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Chapter Text

Dot and Shelby were an unlikely pair, but somehow, they ended up going to New York together.

No offence to the Goodkind girl, but she wouldn’t exactly have been Dot’s first choice to bring along on her first vacation. It wasn’t that she disliked her, necessarily, but they didn’t exactly run in the same circles, and the extent of her knowledge about the girl was basically that she was Andrew’s girlfriend. The same Andrew she’d caught with another girl in his car, before he literally bought drugs from her. It was not a good rep to have.

Her opinion started to change a little, though, when Shelby was one of the first people to approach Dot after she lost her dad. The news had somehow managed to make its way around the entire school in just a few days, and people had been walking on eggshells around her since they’d first found out.

It was fucking infuriating.

Fading into the background wasn’t exactly an option anymore, so Dot withstood the stares and the whispers and the pity until finally, finally, someone decided to talk to her. The blonde approached her one lunch, accent strong even for Texas, and stumbled her way through a fairly awkward (but sincere) apology for her loss. She invited Dot to come eat with them too, which was very quickly turned down – but still, it was a nice gesture.

That was basically the extent of their interaction until they were paired in biology, and Dot wasn’t one to get involved in other people’s shit, but Shelby really liked to share. At first it was light small talk – sharing homework and babbling about student council meetings, but at some point, something switched. And without any idea how she’d ended up there, Dot spent one extremely long biology lesson listening to the blonde rant about her parents.

Shelby had been competing in pageants since she first started walking, but they’d always been fairly local – always in Texas at least. Her latest one was a little out of the ordinary, being in New York, and apparently her parents weren’t entirely on board with the idea. Paying for tickets and accommodation for the whole family seemed excessive for just one pageant, and letting Shelby go on her own was absolutely out of the question. It seemed like that would be the end of it.

Except Dot sort of had a solution to that problem.

Against all her protests, her dad had insisted on getting her some insanely elaborate gift in his last few weeks, splashing out on flights to New York, a twin hotel room, and tickets to see ‘School of Rock’ of all things on Broadway. It had been Dot’s go-to movie for as long as she could remember, before her dad had even got sick. He’d always promised that they’d go see it on stage, one day, together.

Except when he gave her the two tickets, they weren’t for him to join her.

Her dad had wiggled his eyebrows mischievously when she’d opened the envelope, telling her to take Mateo along and then proceeding to give her the most awkward sex talk of her life. It was mortifying, sure, but Dot was beyond grateful, and the idea of taking a trip to the city with her sorta-maybe-crush wasn’t completely awful.

But after her dad was gone, Mateo was nothing more than a painful reminder of the man he’d cared for. Looking at him just made her think of medication and hospital beds and everything she’d lost, and taking him to New York started sounding less and less like a vacation.

At some point she made the decision to just go alone, one last hurrah before she came back to Texas to meet with some woman who could supposedly help her evade foster care until she turned eighteen. She’d still get to see the show she’d been dreaming about since she was old enough to understand the story, and that was enough.

But it also meant she had an extra ticket laying around. An extra flight, and an extra bed in a hotel room.

Maybe she was feeling generous, or maybe it was the creeping realisation that she actually really didn’t want to make the whole trip on her own, but Dot told Shelby about the ticket in between glares from their bio teacher for being too loud.

And maybe Shelby was feeling reckless, or maybe she was battling her own kind of loneliness. But she accepted.

Dot scoffed to herself at the thought of Shelby telling her precious daddy that she’d found a friend to go to New York with, imagining his face when the blonde dropped her name. She could almost hear the please, daddy, Dottie needs the light of the lord in her life right now but decided not to question the other girl’s methods as, against all odds, they ended up working.

For two people who’d barely said a word to each other outside of classes, they fell into a routine pretty easily. Shelby grabbed them both a coffee before she picked up Dot to head to the airport, and the silence in the car was weirdly comfortable, even if the blonde insisted on playing trashy country music until they got to their destination.

Sharing a hotel room was also pretty simple – Dot was a morning shower person, Shelby preferred evenings. It was a little surprising that the pageant queen didn’t try and force a conversation into every quiet lull, but when Dot thought about it, she realised that she’d never seen the other girl so relaxed. It was like the public persona dropped away, and she just stopped trying so hard.

It made Dot like her a whole lot more.

They had a few days in the city – the first day to get settled, the second evening for the show, and the third for Shelby’s pageant. It seemed like that’d be it, nothing dramatic or remarkable, just a few days away from everything before they both returned to reality.

On the first night, though, both exhausted from the long flight, Shelby decided to break the quiet in the hotel room. It wasn’t entirely clear what prompted Shelby’s sudden honesty – maybe she’d been waiting a long time to say something, or maybe it was the heavy darkness that she could hide behind, or maybe it was just the fact that she was too tired to know better. Either way, she spoke up into the night, voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Dottie? Are you still awake?”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause for a second, almost like Shelby was fighting with herself to get the words out. “Can I tell you why I didn’t want to bring my parents?”

It was a pretty odd question, but Dot really didn’t have the energy to try and work out where it was going, so she answered quickly. “Sure.”

Another long pause. A sharp inhale. “My daddy runs this prayer circle. He says it’s- well… he says it’s to heal people.” She paused, giving that a second to sink in before deciding that she hadn’t made it clear. “He helps them pray away their… their sin.”

Dot was silent on the other side of the room, but suddenly feeling a whole lot more awake. This clearly wasn’t just another attempt at casual small talk.

“I don’t…” Shelby faltered for a second. The brunette could practically hear the tremble in her voice, but silently urged her to go on. “I don’t want to be a part of that.” She sighed, then rushed through her words like they burned her tongue. “I don’t him to make me be a part of that.”

Oh. 

Dot took a moment to gather her thoughts before she tried to speak. It wasn’t technically a confession, but it was probably the closest Shelby had ever gotten to one, and she wanted to make sure her response was right. It was quiet for a few minutes as she thought it over, trying to figure out a way to comfort the other girl without pushing her too far, but she realised after a moment that the silence was probably just freaking her out even more, and decided to just go with the first thing she’d thought.

“Hey Shelby?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you came.”

---

Fatin’s dad’s affair was really the last straw.  Or, well, the last straw on a towering haystack of shit, as she would put it.

Fatin spent her whole childhood biting her tongue, learning an instrument because her parents wanted her to, and never fighting back for the exact same reason. The cello was fun until it wasn’t anymore, until it was another chore on her checklist of perfection, but she swallowed every single one of her mother’s instructions and just hoped that at the end of it, she’d still have enough room to be her own person. By the time the sight of a bow was enough to make her feel physically sick, it was too late to give it up - apparently, she was some sort of ‘prodigy’ or something.

Never mind the fact that she was a kid, too.

She kept up the instrument mostly to keep her mom off of her back, but there was a part of her that also saw it as an opportunity. For college, maybe, or some future career – either way, it was the closest thing she had to a ticket out of that house and she clung to it with every ounce of focus that she had left.

Her dad was sort of like a calm point in the storm, for a long time. Sure, sometimes he brushed off Fatin’s words like she was the same age as her brothers, but most of the time he had her back. He comforted her when she got in trouble at school. He sheltered her from her mother’s incessant expectations. And he took her side when she begged for an extension of her curfew.

In a way that was the start of Fatin’s freedom, finally giving her just a few hours where she didn’t have to be the perfect daughter or the musical prodigy, but could instead drink cheap beer and make bad decisions and be a teenager.

It was fair to say that she grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

Long nights practicing her latest piece rolled into even longer nights at parties in the houses of kids she didn’t even know. She fell into keg-stands and night-life and the beds of strangers – guys or girls. Just as long as they didn’t know her last name.

It was seamless, really, the way she slipped from one sphere of her life to another and back again. But the longer she spent with that freedom, the harder it got to slide back into her place behind the cello, and Fatin found her strict control of herself slipping slightly.

The first hint was the night she missed her curfew by over an hour, shuffling into the lounge sheepishly, heels in hand, and stumbling through some half-hearted lie about where she’d been. Luckily, she managed to breeze past the whole situation by promising her dad that it wouldn’t happen again, falling easily into their light-hearted banter as he showed her the current focus of his financial interests. Crisis averted.

The second time she slipped, though? That was a whole lot harder to fix.

In hindsight, sending out the photo of her dad to his entire contact list may not have been very high on the list of Fatin’s best decisions, but she was angry - rightfully so - and snapped in the only way she knew how. She’d expected her plan to go off without a hitch – with no way to trace the anonymous messages back to their source, it seemed totally fool proof.

In practice it went a little less smoothly.

Fatin was sat at the kitchen table with her parents, bracing herself to be yelled at for sharing the picture, but more than that, bracing herself for her father to be the real target of the all-consuming tension that filled the room. For a second, she was more focused on the very real possibility that her parents may be about to tell her that they were splitting up, and any thoughts of her potential punishment were pushed to the back of her mind.

And then they started speaking.

In the end maybe the affair wasn’t the last straw. Maybe it was the way he denied it. Or the way she got the blame. Or maybe it was the way her mom couldn’t even look her in the eye anymore.

Either way, the night before Fatin was supposed to be shipped off to some boarding school on the other side of the country, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Within half an hour, she had all the essentials packed into this ridiculously overpriced watertight suitcase, and a one-way ticket booked to New York. A few of the most expensive watches she could find were stashed in the front pocket, and by the time it was dark, she had snuck out of the house without looking back.

She called her parents the next morning from a hotel, not particularly wanting to hear from them, but also not entirely on board with the idea of a nationwide manhunt if they thought she’d gone missing. They were beyond angry, which she’d expected, but there were no desperate pleas for her to come home. No promises to work this out, together, as a family. Maybe they were just glad she was out of their hair.

And that, that was the real last straw.

The next few months were spent finding an apartment that she could afford from the watch-money, then realising that she’d probably need something else to sustain her eventually. She took advantage of her fairly impressive Instagram following, building her platform and doing everything she could to boost the numbers before finally, finally getting some sponsorship deal with a company called ‘The Dawn of Eve’. Essentially, it sold tacky visors and metal water bottles in this crude shade of baby pink, as if that made it a feminist company, but they were willing to pay her to advertise their shit.

She found a way to rock the visor, obviously. She was Fatin fucking Jadmani. Of course she did.

As much as she’d deny it, Fatin was a little scared when she’d first arrived. A new city surrounded by new people was enough to freak anyone out, but knowing she had nowhere to go back to? It didn’t exactly help. True to her character, though, she threw herself into the social scene, getting invites to elaborate parties with other influencers and pushing down all the fear until it was practically non-existent.

Then it wasn’t scary anymore. It was just lonely.

She had ‘friends’, sure, but they were less of a support network, and more of a number to call if she wanted another famous face to feature on her latest tiktok. The parties were fun, and full of people, but there were never really any of the same people at different events, which made them pretty hard to hold on to.

Regardless, Fatin was thriving. She had an apartment and a sponsorship deal and almost three million followers on tiktok. She was away from her parents. She was free, in all the ways that counted.

One Friday night saw her headed to yet another party, this one at a rooftop pool, and Fatin was hoping to find someone young and good looking to collaborate with on her next video. Throwing on what she knew was a killer outfit, she made her way to the subway station and sidled down the platform, brushing past a brunette girl holding a book to find a free spot. She looked a little familiar for a second, but Fatin chalked it down to the fact that she’d been riding that same train for a while now – probably just another local.

She settled among the crowd, and tried to ignore the way that, even surrounded by people, she still felt so unbearably alone.

