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“Jackie,” says Natalie in a low, dangerous voice. “This does not look like a hotel.”
“What gave it away?” Jackie is beaming. Jackie is, Natalie has discovered, somewhat immune to her dangerous voice.
Honestly, most of her teammates are immune to that voice. And her glares. And her everything, and Natalie wishes she’d had the foresight to be violently ill this weekend.
“Oh, come on,” Jackie adds when the rest of the girls pin her with equally flat stares. “This is going to be epic.”
“Which part?” asks Van. She’s standing hip to hip with Taissa, a duffel hanging loosely from each hand. She, like all of them, does not look impressed with Jackie’s creativity.
“The part where we all get eaten alive by mosquitos?” Tai guesses.
“Or the part where a bear lumbers out and ransacks our food supply?” Lottie suggests.
Mari throws an eager hand into the air. “Ooh, maybe the part where the temperatures drop out of nowhere and we freeze to death—”
“No one is freezing to death,” Jackie interjects huffily. “It’s fucking May. And it’s going to be fucking fun, you guys! Come on, how sick are we of boring old sleepovers?”
They continue to stare at her. She reaches out without looking, slapping at Shauna’s arm.
“Tune in here, Shipman, I’m drowning.”
Shauna opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Weakly, she hears herself say, “It…could be…an experience.”
“So’s a blown knee,” Taissa mutters. Van snorts, not even bothering to cup a hand around her amusement.
Jackie rolls her eyes. Admittedly, the tradition is to spend a weekend at the Taylor house, laying out their sleeping bags around her parents’ living room and proceeding to eat them out of house and home in the name of team bonding. And, admittedly, that’s usually fun. There are movies, and makeovers, and inevitably, they get drunk enough to coax Shauna into reading poetry in a miserable French accent. It’s never steered them wrong.
But when Coach had asked if Jackie had ideas about this year—the final year, their senior year—she’d found herself suggesting something different. Something set just out of town, in the woods, at a campsite where no one (Jeff) could crash out of the blue. Where no one (Jeff) was able to even call and distract from the experience.
Coach Martinez had looked at her like she was crazy, and Jackie knows no one thinks of her as the outdoorsy type. Hell, none of them fit that particular flannel-and-granola bill, not even Van. She’d insisted anyway. It had felt like her last chance to be unpredictable before college sweeps them all away from one another.
Maybe she should have told them. Maybe she shouldn’t have sprung it on them, letting them all believe the bus was carrying them off to an expensive hotel on Lottie’s dad’s dime. Maybe she should have pointed out that the packing instructions she’d written up had included an awful lot of shit that isn’t necessary while staying at the Marriott.
But if she’d told them, odds are good they wouldn’t have gotten on that bus at all. And she needs them here. They’re a team. They’ve got Nationals around the corner. They need to prove to themselves they can handle anything that’s thrown their way.
And they’re going to have a good time if it fucking kills her.
***
“Where the fuck did she get all of these, anyway?” Van wonders. She and Tai have been struggling to pitch a tent for going on an hour now—one of the five child-sized pup tents Jackie had procured from the bus depths, all of them in nauseatingly bright colors. They come with a truly offensive number of poles that cinch together into a shell, over which the tent itself is drawn tight. Van’s pretty sure theirs has somehow come together backwards.
At least when Jackie announced their “roommates”, she’d paired Van with Taissa. She’s not sure she could stomach three days out here if she’d been tossed in a tent with Laura Lee.
(Laura Lee, bless her, is sitting idly back with her Bible open on her knees while Misty Quigley pulls their tent together. Misty’s disconcertingly good at tent-pitching, turns out. Van realizes she could also have been paired with Misty, and sends a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of gay teens that Jackie doesn’t hate her that much.)
Tai grunts, pounding the final peg into the unyielding dirt. She straightens up, frowning at their spoils. “This doesn’t look right. Does this look right?”
Van tugs on the archway. “Are the zippers…supposed to be on the inside?”
“Doing great, guys!” Jackie proclaims. Her bright green tent is pitched a few feet away. Van’s pretty sure Shauna did eighty percent of the work. “This is step one of the bonding!”
“I’m gonna bond her to the end of my mallet,” Tai mumbles. She brushes an errant curl from her eyes. Van forces her glance away, her stomach roiling.
It would have killed her patience, tenting with Laura Lee or Misty, for sure. It would have ended in her sleeping beside the fire, rather than listen to either of them talk her ear off all night long. It might even have killed her reputation as one of their most relaxed, even-tempered teammates.
Unfortunately, it just might kill her outright to sleep nestled against Taissa Turner’s side in the world’s tiniest tent. Taissa, who is her best friend in the world. And who has the prettiest brown eyes she’s ever seen. And whose lips are distractingly full.
And who has been making her feel all kinds of woozy lately without seeming to notice.
“You still in there?” Tai asks. Van snaps her eyes back to that familiar face, that familiar, too-charming smile.
“You know the worst part of this?” she blurts. Tai, hand on her hip, waits. “How the fuck are we supposed to have our traditional horror movie marathon without a goddamn VCR?”
Tai laughs, draping an arm carelessly around Van’s shoulders. She’s sweaty, and Van should find it gross. Van should definitely not want to burrow her nose against Tai’s glistening throat.
Fuck. She’s going to kill Jackie for this.
***
“I love you,” Shauna says. It seems like the best intro to this conversation, reminding Jackie of the strictest fact in their world. “I love you very much, so when I say this—”
“Oh, not you too,” Jackie interrupts with a groan. “Can you cut me a break, please? I’m doing my best out here.”
Shauna chews her lip. She wants to point out that Jackie’s best was pointedly not telling any of them the details of this trip. Jackie’s best was borrowing a bunch of kiddie tents from somewhere, giving them “room assignments” she must have known would be misinterpreted, and setting them loose in the wild. None of which is like Jackie in the least.
She wants to point this out, but Jackie’s wide hazel eyes are eating up her face, and the last time she looked at Shauna this way, Shauna wound up giving up her favorite POGs. Even the slammer.
She’s too old to be missing that slammer, but here she is.
“It’s just not very…you,” she says carefully. “Have you ever been camping in your life?”
“No,” Jackie answers impatiently, “but who cares? I’ve never gone sky-diving or seen the Eiffel Tower, either, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t jump at the chance. We’re going to Rutgers in the fall, Shauna! It’s time to try new things!”
“A week before Nationals?” Shauna presses. “Shouldn’t we be, like, running extra drills all weekend?”
“Is that how you’d prefer to spend your time?” Jackie demands. “Running drills until you puke?”
She’d prefer to be sleeping in her own bed, but Shauna doubts saying so would help. They’re already here, alone; the bus driver pulled merrily away with assurances she would be back early Sunday afternoon. There isn’t much to be done now except roll with whatever plans Jackie has made.
“Fine,” she sighs. “What’s the play?”
Jackie brightens. Her smile is so effusive, Shauna can’t help but return it. She’s missed Jackie, if she’s honest with herself. Missed being alone with her, making sense of the parts of the world that don’t revolve solely around soccer and college and Jeff Sadecki. She’s missed the way Jackie looks without Jeff hanging off her arm. Shauna’s always thought they looked wrong together: too sculpted, too All-American, too bland.
Maybe she’s jealous. Maybe she wishes Jeff would look at her that way, all moon eyes and dopey grin. Maybe she just wants to know what it feels like to soak up the rays of someone’s affection as Jackie so effortlessly does every day.
She thinks that’d be easier, if that was all it was. If she just wanted to be like Jackie. Beloved. Gleaming. The Teenage Ideal.
That’d be easier, but it somehow doesn’t sit right. It sounds like a tape being chewed up in her car’s shitty deck. The song is melting, dripping like wax, making her feel dizzy.
“You’ll help me?” Jackie asks, squeezing her arm. Her hand is surprisingly strong, wrapped around the flannel of Shauna’s sleeve.
“Sure,” she says helplessly. “’Course I will.”
Her heart skids as Jackie hugs her tight.
***
Natalie’s not sure what to think about being paired with Lottie Matthews. On the one hand, she’s not Misty. Or Laura Lee. Or Mari, who is way too intense for Natalie’s taste.
On the other, she’s been looking at Natalie with an indecipherable expression ever since Natalie pushed her aside and finished pitching their purple tent without a word.
“What?” Natalie asks defensively. She hates that Lottie makes her feel this way sometimes. Lottie, by virtue of existing, makes her feel tiny. Poor. Like she needs to explain herself.
“Nothing,” Lottie says. There’s something in her voice Natalie doesn’t trust. She narrows her eyes, folding her arms over her unseasonable leather jacket.
“Come on, spit it out. Why’re you looking at me like that?”
Lottie shrugs. “You just—you did that so fast. I thought we’d be struggling for hours.”
If she’d let Lottie take the lead, they would have. Lottie’s smart as a whip, but clearly unaccustomed to the great outdoors. She’d been looking at those poles like they might spring to life and perform a puppet show.
Not that she owes Lottie anything, but she finds herself saying, “Yeah, well. Dad used to take me camping once a year. It’s not that fucking hard.”
Anyone else would prickle at this last addition. Taissa would snarl back. Van would roll her eyes. Shauna would go bright pink in the cheeks. Lottie just tilts her head, looking at Natalie like she’s never seen anything quite like her before.
“Cool,” she says. “What else do we do to set up?”
Natalie grinds her teeth. This wasn’t her idea, and therefore is so not her job.
But, fuck, does she really trust Jackie to know best?
“We should hang a tarp over the picnic tables,” she says reluctantly. “In case it rains. It’ll help keep the bugs off the food, too.”
She’s surprised to find Lottie is eager to help—but then, that’s Lottie for you. She’s never been afraid of a little hard work, always willing to run cones out before practice or collect towels for Misty to bring down to laundry after. Rich girls, in Natalie’s experience, normally can’t get away from chores fast enough, but Lottie doesn’t seem to mind.
And, even though she is the antithesis of nature with her pigtails and her striped blouse, she’s genuinely helpful. And tall as fuck, which means stringing a line between two trees and draping a blue plastic tarp over it goes a lot more smoothly than Natalie remembers from the last time she tried to do it alone.
“Nice work!” Jackie calls, watching as they string a second line for laundry. Natalie rolls her eyes.
“It’s just a fucking clothesline. Not exactly rocket science.”
“It’s great,” Lottie says, sliding her a warm smile. Natalie’s face goes hot. She needs a cigarette. She needs a drink. She needs to not be stranded out in the middle of nowhere with her fucking soccer team.
But, shit, at least she isn’t at home. She’ll take Lottie Matthews over her mother’s vacant eyes any day of the week.
***
Van hates to admit it, but their campsite is starting to look like it might actually sustain human life for a few days. No thanks to Jackie, who somehow looks the most lost out of all of them despite being fully responsible for their current situation.
No, it’s Natalie who seems to have taken charge. Not that she wants the position, judging by how she flaps at anyone who pauses and looks to her for confirmation they aren’t fucking something up. Maybe that’s why they’re all willing to concede to her, Van thinks. It’s easier to listen to someone who isn’t yelling for attention.
“Hey, at least she brought food,” Tai says, pawing through one of the four coolers. One is full of grill-typical items: hot dogs, burger patties, potatoes, husked corn cobs. One is packed with snacks enough to keep them all sated for a week or more. The last two are full, respectively, of cheap beer and cheaper bottled water.
“How the hell did she sneak this on board?” Tai adds, kicking the Pabst cooler. Van shakes her head.
“How did she sneak all of this on board? How did we not notice?” She frowns down at herself. “Are we idiots? Have we, in our champion hubris, become idiots?”
“You’re not idiots,” Jackie says graciously, sneaking up behind them. “You just walked onto that bus like a bunch of zombies. Why’d you think I had us leave at the asscrack of dawn?”
“Be-cause you’re a freakish morning person?” Taissa guesses. Jackie rolls her eyes.
“Look, guys, I know you think this is going to be a nightmare, but I promise you I did my research. I even practiced starting a fire!”
“Where?” Van asks blankly. Jackie blanches.
“Well. I didn’t actually get one…going, but the logic is simple enough. I’m sure it won’t take much. And I brought lighter fluid!”
“Oh, thank fuck, she’ll burn the whole site down and we can go home early,” Tai murmurs against the shell of Van’s ear. She’s keeping her voice low, waiting until Jackie has dashed away to inspect the firepit at the center of camp, because she doesn’t want to start drama. She’s definitely not whispering in Van’s ear, hot breath coasting over her skin in delirious waves, because she knows what it’s doing to Van’s insides.
Having a hot best friend seemed like a much better idea when she wasn’t always standing in Van’s personal bubble.
“Just keep me away from whatever fire she starts,” Van manages. Her voice is hoarse, but present enough. “I think I’d look insane without eyebrows.”
In the end, it isn’t Jackie who starts the first fire. It isn’t even Natalie. They glance over to find Akilah—who none of them really know, an alternate sent up from JV after Allie’s leg fiasco—bent over pleasantly-rolling flames.
“What the fuck,” says Taissa without missing a beat. Akilah beams.
“I was a Girl Scout. This is actually giving me crazy nostalgia.”
“Great,” Tai says. “So we’re in the middle of nowhere, and our tried-and-true staples of nature are the burnout, the newbie, and Misty Quigley.”
“Kinda makes you want to sneak off and hide in a tree, huh?” Van quips. She’s gratified when Tai laughs and bumps her arm. Tai is always bumping her lately, more than she ever used to. It’s how Van knows without a doubt how enticingly soft her skin is.
Not that she’s thinking about Tai’s skin. Not that she’s thinking about Tai taking her by the elbow, leaning down, saying, Actually, yeah, let’s sneak off, let’s go right now—
“Damn, JV,” Tai is saying from several feet away, a sure sign she has struck upon the power of teleportation. “This is pretty impressive.”
Van blinks rapidly. Taissa is making herself at home in one of the folding chairs, and dude, how did any of them think Jackie’s plans involved a fucking hotel?
“You good?” Natalie asks from her elbow. Van jumps.
“Perfect. Amazing. We, as the cave folk in times before—” She flails in the general direction of the licking flames. “—have created fire.”
“Uh huh.” Natalie looks amused. “You let me know if you need something to help you mellow out, yeah?”
“I’m great,” Van says, sounding strangled to her own ears. Natalie claps her on the back.
“Right. Hang tough, goalie.”
