Chapter Text
Jackie shuts the door, stumbles, and trips face first, head dangling into the toilet.
Okay, so.
She’s not doing particularly well in college.
Rutgers was supposed to be a dream — a sunny campus with sunny students and sunny smiles. A new place, where she could try her hand at being an adult, without having to stray too far from her hometown for comfort. There would always be a safety net, a promise that she could drive home on the weekends to lick her wounds if things went wrong… except, of course, she wouldn’t want to. She’d be off doing fun, exciting college things, like decorating her dorm with Shauna and joining clubs with Shauna and going to frat parties with Shauna.
And that’s still happening. Kind of. It’s not like she’s a total loser. She’s been doing all of those things, just sans the Shauna.
She already met her roommate, Rachel, a plucky blonde with sun-soaked skin and too many freckles (not Shauna).
She already joined the ultimate frisbee club, the fashion club, the young feminist’s book club, and Delta Phi (which Shauna would call cliche, shallow, pretentious, and vapid, in that order).
She’s already gone to exactly six frat parties, the latest of which had her hugging a toilet bowl (without Shauna there to hold back her hair).
Jackie has done a lot — is doing a lot — but all of it feels as if she’s rolling through lines on a script. Like she’s seven years old again, back in one of those pageant shows her mom used to wrestle her into, glittery and dolled up and soaked in cement-solid hairspray, all so she could perform. So her mom could take pictures and hang them on the mantle. Oh, just look at little Jacqueline, isn’t she darling?
She imagines running into Shauna and shoving a scrapbook beneath her nose in much the same manner. Here’s me pinning Madonna posters to my wall. Here’s me laughing with my large, cool group of friends. Here’s me kissing a boy with bigger biceps than Jeff. Here’s me reading Wuthering Heights, because I read now. See? See? I can do just fine without you.
Which is all kinds of pathetic, she knows. Shauna would probably just pity-frown at her, if the fantasy ever did unfurl. It might, actually, if they both wind up back in Wiskayok for Thanksgiving. Scarily, that’s a very real, startling possibility: having a violent stare down over Deb’s turkey.
Still. Jackie’s never been a desperate person. Not on the surface, at least. People seem to like her, and why not? She’s pretty, athletic, and plenty fun to be around. Joining a sorority is easy, and getting invited to parties is easier. She hops through small talk like a champ, chatting about the new skirts she bought with girls and bragging about soccer to boys. It’s a bit of a rush, being faced with a whole new host of people to charm after years of rotating the same roster. She repeats herself a lot, asking people where they’re from, what they’re majoring in, what classes they’re taking. She nods along, and she smiles, and it’s great, you know, but sometimes she gets the thought in her head that it’s all sort of—
(Tragic, boring, insecure, weak.)
—meaningless. Deep down, she doesn’t really care if the guy she’s talking to is majoring in philosophy or business or chemistry. It’s just something to say. Just words.
No one here knows that she can’t puke properly unless someone gives her a hard smack on the back to get the ball rolling — so she gives up, mid dry heave, and slouches onto the floor. She’s in one of those shitty, university-issue bathrooms that’s no bigger than a closet and has the color scheme of a mental hospital. White on white on more white. It makes her a bit jittery, reminds her of all the tests they took after they were rescued. Checking her vitals, her organs, her blood, over and over, until they could deem her alright. Physically, anyway. She still tenses when it gets too dark out — whatever that means, thank you brain — and she’s pretty sure she’s not going to make it on another flight anytime soon. But, she’s here. Some of the other girls haven’t made it to college. That’s something, right? A win in of itself?
Maybe. A whole year undefeated, and now she can’t even remember what a win looks like.
Jackie sighs. Tragic, boring, insecure, weak college girl is tragic, boring, insecure, and weak.
Checkmate, Shipman.
Her stomach’s doing the kind of odd, vodka two step that tells her she should probably take another try at clearing her stomach, but she’s not up for it right now. There isn’t much to throw up, anyway. College is shredding the careful diet she’d pieced together for training season. It’s been mostly alcohol, granola bars eaten on the go, and late night, dining hall slop whenever she can stomach it. It’s okay, though, all part of the experience. And if she is going back for Thanksgiving, she’d like to return without the freshman fifteen.
Part of her wants to add it to that great, big, living scrapbook: Notice how thin I’ve gotten, Shauna? How pretty? Effortless and small. I’m fucking thriving without you. I’m fucking alive.
