Chapter Text
December, 1997
Jackie sits on the edge of her bed, fidgeting with her fingernails – biting at them, scraping dirt from underneath them, and staring off into space.
She's just gotten off the phone from Taissa, who told her that she heard through the grapevine that Shauna is coming home for Christmas this year.
“The grapevine being…?” She had said, looping her finger through the phone cord apprehensively. As soon as Taissa had mentioned Shauna’s name, Jackie had to grab a chair and pull it over to the table where the phone was set.
“Well, I mean, Shauna told me herself,"
Jackie then learned that Taissa and Shauna kept in touch way more often than Jackie had thought. Which was like, fine, but you know…Shauna had basically left her for dead only fourteen months ago.
Shauna didn't come home for Christmas last year. Her mom had decided to fly them to Iceland for the holidays to visit her cousins.
But before we go any further, we should rewind.
In late May of 1996, Flight 2525 carrying the Yellowjackets soccer team to Nationals crashed into the Canadian Wilderness. Many were lucky enough to perish on impact. The rest of them would spend the following five months trying to survive.
During those five months, Jackie found out that Shauna had been screwing her boyfriend and was pregnant with his baby. This, of course, resulted in a huge, life altering fight which led to Jackie almost spending the night outside in the blistering cold.
She was lucky, however, that Natalie returned to the cabin to bring her back inside before she froze over, and scolded the other girls for ever letting her leave.
By some miracle, rescue came the next morning.
They came home, and Jackie and Shauna never said a word to each other. A week later, she got a phone call from Lottie telling her that Shauna had miscarried.
The majority of them returned to school after about two to three weeks of home schooling. Shauna included.
Jackie never went back. Her grades fell, but she managed to keep them high enough to graduate. She attended the ceremony, but she refused to bat an eyelid in Shauna’s direction and she never went to the after party thrown at Lottie’s house.
When September 1997 came, Shauna went to Brown and Jackie deferred her year at Rutgers.
She developed a little drinking problem, started listening to a scary amount of Radiohead and started keeping a journal.
Which brings us here, to December 1997, where Jackie stands up from her bed and storms downstairs into the hallway. She picks up the phone and dials.
One beep, two beeps…
There’s a click, a clearing of the throat and then a raspy: “Hello?”
“Hey, Nat,” Jackie pulls at the cord. “It’s me.”
“What’s up?”
“Have you heard from Taissa?”
A cough. Jackie imagines her taking a drag from a cigarette. “No, but I’ve heard from Lottie.”
Jackie pauses, continuing to pull at the cord. She rests against the table.
“She’s probably trying to call you right about now, actually.”
“Why?”
Jackie and Lottie keep in touch, but Natalie is the only girl from the team that Jackie actively makes an effort to be friends with. Lottie never calls her, and she never calls Lottie.
“To invite you to her Christmas party tomorrow night.”
“No way–”
“Jackie,” Natalie cuts her off. “I really think you should come.”
Jackie shakes her head, biting at her gums. “Will she be there?”
A pause.
“Yes. She’s inviting everyone, Jackie. She really wants us all to be there.”
Jackie feels a familiar swirling in her stomach. Even therapy hasn’t helped her get rid of it. It comes back any time she hears Shauna’s name, or pictures her face, or hears her voice in her head.
She won’t admit that she thinks about Shauna everyday. She never means to do it, never wants to stir up the nausea, but…
In the summer, in blistering heat, she wonders how Shauna will be spending her day. She thinks about what she’s wearing, if she has friends to sunbathe with, a boyfriend. She wonders if her style has changed, if orange ice pops are still her favourite.
In the winter, she wonders whether or not she’s grown to favour hot chocolate instead of coffee – like she does.
Other times, she thinks about Doomcoming and she curses all the things she didn’t say. She wonders if Shauna regrets any of it. She wonders if Shauna really hates her that much.
“Jackie?”
She blinks, and realises that she’s crying. “Yeah, sorry,”
Nat sighs and sounds sorry when she says: “Don’t cry.”
“I’m not,” She lies, for some reason.
