Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Her pad was sticking to her skin. She could feel the blood flowing out of her uterus like a biological middle finger to her health and sanity. Her stomach felt like it was turning itself inside out, her back felt like it had knives lodged at the base of her spine, and due to their piss poor performance during a scrimmage with Asbury (they still won, in the way people consider two own goals a win) Coach Martinez was definitely going to run them the entire practice.

In summary, Shauna was not having a good day.

But there wasn’t much she could do about it except wait until her day was over so she could use her trusty microwaved-rice-in-a-sock as a heating pad, all while silently crying into her pillow and lamenting why she was born a woman.

Well, that and change the pad that was getting increasingly more uncomfortable to sit in. Shauna’s already read and analyzed the passages of the book they were assigned for today, so there can’t be any harm with using the restroom for a minute. Ms. Clarke liked her enough to not mind it anyway.

That’s how she finds herself walking down the hallway, looking and feeling like she’s about to keel over. Usually when she gets her period, she’s able to tough it out to a certain extent. But this week seems like it’s focused on ensuring Shauna regrets ever existing.

When she completes her treacherous journey (her hundred meter shuffle) to the bathroom, she immediately rushes into the nearest stall and locks it. She can only hope no one comes in because she’s about to commit what looks like war crimes in this unfortunate, unsuspecting toilet.

She hears the door open after (thank God) she finishes, as comfortable as one can get while bleeding and in pain. And maybe the pain, like, fucked with her brain—because instead of walking out the door with her head down like a normal person, she just fucking hides. Literally climbs onto the toilet so her feet aren’t visible and stays there. Maybe if she tells coach about these squatting exercises, he’ll let her off the hook today.

She’s regretting her decision even further when she realizes the two girls that enter aren’t even here to piss. No, they both walk into the biggest stall and light a cigarette, giggling as smoke slowly wafts into the air. So here she is, squatting like a bird about to lay a goddamn egg while listening to inane drama she couldn’t care less about.

To reiterate, Shauna was not having a good fucking day.

“Do you think we’ll get in trouble?” one of them pipes up.

“Nah, Mr. Peterson won’t care if we’re gone a couple minutes. And if he does, just push your boobs out. He was totally looking at mine last week. Like, it was a little weird how obvious it was,” the other said.

Shauna grimaces. She never personally had Mr. Peterson, but she’s heard the stories. Experienced them for herself when she went with Jackie to pick up her assignments after an away game caused them to miss a couple classes, and she caught his gaze lingering a little too long on both of them.

“Ew, how does he have a job?”

“Because no one cares enough to say anything about it. And because he lets us get away with shit like this,” the girl’s voice echoed.

Shauna rolled her eyes. If she had to guess, she’d assume these girls were younger than herself—or at least less experienced. Because if they were smart enough, they’d do their best to keep quiet. They’d know the echo in here is loud enough to alert the dog-like ears of Mr. Richards from across the hall, assuming he was actually here for once and not some substitute.

The girls’ voices became background noise as Shauna’s thighs started to ache. Realistically, she knew the girls were probably faded enough by now that if she got down and left, they either wouldn’t care or notice at all. But she’s already here, and if she can commit to playing a sport her entire high school career, she can commit to this. Suddenly, one of their comments brought her out of her thoughts.

“Holy shit, did you see her in class?”

“Yes! I don’t know how she wears shit like that and expects not to be laughed at.”

“Oh my God, she’s such a dyke.”

Shauna freezes. Technically she hasn’t moved since she got into this position, but her muscles tense up like springs, ready at a moment’s notice to fight or flight. She forces herself to calm down because she doesn’t even know who they’re talking about. Is it a horrible thing to say? Yeah, but it’s not surprising. Shauna’s heard the same prejudice from Mr. Taylor’s mouth enough to be a little desensitized to it. Whoever they were bitching about, it’s ultimately none of her business.

“I bet Van only joined soccer to be in the girl’s locker room,” they snickered.

Oh. They were talking about Van. Scratch that—it is Shauna’s business.

Now, Shauna didn’t talk to Van all that much. They don’t have any of the same classes and they sometimes sit together at lunch, but she mainly saw her during practices. She only knew surface-level stuff about the charismatic girl: her phenomenal keeper skills, her captivating story-telling, and her pre-game ritual of cracking every individual knuckle in her hands. And of course, how she seemed to shake off every hit. Every barb, every punch, every cruelty—she absorbed it all like she absorbed the ball, carefully and gently and uncaring of whether the opposing striker was seconds from ramming into her. And after the goal was safe, she’d smile up at the attacker a little smug, like she was bragging: You can’t get to me.

Van was their guardian, their anchor. The team was strong because they knew at the end of the day, if their attack and defense failed, she would be there with her dazzling smile and safe hands, ready to be the difference between a goal and a counterattack.

Even if Shauna didn’t talk to her much, they were teammates. On the field, they weren’t eleven individuals—they were one living, breathing, working organism. On the field, they die for each other.

Why not die for each other off the field?

“You think she’d have a crush on me? I mean, I wouldn’t blame her, but gross.”

“Ew, fuck that. But yeah, she totally would.”

Shauna was about to pull her hair out at all the high laughter. As much as she wanted go out guns blazing with straight denial, she couldn’t say their claims were exactly unfounded. Not all the derogatory parts of it, but objectively. She was never one to speculate others’ sexuality (don’t throw stones in glass houses and all that) but Van was… an open book, so to speak. Honestly, Shauna would be more surprised if she was attracted to men. The baggy clothing and eyes glued to the floor while changing in the locker room were subtle giveaways—something Shauna related to intensely. But the nail in the coffin, though these assholes wouldn’t know anything about it, was how Van looked at Tai, her best friend and closest confidant. Shauna knows that’s not how you look at a best friend. Unfortunately, she also relates to this far too intensely.

“It’s so disgusting. I feel dirty even talking about it,” one of them said, making a shuddering-like noise.

“My mom says that people like that are going to hell. I hope she likes it hot!”

The girls cackled once more, followed by the sound of a toilet flushing. They opened their stall door, metal crashing against tile, and finally walked out the bathroom. Shauna grunted as she stepped down, knees clicking and back absolutely disintegrated. God, she needed to lie down. And explain to Ms. Clarke why she’s been gone for twenty minutes.

Shauna stretched against the wall while she figured out her next move. She couldn’t fight them; Jackie would kill her if she got hurt, or worse, suspended and illegible to play. But she couldn’t just ignore what she heard. Right?

Van probably would. Shauna knows the girl has thick skin and she’s not deaf, she’s probably heard worse and she still comes to practice with a cheeky wit on her tongue. Shauna really should just let this go. But she has a hunch that’s not all there is to it. Van has thick skin, but she’s never fought back against anyone. Maybe she doesn’t know how. Maybe she’s never had someone to fight for her, to look in the face of someone talking shit and tell them to go fuck themselves.

And that pretty much solidifies it. Shauna glances at the trash can in between the stalls where her bloody pad has been discarded and feels a sick excitement give way in her chest.

You think she’s disgusting? Shauna thinks, mouth quirking up as she exits the bathroom. I’ll show you what disgusting really looks like.

——————

She goes up to her in the locker room after practice ends. She was right, by the way—after the team finished changing, they were graced with a fifteen minute lecture about dedication and teamwork before Coach Martinez ordered them to get on the line. He didn’t even pretend to bring the soccer balls out. Thankfully, Shauna managed to secure an unhealthy amount of pain killers from one of the track kids at lunch, which brought her pain from an agonizing 15/10 to a much more manageable 12/10.

She’s proud.

She also planned this on purpose. If Van’s too exhausted to use her critical thinking skills, she might not think twice about the questions Shauna needs to ask.

The team is quiet when practice ends and they enter the locker room. Even the peppier ones seem to have lost their steam. Laura Lee is dragging her feet, Jackie stares straight ahead with hooded eyes like she’s about to pass out, and Van just kind of sinks to the floor and presses her face to the cool surface of the lockers.

Perfect.

Most of JV has gone off to find a trash can to vomit in. Some of Varsity look tempted to join them. Hell, Shauna is close to joining them. But she’s a woman on a mission, and she refuses to let it go. After a comforting arm squeeze to Jackie (to which she responded with a droopy smile that made her heart flutter), she approached the suffering redhead that was still unmoving against the lockers.

