Work Text:
What is a home if not the first place you learn to run from?
You've got to bite the hand that starves you, and in doing so
Praise the place that birthed you.
Birthed you fucked up.
Birthed you ugly,
and interesting,
and ready to scream.
"Courtney Love Prays to Oregon" by Clementine von Radics
Callie thought that things might get better after she and her dad left her mom. They got a tiny apartment in Jersey City. She switched to online school. Her dad actually has some time to pay attention to her now since he’s got Randy running the store. She thought it would make everything better, but it hasn’t. Not really.
Callie finds herself checking r/yellowjacketsightings even more than usual. Taissa and Misty were out together yesterday, without her mom and without Van. Why would they do that? Callie knows that they don’t even like each other. Are they working together? Cutting her mom out just like Callie and her dad did? Callie doesn’t want her mom to be alone.
She tries to bring it up with her dad, but he won’t talk about it. He says that he’s been seeing a therapist and thinks she should too, but he won’t talk about this. You know, the real shit? The real life that they’re living? It’s absolutely infuriating. He won’t talk about if they’re ever going back. He won’t even speculate about it. Callie doesn’t know if she wants to return, but she wants it to be something they talk about: a possibility on the horizon. Something to strive to, just in case. She wants to talk about the fucked up knot their lives have become: two Sadeckis living together in Jersey City, a Shipman left alone back in Wiskayok.
She knows, technically, her mom is a Sadecki too, but technicalities don’t count. The others never call her mom Sadecki, like the marriage and the child and twenty five years of her life don’t even matter to her. (Callie isn’t sure if it does.)
She should have kept her temper when she met Lottie in the city. She liked Lottie! Lottie was going to tell her things, even if those things were wrong. Now Callie can’t ask her anything, because Callie Sadecki is an idiot who can’t control her temper, just like her mom. Her dad says it was self-defense, but Callie knows that he’s wrong. There’s something rotten and ugly deep inside her, just like Lottie told her. Just like what’s in her mom.
Callie needs answers, but she can’t get them. She can’t ask her mom for them because her mom wouldn’t tell her, even before Callie left her. She can’t ask Lottie, even though Lottie would have told her, because Callie killed her . She can’t ask Misty, can’t ask Taissa, doubts Van is even still alive. That leaves a single option: Melissa. The one that sent the letter and the tape. She scours the internet for the elusive 8th survivor: Melissa Collins. She was the youngest of the kids that got back: the only sophomore in a small sea of seniors. While the others were nineteen or twenty when they were rescued, Melissa had barely turned seventeen.
According to the news, she killed herself back in 2009. That just means that she changed her name and donned some new identity. Now Callie just has to find her.
Callie signs into her mom’s google account on her laptop so that she can check her history. Shauna Shipman Sadecki is private, paranoid, and possessive, but she’s never figured out technology well enough to hide that part of her life from her daughter.
A few searches down, Callie finds information about Alexis Finch, the daughter of a herpetologist that went missing in the Canadian Rockies over the summer of 1997. Her Facebook account shows pictures of her daughter named Zoey and her wife named Kelly. “Kelly Finch” has no online footprint of her own, looks scarily similar to the picture used in Melissa’s obituary, and wears a stupid fucking pink baseball cap.
Gotcha.
Once Callie figures out the address, she makes a plan for herself. She’ll snag her dad’s car while he’s on a furniture store phone call, drive to “Kelly’s” house, and confront her about her time in the Wilderness. Sure, it’s not much of a plan, but it’s better than doing nothing. Doing nothing seems like her dad’s plan for the rest of their lives!
She doesn’t actually make it out of the garage before her dad catches her. He knocks on the car window, looking exhausted. Callie rolls it down a little sheepishly.
“Hi dad.”
He lets out a deep sigh. “What are you doing?”
“Going to see Melissa?"
Her dad just stares. “Melissa killed herself when you were in kindergarten.”
“No,” Callie corrects, “Melissa faked her own death when I was in kindergarten.”
He laughs tightly at that. “Of course, of fucking course it couldn’t be simple.” Callie shrugs. Nothing with the Yellowjackets has ever been simple.
“Fine. Melissa’s alive. That doesn’t mean you should hunt her down!"
“She has answers, dad,” she tells him. Answers are the only thing that Callie wants right now.
