Shauna Shipman has more than enough on her plate in the summer of 1992. Between pushing the Shadyside Yellowjackets to Nationals and dealing with her highly publicized breakup with Sunnyvale’s beloved Jackie Taylor, her year is already a fucking disaster.
A horrific car accident. Visions. Something ancient and hungry has awakened in Shadyside, and it's hunting them down. Will Shauna and Jackie's bond be enough to keep them alive, or will the First Evil claim them both?
Have you guys noticed that certain fandoms have a particular fanfic writing style, or rather, a super distinctive voice? I think it was prominent in the Supercorp fandom, which I was a part of for a very long time (way too long). Some of the typical writing beats from the most "popular" SC authors I still can't quite shake off to this day.
The Shadyside football field was packed and loud as all hell. The stadium floodlights were so bright, it almost felt like it was midday. But in reality, the sky that was pressing down on them was an endless void of darkness.
(Coincidentally, exactly like what Shauna experienced when she passed out in the hospital. But she wasn’t gonna dwell on that right now.)
The cold aluminum bleachers shook every few seconds as some already wasted Sunnyvale partisans stomped their feet or stood up to scream at a referee. Somewhere beneath them, under the cover of the metal stands and endless bodies, an old beer keg had been tapped, guarded by a group of seniors that treated it like the Holy Grail.
The air was thick with the last humid night of early fall. It made the stench of cheap beer all that more determined to cling to her clothes and hair. It didn’t bother Shauna any, though.
Sunnyvale’s side of the stadium was packed, too. No surprise there. Their half of the field drowned in red and white, including the cheesy war paint they'd chosen to wear.
It was that serious of a rivalry game.
Across the fifty-yard line, the Shadyside student section looked exactly like they always did: louder, bigger, and a hell of a lot meaner. Adorned in blue and gold, the same colors Shauna's uniform was. The Yellowjackets were one of the top ranked teams across states. Both the men's football team, and Shauna's soccer team.
But, unfortunately, so was Sunnyvale. They were neck and neck in the standings, continuously brawling for dominance over the other as per fucking usual.
Shauna sat near the very top of the bleachers. It was just her and Melissa tonight. The rest of the team had bailed for one reason or another, though she had a sinking suspicion they just didn’t want to risk running into Travis, or any Sunnyvaler for that matter.
She didn't blame them.
Not that he could actually chase after them with that heavy plaster cast dragging him down.
Shauna shifted on her seat. It was crammed, and whoever was on her left didn’t care to give her any personal space. Her knee still gave a tight throb whenever she moved it. The stitches had just come out yesterday, but Coach Scott had benched her for a full week anyway, no matter how much she insisted that she was fine. She could run through the pain.
It wouldn't have been a big deal.
She was only seventeen and still she understood that the worst pain in this life wasn't physical.
Or maybe that was just her overly dramatic teen brain seeing her break-up with Jackie as the worst possible thing that could have ever happened to her.
"Just a precaution," Coach had told her. Stern and final. But he wasn't mean about it. Not like most adults.
Seven days. Seven days since she had supposedly passed out in the hospital bathroom. Seven days since Jackie was launched out of a car and miraculously survived without a serious injury.
Exhaustion from the crash, the adrenaline drop. Simple as that. The doctors explained how shock could do some strange things to the human brain. Extreme stress, lack of sleep. Hallucinations weren't exactly common, but they weren’t improbable either.
The lights hadn't exploded. Her messed up reflection hadn’t smiled at her like the beloved Symbiote villain. She had just fucking imagined it.
A sharp whistle shrieked from the track below, cutting through her thoughts, and nearly made her skeleton jump straight out of her skin. Again.
It pissed her the hell off.
Shauna had never been a very jumpy person. Never felt much nerves to begin with, and had never been anxious. Apathy and anger were among the most familiar emotions to her. But since that night, every little sharp sound made her jump like a wimpy fourth grader.
So yeah. She absolutely despised this new development.
Let it go. It's over.
Shauna had already replayed that night in her head a hundred fucking times anyway. She forced herself to focus on the squad of Sunnyvale cheerleaders marching onto the sidelines. Not because she cared, really, and certainly not because she was looking for Jackie.
Really. She just looked because everyone else did. That’s all.
Crimson skirts, pristine white Nikes, and perfectly matching pom-poms caught the nearly blinding stadium lights. Jackie took her spot in the center of the formation, hands on her hips as the other girls fell into orbit around her.
She looked good. Perfect, even.
And that was exactly what made Shauna's stomach swoop every single time she laid eyes on her. After all this time, too.
(Not that it had been centuries. But still. It certainly felt like it.)
The plum-colored (and sized) contusions on Jackie's arm had already faded, like they had never been there in the first place. The butterfly strips were gone from her cheek, replaced by a tiny bit of foundation which made the cut completely invisible.
Somehow, exactly a week later, Jackie looked like she'd merely tripped over a curb, instead of being violently thrown from a tearing, twisted metal wreck.
The squad moved in unison. Drilled. Polished. Flawless.
Typical Sunnyvale.
"How wild is your tiger?”
Pom-poms were wildly shaking in the air above the cheerleader’s heads as the girls' voices blended into a single, harmonious chant.
"How loud is your thunder?"
Jackie spun on her heel, and launched into a back handspring back tuck. She'd seen Jackie practice this countless times. It was always impressive as hell to watch. The sheer amount of natural charismatic energy she displayed made it seem like there was a massive, bright spotlight on her and her only, which only helped elevate the blonde's gymnastic prowess.
"We're fierce!"
Clap.
"We're bright!"
Clap.
"We'll claw and fight until your stingers lose their bite!"
Ignoring the ridiculous chant aimed at the Yellowjackets, Shauna had spent months trying to convince herself she’d forgotten what Jackie looked like in that uniform. Especially the stupid crease that appeared at the corner of her mouth whenever she smiled for real and not for show.
She was gorgeous.
The realization slipped past Shauna’s defenses before she could stop it.
She absolutely hated it.
Not that it was a particularly new revelation. She always felt that way toward the blonde. It was just that Shauna had spent so much time fighting against it, that the thought itself felt like ripping fresh stitches.
Messy and painful.
Not because it wasn't true, but because of how helplessly in love with Jackie she still was. No matter how many times her parents had tried to scrub those "unnatural impulses" out of her head. No matter how hard Shauna tried to bury them under layers of a cold and detached attitude.
Jackie moved fluidly with the rest of the squad, her gaze sweeping across the crowded bleachers until those sharp hazel eyes locked directly onto Shauna’s.
The roar of the stadium instantly receded, fading into undiscernible murmurs in the background.
Jackie's rehearsed cheer smile faltered. It seemed to soften when it landed on Shauna. It morphed into the real thing, the smile Shauna remembered from their constant late night walks when Jackie would have a panic attack, or from sitting on the hood of her car in the cold, talking about absolutely nothing until three in the morning.
The smile Jackie gave her right before dragging her in for a kiss.
Shauna hadn't realized how starved she was for that look until it was fixed entirely on her.
"Dude."
Melissa’s slurred voice cut through the trance from somewhere on her right. Shauna didn't break eye contact, stillt.
"Dude,” she repeated. “I can literally see your boner," Melissa snorted, choking on a sloppy laugh. Her pink cap was sitting askew on her messy hair, her face flushed red from that stupid beer that tasted like wet, dirty sock.
Cool. Melissa was already hammered.
Shauna threw a hard punch square into Melissa's shoulder.
Melissa limply jerked into the guy to her right, sloshing half her plastic cup of piss-warm beer over her own hand. Her lazy glare, that looked more like a stupid half smirk, was fixated on her best friend.
"I was just making an observation!" Melissa shouted with obvious indignation (slurred, too).
"Yeah, well, keep the next one to your fucking self," Shauna muttered. She shoved her hands in her pockets, but that wouldn’t stop the need to nervously fidget. Her left leg started bouncing up and down.
When she forced her eyes back down toward the track, Jackie was still standing there. Still staring straight up into the bleachers.
And for reasons she couldn't explain, the brief warmth that had settled in her chest vanished as quickly as it'd arrived.
The smile on Jackie's face hadn't changed. But something in her eyes had.
Down on the track, the squad was already setting up for their next stunt. One of the squad’s flyers (Millie, or maybe Allie?), was getting into position. Two of the bases grabbed her ankles, launching her upward. She flipped effortlessly, but she didn’t twist the right way mid-air. She rotated too far to the left, completely missing the arms waiting to catch her bellow. Hell, did the bases even got into position to catch her?