“Hey, Van,” Shauna said softly. “How you holding up?”

Van shut her eyes even tighter, letting out a long groan that settled deep within Shauna’s bones as she crouched down next to her.

“I’m a keeper. My main area is eighteen yards long and forty-four yards wide. Why the fuck is he conditioning me like a field player?” Van ranted, voice coming out in breathy spurts of energy. “ Why the fuck is he conditioning me like a field player?”

Shauna chuckles, giving her a reassuring laugh shoulder rub until Van opens her eyes. They crinkle when she smiles, and Shauna can see why Tai’s a little infatuated with her.

“So, I do have a question,” Shauna starts.

“Shoot, Shipman.”

“During fourth period in Mr. Peterson’s class—“

“Pedophile Peterson?”

“—sure. Were there any girls that went to the bathroom?”

Van scratched her head, twisting her body so it mirrored Shauna’s position against the lockers. “Well shit, I don’t know. I don’t really pay attention to the people in that class ‘cause most of them are dicks. Which is kind of concerning for child development, now that I think about it.”

Shauna’s nose wrinkled. “He’s still teaching child development?”

“Yeah, I know.”

She sighs. If Van doesn’t know who they were, she’ll have to figure out the identity of the voices some other way.

“Wait. Actually, I do remember,” Van hums, snapping her fingers. “Claire Robinson asked for a bathroom break and Maddie Lopez went with her.”

Shauna furrowed her eyebrows. She recognized Claire as one of the juniors on the cheer team, but Maddie was an unfamiliar name to her. Growing up here, it’s rare when a name is unfamiliar to anyone.

“I remember because Claire has this awful perfume that practically assaulted my nose when she passed by me. When they came back, like, twenty minutes later, whatever they smoked mixed with her perfume and smelled so strong that I audibly gagged,” Van laughed. “Maddie is a transfer from another town close to here. I don’t actually know if it was her that went with Claire—I’m just assuming it was because she’s a freshman also on cheer that follows Claire like a dog. I feel bad for her sometimes,” Van elaborates. Shauna doesn’t. Shauna doesn’t feel bad for her at all.

Van squinted at her. “Wait, why do you wanna know?”

Please don’t question me further. “Just asking,” she said.

Thankfully, Van just shrugged and struggled to her feet, pulling Shauna up with her. The two muttered a quiet goodbye before Van hobbled to the showers. Whatever, Shauna will shower at home.

Claire Robinson and Maddie Lopez. Shauna imagines their names in red ink, committing them to memory and making her plans. She’s interrupted when Jackie shoulders her, hair damp and ready to leave. (“Don’t give me that look. I’m ten minutes away from a hot, private shower and my bed, I can stand being sweaty for a little longer.” “Whatever you say, Shipman.”)

—————

Shauna started her surveillance the next day. In hindsight, she feels a little stupid with how much effort she put into it, but all it takes is the memory of their laughter for Shauna to feel ready to ride at dawn.

To be blunt, she stalks them. She becomes their shadow for a couple days (she has the experience) and learns their friend circle, their routine, what their bags look like. Even jots those details down in her journal to build a plan around.

Claire is a preppy girl. She saunters around school with her nose turned up like if she walks obnoxiously enough, she can convince other people she’s important. Her hair is closer to platinum than blonde and she wears a vibrant red lipstick that even Shauna can tell is not quite her shade. She is the class of ‘97’s treasurer, but Shauna’s not convinced she knows what she’s doing. She has a navy blue backpack with a keychain that looks distinctly like a football. Overall, Jackie would coin her as ‘someone who’s trying too hard.’

Maddie is pretty much exactly how Van described her. She follows Claire around with a desperation so obvious, Shauna can pretty much see the leash around her neck. She really hoped people didn’t see her like that when she was with Jackie. Maddie’s dark hair flowed behind her when she speed-walked and she hurriedly agreed with whatever anybody around her was saying. She had a plain black bag with no accessories, but Shauna did notice a small, pink, stitched design on its side. She reminded Shauna of a hummingbird with the way she fluttered everywhere with an undisguised nervous energy.

Most importantly, she memorized their schedule. Right before lunch starts, Claire and Maddie leave their bags in class so they could get to the lunch line as fast as possible. So when fourth period ends, the only thing in Mr. Peterson’s class by the time Shauna gets there should be their bags. But when she enters on the first test run of her plan, there’s a dark-haired boy in the back with his walkman, rearranging something on the shelves.

Fuck. Shauna forgot about his TA. In her defense, any regular TA would be at lunch like every other student, but Devin Lawrence was one of those kids that floated through friend groups. When she saw the guy, he was either alone or with different people all the time.

“Oh. Hey, Shauna,” he said, dragging his headphones off his head. “Did you need anything?”

“Uh, nope. You just- just keep doing what you’re doing!” She gave him an awkward thumbs up before practically sprinting out the door to the cafeteria.

She slides in her usual spot next to Jackie, heart warming as she realizes it was deliberately kept open for her. The other yellowjackets shout a brief greeting around their food before going back to their own bickering. Jackie looks at her and smiles.

“Hey, Shipman! Where were you? I was waiting outside Ms. Clarke’s room and you never came out. We always walk together,” Jackie pouted.

Shauna winces. It’s not like she could tell Jackie what she’s doing—she’d probably say something about keeping the team out of trouble. Today’s trial run was spur of the moment, so she didn’t get the chance to tell Jackie meet her at their table.

“Sorry… I got held up,” Shauna said. “I do have a question, though.”

Jackie hummed, pushing the food around her tray. Shauna made a note to give Jackie her fries later.

“Do you know if Devin Lawrence is seeing anybody? Or if he, uh, likes anybody?” If Shauna’s going to carry out her plan, she needs a distraction so Devin doesn’t see what she’s doing. What better way to distract a hormonal teenage boy than with a girl?

Jackie’s fork freezes against the sad pile of mashed potatoes. “Devin Lawrence? Shaggy hair, ripped jeans, rides a skateboard to school? That Devin Lawrence?”

Shauna nods.

“Why? Do you like him or something?” Jackie’s smirking, but there’s a certain edge to her voice that makes Shauna think carefully about her response. As much as she hates it, it’s the easiest story to go with.

“He’s cool, I guess? And he’s not… unattractive. Objectively.” Shauna tries to play it up like she’s shy, but she sounds as dispassionate as she does when she talks about any other guy.

Nonetheless, Jackie’s smirk falls a little bit. She turns away and stabs the soggy vegetables on the other side of her tray. “Oh. Well sorry, Shipman—he’s had a thing for Mary Grant since sophomore year.” She turns to Shauna with a tight smile. “Better luck next time.”

Shauna’s a little irritated at the dismissal—Jackie’s never hesitated to flirt with guys like Devin to get what she wants—but she rolls her eyes and ignores it. She has more important things to worry about, like getting Mary to agree to spend the first part of her lunch acting like she’s interested in Devin.

————

It’s easier than she expects. When she asks, it goes a little something like this:

“Mary! Hey!” Shauna yells. Mary startles a little at the door to the library. If Devin were to like someone, it couldn’t be more convenient than Mary. She was one of Shauna’s first casual friends in English. They’ve been in the same English courses since freshman year and they’ve even taken a couple study days together.

“Shauna! What’s up?” Mary smiled.

“Sorry, I need a favor. Do you mind coming with me to Mr. Peterson’s room and talking to Devin Lawrence for a minute? Just as, like, a distraction or something. I can pay you my allowance for the next month-“

“Yes.”

Shauna blinked. Mary’s face is red and she’s clutching the straps of her backpack as she stares back at Shauna.

“I mean, no! I mean- yes, I’ll do you a favor. No, I don’t mind it. I don’t need your money either.”

Mary’s shifts her weight back and forth between her feet, looking like she got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Holy crap, Shauna thinks, Does Mary actually… like Devin?

“He’s cool! I wouldn’t mind talking to him. Nope, not at all… I’m actually so chill, I swear. I actually want to ask him what conditioner he uses because his hair smells weirdly good and-“

Mary rambles on while Shauna quietly thinks. She thinks about Devin’s water-like flow, and how he’s always willing to help someone despite the rumors about his ‘emo-ish’ appearance. She thinks about Mary’s softness in her eyes and her jaw, and how her fiery passion makes her a rock that no one dares to try and break. Weirdly enough, Shauna can see them working.

