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( 𝓐S QUIET AS A MOUSE: REESE GRAVES ﾉ ࿐

it was a waste to survive if she crumbeld the second her mind got too loud, wasn’t it .ᐣ

PRE-CRASH

girls guide to being the cool girl

reese is the youngest of three, spoiled but not rotten. a daddy’s girl until she finally hit the apparently grown age of ten and she had to live up to the high expectations set by her siblings. even after they’d left for college the weight of their achievements was heavy. no amount of distance could erase their presence, not from her mind or household.

raised in the church, reese had long come to terms with the definition of right from wrong in the eyes of the lord. he was always watching; despite how uncomfortable it may have made her to have a tiny baby jesus staring over her. their home practically a museum of crosses and jesus statues.

it didn’t matter anyways, with or without her hand on the bible, her parents scrutinized her every move.

where as most teenagers dream of going to highschool, reese dreaded it. between the social hierarchy of highschool and her parents desperate to make her their next shining star, reese bit the bullet and jumped at the first opportunity to appease her parents.

joining the school paper was a bust. apparently her stories had no depth or personality to them. lackluster paragraphs scribbled in ink that she’d stay up nights putting together wirh nothing to show for it.

so it’s safe to say the schools newspaper committee was without the girl draped in florals and polished mary janes.

though the one club that didn’t exactly require any intense amount of talent was the yearbook club. which was easy enough, stand behind a camera and snap a couple photos. which was unfortunately, easier said than done. her hands trembled around the heavy camera, one eye squinted and a leg pointed out in a desperate attempt to get the perfect shot.

and well, her parents weren’t exactly pleased to hear the best their daughter could do was the yearbook committee. and between making little baby jesus proud and her parents, reese had her hands full. desperate to see her picture hanging up in a glossy frame displayed across worn walls.

sports. reese—didn’t have an athletic bone in her body. she stumbled over her own feet, could hardly dance even if she’d been given a pair of ruby red slippers. but for what it was worth, maybe she’d discover she had some kind of special talent when it came to kicking a ball around a field!

news flash. she didn’t. she’d totally embarrassed herself the moment she tried to kick the ball and missed the ball like half an inch. falling was never fun but for once, sitting on her ass seemed rewarding.

until a hand presented itself, fingers wide and welcoming. shauna shipman. with her pretty brown eyes and crooked smile, a smirk, really.

“pretty hard fall, huh? i’m shauna—shipman. we have english together. reese, right?” her voice is soft, as if she was trying to lull her into to sleep.

reese intertwined her fingers with shauna’s, “um.. yeah. i’m not as athletic as i was thought i was, i guess,” she giggles, but whether it’s out of embarrassment or actual humor is questionable.

if you were to ask when reese started giving shauna goo-goo eyes she’d tell you this exact moment with exaggerated details, as if shauna had been her knight in shining armor.

long story short, reese hadn’t been recruited to wear the WHS Yellowjackets jersey, but! storage manager was an achievement too. And she still got to see shauna all sweaty during games, so it was fine. well—it was fine until she came home to her parents to tell them the good news.

an excited, wide eyed reese presented the idea of team storage manager with joy until her parents crushed all the excitement bubbling within her with haste.

“goodness. that—that’s great, sweetheart.” her mother says quickly, delaying the inevitable monologue from her father. and sure, she was well aware lugging bags of balls around the field for a sports team wasn’t exactly star worthy, but reese was excited, so why couldn’t they be?

PRE-CRASH RELATIONSHIPS

guide to making life long friends

reese had never exactly had much luck making friends, and she could lie and say she didn’t mind but she totally did. every teenager wants friends, even the depressed and super lonely ones. but especially reese.

elementary was no hard feat, after all her siblings were practically royalty in the eyes of second graders. being the sister to two sixth graders was like having a million bucks and she thrived in it. it helped that having your birthday at school was still socially acceptable because every little kid basks in the joy of being able to shove their faces full with cupcakes and cookies and choke down watered down juice.

until she got to middle school and everyone around her realized how awkward she really was without the title of being denise and margot’s younger sister. because in middle school nobody cared who you were related too—no matter how cool they were.

middle school was a blur, a muddled image of smug faces and the latest cuss words and nicknames that was everything but a shortened version of reese.

she chooses to forget that point in her life because not even teen magazines and little baby jesus could save her from social death.

it isn’t until her freshman year that she actually begins to make friends—her first friend being laura lee. she’d met her in the yearbook committee, blonde strands sticking up behind a propped up camera, a thin, pale girl wrapped in a baby blue cardigan and a knee length polkadot dress.