“Look, I’d love it if you came, dude. I know we call each other most days but I haven’t seen you in the flesh for awhile. We could use it as a chance to catch up, have a few drinks, smoke a few cigs. You don’t even have to look at Shauna.”
Jackie wipes the tears from her face.
“I mean, it’s Lottie’s house so you know the drinks will be fancy shit that we can’t even pronounce.”
Jackie laughs at that, and hears Natalie smile on the other end.
Just as Jackie places the phone back into its holder, it rings – and Jackie gets the invitation from Lottie herself.
Lottie tells people to start arriving from 7:30pm, so Jackie has been drinking since 5pm.
She showers, styles her hair and then restyles it again. She’s changed her outfit three times, and is standing in her underwear when she cracks open her bedroom window and lights a cigarette.
By 7:00pm, Jackie is wearing a little black dress and a light pink knitted cardigan.
Despite the open window, the room is fogged with smoke and she’s struggling to see her reflection in the mirror as she wafts at the air. She pokes and prods at her hair, applies another layer of lip gloss and takes a swig from her glass of rum and coke before placing it aside.
“Jackie! Door!” Her dad shouts up at her.
Jackie jolts, her elbow knocking the glass from her dresser and onto the floor. “Okay!” She rubs at the stain on her carpet with her shoe, to no avail.
She gives herself one last look in the mirror before leaving her room and racing to the door.
Natalie is wearing her black leather jacket and black jeans. She looks Jackie up and down as she rubs her hands together, shaking in the cold.
“You look like a kids dress up doll.” She says, already walking back towards the car.
Jackie looks down at her outfit. “Gee, thanks. Now I feel great about myself.”
Natalie looks back over her shoulder just to roll her eyes “Whatever, princess. You don’t need any compliments from me.”
Jackie spends the ten minute car ride wondering how on Earth Natalie passed her driving test. They hit every curb they came across, and run a red light twice.
When they pull into Lottie’s driveway, Jackie says: “I’m starting to think maybe it would’ve been best if we’d crashed the car.”
Natalie pulls a packet of cigarettes from her pocket, offering one to Jackie.
“Will she let us smoke in the house?” She asks, taking it.
Natalie shrugs and steps out of the car. Jackie follows. “We’ll just smoke it before we go in.”
Despite the pre-drinking and the hundred cigarettes, Jackie feels her nerves getting the better of her.
She keeps fidgeting with her dress and with her hair and with her earrings, all in the space of thirty seconds, and eventually Natalie scoffs.
“Jesus, you’d think Jeff was in there.”
Jackie frowns. “What?”
Natalie gestures with her cigarette to Jackie, up and down. She exhales. “Well, you’re all dolled up and you won’t stand still. Are you trying to impress Shauna?”
“Are you telling me that I’m overdressed?” She looks down at her outfit again. “God, Nat, don’t stress me out.” She puts the cigarette between her lips, taking a long drag.
“You’re not overdressed, I’m just underdressed.” Natalie gives a smile, tossing her cigarette to the floor. “Are you ready?”
No.
Jackie nods, taking quick puffs from her dying cigarette as Natalie knocks on the door.
Now that they’re closer to the door, she can hear music and laughter from inside. In some ways, it excites her – the Yellowjackets, reunited. In other ways, it makes her want to throw up. At least then she would have an excuse to leave.
She’s fallen down the ladder. Stepped off her pedestal. She has been a girlfriend to the star baseball player, the team captain of the champion soccer team, and a shoo in for prom queen. Now she’s a drunk, a smoker and a burnout.
As footsteps approach the door, Jackie hears: “High school is the best your life is ever gonna get.”
And then the door opens, emitting the warmth and the light from inside onto the cold steps.
“Hey! I’m so glad you guys came.”
Lottie, looking as beautiful and as medicated as ever.
She immediately steps out to embrace both girls into a hug, and then she ushers them in. Jackie’s senses are flooded by the smell of cigarette smoke mixing with Lottie’s expensive perfume, the cosy orange light coming from the front room where the gathering is happening, and by the inviting bright white light in the kitchen where Jackie spots an array of some very strong alcoholic beverages.