The stadium instantly went dead silent. A collective gasp rippled through the bleachers, as united as the Sunnyvale Cheer squad had been moments prior, followed a fraction of a second later by the girl’s scream. A high pitched wail, like nails on a chalkboard.
It made something in Shauna’s body twitch. The sound of it seemed to resonate in her skull, making goosebumps rise on the back of her neck.
"Oh my God," someone nearby gasped.
"Did she hit her head?"
"I think it’s her leg?"
"Why did they drop her?"
"They didn't even try to catch her!"
People in the row in front of Shauna bolted upright and blocked her entire view. Melissa sloshed her brew all over the aluminum bench, again, trying to crane her neck around them.
"Dude, move," Melissa muttered, shoving a stranger’s broad shoulder. "We're missing all the good shit back here."
"Yeah, I'm sure they really give a shit about your view," Shauna muttered, not even bothering to look at her.
She stood anyway, standing on her toes, stretching to see over the wall of bodies.
Nothing. Just a sea of shifting shoulders and heads. Didn't help she was a fucking short stack, as Shauna would always painfully remind her. Not that they were basketball players, so truly, her height didn't fucking matter.
It mattered now, though.
Giving zero shits about personal space, Melissa planted her sneaker right on the metal bench in front of them, hauling herself up to see over the crowd.
With limitation comes... creativity? Or something like that.
Shauna’s eyes instantly snapped to her. She wanted to grab a fistful of her stupid denim jacket and yank her back down. But hell, it actually was a good idea. All things considered, with every alarm bell ringing in her head, Shauna joined her.
She caught a glimpse of game officials who were sprinting toward the sideline, while two paramedics carrying a bright orange trauma bag hauled ass across the track.
The girl screamed again. In pain, in fear, in shock.
Shauna felt her stomach knot.
"Damn," Melissa mumbled, sounding a little less drunk now. “Hope she’s alright. That sounded like a really fucking bad break."
All anybody could hear now was the muffled voices from the sideline and the distant crackle of the announcer awkwardly asking everyone to remain calm and that the game wasn't cancelled.
Shauna couldn't see the injured girl anymore.
Too many people. Coaches and paramedics. The Football players drifted closer before being waved back by the Sunnyvale cheer squad.
Her eyes searched automatically for Jackie and she found her almost immediately.
Jackie was kneeling beside the girl, one hand resting gently against her shoulder while one of the paramedics examined her ankle. Shauna couldn't possibly hear what she was saying, but whatever it was made the girl nod through tears.
Of course she'd be the one trying to calm everybody down.
Natural born leader.
After several minutes, the paramedics carefully helped the girl onto one foot. She cried out the second any weight touched her ankle.
Melissa winced and loudly complained, to no one in particular, one hand on her head: "Dude, what are they even doing down there? Just scoop her up and throw her in the fucking ambulance already."
Jackie stood too, one arm wrapped carefully around the injured cheerleader's waist while another girl supported her opposite side. Together they slowly guided her toward the tunnel beneath the home stands, paramedics following close behind.
The game didn't stop for long. Ten minutes, tops. Long enough for the marching band to awkwardly fill the silence with a song nobody was really listening to, too busy already starting whispered rumors.
When play finally resumed, the Shadyside cheer squad jogged onto the track to cover the rest of the quarter, Taissa Turner leading the pack of Shadyside cheerleaders. Big hair, really long legs (not that Shauna had spent a lot of time staring at them), and an infectiously pretty smile.
She was taken, sure, but Shauna would still occasionally look (read: stare, gawk). I mean, hell, she had eyes, didn't she? Not her fault they wandered sometimes.
Van was a good sport about it, even when Shauna got a little tipsy and her mouth moved far before her brain registered what she was saying. The flirty line would tumble past her lips, tai would slap her arm, Van would laugh and look entirely too pleased with the girl she managed to pull. It was like tradition, or something close to it.
As the game grudged on, the crowd was considerably less enthused. At least, the Sunnyvale side was.
Shauna still had to shove herself closer to Mel in order to avoid getting an elbow to the face when there was a horrible yellow card call.
She never really paid attention to the game after that. She tried. Really. But her attention kept drifting toward the empty sideline where Jackie usually stood. Eventually the Sunnyvale cheerleaders returned. But without Jackie, or the injured girl.
Shauna kept expecting her to suddenly appear, but she never did. And by the time the fourth quarter rolled around, she'd accepted Jackie wasn't coming back.
The final whistle eventually blew, and so did Shauna’s eardrums.
SHADYSIDE: 32
SUNNYVALE: 20
People jumped onto benches, beer spraying through the air as somebody (or multiple somebodies) popped open beer cans after shaking them. The marching band blared some awful noises that very nearly sounded like actual music. Students raced towards the parking lot and poured toward the chain-link fence like a pack of brainless zombies, screaming themselves hoarse.
Melissa threw both arms into the air, nearly hitting the guy standing next to her. "We beat those rich assholes!"
Her momentum immediately carried her forward and she nearly lost her balance immediately afterwards.
Shauna caught her elbow before she toppled down two rows of bleachers.
Shauna’s jaw tightened as she rolled her eyes. "You can barely fucking stand."
Melissa just stared blankly at her, then swayed severely to the left. Shauna let out a sharp breath, grabbing her firmly by the elbow.
"Come on. We're leaving."
Melissa pouted, but dutifully tipped her head back and drained the last of her awful beer. Shauna started dragging her down the stairs, but halfway to the bottom, Melissa dug her heels in.
Shauna yanked on her arm, her patience razor thin now. "Mel, move."
"Wait, wait, hold on," Melissa babbled and waved her hand vaguely, somewhere, when she probably didn’t even mean to. "There was... like, this chick back there. She invited us to some after party or some shit."
She lost brain cells trying to decipher Melissa’s slurring words. "We’re not going."
Melissa looked back toward the celebrating, chaotic crowd like a toddler being dragged out of an arcade. "Why?" she whined.
“Because I’m driving. And I don't feel like holding your hair back while you puke in some stranger’s bathtub. Again.”
Melissa let out a long groan, but surrendered nonetheless, letting Shauna steer her stumbling body away from the bleachers and out toward the parking lot.
Behind them, the stadium was still roaring. Shauna found herself looking over her shoulder, scanning the shadows around the row of idling, yellow visitors' buses. Wondering if Jackie was already left.
No matter. It wasn't like Jackie was gonna leave her friend’s side. She was most likely at the hospital with her by now.
Headlights crawled between rows of pickup trucks and beat up sedans. Someone was blasting heavy rock tunes from their car's speakers. Groups of students carried cases of beer like they didn’t give a shit who saw. Not like cops were gonna do anything about this. Twenty drunk teenagers to one lazy officer weren't very good odds.
They managed to find Shauna's car near the edge of the parking lot. Her vehicle of choice (aka: it was the cheapest one in the lot when her parents bought it), was a red 1990 Volks GTI.
She loved that damn thing and it had somehow survived another rivalry game without somebody keying it.
A fucking miracle.
At least no one spray painted a very large di-
"Shauna."
She stopped cold in her tracks. The voice wasn’t very loud at all. But she could pick it out of any crowd.
Jackie materialized from between the rows of parked cars, cheer skirt swapped for track pants and the matching jacket. Her usually flawless ponytail was falling apart, a few stray blonde strands clinging to her face in the humid air.
She looked like she’d been crying, but she tried very hard to mask it. Her chin was tilted up, posture perfect, but her hazel eyes were stubbornly red-rimmed.
Melissa swaddled back and forth as she looked between both of them.
"I'll... uh..." She pointed toward the GTI with the confidence of someone who was seeing two of them. "I'll leave you two to... talk through... whatever this is."
Before either of them could formulate a response (not that they particularly had anything to add to that drunk blabbering), Melissa yanked open the back door, climbed inside, and collapsed across the seat.
Less than five seconds later, an unmistakable snore drifted out of the cracked window.
Jackie stared through the glass, her expression an odd dichotomy of pity and disgust. "She really has absolutely zero concept of when to cut herself off, does she?"
Shauna forced a tight, one-shoulder shrug, shoving her hands deeper into her pockets to hide how hard her pulse was suddenly hammering. "Her cutoff point is passing out."