Maybe not the healthiest thought to have.
The door pops open. “Oh! Sorry, girl, I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
And closes with a giggle.
Jackie jerks up onto her feet, staggering slightly. The fact that a random stranger has seen her sitting around this way feels strangely humiliating, like she’s just gotten publicly pantsed or something.
The feeling follows her all the way downstairs, where she tries her best not to touch too many people while cutting through the crowd. There’s no one there who expects her to say goodbye, so she just slips right out, hustling past some smokers on the porch.
She fast-walks the rest of the way to her dorm, head down, arms wrapped around her body. The wind is messing up her hair and making her shiver. She wishes she’d worn a slightly less skimpy outfit.
By the time Jackie reaches her room, she’s covered in goosebumps. Her roommate is gone, probably for the rest of the night. The room is bathed in the type of solid darkness she has to grit her teeth to keep from quivering at. She flicks on a light and pads through the eerie quiet to drop at her desk chair, determined to remove her makeup. Her desk is currently a cavernous mess of objects: pens, pencils, notebooks, staplers, lipstick, mascara, nail clippers, mace, a phone, water bottles, et cetera. Most of it’s just clutter. She doesn’t even use the phone, outside of her weekly calls with her parents.
Are you keeping up with your studies?
Yes, mom.
You’re not going to too many parties, are you?
No, dad.
Are you making friends?
Yes, yes, everything’s perfect.
Jackie thought one of her teammates might give her a ring, but no luck — okay, so, Misty had called, it’s just… it’s Misty. She’s still not sure how Misty got her number, and she’s a little too afraid to ask.
What she did ask, during this very brief, very casual conversation, is if Misty had the other girls’ numbers. Just out of simple curiosity. Just so she could check in and chat with Tai or Van and maybe catch up with Nat a bit more and hey, Misty, you wouldn’t happen to have Shauna’s number, would you? She’s not doing anything weird with it. She hasn’t called to cry or scream or embarrass herself (though she thinks she’d be justified in doing so, given the circumstances). It’s just that she’s known Shauna so long the idea of not having some piece of her around is foreign, almost to the point of being disorienting. Like she’d woken up and discovered that she’d forgotten how to walk.
So, she has this: seven digits, scribbled in brand new pen, tucked away for her to take out and run her fingers over whenever she’s feeling sentimental.
The ink is blotching from her sweat.
Jackie rolls her thumb over all the eights and nines, getting a physical feel for the numbers, as if doing so will help them sink into her skin.
She’d gotten her nails done in preparation for Orientation Week, and they’re still that same glossy purple. A pretty color on pretty hands — smooth and polished and softened, yet somehow inadequate, useless, unable to lift a knife. She doubts any of the other girls here think about that. Whether or not they’d be able to skin a rabbit or a deer, if given the chance. She doesn’t have to wonder, though. She already knows, if you peel back the pretty bits of her, that beneath it all, she can’t, beneath it all, she’s worthless.
It’s not the kind of thing you un-know. The cut may have healed, but the skin hasn’t quite set right.
Jackie curls the cord around her finger, thinking.
Shauna is probably actually thriving, doing her best impression of a tortured artist at Brown, wearing berets and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.
Probably.
Just the thought annoys her, and well… Jackie can’t help what happens next.
A buzzing fills her ears, and her head empties, and she jams her fingers at the keypad, rabbit-quick, thinking that it’s fine, Shauna probably won’t be up this late, and if she is, she’s probably busy, so—
“Hello?”
Jackie holds her breath.
“Hello? Who’s calling?”
There’s no identifiable noises surrounding the voice, no clink of glasses or background chatter.
”Alright, whatever.” The line goes dead.
Jackie spends a long minute soaking in the memory of Shauna’s voice — sucking the taste of it, lodging it between gum and cheek. Her favorite candy.
After a while, she carries on, reaches for a makeup wipe, swipes briskly at her eye.
Her hands are trembling.
*
”Hello?”
Silence.
”Hello?”
Silence.
”Is this the same caller?”
More silence.
”Great. Real fucking mature. I already said, I’m not talking to any reporters. Leave me alone.”
*
Right, so, Shauna thinking she’s a random reporter makes the most sense.