“They’re dangerous, Cals,” he tells her, “I just- I don’t want you to go alone.” He says this like they didn’t live with one, as if one of them didn’t bring Callie into the world. As if Callie didn’t kill someone for some insane Wilderness bullshit.
“I’ll be fine,” Callie promises him, “I can handle myself.” Even now, her dad doesn’t get it. She’s not scared of what these women can do to her; she’s scared of what she’ll do if she never knows. It’s like an itch under her skin, and if she can’t scratch it she’ll peel off her skin layer by layer until there’s nothing left of her but a skeleton.
“Fine,” her dad says, looking at her with tired concern, “just- be careful, okay? If Melissa’s still alive… she’s not gonna be happy to see you.”
“Cause she hates Mom?” Callie asks. All of them hate Mom, apparently, even Tai, who used to be her best friend.
Her dad grins at that. “Not this one, sweetie. If she hates her now, it’s cause she used to love her. Best I can tell, Melissa’s your mom’s crazy ex.” Callie starts laughing. Of course. OF COURSE! Of course this couldn’t be normal. This has to be her mom’s crazy ex girlfriend. How insane must Melissa be if she makes Shauna look like the normal one?
Her dad walks back through the garage, up the stairs, and hits the button to raise the garage door.
“Thanks, dad,” Callie says.
“Don’t thank me,” her dad says, “I’m being a shitty dad. Like, bottom of the barrel dad. Worst dad of the year, here.”
She rolls her eyes. “I love you. That’s what matters.” That's what she wants to matter, at least. She knows it's not that simple, though. Neither of her parents have ever been "good", they've just been hers.
He smiles then, little crinkles forming at his closing eyes. “Love you too, Cals.” Then, a little more seriously, he adds, “Stop stealing my car.”
“No,” Callie says. Then she drives through the open garage door and onto the open road.
Callie drives for hours before she shows up at the Finch residence. It’s a little after 1 PM on a Tuesday, so she decides that stay-at-home-mom “Kelly Finch” is probably home alone. She knocks at the door. There's no answer.
She knocks at the door again. There's still no answer. Then she rings the door. The woman from the photos opens the door. She looks casual and relaxed until she gets a better look at Callie.
Then, her eyes widen and she stars having excuses. “Uh, we already have girl scout cookies.” Then she starts to slam the door, but Callie catches her arm in the door. It slams on her bicep, and Callie curses.
“Get your arm out of my door!” “Kelly” orders.
“No,” Callie says firmly, “I want to talk to you.”
“I already found Jesus,” Kelly says tightly, “if you’re selling vacuums, I have one of those too.”
“You’re Melissa Collins,” Callie says.
"What are you talking about?" she lies. It's unconvincing and they both know it.
Callie tears the door open and smiles up at her. "Hiiiiii Melissa!"
The woman just stares. “You’re Shauna’s kid, aren’t you?”
Callie smiles. “Guilty as charged.”
“My condolences.” She starts trying to shove Callie’s arm out of the doorway to close the door again, but Callie forces her way through the threshold.
“Come on! I just wanna talk,” Callie says, holding her hands in front of her in surrender. Melissa looks nervously between her and the door.
She needs to try a different tactic before the door slams in her face and Melissa calls the cops. "If you don’t let me, "Kelly", I’m gonna send your wife a copy of your obituary.”
Melissa slams the door and leads her into the apartment, right to the kitchen table. “You Shipman women,” Melissa complains, “always acting like you're doing someone a favor when you're coercing them."
Callie thinks about how to twist the knife into her mom's ex. Then she says, “It’s Sadecki, actually, for both of us."
Melissa looks unphased. She, apparently, already knew that her mom married Jackie’s high school boyfriend that she was cheating with. “Were you expecting a reaction, there? I already knew your mom was fucked up. No surprises there." Part of Callie thinks that she and her dad were wrong, that Melissa, probably, wasn't the crazy ex- that maybe her mom is worse. But whenever she feels that way, she lets her love override it. Maybe her parents aren't great, but they're hers.
She lets her white indignation talk instead of her steady, reasonable worries. “She’s not the only one. Pretty fucked up you killed someone then married her daughter."
Melissa flinches back in her chair. “Wow. You are just like your mother.” Callie smiles a little: cruel and feral and real. She might not like it, she might not understand all of what it means, but she knows that it’s true. No matter what her dad says, no matter what her mom says… Callie is like her mother in all her ugly, raw beauty. She is like her mother, and Callie’s going to understand that mother the best that she can.