Despite the heavy tension, a short laugh slipped out of both of them at exactly the same time. The chaotic noise of the post-game celebrations suddenly felt miles away, leaving them stranded in a strange, suffocating little bubble of things neither of them were prepared to face just yet.
Instead of holding a perfectly straight and confident posture like usual, Jackie shifted her weight. She picked nervously at the plastic zipper of her track jacket, her eyes darting down to the dusty ground before flickering back up to Shauna.
It was an uncharacteristically insecure display.
Shauna’s brow furrowed, alarm bells going off in her head.
"I wanted to check on you," Jackie finally said, her voice dropping to a soft, unsteady murmur.
Shauna almost pointed a finger at her own chest to ask ‘Me?’, but thankfully managed to stuff back the mortifying impulse before it happened. Instead, she just jingled her car keys deep in her jacket pocket, fixing her gaze firmly on the scuffed toes of her worn shoes.
"I'm fine. Why?"
"You kind of disappeared after..." Jackie sighed, small and fragile. Her brow knit together. "I was worried."
Shauna's stomach tightened. She rubbed the back of her neck, instantly retreating behind her safely rehearsed script. "I was just exhausted and passed out. It happens."
Jackie immediately crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight onto her back leg. Her universal, unmistakable tell that she didn’t buy a single word of it.
Knowing exactly how fast this fragile peace could devolve into one of their patented screaming matches, Shauna changed the subject with pinpoint accuracy.
"So, what actually happened to your flyer?" she asked, mentally cringing at how easily the stupid cheerleader terminology slipped out of her mouth.
It worked, maybe a little too well. Jackie’s defensive posture instantly melted into something far more rigid and haunted.
"I don't know." Jackie shook her head slowly, looking past Shauna toward the stadium, where the last of the rowdy crowd was still ambling towards the parking lot like a hoard of unruly undead. "It's an easy toss. I mean, we’ve literally practiced that exact mount a hundred fucking times."
"You can't prevent every single mistake they'll ever make."
She learned that the hard way, being a Captain to a team full of imperfect teenage girls. Sometimes, shit just happened. And you had to roll with it, or fall face first in it.
Jackie didn't argue. She just stared down, obsessively picking at a loose red thread on the cuff of her jacket.
Shauna watched her, feeling the heavy armor crack just a fraction.
"Hey," Shauna said. The word came out soft. Dangerously uncharacteristic.
Jackie looked up, out of surprise. Or recognition, maybe.
"It wasn't your fault."
"Thanks,” she replied. But the Jackie she knew and loved came back with a fierce vengeance. Cocky, but not entirely unwarranted. “But don’t think this sensitive jock act is going to make me forget that you passed out in my hospital room bathroom floor after getting a nosebleed. Which by the way, you never get."
Before Shauna could invent another lie, a familiar voice cut through the parking lot.
"Hey, Jackie!"
Saved by the fucking boyfriend. Shauna didn’t know whether she had the overwhelming urge to punch him or thank him. Even toss up between the two.
Travis hobbled toward them with his crutch tucked beneath one arm. The cast running from his ankle to halfway up his thigh looked heavy enough to sink a body in a lake.
Well shit. Now she kinda felt bad for the guy, seeing it up close. That thing was massive.
He stopped beside Jackie, slipping an arm around her shoulders. He leaned down and kissed her. It was a quick peck. Nothing fancy or particularly heated. But intimate in a way that Shauna used to know all too well.
She immediately looked away, staring hard at the asphalt as something dark and ugly settled deep inside her chest.
Travis broke the kiss and glanced over at her, offering a short, acknowledging nod.
"Shipman."
"Martinez."
He shifted his weight awkwardly on the crutch, turning his attention back to Jackie. His dark hair looked impossibly soft, falling slightly across his forehead as he smiled down at the blonde.
"They're waiting for us," he said.
But Jackie didn't move. Not right away.
For a split second, her eyes locked onto Shauna’s, lingering just a beat too long. It felt like an eternity. Like she was searching for something. A sign, maybe. Or something equally star-crossed lovers coded.
Are you really that fucking stupid? She doesn’t give a shit about you anymore.
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Jackie’s face, like she was debating whether to speak at all. She reached up, nervously tucking a loose blonde strand behind her ear.
"There's this party Friday," Jackie blurted out. She hesitated then, her voice dropping. "You should come."
Travis’s jaw tightened subtly. He didn't say anything, but his grip on Jackie's shoulder visibly shifted.
Shauna broke the eye contact instantly, retreating behind a wall of familiar apathy. She gave a noncommittal shrug. "Sure. Maybe. If I don’t have any other plans."
It was a pathetic lie.
Both of them knew it.
But Jackie played along, offering a tight, forced smile. "Yeah, sure. Well, I’ll see you there, then. If your schedule isn’t too packed, that is. Miss Popular."
The last bit of sarcasm that dripped off of Jackie's tongue reminded Shauna of their familiar banter. Not whatever awkwardness had nestled itself between them since the break-up.
Jackie smiled at her last time, and spun around.
Shauna forced out a dry chuckle. She stood frozen in the parking lot, watching them turn away. Travis leaned heavily on his metal crutch, and Jackie instinctively slowed down, matching her pace to his limp without even having to think about it.
It was just one more reminder of how perfectly the two fit together.
Shauna lingered beside the driver's side door a beat longer than necessary, staring at the empty space where Jackie and Travis had just been.
When she finally slid into the driver's seat and turned the key, the engine refused to turn over. It just sputtered, let out a ugly sounding cough and... nothing.
"Are you kidding me?" Shauna muttered. She had just changed the fucking oil and the filters. What the hell was this piece of junk’s problem now?
Frustrated, she slammed the heel of her hand hard against the dashboard.
As if on cue, a loud, unmistakable pop echoed from outside, followed immediately by a metallic groan as the front right side of the car slumped an inch toward the ground
The jolt was enough to jerk the drunk blonde in the backseat completely out of her beer coma.
"Did we crash?" Melissa grunted, one eye open, looking both dazed and confused. "Am I dead?"
Shauna closed her eyes and let the back of her head thump against the headrest. A blown tire. The treads were practically bald, she knew she’d waited way too long to replace them. So, she sat there, deflated, exhausted, and exactly one minor inconvenience away from becoming homicidal.
Instead of wallowing for too long, though, Shauna turned around in her seat. Reaching in the back, she smacked the stupid baseball cap right off Melissa’s head.
"Have a good nap, asshole?"
Melissa groaned, rubbing her face and stretching her arms out with feline grace, and carelessness, as she blindly felt around the floorboards for her hat.
"Are you sober enough to help me jack up the car and change a tire?" Shauna asked, already regretting the question before it even finished leaving her mouth.
Melissa offered a trademarked lopsided grin. "I’m drunk enough to think I'll be helpful... does that count?"
Shauna just stared at her deadpan, then turned around in her seat, rolling her eyes.
The hospital wasn’t painted green, but it felt green. The vomit kind. The yellowed fluorescent tubes overhead sounded like a nest of wasps and cast a green hue over the rows of beige plastic chairs. Even the fake potted plants in the corner looked sick, covered in a permanent film of dust.
It didn’t smell like a hospital. There was not a trace of bleach or antiseptic clinging in the air. Instead, Shauna had been greeted by the stench of mildewed carpet, strong coffee, and cigarette smoke.
It reminded Shauna of like Natalie’s trailer, she mused to herself.
Somewhere down the corridor, the ice machine emptied a bin. Shauna flinched. Everyone in the waiting room jerked their heads up for a split second, before pretending everything was normal.
But, in reality, normal had officially left her life the moment she had seen Jackie’s body crumpled in the grass.
Down the hall, Coach Scott sat rigid on the edge of a plastic chair. A sheriff's deputy stood over him, flipping open a small notebook. The cop was young, a little heavy around the middle, with dull brown hair. His skin was pale, but he looked green. And not just from the lights.
"I'm telling you, we were already stopped. One of the girls got sick." Coach Scott said. His voice was flat, exhausted. It was the fifth time he’d spun the exact same web. "They weren't involved."
Shauna didn't even blink at the lie. Coach was desperate to protect his stars, the girls with the bright, shining futures.
or so he thought.
But Shauna knew the truth. It wasn't just the shitty Shadyside roads. If Van and Natalie hadn’t been hanging out the back of the bus, acting like a bunch of petty idiots, that pothole wouldn’t have mattered. The crash would have never happened.