“um, hi—i’m reese graves.. mr. maldando said i should talk to you, laura lee, right?” her voice is a little shaky, all nerves and no confidence.

laura lee ducks her head out from behind the camera, a wide smile on her lips and a rosy blush across her cheeks. “yeah, that’s me. nice to meet you! welcome to the yearbook committee,” the blonde’s voice is soothing, it makes it hard to be nervous anymore.

laura lee and reese are quick friends. and reese’s parents adore the girl, all for their school night sleepovers that are supposedly bible study but instead flipping through the pages of bright colored magazines with shirtless boys and pretty smiles.

reese secretly cuts the girls out of their magazines and neatly glues them to the pages of her journal, the edges frayed at the top of the page, folded down so she could revisit them at a later date once laura lee went home.

but besides laura lee, with reese and her newfound placement as the manager of the soccer team, she had no choice to become friends with misty quigley who, to no surprise, she became good friends with.

“misty!” reese pants, out of breath, “i got a tape of grease—from the vhs store.. maybe i could come over after practice and we can watch it together?” she asks, a little hesitantly because she wasn’t exactly sure how deep their friendship ran outside of carrying equipment together.

but she should’ve known it ran deep enough. misty was like reese in that sense—or maybe every sense. two lonely people too desperate to turn down any mention of hanging out.

misty’s face splits into a wide smile, reese thinks she looks like a poodle. “sure! my mom is working late shifts at the hospital so we’ll have the house all to ourselves! perfect time to prefect the ensemble if y’know what i mean.” the curly haired girl snorts, shaking her head as if she’d just told the worlds funniest joke, but reese laughed too.

reese admires jackie taylor. but who doesn’t? she’s as beautiful as she is kind, the kind of person who’s smile could brighten up your day—the kind of person who you just kinda.. gravitated towards whether you wanted to or not. but no amount of bright smiles and kind words could stop the edge of jealousy reese felt when jackie’s arm wrapped around shauna’s shoulder, or when they embraced eachother after a long, harsh scrimmage.

they didn’t exactly have a friendship, but they weren’t strangers. you could never feel like a stranger around the wide eyed captain.

the sun was bright and reese felt stupid for wearing the teams jacket on a day when the sun was at it’s fullest. the girl begrudgingly carried the bag of soccer balls across the field. with misty being out sick with the flu, reese was in charge of getting the teams practice in order.

jackie, with all her sweetness, jogged over to the girl with her signature smile. “hey, reesy piecy. need some help?” the honey blonde grins.

the (future) prom queen was not only the queen of wiskayok but the queen of nicknames. reese had been juggling between her government name and “reesy piecy” for as long as she’d been apart of the team. “well—no.. yes. but you have to warm up. i heard coach martinez was feeling a little..” reese glances at the ground, “pissy..” she whispers, looking up like a guilty dog.

baby jesus is watching, but so is jackie taylor—and in the eyes of a socially outcasted teenage girl, jackie taylor’s opinion weighed heavier.

jackie throws her head back with an exaggerated laugh and takes the bag from reese’s hands.

shauna shipman. the name rolled off her tongue like a prayer, and it may have a couple times when reese is at the edge of her bed when her hands are folded and her eyes are closed and she should be praying for good health and fortune, a nice young man to sweep her off her feet and her family’s safety but all she can think about is shauna shipman’s short brown hair and wide brown eyes. it’s safe to say she has the restart her prayer more times than one.

reese isn’t exactly sure how shauna feels about her but she’ll catch her looking at her from across the room. or during pep rallies when her eyes stray away from jackie taylor and all her glory and focus in on reese for a few seconds.

shauna clears her throat, one hand on the strap of her bag and the other in the pocket of her levi jeans, the first three buttons of her flannel popped to reveal the black tanktop beneath it.

reese looks up from the pages of her textbook, brows furrowed but soft at the sight of the midfielder. “hey, reese.” shauna says.

she can’t help but to smile, but she stifles the embarrassingly childish giggle bubbling in her throat. “hi shauna..” reese looks away when she realizes she’s staring at her like an idiot.