“Great!” Shauna says, cutting her off. “Is tomorrow okay?”

“Sure!”

The next day when the lunch bell rings, Mary and Shauna fly out their seats and hustle to Mr. Peterson’s room. The sick excitement builds in Shauna’s stomach the closer they get. It also builds because she finally gets to rid herself of the monstrosity currently residing inside her bag.

When they get to his door, Shauna peeks through the window in the middle. The room is empty beside Devin and his trusty walkman, head bobbing to whatever tune is playing through his headphones.

Phase One, complete.

Shauna goes to open the door, but Mary grips her wrist with an intensity that stops her instantly. She turns to her to ask what’s wrong, but Mary just looks embarrassed.

“Do I look okay?” Mary whispers, hands combing through her hair to fix invisible imperfections. Shauna really can’t afford distractions like this because they are on a time crunch, so she plants her hands on Mary’s shoulders and shakes her a little.

“Mary. You’re smart. You’re pretty. You’re passionate. If he doesn’t like you, he’s an idiot.” And Shauna’s not the best at pep talks, so she adds something to give it a little more credibility. “Plus, Jackie told me he’s had a thing for you since sophomore year.”

Mary gasps like she’s been told she won the lottery. “Really?! Jackie said that?!”

Shauna’s learned if you throw in Jackie’s name in a rumor, people are a lot more likely to believe it. Regardless, she gives a reassuring smile and nods. Mary seems satisfied, so she finally grabs the knob and turns it.

Devin turns when they enter. His eyes land on Shauna first and he raises his hand in a little wave, but then they find Mary and his lips part. The cleaning rag in his hand drops to the ground.

“Hey, Devin!” Shauna says way too cheerily, “I just have to do something really quick, I’ll be out of your way soon.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, throat bobbing. The last of Shauna’s worries dissolves at the sight.

She heads to the back of the room where Claire and Maddie’s bags are while she hears Mary say something about conditioner. She opens both of their bags as wide as they go and she takes the two gallon-sized Ziploc bags out of her own.

The two gallon-sized Ziploc bags of her old, bloody pads that she’s collected throughout the week.

Shauna knows it’s gross. Disgusting, even. That’s the point. If they can’t stand the way Van exists, they really won’t be able to stand this. And it was cheap! Organic blood, all thanks to Shauna’s reproductive organs.

She’s put her blood (hah), sweat, and tears into this. Collecting them was not a pleasant experience, and it filled her closet with a pungent odor that made her gag. It makes her gag now as she opens the Ziplocs, carefully pouring the contents into Claire and Maddie’s bags and zipping it up.

As much as she wants to, Shauna can’t risk trashing the Ziplocs at school. She closes them and tucks them into her own bag, planning to discard them at home. Once everything’s in order, she turns back to Mary and Devin, both of them deep in conversation and none the wiser to what she just did.

“Okay,” Shauna says, drawing out the word in the most suspicious way possible. “I’m heading out now.” Neither of them even acknowledge her, so she slips out the door into the hallway with ease.

Just as she enters the cafeteria, she eyes Claire and Maddie passing by her (wow, she does have strong perfume) out the corner of her eye. She does her best not to look at them.

She walks to the rest of the yellowjackets, a space beside Jackie again left empty for her. She slides in seamlessly while Jackie turns to her hurriedly.

Shauna beats her to it. “I know! I know, we didn’t get to walk together again, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you. You can put on Beaches tonight and I won’t even tease you for it.”

Jackie softens and shows that small smile that she reserves for Shauna only. The butterflies in her stomach flutters at the sight. But Jackie’s jaw tightens a couple seconds later.

“What, did you go see Devin Lawrence again?”

Jesus Christ, Shauna could not win with this girl.

She’s about to reply when she sees Claire and Maddie re-enter the cafeteria. Their bags are on their backs and they’re smiling, so Shauna assumes they haven’t opened them yet. She gives Jackie a lazy response that she doesn’t even hear, but she seems satisfied and goes back to gossiping with Mari and Gen.

Shauna didn’t pick up any lunch, so she has nothing to do with her sweaty hands as lunch continues. She spends half her time listening to Lottie complaining about her parents and the other half sneaking glances at Claire and Maddie’s table. She knows she’s getting antsy when Tai shoots her a questioning look after accidentally stepping on her shoe for the third time, a result from her non-stop knee bouncing.

When she sees Maddie reach for the zipper on her bag, she stops breathing.

For Shauna, it happens in slow motion. She wishes she had her camera, just so she could capture the before and after of the absolute pandemonium that breaks out. She sees Maddie’s face twist from a smile into a horrified kind of shock, and she lets out a blood-curdling scream.

It’s music to her ears.

Lottie stops in the middle of her story and turns to the chaos, much like the rest of the cafeteria. Even Nat, who’s usually half asleep at lunch, turns to the scene with curiosity. Maddie’s screams mix with her sobs as she shakes out her bag and watches the pads fall out, and the whole cafeteria gasps.

The people at Maddie’s table all back away. Claire shouts something that Shauna can’t make out, but she reaches for the zipper of her own bag and Shauna physically flinches at the way her stomach flips.

She gets to relive it all over again—the horrified realization and the screaming and sobbing—when Claire unzips her bag. The cafeteria gasps again like some fucked up reality TV show. The rest of their table frantically checks their bags like they’re cursed.

It’s only Claire screaming and sobbing now. Remember what Shauna said about the smell? It gets excessively unbearable after being in a small enclosed space, like her closet. Or a backpack. Maddie has switched to gagging and her stomach must not be as strong as Shauna’s because the lunch she just ate comes back up her throat and out her mouth.

Right onto Claire.

And Shauna gets to relive it all over again, because Claire and Maddie are two peas in a pod, two cherries on a stem, two best friends that can smoke in a bathroom and talk shit about other people. So Claire responds with her own lunch coming out of her mouth.

Right onto Maddie.

The cafeteria is in hysterics at this point. Some people are laughing out of shock, some kind bystanders are helplessly offering water and napkins, and some have just completely run out the room to save their own stomachs.

Jackie has her fist pressed to her mouth and she’s gripping the table, her telltale sign that she’s trying not to vomit. Tai is practically a mirror picture. Nat’s jaw is dropped completely, and a little holy shit slips from her lips. Lottie’s hands are slapped to her mouth, eyes wide.

Shauna’s own hands are slapped to her mouth, simultaneously to look shocked and to cover the smile her lips have tugged themselves into. She wants to see the rest of it play out, wants to see Claire and Maddie shake in disgust, but she tears her eyes away and looks at Van instead.

Van’s posture is hunched. Her head’s on the table and her hands are clutching her sides. Her shoulders are shaking. Shauna’s a little worried she’s crying, but then Van lifts her head.

She is crying—tears run down her bright-red cheeks—but she’s biting her bottom lip like she’s restraining that big, beautiful smile of hers. A barked laugh escapes anyway and Van slaps her hand to her mouth to stifle it, squinting her eyes shut to contain herself. She puts her head back down to the table.

In summary, Shauna was having a really good day.

Chapter Text

She just wants to go home.

She’s sweaty and sticky and tired and she longs for the feeling of her bedsheets but instead Shauna’s stuck at Lottie’s house at yet another one of her infamous parties.

She should’ve known nothing’s bound to go her way when Jackie looks at her like that and asks for something. Shauna will always give her anything she wants.

So instead of the relaxing Friday she planned for herself, she walks into the house right behind Jackie with a headache already sprouting at the base of her skull. Truly, Shauna never feels as weak as she does when she crumbles to Jackie’s gaze.

They’ve been here for a couple hours now, but Shauna hasn’t strayed far from her corner in the kitchen. The bass of the music makes her head throb and tonight is a rare night where she can’t stomach anything more than water. She settles on people-watching instead—the way people flow in and out the kitchen, around each other, through the back door. She catches some of the yellowjackets getting refills, including Jackie, who gives her an apologetic look as she exits. Shauna’s praying for her to come running back soon and finally ask to go home.

It doesn’t help that people are still talking about it. The incident with Claire and Maddie was a couple days ago, but she catches people telling over-exaggerated versions of it everywhere she goes. It’s even brought up at practice, much to her dismay.