The deputy scribbled something down. The scratch of his pen on paper sounded deafening in the quiet room.
A few feet away, Van leaned casually against the wall plastered with old and new PSAs, peeling at the corners just like the wallpaper was. Her arms were crossed but she seemed way too relaxed. At home, even.
Natalie was slouched in the chair beside her like she usually was. Detached and uncaring.
Neither of them showed an ounce of remorse, even with the knowledge that Travis was in a surgery room on this very floor.
He wasn't a monster. He was just a guy from the rival school's football team. And he also just happen to be dating Shauna's ex. Though, for a couple of bitter teen jocks, that was a heavy enough sentence to warrant hating him. The problem is, he was a nice guy.
And it was a problem. To Shauna at least. I mean, how could she hate him when just last week he had driven a drunken Mel home? He was, by all definition, hate-proof. Not to mention his perfect hair and perfect smile, and perfect Quarterback throwing arm.
Alright, well, Shauna needed to squash these thoughts down. Clearly, she was the one who suffered brain damage, because what the actual fuck what that?
Another deputy approached the girls, grasping his belt with a large, hairy hand. "So you saw the car swerve off the road?"
Van offered a lazy shrug. "Yeah."
Natalie stared up at the cop through her messy blonde bangs. Giving him the same bored look she wore during most of her classes
"Did either of you know the driver?" the deputy asked, eyes dropping to his notepad.
"Nope."
In perfect, chilling unison, the two of them shook their heads.
Coach Scott’s jaw worked silently, muscles twitching under his stubble.
"And the passenger?" the deputy asked, pen hovering over scribbled paper. “She a friend of yours?”
Natalie hesitated, her eyes flickering sideways. There was a tiny moment of uncertainty that crossed her face. "Sort of."
Van let out a quiet snort, looking up at the deputy with a friendly smile. "She means yes."
Natalie attempted to remain impartial, but she still managed to shoot Van an annoyed side glance, before turning her attention back to the man questioning them. "I mean yes."
Coach Scott let out a long, shuddering sigh, dropping his face into his hands.
"If you girls happen to remember anything else, give the station a call."
They both nodded.
Satisfied for now, the deputy snapped his notebook shut and walked off down the dim hallway.
“We’re fucked,” Ben mumbled into his hands. “I’m fucked.”
Shauna watched the deputy’s back disappear into the green-lit hallway. She had been the first one they grilled. She’d told him: I turned around just in time to watch the cooler fly out the open back doors. Nothing else. Don’t know what happened. I was asleep.
Whatever.
A lie or the truth wouldn't undo what had happened tonight. The damage had already been dealt.
"Cops ask the dumbest fucking questions," Natalie muttered. She pulled a crumpled stick of gum from her pocket, something she’d probably swiped off an unattended desk in the lobby.
"Hate to break it to you, but that's literally in their job description," Van pointed out, flat and deadpan.
Natalie brought her knees up to her chest, dirty cleats resting on the plastic hair. "Asking the same bullshit six times isn't gonna magically change the answer."
Coach Scott rubbed his palms hard against his face, letting out a humourless laugh. "They're just waiting for one of us to slip."
Shauna barely heard them. Everyone sounded light years away. Her eyes were glued to the heavy wooden door of Room 214.
Jackie's room.
Every couple of minutes, a dark shadow moved past the frosted glass. A nurse. A doctor. They didn’t look human, not from this side anyway. No one ever stayed inside for long. It was either a good sign, or a terrifying one.
Shauna’s brain couldn’t decide which nightmare to latch onto. Honestly, she barely could decipher what a good sign was supposed to look like.
Jackie was breathing. That should have been enough. But every time Shauna blinked, flashes of the accident resurfaced, relentlessly bubbling up and replaying events from a hazy memory. The blinding headlights slicing a crazy arc through the dark road. The screech of metal ripping. The sudden silence that followed, save for the crickets screaming in the tall grass. The odd piercing headache.
And Jackie, lying perfectly still in the dirt, unmoving.
Shauna rubbed her palms against her shorts. She was still wearing her team uniform, the fabric stained with dried mud, grass, and her own blood. Her hands felt dirty, like they were still coated with something invisible and filthy. Something she couldn’t quite scrub away with soap
Someone let out a sharp laugh farther down the hall. Shauna flinched, heart slamming against her ribs.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Her eyes snapped back at the closed door of Room 214. Mrs. Taylor was definitely in there. She had always been nice to her. Always piling an extra scoop of potatoes onto Shauna’s plate after practice. Always giving her dessert without asking. Always thanking her for walking Jackie home after class.
Shauna’s leg started to bounce, her cleat tapping out a nervous rhythm. Maybe she’d just wait out here. Wait until Mrs. Taylor left. Besides, she didn't want to intrude.
A hand suddenly clamped down on her shoulder.
Shauna nearly jumped out of her skin, a gasp tearing from her throat.
Van was peering down at her, sporting that wide grin she had the infuriating habit of wearing.
"Didn’t wanna bother you, Captain," Van started, dropping into the empty plastic chair beside her with a loud, plop. "You just seemed so serene and at peace, twitching like a psycho."
Shauna let out a scoff, and intentionally stopped her leg from bouncing. It took some conscious effort. "I was just thinking."
"Oh, wow. Thinking? Next time, give us a warning so we can evacuate."
Shauna rolled her eyes, regretfully welcoming the familiar spike of annoyance.
They fell silent again. Shauna shoved her hands deeper into the grey hoodie the police department provided them. She stared hard at the discolored floor tiles.
"You think she's mad?"
Van didn't answer right away. She leaned back, watching a nurse in pale blue scrubs leave Jackie's room. When she finally spoke, the teasing edge had completely drained from her voice. For all her endless, insufferable dumbassery, Van had a terrible habit of occasionally being the only voice of reason in the group.
"If she's anything like she was before..." Van trailed off.
She didn't need to finish the sentence. Shauna already knew the answer. She was just desperately clinging to the hope that she was overthinking.
"...she'll probably ask if you're okay, even if she’s the one stuck in the hospital bed."
Shauna let out a low chuckle. She dug her fingers into the back of her neck. A nervous tick.
"I just don't know what the hell I'm supposed to say to her."
Van knocked her shoulder against Shauna's, rough and solid, but comforting all the same. "Just go in there, moron."
"But what if her mom-"
"Mrs. Taylor loves you, dude," Van interrupted, rolling her eyes. "Come on," she pressed.
"And what if she doesn't anymore, smartass?" Shauna shot back. The raw paranoia in her voice was thinly veiled, and they both knew it.
Van produced the most logical answer: "Then you'll find out."
Great. Thanks.
Shauna let out a slow, rattling breath and pushed herself up from the chair. An annoyed grunt escaped mouth as her right leg took her weight. A piece of glass had sliced open her knee when she had knelt beside Jackie. The shock had kept it numb. But it was rapidly wearing off now. Beneath the white tape, the cut was throbbing and stinging like a lit match pressed against her skin.
Ignoring it, Shauna took a limping step toward Room 214. She pressed her palm to the rough grain of the door’s wood, and slowly pushed it open.
Mrs. Taylor looked up first. Her greying blonde hair was styled its usual perfect bun. The pastel blue cashmere sweater she wore didn't have a single wrinkle. She was sitting perfectly straight beside the bed, outwardly composed, but internally unravelling.
"Oh, Shauna, there you are,” She said, easily. Just like her smile was. Warm and instantly familiar. "Come in, honey."
Honey. An overused nickname that Shauna had gotten used to. Somehow.
She stepped fully inside without any hesitation this time.
The room was darker than the hallway. Muted and relaxed. Or simply darker. More places for shadows to hide, really.
When her eyes finally adjusted to the dim lights, she eyed the bed, and it wasn’t at all what she’d braced herself for. She had expected the absolute worse. A rigid neck brace, heavy plaster casts, machines clicking and breathing for her, enough tubes snaking around her to make Jackie look like some sort of science experiment.
But, instead, she was sitting upright against a stack of pillows and, hell, she looked fine?
There was a shallow cut running along one cheek, stitched neatly together with butterfly strips. Purple bruising had already begun blooming around her left forearm.
But that was it.
That’s… just fucking impossible.
Shauna had seen the car. She'd seen Jackie lying in the grass.