“So, everyone is just in there,” Lottie points to the room with the orange glow, where laughter is pouring out of. “But if you wanna grab a drink from the kitchen first, help yourselves. Oh! And I know you can probably smell smoke, but if you wanna have anything other than tobacco I have to ask that you do it in the back.”
Jackie bets that Natalie was the only girl who got that word of warning upon entry. She bites back a laugh.
“Sure, Lot,” Natalie smiles.
And then Lottie heads back into the front room. Natalie takes a deep breath, placing her hand on Jackie’s shoulder. Jackie’s eyes finally snap away from the room.
“Shall we go get drunk?”
Jackie has her back to the door, eyeballing her rum to coke ratio into a little red cup. Natalie is behind her, still eyeing up the drinks options on the island.
They’re in a steady flow of conversation about absolutely nothing when all of a sudden…
“I don’t think that’s what it was about–oh,” Natalie trails off.
Jackie stops what she’s doing, her joints seizing all of a sudden at the sound of footsteps.
“Hey Shauna,” Natalie announces (for Jackie’s benefit). “How’s things?”
Oh, Jackie can smell her now. Past the smoke on her own hair, past the alcohol on her own breath. Shauna’s perfume fills the air.
“Oh, you know,” Shauna says, and Jackie thinks her voice still sounds the same. Which, of course it does, because it’s only been fourteen months, but to Jackie it feels like fourteen years. “Same old.”
Natalie nods along, eyeballs her drink and turns to face Jackie (who still hasn’t turned around). “You ready to come in, Jackie?”
“Um,” Jackie jumps back into action, pouring more rum into her cup. She takes a big sip. “Yeah, sure,”
And then she turns around, and there is Shauna, and their eyes lock immediately.
Her hair is a little longer, her face a little wider. She looks older, in the best way.
Her lips are the prettiest shade of pink, accentuating the rosiness of her cheeks from the warmth of the house.
She’s wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, so simple yet so elegant. She looks like an adult, whilst Jackie looks like a teenage girl who is trying too hard.
Shauna has progressed, and Jackie has been left behind.
“Hi, Jax.” Shauna greets her softly.
Jackie swallows. Blinks. “Hey,”
It’s done, words have been spoken, time has done its thing.
Hasn’t it?
“I, um, I’ll meet you guys in there,” Natalie stutters, and Shauna moves out of the way of the door and then Natalie is gone and there is only an island between the two of them.
Jackie feels small in Shauna’s presence.
“How’ve you been?” Shauna moves closer to the kitchen counter, to Jackie.
This is where Jackie can lie and tell her she’s the best she has ever been, that Shauna was completely wrong and that high school was just the start of her amazing life.
Instead, she shrugs. She can feel Shauna’s eyes examining her. She uses her freehand to pull her cardigan tightly across her chest, shrinking into herself. She has done all of this for Shauna, but now that they’re in front of one another, she feels embarassed. She feels like a school girl.
“When did you start smoking?” Shauna asks.
“What?”
Shauna nods towards Jackie’s cardigan. There’s a cigarette burn on her sleeve. “Oh,” Jackie says, rubbing her finger across it. “About a week after we got back.”
And then Jackie sees it, a look that she never wanted to see from anyone, let alone Shauna.
Pity.
“Don’t look at me like that,” She brings her drink to her lips and gulps, until there is nothing left in her cup. She slams it down on the counter, turning her back.
“Look at you like what?”
Jackie hears Shauna’s footsteps again, and then she’s standing right beside her.
“Like you just did.”
“What are you talking about, Jackie?”
Jackie refills her cup, her hands trembling. She continues to eyeball it.
The predrinks are catching up to her now, but she refuses to let that be known to Shauna. When she spins back around, Shauna is closer than she could have predicted.
She sucks in a breath, clutching her drink to her chest. “I don’t want to talk to you, Shauna.”
Shauna blinks and takes a step back. She looks to the floor, appearing scolded. Jackie uses the opportunity to push past her and make a beeline for the front room.
She forgets, somehow, that the room will be full of people.
“Oh my god, Jackie!”
“Hey, Jackie,”
“Oh, I just love this cardigan!”