***
With the site all set up, a fire roaring merrily away, and half of them sprawled in chairs with frosty beer cans in hand, Shauna thinks Jackie’s actually achieved something wonderful.
“See?” Jackie digs the tips of her fingers into Shauna’s ribs. She’s dragged her chair sidelong with Shauna’s so she can throw slim legs over her lap, using her as a human ottoman. It’s more comfortable than Shauna would like to admit.
“I see,” Shauna says gamely.
“It’s great,” Jackie says. “Go on, Shipman, tell me it’s great.”
“It’s fantastic,” Shauna says, keeping her voice pointedly level. “You’re a genius.”
“Shut up,” Jackie laughs. “Look, nobody’s even tried to kill each other in half an hour.”
She has a point. Everyone looks bright-eyed, awake at last, the strain of pitching tents and swatting the first mosquitos washed clean. Laura Lee is teaching Misty a game that seems to involve word association and rocks. Mari is splitting a bonkers-huge stash of Fruit by the Foot with anyone who glances at her. Van and Tai have dug a soccer ball out of someone’s bag and are booting it back and forth with uncomplicated ease.
They look relaxed. Like a bunch of friends with nowhere to be, no exams to study for, no stomach-churning choices to make. Like none of them have a secret letter from Brown announcing their future is months away from skidding clear of their best friend’s.
She promised herself she wouldn’t think about that here.
“This is what summer’s going to look like,” Jackie says. She sips her beer, sunglasses holding back her hair, looking for all the world like a Californian beach is calling her name. Jackie’s never been to California, but she’s just got that kind of face. The kind that would look at home absolutely anywhere she settled.
So why, Shauna wonders, is she settling for fucking Jersey?
“Shauna, please tell me you aren’t going to spend the whole weekend studying.” Jackie’s hand punctuates her words, slapping down in the middle of Shauna’s journal. Shauna snaps the book shut.
“Maybe I was writing an epic poem all about our fearless captain.”
“Ooh. Carry on, then. Make sure you get all my finest traits.” Jackie bats her eyes. Shauna leans over, yanking the beer out of her hand and downing it in a gulp.
“Which are?”
“Bitch,” Jackie says with absolutely no malice. Shauna flips open the cooler, tossing her a replacement. Jackie snaps the top, raises the foaming can skyward. “To best friends.”
“To winning,” Shauna adds. Jackie grins.
“Same thing.”
***
The first problem crops up when Mari says, “Um, Jackie? Did they give you a map or something when you booked?”
“Why?” Jackie leans back in her chair, letting the sun kiss her cheeks. “Everything the light touches—within the radius of these trees—is ours. Pretty simple.”
“Yeah, but which way to the bathrooms?”
Natalie glances up from rolling a joint in time to see Mari hop from one foot to the other. She manages to look all of four years old, her expression dire.
“Seriously,” she adds, “I really have to pee. Which way, Jackie?”
Go ahead, thinks Natalie with a feral little grin. Tell her, Jackie. Tell her what you forgot.
“I, uh.” The color is draining rapidly from Jackie’s cheeks. “I didn’t…think about that.”
The others stop dead as if on a timer. Tai stomps down on the soccer ball to keep it from shooting off into the trees. Lottie raises her eyebrows.
“But there are bathrooms,” she says. “Right?”
“Probably?” squeaks Jackie. She darts a glance at Shauna, unmistakably begging for assistance. Shauna raises her shoulders and drops them again, the universal sign for the fuck do you want me to do?
“Nat,” Van says. “You’re the camping expert.”
“So not an expert,” Natalie protests. Van ignores this.
“There’s definitely a bathroom, right? With a toilet. And running water.”
“Um.” She shouldn’t laugh. She really shouldn’t. They’re all going to kill her if she laughs. “I mean…we are camping. In the woods.”
“Obviously.” Taissa doesn’t sound amused. “But that doesn’t mean—”
Natalie shrugs. She licks the rolling paper, finalizing her joint, and holds it up for inspection. Not as clean as when Kevyn does it. She never gets that picture-perfect seal. “Means when in animal Rome, do as the animal Romans do.”
They explode. They’re all talking at once—Tai and Van, Mari and Lottie—and Jackie looks like she’s hoping the ground will carve open beneath her feet. Natalie flicks her lighter to life, sparking the joint between her lips.
“It’s really easy, actually,” Misty says over their protestations. “I used to pee in my backyard all the time when I was a kid.”
She looks proud of this admission, like she’s some kind of jungle explorer. Mari wrinkles her nose.
“I am not pissing in the woods.”
“Well,” says Natalie around her joint, “have fun with your UTI, then. And make sure you call the Guinness Book of Records, ‘cause I don’t think they’ve got anyone who hasn’t taken a leak in over three days in there.”
Mari looks like she wants to cry, or strangle Natalie, or strangle Natalie while she’s sobbing. Jackie pops up from her chair, hands outstretched.
“Okay, okay, look, you guys. It’s part of the experience, right? Part of the bonding. Instead of having to wait for another girl to get out of the shower, we can…employ the buddy system!”
“Yeah,” Van says. “The bonding experience of watching your teammates squat. Love it, Jackie. Brilliant.”
“You don’t have to watch,” Jackie begins, but they’re all turning away, grumbling. She raises her voice. “But seriously, I mean it about the buddy system! If you’re going off to…do anything, make sure you take your tentmate! I don’t want anyone getting lost.”
“Guess that means you and I are about to see a lot of each other,” says Lottie grimly, setting down beside Natalie. Without glancing at her, Natalie stretches out to pass the joint.
“Promise I won’t look.”
Lottie takes a long drag and passes the joint back. She holds the smoke for ages, her eyes shut. She looks almost peaceful, despite the topic of conversation, and Natalie finds her gaze tracing the line of her nose, the dark flutter of her lashes.
Lottie’s eyes flick open, catching her. She exhales through rounded lips, producing a dragon-quality smoke ring, and Natalie looks away.
“She really is doing her best,” she says, unsure why she feels the need to defend Jackie. Lottie leans back on her hands.
“Hey, it could be worse. She could have told us to pitch those tents in her yard.”
Natalie shudders. Mrs. Taylor always looks at her like she’s debating which orphanage to call to shunt Natalie away from her precious daughter. “At least here we can fucking smoke.”
“Smoke,” Lottie repeats, accepting the joint again. “And watch each other piss. Like God intended.”
“I heard that,” Laura Lee snaps. She looks pained. Lottie raises a hand in a placating wave.
“Sorry, Laura Lee.”
It would be more believable, Natalie thinks, if Lottie didn’t immediately meet her eyes, snort laughter, and let her head bow against Natalie’s shoulder for balance.
***
After the piss bomb is dropped, Van expects them to unravel. She expects Mari, at the very least, to commit grievous bodily harm. Teen girls have lost their shit over much, much less.
“The alcohol helped,” Nat says. “Jackie’s life was saved by bottom-shelf beer.”
“First time for everything,” Lottie adds.
“Pour one out for the world’s shittiest beer,” Taissa says somberly, jetting smoke from her nose.
They’re sitting in a circle on some rocks Natalie found, the four of them passing a joint around and around. It’s easily the highest Van’s been in months. The highest she’s ever seen Tai, who normally sticks to tobacco.
Not that she’s trying to impress Tai or whatever by keeping up. It’s just that Tai is her tentmate, her best friend, and if Taissa’s going off to smoke Nat’s grass, the buddy system mandates Van go with her.
And get stoned off her fucking face.
“This is so much better,” she groans, “than listening to Misty spell out the finer points of public urination.”
“Getting clubbed in the head with a rock would beat that,” says Tai in her sensible voice, the one she uses whenever she’s drunk and pretending not to be. Van falls against her side, giggling.
“You guys.” Lottie is hugging her knees, staring into space. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We could probably hit her with the rock and get away with it.”
“Charlotte Matthews,” deadpans Nat, “did you just suggest murdering our equipment manager?”
Lottie looks at her, vacant-eyed, and begins to laugh. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her whole face open in a way Van’s never seen before. Lottie’s normally pretty put-together.
“Think Nat might be a bad influence on you,” Van points out, accepting the stub of joint from Tai. She considers it for a long beat, then shakes her head and hands it to Natalie. “Fuck, man, I’m baked. Any more, you’re going to have to carry me back to the tent.”
“We could sleep out here.” Tai flops onto her back. The rocks are pleasing in shape, flat enough to stretch out on. Van wonders if they look like turtles, sunbathing at the edge of a tiny creek. Ninja turtles. There are four of them. She wonders if Natalie or Lottie would be Leonardo.
“It’s like four in the fucking afternoon,” Nat points out. Tai shifts until her head is resting on Van’s thigh.
“A nap, then. No law against napping. We’re on vacation.”
“We’re on Jackie’s bonding schedule,” Lottie corrects. “She’ll definitely come looking if we don’t get back soon.”
“Let her look,” yawns Tai. She’s nuzzling into Van’s leg, one hand folded over her kneecap as if to stay grounded. “I’m not fucking scared of Jackie. Are you, Van?”
Van doesn’t answer. Her head is a bowling ball filled with glitter. Her legs have become one with the rock. Tai’s breath is hot through the cotton of her sweats, and she suddenly realizes she can’t move. Can barely breathe. Her heartbeat is an earthquake.
“Shit,” she hears Nat say. “Think she had too much.”
“She’s good,” Tai says sleepily. She presses her cheek more firmly against Van’s leg. “Aren’t you?”
“Great,” Van chokes out. Great. High as a kite, with the world’s worst crush, and there isn’t even a bathroom to go hide in. She’s great. “Never better.”
“That’s my girl,” Tai murmurs. Her arm swings out across Van’s lap like she’s just a giant teddy bear, and Taissa’s making herself a comfortable bed. Van glances up, cheeks burning, to find Lottie and Nat staring.
“What?” She sounds too defensive. She doesn’t sound like herself at all. “She’s fuckin’ tired.”
Lottie grins. Natalie looks elated for reasons Van is way too high to parse. She tips back, arms behind her own head, and lets the rock take her full weight.
“Naptime,” she says, hoping she sounds like a human being. A very high, not-at-all-fucked human being. “Wake me when it’s time to taste-test all of the chips. Like. All of them.”
***
“Are you guys high?” Jackie has never figured out that no one listens to her when she goes all shrill like that. Shauna keeps meaning to tell her, but never quite seems to find the time.
“No,” says Van, swaying in place.
“Absolutely not,” says Taissa, clinging to Van’s arm.
“Three-hundred percent,” says Natalie, grinning wide enough that Shauna can count every tooth in her snarky little mouth.
“Nat’s stuff is awesome,” says Lottie, which seems to be the last straw. Jackie throws her hands into the air.
“I expressly paired you with Natalie so you would keep an eye on her, Lot! Not so you’d go getting baked on day one!”
“Sorry,” says Lottie, clearly not meaning it in the least. “Anyway, you were right, Jackie. Peeing in the woods is fine.”
Van mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “Until you forget how to pee altogether,” and Shauna decides she doesn’t want to know. She takes Jackie gently by the elbow.
“They’re fine. Look—get a little dinner in them, they’ll come down.”
“But we’re supposed to be bonding as a team,” Jackie protests. Shauna glances back in time to see Lottie stagger and Natalie catch her around the waist. For some reason, Natalie’s neck is brick red.
“They’re bonding. We’re bonding. We don’t have to all be doing the same thing, right?”
Jackie grumbles. Shauna twists her around, giving her a little shake she hopes reads as friendly, and not wanting to throttle the stubbornness right out of her best friend.
“Hey. Look at them.”
Jackie leans around her, scowling. Tai and Van are clinging to one another, cackling. Nat is still holding Lottie around the waist, looking a little lost, but wearing the brightest grin Shauna’s ever seen.
“They’re having fun,” she says firmly. “Weren’t you afraid they’d hate every minute out here?”
Jackie shrugs. Shauna shakes her again, and she coughs out a laugh. “All right! All right, Jesus, stop that. You’re gonna make me hurl.”
“You did good,” Shauna says. “So what if they’re fucked up? They’re happy. And Akilah’s fire is amazing, and no one has killed Misty yet. That’s a victory, Jackie. Take it.”
Jackie squints up at her. “Shauna Shipman, are you giving me a fucking pep talk?”
“No,” lies Shauna. “Because if I were, it would completely wreck my reputation.”
“As a…sad poet laureate?”
“As the one who does not give fucking pep talks.” The edge of Shauna’s mouth quirks up. Jackie leans in closer, her eyes bright.
“Except for to me, right? Because I’m special.”
She wants to laugh. She wants to tell Jackie to go start dinner. She wants to make any kind of joke to get out of the way Jackie is smiling at her.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “You’re the most special.”
Jackie whoops. She cups her hands around her mouth, raising her voice. “All right, Yellowjackets! Who can cook worth a goddamn?”
Shauna hugs herself, watching Mari’s hand shoot into the air. Misty starts in on some diatribe about being a sterling sous chef, and Laura Lee patiently sets to work husking corn. The stoners circle the table like red-eyed vultures, plucking whole bags of Doritos like no one will notice them crinkling away to their seats.
Jackie stands in the middle of them all, blouse tied expertly above her bellybutton, hands on her hips. She looks so relaxed, so cheerful, it causes Shauna actual pain. Jackie, her best friend in the whole world. Jackie, her home.
Jackie, who, come fall, is going to be right here in Jersey while Shauna moves out of state.
How the fuck is she going to do this?
***
“Do you think they know?” Lottie wonders. She’s sobered up considerably since dinner (after three hot dogs and nearly an entire bag of Ruffles Sour Cream and Onion chips), and is now conducting psychological experiments on their teammates from afar.
As long as she’s not analyzing Natalie, Nat is so in.
“No way,” she answers. She’s not sober; those pretty little pills she tossed back an hour ago are starting to do their work, spinning the flames into technicolor ribbons. She feels amazing.
“Really?” Lottie crinkles her nose. “Not even a little bit?”
“No,” Natalie says. “That’s the best fucking part.”
“But…they’re always together. Always. You really think they have no idea?”
“What,” Taissa asks, plopping down in the next chair, “are we talking about?”
“Whether Jackie and Shauna know they’re both crazy about each other,” Lottie says. “Like full gay-drama vibes.”
Tai promptly chokes on a swig of Pepsi.
“Seriously? This is the topic of conversation.”