She was in New York, and she was headed to a party, and her parents had finally loosened (or, completely let go of) the reigns they’d had on her. She was free, she reminded herself.

So why the fuck didn’t she feel like it?

---

Rachel really didn’t know how she’d ended up getting roped into this.

She’d come home late, one Friday night, after spending the evening at practice trying to perfect her latest dive. This wasn’t an unusual thing for her, so when she pushed open the front door to find the whole family gathered in the living room like they were ready to have some sort of meeting, she was (understandably) a little confused.

Mentally preparing for what she thought would be a kind of intervention, Rachel dumped her bag by the door and toed out of her sneakers before walking over and flopping down next to her dad on the sofa, trying to be as casual as possible.

“What are we doing?” She smiled, glancing over at the way Nora was pulling on the sleeves of her sweatshirt, like she always did when she was nervous. Or like when she was guilty. Either way it wasn’t a good sign.

“Your sister was just telling us about this lecture she wanted to go to on Friday, next week.”

Of course. This was about Nora. Fucking typical.

She kept her expression neutral, though, hoping not to draw too much attention to her annoyance, and quirking an eyebrow at her mom as she waited for her to continue. This conversation was annoying, sure, but Rachel still hadn’t figured out what exactly it had to do with her.

“Well, Rach, it’s a little far away, and it’ll be pretty late by the time it’s over.” She paused and glanced at Nora, seeing the tense set of her daughter’s shoulders before continuing. “Your father and I don’t really want her out on her own at night.”

Too late, Rachel realised just what this was.

“I have practice on- “

“It’s just one night, Rach,” her dad cut in. “I’m sure missing one session won’t set you back too far?”

It was phrased like a question, but Rachel heard the hidden message underneath. Nora’s stuff would take priority. It always would. That was just the way things went.

“Besides, you’ve been working so hard recently. We all think you could use a bre- “

Rachel stood abruptly, sure that she’d explode if she sat there a second longer. She looked over at Nora, but still her sister refused to meet her eyes. There was no way she was going to get out of this.

“Yeah,” she said, biting back the anger that threatened to taint her words. “Sure. Whatever.”

She went straight to her room without another word.

A week later, Rachel was half an hour away from leaving with Nora and was still trying to come up with some sort of excuse to get her out of the evening. The sisters had barely spoke a word to each other all week, making polite conversation at dinner with their parents but otherwise only communicating when they were arguing about something.

In short, it was shaping up to be a great Friday night.

Against all Rachel’s hope, the two headed out together at around 6:30 pm, walking in total silence towards their nearest subway station. For whatever reason, about ten minutes after they’d left, Nora decided to break the awkward tension with a tentative question.

“Do you want to know what the lecture is about?”

Rachel didn’t even hesitate before biting out a quick “No.” It wasn’t like she’d have any clue what Nora was talking about anyway.

“Are you sure? Because you’re going to be there for the whole thing. And it’s actually pretty interesting- “

“I said no.” Rachel snapped, glaring at the side of her sister’s head. “I’m here because I have to be, because for whatever ridiculous reason, you and mom and dad think I need a break. Which is totally insane, by the way.”

“We’re just worried about you- “

Rachel rolled her eyes and tried to stomp ahead of Nora, but the other girl jumped in front of her and forced her to stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Look at you,” Rachel spat. “Always getting in my fucking way.”

It was silent again after that.

It was silent when Rachel started walking again, and Nora made no further attempts to stop her. It was silent as they pushed through the turnstiles into the subway station. It was silent as they stood on the platform beside a girl who was babbling excitedly to her friend in a basketball jersey about all the sightseeing they were going to do.

It was totally silent. And Rachel hoped it’d stay that way until they were home, where they could go back to pretending the other didn’t exist.

It was going to be a long night.

---

Jeff was a dream, and then he was gone, and Leah wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with that.

It all started with a book, genius in some places and weirdly sentimental near the end, but she loved it all the same. Apparently, they’d only been assigned it because it was written by an alumnus, but she pored through it with a focus that was a little too intense to be purely academic, and even opted to re-read it when she finished it the first time.

Then she found out the author was visiting the school. Jefferey Galanis was visiting the school. She was only slightly excited.

His presentation was a little awkward at first, and it was obvious that public speaking was definitely not his thing, but he got into his groove when the audience laughed at a couple of his jokes. By the time he started reading a passage, his voice was even and relaxed, and Leah thought she might love the book even more when he read it aloud.

Somehow, she ended up offering to drive him home, which turned into tentative jokes about her music choices, which then turned into fries on the edge of a basketball court. Before she knew what she was doing, she had put her number into his ancient excuse for a phone, and all she could think about was the fact that maybe the end of the book didn’t seem so weirdly sentimental anymore. Or, maybe it did, but she just didn’t care because he’d written it.

It was sort of a blur after that, a haze of memorised numbers and texting until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, of hotel rooms and coffee dates, of a whirlwind that swept her up and left everything else behind it. She was happy, she really was, even if the whole thing had to stay strictly between her and the unsaved number on her phone screen. She was so, unbelievably happy.

And then she wasn’t.

Because he was outside her house in his car, and he wasn’t laughing when she joked about him being an uber, and he looked like he was on the verge of throwing up. Because for a second there was silence, and then he was telling her that someone had sent him her birth certificate. Because she couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe, and he kept yelling that she needed to get out of the car. Because then she finally listened.

Because then he was gone.

Bottom shelf vodka on a school camping trip dulled it for about half a night, but when the sunlight made watery pools on the forest floor and her head had finally cleared, she got to thinking again. Thinking about the tent the night before, and Ian’s words, and the birth certificate-

And then it finally clicked into place.

Of course it was Ian. It couldn’t have been anyone else. He was the only one she told, and he’d made it exceedingly clear what he’d thought of the author. Everything finally made sense, and it sharpened her heartbreak into a single pinprick, a dart that was sailing through the air and ready to hit its target.

Ian was the bullseye.

She confronted him one afternoon at school, as he dodged through a crowd of faceless students, dragging him over to the side of the pathway and ripping into him without a moment’s hesitation. He denied it, of course, bullshit excuses spilling from his lips like she didn’t already know the truth, like she hadn’t worked it out already. It just made her angrier.

Determined to get some sort of honesty from her once-best-friend, though, Leah pushed her phone into his chest and waited, bottom lip caught between her teeth, for him to take it.

“Call him. I want you to call him and tell him it was you, and that you won’t tell anyone else.”

He looked at her like she was crazy.

The argument quickly devolved from there, into denials and refusal and the slumped shoulders of a boy who was done trying to defend himself. He didn’t even look pissed when he finally gave up, one hand fisted around the strap of his bag, knuckles white. His eyes just seemed sad, with something almost like loss creeping behind the downturned corners on his mouth.

Which was ridiculous. Leah was the one who’d lost something. Not him.

“I’m sorry, Leah. I can’t help you.”

She watched him walk away, filing seamlessly back into the crowd of students, and just like that, the last thread of hope she’d been clinging to slipped from her grasp, and she was falling, falling, falling.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever stop.

Her parents, with all their condescending ignorance, gave her the standard speech on heartbreak. The it’ll get better and you’ll find someone else and high school boys aren’t worth crying over. It went straight it one ear and out the other without a moment’s consideration – they didn’t understand what she’d had. They didn’t understand what she’d lost. Nobody ever would.

After the accident, things only got worse. There were people asking her if she’d been trying to get hurt, if she’d been waiting for a car to come round the corner at top speed, and to be honest - she didn’t have an answer for them. There were bruised ribs and stitches over her eyebrow and a couple of weeks of mandatory bed rest, but still, still, it all paled in comparison to the hole Jeff had left behind.

Leah briefly wondered if the doctors would try stitching that up, too.

Eventually, her parents must have decided to take matters into their own hands. Leah wasn’t entirely sure what had finally pushed them into making the decision, but one night they both came into her room and sat on the edge of her bed with serious expressions, and she knew some sort of ultimatum was coming.

Her mom was wringing her hands nervously, her dad had one arm loosely curled around her side, the other placed hesitantly on the crumpled edge of Leah’s comforter. She flicked her eyes between them, half bored, half expectant, but when her dad finally broke the tense silence in the room, his words were the last thing she’d expected.

“We’re going to New York for a few days. All of us. Together.”

For fucks sake.

It was insane that they thought it would fix everything, like she could see a Broadway show and ride the subway and suddenly she would be fine again. If anything, all it did was reaffirm her belief that they had absolutely zero idea what she was feeling - but there was still no way of getting out of it.

By the next evening, she was twenty minutes into her drive to the airport, and if either of them mentioned how this was ‘exactly what she needed’ one more time, she was going to lose it.

“A family trip to the big apple, Leah,” her mom said. She paused for a second, glancing over at her husband before continuing. “If that doesn’t pull you out of your funk, I don’t know what will.”

“Please don’t refer to my emotional devastation as a funk.”

Her parents stopped trying to get her to talk after that.

The flight was long, but Leah didn’t really mind because her mom and dad both passed out twenty minutes after take-off, leaving her with a few hours of well-deserved peace. She pulled The Nature of Her out of her bag and flicked it open to a random page, less concerned with the story itself, and more focused on the messy blue scrawl crammed into the margins.

It was comforting, in a morbid sort of way, to trawl back through her mess of a relationship in the familiar slope of his handwriting. She saw the way each ‘y’ twisted at the end, and for a second she was back in a hotel room, way before everything had collapsed. Before his car was outside her house and before he told her to delete his number and before someone sent her birth certificate-

It was comforting.

Upon arrival, Leah found that she hadn’t really thought about what sharing a room with her parents would mean.  Because then she was living it, withering under their combined stare, like they were waiting for something to snap in her, and it was that which prompted her to find any pathetic excuse to get away from them - just for an evening. And after an overly dramatic speech about how maybe a breath of fresh air somewhere new might finally get her out of her ‘funk’, they seemed pretty convinced.

She wasn’t entirely sure where to head, but after a few minutes of aimless walking, she found herself at the entrance of a subway station, and figured it would probably be as good an escape route as any. The platform was crowded and hot and loud, but she was on her own again, and that was a victory in itself.

She found an empty spot and leaned back against a pillar, quickly glancing around at the crowd in the station and flicking her phone onto silent.

And once she was comfortably settled, she pulled The Nature of Her back out of her bag.

---

Bernice Blackburn wasn’t usually the type to enter those rigged TV competitions, but the one time she did, it went a whole lot better than Toni was expecting.

For weeks, this wildlife conservation company had been advertising its newest fundraiser: a huge raffle with the prizes ranging from a gift card for Waffle House to a shiny new swing set to an all-expenses paid trip to New York. Donating to the charity entered you into the raffle, and Martha was determined to convince her mom that calling up to make a donation was the most important way to spend her Saturday afternoon.

Toni had been at the Blackburn’s since the night before, crashing in Martha’s room after her game because, seriously, if her foster parents spent one more night blasting country music at top volume, she was going to lose it. She stayed the next morning, as she always did, for Bernice’s famous blueberry pancakes, and ended up spending the day laying around in the lounge with Marty and her family. They’d thrown on some cheesy romcom at some point, which both Bernice and Martha were fully invested in, but Toni joined Martha’s siblings in fake gagging every time the couple was on screen together.

It wasn’t an unusual day, chilling with the Blackburns. It was pretty much how she spent all her weekends. It was nice though, in a strangely domestic way, spending the afternoon with a family that Toni was starting to recognise as her own.