“Whoever thought of that is fucked up,” Mari said. “I like it.”

“I think it was overkill,” Jackie stated, lacing up her cleats. “That was just cruel.”

Shauna should’ve held her tongue, but when does she ever make good decisions? “What if they deserved it?”

Jackie gave her a weird look. “Bloody pads in their backpacks? Really?”

As much as she enjoyed it in the moment, Shauna needs people to stop talking about it. Her heart races with anxiety every time someone brings up who’s behind the entire scheme, and she doesn’t need any marks on her permanent record.

Still in her sad little corner, Shauna looks at the stairs longingly. Lottie’s house has three floors: the first floor is where parties are limited to and the second floor is exclusive to the yellowjackets. The third floor is less of a floor and more of a space; If Shauna had to describe it, it’s a room full of knick-knacks, beanbags, and other miscellaneous items. It’s the only room that Lottie got to fill herself.

It’s pretty much an extra bedroom without the standard bed. The best part about it is Shauna’s one of the few people who are allowed up there. People think Lottie’s super relaxed when it comes to rules—and objectively, she is. She can’t hold these kinds of parties without possessing a certain leniency. But Shauna knows Lottie is protective of her personal spaces, especially the one up top. That’s why she’s eternally grateful to the girl for offering her the area. It’s been open to her since they were Juniors.

The story is they’re at Lottie’s house for a party and Shauna didn’t want to be there (the usual plotline). What pisses Shauna off when she thinks back is the fact that Jackie’s known her for over a decade, and she still doesn’t know what Lottie happened to figure out in less than an hour.

(Well, she either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Both options are equally tragic.)

Shauna’s stressed and tired and confined to the stupid dress Jackie forced her to wear when Lottie softly tapped her on the shoulder. A conversation was the last thing she wanted, but Lottie’s the host and her mom didn’t raise her to be mannerless. So she turned and forced a smile anyway.

“Y’know,” Lottie began, “Most of the time you and Jackie come together and leave together. But when you guys are actually here, you’re sulking against a wall while she talks to everyone else.”

Thank you, Lottie. Way to rub it in, Shauna thought. She shrugged in response.

Lottie seemed to contemplate something, squeezing the cup in her hand before nodding to herself.

“Follow me,” she said. She tugged Shauna up the stairs before she even had the chance to protest. As they ascended to the second level, Shauna saw Jackie re-enter the main floor with Jeff in tow. She tore her eyes away just as Jackie got a glimpse of their disappearance act.

Lottie brought them to a hidden-but-not-hidden staircase. Shauna furrowed her eyebrows.

“You’re bringing me to your attic?”

“Not exactly.”

Up the staircase was a wooden door that Lottie pushed open. Inside was a room that looked like it could be in Shauna’s house, which wasn’t much of a descriptor until she compared it to the rest of the mansion.

Lottie slowly walked to the middle of the room, arms spread wide before flopping onto the nearest chair. “This is where I go to hide.”

Shauna examined the room silently. There were a couple bookshelves lining the navy blue walls and a leather couch placed opposite of it. In terms of places to hide, it wasn’t a bad one.

Lottie stood and walked to Shauna hesitantly. “I don’t know if you actually like coming to these things. But… I think you’re like me? Maybe?” She shook her head nervously. “I don’t know. If you ever feel overwhelmed, make yourself at home here. I don’t mind.”

Shauna didn’t know what Lottie’s ‘like me’ necessarily entails, but the offer was appealing. The music was significantly dulled with a whole floor between them and the couch may as well have beckoned Shauna to lay down and rest her eyes.

Lottie’s always been kind. But besides the team, Shauna knows she doesn’t have many people she calls friends. Part of it is her last name; Everyone knows the Matthews, for better or for worse. Befriend one of them and you’ll reap the benefits, but get on their bad side and you’ll run the risk of being shunned. Because of this, people tend to steer clear of Lottie to be on the safe side.

Shauna wondered what it’s like—to be a ‘Matthews’ kind of untouchable. To roam around school floating between friend groups where everyone likes her, not a single derogatory thing to be said. At the same time, it must be exhausting going through life questioning everyone’s intentions, whether people are there because they want to be or if they’re present because they see dollar signs in their future.

That’s why Shauna tries not to take Lottie’s kindness for granted. She is kind and empathetic and determined and Shauna is grateful she gets to be one of Lottie’s people.

Regardless, she still hesitated.

“I don’t know how expensive this stuff is! And I don’t want to break any of it,” she said. Lottie was already at the door.

She just turned and smiled softly. “Don’t worry about it. I trust you.”

And that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Trust? When they take to the field and they all jog to their positions, Lottie is directly behind Shauna. Center Back and Defensive Center Mid—two positions that require control and constant communication. Shauna’s a damn good player, but she can’t see everything on the field all the time. Lottie’s a protective blanket that sits right behind her, picking up the slack when Shauna lets a player get by. Shauna trusts her because, literally and metaphorically, she has her back—unfailingly and unflinchingly.

Shauna’s trusted her for a long time. As of that night, she knows Lottie reciprocated on some level.

A sharp cheer breaks Shauna out of her reverie. She’s still in the kitchen and she still has a headache, but now she’s graced with the sight of Randy Walsh attempting to breakdance on a rug that probably costs more than her arm. That’s the thing that breaks her.

Shauna didn’t often take advantage of the space Lottie showed her because she doesn’t want to seem like she’s taking advantage of her, but she needs to get away. Just for a while.

She quietly makes her way up the steps, navigating the path Lottie showed her until she’s at the hidden-but-not-hidden stairs. But when she makes it to the wooden door, it’s already cracked open.

She doesn’t think too much of it. Nat also knows about this place and uses it as her own escape. So Shauna enters expecting to see her dozing on the couch, but the room is empty. The main one, at least. She hears voices from the connecting bathroom—voices that are definitely not supposed to be there.

“There has to be something,” one of them says.

“Seriously. She has to be hiding some fucked up shit,” another one pipes up.

Shauna recognizes those voices. They belong to Ellie Campbell and Justin Broker—also known as, after Jackie and Jeff broke up, the most aggravating couple Shauna has the displeasure of knowing. They’ve made out against Shauna’s locker enough times for her to imagine cutting off their tongues.

“She’s so fucking annoying. ‘Don’t go upstairs,’ like, shut the fuck up, you’re rich,” Ellie rants. Shauna can hear them rummaging around, most likely making a mess. “She’s so entitled.”

Shauna’s never thought Lottie was entitled. She can’t say the same for her family, but she knows Lottie actively tries not to act like her parents. Also, she has no idea what being rich has to do with not wanting people upstairs. Cautiously, she walks closer to the bathroom door to hear them better.

“I can’t stand her. She’s always looking down on me, like she thinks she’s fucking better than me or something.” There’s a thud that reverberates through the wall, followed by Justin’s drunken cursing.

You probably deserved it, asshole, Shauna rolls her eyes. Also, she’s like, 5’10, she looks down on people all the time.

“Oooh wait… what the hell is this?” Shauna hears their voices through the door getting closer. She scrambles backwards, all the way to the door leading back downstairs. She barely gets out of sight before the bathroom door swings open, spilling out the couple unceremoniously.

“Jesus, what kind of drugs are these?” From her place on the staircase with the door cracked open, Shauna could see Justin hold up a small orange bottle to the light. Pills rattle at the movement, and she feels her chest still.

Those aren’t party drugs. Those are real, actual medication prescribed from a real, actual doctor.

What were they doing sitting up in Lottie Matthews’s hiding place?

Ellie snatches the bottle from Justin’s grasp.“Lox- Loxipene?” Her face screws up. “The fuck is that?”

Justin shrugs. He glides over to lounge on the couch, rubbing his hands over the expensive leather. Shauna grinds her teeth, a violent feeling bubbling beneath her skin.

You don’t belong here. Get out get out get out-

“Prescribed to our very own Charlotte Matthews. What if she’s insane?” Ellie muses, tossing the prescription between her hands. Justin laughs and proceeds to look around the room in faux panic, clutching his chest and moaning in this mocking tone that makes both of them wheeze from laughter. Shauna feels venom in her veins.