“Why?” Natalie sneers. “You’re not going to tell us you’re homophobic, Taissa. The fuckin’ 40s called, they want their bullshit rhetoric back—”
“I’m not a—” Tai lowers her voice, eyes flicking every which way. “I’m not a fucking homophobe, I just—it’s Shauna. And Jackie.”
“What are we talking about?” Van asks, dropping into a crouch beside Tai’s seat. She rolls her eyes, ceding the Pepsi to Van’s grabby hand gesture.
“These two idiots think Shauna and Jackie have it bad for each other.”
“Uh, because they do,” Natalie says. Van, bottle still tipped to her lips, makes a noise like a fish trying to breathe from the top of a mountain. Tai hammers her on the back until she spits soda everywhere.
“How high are you guys?” Van demands, a hand pressed to her chest.
Lottie flings up her hands. “Come on! They aren’t the gayest thing you’ve ever seen? Look at them!”
Van glances up at Tai, who sits a little taller. “I don’t know about the gayest,” she says hesitantly.
“I mean, that’s a pretty steep—” Tai shakes her head. “Anyway, Jackie’s got a boyfriend. He’s basically a scarecrow with a driver’s license, but—"
“Bisexuality.” Nat taps a finger against the side of her head. Sparks fly from the firepit, blues and greens and fluorescent purples. “Look. It. Up.”
“They’re basically in love,” says Lottie sagely. She’s maybe not as sober as Natalie was giving her credit for, but she is right. Jackie and Shauna have been clinging to one another for years. It’s hardly possible to find one without the other. Natalie has never seen two girls revolve more reliably around one another.
Almost never.
“Do you think they know?” she asks when Tai and Van, spluttering excuses that barely make any sense at all, have wandered off to chat with Akilah. Lottie raises her eyebrows.
“Oh, not even a little.”
“Give it to the end of Nationals,” Natalie says in a low voice. Lottie smirks.
“You want to put an actual wager down?”
“Fuck yeah. Five bucks says they’re banging by the time we take the gold.”
“Ten bucks,” Lottie says calmly, “they’re banging by the time we break camp.”
Natalie takes her hand, gripping tight, and pumps once. Lottie’s palm is warm, oddly supple against her own. The pills, probably, enhancing reality to its maximum potential. No way does Lottie have the smoothest skin on the planet.
“Any terms?” she asks, still clutching Lottie’s hand. Her own is starting to feel a little sweaty, but releasing too abruptly would look bizarre.
Lottie shrugs. “No interfering. Can’t Little Mermaid their shit. Otherwise? We just see how it plays out.”
Natalie bares her teeth and squeezes a little harder. She’s pleased when Lottie squeezes back without breaking eye contact.
“Let the best man win.”
***
Sleeping is supposed to be the easiest part of the weekend. Van’s a champion sleeper. She’s learned to sleep through her mother stumbling home at the oddest hours, sometimes bringing company in her wake. She’s learned to sleep through the scream of a TV turned on at max volume, through the clamor of neighbors fighting, through her own driving anxiety. Sleeping is a cakewalk—especially when she’s spent the evening partying, carefully chiseling down her defenses in the name of a rock-solid crash.
Sleeping is the most uncomplicated thing about living.
Until she’s trying to do it outside. In the middle of nowhere. In a tiny-ass tent designed for exactly one nine-year-old.
With Taissa Turner pressed along her frame like clingfilm.
“You comfy?” Van asks. Tai clears her throat.
“Yeah. You?”
“For sure. Yeah.” She’s laying on her back, gripping her blanket under her chin. She doesn’t own a sleeping bag, and wishes she did. At least that would put another layer between her ribcage and Tai’s.
“You sure?” Tai rocks up on one elbow, looking down at her. Her eyes glitter in the dark. She’s beautiful, even in shadow, even when Van can barely make out the nuance of her features.
No, she reminds herself, not beautiful. Just Tai. Just normal Tai, your normal friend, who is completely normal.
“Just—you don’t usually sleep like that,” Tai adds. She flops back down, doing her best impression of Van right now: arms and legs locked tight as a corpse’s, chin raised. “Like you’re expecting to burst out of your cocoon in the morning.”
“If we were in a horror movie,” Van says, “that would be amazing.”
Tai laughs. “You can relax, you know. I’m sorry there isn’t more space, but I don’t mind you…” She trails off, sounding uncertain for the first time. “Unless you mind?”
Touching me. Sleeping next to me. Like we used to all the time at every team sleepover without ever making it weird. This is stupid. This is so stupid. Van’s known she was gay for years, has known it with the certainty of seeing her own face in the mirror. Never once has it made her feel like she should take care where to put her limbs. Never once has Tai made her feel like she needs to tie herself into knots to keep from making it weird.
“I don’t,” she says quickly. “Mind. You can stretch out, too, if you don’t have enough…”
Tai hesitates. Then, as if shaking herself, she says, “This is stupid. Come here.”
“What?” Maybe Van’s still high. Maybe Van’s still totally stoned, swaying beside the fire. The air was pleasantly chill out there, Natalie’s weed working miracles on her system. Maybe she never left.
“Roll over,” Tai commands, and Van obeys without thinking. Tai scoots across the half-inch between them until her gray sleeping bag is nestled against Van’s back. “There. That okay?”
Van, laying on her right side, the tip of her nose kissing the wall of the tent, exhales. “Sure. Yeah. Cozy.”
“I just don’t want you freezing,” Tai says into the curve of her shoulder. “Or not sleeping. Christ only knows what Jackie has planned for bonding time tomorrow.”
Van rumbles a laugh, hyper-aware that it has nowhere to go before tucking itself into the angles of Taissa’s body. “I would’ve been fine. That’s a good blanket.”
“That’s a school blanket,” Tai points out. “From school. Which you stole to take naps on before practice. You couldn’t bring your quilt?”
“I thought we’d be in a hotel,” Van protests, which is somehow worse, because it lets slip that she brought this blanket less for warmth and more because it reminds her of the day Tai watched the supply closet door while she snatched it. It reminds her of Tai laying on one half, the top of her head brushing Van’s shoulder, both of them risking being late to practice in the name of ten minutes’ shuteye.
Tai is quiet for a long time. Her arm slips out of the sleeping bag with a rustle, loosely encircling Van’s middle.
“Okay?” she asks again. Van’s breath stalls. She shuts her eyes, willing the world to stop spinning.
“Great,” she manages. “Thanks. ‘Night, Tai.”
“’Night, Van,” Tai murmurs. Van thinks she falls asleep soon after. It’s hard to tell.
Everything feels entirely too alive, with Tai sleeping this close.
***
“Are you coming to bed?” Jackie asks impatiently. Shauna wonders if this is how her father felt, back when her mother cared to ask such questions.
“In a minute. I want to finish this thought.”
Jackie makes a noise that might be disgust or amusement. Either way, she steps back out of the tent, striding to the dying campfire and plonking down next to Shauna.
“You can go to sleep,” Shauna begins. Jackie shakes her head.
“Uh uh, Shipman. That thing is lunchbox-sized. I try to go to sleep before you get in there, you’re probably going to step on my head or something stumbling around.”
“Thanks,” mutters Shauna. “Glad you think I’m such a picture of grace.”
“I happen to remember quite clearly your eleventh birthday. When you fell down the stairs? And took out the clown and the cake in one fell swoop?” Jackie raises her eyebrows dramatically. As if anyone could forget the Eleventh Hour Catastrophe.
“I like to think I’ve grown into my legs since the sixth grade.” Shauna scratches her pen into the page, making an ever-widening spiral. Jackie shifts, trying to peer over her shoulder.
“What are you working on, anyway?”
Shauna slaps the cover shut. “Nothing. Study plans.” In actuality, it’s a pro-con list breaking down just how awful it’ll be when she finally tells Jackie the truth. So far, on the pro side, she’s written “the weight will finally be off my shoulders.”
The con side has “Jackie will murder me”, “Jackie will never speak to me again”, “Jackie might turn the others against me”, “we will absolutely lose Nationals”, “I will lose my acceptance to Brown”, and “my parents will kick me out of the house.”
Keeping this secret is looking better and better.
Jackie heaves a sigh. “Is there any chance I could get you to cool out this weekend? Just for a couple of days of wilderness living?”
“I’m cool!” Shauna isn’t sure cool people have to go around announcing it. Repeats herself anyway, because fuck it. “I’m being so cool.”
“Cool enough to do your homework,” Jackie says patiently. “While everyone else sleeps off what is sure to be a collective monster hangover.”
Shauna says nothing. Jackie’s tone is particularly calibrated to edge under her skin. She always uses it to get her way: telling Shauna what to wear for picture day, telling Shauna what she should buy for lunch, telling Shauna how to style her hair. There’s no point in responding when she gets like this.
Jackie reaches out, rests a hand on her wrist. “Hey—I’m sorry. That was shitty, wasn’t it? I was being shitty.”
Shauna shakes her head. Jackie sighs again.
“Yeah, I was. I’m sorry. This day has…not gone exactly as I imagined. And I’m kind of nervous, you know, about tomorrow? What if they don’t…listen to me?”
“They always listen to you,” Shauna says quietly. Jackie snorts.
“The fuck they do. Coach is always telling me to be a positive influence, you know? Like the team glue. It’s exhausting.”
Shauna isn’t sure what to say to that. You don’t have to be that way? You don’t have to do everything Coach tells you? You’re amazing without trying at all, and it kind of makes me want to claw your face off, but in the most affectionate way possible?
“I’ll help,” she says at last. “Whatever you want tomorrow, I promise, I’ve got your back.”
“Even when Nat gives me all the shit?” Jackie pooches out her lower lip. She knows full well Shauna can’t turn her away when she’s pouting like that.
“Even if Van gives you all the shit.” She can’t help but smile when Jackie’s brow furrows.
“Yeah, what gives? What is her beef with me, anyway?”
“Maybe you wronged her in another life,” Shauna suggests. She pushes up from her chair, kicking sand onto the remaining coals. They snuff out with a hiss, leaving her to face Jackie in dim starlight. “Anyone who gives you shit tomorrow will have to answer to me. Think of me like your bodyguard.”
“Yeah? You’re gonna be my Kevin Costner?” Jackie grabs her arm, hanging off her. “I mean, he’s no Bruce, but I will take it.”
Shauna ducks her head, laughing, and follows Jackie into their tent.
***
“Up and at ‘em, Yellowjackets! I want to see you bright-eyed and bushy as fuck!”
Natalie jerks awake with a yelp as the zipper on her tent snarls open. Beside her, Lottie sits up way too fast, bonking her forehead off the low ceiling.
Shauna is holding their tent flap ajar, letting in the evil, evil sunlight. “C’mon, guys, don’t make her get out the bullhorn.”
“Tell me she doesn’t have a fucking bullhorn,” Natalie groans.
“What the fuck time is it?” Lottie adds. “Shauna, so help me, if you say any number smaller than ten—”
“Up and at ‘em!” Jackie bellows again. They can hear her clapping her hands, stomping around from tent to tent, dragging her palms up and down each roof with a horrible shushing sound. Natalie covers her head with both arms, trying to roll into a ball to escape this brand-new hell Jackie has concocted.
“She wants to die,” Lottie whispers. “She really wants us to kill her. What are our chances of the win without her?”
“Nil,” Shauna says, fanning them with the tent flap. “Get up before she takes it nuclear.”
They are the last to emerge, clutching their heads and shielding their eyes. Van looks murderous, Taissa scowling so deeply, Natalie will be surprised if her face ever bounces back. Laura Lee and Misty are the furthest from committing homicide, but both are staring at Jackie like she’s standing between them and a ginormous breakfast buffet.
“Is there,” Natalie asks, the idea occurring to her with a stab of excitement, “breakfast?”
“There will be,” Jackie says. She’s beaming. Natalie trusts no one who looks that cheerful first thing in the morning.
“Shauna,” she says slowly. “Why is she looking at us like that, Shauna? Shauna. Fix it.”
No one has ever looked as guilty as Shauna Shipman does right now. Her hair is tied back from her miserable face. She’s wearing, Natalie realizes with a stab of horror, shorts and a tank top. Running shoes.
Workout gear.
“No,” Natalie says. “No, Jackie. Absolutely the fuck not.”
“Yes, Jackie!” Jackie says brightly. “Come on, what better way to get the blood pumping?”
“Than what, ritual slaughter?” Van asks. Jackie rolls her eyes.
“Come on, you guys, it’s gonna be great. We’ll just do a lap around the lake to warm up, and then breakfast on the beach! Doesn’t that sound amazing?”
She shoots Shauna a look. Shauna straightens her shoulders, kicking one leg up in a quad stretch.
“Yeah. Amazing.”
“And,” Jackie adds when the rest of the team stares at her in mutinous disbelief, “I didn’t even mention the best part. Winner gets to sit out all of the breakfast chores.”
“Winner?” Tai repeats flatly. “Are you seriously suggesting we race?”
If Jackie says come on one more time, Natalie’s gonna throw a rock at her. Luckily, Shauna seems to sense this and steps between Jackie and the rest of the team.
“Five minutes to get dressed and stretched,” she says, her mouth pressed into a determined line. “Anyone who’s late to the starting line surrenders their bacon to me.”
Normally, any one of them would scoff at this, tell Shauna she can have their portion over their dead body—but for some reason, be it weariness or headache or simple hunger, no one argues. Each girl stomps back to her tent, grumbling under her breath, and four minutes and fifty seconds later, they’re all lined up.
Jackie hands Misty a dishtowel to use as a makeshift flag and settles in at the end of the line. “Ready?”
“No,” say Van and Tai in unison.
“Yes,” say Laura Lee, Akilah, and Mari.
“Fuck this,” mutters Natalie, tilting into a sprinter’s position.
“Go!” screams Misty, so shrilly, Natalie wouldn’t be surprised to find a complaint tacked to her tent when they return, and they’re off.
Her legs carry her with grim reluctance, her breath winding short after an abysmally-brief distance. Fact is, Natalie has never been much of a runner. Maybe it’s the smoking, or maybe the inescapable feeling that she’d rather fight than flee, but the straightforward momentum of a morning run has never appealed to her much.
That said, this isn’t…terrible. Lottie is keeping pace at her side despite her freakishly long legs, and the others are warming quickly to the competition. She sees Tai playfully shoulder into Van, laughing when Van reaches to snag her t-shirt in return. Laura Lee is picking up the pace, pulling ahead until Mari cuts sharply around her, splashing into the lake to cut her off.