Commercial breaks sent Martha’s siblings rocketing into the kitchen for snacks, and the distant sound of their bickering over who would get to use ‘the good cup’ could be heard faintly over the TV, but Bernice and the two older girls ignored it and instead focused on the advertisement now playing. There was a familiar, overplayed song, a dreary montage of injured animals, and a huge flashing “CALL NOW” sign at the bottom of the screen, all of which made Bernice groan. She knew what was coming.

That damn wildlife centre commercial. Again. Really?

Bernice sighed and shared a quick look with Toni as Martha launched into her speech about how it was their duty to conserve the natural world, listing off statistics that sounded true enough (though, to be honest, neither of the other two would have known if she’d made them up). Martha’s siblings were back now, bouncing in front of the TV and vehemently agreeing with everything their older sister said, but Toni had an inkling they were more interested in the New York trip than the poor, suffering animals.

The movie had started back up again after the commercial, but Martha’s speech was still going and the kids still blocked half of the screen. At last, Bernice relented, claiming she’d never know peace again if they didn’t all stop talking about that god-forsaken wildlife centre. She promised to make one, one, donation, and Martha stared for the whole time she made the call, grinning from ear to ear.

Once Bernice had hung up, one of her sisters leaped onto the sofa Toni was sprawled across, knocking all of the air out of the older girl as she babbled excitedly.

“You think we’re going to New York, Toni?”

Toni smiled affectionately and poked the other girl in the side to get her to shift over a bit.

“Don’t get your hopes up, kid.”

Martha’s sister pouted, but was quickly distracted by another gross kissing scene in the movie, and was soon laughing again with Toni as they both hid their faces behind their hands. Bernice put down the phone. Martha sat in content silence.

And it looked like that would be the end of it.

Or, at least, it did. Until two weeks later, when Bernice got a call to tell her that her name had been drawn in the raffle. And not for the Waffle House gift card, or the brand-new swing set. Instead, Bernice Blackburn had accidentally won an all-expenses paid trip for her family to New-freakin-York.

And she had an extra ticket.

She had an extra ticket and she didn’t even hesitate for a second before she offered it to Toni, telling the girl that it just wouldn’t be a family trip without her.

And if Toni maybe shed a tear as she was trying to get to sleep that night, she definitely didn’t tell anyone.

Another two weeks passed, and at last the start of the summer vacation saw the Blackburns heading to the airport, dragging with them a sleep deprived Toni and what was probably an unnecessary amount of baggage. The trip was an amazing opportunity, sure, and she was seriously grateful that Bernice had invited her along, but did the flight really have to be at 7am?

Toni’s grouchiness aside, they touched down in New York around 9 in the morning (more like 10, according to the new time zone) and headed straight to the hotel so they could all catch up on some well-deserved rest. Even the younger kids, who had been practically bouncing with excitement since they first found out about the prize, were dragging their feet with exhaustion.

By some stroke of luck, Martha and Toni scored a room to themselves, whilst Bernice was across the hall in their (insanely fancy) hotel with the other kids. They took a few minutes to marvel at the room, the ridiculous freebies, Toni grumbling something about “fucking one percenters” under her breath, before they crashed into their respective beds for a few hours.

It was a small miracle that they managed to convince Bernice to let them go out alone when they awoke sometime later in the evening. There was a lot of begging about this being a once in a lifetime opportunity, and the city of dreams, and Toni was pretty sure the only reason they were eventually given permission was because Martha’s mom had seen first-hand the kind of damage Toni’s fists could do, so Martha would probably be pretty safe with her.

So, the two girls found themselves heading to the nearest subway station a couple hours before sunset, not entirely sure where they were heading. Toni wasn’t all that interested in sight-seeing, but Martha looked like she was practically about to burst, and to be honest her smile was all the convincing Toni needed. Even if it meant being all tourist-y, which was definitely not her thing, Marty was happy. And that was enough for Toni.

They squeezed onto the platform between these two girls who looked like they could be sisters, and another pair which could not have been more opposite. One, a tall blonde fiddling with an obnoxiously large map, talking far too loudly in a southern accent to the other, a shorter brunette in worn cargo pants who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else.

Toni held herself back from grumbling something about how they were typical tourists, seeing as she and Martha were technically tourists too, but it wasn’t made any easier by the fact that the crowded platform meant she kept getting shoved backwards into the blonde.

The stuffy July heat and the loud crowd were not a good combination, but still Martha was smiling, and Toni was in a new city with her best friend.

And really, there was no possible way for this to go wrong.

Chapter Text

Toni was trying to listen to Martha, she really was, but there was just so much noise and movement around them – it was impossible to focus.

Somewhere around the time the other girl started listing off the sites she wanted to visit while they were here, Toni zoned out, having heard all of this multiple times before from Martha’s insanely detailed itinerary over the weeks leading up to the trip. She nodded in all the right places and smiled at her friend’s animation, but the majority of her attention had been captured by the people around them.

There was a sort of small crowd around the area of the platform that they were standing on. The sisters she’d seen earlier were still standing on the other side of Martha, but she was starting to doubt that they were even related, judging by the way they both seemed determined to look in any direction except at each other. There was another girl wedged in behind Marty, black bob brushing over her chin, music loud enough through her headphones that Toni could just about make out the voice of P!nk. To the left of her was a taller girl, also with earphones, dripping in fancy jewellery and designer clothes that were definitely not good choices for a subway. Further back, a brunette leaned on a pillar, nose buried in a book but occasionally glancing up at the rich girl, almost like she recognised her. And, of course, right behind Toni was the blonde southern girl and her friend.

For possibly the tenth time since she’d entered the station, Toni felt something knock into her back, and despite her determination to stay calm and collected for Martha’s sake, it was the last straw. She spun around, frustrated, ready to tell the Texan to just back off a little, but instead was face to face with a grimy plaid shirt that had definitely not been there before.

A guy, maybe six foot, and in desperate need of a shave, was trying to shove his way into the already too small space between Toni and the blonde. And it wasn’t long before she figured out why.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He drawled. His breath smelt like beer and smoke. “You lost?”

It wasn’t directed at her, but it pissed her off regardless. With the tiny amount of distance between them, Toni saw the way the blonde’s shoulders immediately tensed. She saw the way her friend in the cargo shorts, who had previously looked like she could drop dead from boredom, snapped to attention.

“I’m all good, thanks, mister.”

“You sure about that?” He grinned. He was missing a tooth. “I’m way better than a map.”

Toni glanced back at the map in the girls’ hands, this time not ridiculing how obnoxiously large it was, but instead noting the way she gripped it with white knuckles. For whatever ridiculous reason, the sight spurred her into action, and she decided that it was the perfect time to step in.

“She said she’s good, dude.”

The blonde looked at her, a little shocked, but with gratitude behind her green eyes. Green fucking eyes. Of course.

“Hey now, I’m just trying to be friendly.”

Against her will, the words reminded Toni of another night, in another city, and she heard Regan’s voice in her ear telling her to just leave it. She remembered they guys in the truck, remembered how they’d just wanted to make a new friend. She remembered throwing a punch and keeling back and accidentally hitting the wrong target. Toni hadn’t listened that night. And she wasn’t about to start now.

“She doesn’t need your help. Now maybe, if you’re so good with directions, you could try fucking off to the other end of the platform.”

He looked at her, dumbfounded for a second, like he hadn’t expected a pushback. It just made her angrier.

“Need a map?”

Saying that was decidedly not the best decision Toni had ever made, as the guy looked like he was about three seconds away from throwing a punch, but Toni wasn’t exactly known for her good decisions. Regardless, the cargo-shorts-girl had now stepped up next to her, and the guy looked a little less cocky at the prospect of facing two people instead of one.

He still might have pushed a little further, if the rich girl with all the jewellery hadn’t sidled up behind them a second later, ridiculously huge phone pinched between her fingers, camera aimed right at his stupid scraggly beard.

“Hey, Mr Loverman,” she said, smile crude fake and sickeningly sweet. “I can have your face on a billboard in half an hour.” She picked at some imaginary dirt under her nail then glanced back up. “And this is really not your best angle.”

That finally seemed to do it for the guy, who huffed something inaudible and stalked away from the small crowd, further down the platform and eventually disappearing into the mass of bodies.

Toni breathed heavily through her nose to dispel her lingering anger as she watched him walk away. She was here for Martha. Martha wouldn’t want her to chase after the guy and go apeshit. Instead, she did her best to blink back all thoughts of a grimy plaid shirt and uneven stubble and green eyes looking at her with gratitude.

She was here for Martha. And a jackass who couldn’t take no for an answer wasn’t going to change that.

---

Leah almost missed the whole argument, despite how close she was standing.

Still reeling from her conversation (if you could call it that) with her parents, she leaned against a pillar and pulled The Nature of Her from her bag, balancing the familiar weight in one hand and biting on the nails of the other. She was sick of being looked at like some sick puppy, like one wrong word would send her over the edge, and as much as the crowded subway station wouldn’t usually be her first choice for some alone time, it was away from her parents.

So, the way Leah looked at it, the station was basically her own personal library.

That was, until raised voices fairly close by snapped her eyes up from the printed words on the pages in front of her (and the ones scrawled in the margin) to a small huddle of girls. They seemed to be arguing with a guy who was swaying a little too much to be sober, and she watched as one of the girls got in his face. She was basically a full head shorter than him, which would have been kind of funny if she didn’t manage to make it look so intimidating.

Leah wasn’t entirely sure what the argument was about, but she could guess from the way the girl positioned herself in front of a pretty scared looking blonde, who’s friend had now joined the shorter girl in glaring daggers at the guy. From the corner of her eye, Leah saw a flash of movement as someone on the edges of her peripheral vision pulled out their earphones, holding their phone up and then marching over to the small crowd with more confidence than she’d ever seen anyone have.

Well, almost more than anyone she’d seen. Leah had a brief memory of a girl she used to go to school with who used to strut around in the exact same way-

Oh. Oh.

No way. No way was Fatin fucking Jadmani in the same subway station as her. The girl had literally stopped showing up to school in the middle of the last semester, and nobody had any idea why, until she was posting pictures of her new apartment in New York. The whole school was buzzing with rumours about how she’d managed it, with some claiming her parents were paying for the whole stunt, others joking that she’d found some sugar daddy in the city.

She didn’t really know Fatin, but she thought that was kind of harsh.

Leah would never admit it, but she’d been so intrigued by the whole situation that she’d actually turned on the other girl’s post notifications, so she saw every new photo of insane rooftop parties and bougie cocktails. She was just interested, that was all. It wasn’t like she’d also been one of the first people to follow Fatin’s tiktok account (that had now amassed a ridiculous number of followers – close to three million last time Leah checked).

Yeah, Leah basically forgot she existed.

She convinced herself that it was just a trick of the light, just for a second, until the girl came into full view at the edge of the arguing crowd, and then there was no doubt about it. There was Fatin, recording the drunk guy, and propping up her phone with the pop socket that sported a logo for a company she’d recently gotten a sponsorship deal with-

Not that Leah knew that. Of course she didn’t.

Leah thought about approaching the group for a second, but almost immediately reconsidered as she watched Fatin take her place alongside the other girls. What would she even say? Hey, Fatin, you probably don’t remember me, but we had English Lit together last year. Also, I may occasionally stalk your Instagram. No big deal.

Yeah, no. That was not happening.

Leah watched as the guy was finally scared off, stumbling off and melting back into the crowd, before turning back to her book. It was just a crazy coincidence, seeing Fatin here. And besides, there was no way the other girl would actually remember her.