“brody from home room is throwing a party tonight. i know you don’t usually go but i was wondering if you’d wanna come? jackie’s gonna be all over jeff and i really don’t wanna deal with them and their obnoxious smacking.” the brunette’s voice is all persuasion and sweetness.

she’s right, reese doesn’t usually go to parties—partly because she doesn’t get invited and partly because baby jesus would probably smell the weed and booze on her before her parents do.

that doesn’t stop her from saying yes, though.

“uh, sure!”

“nice. see you tonight.”

reese forgets to mention she doesn’t exactly have a car to get there and walks two blocks to brody from homeroom’s house after clumsily climbing out her bedroom window. luckily for her, the smell of cheap beer covers up the smell of her sweat relatively well.

reese hadn’t made too many connections on the team besides the select few. natalie scatorccio was a passing acquaintance, she’d toss reese a sideways smile when they’d pass eachother in the hallway or teasingly offer her a hit of her cigarette in mari’s hotel room during their away games because they always huddled up in mari’s room when they were away for games.

taissa turner had always been somewhat of a role model for reese. she was passionate and smart, kind but didn’t take shit crap from anyone. if reese had worked up the nerves to talk to her she could imagine they’d be pretty good friends.

if there had been anyone who made reese laugh the most it was van palmer. the redhead was practically the funniest person she knew. a mess of movie and show references and sarcastic jabs that you could hardly be mad at because they were so funny.

reese didn’t exactly know lottie all that well but she liked her. lottie had always been a kind soul. she’d help reese with math and she’d always been nice to photograph, the matthews girl was painfully photogenic she couldn’t help the edge of jealousy she felt once she camera clicked.

THE CRASH WILDERNESS

girls guide to blessings

the plane is up in flames before reese can blink, throwing herself out of the plane and immediately wishing she had gotten blessed with the lungs of an athlete and not the lungs of an asthmatic teen. she hits the ground and the sound of screams is hard to drown out but she does anyways, eyes shut tightly and hands digging into the dirt.

“dear god, whatever i did wrong—please don’t take it out on the others.. is this about the journal? i don’t actually like girls i just—“ she whispers to herself before one of the other girls tumbles over her still body and the wind is knocked out of her.

okay, so no time to apologize for her sins. the plane is burnt up anyways and coach martinez’s body is all bloody and torn. but maybe this isn’t a punishment—but a blessing? god wouldn’t purposely crash their plane into the middle of fucking nowhere.. right?

her mind is all fuzzy until the sickening slice and then coach ben’s scream cuts through whatever rapid thoughts float about her mind. misty’s standing over him with a bloody axe and his leg is separated from his body—burnt flesh and a mangled limb.

she did the right thing.

reese quickly jumps at the opportunity to be helpful, her parents would be proud, she thinks. she can’t be a star photographed behind glossy film but she can be a star in the eyes of wildlife and her soot covered team.

reese digs a shallow grave alongside the plane that is distorted and burnt, gently placing coach ben’s severed leg in the dirt, the mangled limb doesn’t scare her. she’s accepted the crash as a blessing, not something to fear.

she thinks her parents would be proud.

only half of the girl’s belongings are recovered. reese’s pink suitcase littered in stickers is warm and crispy but some of her stuff is still intact. she folds the magazines and shoves them into her little backpack, her leather bound journal is next and the little statue of baby jesus falls into the pile.

WILDERNESS PROPHETS

girls guide to sin and cannibalism

misty and reese quickly fall into the way of the wilderness. after lottie’s whole show of her questionable french, reese is sure that this was a blessing. laura lee says lottie has a gift, reese is quick to agree, spewing scriptures she’s memorized with confidence.

she thinks somewhere between the blurred lines of the wilderness and the bible, she may have started making things up. so desperate for an explanation she was more than willing to come up with one of her own.

reese stills prays every night, her head bowed before the flickering fire, the flames no longer a reminder of their loss but their new beginnings. she still prays for the same things—good health, her family’s safety and then shauna shipman.

her feelings for shauna are more conflicting out here. she can feel herself pulling away from laura lee in fear of disappointing her. laure lee’s a saint and reese feels like some kind of false prophet standing next to her.