Jackie remains at the back, outpacing only Misty (who might, if she’s lucky, arrive to breakfast while there’s still a single apple available). When Natalie glances over her shoulder, she’s surprised to see Jackie is smiling, arms pumping at her sides, ponytail bouncing.
The lake is really more of a pond, more compact that she’d expected. When Natalie pulls up, bent double over her knees, she finds Shauna and Tai engaged in a mostly good-natured argument over the winner. Van is flopped on her back, limbs akimbo.
“I vote Tai,” she pants. “’Cuz she put the most work into cheating.”
“Excuse you,” Taissa replies. “I do not cheat. I just pull out all the stops.”
“Right. By cheating.”
Natalie allows them to squabble on, kicking off her shoes and digging her toes into the wet sand at the shoreline. Lottie sits beside her, a bottle of water in hand, and pops something small into her mouth.
“Bring enough for the class?” Natalie asks. Lottie smiles thinly, raising the bottle to her lips.
“Sorry. Just my medication.”
“Not the fun kind, huh?” Natalie shrugs. “Worth a shot. What’s it for?”
Lottie takes another drink, longer than Natalie feels is totally necessary. She’s not even that out of breath. At last, she says, “Keeps my head on straight,” in a tone of voice that tells Natalie the conversation is over.
Fair enough. “You could have won that, you know. At least come in second, or whatever.”
Lottie looks amused. “I feel like I could barf up a lung at any minute. And, anyway, I’m not picking a fight with Taissa this early in the morning.”
“I always said you were the smartest of us,” Natalie tells her. A wave licks up her ankles, and she shivers.
Akilah starts another fire. Mari sets to work frying bacon and eggs while Laura Lee and Van chop potatoes. It’s been decided (Jackie decided, really) that Taissa and Shauna can share the first-place spot and are therefore absolved all cooking and cleaning duties for the morning. Shauna posts up on a rock, staring absently at the water.
Tai posts up next to the table, laughing when Van tosses chunks of potato in her direction. Lottie knocks against Natalie’s shoulder and points.
“Flirting.”
“Flirting like crazy,” Natalie confirms. She reaches over, thoughtlessly pulling the bottle from Lottie’s hand and draining it. Lottie smirks.
“Still think they’re going to hold out ‘til Nationals?”
Tai chooses this moment to pop up from her seat, tucking close around Van’s back and adjusting her hand on the knife. Van’s face goes a brilliant scarlet.
“Sure,” says Natalie. “Bet’s a fuckin’ bet.”
“What about Shauna? I mean, she was up before the goddamn sun to help Jackie torture us. Is that not love of the highest order?”
“That’s brainwashing,” Natalie laughs. She crinkles the empty plastic bottle, twisting it between her hands. “Those two will figure their shit out when Hell freezes over. I’m not taking that bet.”
Lottie quiets, gazing out at the gentle waves. Her hair is coming loose from last night’s pigtails, trailing into her eyes, and Natalie can’t help studying her. She looks so peaceful. Like a part of her belongs out here, far away from phone lines and fast food drive thrus.
“Hey! Bacon’s up!” Mari calls, jarring her. “And if you want coffee, you better boil that water yourself, I am not your mother.”
***
Jackie’s decision that they should all start the day with a race? Pretty insane. Jackie’s decision that they should spend the rest of the day at the beach? Significantly better. Van’s always loved the beach.
Or she used to. When the beach was a place of peace, of sand castles and laying out until her mother realized her only child was in danger of going full lobster. That place was a godsend.
This beach? This beach in particular might take her out.
All she has to do is not be weird. It’s not complicated. It’s not something she’s ever struggled with before. Girls are hot, yes. This is like pointing out the sky being blue, winter being cold, movies being awesome. Girls are hot, but that doesn’t mean Van can’t behave like a normal person around a hot girl. She’s been doing normal shit her whole life, to the point where no one on this team has sussed her out. She’s basically a gay superhero.
So why in the name of Sandra Bullock is she having such a fucking time this weekend?
What if you just…told her?
She starts out of her float, water sluicing over her face and into her mouth. That thought belongs to chaos goblins, to Satan himself. That thought belongs to the very same madness which insists she can watch just one more movie, even though it’s midnight. The same madness which insists she can make it through a calc test without studying all weekend. It’s a voice she knows full well she should never listen to.
Why the fuck would she start now?
She splashes herself, eyes shut, cool water banishing the sheer insanity that is just tell her how you feel. Which is what, exactly? That Taissa is hot? That Taissa is funny, and brilliant, and her favorite person in the world? Tai knows all of that. She doesn’t need Van to tell her.
That Taissa is the kind of hot, funny, smart favorite Van wants to make out with? That Van wants to do all sorts of bonkers new things with? That Van wants to—
“Fuck,” she mutters, splashing herself again. The others are laughing and squealing, swimming around each other. Someone found a beach ball, and they’re playing some wild variant of keep-away with it, the teams split so haphazardly, Van can’t figure out who’s against whom. Shauna is on Jackie’s shoulders, the ball hoisted over her head. Natalie keeps diving under, popping back up in unexpected spots.
And Tai is sitting out on the beach between Akilah and Lottie, her head tipped back, her shirt and shorts piled far away from her body.
Tai, just laying there on a towel in a bikini, her eyes closed, her face rapturous.
Van sinks under the next wave, arms around her knees like a human cannonball. If she just stays under here long enough, it will all wash away. The insane urge to splash out of the lake, stand dripping over her best friend, say calmly, “We need to talk.” The insane urge to grab Tai’s hand, smooth her thumb over familiar knuckles, bring it up to her mouth.
It'll pass. If she just stays under here long enough. If she just can hold her breath for another two—five—million minutes, it’ll pass.
An arm circles her waist. She bobs to the surface with a gasp, pushing wet hair out of her eyes.
“Dude,” Natalie says. “Were you fucking drowning?”
And, great, now they’re all looking at her. Van splutters, shakes her head, pushes off from Natalie and swims in a circle to prove all of her faculties are still very much in order.
“I was…communing. With nature.” Because this is officially a world where that sounds less insane than what she was actually thinking. Van might actually hate the beach.
Natalie raises her eyebrows. She’s still wearing copious day-two eye makeup, and it’s dripping down her cheeks like she’s a baby raccoon. A baby raccoon who just tried to save Van from her own gay yearning.
“Don’t tell Jackie that,” Nat says at last. “I do not want to know what her version of communing with nature looks like.”
She swims off, splashing Van as she goes. Van swallows a groan, eyes flicking back to shore.
Tai is watching her, brow slightly furrowed. She’s up on her elbows, sunglasses sliding down her nose. Those are Van’s aviators, she realizes. She hadn’t even seen Tai swipe them from the tent.
She waves, cups a hand around her mouth. “All good! No one’s drowning!”
Tai nods slowly. She stands up, giving Van much too good a look at much too great an expanse of skin. Could that even be charitably called a bathing suit? Van’s in swim trucks that go down nearly to her knees and a sports bra. Van’s skin is exactly as exposed as necessary, a perfectly normal amount of her daring the sun to do its worst.
Tai’s out there looking like a goddamn model out of those magazines Van definitely doesn’t look at in grocery store checkout lanes. Would it have killed her to just wear a pair of overalls or a fucking trash bag or something?
“Hey!” Tai has walked to the shoreline, her feet barely broaching water. “Come out for a minute.”
Van jabs a finger into her own chest, a who me? gesture that makes Tai roll her eyes.
“No, you weirdo, I’m talking to the fucking Loch Ness Monster. Will you get over here?”
Van darts a look around, helpless, wishing Nat would swim back to unnecessarily save her life again. But Natalie is weaving around Mari, arms flailing to—catch the ball? Stop Misty from catching the ball? Christ, she has no idea what that game is, and sort of wishes she’d involved herself before now.
Nothing to be done for it. Tai looks like she’s about ready to come in after her, and if Tai gets her hair wet on her account, Van is done for.
“What?” she asks, breathless. Because of the swim, she tells herself. Not because Taissa is inches away, miles of soft skin and firm muscle and Christ, that’s cleavage.
“Take a walk with me,” Tai says. She holds out a hand, grasping Van’s wrist, pulling her to the stack of sneakers left under the picnic table. Tai shrugs into a short-sleeve button down, leaving it wide open, and Van bites her cheek. Somehow, that is even hotter. Somehow, it feels even more dangerous.
Tell her, that little madcap voice in her head says again. Van shoves dripping feet into her Converse, pointedly ignoring that broken piece of herself which wants so badly to ruin her life.
“Where are we going?” Keep talking. Talking is what normal people do. Talking is what she and Tai do—about movies, about soccer, about school and other people’s drama and whatever else doesn’t fall too close to home.
“Away,” Tai says. “Doesn’t all that shrieking make your head hurt?”
“The bacon helped. And the four bottles of water Misty poured down my throat. Don’t you hate it when she’s right about shit?”
“Under penalty of death,” Tai says soberly, “I will never admit to Misty being right about anything.”
Van laughs. Tai is leading them down the beach, back the way they’d run this morning. She can still make out the imprints of their huff-and-puff tracks, the sand sucking at their sneakers.
“You don’t think she’s going to make us do that again tomorrow,” she says with a shudder. “One beach run is all I’ve got in me for the next year.”
“I go down the pier sometimes,” Tai admits. “It’s great for increasing speed. When you’re back on solid ground, you feel like you’re flying.”
“Great news about being the goalie. I’m in a little-bitty box. Short-term endurance, that’s my baby.” And she’s fast enough. She proves it every game, sailing to smack those shots out of the air. She doesn’t need to put herself through fucking Dune or whatever, thanks.
Tai’s arms hang loose as she strolls along. The back of her hand keeps bumping Van’s, her fingertips grazing Van’s wrist. Van tries not to feel that blue pulse of electricity each time, tries not to feel as though her skin might tear right off her bones if Tai keeps touch-not-touching her.
“This isn’t terrible, actually,” she says. Keep fucking talking. “I mean, the wake-up call was terrible. And the running wasn’t great. But Jackie kind of did all right with the rest. Food’s good. Swimming’s good. Beer’s—”
“Van.” Tai’s eyes are smiling. How does she always look at Van this way, like every word out of Van’s mouth brightens her day? “You’re babbling.”
“This is not babbling,” Van protests. “You want babbling, I’ll give you my presentation on the evolution of the Final Girl. That is grade-A babble.”
Tai’s hand swings out again. This time, shockingly, it catches. Her fingers interlock with Van’s, slender and cool, holding fast.
Van’s mouth snaps shut. Her eyes dart to Tai’s face, but Tai is looking straight ahead. She’s still smiling, but there’s a tension in it now. Something Van can’t quite pick apart, crouched behind the curve of her lips.
“I just want a break from them for a while,” Tai says, not glancing at her. Her fingers flex like she might let go, and Van squeezes tighter.
Tell her, that voice commands. She ignores it.
“Wanna get back to camp and get a head start on tonight’s party? I don’t think it counts as day-drinking if it’s past noon.”
“Fuck yes,” Tai breathes.
She holds Van’s hand all the way back to the site.
***
Shauna could lay out here for the rest of her life and feel complete. Maybe college is a mistake altogether. Maybe she should shun society, pack a bag, and roam the world’s best beaches.
“You could,” Jackie replies when she says this aloud. “But then who’s going to help me decorate our dorm? Pinks and greens, Shipman. Think pinks and greens.”
Shauna isn’t thinking pinks and greens. Shauna is thinking ivy-covered walls, and fancy lit magazines, and poetry unspooling from a feather quill at three in the morning. Shauna is thinking short stories that consume her every waking moment until they unleash upon an unsuspecting-but-adoring readership. Shauna is thinking Brown.
Shauna is thinking life without Jackie, and her chest aches so badly, she almost can’t pull breath.
“Hey.” Concern writes itself all over Jackie’s pretty face, turned on her towel toward Shauna’s. “What’s wrong? Do you need lunch?”
Shauna shakes her head. Jackie’s going to stay in Jersey. Jackie’s going to stay right here, where she’s always been, and she’s going to forget all about Shauna Shipman. She’s going to buy a house around the corner from her parents, and she’s going to marry fucking Jeff, and it’ll be as if Shauna never existed at all.
“I miss you,” she says before she can stop herself. Jackie looks perplexed.
“You’ve been with me literally for thirty-six hours straight.”
“Forget it.” Shauna sits up. She darts a look around the beach—to Mari and Akilah sipping coffee out of tin cups, to Misty crouched in the sand, poking something with a stick. To Lottie, pointing at the sky, and Natalie laughing at whatever she’s saying.
They’re all so carefree. Like they don’t give a shit about anything that comes after Nationals. Like life will just end with a soccer game, and the credits will roll, and that will be enough.
Jackie tugs on her hand. She’s wearing that ring, the one Jeff gave her, and Shauna is possessed suddenly of an urge to tear it off and hurl it into the lake.
“Talk to me?” Jackie asks. “You’ve been weird all weekend.”
Shauna thinks she’s been weird much, much longer than that. She heaves a sigh. “I just—I should tell you that I—”
“Jackie! Shauna!” Misty skids to a stop, spraying them with sand. “Come here, come look!”
Shauna grinds her teeth. “Kind of in the middle of a conversation, Misty—”
“Come look,” she repeats, a feral glint behind her glasses. Shauna realizes the other girls have all collected, an uneasy clump standing between their picnic table and—
“Is that a…bear?”
“A baby bear!” Misty announces, like this is some kind of net positive. “Look, isn’t it sweet, it just came right out of the trees!”
“Uhh, Jackie?” Natalie, who is not insane, does not sound nearly as pleased. “What the fuck do we do?”
“How should I know?” Jackie demands. She’s gripping Shauna’s hand so tight, her bones creak. “Akilah? Anything?”
“I learned how to forage for mushrooms and give butterfly stitches, not wrangle bears,” Akilah moans. She looks terrified, which Shauna thinks is a little much. The bear is pretty small. Cute, even. It’s black all over, its fur soft-looking, and it keeps making snuffling noises as it roots around in the remnants of their breakfast.
Then Lottie says, “We should get our shit and go, before Mama follows it”, and oh yeah, good point. Shauna did not have “get mangled by a mother bear” on her to-do list this weekend.
There’s a scuffle, muttered “get the cooler” ‘I’m not getting that close, Laura Lee, you get the fucking cooler” conversations, and Natalie has to actively prevent Misty from reaching out to stroke the goddamn bear. Jackie snatches up the clothes left in a pile. Shauna grabs the cookware they’d stashed first thing this morning. Nat snags the remaining beer even as the bear eagerly sniffs a tipped-over can.