“You look gorgeous,”
Jackie is consumed by what once were familiar faces, but now everyone looks older or younger or less attractive or more attractive.
People are embracing her and touching her hair and feeling her cardigan and complimenting her dress and all the while, Jackie’s eyes are searching for Natalie or Lottie — for safety.
Just when she thinks she might pass out, she feels a hand grab her arm and gently pull her forward. Natalie to the rescue.
“Alright, guys, let the girl sit down at least,”
Everybody laughs and everybody retreats. Jackie takes the seat on the sofa beside Natalie, just as Shauna comes through the door with a red cup.
Jackie feels all the eyes in the room fall on her once more, and all of a sudden all conversations come to an end.
If it wasn’t for the unfamiliar record playing, silence would have filled every corner of the room and Jackie might have let the sofa eat her alive.
“So, um, Jackie, I heard you deferred college for a year,” Mari says from her spot on the floor, and Jackie can tell that there was no malice in it, but my God, could she not have said something that didn’t make Jackie sound like a total burnout? Something that didn’t confirm that Jackie was not at all okay and hadn’t been okay since the crash?
“Oh, yeah, um,” She runs the tip of her finger along the rim of her cup. “I just think it would be better for me if I go next year,”
“So do you have a job?” Another girl says, a girl Jackie doesn’t even recognise. JV, maybe?
She can’t help herself. She looks at Shauna, and Shauna’s looking right back at her. “No,” She looks back at the unfamiliar face. “No, I’ve just been um,” Jesus, why can’t she think of a lie?
“She’s actually been trying to tutor me,” Natalie says from beside her. “As you guys know, there were a few classes I totally flunked out on and I have to retake them, so…” She nudges Jackie playfully with her elbow. “This straight A student has been my saviour,”
A few people laugh, and then: “Jackie didn’t get straight A’s, did you?”
Fucking Mari.
Jackie grits her teeth. “No, but I didn’t fail any of my exams.”
“I think Shauna would have been a better tutor,” Mari adds, a silly, shit-stirring smirk on her face. “Getting into an Ivy League and all,”
Shauna opens her mouth to speak but then Jackie says, “Yeah, well, once she left she never looked back.”
And she takes a swig of her drink.
If Jackie could see the look on everyone’s face, she’d have felt pretty darn good about herself. Mari covers her mouth to stop from laughing, which is probably exactly what she wanted when she stirred the pot anyway.
Lottie looks a little disappointed, because it is her party.
“Jesus Christ,” Natalie whispers to herself.
Then, a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it!” Lottie shoots up, and as Jackie watches her leave her eyes fall on Shauna again. She’s biting her cheeks, her narrowed eyes fixed on Jackie.
Jackie hears Lottie greeting her guests from the hallway, and seconds later she reemerges with Taissa and Van.
Jackie feels herself relax a little at the sight of them. Their familiar faces help her confidence grow. Maybe, just maybe, they still see her as she once was: team captain, a shoo in from prom queen.
“There she is, our captain!” Van embraces her just the way that Jackie needs her to, a tight hug paired with reassuring words. “You look beautiful, Jackie.”
Oh, darling Van. Jackie is grinning from ear to ear.
It’s no secret that Taissa has always been closer to Shauna than she is to Jackie, but still: “You look great, captain.”
Jackie falls into an easy conversation with Van. There’s a lot to talk about, considering Jackie had spent the past fourteen months icing everyone out (bar Natalie, her saviour).
But Jackie isn’t the one with much to say, because she has spent the time rotting away. Still, it’s nice to hear more about Van’s scholarship. If there is one thing Jackie can talk for hours about, it’s soccer.
Lottie stands up and gives Natalie a nudge, gesturing with her head towards the kitchen. Natalie taps Jackie and does the same.
“Sorry, one sec,” Jackie says, placing her hand on Van’s arms as she dismisses herself.
She follows the shadows of Natalie and Lottie into the kitchen. They’re standing at the back door, and Lottie is holding up a bag of weed to Jackie.
Well, she doesn’t need telling twice.