“Is that what we’re thinking? That she’s-“ Justin whistles, twirling his finger in a circular motion around his temple. “We don’t even know what Lex- Loxi- whatever the fuck she takes—is for?”

“Babe, it doesn’t matter what it’s actually for. If people see a bunch of pills with her name on it and we just tell them she’s a psycho, they’ll believe it.” Ellie grips the pills in her hand. “And then everyone will know she’s a freak.”

Shauna would pity their stupidity if she wasn’t already boiling. All rumors about Lottie end up swept under the rug eventually because no one would dare to speak on it. Not when she could ruin their lives with a snap of her fingers.

(She wouldn’t, Shauna knows. Lottie isn’t all that vengeful.

Then again, Lottie contains multitudes that Shauna has yet to uncover.)

Ellie tosses the bottle to Justin, who fumbles it in the air. “Here, put it in your pocket. I wanna show it to Kaylee tomorrow.”

“Wait, why do I have to carry it?”

“Because I don’t have pockets, moron!”

“So I’m just supposed to carry it the rest of the time we’re here?”

“Yes! Besides, we’re leaving soon. I have curfew.”

And Shauna knows, watching Justin stuff the bottle in the front pocket of his jeans, that she has to get it away from them as fast as possible. It’s a smoking gun, and she’ll be damned if it leaves this room in the hands of a boy that used to eat his boogers. They’re already approaching the staircase to go back downstairs, so she does the first thing she thinks of.

Right as they’re about to open the door, Shauna shoves the door open herself, smacking it straight into Ellie’s face.

“Ow! Fuck!” she shrieks, clutching her face and turning around. Simultaneously, Shauna bulldozes through and rams into Justin, tackling both of them to the floor.

While Ellie’s whining over her face, Shauna makes a decision that will lead her to take a very hot, very rough shower after this party is over. She groans performatively, pressing one hand over Justin’s crotch and accentuating (she hates everything about this) her chest in the pretense of getting up. While his face goes red and his eyes wander, she sticks her hand in his pocket and grabs the pills. She rolls off of him onto the ground all while slipping the bottle into the sleeve of her jean jacket—and really, Shauna thinks she deserves some kind of award for this.

“What the fuck?!” Ellie finally ceases her dramatics, whirling around and sporting an angry red mark in the middle of her forehead. “Fucking Shauna?”

She and Justin struggle off the floor, and Shauna makes sure she sways a little more than usual. Because if there’s one thing that people know about Shauna Shipman, it’s her reputation with liquor.

Shauna hasn’t had a drop of alcohol all night. But everyone knows she’s a lightweight; Jackie’s made more than a couple jokes at her expense. Furthermore, everyone knows she’s an angry lightweight. This is the first time she’s grateful for the facade.

“Huh? You’re…” Shauna slurs, squinting her eyes and stumbling. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

And sure, she’s a little dramatic with it—she twists her neck until she’s hears those satisfying pops, and she does the same with her knuckles as she watches their faces falter. She watches the fear and realization take over their expressions. Neither of them want to deal with her when they think she has alcohol in her system.

“Uh, we just, um,” Justin flounders, clearly panicking.

“Needed a bathroom! We needed a bathroom and Lottie said we could be up here,” Ellie blurts out, grabbing Justin’s hand and pulling him to the door. Shauna feels a little disappointed that they’re not even subtle. Even if she was drunk, she’s certain she would’ve caught their bullshit immediately. She doesn’t have any room to comment on it though, because both of them are out the door and bounding down the staircase before she can get a word out.

Shauna sighs, walking over to sit on the couch and leaning her head back on the wall. She lets the bottle slip out of her sleeve into her hand, examining it. She knows what she should do—she should put the bottle back into whatever medicine cabinet they found it in, alert Lottie of the trespassers, and be done with it. Lottie can take care of it herself, probably in a perfectly mature and justified way.  She absolutely, under no circumstances, should be making any sort of violent and/or humiliating plans. Shauna rubs her thumb over the printed ‘Matthews, Charlotte’ on the label.

“If people see a bunch of pills with her name on it and we just tell them she’s a psycho, they’ll believe it.” Ellie grips the pills in her hand. “And then everyone will know she’s a freak.”

Shauna feels it—the rage that contorts itself into the same sick excitement that she felt days ago watching bloody pads fall to the cafeteria floor, and the decision is already made. She stands and walks to the bathroom, placing the bottle back in its rightful place.

Alright, Shauna thinks, shutting the cabinet softly.

Game on.

-

She stays upstairs until her headache ebbs away, soaking in the silence before she has to face the music (literally and figuratively).

Jackie, as usual, is the first person she finds in the crowd. She’s dancing with a group of people, smiling as bright as the party lights that illuminate her. Shauna’s breath abandons her with every twirl, every shuffle. There’s something about Party Jackie that captures her. Something about the way she moves and the way she smiles and the way she has people wrapped around her finger, and…

Well, there’s a reason Shauna agrees to these parties so easily.

Jackie catches her eye in the middle of a song and she smiles just the tiniest bit wider. Despite it being one of the best songs, she cuts through the crowd to stand in front of Shauna, hair slightly mussed and mascara on her cheek. She smiles at her anyway.

“Hey, Shipman. Ya having fun?” she teases.

“Mhmm,” Shauna lies, sticking her hands into her pockets. Jackie squints, softening and searching her face. She glances around the room before she leans in conspiratorially.

“Wanna get out of here?” she stage whispers, taking Shauna’s hand out her pocket and linking their pinkies. Shauna tries to morph her face into something apologetic. Probably fails spectacularly.

“Mhmm,” she nods. “I have to go talk to Lottie.” She takes her keys out her pocket, handing them to Jackie. “Start the car for me?”

Jackie takes the keys and steps further into Shauna’s space. She hopes the red light shining over them hides the worst of her flush. “Don’t make me wait too long,” Jackie winks.

Jackie starts making her rounds of goodbyes while Shauna hunts for Lottie. She finds her outside next to the fire pit conversing with two guys from the basketball team. Shauna walks up and taps her on the shoulder.

Lottie turns, waving off the boys and taking a sip of her drink. “Hey, what’s up? You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m actually calling it a night.” Shauna bites her lip nervously. “I just wanted to tell you Ellie and Justin were in the room.”

Coming from anyone else, ‘the room’ would be very unspecific. Coming from Shauna, ‘the room’ leaves only one option—the one that makes Lottie go pale, her easy-going smile instantly slipping off her face. She’s slamming down her drink and speed-walking towards the house almost fast enough to leave Shauna in the dust. Shauna catches her hand just before she’s out of reach.

“They didn’t break, mess with, or- or take anything,” Shauna says, looking into Lottie’s eyes. It’s the first time since she’s known her that she sees fear in them. “I just thought you should know.”

Lottie tears her hand away from her, choosing to pick at the skin around her nails. “Did you tell them to get out? I mean, how long were they in there before you saw them? Are you sure they didn’t-“

“Lottie,” Shauna says gently. “They didn’t move anything. I made sure of it.”

Lottie’s eyes flicker uncertainly, pursing her lips and heaving a weary sigh. “Well, at least I have an excuse to kick them out now.”

Shauna huffs, “If they haven’t high-tailed it already.”

When she finally, finally, gets to the car and sinks into her seat, she glances at Jackie in the passenger seat. Jackie gives her a drowsy smile, heavy eyes fluttering shut. It’s something that stays with her all the way home.

-

It’s a little harder than she thought to do this logically.

With Van, everything was sort of instinctual. She was already pissed and conveniently on her period and the whole ‘disgusting’ theme just seemed poetic in some weird universal way. She felt like a goddess of karma. But that feeling has greatly screwed her over, because now she can’t shake this particular plan from her mind.

She’s going to spread a rumor about Ellie and Justin.

…and okay, saying it out loud makes it sound really fucking lame. But if they were so willing to spread some resentment-fueled rumor about Lottie, it’s only fair that she returns the favor, right? She knows better than most people, being subjected to Jackie’s other friends, how destructive rumors can be. There’s just one tiny problem.

Shauna sucks at this stuff. Seriously. It’s not like she’s tried to be good at it—she doesn’t care enough to spread shit about other people. But she’s started to realize that she’s not even creative enough to make something up (which is a huge blow to her pride as a writer, by the way). What the hell is she supposed to say? Ellie and Justin are about the most generic people she can think of. Both of them are into whatever’s the most popular. Anything that Shauna conjures up will most likely be far-fetched and ignorable. The best rumors have a little bit of truth to them.