laura lee’s death is a tragic. reese watches the plane go up in flames, exploding into thin air as if it’d never been there to begin with. lottie falls into the water with a splash and suddenly reese doubts god and his choices.

reese dreams of laura lee and her blonde hair, a comforting vision of her beauty. the sunlight dusts over her like a halo and it’s only then that the angelic version of laura lee is twisted into something less glowy. her mouth splits open, she’s wailing and crying and begging reese to come with her.

it’s only then that she’s waken up and they’re back in the cabin. it’s then when she realizes that laura lee is truly gone and she’d never see her again.

the girls remember laura lee in a half assed memorial at doomscoming. reese is wrapped in one of her shorter dresses with an arrangement of little florals on the fabric and her eyes can’t help but to focus on shauna. her visions all loopy and her brain is fuzzy, she hardly had time to wonder about what was in the punch.

“wanna dance?” shauna asks.

shauna can’t dance—but reese can’t either.

their dance is a tangled mess of limbs and jerky movements. reese’s hands are on shauna’s shoulders and shauna has her hands planted on the girl’s hips, the two swaying side to side with an orchestra of giggles as their music.

in some exaggerated sequence of events, she might’ve told you that shauna swept her off her feet and gave her a kiss once they clock striked midnight. but that’d be a lie because she wasn’t exactly sure what time it was.

doomcoming was a blur, reese doesn’t remember much but she knows travis avoids her like the plague, more than he already had, and jackie is sinking further into her depression ridden isolation.

“the wilderness.. will guide them back to us.”

lottie had really gotten into her whole wilderness thing after doomscoming. apparently reese’s brain being all fuzzy and loopy was the wilderness trying to talk to them and all they had to do was listen.

and since laura lee was gone.. reese was more than willing to commit to the role of falsehood. one hand on the bible and another in lottie’s hand, spewing out nonsense that she had almost conditioned herself to believe.

“you have a gift, lottie—a blessing. you’re special and it’s up to you to use this blessing for good.. to get us home.” reese whispers, a smile on her lips that didn’t quite reach her eyes. she’d like to think maybe she looked a bit like laura lee, with her perfect blonde hair and her soothing presence.

and maybe out here reese was soothing. lottie looked pretty soothed anyways, her eyes closed and her fingers intertwined with reese’s as if she was trying to communicate with the forest.

laura lee couldn’t help but reese can.

jackie’s death occurs at the dawn of snow, reese thinks it’s punishment for the events of doomcoming. snow means their conditions in the cases of hunting and warmth will be worse with their lack of survival skill.

reese cries for a while. she wonders if it’s for jackie or the tears shauna shed. but she chooses not to ponder on that much longer because jackie wouldn’t want them to cry—she’d want them to feed.

WILDERNESS RELATIONSHIPS

girls guide to murder & cannibalism

winter is rough for everyone. rougher for the other girls because misty, crystal and reese won’t stop singing show tunes and shauna’s bound to pop anytime soon.

reese had never pegged shauna to be the type of girl to sleep with her bestfriend’s boyfriend but reese had never liked jeff sadecki anyways. she blamed their shortcomings on him and his stupid teenage boy brain and the fact he can’t keep it in his pants.

misty and reese remain as close as ever. reese shares her very last season magazines with misty, the ones that she used to read while lying down on the floor of her bedroom with laura lee. but misty understands her in a way laura lee never would.

“why are these pages cut up?” misty whispers into the night. the other girls are asleep and the two are sitting in front of the fireplace flipping through the frayed pages of her magazines.

reese looks up with a trembling lip, wide brown eyes all glossy and teary. “misty..” she starts.

but she can hardly finish her sentence before misty’s wrapping her arms around her and cooing as if she were a baby, and she’d have to admit, the warm embrace of someone besides herself felt nice—especially now that they were out in the wilderness.

reese didn’t have to put it into words. misty had gathered context clues from the way reese looked at shauna whenever she opened her mouth.

it was an unspoken agreement between the two.

with shauna’s impending pregnancy and lottie’s determination to claim role as father, reese spends most of her time trying to make sure shauna is comfortable. a day before the baby shower reese spends hour in a corner of the cabin knitting a hat for the baby, stabbing herself too many times to count but it was worth it to see the smile on shauna’s face.