It was suddenly a whole lot harder to focus on what she was reading.

---

Shelby looked right at the girl who’d been recording the creepy guy. There was something so familiar about her… That sarcastic quip, the cocky smirk – she’d definitely seen her somewhere before. Before she had the chance to figure it out though, the girl had spun on her (obscenely high) heels and returned to her original position, poking her earphones back in and typing on her phone at an impressive speed.

Shelby gave herself a second longer, but still couldn’t place why the other girl seemed so familiar, so turned back around just as Dot fell back into her spot beside her. Shelby turned to the other girl who’d come to her defence, the one in the basketball jersey, pasting on her best pageant winning smile and taking a few deep breaths before she spoke, hoping her voice wouldn’t betray how nervous she actually had been.

“Lord! Thank you for all that. You really didn’t need to- “

“Don’t mention it, Texas.”

Shelby was a little put off at the interruption, but persevered, taking the nickname as a light attempt at friendly humour on the other girl’s part, and so laughed good naturedly.

“It’s Shelby, actually.” She stuck out her hand. Still smiling. Still optimistic. But the other girl turned back to her friend with the pretty eyes, effectively cutting off the conversation.

“Good for you.”

Shelby’s smile slipped a little at that, unsure how she was supposed to take that in any way other than just plain rude. But she shook herself out of it pretty quickly, reminding herself that one girl with an attitude problem was absolutely not going to ruin her first trip out of Texas.

Regardless of her determination, Shelby was still beyond confused as to why the girl would even get involved if she was just going to act like that afterwards. Seriously, she was pretty short, and getting between a stranger and a creepy guy who was at least a head taller than her seemed like a pretty risky move - though to be fair, the girl did look like she could pack a punch.

It was obvious she was an athlete: even without the basketball jersey, Shelby could tell from the way she bounced on the balls of her feet when she tried to stand still, and when her fists clenched as she stared down that creepy guy her arms were-

Either way, the guy was gone. That was the point.

Shelby was looking at her map again and babbling excitedly about ‘School of Rock’ and one rude girl was not going to stop her good mood.

Dot actually seemed to be listening to the other girl when she brought up the musical, so the blonde persisted with the topic. Since arriving in New York, the two hadn’t really talked all that much, other than the whispered words Shelby had let slip in the darkened safety of their hotel room, so she was grateful for the common ground that the show provided. Dot seemed to genuinely light up whenever it was mentioned, and the blonde couldn’t help but smile along with her - Dottie may have been a grouch at times, but her happiness was totally infectious.

So, Shelby gushed about the soundtrack with the other Texan, map now folded and tucked away in her back pocket. She was headed to Broadway tonight, and she had a pageant tomorrow, and her parents were basically on the other side of the country. And maybe, just maybe, she’d end this trip with a new (and unexpected) friend.

It was enough to put anyone in a good mood.

---

Nora was vaguely aware of someone sliding behind her, a ratty plaid shirt hanging over his shoulders, and turned to watch him slink away through the crowd. He was grumbling something about a billboard under his breath, but the girl couldn’t really discern much other than that before he was gone, taking the stench of stale beer with him.

Even if she had tried, Nora wouldn’t have been able to hear much of anything in that station. She was too distracted by the voices of a group of teenage girls somewhere a little further down the platform, and the distant rumble of the tracks, and the muffled sound of a guitar from a busker somewhere in the station. The subway was always too loud, never a comfortable temperature, and without fail, smelling of something that was pretty much guaranteed to not be good. Nora hated it.

Louder than all of it, though, more overpowering than the din or the heat or the smell, was the crushing weight of Rachel’s stony silence. She glanced over at her twin sister as she fiddled with her frayed shirt sleeve, but as had become normal recently, Rachel refused to meet her eyes. In fact, the only time they really seemed to talk these days was when they were arguing, and even then, it was less talking and more Rachel yelling while Nora stared at her shoes.

Instead, when her sister was really irritating her, Nora took to venting all of her frustration into an old notebook. Nora never used to like journaling with an excess of feelings, but she’d simply had too many recently, and the book seemed like a safe place to put them. They wouldn’t hurt anyone there. They wouldn’t hurt Rachel any more than she already had.

The most confusing part of the whole situation was that Nora honestly didn’t know what she’d done wrong. She threw herself in front of the world for her sister, and, to her, it seemed like all she’d ever done is be punished for it. Rachel had the popularity and the friendship of the other divers and the admiration from her peers – and what did Nora have? Saturday night scrabble. And a sort of half boyfriend that she’d pushed away, who now wasn’t responding to any of her texts.

Nora was dragged out of her thoughts as the train screeched to a halt at the platform. Anything she’d even thought of saying to Rachel died in her throat as the other girl stepped through the doors into an empty car.

When they were younger, riding the subway with their parents, Rachel always used to make Nora get on in front of her so she knew they hadn’t been separated.

This time, though? Rachel didn’t even look back.

---

Dot watched as two girls who look like they could be siblings slipped into the empty car before her, closely followed by the girl who’d stood up for Shelby a few minutes before. Next was her friend, then the rich chick with the phone, and just behind her, a brunette holding a book who she hadn’t even noticed until now. Dot jumped into the car next and flopped into a seat facing the entrance, waiting for Shelby to come join her.

The blonde stayed by the door for a second, though, and Dot was quick to see why. She had a hand on the door, stopping it from closing for another girl, who kept looking around like she’d lost someone. The girl stepped past Shelby and quickly pulled one earphone out to thank her, letting the muffled sound of P!nk’s ‘Raise Your Glass’ fill the quiet in the carriage.

Before she got the chance to get more than a thank you out, though, there was a yell from someone out on the platform.

“Linh?”

The girl spun around and huffed. “Thom, seriously, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

She shot an apologetic look at Shelby before hopping back out of the car to meet her friend, and the blonde seemed to make a split-second decision to call out after her.

“Hey, I love your bangs!”

Through the still open doors, Dot could just about see the girl spin around and walk backwards for a few seconds. She looked confused, struggling to come up with a response (and really, Dot couldn’t blame her - who compliments a total stranger?) before calling back an awkward: “Uh- Thanks? I love your… blank forehead.”

It took everything in Dot not to burst out laughing.

Instead, she watched as Shelby stared out of the carriage, then strained her ears to listen to the muffled sound of the driver telling people to stand clear of the closing doors.

Still, Shelby seemed totally dumbstruck, frozen in place.

“You might wanna move, Texas.”

Dot glanced over and saw the girl in the basketball jersey smirking. It seemed to be enough to snap Shelby out of whatever she’d been thinking, though, because she jumped back from the doors and shot a scowl over at her earlier saviour. This time, she didn’t even try to hide it behind a forced smile.

Shelby fell into the seat next to Dot just as the train started moving, picking imaginary lint from her jeans and trying to ignore the other girl’s grin. Eventually, though, she caved, murmuring out an uncharacteristically snappy “What?” in the hopes that none of the other passengers would hear.

“Nothing. Just…” Dot trailed off, and Shelby sighed in frustration.

“What, Dottie?”

“Was that you trying to flirt?”

Shelby flushed bright red and darted her eyes around the car, paranoid, but all of the others seemed absorbed in their own business, so she turned back to Dot and hissed.

“Lord, Dottie, you can pay someone a compliment without other intentions.” She paused for a second then sat up a little straighter. “Like this: you have pretty eyes. See?”

“Sorry, Goodkind.” Dot fired back, still wearing a shit-eating grin. “I don’t swing that way.”

Shelby grumbled, but she made no attempt to respond. Not even to push the conversation away from what the brunette was clearly implying.

Dot couldn’t help but feel a little proud. That was definitely a step in the right direction.

---

Disregarding pretty much everything that had happened on the platform, Martha couldn’t have been more excited if she tried.

She and Toni were sat side by side at one end of the car, talking quietly about everything they wanted to do and see, all the places they’d visit on the trip. Well - Martha was doing most of the talking, but her friend mirrored her own elated expression, so that was something. It was nice for Martha to see Toni so happy, away from all the chaos back in Minnesota, with school and crappy foster families and fights – she looked at peace for once.

Most people never got the chance to see this side of Toni, the side that held her when she cried at night, or had gladiator fights with her younger siblings, or hopped on a subway going who-knows-where in an unfamiliar city just because her friend wanted to. So, Martha revelled in its appearance, and started planning an overly elaborate evening with her best friend, thinking of the time that stretched ahead of them, and everything they could do before they had to be back at the hotel.

Naturally, as soon as she thought about it, it all went to shit.

The train screeched over the tracks and Martha managed to convince herself that this was probably what the subway always sounded like. Her confidence faltered, though, when the car rocked a little too forcefully to be good, throwing her into Toni’s side.

Her friend steadied her quickly, before the two of them looked around the rest of the car at the other passengers.

The girl in the designer clothes had pulled out an earbud, and was glancing around in confusion. The twins, or sisters, or maybe absolute strangers (Martha honestly couldn’t tell at this point) were doing the same, though decidedly ignoring each other entirely. The two Texans were speaking quietly, probably also wondering whether this was a normal subway thing, or if they should be concerned. And the girl with the book – well, she looked like she might actually throw up.

The car was jolted again, though this time it seemed that the train had stopped entirely. There were a few seconds of eerie silence before the lights flickered off, plunging the car into total darkness, and Martha gripped onto Toni’s elbow unconsciously.

“It’s cool, Marty. Probably just stopping for a sec.”

That made basically zero sense, but Martha decided to roll with it until she heard another voice, quiet but just about audible. It sounded like- was someone praying?

Toni groaned next to her, leaning over to murmur in her ear.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

Martha was glad for the darkness for a second, allowing her to hide her laugh at her friend’s words. She had no problem with it, really, but even she had to admit that praying was just a little bit dramatic. Further down, around where the girl in the designer outfit had been sat, she heard another voice, much louder than the one before.

“What the fuck is happening?”

There was no time for a response, as the emergency lights chose that moment to finally jump into action, filling the car with a dim glow. The driver’s voice broke the silence, then, thickly accented and crackling through the ancient speakers, but Martha managed to discern something about technical difficulties in the noise.

That was totally fine. Technical difficulties. They’d probably get going again in a few minutes – no need to worry. She sat back, releasing her death grip on Toni’s elbow, and glanced down at her phone screen. 7:03 PM. Still plenty of time for all her big plans.

Martha waited patiently for the train to start moving again.

Chapter Text

Around twenty minutes after the emergency lights flicked on, Leah decided to make a mental list of all the things she’d learnt from her trip so far.

1. Fatin Jadmani apparently lived very close to the hotel she was staying at.
2. The subway was not a good place to go to relax.
3. She was the tiniest bit claustrophobic.

In some ways, you could have described the vacation as pretty productive, if you were viewing it as a sort of learning experience. If you actually looked at it as a break though, as some desperately needed R & R? Yeah, it was a steaming pile of shit.

The third revelation was probably the most problematic, considering the fact that she was literally trapped in a sealed metal box for an indefinite amount of time. She dealt with it as best she could, trying to avoid any extra attention and moving down the car so that her back was at one end, and the length of it stretched out in front of her. It helped, somewhat, but she apparently wasn’t as slick as she’d thought in hiding her distress, because a couple of minutes later, one of the girls had slid down beside her with a concerned smile.

“My mom always tells me to count my breaths,” she murmured, quietly enough that none of the other passengers seemed to hear her. “As in, inhale for four counts, then hold it for four, then out for four.”