They make their way back to the campsite, zig-zagging a wild path to keep the bears off our scent (Akilah says this and then shrugs like she thinks it’s the stupidest thing she’s ever said, but no one can discount it). By the time they return to find Van and Tai settled beside a fire, eating chips and raising their eyebrows in confusion, it’s clear.
Nature does not want her to tell Jackie about Brown. Nature itself demands she keep her secret at least a little longer.
She wonders if nature cares about just how badly she wants to throw up.
***
“So, what, did you summon that thing?”
Lottie’s head snaps up. Her brow crinkles, and Natalie thinks she’s weirdly adorable when confused.
Which is and of itself a confusing thought. She nudges it away, lighting a cigarette.
“The bear,” she adds. It’s all the others can talk about. The way they’re telling the story now—only a few hours after the event—you’d think the thing had been a full-grown grizzly. And that it had tried to take a bite out of Laura Lee’s shin. And that Misty had single-handedly warded it off.
Lottie’s frown doesn’t change. “What about it?”
“Yesterday, when we were all talking shit about this camping idea, you said a bear would come.” Natalie grins. “So? Fess up, how’d you know?”
“I—didn’t.” Lottie looks lightly pained by the accusation. “I just said it, ‘cause…bears, you know, like food. Happens all the time.”
“I’ve been camping a bunch of times,” Natalie tells her. “Never saw a bear before today. You sure you’re not psychic?”
She’s kidding. Of course she’s kidding. There is no such thing as psychics, no such thing as predicting the future. And, if there were, it definitely wouldn’t be something Lottie could do.
But she likes the way Lottie chews her lip, her eyes widening as she tries to work out whether or not Natalie is serious. She especially likes the way Lottie swings out a fist, catching her in the upper arm when Natalie continues to grin with her tongue between her teeth.
“Asshole,” Lottie says with no heat whatsoever. Natalie scoots in next to her, drawing out a second smoke and forking it over.
“Yeah, it’s part of my charm. Every team needs one.”
“Then what’s Taissa’s excuse?” Lottie quips. Natalie ohhhs into a cupped hand, and Lottie snorts. “No, I’m just—Tai isn’t an asshole. Just…weirdly and upsettingly competitive.”
“She can be,” Natalie says lightly. “An asshole. But she’s also the only one who’s been chopping wood for those fires all weekend, and I saw her sneak Akilah an extra piece of toast off her own plate, so jury’s out.”
Lottie plays with the unlit cigarette, spinning it idly between her fingers. “We couldn’t win without her. She’s like…another person entirely on that field.”
“Don’t tell her that,” Natalie warns. “Last thing we need is Taissa God’s Gift To Soccer Turner’s head getting any bigger.”
It makes her feel oddly fuzzy, talking shit with Lottie. She doesn’t think of Lottie as someone she can bond with, most days; Lot’s always off doing earnest shit, like helping teachers sort books in a way that somehow never comes off like kissing ass. And Natalie…well, Natalie’s got other things to do when not keeping up her GPA or scoring goals. Plenty of things that don’t involve Lottie Matthews and her pigtails, her sweet little sweaters, her sincere smiles.
And yet, somehow, it’s become the best part of the weekend. Talking with Lottie. Sitting around watching the clouds scud across the sun, pointing out shapes. Smoking, and swimming, and generally just…being around Lottie.
Why does that make her feel so fucking weird, all of a sudden?
“I’m glad you came,” Lottie says with the abruptness of a car crash. Natalie blinks at her, and she soldiers on. “On the trip, I mean. I know this bonding shit isn’t really your thing.”
“Is it anyone’s?” Aside from Jackie and Misty, she’d guess any one of them would pin team bonding as the worst part of being on a team at all. They’re here because they like to run, to shoot, to guard, to kick ass. They’re here because they like to win, that fleeting sense of perfection teenage girls are only granted in moments of athletic success. Being a team is just…perfunctory. Just part of the stitching.
But she does like it. Being a part of something bigger, being part of a group. She hates it, too, when they’re all acting like catty bitches. When they’re pairing off and sniping at one another, it’s the dumbest thing in the world. But when they’re actually banding together? Not running kiddie icebreakers or whatever, but playing like a fucking team? Winning as a fucking team?
Yeah, that’s the best. Nothing else feels like that.
It is, Natalie thinks, what they’re talking about when they say you need a purpose.
“I’m glad, too,” she says, meaning it. “Even if Jackie did basically lie to get us all here.”
“Is it lying if it’s just…omitting the truth and letting us believe bullshit?” Lottie wonders. Natalie coughs out a plume of smoke.
“Whatever. A hotel wouldn’t have had bears.”
***
A bunch of drunk girls in the woods shouldn’t be allowed such freedom.
A bunch of drunk girls in the woods come up with the greatest ideas known to man.
Van believes both simultaneously. One maybe slightly more than the other, with Taissa grinning at her from mere inches away.
“Truth or dare?”
“Dare,” she says, because she isn’t stupid, and because that little voice in her head has been getting louder all night. The more Taissa drinks, the closer she sits, until she’s actively sprawled in Van’s chair. In Van’s lap. A beer can in one hand, her other arm slung around Van’s shoulders for balance.
Van isn’t picking truth for all the beer left in that cooler.
“I dare you,” Tai says, “to lick Lottie’s nose.”
“Done,” says Van immediately.
“Wait, hang on,” Lottie begins, but Van’s already leaning across to her chair, almost upending Tai in the process. Her tongue flicks out, catching the end of Lottie’s nose, and she laughs.
“Easy. Cake. Give me a hard one next time.”
“Gross,” Lottie mumbles, swiping a hand over her face. “You reek of Pabst.”
“Lot,” Van says. “Truth or dare?” It’s only fair.
“Dare,” Lottie says, because Lottie isn’t a coward. Everyone knows you only pick truth if you actively want to spill something, or if you’re too much of a loser to deal with an actual challenge.
“I dare you to…hm. Sing karaoke. Right now. Your choice of Madonna song.”
“Madonna,” Lottie repeats, sounding pained. “Fuck. Really?”
“If you go with ‘Material Girl’,” Natalie announces, “we will all disown you.”
Lottie does a passable rendition of “Like A Prayer”, complete with hand motions that make most of them laugh and Laura Lee look vaguely constipated. She flops back down, grabbing for a bottle of Jack Natalie produced from her bag with a flourish.
“Shauna. Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” Shauna says. Van snorts.
“Weak.”
“What?” Shauna looks defensive. She’s been staring into the flames, her head cocked to the side. Now she scowls. “Truth isn’t weak. Truth can be really—”
“Truth,” Lottie says soothingly. “Sure. Okay. Tell us all a secret none of us know.”
“None of us,” Natalie adds, “includes Jackie.”
“Well, fuck,” Jackie laughs. “That ups the ante, Shipman.”
Shauna grips the hem of her sweatshirt. “Um. I don’t…”
“Do not,” Taissa says, “pretend you don’t have secrets. Everyone has secrets.”
“Yeah?” Natalie’s eyebrows pop up to her hairline. “What’s yours, Tai?”
“It is not,” Tai says primly, “my fucking turn. Shauna?”
Shauna opens her mouth, makes a weird choked squawk, and closes it. Jackie pats her knee.
“Go on, you must have one. Here, I can tell you mine. I don’t think I actually want to keep dating Jeff past graduation.”
Shauna freezes. “Wait, what?”
“Yeah.” Jackie is making a show of inspecting her nails. “That’s part of why I wanted to come out here, you know. Just thought it would be nice to get away from him for a few days, see how it felt. You know he keeps climbing through my window—”
“You brought all of us out to the middle of nowhere,” Van says, “because your boyfriend got too clingy?”
“I brought us out here because camping sounded like a great bonding activity! And also because I needed a little space. What, you never multi-task?”
Van’s not entirely sure what to say to that. Tai’s weight is comfortable on her lap. One of her hands is drawing absent circles under Van’s hair, barely caressing the back of Van’s neck. She doubts Tai even knows she’s doing it, but it’s making her feel like she’s going to—
“Shauna!” Her voice is squeaky. “It’s still your turn.”
They’re all looking at Shauna, which means none of them are looking at her, which means she might get to keep her dignity a little longer. Thank god. Thank god, because Tai smells way too good for someone who hasn’t showered in a day, who has been drinking piss-poor beer and sleeping on the ground, and Van has got to get a lid on this shit.
“I changed my mind,” Shauna blurts. “I pick dare. Give me a dare, Lot.”
“Hey, that’s not how the game works,” Natalie complains. Lottie steps on her foot.
“I dare you to…slow-dance with Misty.”
Shauna shoots to her feet, hauling a giggling Misty out of her chair. “Music! Someone give me music!”
“Someone other than me,” Lottie drawls. “I’m already going to have that stupid song in my head all night.”
Laura Lee lopes over to the boom box, cranking the volume. What pours forth is not slow-dance material in the least (Van doubts anyone has ever tried to be graceful to the stylings of Sublime), but Shauna determinedly grasps Misty’s hand in her own and begins swirling them both around the fire.
“They look ridiculous,” Tai murmurs.
“I dunno.” Van tilts her head. “It’s sort of sweet. In a super weird way. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Misty so excited.”
“We could do better.”
Van whips to look at her so fast, her neck audibly cracks. Tai is still way too close, way too gloriously warm.
“You wanna?” she asks when Van just gapes at her. Slowly, Van nods.
Sublime is still bleating about what I got, Shauna and Misty revolving awkwardly past the camp chairs. Tai gathers Van to her, one hand at the small of her back, the other smoothly holding her arm upright, and then they’re dancing. Just like that. Like it’s nothing.
Thank god Taissa is pathological about leading, or Van’s knees would lead them both right into the firepit.
Drunk girls should not be given so much freedom. Drunk girls should be given all the freedom in the world. Both remain unimpeachable truths, especially when Laura Lee bows to Jackie, who is immediately overtaken with giggles, but accepts her hand. And Akilah and Mari curtsy to one another with such eagerness, they almost crack heads. And Natalie shrugs, letting Lottie pull her upright.
Drunk girls can ruin absolutely everything, when they choose, but they can also iron all the wrinkles out of the world. Suddenly, Tai’s body pressed along the length of hers doesn’t make Van feel quite so exposed. Suddenly, they’re all dancing to the worst song. They twirl around and around, giddy, a bunch of friends with the game forgotten.
“Okay?” Tai asks. She alone isn’t laughing. She’s looking Van in the eye like no one else is present, her hand firm at the base of Van’s shirt. Van nods. She can feel her heartbeat in her ears. She thinks she can feel Tai’s, too, hammering straight through her sternum.
Tell her, that little voice screams, and for the first time, it doesn’t feel like a world-ending kind of idea.
***
The impromptu dance party carries on way longer than Shauna could have anticipated. In a way, she’s relieved. Dancing with Misty Quigley was weird as fuck, but at least it pushed her secret way down where it belongs before another predator could come crashing into camp.
She dances with Misty. She dances with Natalie. She dances with everyone, a free-jazz sort of choreography led by Laura Lee. She spins by herself, arms outstretched like it’s the Sound of fucking Music, and she’s Julie fucking Andrews.
It feels like any other party—but better, because it’s just them. No random kids from school who mostly know Shauna by the number on her jersey. No Randy Walsh, no Jeff. Just a bunch of girls who, deep down, belong together on some level that can’t be defined.
The others drift in and out, pausing to roast marshmallows, or pound another beer, or play a round of cards. She looks over to find Nat with her shirt and left boot off, a cigarette between her lips, and decides she probably wouldn’t fare well at that game.
When she looks back, Jackie is standing in front of her, hand outstretched.
“Dance card full?”
“Nah.” Shauna pulls her in. They used to dance like this all the time, when Jackie was going through her movie-musical phase. She’s bewildered to find herself much taller now, as though the simple act of coming together in a faux-waltz should be enough to cast them back to seventh grade.
“This is good, right?” Jackie asks. “It feels good.”
“It’s great,” Shauna tells her with perfect honesty. She’d regretted telling Jackie she’d have her back, no questions asked, when they woken with the sun this morning—and regretted basically everything when the bear had shown up—but the night has turned beautiful. “I love you, you know.”
“I know.” Jackie raises one shoulder, her smile mock-bashful. “What’s not to love?”
“For real. You’re my best friend. The best friend I’ve ever had.”
“Damn right,” Jackie says. Shauna swallows hard.
“I got accepted to Brown.”
The bear! some part of her wails. Think of the bear! As if it’s not already too late. As if maybe she could just take a few steps backwards in the soft grass and dial the conversation back, too.
Jackie’s mouth turns down. “What?”
“I got accepted,” Shauna repeats. “To Brown. I’m—I’m going to Brown.”
“Um, no,” Jackie says, a touch of a laugh propelling the word out of her mouth. “No, you’re not.”
“I am.” Her heart is in her throat. Her mouth is all bile and warm beer.
“You’re not,” Jackie says, more forcefully. “Because you’re going to Rutgers. We decided. Ages ago, remember?”
“No. No, you decided that.” She shouldn’t get angry. It won’t help anyone, getting angry. Anger is just one of those emotions that turns any conversation with Jackie into an endless tennis match nobody ever wins.
Here it comes anyway: a flare in the pit of her stomach, brightening until she can’t see around it. Jackie did decide. Jackie turned up in her bedroom one day with a stack of pamphlets in her folder, flipping through them on Shauna’s bed with pronouncements like too small; too far; too artsy.
Jackie held up the Rutgers logo and said, “This! This is the one!” And all Shauna had been able to do was nod.
Jackie is looking at her now with eyes blazing. Her arms are still looped around Shauna’s neck, her hips instinctively swaying to Sheryl Crow, but all the warmth of childhood dance parties is gone. She’s never looked so furious—or so confused.
“You’re coming to Rutgers,” she says, like she’s trying to parse French adverbs. “You’re rooming with me at Rutgers. We’ve talked about this. Like. A million times.”
“I got early acceptance.” Shauna’s mouth tightens. She’s staring at a fixed point over Jackie’s shoulder where someone dropped a water bottle. “I’m…I have to go.”
“Why?” Jackie asks, her voice so plaintive, Shauna feels her soul twist. She staggers back, breaking contact, unable to look into Jackie’s betrayed eyes a moment longer.