“i—um, i made this for the baby.. i might be a little big but, the bigger the better, right?” reese awkwardly giggles, handing shauna the little beanie with shaky hands.

shauna stares at it for a while before smiling, rolling the knitted edges between her fingers.

“thanks reese.”

but it doesn’t come as a shock when wilderness baby doesn’t make it. shauna is rightfully devastated and so are the other girls, desperate to calm her down but between her teenage hormones and the stress of a grieving mother in the woods, there isn’t much they can do.

amidst the chaos of winter, natalie and reese surprisingly bond over their shared love for the sex pistols and natalie is rightfully shocked because well, reese graves doesn’t look like the kinda person who would be into sid vicious and whatever he had going on.

“i go to the radioshack—after school. stacy jones knew my sister so she lets me stay a little after closing hours to listen. um, my favorite album is never mind the bollocks, here’s the sex pistols.”

natalie laughs, “shut up! mine too! jeez, graves. i never imagined you to be a sex pistols fan. hey, maybe when we get the hell out of here we can catch a show together or something?”

“oh yeah, sure!”

lottie and reese have an odd relationship.

reese is more than happy to open her bible and read lottie a couple scriptures, words scribbled out and replaced and revised for her own. they have something of a sisterhood, a close bond and a closer bond when it comes to the wilderness.

the last thing she wanted to see was lottie basically get beaten to death by shauna. and sure, reese had a huge crush on shauna but still—lottie looked terrible.

“reese..” lottie mumbles, her eyes swollen and reese’s eyes all watery as their fingers intertwine.

she’s weak and her voice is soft, it physically pains reese to hear her like this. “shh.. you’re hurt. just rest—i’ll be right here when you wake up,”

lottie’s smile is sweet and her eyes close.

WILDERNESS IN THE SPRING

girls guide to guides

the cabin burns up, it reminds her of the flickering flames of the plane, or the flickering of the fireplace that she’d sit in front of.

tai and reese get closer over the spring, reese taking on the role of helping taissa build the shelters. it almost felt like summer camp.

“i’ve always wanted to get to know you,” reese mumbles, embarrassed.

“well, here i am.” she grins.

van “educates” reese on her favorite movies and reese makes sure van knows all the best musicals there are to know.

“you have to see grease! when we’re rescued i wanna see it on broadway.. i’ve only ever seen it taped. never in person.” reese says dreamily.

van chuckles, “maybe they’ll let you see it for free. y’know, the whole traumatic plane crash—they’ll feel so bad they’ll bring.. what’s his face?”

“danny zuko,”

“yeah. danny zuko. they’ll bring him right to you.”

shauna and reese eventually begin their tumultuous relationship. shauna’s all anger and aggression and reese is more than willing to indulge in it. playing the role as shauna’s wilderness guide, claiming her actions all have an explanation.

“you’re doing the right thing, shauna.. the wilderness—it speaks through you.” reese says.

shauna smiles, her calloused fingers intertwine with reese’s. she doesn’t say anything, but her actions say more than her words can.

THE RESCUE, TW FOR OVERDOSE

girls guide to suicide and therapy

the lights are blinding. her parents are there—and her siblings are too. scared and worried.

but why? she was a star out there—she helped. she helped lottie and she helped shauna.. she helped misty—she helped everyone the only way she knew how.

reese could survive the wilderness, 19 months of the forest—the cold and eating her friends. but she could stomach the blood and the mangled bodies but the moment she was alone, deep in her thoughts, she crumbled.

reese graves is determined dead by overdose three months after the yellowjackets are rescued. found slumped against the bedpost of her childhood room.

the last moments of this info dump are a little messy because we don’t completely know what happened in spring so i don’t wanna post her spring arc until it’s fully done! i’ll go more into depth about her suicide in another post but i just wanted to go ahead and post her lore hehehhe :3

@artificialroux @logansdogmotif @puppybutcher @ohno-people @moonyvvamp @natscatorcciosgf 🐇

#🐰 𓈒ㅤ͡⊹ dottie talks #reese graves #shauna shipman #misty quigley #yellowjackets ocs #religious trauma #falsehood #yellowjackets 𓂃