Also, she’s not nearly the best gossiper. There’s a certain charisma required that she just doesn’t have. People take Jackie at her word because they think she’s a saint, like there’s no way she would be saying something unless it were actually true. If someone else with less charisma said the exact same thing (read: Shauna), they’d just think she was being a bitch. So whatever rumor she ends up spreading, people can’t know it came from her or it’ll immediately lose its credibility.

Shauna groans, already exhausted from all her thoughts. She sticks a hand under her bed, looking for any stray items. Her mom said to clear out some of the stuff from her room to donate, so she’s been spending the last hour or so picking apart her room.

Her fingers snag on a box, pulling it out lazily with her face smushed against the side of her bed. She looks down and sees a bunch of random stuff—arcade tickets, colored ribbons, rubber bracelets—but the attention-grabber is her old handheld camcorder in the center, dusty and long unused.

She picks it up carefully, like she’s touching a memory long forgotten. She got really into photography in her freshman and sophomore year. She used to have a barely functioning digital camera that she would use as an exercise for her writing, taking a picture of any place or any person and describing it as vividly as she could. For her fifteenth birthday, Jackie got her this one—Shauna had hugged her for a full ten minutes as soon as the wrapping paper was torn away (not that either of them complained). It’s filled with pictures and videos of her backyard, slumber parties, and the yellowjackets.

She brings it to her desk, using an old t-shirt to wipe away some of the dust. She doesn’t know why she stopped, if she’s being honest. There was something cathartic about capturing a still image; it was like everything was frozen in time, impervious to change and disaster. Like the way the sun shone in her backyard would always shine that way, regardless of the rain that would eventually come. And even then, the rain made it look its own kind of beautiful.

She should give it away. She hasn’t used it in a while, and it’s not like she has the time to pick it up again. She doesn’t need it anymore.

Instead, she finds a charger and plugs it in.

-

The next day, Shauna goes to school with a camcorder in her backpack.

She can’t lug it everywhere, so she stores it in her locker before first period starts. Ellie and Justin are there, tongues in each others’ mouths at eight in the goddamn morning.

She shoves them to the side to give herself a little space. They remain remarkably unfazed. They only separate when the first bell rings, indicating the beginning of the passing period. Shauna’s trying to figure out how to fit the camera in her locker when a part of their conversation catches her ear.

“You’re bringing the peanut butter, right?” Ellie says, rubbing his shoulders up and down.

“Of course,” Justin says, pecking her lips. “I’ll stop at the supermarket before I come over.”

It’s normal. There’s absolutely nothing extraordinary about it. So why is it sticking in Shauna’s head?

The day goes by slowly. The minutes tick by, building an anticipation for something unknown. The feeling follows her the entire time, making it impossible to focus.

“You okay, Shipman?” Jackie whispers, quickly glancing at her. They’re in math, one of the subjects they’re relatively equal in, and Shauna’s leg brushes against hers obnoxiously with how much she’s bouncing it.

“I don’t know,” she responds, scribbling in her notebook. It’s the first time it doesn’t feel like a lie.

Her nerves slightly abide by practice. The stretch in her legs and lungs as Coach makes them do suicides actually do a great job at clearing her head. The anticipation is still there, but much more manageable. By the end of it, she realizes that she hasn’t used her camera at all. She doesn’t know what she expected, so she takes it out her bag to trick herself into thinking she brought it for a reason.

“No way! I haven’t seen you with that in a while!” Van exclaims, sitting down next to her. Shauna smiles, fiddling with the settings and controls. It all comes back to her slowly, hands moving like they’re retracing an old art, and suddenly the red light starts blinking to indicate the start of a video.

“Say Hi,” she says, pointing the camera at Van. Van yells a greeting, folding her hands into a snake and hissing at the camera. Tai comes up from behind her, walking her fingers up Van’s spine until she writhes like a fish out of water. The two of them start playfully fighting while Shauna moves around the locker room. Laura Lee gives a shy wave, Mari and Nat flip her off (a gesture she hastily returns), and some of the JV girls she has a soft spot for make an appearance.

Lottie walks in from the showers, and Shauna makes sure she’s decent before turning the camera to her. “Say Hi, Lot,” she says.

Lottie blinks in surprise before smirking and breaking out an enthusiastic rendition of Shoop. Her strong voice carries across the locker room, and soon most of the girls are shouting the lyrics. There’s no music, but when has that ever stopped them? Shauna’s laughing and singing at the same time, tracking Lottie’s movements as she takes the time to sing with everyone in the room. The tall girl gets into a dance battle with Van, throws verses back and forth with Laura Lee, and even manages to jump up and down with Nat for a single eight count.

Lottie makes her way back to Shauna eventually. She’s still singing, walking up to the camera like she’s giving a live performance. Shauna studies her, taking in her sharp canines and messy bangs, and all she can think of is the poison in Ellie and Justin’s voices in that room. All she can think of is the fear in her eyes when Shauna told her they were up there. All she can think of is how she’d ruin them before they ever get the chance to ruin her.

She was close to asking her mom about it. She can’t deny that she was curious to know what ‘Loxipene’ is for, and her mom would probably know what it treats.

But… it’s not her business. Lottie showed her a safe place, so the least she could do is treat the gesture with respect. That means not asking questions about things she doesn’t need to know. She’s content with her decision, seeing Lottie dance without inhibition. No matter what prescriptions she has to take, Lottie’s her friend.

The song ends, and Lottie plants a kiss on the front of the camera. The rest of the girls are laughing in the background, finally starting to file out the door. Lottie gives one last smile, and Shauna stops the recording.

-

What is she doing?

She already dropped Jackie off, much to her complaint.

“You sure you can’t stay? My parents aren’t home, and I’ll let you put one of your records on,” Jackie pouted.

“Not tonight. I have to head to the library for a LIT assignment, and you-“ Shauna said, lightly flicking her on her forehead, “-do not have the patience for that.”

Jackie rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, lilting, “You know me so well.” She wrapped Shauna in a hug, nose rubbing just under her ear. “Nerd.”

Except Shauna doesn’t have an assignment that requires a trip to the library. Just the overwhelming feeling to drive around like she’s missing something important. She just doesn’t know what.

Her instinct brings her to the forest near the edge of the town. Technically it’s a public park, but it’s lined with trees that evolves into a forest the further you walk into it. Shauna parks her car and sighs, slumping back into her seat. She glances at her bag in the passenger seat. She’s felt off the entire day, maybe a walk could fix whatever’s wrong with her. She could even describe the woods in her journal with her camera, like she used to do.

So Shauna grabs her bag and exits the car, beginning her trek into the woods. After ten minutes or so, the park long behind her, she comes across an area of decaying, mangled trees. It’s not a bad spot, so she takes the camera out the bag and presses the recording button. She pans it across the landscape, already imagining the details in her head—the chirps of the birds, the richness of the soil, the way the trees twist around each other like they’re dancing.

Just as she’s about to end the recording, she hears a distant moan. Now, contrary to popular belief, Shauna’s not stupid. She knows this is probably the most cliché trope to horror media: character hears weird noise, character investigates weird noise, character dies because of weird noise. And while she likes to imagine she’s a character in a novel, horror isn’t exactly the genre she’d like to star in. She’s prepping herself to go ahead and fuck right off when she hears another moan. It’s a little louder and, to her horror, it sounds… aroused.

There is no fucking way people are actually having sex in the goddamn woods.

And there is no fucking way Shauna’s feet are actually moving toward the sounds.

(Shauna might be stupid.)

She puts careful consideration in her steps, ensuring she doesn’t step on any stray twigs or crunchy-looking leaves. As the moans get uncomfortably louder and more frequent, the regret builds higher and higher in her stomach. There is no reason she should be investigating. In fact, it’s encouraged that she turn on her heel and cover her ears, pretending this never happened because this is none of her business. But her feet have their own agenda, and she comes up on the clearing before the logical side of her brain has anything to say about it.