(Jackie herself had been swarmed by them, people who would show up to her house with their notepads already out, pens clicked, entitled.)
And she doesn’t want to talk about the crash, which makes even more sense.
For an almost-eternity, all the nightmares Jackie had were inescapable, more part of her than her hands and feet. They came blunt and vivid and everywhere, like a knife grinding continuously against her spine. Screams, bright bursts of flame. Blocks of darkness, rustling trees. Maggots, animal guts, rot. A dead-eyed freshman, impaled through the chest. Coach Martinez, sucked right out of the plane. Coach Ben’s jelly ooze of a leg. Laura Lee, disappearing into a plane carcass. A forehead spitting blood and a smiling mouth garbling French, then English: you don’t matter anymore, but that’s alright, I suppose you never really did.
She’d wake up, trembling engine-hard in a tangle of soaked sheets, nothing to do but close her eyes and clamp her mouth shut. She likes to be coddled, admittedly, likes it when she gets sick and her mom sweeps in to brush the hair from her forehead and ply her with tea. But it’s not the same, now, knowing everyone sees her that way — a sick child, a little baby that needs to be burped to vomit properly.
The dreams got better, somehow, all on their own. They lightened, got less clear cut: blurry colors and shapes of a mall, a rain-damp soccer field, red solo cups, a pack of bodies bouncing around her, buzz, buzz, buzz. A glimpse of the life she once had. A glimpse of the life she can have again, if she tries hard enough.
*
She skips breakfast the next morning — a drip of marvelous, fuzzy, secret pride — and thinks, if she got a second shot at it, she’d beat hunger. She’d dominate the wilderness.
*
”Hello? Hello? This isn’t funny. I’m not, like, amused or scared or whatever you want me to be, so just—“
”Hi, Shauna.”
An intake of breath on the other line.
Jackie tosses back her wine, triumphant. Yeah, that’s right, bet you didn’t expect me. She’s got the room to herself, again, since Rachel’s found some boy to cozy up to. She’d wrapped up her classes, then flirted her way into a free bottle one of those fancy, expensive wines she always imagined she’d start drinking at forty.
A bit early, but it’s fine. She’s got a smooth, goddamn plan.
It was a little unfair, how things went down, right? How Shauna got to lay into her in front of everybody, then toss her out in the snow. When the rescue team came, Shauna hadn’t even looked at her, just ducked into the helicopter, all quick and guilty.
Well, fuck her.
Fuck this. Fuck the wallowing.
She’s not a rabbit. She can be a fucking wolf if she wants to. “Did you know I’m a wolf?”
”Jackie, is that — what?”
”You’re not the only one that gets to do things.”
”…are you drunk?”
”No.” She bites out.
But, really, yes. The alcohol is hitting her harder than she’d imagined. Consequences of an empty stomach.
Jackie leans back in her chair, transferring the phone into her lap as she props one foot up on the desk. The sundress she’s wearing rides up her thighs, fabric bunching indecently. “You’re not the only one that gets to read and, and — fuck and kill things. I can be angry, too.”
See, Jackie went to this party over the weekend because she’s fun, and she does fun things. And she met this boy, who was also fun (Brian, business major, tall and stocky, smile of a golden retriever) and had a room upstairs and — she’s starting to grasp, after the four times that she’s had sex, that she maybe doesn’t like it that much. Sure, she likes what the act says about her: that she’s wanted, desired, useful in at least one way. But the physical part is kind of gross, actually, too wet, too slimy, and too rough. She’d dismissed the thought initially, blaming it on Flex and his lack of game, but now she’s thinking sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe it’s just underwhelming.
For her, anyway. For Shauna, apparently, it’s worth blowing up a fifteen-year friendship.
”Okay, Jackie.”
”You pissed me off, and you really hurt my feelings.”
”I know.” A pause, a sigh. “Drink some water.”
The anger inside of her slips, threatening to deflate entirely at the soft tone of her voice, but Jackie holds strong.
”No.” She taps her bare foot idly against the wood. Her toes are purple, too. “I don’t want water. I want… ice.”
”Ice?”
”Got a hickey.”
This next pause is terrifyingly long, almost a full minute of anxiety-inducing silence.
”Oh.” Shauna says, after a moment, slow and measured. “Do you?”
Is that curiosity in her voice? Surprise? Suspicion? Anger? Jealousy?
“Yeah.” Jackie brags. “I do.”