“I have to go,” she repeats, turning on her heel and striding away into the dark.
***
“Nat.” Lottie prods her in the shoulder once, twice, her finger finding a nerve. Natalie shakes her off.
“What? Jesus, when did you get so pokey?”
“Nat,” Lottie repeats. “I have to pee.”
Natalie stares at her over her cards. “What, now? I’m winning.”
She is not winning. Tai is winning—clearly, since she still has all of her own clothes and Natalie’s jacket. Van, down to her boxer shorts and a threadbare tank top, ruffles her hair.
“It’s so cute when you lie to yourself.”
“Nat.” Lottie is prancing in place. “Come on, if I go by myself and Jackie finds out, she’s gonna be pissed.”
So? Natalie thinks. She stares hard at her cards. Down at her red bra and missing socks. Tai’s already taken her belt.
“On second thought,” she says wryly. “Shithouse odds. I fold.”
“You’re goddamn right you do!” Taissa crows. Natalie flips her the bird, standing and reaching for her shirt. Tai holds it teasingly out of reach, then balls it up and chucks it at her head.
“Very mature, numbnuts.”
She falls into step with Lottie, still grumbling about Tai holding her jacket hostage. The sun is long-gone, the air brisk. The further they wander from the fire, the more she regrets her choices.
“Do you think I could beat Tai in a fight?”
“What?” Lottie has this way of blinking at her like she’s nuts. Natalie’s not sure why she likes it so much.
“Not like a death brawl. Just, y’know. Your basic fistfight. You think I could take her?” She mulls it over. “Yeah. Yeah, I could take her. Tai’s got reach, but does she have speed?”
“Yes,” says Lottie.
“But,” Natalie presses, “does she have the drive?”
“Literally no one on this earth has more drive than Taissa,” says Lottie. “Do you want to fight Tai?”
“Depending on the day, I want to fight every last one of you,” Natalie admits with a sheepish grin.
“Even me?”
“Oh, especially you. You kidding? You’re so fightable.”
“Fightable,” Lottie repeats. “I don’t…think that’s a word.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Is this conversation doing anything to keep you warm?” Lottie asks, amused.
“You’re the one who has to take a piss,” Natalie fires back. “Which you could do anytime and get us back to the fire. And my jacket.”
“You know you’re never getting that back.” They’re more than far enough from camp for her to pee, and yet, on she walks. As if, Natalie realizes with a stroke of suspicion, she has a destination in mind.
“Where…are you taking me?”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re not very trusting?”
“Maybe I’d be more trusting if someone was more up front—” Natalie stops. “Wait. Are you really taking me back to bear beach? In the dark? Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?”
Lottie laughs. “Will you relax? I just figured It could be nice to see the water at night. And I knew you’d get all weird if I said so.”
“I’m not weird.”
“You’re so being weird.” Lottie is actually smirking at her. She hadn’t known Lottie could smirk. “Wait…are you afraid of the dark?”
“What? Fuck no, I’m not afraid of the dark!”
“If you are, I can hold your hand. Keep the monsters away.” Lottie reaches out, trailing her fingers down Natalie’s back. Natalie shivers her away.
“I am starting to think you never needed to pee.”
“Wow,” says Lottie. “Imagine that.”
Natalie is impressed despite herself. “You know what? I think Van might have been right about me being a bad fuckin’ influence on you.”
It’s way chillier down by the water, but if Lottie doesn’t mind, Natalie doesn’t mind. She drops onto the shore, the sand damp under her back, and follows Lottie’s gaze heavenward.
“I forgot how much I love this.”
“The stars?” Lottie asks. Natalie shrugs.
“The stars. The water. All of it. Haven’t been out here since my dad—”
She stops. Does Lottie even know about her dad? She’s never talked about it. Never told any of the girls about that horrific afternoon, the one that stripped away any chance of her mother ever looking at her with love again.
“Do you miss him?” Lottie asks quietly. It strikes Natalie, that she frames it as a question. Not you must miss him. Not an imperative at all.
She reaches for a cigarette, remembering too late the crumpled pack is still in the pocket of her jacket. Her hands dig instead into the sand, molding a shapeless hump between her ankles. “Yeah,” she says finally. “Sometimes. And sometimes I think it was the best thing that ever could have happened to us. He was shit.”
Lottie nods. Doesn’t press. Doesn’t speak. She reaches over, lays a hand over one of Natalie’s. Her fingers are soft, uncalloused. She somehow applies no pressure at all, and it makes Natalie want her to hold on forever.
She can’t remember the last time someone asked so little of her with such grace.
“Lot?”
“Yeah?” Her eyes are so dark, the stars reflecting back. Natalie could tip over into those eyes and never find her way back out again.
“Thanks,” she says, and from there, they let the waves do all the talking.
***
Bedtime in the great outdoors is less a matter of time on a clock, more Mari just shouted that she’ll skin us alive for tomorrow’s breakfast if we don’t shut the fuck up. Van buries her face in Tai’s shoulder—clad in unfamiliar leather—to muffle her snickers, and Mari adds, “I fucking heard that, Palmer. Do you want to cook in the morning?”
“Sorry, Mom!” Van calls back into the orange tent. Mari makes a teeth-grinding sound, as if her impending hangover is already kicking into overdrive, and somehow manages to slam the tent flap shut.
Taissa tips her head toward the blue tent in which they snuggled all last night. “Well? Brush your teeth, I guess it’s time to tuck in.”
Van’s skin goes hot. It’s one thing to be horsing around out by the firepit, playing strip poker, dancing. It’s one thing to have Tai looking at her with unmistakable fascination while the others are whooping and hollering nearby.
It’s going to be another thing entirely when that tent is zipped around them, and Van is suddenly so high on exhilaration, it feels kind of like being set on fire.
There seems tonight to be even less space. Van can’t get comfortable. She’s sitting upright, her back against the wall. She’s folding her knees beneath her. She’s half-reclining, a hand under her head.
“How’s that going for you?” Tai asks, plainly amused. Van kicks her. She barely has to reach for her toes to brush Tai’s shin, and it shouldn’t surprise her that Tai closes a hand around her foot and yanks.
Her half-recline turns into full prostration, and now Tai is leaning over her. Her eyes are dark, lidded. Her mouth is a tempting bow.
“Hey,” Tai says, like they’re just running into each other at someone’s locker.
“Hi,” Van replies. She can be cool. She can be normal. Everything about this is normal.
“Truth or dare?” Tai asks. That game ended hours ago, but she’s looking at Van like she’s just been waiting all that time to pick it back up. Van licks her lips.
“Dare,” she says, because she’s not stupid, because truth holds too much weight, because you only pick truth if you’re itching to admit something enormous. She can’t. Not in this tiny little tent, with Tai’s body radiating heat, with Tai’s palm indenting the pillow beside her head.
“Dare you to kiss me back,” Tai says, her voice weirdly raw. She looks at Van for a few endless seconds, studying her, waiting for Van to push her away as she angles her head down. She gives Van time.
Van, never one to shy from a dare, slides a hand around the back of Tai’s neck and pulls her the rest of the way down.
This is happening. This is really fucking happening. The words run on a loop as Tai’s mouth crushes against her own, fiercer than in her wildest dreams. Like Tai’s just as bewildered by this turn of events as she is. Like Tai has been wanting it, wanting her, just as much.
It’s the kiss to end all kisses. The fucking Princess Bride of kisses. They should write sonnets about a kiss this good: Tai’s lips, soft and insistent; Tai’s hand, framing her jaw; Tai’s hair, tickling her face as she tilts her head, pressing Van deeper into the nest of blankets.
Tai kisses her like she’s wanted to do it all weekend, like she’s just been looking for an excuse, and when she breaks, Van’s heart flips in her chest. There’s a soft sound between them, a slide like a sigh, and then Tai’s mouth is a heartbreaking two inches from her own again.
“Truth or dare,” Van says, straining to keep her voice level. Tai grins.
“Dare.” Because Taissa isn’t a coward. Because Taissa knows exactly what she’s started. Van closes a hand around Tai’s shirt, pulling the fabric taut.
“I dare you to do that again.”
Tai sinks into her, and this time, it goes beyond excellence. It’s Tai’s body pinning hers, Tai’s leg jammed between her thighs, Tai’s hands roaming with deliberate interest. Van wants to ask so many questions: since when, and how did you know, and why didn’t you fucking tell me, you homo, but the part of her made for asking questions is preoccupied with the starburst novelty of Taissa’s tongue tracing her lips. She groans, and Tai makes a helpless sound against her that feels as though it has the power to rewrite their whole friendship.
She pushes at Tai’s shoulders, just for a minute, looking her in the eyes. “You drunk?” If Tai’s doing this because she’s drunk, all bets are off. Van will sleep out in the grass, if that’s all this is.
Tai, though, crooks her a small smile. “Stopped drinking hours ago. You?”
“Never more sober,” Van says. She reaches up, brushing light fingers against Tai’s cheek. “Should we…talk about this?”
“Do you want to?” There’s a hardened element to Tai’s eyes, her mouth, even as the hand bracketing Van’s neck strokes softly. Van shakes her head.
“Really don’t.”
“Love that,” Tai says, and dips to meet her again. Her hands are everywhere, and Van rushes to keep up. It’s the second time she’s lost her shirt tonight. The first time she’s sat up enough to yank the tank over her head. The first time she’s felt another girl’s eyes rove her body, lingering. Allowed to linger.
“I dare you to keep going,” she says, her voice strangling when Tai kisses her neck. She skims a hand up the front of Tai’s shirt, brushing the cup of her bikini, and Tai’s mouth turns sloppy-wet against her skin in surprise.
She did that. She made Tai lift her head, wonder in her eyes, kissing her deep and hard enough to make her feel like levitating.
Tell her, she thinks distantly, and pushes that thought away. Fuck telling. She’s showing Tai. Showing is always, always better than telling—at least where this is concerned.
Time seems to slow around them. There are other tents with other people, and Van knows she should care, but Tai’s shirt is off, and her shorts are following. Tai is kissing her, and there’s skin, more skin than she could ever have imagined aside from the transience of a changing room. There’s skin, and Tai’s hands cradling her face, sliding down her body with a reverence she’s never shown for anything else.
There’s skin, and hot winding breaths, and Tai unzipping her sleeping bag to fit them both inside. There’s Tai’s legs tangled with her own. There’s Tai’s mouth grazing, questioning, demanding. There’s Tai’s hands questing lower, and Van’s mirroring her every move.
There’s Tai murmuring, “Dare me”, and Van can’t think of anything else. There are no other tents. There are no other people. There is just Taissa Turner, and a sleeping bag, and a kiss that will never end.
She owes Jackie big.
***
The noises coming out of Van and Taissa’s tent are more than a little distracting. Shauna wonders if they think they’re being subtle.
She wants to turn her head and make a joke in Jackie’s direction. Wants to laugh, because who in their right mind would think the muffled moans and shushing fabric belong to some kind of animal? Who in their right mind would think for a second they aren’t doing something they absolutely won’t love the rest of them hearing?
She wants to turn and ask Jackie, but she can’t. Because Jackie, stubborn as she is, hasn’t come to bed.
Which is Shauna’s fault, she knows. Shauna, who dropped an absolute bomb and then ran away. She’d known full well how Jackie would react.
But goddammit, she hates laying here alone in the dark. Sure, it’s easier to get comfortable without Jackie’s bony elbow in her ribs, but sleeping? With Jackie’s pillow standing empty as an accusation right beside her?
Impossible.
Even more impossible would be getting up. Unzipping the tent. Storming out to where Jackie is so obviously not sleeping beside their banked fire. What would that even look like?
Like it’s all her fault.
Like she’s apologizing for making choices that don’t involve Jackie.
Like she regrets it.
Which she doesn’t. Of course, she wishes it—that conversation—had gone differently. She wishes she’d had it with Jackie six months ago. Or never. But going to Brown is the right decision. She wants to go. She wants to be the person Brown will let her be.
She just…wishes Jackie could be going with her.
She wishes Jackie would want to go with her.
And if Jackie were a mature and reasonable person, she’d come into this tent, lay down beside Shauna, and admit there’s a little fault in her, too. A little fault in the way she’s always assumed Shauna would just go along with whatever she has planned. Would it really be so hard, to tell Shauna she’s allowed to be her own person?
She lays in the dark, watching the shadows grow steadily thinner, watching the dew drops rolling on the other side of the green fabric. Every so often, her eyelids flicker, popping back open to gray light. Then pink. Then honest, if early, daylight.
And still, that pillow is empty.
This is ridiculous.
Shauna forces herself up, kicking aside her blankets. She wrenches open the tent flap.
Outside, folded across two camping chairs and looking the least comfortable anyone has ever been, Jackie studiously does not turn her head.
“Really?” Shauna asks, not bothering to temper her volume. “Really, you slept out here?”
“Yep,” Jackie says, still not looking at her. There are hollows under her eyes. Shauna figures slept really isn’t the word.
“Jackie. This is insane.”
“No,” Jackie says, “insane is getting ready to go to a school you’ve never talked about, even though you’ve known for…how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, bullshit, Shipman,” Jackie snaps. Her eyes are murderous. “How long? You said early admission. How early is early?”
Shauna shrugs. She doesn’t want to be the bad guy here. She shouldn’t be the bad guy here. “Since…November, I guess?”
“November.” Jackie rolls her gaze skyward as if praying for mercy. “Fuck’s sake, Shauna, November?”
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal!”
“Hey, you know what’s a big deal?” Mari asks loudly, popping out of her tent with Akilah grumbling at her heels. “Getting to sleep in while fucking camping. My god, are you all animals?”
“Ask Tai and Van,” Akilah mutters. “Kept me up half the damn night—”
“Yeah, about that.” Mari turns to scrape her nails down the side of the blue tent. On the other side of the wall, a voice yelps in surprise. “Hey! Lesbos! We’re not mad you’re gay, we just would have liked a little courtesy. You know we’re pitched, like, two feet away from you, right?”
“But also congratulations,” Misty calls through the other side of the tent. “Are you sad you can’t go to Prom together?”
Inside, Tai’s voice groans. “Will you all just fuck off?”
“Depends. You going to keep eating Van out while I try to sleep one child-sized canvas room over, or—”
“Mari,” Shauna says. “Enough.”
It should be on Jackie to say it. Should be on Jackie to tell them all to lay off. Jackie, who is still glaring at her, arms folded. Her cheeks are bright pink. Shauna sighs.