It’s only when Jackie’s standing in the back yard that she realises how drunk she is. The cold air sucks the oxygen out of her lungs and the warmth out of her blood, and she hops hopelessly from one leg to the other as she smokes.
“You’re gonna make yourself sick doing that,” Natalie says, her leather coat zipped up to the top.
“I’m gonna die of cold if I don’t do this,” and just as she says it, snowflakes begin to fall from the sky and into her hair. She stops hopping. “Well, that’s just great.”
“Hey, can I ask you something that’s probably totally inappropriate and out of pocket?” Lottie says, licking her lips.
Jackie raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps,” Natalie chuckles knowingly, stumbling back slightly. “Well, if she’s laughing, I have a feeling this question is trouble.”
Then, Lottie starts to laugh. “No, no, it’s just…well, we were just talking in there and we just wondered like, I mean–” and then she takes another pull of her joint, leaving Jackie on her toes. “I assume you know about the rumours regarding you and Shauna,”
She says it so flippantly, like everyone knows – and of course Jackie has heard the whispers,, but she doesn’t know how far it’s travelled.
“Yes, but I don’t like how you said that,”
Natalie laughs again.
Lottie laughs too, elbowing at Natalie. Jackie forgets how annoying the two of them are when they’re both drunk or stoned, or both. She rolls her eyes.
“I’m just asking because, you know she’s been screwing some girl at her college?” Lottie says, so nonchalant.
“Dude!” Natalie smacks Lottie’s arm.
“Ouch! What the Hell, Nat, that hurt!”
“Why would you say that to her?”
“I’m leading up to my question, obviously,”
“She and Shauna don’t talk, dumbass. How would she know about that?”
Jackie doesn’t feel cold anymore. Hell, she doesn’t even feel drunk anymore.
The ash from her joint falls and hits her leg, and she winces. “Shauna has a girlfriend?” She hears herself say.
“No, not exactly,” Lottie reiterates. “There’s a girl she’s been screwing. But that wasn’t my point,”
Natalie throws her head back and sighs into the sky. “Christ,”
“My point was to get to this question,” Lottie clears her throat. “Did you guys ever actually make out or were they just rumours?” She stumbles, having to strain to keep herself upright. “Oh! and if you did, was it just casual or were there feelings involved?”
Jackie’s face is a picture.
Natalie slaps Lottie’s arm again, scolding her.
“So, what do you think?” Lottie says, all smiles and intrigue, like she hasn’t just given Jackie a brain haemorrhage.
“You’re such a dick,” Natalie mumbles from beside Lottie, taking the joint from her hand.
Lottie pouts, looking at Natalie and then back to Jackie. A look comes over her face, maybe a realization, and her mouth falls open in surprise. “Oh, shit, did you guys actually make out?”
“What am I missing out here?” Taissa steps out, unaware what she’s stepping out into. “Gimme,” She reaches for the joint in Jackie’s hand.
“Well, I think I just outed Shauna to Jackie,” Lottie says, bursting into laughter at the fact. Natalie hands her back the joint.
Taissa’s eyes go wide. She takes a pull, then hands it back to Jackie, who reacts only by reflex.
“I assume you know about the girl at Brown, right?” Lottie says to Taissa.
“Melissa? Yeah.”
Just like that, one name from Taissa makes it all a reality.
Jackie takes a deep breath. “Here, you can have this,” She shoves the joint into Taissa's hand and walks back into the kitchen.
She needs water, and she needs a splash of cold water to her face.
She makes her way into the hall, passes the front room and up the stairs. She reaches for the door, which opens before she can push it.
“Oh,” Shauna jolts. “Sorry,”
Jackie freezes. She just stares at her.
Shauna frowns. “Jackie?”
Jackie pushes past her and lands at the sink, spinning on the cold water tap and splashing carelessly at her face.
“Hey, are you okay?” Shauna moves to stand at her side and pulls Jackie’s hair back from her face. She uses her other hand to grab a towel, offering it to Jackie when she stands back up.
Jackie snatches it and dabs at her face. It doesn’t bring her the relief she wants.
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke,” Shauna says all of a sudden. “Your hair doesn’t smell the same,”
The fucking audacity. “Are you insane?”