She’s walked deeper into the woods, so the general environment is a lot denser, providing suitable coverage (coverage she would not need if she just walked away, but whatever). The clearing she sees is small, but it’s remarkably clear of the shrubbery that inhabits the rest of the forest. The trees swarm overhead, creating somewhat of a roof that filters out the rapidly setting sun. It would be a beautiful place to write about if it wasn’t tarnished by the couple in the clearing.

The good news is that the couple’s not having sex in the woods.

The bad news is that the couple’s not having sex in the woods, because Shauna would prefer walking in on that than whatever the fuck she’s actually witnessing.

She’s cursed with the image of Ellie Campbell, pants and underwear discarded and head rolled back onto the grass. Next to her is Justin, shirtless and hooded eyes watching Ellie, his hand moving fast underneath his pants. There’s a closed peanut butter jar between them, and the insatiable itch in the back of her mind finally relieves itself. But the worst part isn’t the voyeurism; it’s the fucking dog in between Ellie’s legs, lapping at her peanut butter covered sex.

(So that’s what they needed the peanut butter for.)

And it’s not a euphemism or anything. No, there’s a literal dog with four legs and a wagging tail. Ellie moans again, hand going down as if she’s trying to tangle her fingers in someone’s hair. She’s met with fur instead, and her hand twitches with hesitant recognition before urging the dog closer.

Shauna’s entire body rebels against itself. Her hands want to claw her eyes out from her head. Her stomach wants to regurgitate everything it’s already digested. Her legs want to move in the opposite direction as fast as possible. Helplessly, none of those things happen. She’s stuck in her place, feeling like her eyes are forced open.

Something brushes against her leg. She looks down and sees she’s still holding her camcorder, even if it’s currently slipping out of her hand. Thankfully, she has enough brainpower to adjust her grip so the thing doesn’t crash in the underbrush and create an even more awkward situation. And then she sees the red blinking light on the screen, and she has two realizations at the same time.

It’s still recording. And this is definitely the type of thing that can ruin someone.

Shauna stares at the blinking light, considering. First of all, recording a sexual video of two maybe minors without their knowledge is probably most definitely illegal. Second of all, does she really want to be that kind of person? Does she really want to spend her time (and dignity) recording a demeaning video about two people that made a drunken remark? Is she willing to stoop that low and tarnish the reputation of two stupid kids that she really couldn’t care less about?

It’s humorous how fast she thinks, Yes, I absolutely am.

So Shauna crouches further behind the conveniently large bush and ends the recording. She starts a new one, pushing the camera through the leaves and focusing it on the scene. She captures the moment Ellie’s orgasm hits her and the moment Justin pulls down his own pants, spreading peanut butter down his dick and prompting the poor dog to switch people. Their moans are constant throughout the audio of the recording.

Despite the disgust and discomfort hitting her in waves, Shauna smirks. After all, the best rumors have a little bit of truth to them.

-

Shauna spent the rest of the weekend converting the evidence into a VHS tape. She attached a sticky note to the front with the dramatic instructions of ‘do what you want.’ All she has to do is put it in her chosen gossiper’s locker.

It didn’t take too long to decide who should spread the rumor. Justin has two very important people in his social life. One of them is Ellie, a surprise to no one. The other one is his best friend, someone he’s known almost as long as she’s known Jackie—one very convenient Danny Mears. When Danny Mears left his girlfriend for his cousin, Justin chose to antagonize said girlfriend instead of questioning what kind of friends he has (although, with recent events, it’s not that surprising they’re friends).

So the ex-girlfriend—also known as Mari Ibarra, an already notorious gossiper—would snatch up the opportunity to ruin Justin. She’s never been happier to have Mari as a teammate.

Shauna stalks her after their last period ends. Before their sixth period, which is just a free period for their soccer practice, Mari goes to her locker to pick up her bag before heading to the locker room. Shauna makes a conscious effort to stay out of sight and memorize her locker combination simultaneously; an easy task, because Mari’s too distracted talking to her classmates to notice Shauna in the background. When they finally leave, Shauna enters the combo the way Mari did and the locker opens without any problems. There’s more pictures than textbooks, but Shauna pays them no mind as she carefully places the tape in a way that Mari can’t ignore. Then she slams the locker shut and hurries to the locker room, eager to get practice over with and go home before any of this blows up on her.

-

It takes a single day.

Less than one, actually; not even twenty-four hours has passed before Shauna hears the whispers.

Mari works fast , she thinks.

By lunch, it’s all anyone can talk about. News travels devastatingly fast in a small town. Even the yellowjackets are engaged, Mari leading the table for once. She looks utterly smug about it.

“What the hell?” Jackie says incredulously, eyes wide.

“Right?!” Mari responds, taking a bite of her food. Shauna swears she chews longer than necessary just to build anticipation. “I’m going to my locker after practice, right? I open it to grab one of my notebooks, and boom, there it is! Literally asking me to do what I want with it! So obviously, I go home and play it.”

“Mari,” Nat chastises. “Don’t play a random ass tape. What if it was some dark shit that sticks in your nightmares?”

“Or some possessed tape that literally haunts you?” Van says around a sandwich that Shauna’s half-sure came from Tai’s lunch.

“Well it wasn’t,” Mari assures, looking disgruntled that they interrupted her. “It was a video about Ellie Campbell and Justin Broker engaging in literal beastiality. I stopped watching after, like, ten seconds ‘cause I was about to throw up, but it was perfect.”

Mari’s cut off again by the room going silent. Shauna looks around in confusion until she realizes the reason.

Ellie and Justin just entered the cafeteria.

Mari sees them at the same time Shauna does and turns to the table wearing this triumphant smile. “Whatever people say about him, the fucker deserves it.”

And no one’s able to tell her to shut the fuck up until it’s too late. Mari rises and cups her hands, shouting all the way across the cafeteria, “Hey, Justin! Is Ellie that bad that you need a dog to suck you off?”

Shauna’s mouth drops open. Nat and Akilah are hurriedly pulling her down and telling her to quit it, but Mari just snickers. The rest of the yellowjackets keep their head down to try and ignore it, but Shauna’s pretty sure Tai and Lottie are hiding their laughs behind their fists.

The other people in the cafeteria have the same reactions: most people stifle their laughs into the palm of their hands, some people roll their eyes and keep their head down. No one stands up for them. Shauna’s too preoccupied dealing with her own exasperation to realize both of them have marched over to stand in front of Mari.

Justin is ghostly white and Ellie is an angry red. She fumes, “The fuck did you just say?” The cafeteria returns to silence.

Mari ignores her and addresses Justin instead. Raising an eyebrow, she asks, “Does your dog talk for you?” And to rub it in further, she sucks her teeth mockingly and pouts, “Sorry, is that a sensitive subject?”

Ellie grabs the front of her shirt and starts yelling, making Mari yell right back at her. Justin doesn’t a say a word, eyes flicking around the cafeteria like he wishes he could sink into the earth. Shauna thrives in their discomfort.

How does it feel? She gloats. How does it feel to be stripped bare and humiliated? How does it feel to have your secret exposed and laughed at? How does it feel to be ruined? How does it feel?

Nat and Van have gotten in between them, yelling and desperately trying to get Ellie to let go.

“Okay, let’s all just calm down,” Jackie pleads, hands spread in a placating gesture. She’s promptly ignored. Someone must have notified the teachers, because Shauna sees a few entering the cafeteria.

She loves the absolute humiliation occurring, but there’s just one thing nagging at the back of her mind. Just the one comment that she’s replayed since that night.

“ Everyone will know she’s a freak.”

Shauna opens her mouth before she can stop it. “Wow, Ellie,” she says loudly, dragging her words out. Everyone goes silent. She feels too many eyes on her, so she keeps her eyes on her tray and pushes the food around to at least appear composed. Meanwhile, she’s fighting the urge to run.

Still, she forces her voice to come out steady. “You’re kind of a freak, aren’t you?”

Jackie chokes out a gasp from beside her. Someone whistles from behind her. Shauna looks up to see Ellie’s expression and she wants to bask in the satisfaction. Ellie is a shade of red that is almost medically concerning. Her hand twists away from the front of Mari’s shirt. She looks ready to jump across the table to strangle her, and Shauna’s more than happy to meet her, but the teacher finally pulls her away, whisking her and Justin out the cafeteria swiftly.