Leah glanced over at the girl and quirked an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she laughed softly. “You just looked like you could maybe use a friend. I’m Martha, by the way.”

Leah shook the other girl’s hand with a tentative smile before facing forwards to look down the length of the car again. And maybe she was desperate, but she figured she’d give Martha’s advice a go.

It wasn’t totally awful.

In fact, after a few repetitions of the process, some of the twitchy, nervous energy in her limbs started to dissipate, and when she turned her head to express her gratitude to Martha, she realised she hadn’t actually introduced herself before.

“Leah Rilke. And thank you, seriously.”

Martha opened her mouth to respond, but whatever she’d been about to say was cut off when Fatin, who’d been sitting near to the pair, snapped her head up.

“Leah Rilke? Why does that sound familiar…”

Leah was saved from answering by a voice further down the car, coming from the girl she was pretty sure Martha had called ‘Toni’ earlier.

“Hey, Marty,” she waved a phone at her friend. “I can’t get a hold of Bernice.”

Martha looked over to Leah apologetically, but Fatin spoke again before she had a chance to say that she was fine.

“It’s cool, I’ve got her. Go.”

And then Fatin was taking Martha’s spot on the floor next to her. Leah felt a little bit like a kid being passed between babysitters, but was too flustered to be properly bothered by it. There was silence for a few moments between the two, Fatin lost in thought before she was finally struck with an epiphany, looking over at the other girl with recognition dawning in her eyes.

“Oh my god! We went to school together?”

Leah nodded slowly, deciding to play the cool, nonchalant card. “Yeah. I think we had a class together; I don’t know.”

She did know. They had English Lit together. Leah sat in the row behind her, two seats to the right.

Fatin clearly didn’t have the same concerns, as her eyes lit up with a sudden memory. “Miss Wolfe’s class, right? Shit.” She laughed, shaking her head. “How is she, anyway? Still busting ass?”

“Pretty good, I’m guessing. She’s not stuck in the subway, at least.”

That elicited another laugh from Fatin. “Good for her.”

This was totally fine. Leah was just having a casual chat with the girl she absolutely hadn’t lowkey internet stalked for the past few months. In for four, hold for four, out for four.

This was totally fine.

---

“She’s gonna kill me.”

“Marty, I think she’ll forgive you considering you literally have no possible way of contacting her.”

She looked at Toni, eyebrows raised.

“Okay, fine, maybe she’ll kill you.” Martha groaned. “On the plus side, at least you’re safe as long as we’re stuck. Somehow, I don’t think anyone here is gonna try and steal our shoes.”

That earned a small smile from the other girl, at last, who tucked her useless phone back into her bag.

“And why would anyone be stealing our shoes in the first place?”

Toni shrugged and said “It’s New York,” like that explained anything.

In an effort to distract herself from thoughts of Bernice’s protective rage, Martha dug into her bag again, this time drawing out a worn deck of uno cards held together with an old hair tie. When people talked about travel essentials, they usually meant things like water and spare underwear and phone chargers, but Martha had always considered the game to be an important figure among those basic needs. No trip was complete without uno. It was simple logic.

Toni smirked at the sight of the cards, immediately kicking her own bag to the side so she could slide onto the floor and clear a space for them to play. Her preparations were interrupted, however, when a shadow fell over her crossed legs, and she looked up to see the blonde girl from earlier – Shelby, she’d said her name was - smiling far too widely at Martha.

“Oh my gosh, is that uno? I used to play that with my little brother and sister all the time.”

Predictably, Martha met her with the exact same level of enthusiasm, and Toni listened with horror as she invited the Texan to join them.

“I’m Martha,” she chirped, waiting for her friend to jump in before coming to the conclusion that she was going to remain in stubborn silence. “This is Toni. We’re here on vacation.”

Shelby quickly waved over a reluctant Dot, who rolled her eyes but still came to join them, and soon the four were all sat around an empty patch of floor while Toni dealt the cards a little too aggressively.

“Me and Dottie are headed out to see a show.” She smiled proudly and puffed out her chest before continuing. “Then tomorrow, I’ve got a pageant to win.”

Of course she was a fucking pageant queen.

Martha lapped it all up, asking Shelby all about the process and filling the space left by Dot and Toni’s silence with ease. Eventually, they got on to talking about the show they were planning on seeing though, and the other Texan finally made her input.

“Who knows if we’ll even get there on time. We left pretty early, but if we don’t start moving soon…”

She trailed off, and Shelby shot her a sympathetic look that Toni didn’t fully understand, but Martha seemed to sense the strange mood that the conversation had suddenly taken on, so switched them back to safer topics. She and Shelby talked about everything from school to the TV shows they were watching, with Dot making occasional inputs and Toni maintaining her silent protest.

Eventually, the first game came to an end (infuriatingly, the blonde had won) and Martha must have been hit with some sort of sudden desire to torture her friend, as she decided to call over Leah and Fatin from the other end of the car. As if four random strangers weren’t enough, she then smiled invitingly at the sisters who still hadn’t said a word since the subway first stalled.

So, Toni dealt for eight. And hated every second of it.

A couple of slow rounds and awkward introductions later, and the haphazard group were well acquainted enough to actually compete with each other, throwing down their most annoying cards without any of the initial polite hesitation.

At Toni’s turn, she grinned mischievously down at her cards before slapping one down and flicking a triumphant glance over her shoulder to Shelby, sat on her right.

“Pick up four, Texas.”

The blonde huffed in annoyance but dutifully followed the rules – typical good Christian girl.

“That’s not my name, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” Toni leaned back on her hands. “What would you prefer? Blondie? Pageant princess?”

“I’d prefer Shelby.”

“Okay, Texas.”

The rest of the circle continued the game in amused silence, as Shelby turned an annoyed look on the basketballer.

“How about I start calling you Minnesota, huh?”

Toni didn’t even have to bother coming up with any kind of witty comeback for that, as Dot piped up from her place opposite the girl. “Doesn’t have the same ring to it, Shelbs.” She glanced up from her cards to meet her friend’s withering stare and threw her hands up in mock surrender. “What? It’s true.”

On second thought, Toni might kinda like this Dot chick.

They fist-bumped over the pile of placed cards and ignored the way Shelby was grumbling something inaudible, instead turning back to the overly competitive game. Another few turns passed without incident, until whatever gods existed in that grimy old subway car decided to punish Toni by taking away her most prized possession.

“I’m getting kinda hungry,” Martha frowned, placing her card before glancing back up her friend. “Hey, Toni, you still have Taki’s in your bag, right?”

Treachery. Betrayal. Treason.

“Ooh, fuego?” Dot asked, receiving a quick nod from Martha. “I could get in on that action.”

Next to Toni, Shelby perked back up, full of so much peppy energy that she could practically hear the blonde doing some elaborate cheer routine, and see-

Nope. She was not following that train of thought.

“I say we look at these Taki’s as a grand prize and we play for ‘em!”

“Can’t we just eat them?” Leah piped up, and Toni would’ve been inclined to agree if it didn’t mean having to share her rightful property.

Beside Leah, Fatin rolled her eyes as she twisted a ring around her finger. “Yeah, seriously. She’s gone full youth group counsellor on us.”

Rachel snickered but abruptly cut herself off when Nora started laughing with her, sparing her sister a scathing look before deciding to agree with Shelby, just to spite her.

“Fuck it, I’ll play.”

So, somehow, Toni found herself locked in a fierce uno battle with seven other people to win back her own actual stolen property. It would definitely have been enough to piss her off, but Martha looked like she was enjoying herself, so Toni did her best to remember her dedication to making this trip good for her best friend.

At one point, Leah laid down a ‘skip-a-turn’ card on Rachel, then seemed to panic under the weight of the glare she was receiving because she was suddenly apologising like she’d just run over the other girl’s childhood pet.

It seemed Rachel took the move just as seriously though, heaving a dramatic sigh before turning to Leah and announcing, almost like she was discipling a kid: “The best apology is a change in behaviour.”

On the other side of the circle, Dot leaned over to murmur in Fatin’s ear.

“Who sounds like a youth group counsellor now?” And Fatin honest-to-god snorted.

Anyway, speaking of a change in behaviour – Leah did the exact same thing on her next go, leaving the rest of the girls to wonder if Rachel’s vaguely murderous expression was a joke, or if she was genuinely that competitive. None of them could work out an answer for that.

Eventually, Nora won, in record timing, probably working out some mathematical formula for the probability of certain cards or some shit that Toni didn’t care to understand. She took the bag almost sheepishly, and within seconds, started offering them around to the whole group. Toni thought about bringing up the fact that it basically made the whole game redundant, but getting two whole chips was better than none, so she kept her mouth shut.

Or, she mostly kept quiet.

Because when the empty packet was dropped in the middle of the circle a couple minutes later, Toni really couldn’t help making a stupid joke. She was Toni freaking Shalifoe. Stupid jokes were her thing.

“Just so you all know, stealing my Taki’s was totally a hate crime.”

Everyone laughed at the quip, seemingly unbothered by its implication, except for one person. Shelby had been sipping from a hydroflask (of course it was a fucking hydroflask) that she’d grabbed from her bag, but at Toni’s words, her eyes blew wide and she choked on the water.

Rachel, on the other side of the blonde, slapped her back with mild concern, but Toni made no attempt to help, balling her hands into fists at her sides and readying herself for what she was sure would turn into some sort of shouting match.

“Let me get this straight,” Toni starts, ignoring her own unintentional pun. “I save your ass from a creep and your thanks is to, what? Hate me? Feel sorry for me?”

“What are you saying Toni?”

“I’m saying she can’t stand that I’m gay Marty, that’s what fucking skeeves her out.”

“That’s not true.”

She scoffed, not giving the other girl a chance to respond before she continued, knowing that she’d just get some ‘its Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve’ bullshit. “Fucking typical.”

The whole circle fell silent. In the last few seconds, their somewhat friendly game had very quickly devolved into a situation that would definitely make for a very uncomfortable few hours, especially considering they were literally trapped in a 400 square foot space. When Shelby finally spoke though, voice shaky and accent thick through her nerves, it wasn’t anything any of them (except maybe Dot) were expecting.

“That’s not… I don’t hate you, Toni.”

Toni took a breath like she was ready to say something else, but the blonde didn’t give her the chance.

“My parents are… they think those things. But I’m not like that. I just- there’s a lot of things I have to unlearn.”

A pause. A very long, very awkward pause. Then: “Oh.”

Martha tried to put them back on track after another few moments of silence but it fell apart when Shelby abruptly stood and murmured something about a headache, taking herself over to one of the plastic seats at the end of the car and falling into it without another word to any of them. Martha shot an accusatory glare at Toni who met her eyes with a look that clearly said what the fuck was I supposed to say?

Because, seriously, what the fuck was she supposed to say?

Marty must have given up waiting for a response, going over to join Shelby and presumably apologise for her friend’s attitude. The pair were joined by Dot, who seemed a little less pissed off with Toni, but also like she may have an idea what the hell was going on with the other Texan (which, ok, fair, they were here together).

Trying to work it all out was messing with Toni’s already fragile cool, so she pulled her bag over and plugged in her earphones, figuring she could drown this all out until they were free. She could beg for Marty’s forgiveness later, and she wouldn’t have to think about Shelby ever again.

As far as plans went, Toni thought it was a pretty great one.

---

Post ‘uno-gate’, as Fatin had decided to call it, she and Leah had ended up next to each other again.