Shauna stumbles back like Jackie has slapped her. “What?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
Now Jackie was being flippant.
Shauna’s face falls, and Jackie watches as she swallows hard.
“What are you talking about?”
“My God, Shauna, do not fucking act dumb with me right now.”
“No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Melissa, doesn’t ring any bells?”
The name tastes bitter on her tongue.
Realisation paints Shauna’s face, and she falls back into comfortability quite easily. She crosses her arms.
“Yeah, it does.” She nods, looking down at Jackie like she now has the upperhand. “But she’s not my girlfriend.”
Jackie scoffs, raising an eyebrow. She mimics Shauna’s stance. “No, of course not. She’s just a girl you’re fucking,”
She wants to wince as soon as she says it. It sounds so strange coming from her mouth.
Shauna grins, biting at her lip. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Oh, fuck off, Shauna.”
“What does it matter to you, who I sleep with?”
“Well, the last person you were sleeping with was my boyfriend,”
Jackie feels victorious in the way Shauna’s stance melts and dwindles. She feels her own superiority grow. She feels tall.
“That’s great, Jackie,” She stands up, moving to open the door. “Real mature.”
“No,” Jackie all but throws herself against the door. “No, you’re not leaving.”
“What do you want me to say, Jackie?”
“I wanna know,”
“Know what?”
“About Melissa,”
Shauna’s eyebrows knit together, her eyes scanning Jackie’s face, trying to read her the way she used to be able to. But Jackie is a shadow of her former self.
“There’s nothing to know, Jackie, we met at a party and it went from there,”
“So when did you know? When did you know you liked girls?”
Jackie’s heart is thumping so hard, she can hear it in her ears. She can smell the vodka on Shauna’s breath and the lemon shampoo she’s used in her hair.
Shauna looks defeated, which is just delicious for Jackie. “I-I’ve known since I was fifteen.”
Which means…
“You knew? You knew when we were–”
“When we were making out, yeah,” Shauna rests her arm on the door, right beside Jackie’s head. “Can I go now?”
Jackie looks at her, really looks at her. The fullness of her lips, how easily distracted you can be by the darkness of her eyes, the length of her eyelashes – she’s matured, and her features have matured with her.
The longer she looks and examines, the harder her heart thumps and she can hear it in her head and feel it in her throat and she could just scream and–
There’s a knock on the door. The vibration hits Jackie’s back like a punch.
“Hello?! You’ve been in there forever,” Mari argues from the other side.
Jackie puts her head in her hands. “Fuck,”
“Go piss outside, Ibara,” Shauna huffs, rubbing her hand across her face.
By some miracle, Jackie hears Mari descending the stairs mumbling a string of curse words. When Jackie lifts her head, Shauna’s eyes are fixed on her. Jackie knows this look. It’s dangerous. It’s tempting.
“I think we should talk,” Jackie says.
Shauna makes a face. “Now?”
Jackie shakes her head. “No, I–” She practically has to duck underneath Shauna’s arm to create distance between them. “I need a clear head.”
There’s a pause, a silence. Jackie keeps her gaze fixed to the floor, but is aware of how Shauna moves away from the door with folded arms.
“Coffee tomorrow?”
Jackie runs her fingers through her hair. “Okay.”
They avoid each other for the rest of the night. Jackie steals occasional glances at Shauna when she isn’t looking, and Shauna does the same.
Jackie gets very drunk. Natalie stops drinking after smoking her joint, and Lottie remains in a very happy limbo of drunk and high.
She wakes up the next morning in a bed that isn’t hers. Her head weighs a tonne as she tries to lift it from the pillow. She sinks back down into the mattress.
“God,” She mumbles to herself, bringing her arm up to drape it across her eyes.
Natalie tosses beside her. She lets out a groan of disapproval to Jackie’s disturbance. “There’s water and aspirin next to you,”
Jackie lifts her arm up to glance at the clock. 10:30.
“Fuck,” She pries herself upwards, kicking her legs off the side of the bed and grabbing the water. “I have to get home,”
Natalie shifts, then pushes herself off the bed with a stretch. She seems completely fine. Jackie makes a mental note to maybe stick to weed from now on.
