Chapter Text
Jackie wakes up choking.Not on air but on memory.Her chest hurts first, a phantom ache, like cold still lives inside her ribs. Snow. Dark. Shauna’s voice calling her name, cracked and useless and too late.
“Jacqueline ?”
She jerks upright.Her bed is wrong. Too small. Pink comforter with little white flowers she hasn’t seen in decades. Sunlight spills through thin curtains, too bright, too warm.Her hands , They’re tiny.
Jackie stares at them, fingers short and clumsy, skin smooth and unscarred. She presses a hand to her chest, half-expecting frostbite, half-expecting nothing at all.Her heart is racing. Alive. Loud.“No,” she whispers. Her voice is high. Wrong.
Five years old .
The door opens.“Jackie, honey, you’re gonna miss the bus!”Her mom. Younger. Softer around the edges. Wearing the denim jacket Jackie remembers borrowing in high school The room tilts.Jackie slides off the bed, knees wobbling as her feet hit the floor. She stumbles to the mirror over her dresser.
A child stares back at her. Big eyes. Missing teeth. Hair chopped unevenly like her mother did it herself.Jackie presses her palms to the glass.
“I died,” she says quietly. The girl in the mirror doesn’t argue.
The classroom smells like crayons and glue and something sweet. Apple juice, maybe.Jackie sits very still at a tiny table, legs swinging uselessly. Around her, kids chatter and laugh and shout names that mean nothing to her yet.
She knows this day.She knows what happens next.The teacher Mrs. Fleming, she remembers dimly claps her hands. “Okay, friends! Let’s all find a seat on the carpet.”Jackie stands slowly.And then she sees her.
Shauna Shipman is standing near the cubbies, clutching a purple backpack to her chest like armor. Her hair is pulled back too tight. Her eyes flick around the room, already watching, already cataloguing.Already looking for Jackie.
Jackie’s stomach drops.
There you are, the universe seems to say.
Shauna spots her. Her face lights up not bright, exactly, but relieved. Like she’s found something she was afraid she lost.She starts toward Jackie.“No,” Jackie breathes.She moves first.Jackie darts past her, heart hammering, and sits down hard on the carpet between two unfamiliar girls. One of them blinks at her.
“You’re in my spot,” the girl says.Jackie doesn’t look at her. “It’s not assigned.”
Mrs. Fleming smiles indulgently. “Alright, everyone, crisscross applesauce.”
Jackie folds her legs, hands clenched in her lap.
She feels it then Shauna sitting behind her, close enough that Jackie can feel the heat of her. Close enough that it’s wrong.“Hi, Jackie,” Shauna says softly.
Jackie flinches. She doesn’t turn around.
Shauna hesitates. “I like your shoes.”
Silence.
Jackie stares straight ahead at the alphabet poster on the wall. A is for Apple. B is for Bear. C is for choice, she thinks desperately. Shauna’s voice gets smaller. “My mom says we’re gonna be in the same class all year.”Jackie swallows.She doesn’t respond.
Mrs. Fleming begins reading a story. The room settles. Shauna shifts behind her, then goes quiet.Jackie tells herself this is good. This is how it starts changing.
She tells herself not to look back.
Recess is worse.The playground is chaos kids running, screaming, falling. Jackie sticks close to the monkey bars, trying to look busy, normal. She knows the pattern.
Shauna always finds her.“Do you wanna play house?”Jackie stiffens.Shauna stands a few feet away, hands twisted together. Hopeful. Nervous. Exactly as she always was.Jackie turns slowly.
“No.” Shauna blinks. “Oh.” Jackie hears herself continue, sharper than she meant. “I already have friends.” It’s a lie. But Shauna doesn’t know that.“Oh,” Shauna says again. She nods, like she’s accepting a rule she didn’t realize she was breaking. “Okay.”
She walks away.Jackie watches her go, chest aching in a way that has nothing to do with cold.She did it, she tells herself.She stopped it.all the hurt and the pain from her last life. So why does it feel like she just made the biggest mistake of both her lifetimes ?