Dot, Shelby and Martha were all looking at something on the blonde’s phone, Toni was listening to music (or maybe asleep? Either way, her eyes were closed). Rachel and Nora sat some distance away from the others, and at some point, a sort of argument had seemed to sprout between them, but Fatin figured it was probably just a typical sisterly bicker and so didn’t strain her ears to try and catch what they were whisper-yelling at each other.

Regardless, she and Leah were left to make conversation. It was only natural, Fatin supposed, given the fact that they did kind of know each other, that they should gravitate towards each other when they were surrounded by strangers. Although if she was being honest, after just half an hour of uno with the other six girls, she basically knew exactly the same amount about them as she did about her fellow Californian.

Despite this, it was easy, the way conversation seemed to flow between them. First about neutral topics – their hometown, their old classes, the people there. Pretty soon they were talking about Fatin’s life in New York, and she may have exaggerated it a little just to make it sound less sad, but Leah seemed interested enough. When Fatin brought up her tiktok, casually asking if the other girl had seen any of it before, though, she sort of froze up, mumbling about how she’d maybe caught one or two on her ‘for you page’.

Fatin figured she’d actually never seen it, and didn’t want to be rude. Leah knew it was practically the opposite.

They spent a while scrolling through the videos Fatin had saved, Leah laughing like it was her first time watching them and hoping it wouldn’t be too obvious. Luckily though, the other girl got bored of this pretty quickly, and decided to show Leah some of her current drafts for a second opinion.

Maybe it wasn’t so lucky.

The first couple videos were fine, a POV and a get-ready-with-me, nothing too serious. The third was a little less fine. It was another instalment in Fatin’s ‘5-Signs’ series, where she shared her abundance of social wisdom with her followers – ‘5 signs he likes you’ and ‘5 signs you should move on’ were some of the most popular.

The draft? ‘5 signs your relationship is toxic’. It shouldn’t have bothered Leah that much. Except practically every single one seemed to apply to what she’d had with Jeff.

1. You can’t seem to enjoy good moments with the other person.

That sort of applied, sure, but that was only because she couldn’t tell anyone about the relationship. It had nothing to do with toxicity.

2. They make all your decisions for you.

Well, okay, not all. But it was always Jeff who decided where they went, when they could meet, who could know. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just to protect them.

3. Your friends are concerned about the relationship.

Fuck. Really?

The rest of the video followed the same sort of structure, with each eerie similarity just making Leah cringe a little more. She really did not want to think about this. By the end of it, Fatin was looking at her expectantly, and Leah remembered that she was actually supposed to be giving her opinions.

“Uhh- yeah. It’s good. Informative.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. But the sick feeling from earlier was back again, and this time it had nothing to do with the small space. In for four, hold for four, out for four, Martha’s voice echoed in her memory.

It didn’t help as much this time around.

---

Getting Shelby back in good spirits again hadn’t taken too long.

Dot and Martha poked and prodded for a few minutes, trying to find a topic that would entertain the blond enough to capture her attention again, but when Martha finally asked about her pageants, she lit up like a Christmas tree.

Even Dot, who usually had no interest in this sort of thing (despite promising to go to Shelby’s pageant the next day) listened avidly, knowing that she needed this after whatever had happened with Toni. It was a weird situation, but the Texan was quick to remind herself of her strict policy to not get involved in other people’s shit, and instead turned her attention back the photos she was now being shown.

The first one was an old picture – Shelby was around ten years old, outfitted in an adorable baby blue dress and wearing a sash that marked her out as the runner-up. Despite this, the young girl was grinning fiercely at the camera without an inch of self-consciousness or reservation, like kids always did. Martha could barely contain her admiring squeals at just how freakin’ adorable she’d been, and even Dot had to admit it was a pretty sweet picture.

The next picture was probably a couple years later, judging by the vast improvement in camera quality. That wasn’t the only thing that changed, though: the dress was emerald green this time, and the sash read ‘winner’ in bold pink letters. Despite this, the Shelby in the picture didn’t exude the same glee as she had in the previous one – her smile was pinched at the edges, hands deliberately posed, back ruler-straight.

It was a pattern that the next pictures all seemed to follow. Shelby got older, the tiaras got bigger, the dresses changed colours. And every time she swiped, she shrunk in on herself a little bit more, poised and perfect but so blatantly fake. Martha, of course, still fawned over each new picture, pointing out her favourite parts of the dress and asking about the competition, generally being a great audience.

By the time they were nearing the end of the pictures, though? Dot wasn’t sure if she was looking at Shelby anymore, or if the photos were just blonde hair and a dress and an elaborate bouquet.

It was strange, looking at the real girl in front of her and seeing just how full of life she was compared to the one on her phone. When Dot considered it, though she remembered how Shelby had always seemed a little forced when they were at school, remembered her own revelations about the girl when they’d first arrived in New York.

She wondered when Shelby had started treating herself like a prop.

Another swipe brought up a new picture, and Martha dutifully launched into her praise of everything about it, but both the Texans froze. It was a picture of Shelby in a floor length blue gown, and if she zoomed in, you’d probably just be able to make out the lines that her tears had made through her makeup.

It was from the night Becca had died.

Martha seemed to sense that something about the mood had changed, because she glanced back at Dot in confusion, clearly pleading for help to move on from whatever this was.

“Hey, Shelbs, do you have any from prom night?”

The blonde looked back at her, finally shaken out of whatever hold had grabbed her in the past few minutes, but obviously a little confused.

“I, uhhh- Your dress. That night, it was nice.”

It was a blatant lie. Not that Shelby’s outfit had been ugly, or anything, but Dot most definitely didn’t have an opinion on it. She hadn’t even gone to prom. For all she knew, the blonde could’ve worn a sandbag to the event and she’d have no idea.

Luckily, though, it seemed that Shelby was quick to pick up what Dot was suggesting, and she thumbed through her camera roll for a second before finding what she was looking for. While Martha was occupied, she reached out a subtle hand to squeeze Dot’s knee in thanks.

Shelby wondered vaguely when she’d started trusting the other Texan so much.

---

Two and a half hours after the subway had first stopped moving, and Fatin was getting restless.

After the initial ‘technical difficulties’ announcement, there’d been one other basically unintelligible message that said something along the lines of a blackout, but she hadn’t really been able to discern more than that. The message was pretty clear though, and if the muffled words didn’t make it obvious then the flashing 9:32 PM on her phone definitely did – they were going to be stuck here for a while.

After she’d shown Leah a couple of her tiktok drafts earlier, the other girl had slipped into a sort of quiet reflection, and Fatin wasn’t entirely sure what that was all about but figured she’d give her some space. A few laps of the car to stretch her legs did nothing to dispel that lingering restless energy, though, so she figured she may as well take advantage of the company, and flopped down next to Dot.

She had drifted away from Shelby and Martha at some point, when their conversation turned to some rom-com they both wanted to see, and ended up lounging in one of the plastic seats in the middle of the car. Fatin was unexpected company, but not unwanted, and despite the fact that they seemed to be the total antithesis of each other, they fell into conversation easily.

She may have looked like a literal Gucci-posterchild, but Dot had to admit that she was pretty funny. It would’ve been a sharp reminder to never judge a book by its cover, but Dot wasn’t exactly one for reading, so it was more of a ‘don’t judge a horror movie by its shitty poster’ kind of message. The sentiment was the same either way.

From their position in the car, the two girls had full view of all the others, and so could see the way Rachel and Nora’s argument seemed to be escalating pretty dramatically. Exaggerated hand gestures came dangerously close to actually hitting each other, and eventually, their quiet snapping boiled over as Rachel suddenly burst out with a much more audible yell.

“Great fucking break, Nora!”

She gritted her teeth as she realised her own volume, meeting the shocked stares of the other girls in the sudden hush that had fallen over the car.

Martha, taking her place as master de-escalator, turned back to Shelby with a feeble attempt to draw attention away from the sisters. The others took the hint pretty quickly, and Fatin was facing Dot with one raised eyebrow.

“This place is actually turning into some trashy reality show,” she mumbled, glancing around to check that none of the others were listening to her before continuing. “Real housewives of the subway or some shit. I love it.”

Dot snickered despite herself, rolling her eyes at the other girl. Gossip wasn’t her thing, it really wasn’t - but Fatin made a good point.

“Speaking of drama,” Fatin started, turning sideways to face Dot and crossing her legs. “What are we thinking about this whole Shelby-Toni-situation?”

Dot shrugged. “They don’t like each other. No shocker there.”

To her surprise, though, Fatin started shaking her head, glancing over at Toni (who was, conveniently, staring at Shelby and Martha) before dramatically whispering to the other girl. “Trust me, they’ll be a thing in three weeks, tops.”

“In three weeks, they’ll be on opposite ends of the country.”

This didn’t seem to deter Fatin, who shrugged noncommittally and turned in her chair again so she was facing forwards. “Seriously. I know sexual tension when I see it.”

Dot looked at Fatin. Dot looked at Leah, who was looking at Fatin. Bullshit.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Fatin didn’t seem to sense the sarcasm in her tone, and turned back to the other girl with the light of mischief in her eyes.

“Okay, Dorothy. 20 bucks says I’m right.”

And, okay, Dot really wasn’t interested in other people’s business, despite how much she seemed to have disproven that over the past couple hours. But she was pretty confident, thinking of the way Shelby still clung to Andrew’s arm back home, and if she could make a little money from this girl who was very obviously good for it – why not?

“You’re on.”

Dot didn’t really consider about the fact that, for the bet to work, she’d actually have to still have contact with Fatin in three weeks, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised that it didn’t really bother her. If she was totally honest, it actually sounded pretty nice.

They moved on from there, talking about Fatin’s glamorous New York life, as she shared stories of the wildest parties she’d been to, or the guy she once saw clipping his toenails on the subway. Eventually, though the conversation shifted to Dot’s reasons for being in New York, and glancing at her phone, her chest pinched with a painful realisation.

“The show started ten minutes ago.”

Despite all her comedic exaggeration a few minutes earlier, Fatin softened. And, really, it was just a stupid show - it was a couple hours of singing and dancing and Dot could totally live without that. It wouldn’t bring her dad back or magically take away her grief, but still-

“My dad got me the tickets before- “ She shook her head, wondering why she was talking about this with someone she’d basically just met, but deciding to continue regardless. “It was sorta like a last gift, or something. I don’t know.”

“Shit, Dorothy. I’m sorry.” It was surprisingly genuine.

Dot shrugged, suddenly a little uncomfortable with just how seen she felt.

“It’s whatever. I just really wanted to see the show, I guess.”

Fatin nodded. She watched as Dot fiddled with the corner of one of the pockets on her cargo pants.

School of Rock, on Broadway. She filed away the information for later.

---

In the other end of the car, Martha had left Shelby to have a moment alone, and sank back down next to Leah with a heavy sigh.

“Y’know, I’m starting to think some of the rest of these girls could really use a good breathing exercise right now.” A weak attempt at some sort of humour on Leah’s part, but Marty appreciated it all the same.

“Group meditation?” she suggested, eyebrows raised in amusement.

“I was thinking more along the lines of group therapy.”

The two shared a quiet laugh, revelling in the brief break in the tension of the carriage, before falling into a comfortable silence.

Martha glanced around at the other passengers in the car. Fatin and Dot (an odd pair, but it seemed to be working for them) were murmuring quietly to each-other. Shelby and Toni (again an odd pair, this one seeming like it wasn’t working so well) were sat beside each other, both staring in opposite directions with their respective earphones jammed in – it was actually a pretty funny image. Rachel and Nora were still talking at the other end of the car, and Martha braced herself for the animosity of earlier when she glanced over at them.