“Grab your shit,” Natalie says, nodding towards the floor where Jackie’s clothes were laying. It was only then Jackie notices she’s in her clothes that aren’t hers. Instead, she’s covered by one of Natalie’s tatty band t-shirts and pyjama pants.
As Natalie drives, Jackie tries not to throw up.
“So, did you and Shauna get to talk much last night?”
Jackie screws her eyes shut. Oh, God.
“Not really,” Jackie clears her throat, looking out the window. Shauna is probably trying to call her right now. Had her mom answered? Her dad?
She’s never told her mom and dad the true reason for their fallout. What could she have said? My best friend was fucking my boyfriend? Oh, and she got pregnant with his baby and then miscarried. Jackie doesn’t tell her parents anything, and she isn’t about to start now.
“Are you gonna see her again before she leaves?”
“I don’t know, Nat,” Jackie bites.
“Alright, jheez.”
Jackie hasn’t decided what she’s going to do if Shauna follows through and actually calls her about getting coffee. She can’t think about it right now. She has to focus on not throwing up.
She opens up her front door and tosses her handbag to one side. Resting her back on the door, she folds up her knees and melts to the ground with her head in her hands.
Were hangovers always this bad? Or had she just drank significantly more than usual?
She feels dead. But she mustn’t be, because she can feel the alcohol still swishing around her stomach, threatening to crawl up her throat and spill out.
The inviting stench of cigarette smoke still lingers on her cardigan, and for a moment she stops thinking about Shauna and thinks: I would love a cigarette right about now.
At least the position she’s folded herself into is comfortable. The problem is, she can’t stay pressed up against the door all day.
Just as she starts to feel a little better, the phone rings.
The sound of it booms through the hallway like a death rattle, echoing into the empty spaces.
Jackie jumps out of her skin, losing her balance and scrambling to keep herself up right. “I’ll get it!”
As she hoists herself up, she wonders if her parents are even home. She stands in front of the phone, staring down at it as it rings. It hurts her head.
She takes a breath. “Hello?”
“Hey,”
Jackie softens. She sits against the table, steadying herself. She presses her ear closer to the phone. Shauna’s voice is like honey.
“Are you there?” Shauna shifts on the other end. Jackie wonders what room of the house she’s calling from, if she’s sitting on her bed or leaning against the wall in her hallway.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jackie clears her throat.
“I tried to call you a little earlier, but–”
“Yeah, I’m only just getting home.”
“...from last night?”
“I stayed at Nat’s,”
“Oh,”
Jackie finds the phone cord, looping her finger into it. She pushes herself further onto the table.
“I was just calling to see if you wanted to get that coffee,”
Jackie purses her lips and closes her eyes. Shauna's honey-like voice is suddenly starting to sound a lot like..
"I’m sure everyone back home is so fucking sad to be losing their perfect little princess, but they’ll never know how sad and boring and insecure you really are. Or that high school is the best your life is ever going to get."
“I don’t think so,” Jackie blurts out. “I don’t really feel good, too much rum, maybe,” She slides herself off the table, which makes her dizzy and she immediately regrets it.
There’s more shifting, and then: “I could bring the coffee to you, if you don’t feel like going out,”
Can she not take a hint?
Is Jackie incapable of saying no to her?
“Okay,”
Shauna says she’ll be thirty minutes.
Jackie, somehow, finds it in herself to race up the stairs and jump in the shower. She uses her most expensive shampoo (which smells like honeysuckle, if you’re wondering), and she musters the will to pull on a clean pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
She looks in the mirror. Her hair is damp, and there’s still a faint shadow of mascara on her eyes somehow.
If Jackie is being honest with herself, she looks gaunt. She’s looked this way for fourteen months. She has become thin, pale skin draped tightly over bone.
She rubs at her cheekbones in a desperate attempt to gather colour back into them.
Returning back down the stairs, she grabs her discarded handbag and roots through it for her lipgloss.
Just as she finishes applying it, the doorbell rings.
Jackie looks at the clock.
Thirty minutes.