“Can everybody just…cool it for a little while? We obviously didn’t get the best sleep—”
“Speak for yourself,” Van mumbles, appearing at last. Shauna’s pretty sure she’s wearing Tai’s shirt, and very sure she’s got sex hair. This is all so much more than she’s ever wanted to know about her teammates.
Christ, she doesn’t even like soccer.
“Where’s Nat?” Taissa is strangely put-together for someone who just got laid. Shauna doesn’t know why she’d expect anything less. “And Lottie?”
“Maybe all your humping scared them off,” Mari begins. Tai takes a warning step in her direction, and she flings up her hand. “Fuck, forget I said anything! We’re all very happy for you.”
“Seriously, though.” Laura Lee is kneeling beside the purple tent, flap unzipped. The blankets inside appear undisturbed. “Where are they?”
“They’re probably fine,” Shauna says. “Jackie—”
“We should still go look,” Jackie interrupts. “No man left behind, right? What if they got lost in the dark or something?”
“Or the bears found them,” Akilah says ominously. Jackie jabs a finger in her direction.
“Not sure that’s helping, but thank you, Akilah. Everyone, split up, take a different direction. I’m sure we’ll find them in no time.”
Shauna heaves another sigh, but Jackie’s buddy-system rule has been too well-ingrained. Before she can say another word, they’re breaking off: Misty and Laura Lee in one direction, Van and Tai in another, Akilah and Mari in a third. Which just leaves—
“You sure you can walk with me?” Jackie asks coldly. “You sure I’m not gonna cramp your brand-new style?”
“Is this gonna be like the time I accidentally dropped your Polly Pocket into the sewer? You’re just going to snipe at me until we’re thirty?”
“Bold of you to assume you’ll still want to talk to me when we’re thirty,” Jackie says, her tone the kind of snide that makes Shauna want to sock her. “I thought you were too cool for me now.”
“Will you stop that?” She’s grabbing Jackie’s elbow before she can think better of it, wheeling her around. “Jackie, I’m sorry. I swear to god, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Were you ever going to?” Jackie’s face blazes scarlet. Her mouth is tipped so far down, it reminds Shauna of the time her dad called Jackie’s pouty-face Muppety behind her back.
The time, she remembers, she shouted him down for being shitty about her best friend. Sure, she’d been channeling a lot of unresolved feelings at the time, but all the same: he’d deserved it for saying anything about Jackie. Jackie’s the best person in her world. Always has been.
“I was scared,” she admits. Jackie folds her arms more tightly, not giving her an inch. “I was scared you’d…do this. Never want to talk to me again. You’re my best friend, Jackie, and I—”
Jackie mutters something. Shauna squeezes her arm.
“What?”
“I said: not enough of a best friend to want to room with. Or go to classes with. Or see, like, ever again, because you’re going to fucking Rhode Island, Shauna. What the fuck? What the actual fuck are you going to do in Rhode Island?”
Shauna doesn’t know. She hasn’t exactly figured that part out yet. What she does know is it hurts, Jackie looking at her with such obvious anguish.
“I’m going to miss you,” she says. “Every day. Every minute.”
Jackie slumps. She looks so tired. Her hair is all stuck up in the back, and her eyes are haggard from lack of sleep. Shauna just wants to hug her.
“You don’t have to go, you know. It’s not too late.”
She doesn’t even sound like she believes it, and Shauna can’t help but smile.
“They’ve invented these things called phones. I think they’re going to be really big.”
Jackie scoffs. “Phones. You’re going to be going to all these parties, and meeting cool people, and—”
“Jackie.” She slides her hands up Jackie’s arms, gripping her biceps through a bright yellow sweatshirt. “You’re cool people. The coolest person I’ve ever known. Nothing is going to change.”
It’s a lie, and they both know it. Things always change. They changed when Shauna’s dad moved out, and they changed when Jackie started dating Jeff, and they changed when Jackie decided soccer would be their defining characteristic in high school. They change, and they keep on changing. Shauna’s terrified sometimes they’ll never stop.
“I love you,” she says. “You know that?”
Jackie opens her mouth. Her face seems to go a shade brighter, her arms tightening around herself.
“I don’t want to date Jeff,” she blurts. “In college. Or at all.”
Shauna gives her a lopsided grin. “No one says you have to. You’ll find all sorts of guys at Rutgers who will—”
“Do you want me to do that?” Jackie demands. She sounds almost angry again. Almost as angry as she did last night. “Do you want me to go date a bunch of guys you’ve never met?”
“No, I—what?”
Jackie looks at her with something bordering on disgust. “I can’t believe you. I really thought—” And then her mouth is snapping shut again, her teeth clicking together. Shauna blinks.
“I…what is happening here, exactly?”
“I thought it would be us!” Jackie explodes. “In school! At parties, at sororities, at…I dunno, whatever weird art clubs you might like. I thought it would be just us. No Jeff. No boys in the way, just…like it used to be.”
She’s grimacing. She looks like she’s in physical pain, staring at Shauna.
“I thought we’d figure out what it’s like,” she says at last. “Being us.”
“I…” Shauna rubs her eyes. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Neither do I,” Jackie mutters. Then, without warning, she arches up on her toes. Her mouth slides, glossy, across Shauna’s. It’s there and gone before she can even blink.
And then Jackie is stomping off into the trees, leaving Shauna with a lip-gloss smear and a baffled expression.
***
Natalie wakes shivering and nestles closer to the warm lump at her side. It’s breathing, her sleepy mind registers, and wonderfully soft. She loops her arm more tightly around it, face pressed into something velvety.
“Jesus Christ,” a voice says above her. “Is there something in the water?”
Natalie grimaces. The voice is like a power drill to the temple. She buries her face more completely in the soft thing, which rises to meet her.
“Shut the fuck up,” she mumbles. “Were you raised in a barn?”
The owner of the voice ignores her. “We found them! They’re sleeping in the fucking lake!”
Untrue, Natalie’s still-woozy mind insists. The lake would be cold and wet. Only her feet are wet, and only because a wave keeps lapping at random intervals. The rest of her is perfectly dry, coiled around the warm soft something. She could have slept for an hour yet, if not for the voice bugling in her ear.
“Akilah,” the voice asks, “do you have something you want to tell me? Since it seems to be spreading and all, and I get the feeling Laura Lee is immune thanks to the power of Jesus.”
“You get how that sounds homophobic,” Akilah’s soft voice replies dryly. The first voice—Mari—makes a sound of astonishment.
“Am not! I’ll have you know, I’m very open to it. I’m sure your lips are incredibly soft.”
“Can we not talk about my lips—”
“What the fuck,” Natalie groans into the soft thing, “are you talking about?”
“And why,” yawns the soft thing under her cheek, “are you talking at all?”
Natalie jerks upright like she’s been fired from a slingshot. The soft thing—Lottie—blinks up at her.
“That sun is very bright. Anybody know how to turn it down?”
“We found them!” Mari bellows again. “They’re cuddling. Should we leave them here to work it out, or do we really think the bears will be back for seconds?”
“Or turn her down,” Lottie adds grouchily.
“We were not cuddling,” Natalie says. Mari grins.
“What do you call it, then? Because I’m sure Tai and Van would have a few suggestions—”
“Keep talking like that,” Akilah urges. “Maybe I can take your spot at Nationals when Tai pushes you off a speeding bus.”
“You already have Allie’s spot, why do you need mine, too? Starting to think you don’t have a crush on me after all—”
“Can everyone just.” Natalie holds up both her hands, head bowed. “Shut up? For a second? What is even happening?”
“Oh,” Akilah says, “we were worried you all got eaten by something, because we woke up and you weren’t at camp. But it turns out you were just using Lottie as a human pillow, which was actually very sweet. Are you girlfriends, too?”
“Too?” Natalie frowns.
“Girlfriends?” Lottie repeats blankly.
“Like Tai and Van.”
“Oh, we haven’t—had that conversation,” Van blusters, choosing this exact moment to jog up to the group. Her face is a worryingly-complete shade of red.
“And it’s none of your business,” Tai adds through gritted teeth.
“See?” Mari gestures as if to say what did I tell you? “The gay agenda. It’s spreading. Which,” she adds when Akilah raises her eyebrows and Taissa’s scowl deepens, “I am super okay with. Have you seen girls? Girls are great. Girls are—”
“Please,” says Van, gripping the bridge of her nose. “I will pay you to stop.”
“Would you say you’d pay her…ten dollars?” asks Lottie slyly. Natalie flops back onto the sand.
“Fuck me, I can’t believe you actually won.”
“If anyone’s fucking,” Mari says, “let me know, and I’ll make myself scarce. Again, not because I have a problem with it. Just because, y’know. Common courtesy. And I’ve heard enough moaning for the month.”
“Please,” Van repeats. “Stop. Talking.”
“Do you…dare me?”
“That’s it.” Van takes off, hands outstretched towards Mari, who springs away with a cackle. They skid off down the beach at a sprint, Mari narrowly keeping just a little ahead of Van’s throttling grasp.
“Unbelievable,” Tai mutters, like the rest of them can’t see the dopey-ass smile on her face as Van tackles Mari around the ankles. “Wait—did you say won?”
“No,” says Natalie promptly. “Nope. Did. Not do that.”
“Definitely didn’t make any bets about you two,” Lottie adds unhelpfully. Taissa blows out a breath.
“If I didn’t have a goalie to keep from murder charges right now, you and I would be having words.”
“Hey, what about my fucking jacket?” Natalie calls after her. Lottie snorts, leaning her chin on Natalie’s shoulder.
“Yeah, I still don’t think you’re ever getting that back.”
She’s oddly comfortable, pressed against Natalie’s back. Like she was comfortable last night, Natalie remembers now, her arm slowly making its way around Natalie’s shoulders. She isn’t even sure how it had happened: her body twining around Lot’s, her head nestling into the crook of Lottie’s neck. It had just seemed natural. Magnetic, even. There were stars, and the lake sloshing away, and Lottie had been so warm and soft and—
“You okay?” Lottie asks. Natalie cuts her a smile.
“Weirdly, yeah. Think I am. You?”
Lottie nods. “That was…really nice. Last night.”
She’s looking at Natalie with serious eyes. She’s looking at Natalie from such a brief distance away, and if Natalie turns her head just the least bit, angles herself back, she might be able to—
“Anyway,” she says briskly, shaking sand out of her hair. “Guess you won.”
“Guess I did.” Lottie smiles. “Good game. You fucking loser.”
“Loser?” Natalie repeats, popping up onto her knees. She gives Lottie a friendly shove, amused when Lottie just keeps grinning. “You’re talking shit?”
“Only when I mean it,” Lottie says with false solemnity, and Natalie throws her head back, roaring with laughter.
***
“Okay, maybe we could have done it somewhere further away,” Van concedes. “Like Neptune.”
“Mm. Sexy atmosphere, Neptune.” Tai kicks her legs over the edge of the rock, letting her bare toes skim creek water.
“I’ve always said this.”
“You know what else you’ve always said,” Tai says lightly. Van looks at her, head turned on folded arms, and Tai goes on. “You always said you didn’t give a shit about dating.”
Van grunts, twisting back to stare out at the horizon. They’re supposed to be back at the campsite, helping the team break down. They’re supposed to be stuffing that tiny little tent into its carrying bag, folding blankets and rolling sleeping bags.
They’re supposed to, but every time they turn a corner, someone else is beaming at them like they can singlehandedly erase decades of hate crime, and Van is already so over it. Plus, she can’t look at that tent without feeling her ears turn into twin infernos. It’s way, way too easy to remember Tai muffling her gasps against Van’s shoulder, Tai’s body urgent against her own, Tai kissing her until she thought her lungs would explode.
So much safer out here. She’d rather be accused of slacking off than put up with another of Mari’s hyena grins.
“Van.”
“Tai,” she replies. Tai flicks a pebble at her.
“You said you didn’t want to date.”
“No,” Van corrects with a sigh, “I said I had better shit to do than worry about the high school dating pool. Which was true. I just failed to mention my pool was made up of like. Two fish.”
“At least four,” Tai says playfully. “Judging by how cozy Nat and Lot were.”
“Yeah, I don’t even have the first clue what to do with that.” Van squints into the sun, then back at the water. Silvery discs play before her eyes, chasing one another over tiny ripples.
“I’m not sorry, you know,” Tai says. Her hand is recklessly close to Van’s hip. Van, stretched out on her stomach, could so easily roll toward it. It would take no effort whatsoever.
“You’re not?” she asks, forcing her body to remain still. Her chin digs into her arm. She’s getting a sunburn. “Well—that’s—good. Because I’m not, either.”
“Good,” Tai says. She sounds almost…nervous? “Because that would suck. If we’d—if I’d—with you—and then you—”
“Taissa, are you babbling?” Van asks, incredulous. Tai shakes her head.
“Do I babble?”
“Well, no. Hence my worry.” She reaches over, presses a hand to Tai’s forehead. “Are you having a stroke? Did I break you last night?”
“Absolutely not.” Tai’s hand slides up, wrapping around Van’s wrist. She hesitates for a beat, then draws Van’s fingers to her mouth, pressing a series of slow kisses along her knuckles, the back of her hand, her palm. Van sighs.
“Maybe we should try again, then. Imagine the legends if I was the one to break Taissa—”
Tai muffles a laugh against her wrist, nipping at the patternwork of veins. Just the sensation of breath against skin brings last night reeling back in surround sound.
“I’m not sorry,” Van says again, more seriously this time. “I really…I’m really not sorry at all.”
Tai is kissing her way down Van’s arm. She’s reached the crook of elbow, dragging her lips gently over a particularly thick cluster of freckles, when Van pushes upright and slides a hand around her neck.
“I don’t want it to mess anything up,” she says. “I guess that’s why I never—I mean, I didn’t think you’d want it, and if I said something stupid, you might…go away.”
Tai’s eyes are almost amber in this light, threads of gold plucked out of the deep brown. There’s a look in them Van’s never noticed before. It almost feels like too much.
“So, if you just want it to be something we do,” she hurries on before Tai can speak. “Just messing around, just…whatever, I can be okay with that. As long as you don’t go away.”
“I’m not going away,” Tai says. She arches her neck when Van’s fingers flex against her nape, toying with the scarf holding back her curls. “I’m not going anywhere. And after we take Nationals, I don’t know—I’m sort of thinking we could be anyone.”