The thing was, they didn’t really look all that angry anymore.

Actually, it didn’t even look they were even arguing, whisper-yells now simple whispers that, sure, looked a little serious, but less like they were going to kill each other. From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed like they were having some sort of heart-to-heart, which was definitely a massive improvement on the outburst from earlier.

In fact, as Martha watched them, she saw an actual smile cross Rachel’s face – it was quick, sure, and small, but it was the first time she’d actually seen the girl happy since the train got stuck, and she was glad for it.

It was probably an almost unconscious movement, but in that second where she thought nobody was watching them, Rachel reached up a hand to tuck a stray lock of hair back behind her sisters’ ear, pushing it into the hood of Nora’s sweater.

Watching them, Leah sat silently beside her, Martha let herself believe for a second that this whole experience wouldn’t be a total disaster. Even if it wasn’t explicitly good for her, something good had come out of it.

And, Marty being who she was, she couldn’t be happier for them.

Chapter Text

“Truth or dare?”

Fatin, who was lying flat on her back in the middle of the subway car (that had to be so unhygienic) had apparently decided that the fragile peace suspended between the eight girls was boring. This whole ‘being-civil’ and polite chatting thing was fine, but being nearly three hours into her entrapment, Fatin needed something juicy. Some drama.

At one end of the carriage, Toni and Rachel were locked in a fierce game of… something. They’d crushed an old straw wrapper into a ball and were using a couple pens from the bottom of Nora’s bag to try and flick it past each other. The rules weren’t entirely clear to an outsider, but both girls clearly knew what they were doing, equally as competitive as the other.

Nora overlooked them from one of the seats, counting points and playing ref. Occasionally she made a call that went against her sister, but the glares she received when she did no longer held any animosity. Something had shifted between them, after their heated talk from earlier, and there was a flicker of understanding in the way they looked at each other.

Which was all well and good, but Fatin was bored.

“What are we, twelve?” Dot scoffed.

“Truth or dare is timeless, Dorothy.”

Rachel sat back from her game and looked over to them. “How are even supposed to do dares in here?”

“Yeah, seriously, I’m not licking any subway seats or anything.” Toni piped up. Rachel took advantage of the other girl’s distraction to flick the straw wrapper past her, and the basketballer gasped dramatically.

“That totally doesn’t count!”

“Nora? Your call,” Rachel said, looking over to her sister.

Silent deliberation. Then, “It counts.”

“Ooookay!” Martha jumped in, before Toni could start yelling at the other athlete. “Fatin. You were saying?”

“Martha, angel, my only supporter.” She sat up from her position on the floor. “So, we scrap the dares. Truth or truth.”

“Isn’t that just… questions?” Leah asked, smirking at the exasperated influencer.

“Okay, fine!” She threw her hands up in defeat. “Who wants to ask each other questions?”

Despite all their protests, the seven girls joined Fatin in the floor, falling into a circle much like the one they’d sat in to play uno a couple hours earlier. The mood was a whole lot lighter than it was then, though, with the group playfully shoving each other to find a space and joking about how gross it was that they were literally sitting on the floor of the subway.

“Okay, ladies,” Fatin began, rubbing her hands together. “There’s a zombie apocalypse. Civilisation is trashed, the streets are overrun – who’s dying first?”

Beside her, Leah smirked, poking her in the side before saying: “No offence, but it’d totally be you. Like in the first five minutes.”

Fatin feigned offense but made no attempt to defend herself - to be fair, she was probably right.

“I hate to say it, Marty, but my money would be on you,” Toni smirked. “The zombie would be, like, trying to eat your brains or some shit, and you’d ask if it wanted to talk through its feelings with you.”

Martha punched Toni lightly but laughed. From the other side of the circle, a voice piped up, signature Texan twang and all.

“I don’t know about y’all, but I’d have to guess Toni.”

The basketball player looked at her challengingly, but Shelby didn’t shrink under her eyes this time.

“You’d get cocky - try and take on like, fifty zombies at once.”

When Toni told her to fuck off a second later, there was no bite to it. In fact, the ghost of a smile slid over her face as she shook her head.

Fatin silently wondered to herself what she’d do with her $20 when she won that bet with Dot.

There was a couple more answers, in the same teasing tone, before Toni sat up and spoke again. “Okay, I’ve got one. Who’s single here?”

Martha, pretty much straight away, went bright red where she was sat next to her friend, and Toni looked over at her incredulously.

“Marty! How did I not know about this?”

The girl shrugged and stared resolutely at a spot on the floor, before the rest of the girls started answering. Each in turn responded with a ‘no’, until it was only Shelby and Leah left to speak.

“I know the answer to this one,” Dot started, glancing over at the other Texan. “Although, to be fair, we’ve been gone for like a whole day, so Andrew’s probably dick deep in Christa Finlay by now.”

Toni snorted, like legitimately snorted at that, but tried to hide it behind a cough that none of them believed.

“Seriously, Dottie?” Shelby scoffed, ignoring the basketball player entirely. “I’m not even dating him anymore.”

“Shit, really? Why?”

“Well, it turns out he was, you know…” She trailed off, looking around hopelessly. “What you said. With Christa.”

Dot grinned. “What, dick deep?”

“Mhm.”

“Go-on, say it. Dick-deep.”

Shelby huffed, a light blush dusting her cheeks. “Dottie.”

The other girl smirked and poked her flushed cheek, but let it move on, instead turning to Leah and trying to ignore the way Fatin perked up in anticipation of her answer.

“Single,” Leah said quickly, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. “Recently single.”

For whatever reason, as she looked around the circle of basically total strangers, she felt a sort of safety, and reached behind her to pull The Nature of Her out of her bag. She turned it over, so the back was facing upwards and Jeff smiled from the cover.

“Him.”

There was a collective whistle from the circle as they passed around the book. It was passed back to Fatin and she glanced over at the other girl, remembering their conversation from a couple hours before.

“So this is the toxic ex?”

Leah’s eyes bulged and she grabbed the book back almost protectively, stammering through her response like she didn’t even believe it herself.

“He’s not… we just didn’t end on good terms. That’s all it was.”

Fatin stared at her, eyes searching, for a little too long, and Leah was on the verge of asking what was so damn interesting when Dot broke the somewhat awkward silence with another question.

“Okay, how about this – you’re marooned on a desert island, and you can only bring one item. What do you bring?”

The responses ranged from a lighter (Nora, smart as always) to a toothbrush (Fatin, for some strange reason) to Martha (Toni, earning some ‘awww’s from the others). Eventually, though, the responses dissolved into a general conversation about what they’d all be like if they were marooned on an island.

What a wild scenario.

“Me and Toni would run shit, to be honest.” Rachel shrugged, bumping her fist with the basketballer.

“Are you kidding?” Fatin scoffed. “Toni would, like, kill someone.”

Toni grinned. “With pride, motherfuckers.”

It got them all laughing, even Shelby, no matter how much she tried to hide it.

“No, but seriously, Dorothy would keep us all alive. Something about those cargo pants just tells me she’d know what she was doing.”

Dot smirked but didn’t disagree. “I’d totally lead, but Nora would get us out of there. She’d, like, engineer some super genius raft or something.”

The twin smiled shyly at her shoes. She glanced up for a second, then laughed as she said “Fatin and Leah would probably try to kill each other at some point.”

“Then probably make out,” Dot piped up.

“And then try to kill each other again,” Toni finished with a smirk. She glanced between the two girls, noticing the way Fatin laughed along with them while Leah took a very sudden interest on the gum stuck to the bottom of one of the seats.

Their game, if you could call it that, progressed in pretty much the same way for the next half an hour, until everyone drifted off into smaller pockets again. Rachel, Nora and Martha were flicking through Nora’s notebook together, marvelling at the drawings (in particular, one of Rachel mid dive, which she’d never even seen before). Leah, Dot and Fatin had commandeered Martha’s uno deck, though it looked less like they were playing the game, and more like they were just flicking cards at each other’s heads occasionally.

Toni was still kind of exhausted from the long flight that morning, and decided to put her freakish ability to fall asleep anywhere to good use when she curled up in one of the plastic seats, knees drawn up to her chest. Years bouncing between foster families and couch surfing meant she wasn’t exactly fussy about where she took a nap – in fact she’d almost dozed off when she felt something drop onto her shoulder, and breathed in some sort of floral perfume.

No way. No fucking way.

Shelby, as it turned out, had also decided to get some shut eye. In the seat right next to Toni. And apparently her unconscious self thought the other girl would make a great pillow.

Toni steamed silently. Not only was she stuck in a subway, but she was now stuck in that exact seat until the Texan woke up. And she fucking smelt nice. So annoying.

Martha apparently didn’t take the same view as her friend, as when she saw the position of the two girls, she immediately jumped up, pulling her phone from her bag as she went, and snapping a picture. If Toni could yell without waking the sleeping girl up, she totally would have, but she wasn’t a complete dick, and at least she’d be able to make fun of Shelby for this later. That was the only reason she stayed quiet.

At least, that’s what she told herself.

Either way, despite her certainty that she could crash literally anywhere, Toni couldn’t get a wink of sleep after that.

---

Dot got bored of the not-game of uno eventually, and moved to the other end of the car to look at Nora’s notebook too, meaning Fatin and Leah were left alone for the third time that evening.

They kept up the playful bickering for a while, flicking cards at each other and trying not to laugh too loud so they didn’t wake Shelby, but eventually they lapsed into a comfortable quiet. Side by side, they leaned on the metal wall of the car (still at one end, so Leah didn’t get too claustrophobic) and watched the other girls chat. Fatin actually almost dropped off at one point, but Leah’s quiet voice next to her pulled her out of her sleepy daze.

“Do you ever think about going back?”

Fatin rubbed at her eyes and forced herself to sit up a little more, mind still hazy from the beginnings of sleep “Huh?”

“To Berkeley, I mean. Do you ever think about going back there?”

It was sorta out of the blue, but Fatin answered regardless. “No. Not really.”

Leah turned to meet her eyes with a small frown. “Isn’t it a little lonely, though? Being somewhere where nobody really knows you?”

Fatin shrugged and looked away, suddenly a little uncomfortable with the eye contact. “I guess, but I don’t think anyone really knew me back in Cali either. It was lonely there too, you know?”

Leah nodded quickly, and Fatin wondered just how much Leah knew that feeling, wondered if maybe she wasn’t the only one with something to escape. It was silent for a few seconds, and she decided to try and lift the mood a little because the brunette had started to pull nervously at her eyebrows, and she had a feeling it was nothing to do with the claustrophobia this time.

“Hey, it’s hard to be lonely when you’re literally trapped with seven other people, though, right?”

To her relief, Leah smirked and lowered her hand. “Yeah, for sure. I couldn’t even escape the company if I tried.”

“Oh please, I know we never really talked in school, but I’m kinda the best.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “The setting is less than ideal,” she grumbled, looking back over at Fatin again. “But I’ve had worse company.”

“I’ll take it.”

---

At some point, Dot took pity on Toni (who was still stuck under the sleeping blonde), and shook Shelby awake gently.

“Rise and shine. We’re in hell.”

Shelby blinked slowly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and lifting her head from where it’d been resting on Toni’s shoulder. She barely spared the other girl a glance, stretching casually like she hadn’t just taken a nap on the same person she’d been arguing with a couple hours before.

“Well, maybe this is hell. Hell is where to lord sends us to try and teach us something.”