”Okay, was it — I mean, are you seeing someone?”
”No. It was just some guy.” She twirls the cord tighter around her finger. “Brian.”
”Just some guy? What happened to sex being special? Only to be done on a romantic bed of rose petals.”
The remark startles a laugh out her that she immediately regrets. This isn’t a friendly chat. It’s an argument, and she’s winning, damn it.
Not wanting to give Shauna the satisfaction, she bites back, twice as hard: “Well, I wanted to lose it to my boyfriend, but that idea’s out the window, isn’t it?”
She imagines Shauna on the other line, rubbing her forehead, wearing that sulky pout.
”Okay, I get it. You’re pissed about Jeff—“
“No, you don’t get it. It’s not about Jeff.” She spits, annoyed beyond reason. “Fuck you. It’s about us.”
”—but you said you didn’t want to get “Natalie levels of easy” in college—“
”I’m not easy.” Jackie snaps loudly.
Putting the words out there has a strange effect. She’s not, is she? Maybe she is. Three boys since she got to college, all of them one night stands with no last names. She wonders what Shauna would think, seeing her pressed against the wall, giving up what’s between her legs, after a bit of small talk. What would she do if she walked in on Jackie like that, indecent, legs spread embarrassingly wide? Call her easy? Fast? A slut?
Jackie shivers, oddly. Takes another sip of wine.
”Alright, sorry. Forget I said anything.” Shauna replies, decidedly moody. “What are you drinking?”
”Wine.”
A long-suffering sigh. ”What type of wine, Jackie?”
Jackie scrambles to check the label, feeling put upon, like a child called out by their teacher. ”It’s, red, uh Buccella Mica Cabernet?”
She rushes it all out, then sits, waiting for Shauna to comment on her pronunciation, but all there is is some rustling on the other end. Footsteps, the soft pop of a bottle opening. Shauna swallowing something in an audible gulp.
”What are you drinking?” Jackie points the question towards her with restless curiosity.
”Whiskey.”
“Ew.” She wrinkles her nose, even as an alluring image appears in her head: Shauna, draped lazily across a velvet red bed, taking sips that leave her lips wet.
Real Shauna laughs, and it’s a touch mocking. “You still can’t stomach more than a cocktail, can you?”
Jackie twitches. “I can. It’s just gross.”
”Right, okay.”
”I can.”
”I said okay.”
She’s never heard Shauna’s voice like this before, so low, so casually cruel. It dismantles her, sends a flick of heat up her neck. Has Shauna always been this way? Has she just never noticed?
“You’re being a dick.” Jackie unwinds the cord, then rolls it back up again — thinks about how she’s going to draw out Shauna’s temper, where it can no longer hide. “You don’t even like whiskey, either. You’re just faking it.”
“I’m faking it? Really? That’s rich.”
Jackie swallows. “I don’t know what you mean.”
”Yes, you do. Yes, you do.” Shauna repeats herself, fervent, rushed with her own alcohol. “I bet you joined a sorority or something and started sleeping with a bunch of frat boy Brents—“
”Brian.” Jackie reminds her quietly, feeling as flimsy and weak as paper.
”Brian, whoever, just to forget the fact that you’re hollow inside, like one of those fragile, porcelain dolls your mom used to buy. Pretty, sure, but not much else.”
Jackie grips the stem of her glass hard, breathing ragged. Her body’s wound tight, skin flushed, nipples poking through the delicate fabric of her dress.
”That’s not true.”
“Sure.” There’s a noise that suggests Shauna is knocking back her drink again. “What are you majoring in, anyway? Fashion?”
“Yeah.” She admits, small.
“Sounds fun.”
“It is.” Her protest comes out feebly next to Shauna’s cruel tone, wobbly as her bottom lip. Something between her legs is throbbing.
Shauna just hums — a short, swift judgmental thing that has Jackie squirming. Her dress rides up the tiniest bit at the action, revealing the underwear she’d slipped on only two hours prior.
Pale purple panties with a dark, accusing wet spot marking their center.
The sight alone shocks her enough that she hangs up and sloshes her drink down on the desk, all at once, panicked. The line cuts dead abruptly. She sits for a few moments in silence, panting.
It’s only in the aftermath that she realizes she never yelled, never raised her voice, never said any of the things she wanted to.
Well.
She’s always known she was a weak girl.