"Gross. I think I’m gonna be sick," Jackie’s voice suddenly sliced through the beeping of the EKG machine she was hooked on. She was stabbing a plastic fork into a grey, steaming pile of mush on a grey, plastic tray.
Mrs. Taylor let out a long, weary sigh. "It's meatloaf, sweetie."
Jackie poked it again. She let out a dramatic gag. "More like ratloaf."
Shauna couldn’t stop the short, involuntary chuckle that escaped her throat.
Jackie set the plastic fork down, head snapping towards the sound. Green eyes wide, and alert. She took in the state of Shauna’s stained uniform, her brow pulling together in a tight frown. As Shauna limped a few steps closer to the bed, the crease between Jackie's eyes only deepened.
"Are you hurt?" Jackie asked, worry hanging thick on her lips.
Shauna let out a breath that prickled the back of her throat. "I should probably be asking you that."
The room went dead silent.
Moron. Why the hell did you say that?
Nobody spoke. They just stared at her. The silence stretched as they both just continued to bore their gaze into her. Like neither of them were ready to open that can of worms, and the existential conversation that came with it.
Shauna was just about to back away and make a hasty, cowardly retreat before she ruined anything else, when both of their faces suddenly shifted.
Mrs. Taylor tilted her head, her voice dropping to a calm but uneasy whisper. "Honey… your nose. You’re bleeding."
Shauna absentmindedly reached up, pressing her fingers just beneath her nostrils. When she pulled them away, her fingertips came away bright red.
For a second, her brain simply refused to process it.
A drop of crimson splashed onto the pristine white linoleum between her sneakers.
Then another.
Without warning, a nearly blinding pressure exploded behind Shauna's eyes. She flinched, biting back a groan. Whatever dim light was in the room was suddenly searingly bright. She pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut, but the headache only dug its claws deeper into the base of her skull.
"Shauna?" Jackie’s voice sounded muffled now, like she was moving further and further away.
"I'm fine," Shauna choked out another lie, like it was just a habit of hers now.
She didn't wait for a response. She spun around and stumbled blindly toward the small, attached bathroom. She shoved the door closed behind her and the lock clicked.
Shauna gripped the edges of the porcelain sink and twisted the tap. It squeaked, loud enough to send another sharp throbbing pain through the side of her temple. The pipes groaned deep in the walls before spitting out a stream of ice cold water.
She cupped it in her hands, splashing her face, watching her blood swirl and vanish down the drain.
Crack.
A thin, jagged line appeared across the mirror. Almost entirely silent.
Shauna froze. Water dripped heavily from her chin.
Then, the mirror cracked again. Much louder this time. The glass fractured with a loud concussive sound, like an echo of the heavy cooler obliterating the Trans Am’s windshield. The spiderweb of splintered glass shot outward, driving a deep wedge straight down the center of her reflected face.
The three exposed bulbs above the sink flickered. Once. Twice. And, without warning, the lights clicked and buzzed on and off in a frantic spasm, like someone was fucking around with the switch. The light show only worsened the dull ache in her head, and the fingers gripping the sink slipped.
She crashed into the tiled wall behind her. She heard another crack there too.
Shauna’s eyes remained trained on the fracture mirror, chest heaving, eyes wide. Her own reflection slowly tilted its head.
She hadn't moved a muscle. She knew she hadn’t.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The face in the mirror was darkening, the skin drawing tight over the bone. Her whiskey brown eyes vanished, swallowed by an endless void that stared right through her. Slowly, the reflection's lips began to peel back, the skin practically tearing as it stretched into an impossibly wide smile. Horrifying and impossible.
The lights let a one last buzz before every bulb above the sink detonated simultaneously, raining a shower of sparks and sharp glass down onto her.
She took a step forward, the broken pieces crunching under her cleats, and without so much as a warning, her vision plunged into absolute darkness.
The Shadyside team bus was basically a metal tomb on eighteen tires. It had seen the harsh conditions of unkept pavement for far too long. There was a very Mad Max look about it, in a way. It was kind of charming, really.
At least to Shauna.
Tit rattled through the dark like it was trying to shake the rust off its own metal bones. The heater was screeching out a shrill noise, spitting out humid air that tasted tangy and metallic. Every time they passed under streetlamp, Shauna caught a glimpse of her haggard reflection. It felt like starring at a stranger.
She sank deeper into the cold vinyl seat that had rips so long it looked like Freddy Krugger had passed through. Regularly.
She pulled her jacket hood down. There was a distinctive click as she pressed a button on her Walkman. Music crackled into her hears. It wasn't loud enough to drown out the engine's roar, or the heater, but it was loud enough to escape her roaming thoughts.
That, Shauna was an expert at.
Outside the square glass windows, Sunnyvale streets flew past like she was thumbing through a catalogue of perfect homes. Freshly trimmed hedges. Porch lights held the all-consuming dark cover of night at bay.
But even the shadows seemed friendly and well-behaved.
Shauna hated that she noticed every single detail. Hated her brain’s automatic comparison to Shadyside's often desolate and unkempt streets. It felt like ten years passed, when the reality is her parents had relocated them to Shadyside just shy of a year ago.
To ‘be closer to family’. That’s the story her parents fed everyone. And they all ate it up.
Worse than that, Shauna hated that she knew these pristine streets intimately. She remembered which houses handed out the good stuff on Halloween.
Shauna couldn't drive through a single fucking Sunnyvale street without tripping over a ghost.
She shut her eyes.
Not the smartest move. The dark just made a better projector screen.
Jackie was right there. Not in physical form, that would have been a solvable problem. A fight she could win (even if that thought wasn’t particularly convincing considering the exchange she'd just had with her).
She was standing beneath the buzzing stadium lights, staring at her. Sad, angry, fed up.
Rightfully so.
"You didn't even give me a chance to fix it."
Easy for Jackie to say. Easy when she hadn't spent her weekend listening to her father harshly point out what a massive disappointment she’d become. Yelling would have been easier to deal with, yelling meant she could fight back. But she didn’t, even when lashing out had been an instinct of hers since childhood.
Her parents hadn't explicitly threatened anything, apart from the overly dramatic move. They didn't need to. They talked about reputation. About fixing things. About how fast a girl's entire future could evaporate if the wrong people caught wind of her extracurriculars.
That's what her parents had called her relationship with Jackie.
No more soccer if she didn't break it off. Dreams of going pro evaporating in an instant.
The threats were terrifying because they didn't sound like it. They were an inescapable prison sentence. Twenty five to life, no parole.
Jackie would have argued, because she still operated on the delusion that the universe fundamentally wanted people to win.
But Shauna knew better. And, she was also a fucking coward.
Her jaw locked. Kurt Cobain continued to shout in her ears. She had almost forgotten she was listening to music in the first place.
She blindly thumbed the volume wheel louder, and louder still. The sound was distorted for a second, but anything was better than continuing this moot conversation with her damn self.
Can't quite drown out a memory when it was playing like a movie reel over and over again.
THUD.
Something dense and heavy slammed into the outer panel of the bus. Probably just a rock from the road.
Shauna didn't move. Down the aisle, somebody let out a sudden, ear-piercing laugh. Still, she kept her eyes clamped shut.
BANG.
Louder this time. The vibration shot up through the floorboards, rattling the equipment in her duffle.
Shauna let out a long-suffering exhale. Peace, apparently, wasn't on the roster tonight.
She peeled the foam off one ear. The music sounded light years away, but she heard it clearer than when it was over her ears.
She stood. Furious. Looking for a victim, not an answer.
Natalie let out another barking laugh. "Fucking nailed 'em."
Shauna marched down the narrow aisle and instantly, the chatter died. Some of the players looked up from their seats, caught the angry glaze in her eye and wisely decided to find their shoelaces fascinating.
She reached the final row at the back, and froze.
The emergency exit door was wide fucking open.
Freezing air whipped inside, carrying the an odd aroma blend of pine needles and diesel exhaust.
Lottie sat cross legged on the rubber floor beside the open exit, clearly not caring about what kind of dirt would be stuck on her uniform for the rest of her life. She looked at peace, but utterly detached, like she'd forgotten what she’d been doing there in the first place.
Van and Natalie were precariously perched on the edge of the door, hanging on to the team’s massive, orange cooler. Shauna watched them tip the heavy plastic forward. Water splashed out, crashing over the windshield of the car tailgating them.
Both girls burst into breathless laughter.
Morons.
A snarl curled Shauna’s lip.