Toni rolled her eyes and stretched out in her seat.

“I know he’s trying to teach me patience.”

From the other end of the car, Fatin called out in response. “You can say that again!”

She had her back to them, squatting down and fiddling with her phone on the floor. Occasionally, a few seconds of some overplayed song could be heard, before Fatin grumbled something and changed it quickly. Toni didn’t have a clue what she was doing, still a little drowsy from her not-sleep, but Leah figured it out pretty quickly.

“Fatin, are you making a tiktok?”

“Gotta make use of the time, somehow, right? Care to join me?”

Leah was quick to shake her head, eyes wide at the idea of her classmates in Berkeley seeing her feature as part on one of Fatin Jadmani’s videos, so Fatin instead looked to Martha.

“Not happening, sorry.”

“Rachel? Toni? Dot?”

All three of them turned in unison to shoot her a death-stare. Fatin leaned back, apparently happy with the positioning of her phone, and turned to face the rest of the carriage, looking a little dejected before her eyes landed on the blonde, now wide-awake.

“Shelby! Come on, girl. You’re my only hope.”

And of course Shelby went along with it. And of course they decided to do some trashy dance that they both learnt insanely quickly. And of course Toni accidentally ended up in the corner of the frame, trying her best to look annoyed but basically just staring (though she wouldn’t find out until the next morning, when Fatin posted the video).

When they’d finished filming the video for probably the twentieth time, Fatin finally decided she was happy with it, and fell onto the floor beside Shelby as they both laughed, out of breath. She grabbed her phone to watch over what they’d created, leaning over so the blonde could watch it with her, but Shelby’s attention was instead grabbed by the time at the top of the screen.

“Is it eleven already?” she questioned incredulously. “I have a pageant tomorrow!”

Toni rolled her eyes from where she was perched next to her friend, but Martha’s face took on a much more sympathetic frown.

“You need your beauty sleep or something, Texas?” Toni laughed.

“No way,” Martha jumped in quickly. “You’ll do great tomorrow, Shelby. Besides, you totally don’t need any beauty sleep. Right Toni?”

She looked over at her friend with a sweet smile, and Toni opened and closed her mouth like a fish searching for an answer. Eventually, she settled on a small nod and a frustrated huff, all witty comebacks leaving her when she felt the blonde’s eyes on her, waiting for a response. She was gonna kill Marty for that, later.

“Hey, are you seriously complaining about missing your bedtime?” Dot laughed, only half-serious. “I’m missing School of Rock right now.”

The car fell into a hush, shooting sympathetic glances over at Dot – clearly her joke hadn’t landed as well as she’d hoped. Fatin seemed to sense how uncomfortable she was, though, as she jumped up and grabbed her phone again.

“Fuck that. I have an idea.”

“Fatin, I swear to god, if you make another tiktok- “

Rachel’s threat was cut off as music suddenly poured out of the speakers of Fatin’s phone, filling the car pretty well for such a small device. The song wasn’t recognisable for a second, but a moment later Dot’s eyes lit up, and she was grinning at Fatin widely.

“You have the soundtrack saved on your phone?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I do.”

So, a minute later, all 8 of them (despite a few weak protests from Toni, Rachel and Nora) were jumping around in the middle of the car, dancing to the first song on the soundtrack. They all kind of sucked, movements exaggerated and off time, but they were laughing and breathless and together, and Dot had a fleeting thought that being stuck in a subway car with a bunch of strangers wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done.

At some point, the soundtrack was swapped out for Fatin’s other (questionable) music. There was some bass heavy club music, that lead to the influencer trying to teach Nora how to twerk (possibly in the top 10 most ridiculous things Dot had ever seen). There were a few iconic classics that had them all singing along, Shelby carrying them as the only one who could actually hold a note.

‘You’re The One That I Want’ from Grease was a pretty surprising addition, but they all rolled with the quick switch, and Fatin and Dot decided to take the roles of Sandy and Danny respectively, performing an insanely exaggerated rendition of the song that had the others rolling.

It went on like that for quite a while, upbeat and energetic, until the song that had been playing ended, and the speakers instead switched to playing something slow on the piano. The girls took it in their stride though, swapping in in their chaotic movements for theatrical swaying. Toni grabbed Martha and spun her, and Fatin and Dot tried to waltz – very unsuccessfully. Rachel and Nora held on to each other but spent most of their time laughing as Leah tried (and failed) to dip Shelby.

They swapped partners a fair few times; there was Nora and Leah, Shelby and Dot, Martha and Rachel, Fatin and Toni. There was all eight of them slinging their arms around the others’ shoulders and swaying in a circle. There were competitions over who could go the longest without stepping on their partners toes, and then there were pairs again. And this time not everyone was laughing.

Fatin and Leah fell together in a sort of half hug with a whole lot of cheesy grinning, but eventually the smiles faded and they just held on to each other. Their movements were slow and deliberate and totally silent, and though Fatin marvelled at the quick switch in mood, she wasn’t exactly opposed to it.

Leah, for possibly the first time since she’d arrived in New York, wasn’t thinking of Jeff. She forgot all about the book behind her, about everything it signified, and decided to amend her previous statement. Maybe the subway was a good place to relax.

Beside the pair, Rachel and Martha along with Nora and Dot were still just as energetic, and didn’t seem to notice the quiet from the two girls. Martha, though, ever watchful of her best friend, saw the moment Toni was thrown into Shelby, and tried not to make her smirk too obvious. It was going to be so fun to tease her about that later.

Toni figured jumping away from the blonde would somehow be more awkward than actually dancing with her, so decided to roll with it. It was hard to focus on keeping her cool, though, when they were standing so close, and she could finally see just how much taller than her Shelby was. It was a little off-putting, especially considering the fact that the Texan deliberately angled her head downwards so green eyes could stare right at her.

Toni put all her attention into not tripping over her feet. She tried to put all her attention into not tripping over her feet. She totally wasn’t more focused on the light resting of hands on her waist. No way.

All eight of the girls stumbled a little, though, when there was a sudden jolt of movement in the car, and Toni spent a brief, stupid moment wondering if another train had run into them, before realising that the car was still moving.

They were fucking moving.

The girls all cheered loudly, and Toni jumped away from Shelby to wrap Martha in a hug. She glanced down at her phone to see the display flash up with 12:07 AM, and she was saved from wondering what the hell had just happened by her friend’s voice in her ear.

“We’re going home bitches!”

---

Coming to a stop at the platform was, in Nora’s eyes, literally magical. She saw the grimy station, dotted with a few maintenance workers who must’ve been trying to get them out, and she’d honestly never been more excited to get out of somewhere than she was at that moment. Five hours stuck in a metal box. Who could blame her?

Toni and Martha were the first people out as soon as the doors finally slid open, taking dramatic gulps of air despite the fact that they’d been able to breathe perfectly fine in the car, and laughing at the other’s antics. Next were Dot and Shelby, a little less theatrical but still just as excited for their freedom. Fatin was behind them, but waited at the door for Leah to catch up so they could walk out together.

Rachel and Nora were just about to step out, too, when something colourful caught the latter’s eye in the corner of the car. Left on one seat was a well-worn book, and Nora recognised it as the one Leah had shown them earlier on.

“Hey, Leah,” she called. “You forgot your book!”

The other girl didn’t even turn around as she stepped out of the car with the influencer at her side.

“No, I didn’t.”

Rachel and Nora both grinned at each other as they followed the others onto the platform, just catching Fatin’s voice as she slung an arm over Leah’s shoulders.

“That’s my girl.”

Behind them, the doors of the subway slid shut, and The Nature of Her was left on a cold plastic seat in an empty car.

Nora didn’t know much about this Jeff Galanis guy, but something told her it was exactly what he deserved.

---

It was only when they were finally standing out on the platform that Toni realised there were other people on the train too. There were people spilling out of all the adjoining cars and it was a little overwhelming to see the sheer number of them – a disgruntled businessman, a flustered mother and her crying toddler, even the gross plaid shirt guy from earlier. The eight girls stayed together in the crowd, not wanting to get separated but also not entirely sure why.

It had just gone midnight. And the eight strangers, acquaintances, friends, whatever you wanted to call them, stood together in a small, awkwardly silent huddle, waiting for someone to say something. There was no reason for them all to still be there – already people were rushing out of the exits of the station and heading back to their lives. It would have made perfect sense for Toni to grab Marty and march out of there without a second thought.

Except, she didn’t really want to.

Open air was sounding majorly appealing, of course, but there was some sort of expectation in the air, suspended above the awkward silence between the haphazard group. Something like unfinished business.

The quiet between then was only broken by the quick tapping of Fatin’s nails on her phone, and Toni was just about to take the plunge and make some excuse for why Marty and her would have to go, when the aforementioned girl spoke up.

“Is everyone ok with the box?”

Toni glanced around quickly at the others, but found them all looking just as confused as she felt, and decided to voice her question.

“What?”

“For ‘School of Rock’,” Fatin said. She glanced up from her phone at the silence after her words, then continued casually. “I’m getting us tickets for tomorrow.”

Toni wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the way Dot leaped onto Fatin. The influencer seemed to recover after a second, grinning and hugging her back, but when Dot withdrew, she flushed bright red like she hadn’t expected her own action. Even with her flustered embarrassment, though, it was nowhere near enough to wipe the grin off her face. Toni pretended not to see the way she reached up to quickly brush at her eyes.

“I’m real happy for y’all,” Shelby started, a hint of remorse in her eyes. “But I won’t be able to make it. I’ve got that pageant tomorrow afternoon.”

“I know, kid,” Fatin smirked. “That’s why I got us the latest time. If you think we’re gonna miss you mopping the floor with the competition tomorrow, you’re crazy. You think you can get us into the audience?”

Shelby looked like she might cry with Dot, then.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I can manage that.”

It was chaos after that, all the girls throwing their phones around and trying to make sure they all had each other’s numbers, wondering why they hadn’t done this at some point in their five hours in the car. It was actually a small miracle none of them ended up shattered on the floor.

“Whose phone is this?”

“I think I’m already saved on this one.”

“Is your wallpaper seriously Jake Gyllenhaal?”

“Who still has a flip case?”

“Martha! I don’t know who this Marcus guy is, but I feel like I should not be seeing these messages!”

Eventually they were all holding their own phones again, and Toni took a second to glance through the new additions to her contact list. Dot accidentally added herself as “Dopothy Campbell”. Fatin used a strange assortment of emojis beside her name (crown, lipstick, nails – it was actually pretty fitting). Nora entered her name in entirely lower case, and actually put a period after it. Shelby entered her name as “Texas” with a little yellow heart, and even somehow managed to find time to take a blurry, zoomed in photo of herself grinning for the little icon.

It should have made Toni gag, but it didn’t.

Instead, she focused on the way Martha was still smiling, and as she reminded herself, that was all she’d really wanted from the trip after all. But thinking about the next day, about the show that (though she’d never admit it) she’d been wanting to see forever, Toni couldn’t blame her. She thought of Rachel chattering excitedly with her sister, of Leah’s book left behind on the subway, of a little yellow heart in her phone; and she couldn’t help but think that maybe she could enjoy this trip for herself, too.

A group chat was made later, to sort out the details of the next day, and when Martha texted to ask if they would take the subway to get to the pageant, Toni was pretty sure she’d never seen anyone reply so fast. In hindsight, it made sense – Toni had seen how quick Fatin could type.

[Fatin Jadmani]: Martha, I say this with love: fuck all the way off.