“Yeah?” It’s too much to hope for. Too much, realizing that look in Tai’s eyes is radiant. It’s exactly the look she knows is in her own face right now.
“I mean, look, the team clearly doesn’t give a fuck—”
“Starting to think they’d all be hypocrites, if they did,” Van laughs. Then, because she can’t help herself: “Truth or dare, Tai.”
“Truth,” says Tai without looking away. Van swallows.
“What do you want to be, when Nationals is over?”
And Taissa, who is not stupid, who is not a coward, who knows you only pick truth when you’ve got something to admit, is a kiss away when she breathes, “Right here.”
***
For someone who has spent the last ten years glued to her side, Jackie is proving remarkably, annoyingly adept at avoiding Shauna. She’s like a fucking ghost. Shauna keeps catching glimpses of her from the corner of her eye—a flash of ponytail, and then nothing.
There’s little else to do but help break camp. Misty and Natalie are bickering over how best to fold tents, where to stack items in preparation for the bus arrival, and generally anything else that crops up. Misty seems to be enjoying herself immensely. Natalie mostly seems cranky.
“Have you seen Jackie?” Shauna asks after all of the coolers are accounted for, the laundry lines stripped down, the tarps folded into miniscule squares. Lottie raises her eyebrows.
“I think she’s waiting for the bus.”
Good. That should make it easy to get her alone. To ask what the hell is going on, why she just…thought it was okay to kiss Shauna and run away.
Shauna really isn’t sure which part bothers her more. She thinks it might be the latter. She doesn’t know what that says about her, what the hurricane in her chest that lashes at the thought of the look on Jackie’s face means.
She realizes her hand has drifted to her lips and forces it back down. They need to talk. She needs Jackie to stand still for five minutes and explain herself.
Jackie owes her that.
“Hey!”
It comes out like a right hook, hurled at the back of Jackie’s unsuspecting head. One word, knife-sharp, burying itself in the slim, pale column of Jackie’s neck. Jackie whirls, eyes skirting left and right for an escape, but Shauna’s always been faster.
“You’re really just going to do this?” she demands. “Do—whatever that was? And then pretend it didn’t happen?”
There’s a glaze in Jackie’s expression she doesn’t recognize. It doesn’t suit her, that look, and it takes far too long for Shauna to realize it’s something depressingly akin to fear. She softens, the windstorm battering her ribcage starting to settle.
“Jackie,” she says, a plea. “Can you just…”
“I have to wait,” Jackie cuts in, twisting around to face the other direction. “We can do this later.”
“No,” Shauna corrects. “We should do it now.” If they don’t, she has the nasty feeling she’ll never see Jackie again. Like—Jackie will be there, technically, right by her side, but she won’t be there. Inside, deep down, where the girl who knows all of Shauna’s secrets and none of her shame lives, she won’t be there ever again.
If Shauna lets them leave it this way, if she lets Jackie set one foot on that bus, it’s over. Whatever this is. Whatever Jackie was feeling this morning, that burst of emotion that started in her chest and traveled without warning to her lips. It’ll be over, a story Shauna only ever got the prologue to, and it will make her crazy for the rest of her days.
“You,” she says, “are dating Jeff. You have always been dating Jeff.”
Jackie keeps looking off down the road leading out of camp. Shauna taps her shoulder once, twice, with mounting frustration.
“Jackie. You’re dating Jeff. You like Jeff.”
“Not really,” Jackie mutters. She won’t turn her head, won’t look Shauna in the eye. Shauna is forcibly reminded of the ninth grade, when Jackie went a whole month without eye contact, just because it made her mother nuts.
“You don’t like Jeff?” Shauna asks. Jackie shrugs. “Do you—do you like me, then?”
“Of course I like you,” Jackie scoffs. “You’re my best friend.”
Shauna is going to strangle her. “But do you like…like-like me? Because you did kiss me. That is a thing you did.”
Jackie’s small hands curl into small fists. The silhouette of her jaw tenses. She says nothing.
“Why is every conversation with you like a game of twenty freakin’ questions?” Shauna demands. “Just…be straight with me, for once. What’s going on in your head?”
“I don’t know!” Jackie explodes. She’s bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if it’s taking every ounce of willpower not to sprint away from this conversation. “I don’t fucking know, Shauna! Everything made sense, and then all of a sudden, you’re going to fucking Brown without me, and I’m thinking about going back home to Jeff, and being with him because it’s easy, because my fucking mother is sure we’re going to have two-point-five kids and a dog someday, and you’re going to be off living an adventure without me. And I just—I don’t know, I just—snapped!”
“You snapping,” Shauna says evenly, “looked a lot like kissing me on the mouth.”
“I didn’t think, okay?” Jackie sounds utterly unmoored. “I just did it. I don’t even know what it means, I just—it was like this trip. I just thought, what if I did the thing nobody expects, for once? And then I did that thing. And now I’m…”
She sags, her hands flying to her face. She looks so like a broken doll, Shauna almost laughs.
“Now you’re what?” she asks instead.
“I don’t know,” Jackie wails into her cupped palms. She lets them drop, spinning to glare at Shauna. “Why is this all on me, huh? You’re the one who lied. You’re the one who’s gone all mysterious with your ooh, I’m going to Brown, la dee da bullshit!”
“But I didn’t kiss you,” Shauna says. It feels like the only thing that matters in this moment. Like Brown and Rutgers and even Jeff are just traffic cones set up between points A and B.
Jackie looks at her, long and hard, a shattered gleam flitting around her eyes. “No,” she agrees. “You didn’t.”
Shauna gazes at her, this girl she thought she understood, this girl who has always made so much sense. Jackie does what she’s supposed to. Great grades, great athlete, great hair. Great boyfriend. Great life. Jackie does what she’s meant to, and she makes it look so easy. Like it was ever a choice.
Shauna could leave her to that. One word, one step, she could leave Jackie to that future. The school she selected without Shauna’s input. The boy she selected without hesitation. The life she selected out of a catalogue, like that’s all she could ever want. She says she doesn’t want Jeff, doesn’t want to be alone, but Shauna knows she’d be okay. Jackie always is.
Shauna could leave her to it, run off to Brown, to Paris, to parts unknown. It would be the easier move, in the long run.
She inches forward, the toes of her sneakers sketching through the dirt. She takes Jackie’s hand. Lets her eyes linger on Jackie’s downturned mouth.
Kisses her.
It feels weird. Because Jackie is a girl, soft and curvy under her touch, but moreover: because Jackie is Jackie. Because Jackie is sleepovers so frequent, they don’t even issue verbal invitations anymore. Because Jackie is wired into her wardrobe, her wallpaper, the pins on her jacket. Because Jackie is in her car, in her tape deck, in her locker. In everything. Jackie is her, in a way, and she is Jackie, and still, she’s never thought for a minute what this could feel like.
It feels weird.
It feels wonderful.
They’re standing in the road, Jackie’s hands on her hips, Shauna’s fingers cupped around Jackie’s chin. They’re standing there, staring at one another.
“The bus is going to be here any minute,” Jackie breathes. Shauna’s brow furrows.
“That is what you say to me?”
“I don’t know! You—what’d you think? Of that. Of—” Jackie can’t seem to say it. Her eyes are overbright, like she might burst into tears if Shauna says the wrong thing.
“I’m not Jeff,” Shauna says. Jackie snorts.
“Yeah, you didn’t immediately try to stick your hand down my pants, so. Kind of gave it away.”
“I’m not like Jeff,” Shauna amends. “I don’t…want to be climbing through your window. And breaking up every ten minutes. And hanging around just because you expect me to wait.”
The amusement vanishes from Jackie’s face. She nods once, a sharp bob that pulls her head from Shauna’s loose grasp.
“I’m going to Brown,” Shauna says firmly, and when Jackie tries to wriggle free, she snags her in a tight hug. Her chin hooked on Jackie’s shoulder, she says, “I’m going because I need to figure out who I can be out there. But I’m going to call every night. Every night. And I’m going to visit on weekends, and you’re going to visit me. And we’re going to be us, Jackie.”
Jackie’s hands creep up her back, a hesitant return embrace. “What…does us even mean?”
“What it’s always meant. You and me against the world.” Shauna presses her face to Jackie’s neck, inhaling the scent of sunscreen, bug repellant, cucumber lotion.
“Shauna?”
“Yeah?”
“If I break up with Jeff when we get back…can us mean figuring this out, too?”
She sounds fragile. Jackie never sounds fragile, not with her. Shauna clings tighter, a smile cracking her face.
“If you break up with Jeff, we can do anything you want.”
***
The girls who board the bus that afternoon run perfectly parallel to the girls who’d climbed aboard Friday morning. They move with zombie inefficiency, stumbling over their own feet, sagging into seats with giant sighs of relief. The wheels haven’t even begun turning before Mari is asleep on Akilah’s shoulder, mouth open, a Fruit by the Foot half-unpackaged in her left hand.
“Good work, Jackie,” Natalie calls from the back of the bus. “You knocked us out so hard, we’re going to have to hold each other up at Nationals.”
The tips of Jackie’s ears pinken, but her smile is broad. “You all have five days to recover. I expect to see high spirits and higher energy when we get on that plane.”
“For real, though,” Lottie chimes in. Her shoulder knocks against Natalie’s as the bus makes its first turn. “That was pretty great.”
“Yeah,” Akilah adds. “I really feel like I know you all better now. Much better.”
“For the four hundredth time, I am sorry,” Van groans, letting her head bounce off the window. Next to her, Taissa shrugs.
“I’m not.”
Natalie settles back in her seat as the conversation gradually dims. Soon enough, they’re all asleep: Tai’s head on Van’s shoulder, Van’s cheek crushed against her hair; Misty lolling against her window, glasses askew; Laura Lee’s chin bobbing toward the Bible in her lap. Even Jackie and Shauna, who seem to be sitting with a suspiciously razor-fine space between their legs, are dozing.
It's just her now. Her, and Lottie, and the highway spilling out before them.
Why, suddenly, is her skin starting to prickle?
“I think that had a lot to do with you, you know.” Lottie is looking out the window, her face serene. Natalie frowns.
“What did?”
“Everyone surviving. Everyone having a pretty okay time. I think, without you, it would have been much worse.”
Natalie isn’t blushing. Natalie doesn’t blush. Not even when Lottie Matthews turns her head, dark hair spilling into her eyes, and adds, “I know I would have had a much shittier time without you.”
“You’d have been fine,” Natalie mumbles. She feels suddenly very small, very uncertain. Mari’s voice is in her head: Is there something in the water? Her eyes slide to Tai and Van, dead asleep across the aisle, and Jackie and Shauna pretending they aren’t napping with interlocked pinky fingers.
Lottie’s leg bumps hers lightly. Her shorts are riding up, all tanned muscle on display. Natalie forces herself to breathe.
With guys, it’s easy. Straightforward. A guy likes you, you know it. He’ll stumble, or he’ll offer you a smoke, or he’ll just go for broke and reap whatever you give back. With guys, she understands.
Lottie’s ankle jostling hers. Lottie’s arm smooth against her jacket sleeve. Lottie’s smile crooked on pretty lips.
“Lot,” she says hoarsely, already leaning in. “Do you want—”
Lottie is eager. She hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected Lottie’s perfume to have a taste, her skin a fragrance beyond whatever Macy’s bottle she wears. Hadn’t expected Lottie’s lips to part over hers, Lottie’s hand to drive into her hair and pull her closer.
Lottie is kissing her. Lottie. Kissing her. Lottie’s hand is crinkling the sleeve of her jacket, Lottie’s mouth unrelenting, Lottie’s thigh blistering through her leopard-print jeans.
“Wow,” Natalie says. “You just kissed a girl.”
“What makes you think it’s my first time?” Lottie demands. Her fingers are still wound around blonde waves, brushing Natalie’s ear.
“Was it?”
Lottie grins. “I kissed Laura Lee once. Seventh grade. She tasted like pineapple, and told me the next day it could never happen again, because she was saving herself.”
“For what?” Natalie asks. Lottie’s fingers slide down, grazing the chain of her safety pin necklace.
“I dunno, for someone who wouldn’t make up an excuse to get out of going to church after a sleepover, probably.”
“Oh,” says Natalie. Then: “Shit, dude, maybe there is something in our water.”
Lottie opens her mouth the way she does when she has no idea how to field an especially-bananas statement, and Natalie takes advantage of the opportunity to sweep in. The second kiss is just as eager, but a little less intense. Just enough for her to drink in the details of Lottie’s cheekbones, the fall of her collar around her throat, the precise angle of her knee as she shifts and knocks against Natalie’s.
“This is nuts,” she says, careful to keep her voice down. No one sleeps that deeply on a bus. The last thing she wants is to field Mari’s observations on this before she’s even had time to process it herself.
“But it’s okay, right?” Lottie looks a little nervous for the first time. Natalie’s grin feels like it doesn’t have nearly enough real estate on her face. She’s going to need to install a second head just so it can actually fit.
“Fuck yeah, it’s okay. If It’s okay with you, I mean.” She’s never done this before. Not with someone who could surprise her. She looks at Lottie with new eyes, pleased when Lottie doesn’t glance away. “You can tell me. It was definitely my wilderness skills, right? Made me, like, super hot.”
“Yes,” Lottie drawls. “That was definitely it. Never thought about it before I saw you pitch a tent, but then—”
“How long?” Natalie blurts. Lottie gives a half-shrug, embarrassed.
“Few months? I dunno. I just…like being around you. Makes me feel normal.”
“You are normal,” Natalie tells her. Lottie’s mouth quirks.
“We can talk about that sometime. But uh. For now…”
Her hand closes around Natalie’s collar. Her kiss is sweet, dangerously close to addictive. Natalie breathes her in, wishing with every cell in her body not to be on a bus with her teammates.
“I think we should room together,” she says. “At Nationals. When we’re at an actual hotel.”
“They’re going to notice.” Lottie noses under her jaw. Natalie draws a fistful of dark hair, coaxing her to stick around, appreciate the scenery.
“Look around. There’s enough gay panic on this bus to fuel a trip to Canada. No one’s going to give a shit about us.”
Lottie snickers. Across the bus, Tai cracks an eyelid. Makes a noise of mild irritation under her breath. Snuggles in closer to Van.
“Next time,” Lottie assures her. “Hotel room. As far away from the others as we can get.”
It sounds to Natalie's ears like the best promise she's ever been made.
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