The trailing car flashed its high beams, flooding the back of the bus in a blinding, overexposed white glare. Shauna brought up a hand to shield her eyes from it.
The horn blared, a long, furious wail tearing through the otherwise dead quiet woods.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Shauna snapped.
Neither of them answered. Another gallon of water sloshed out of the cooler, hitting the vehicle's hood like a wave crashing and washing itself ashore on a quiet beach.
Shauna crossed the last three feet in a single stride. She grabbed a fistful of Natalie’s jersey and yanked her backward. Natalie stumbled back inside, her shoulder slamming into the bus wall with a thud.
"The fuck," Shauna repeated, her voice dropping an octave, "are you doing?"
"It’s just water." Nathalie grinned, stupid and lazy. Cocky. Inviting Shauna to challenge her.
Instead of slapping that look away, Shauna stared at her, her expression completely flat. "No shit it's water," she shot back. Harsh and cold. "But if you fall out the back of a moving bus, I’m not scraping you off the pavement."
Shauna needed to punctuate her threat with something real, more than just fleeting words. She delivered a quick swat to the back of Natalie’s bleach blonde head.
Natalie was prepared to swing. Before she could launch herself, Lottie stepped in, casually hooking an arm around Natalie’s waist and hauling her backward with infuriating ease.
Shauna quickly turned her head to stare out the dark window, forcing down a traitorous smirk as Natalie loudly cursed, stuck in Lottie’s seemingly unbreakable hold.
Van hauled the cooler back from the ledge, alone, face flushed with adrenaline and a few missing brain cells. "Okay, look, in our defense-"
Shauna immediately interrupted what was most definitely going to be a piss poor excuse. She grit through her teeth: "If I have to explain to Coach why you’re both roadkill-’’
Van gave her an exaggerated eye-roll, like Shauna was being overly dramatic. "Why such a buzzkill, Captain?’’ she yelled over the rushing wind, gesturing vaguely toward the blinding headlights. "They looked parched!"
"We're just trying to wash daddy's money off 'em," Natalie added, usual disaffected grin in place.
Sunnyvalers were tailing them. Great. Fucking spectacular. They kicked their ass at soccer and now they wanted to what, exactly? Race a fucking bus that was clearly on its last mile?
Lottie finally turned her head away from the void outside. Her dark eyes were wide, her voice impossibly calm, but still discernible over the noise. "They've been following us since we left the school."
Van frowned out the open door, squinting against the aggressive glare of the high beams. "I kinda thought they were just trying to pass."
"They're definitely trying to get our attention now," Natalie pointed out, leaning dangerously close to the edge.
Another long, aggressive blast of the horn tore through the night.
Shauna looked past her. The muscle car she now recognized was practically eating their rear bumper. The driver's window was down, and Travis Martinez was leaning halfway out, screaming something lost to the roar of the bus’ overworked engine.
Probably an insult of some sort, if the bulging veins on his neck was any indication.
Then, Shauna instinctively glanced at the passenger seat. Or rather, who was in it. Her eyes snapped to the occupant like a magnet.
Jackie.
Even through the car’s blinding high beams, Shauna recognized the rigid, set line of her jaw. Jackie wasn't scared. She was pissed to all hell. She hated watching people act like reckless idiots.
"Drop it” Shauna hissed, “or you three are gonna spend the rest of the season on the bench."
Natalie eyed Shauna, her smirk morphing to a look entirely too knowing. Yeah, that's completely Shauna fault for having friends. "Don't tell me you're getting soft on us now."
Shauna kept her eyes locked on the trailing car. She forced herself to fake utter boredom and total detachment from the situation. She was decent at it, surely. "No Sunnyvaler is worth all that effort."
Van’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. She turned towards the car. Back to Shauna. Then her gaze shifted back to Jackie’s furious face behind the windshield. A slow grin spread across Van's mouth, like a Hyena waiting to cackle.
"Drop it," Shauna warned even though no one uttered a single word. Her pulse was like a sledgehammer against her ribs.
Lottie still hadn’t said a thing, or really moved since Nathalie’s little outburst. She was peering out through the back, black hair whipping through the wind.
Shauna let out an impatient sigh. "I’m just trying to avoid possibly getting murdered by your parents when you brain damaged clowns eventually slip.”
The lady doth protest too much. Van was giving her that look that said as much. but Shauna couldn’t quite help the word vomit from spilling out.
"Whatever you say, Captain," Natalie mocked, fake sweetness curling around her words to piss off Shauna that much more. "But if this is your big play to show your ex how over her you are, maybe don't glare at us like you’re about to toss our asses off the bus."
Outside, Jackie screamed something out of her window. The wind hacked up most of the sentence, but Shauna caught the cutting end of it.
"Assholes!"
Yeah. Well, that was pretty accurate, actually.
Shauna opened her mouth. She wasn't sure who she was going to scream at first. Natalie, for being a total dick. Van, for her stupid lopsided grin. Travis, for riding their bumper like the car had a mind of its own.
She couldn't make up her mind, so the pothole on the road did it for her.
The floorboards bucked wildly. The massive orange cooler lurched upward, seemingly weightless. Van's fingers slipped off the plastic handle. Natalie lunged but Her hands clawed at air and nothing more.
For one agonizing second, the cooler hung there. But gravity already had a plan. The trajectory was mapped. The outcome was already decided, and Shauna could only watch as the bright orange cooler struck Travis's windshield with a loud CRACK.
It sounded exactly like a gunshot.
The safety glass instantly exploded, fracturing into a giant spiderweb.
Travis jerked the wheel.
The Trans Am swerved left. Tires screamed and protested against the pavement. The headlights whipped off the road, cutting a dizzying arc of light across the dense treeline.
Metal loudly folded, glass exploded everywhere, wood snapped and cracked from the impact. A terrible assortment of sounds that dragged on for entirely too long. But, seconds later, an unnatural calm rushed in.
Shauna could actually hear the crickets. Hundreds of them, buried deep in the woods.
"Stop the bus!" Shauna shouted. It didn't sound like her. Not really. Frantic and freaked the fuck out.
The driver was paralyzed in the front seat. He didn’t move a damn muscle.
"STOP THE FUCKING BUS!"
At least three of them yelled, this time.
The heavy tires locked, throwing everyone forward as the bus lurched, rubber screaming and skidding against the pavement.
Before the tomb on wheels stopped rolling, Shauna was already throwing herself out the open emergency door. Her shoes hit the asphalt at a speed she only ever reached out on the pitch, chasing a ball, running it down to score a goal.
She didn't have time to pretend she didn't give a shit.
Gravel slid out from under her shoes. She caught herself, stumbled, and kept running. Soccer cleats were definitely not designed to run on gravel.
The night engulfed everything outside the bus's headlights. Dead branches snapped like bones. Someone was yelling her name behind her.
Natalie?
Coach?
Where the fuck had he been? Sleeping? What the FUCK?
It didn't matter.
Travis’ Pontiac was folded around a massive tree trunk, the metal crumpled and twisted like a giant had crushed it into its fist. Thick, white steam hissed from beneath the mangled hood, lifting and hanging in the cold air like clouds. The smell of burnt rubber was nauseating.
The surviving headlight flickered on an off.
Shauna's eyes snapped to red fabric, blonde hair.
No movement.
"No, no, no."
Shauna’s shoes lost their grip on the damp grass. She went down, hit her knees with enough force to feel rocks and tree roots bite straight through her skins. or maybe it was glass from the Pontiac's destroyed windshield.
"Jackie."
The wall she had spent months building collapsed and crumbled to dust at her feet.
"No. No, no, no. Come on."
Jackie lay on her back, one arm twisted at an unnatural angle. Broken, definitely. Her blonde hair fanned across the grass, matted and dark with blood.
The ground beneath her was strangely warm, and soft. Spongey, like moss that’s been growing there for centuries. Lush and feverishly green.
For a second, a sharp visceral headache made Shauna hiss in pain. But it was gone in seconds. She ignored it, like she had the habit of doing, and pressed trembling fingers against the side of Jackie’s neck.
Nothing.
She scrambled, moving her hand. A tremor ran through her. Wrong spot? it had to be. Coach Scott had hammered CPR lessons this into them every season. "Because one day," he’d repeated over and over, pacing the gym floor with his white shoes and whiter socks, "somebody might need you."
Shauna remembered rolling her eyes, remembered Van making the plastic dummy move just to freak the freshmen out.
Now, her mind was a blank, frozen screen.
Two fingers. Where? Here?
She pressed harder. Her vision tunneled. Thirty compressions, she thought. Or was it fifteen?
Before Shauna had the pleasure of giving herself an aneurysm, Jackie gasped.
It wasn’t a regular breath. It was a wet sound, like a drowning victim finally breaking the surface. Her body jerked off the ground.
Shauna froze, her hands hovering uselessly in the cold air.
For one agonizing second, Jackie just stared at her.
Shauna finally got the feeling back into her limbs and lunged, grabbing Jackie by the shoulders so hard they almost tipped backward into the thick grass.
"Holy shit." Shauna’s voice cracked. Unguarded and raw. “You’re okay.”
Jackie didn't scream in pain. She didn't look around at the smoking wreckage. She simply stared directly at Shauna, hazel eyes too clear for someone who had just been thrown from a moving vehicle at over forty miles an hour.
She let out a weak laugh against Shauna’s shoulder. "I think I died."
"Fuck you," Shauna choked out, her fingers dug into Jackie's jacket. "That's not fucking funny."
Shauna pulled back just enough to look at her, there was dirt smeared across Jackie's pale cheek. A bloodied scrape across her forehead. But she was breathing.
Jackie didn’t say a word. She reached up and wrapped both arms around Shauna’s neck.
Shauna hugged her back even if she knew something didn’t quite make sense. Her body made the decision before her brain could even try to fight it, burying her face into Jackie's shoulder.
She swallowed hard, trying to push down whatever cocktail of explosive emotions wanted to surface.
Except something wasn’t quite right.
The feel of her. Hell, Shauna knew she’d sound insane trying to explain it out loud. She sounded insane just thinking about it.
Jackie was still and calm. There was no frantic post-shock shivering. No racing heartbeat hammering against Shauna's chest. It felt like she was hugging those creepy clothes mannequins she'd often see at malls. Void of any feature. Void of humanity.
Shauna slowly pulled back, brow creasing. "How are you... okay?"
It was a stupid question. Fucking moronic, actually.
And Jackie had no answer, either.
Shauna looked past Jackie's shoulder at the shape of the car. Or what was left of it. The passenger door of Travis's black and gold Trans Am had been ripped clean off its hinges. The seatbelt was snapped in half, dangling uselessly out of the crushed cabin. Jackie had been launched out of that mangled mess, roughly thrown ten feet through the forest.
Something should be broken.
Or worse.
A hell of a lot worse.
No one’s that lucky.
The woods around them had gone suffocatingly quiet. Shauna knew the wail of sirens was approaching them somewhere in the distance. She could hear the heavy footsteps of Coach Scott and the team echoing on the pavement behind them.
But still, Jackie was just... watching her calmly.
Not in the casual, socially acceptable way everyone claimed they did, either.
"I hate the feeling."
Yeah, that was bullshit. Those types of people smiled after the final whistle. They shook hands, traded a breathless ‘good game’, then forgot the score somewhere between the parking lot and dinner. Or, for a lot of them, the very moment their duffel hit the back of their parent's minivan.
Shauna never did forget. To her, losing wasn't just falling short, it meant somebody else got to be happy.
Tonight, that somebody was Sunnyvale.
The scoreboard still glowed bright over the field, with blocky yellow bulbs glaring at her. Or rather, she was glaring at them.
SUNNYVALE: 3
SHADYSIDE: 1
She looked away, scowled at nothing in particular, and then forced herself to look back. Still a three. Worth a check, but the analog numbers hadn't miraculously changed. The damn thing looked smug, which was insane, considering it was just a rusted metal rectangle bolted to a pole.
Maybe that was just a Sunnyvale trait. Even their electronics acted like they owned the damn place.
Behind her, the bleachers were still packed. Parents joined their kids out on the pitch, cheerleaders crowded together for mirror worthy polaroids. You’d think they had just won the damn state championship, not a mid-season game that nobody outside of these two zip codes would remember, or even know happened.
If the score had been reversed, half the Sunnyvale female soccer team would be blaming the refs. The other half would be blaming their nearly perfect field. They’d find a patch of dry grass somewhere, though. And that, that, would have been the reason they lost. Not because Shauna picked up perfect passes all game and sunk the ball in the net three times.
Which, pointedly, did not happen tonight.
Van was off her game, but so was everyone. Shauna knew when it was her team playing like shit. Nothing else to it. Take the loss on the chin and move the hell on.
Shauna adjusted the strap of her duffel bag, canvas digging into her shoulder, and struck out for the parking lot before Coach Scott could usher them into one of his debriefing circle-jerks. She already knew the script by heart.
"We've got plenty of soccer left. One game doesn't define us."
Funny how nobody ever said that shit after a win.
Taking the long way around the athletic building meant it'll take a hell of a lot longer to reach the parking lot, but it was quieter, too. The farther she got from the field, the more the cheering blurred into distant chatter, swallowed up by the brick walls and the distinctive electric buzz of the floodlights illuminating the path ahead.
One of them flickered.
She only noticed because it stayed dark just a fraction of a second longer than the others before buzzing back to life.
Probably nothing.
Somewhere ahead, a section of the chain-link fence bordering the practice field rattled softly. Metal screeching against metal.
Just the wind.
She kept walking, her cleats scuffing against the asphalt bellow.
Schools were never truly silent after dark. They just settled into a heavy, hollow quiet. Sounds drifted through the chill air like they were untethered from this plane of existence. The clack of a fire door echoing from somewhere inside one of the buildings. A sudden, sharp burst of laughter that didn't seem to belong to anyone. The phantom trampling of soles on polished wood floors, eventually swallowed up by the autumn wind noisily rustling the thicket of trees.
Menacing sounds enough to rattle someone to the bone and spark sudden fear and paranoia. Someone lesser than Shauna, surely.
Probably.
Shauna was starting to regret not throwing on her uniform joggers. Now that the adrenaline was all but gone from her system, goosebumps rose on her legs, and the back of her neck.
The brick buildings that seemed so pristine and polished during the day morphed into uniform and oppressive shapes under the shadows the harsh glow the lights cast. The dark classroom windows reflected the empty parking lot rather than whatever was inside them, making the whole campus seem abandoned. Like a movie set after the crew had packed up and gone home, leaving shadows behind.
She wasn’t stupid, or scared. Schools weren't haunted. If anything was going to ruin your life in a town like this, it was usually a flesh and blood human being. Teenagers were the real monsters.
Shauna shoved her cold hands deeper into her jacket pockets and rounded the corner of the brick wall.
A shoulder slammed into hers. Hard enough to knock them both off-balance, sending loose gravel flying.
"Shit, my bad-"
The apology died in Shauna’s throat the second she looked up.
Jackie Taylor.
Fucking fantastic. There went the rest of her peaceful night.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Behind them, the floodlights buzzed, one of them dropping into a single flicker that stretched their shadows long and tall against the brick wall.
Jackie looked unbothered, and maybe even a little pleased to have run into her. Which was infuriating.
She’d already thrown on her warm up gear, too. Cheer skirts weren't great for fall weather. Her red and pristine track uniform caught what little light reached the side of the building, looking crisper and cleaner than it had any right to after a game. Like even the dirt gave her personal space.
Jesus. Shauna needed to stop doing that.
Jackie wasn’t some sacred hollowed ground.
She was the girl who stole fries off Shauna’s tray because they tasted better from someone else's plate. The selfless girl who insisted every stray cat she crossed paths with needed a proper name. The girl who could charm complete strangers into moving a couch up three flights of stairs just by smiling at them.
It would’ve been a lot easier to deal with if Shauna’s brain could actually purge those memories.
"Hey."
Jackie’s voice was careful. Deliberately relaxed, like she was holding back. Shauna could tell by the faint crease of her brow.
"Didn't know you were still here," Jackie added.
"Just leaving." Shauna adjusted the strap of her duffel bag, pulling it tightly across her chest like a superhero’s shield to deflect evil Jackie’s machinations.
Or whatever.
She also needed to stop reading Melissa's stupid comics.
"Oh." Jackie nodded once, her dark eyes tracking the defensive movement. She noticed. Of course she fucking would. "Right."
"Later." Shauna barely resisted the urge to word vomit her name. She pushed it back down. Like everything else.
What's one more thing, right?
Shauna stepped past her with a huff. She just needed to get away from here. And this conversation. And from Jackie's perfect, piercing hazel eyes aimed directly at her. Suffocating her.
"Seriously?"
Shauna stopped. She didn't turn around. Her jaw clamped shut. "What?"
"You almost knock me on my ass, you stare at me like I'm a ghost, and then just... walk away?"
"Sorry I didn't roll out the red carpet, your highness," Shauna muttered, her eyes locked on the dark parking lot. A sigh. "What do you want?"
Jackie let out a short, dry laugh that held zero amusement. "I really don’t get you, Shauna."
The hidden meaning behind that phrase hit Shauna like a slide tackle she hadn't seen coming. I used to get you. I used to be the only one who knew you.
Shauna didn't look up. "Yeah, well. Join the fucking club."
"I'm serious." Jackie's voice sharpened, stripping away any lingering pretense of small talk.
Suddenly Shauna wished she was back on the pitch, exhausted, lungs burning, where the only thing she had to focus on was moving the ball down the field.
"I just don't get how you can freeze me out like this," Jackie said, the warmth in her voice finally easing into frustration.
Shauna looked past her, fixing her eyes on the familiar sight of the soccer field, now a graveyard of sweat and upturned turf. Comforting. A little. "I didn't decide anything."
She hadn’t. Not really.
"You did."
"No, I-"
"You stopped answering my calls."
Shauna remained silent while the muscles in her jaw worked overtime.
"You stopped coming over," Jackie accused. Once more.
More silence.
She wouldn’t get it.
"And when I finally cornered you to ask what was wrong, you just said it wasn't working. Really? Us? Not working?" Jackie stepped closer, closing the distance Shauna had just tried to create. "Because last time I checked, Shipman, we were working. Like... three times a day working."
Shauna had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from breaking in a full blown laugh. Not because Jackie had just overshared their intimate history to an empty parking lot, but because a bright flush had crept up Jackie's neck the second the words left her mouth.
To make matters worse, the way Jackie scowled at herself, crossing her arms tight over her chest to hide the embarrassment, was infuriatingly endearing.
"You didn't even give me a chance to fix it," Jackie muttered, the fight draining out of her tone.
That snapped the defensive ice right back into Shauna's veins. "You make it sound like there was something left to fight for."
Jackie stepped directly into her space. She had that fierce, dangerous look in her eyes, the one that usually meant she wanted to slam Shauna’s head into a locker. "Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Pretending you don't care."
That hurt. Like a slap. Like a gut punch. Because dammit, she was right. Shauna hated how deep it sliced through. She hated that Jackie still knew the exact spots to aim for, even when she was trying to push her away.
"You know what?" Shauna scoffed, forcing her voice grow colder. Cruel, even. "Believe what you want."
They stared at each other, the space between them heavy with the unspoken truths... and lies. For half a second, Shauna almost spilled her entire guts out right then and there. She blamed it on post-game hunger. And Jackie’s searching eyes.
Fuck. She couldn’t look at them anymore.
Brown eyes snapped down to her feet. Dirty cleats. Much better.
My parents found out. They were furious. My dad said things to me I will never forget. My mom cried like I had ruined her life. They told me if I stayed with you, they would make sure I regretted it.
They made me feel like a monster.
But the words stayed trapped exactly where they belonged. Buried deep inside.
So instead, she choked out another lie. "We're just too different. You and me."
Jackie blinked back a sudden sheen of tears. Her lower lip trembled, but before the sadness could take over, the anger roared back in, like it usually did.
"That's it? Really?" Jackie lunged forward, punctuating the words with a hard, two handed shove to Shauna’s chest. "You’re a fucking asshole, Shipman!"
Her raised voice echoed off the concrete, tearing through the eerie quiet of the night. Even the wind seemed to stop and listen.
"It's the truth," Shauna lied, once more, taking the physical hit without stepping back. Hell, she deserved a little more than just that fucking weak shove.
"Is it?" Jackie asked, her voice cracking, completely devoid of the anger she just tried to weaponize.
Shauna looked away, unable to stomach the betrayal marring Jackie's features.
The blonde scoffed, after a moment, aggressively wiping at her eyes with the back of her sleeve.
"You're acting like I don't know you," Jackie whispered, her voice barely carrying over the wind and buzzing lights. "Like you don’t know me."
"Grow up," Shauna shot back, adopting a tone she didn't actually feel. "People break up. It's high school. Get over it."
The second the words tumbled past her lips, she wanted to claw them out of the air and shoved them back into her mouth.
Jackie’s expression shifted. The fury drained away entirely, replaced by something far worse than anger. Absolute, crushing disappointment.
"Fuck you. Just… fuck you," she hissed out harshly past trembling lips.
Well, shit.
Shauna let out a breath, her hand reaching out instinctively, her fingers twitching. For what? To grab her? To apologize? She wouldn’t need to dwell on it much longer as a scream ripped through the quiet darkness.
Both of them froze.
High-pitched. Piercing. Very close.
Shauna’s entire body went cold. Jackie’s hand shot out, her fingers digging, as if by automatism, into Shauna’s forearm. For one agonizing second, neither of them moved, or dared to take a breath.
Shauna’s muscles felt like lead, completely locked up from the game and the sudden, freezing terror. But Jackie’s grip anchored her, and the adrenaline finally snapped the paralysis. They scrambled around the dark corner of the building.
They skidded to a halt on the gravel.
What they saw was far different than whatever the hell Shauna's stupid brain has conjured up. One of Sunnyvale's football players was holding a Gatorade cooler, dumping the last few drops of ice water over a shrieking cheerleader.
She screamed again, turning around and slamming the red and white pom-poms into his chest. "You're, like, so dead, Brad!"
The tall jock took off sprinting across the lot, laughing hysterically. Almost has high-pitched at the girl he'd been bothering.
The dark-haired cheerleader chased after him, dripping water across the asphalt and yelling threats creative enough to remind Shauna that Sunnyvale kids weren’t all prim and proper.
"What a bunch of losers," Jackie breathed, her fingers finally slipping their death grip on Shauna’s forearm. She immediately smoothed down the front of her uniform, pulling her posture rigid, desperate to look like she hadn't just been terrified and was ready to use her ex as a human shield.
Shauna didn't laugh. She just took a step back, instantly putting much needed physical distance back between them.
And just like that, the moment was gone. All of it was swallowed up by the mundane reality of teenage hormones.
And Shauna was deeply, profoundly grateful. Because she was a coward. A practical coward, sure, but a coward nonetheless.
"My bus is leaving," Shauna said, her voice completely flat. She gestured vaguely over her shoulder toward the far end of the lot, where the exhaust from the idling tail lights were visible into the cold air.
It felt too much like asking for permission. Like when the pair was still an item, and Shauna would have to carefully negotiate an afternoon at the skate park with Melissa.
Some leashes were invisible. Not that she had minded that particular one.
Jackie’s jaw tightened, coldness hardening her features, as the reality of the distance settled back in. "Right. Don't let me keep you."
Shauna hated how much that stung like a bitch. She forced herself to turn around and take a step away.
"Shauna."
She stopped, shoes scraping against gravel, but she couldn't bring herself to look back. Jackie's voice had dropped its armor, and anger, to a soft, almost fragile inflection.
"It didn't have to be like this."
Shauna closed her eyes against the dark. She knew exactly what Jackie meant. She knew how easily she could fix it. One apology, the truth spilled, and Jackie would take her back. And she knew exactly why she couldn't do that.
"Yeah, well," Shauna muttered, her voice hollowed out. "It is."
She forced her feet to move. The team bus waited at the edge of the parking lot.
Somewhere beyond the school property, where the dense treeline crowded close to the edge of the school property, something shifted. It wasn't a movement the eye could catch. It was a sudden, unnatural pressure in the air. A shift in the direction of the freezing wind.
Shauna hadn't noticed.
Her eyes were fixed firmly on the asphalt, completely consumed by the thought of leaving Jackie behind.
Which, unfortunately, was the kind of mistake a person only got to make once in their life.
I’ll be writing Yellowjackets horror fanfiction here. I’ve been writing since high school (so, about 19 years now). I’ve always struggled to connect with original characters, so I usually stick to fanfiction instead. It's so much easier to write for a voice and character that I already know so well. Maybe one day I’ll fall in love with an OC enough to write a full novel about them (highly unlikely), but until then, I’m just here to write the kinds of stories that make you feel like you’re reading a 80s horror paperback.