As soon as they exit the cafeteria, everyone breaks out into lively conversation, likely debriefing what just happened. The yellowjackets remain silent. Until Jackie speaks up, both eyebrows raised.

“Shauna… what the fuck?”

She just shrugs helplessly, the tension finally leaving her body. Her teammates laugh it off, and Mari jumps into a slightly hypocritical rant about Ellie’s audacity.

Shauna looks at Lottie in the middle of it, somewhat startled when she realizes Lottie’s already looking at her. There’s an indecipherable look in her eyes, but there’s a hint of fondness in her irises. Shauna looks away first.

She listens to Mari’s rant with the lightness of someone who pulled off a job well done. But this whole business is risky, and she knows she can’t risk herself like this all the time. This is the last time, she swears.

She definitely won’t, under no circumstances, do this again.

Chapter Text

She does it again the next day.

At this point, she has to stop being surprised. But who knows? Maybe this will actually be the last time. Third time’s the charm, right?

She’s at a party. Shocker. You think she’d get the hint and stop going to parties at this point. But she has a drugged Bobby Farleigh in a shed out back, red staining her hand, and a mind going wild. There’s minimal light in here, so the job is shoddy, but she gets it done. There’s a melody playing in her head that she can’t quite pin down, but she hums it out loud, feeling somewhat crazed and wholly dignified. She doesn’t know it, but there’s a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

She’s an artist with a blank canvas, and she’ll be damned if she isn’t going to paint.

-

If anyone asked Shauna her opinion about Natalie Scatorccio, she would give a perfectly neutral answer. They play well together on the field, but they’re the type of people that ignore each other in the hallways. If they ever see each other in the hallways in the first place. It’s not a personal thing—their circles just never intersect with each other. When they do, it’s not in the best ways. 

(Shauna’s circle is really just Jackie and Jackie’s friends that she barely registers as individuals. If you asked them their opinion about Nat, that’s a whole different story.)

The point is, Shauna barely knows the girl. She knows her hair isn’t originally blonde. She knows her mom doesn’t come to her games. She knows she claims to have no pregame ritual, yet she drags the tip of her beat up cleat along the sideline right before kickoff, no matter whose field they’re on. And she knows the rumors that follow her: slut, stoner, burnout. When Jackie’s seriously pissed, she’ll throw a few of the taglines at the girl. Never loud, but always clear. Shauna has to hide a wince sometimes. She never says anything to avoid Jackie’s cold shoulder because it gets really annoying after a couple days. 

There’s one more that truly puzzles Shauna. She’s heard whispers of ‘Murderer’ in the hall a couple times, maybe a year or two ago. Shauna never thought much of it purely because she couldn’t believe it. She remembers the speculation around her father’s death, how Nat didn’t come to school for a while. How people were scared to look her in the eye when she did. The whole idea was bizarre to Shauna. Nat is assertive and defensive and snarky and sometimes rude—but never violent. Shauna imagines that when clenching her fist, Nat probably thinks of bloody crescents indenting her own palm before she thinks of swinging it at anyone else.

Shauna knows surface level things, and therefore stays perfectly neutral with her opinion on Natalie Scatorccio. Of course, this is all in the hypothetical that someone asks her opinion on Nat in the first place, which no one has ever done barring Jackie when she’s angry and wants someone to agree with her.

Still, there is a kinship. Nat is a winger, a position with many demands and very few rewards. A good winger needs stamina because they’re expected to have equal participation on offense and defense. They fly up the attacking third, expected to give a well-positioned cross to an offense that may or may not be in position to score. If that doesn’t work, they speed back down the defensive third, expected to slow the counterattack and become an outlet for a pass just to do everything all over again. It’s a difficult position that can get a lot of scrutiny if the player slacks on any facet, much like a center midfielder.

She’s always liked the term winger. When she was younger and she heard the name, she imagined a team as this winged being that moved with the wind and flew across the field. When the wings were working at full capacity, they didn’t just fly—they soared. She used to watch her teammates struggle up and down the field with red faces and open mouths like oxygen was a rare and valuable resource.

Nat cheats. She’s not a pure winger, committing to every attack or coming back fully to aid in defense. Shauna would be surprised if she could, honestly, with the multitude of cigarettes she’s prone to smoking. But Nat makes up for it by using her sense; If an attack has a low chance of providing, she’ll pull back on her runs and wait for a rebound or go on an early defense. If the defense looks like they have a situation under control, she’ll cut off her recovery run and start making her way up the field, looking for open channels to receive the ball.

There are a couple instances where her sense is wrong and Coach Martinez calls her out for her so-called lack of effort, but most of the time her strategy works. It confuses Shauna sometimes, when he calls it a lack of effort. Because no matter how much it hurts or how thankless her job is, Nat doesn’t complain. And she doesn’t give up. Shauna’s jealous of how much faith she has in everyone and herself; it makes her bite her tongue until the copper coats the back of her teeth.

She barely knows the girl. That’s why it hurts a little when Nat looks at her like that.

Nat will look at her sometimes with this squint like she’s expecting something from her that Shauna isn’t able to give. Or at least, she doesn’t know how to give it. It mainly happens during arguments within the team, when words are less about resolving the issue and more about demeaning each other. Nat will look at her of all people and scoff with disappointment when Shauna doesn’t say anything.

(Ad Hominem, Shauna thinks. It’s a logical fallacy where someone will attack the person making the argument instead of the argument itself. She wonders, if Nat was a little less like herself, if the team would get along a little more.

And therein lies the roadblock, because Nat will never be anything but herself. Shauna’s jealous of that too.)

“Fuck, she can be so fast sometimes. I don’t know how she does it,” Tai says breathlessly from beside her. “But she didn’t do anything amazing, our defense was just shitty.”

Right. She’s at practice. Which is absolutely not the place to be thinking anything unnecessary. If there’s one thing she likes about soccer, it’s the way it shuts off all the thinking in her head. Shield. Pass. Cut her off. Her touch is awkward. With everything put towards the ball at her feet, she’s free from the exhausting torrent of her own mind. Mostly.

Jackie’s smiling, jogging up to Nat enthusiastically and high-fiving her for the perfect cross. Nat returns the high-five with a smirk on her own face, rolling her eyes as Jackie laughs good-naturedly at Van, who flips her off in response. When Jackie and Nat aren’t picking at each others’ flaws every other week, they actually make a good duo. 

“Rachel!” 

Tai stomps to the light-haired girl, who looks awfully terrified. Shauna can’t blame her, Tai has a bad habit of getting intense at the wrong times.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” 

And saying everything in the worst way possible.

“Um,” Rachel says, eyes searching for a way out. Rachel’s a sophomore with the need to prove herself to all the seniors, so Shauna knows she’s scrambling to find an excuse. “I thought- I didn’t think- Nat was-”

“Lay off, Tai,” Nat interrupts, shooting her a cold glare. “You did fine, Rachel.”

“Uh- no, she didn’t, actually,” Tai argues. Shauna sighs—Tai and Nat in an argument was never fun for anyone. Both of them are unyielding. “If she did fine, she would’ve stopped your ass. Especially because you didn’t do anything special, you just outpaced her.”

“Yeah? Well, why couldn’t you stop Allie, huh? If you did your job, I would’ve never gotten the ball in the first place,” Nat declares, marching into Tai’s space. Tai straightens up, using her full height to look down on Nat. “For someone who thinks she’s so much better than everyone else, you make plenty of the same mistakes. Maybe you should stop talking shit and focus on your own game.”

“I’m not talking shit,” Tai hisses. “I’m giving constructive criticism. If she doesn’t learn now, she never will.”

Nat scoffs. “That’s your constructive criticism? And you wonder why you didn’t get captain.”

It feels like all the air gets sucked out of the area. It’s no secret that the role of captaincy is a sore spot for Tai. Whenever the topic seems like it’ll be mentioned around the girl, Shauna makes sure she isn’t within the vicinity.

Tai has a deadly look in her eye. Nat doesn’t flinch from it. “Say that again, I fucking dare you.” Rachel looks back and forth between them like she’s unsure whether she should stay or take cover in a bomb shelter.

“Guys,” Jackie says, tone hard as steel. Finally, where the fuck as she been? “Practice is still going on. Whatever shit you have with each other right now, deal with it later.”

“Fuck off, Jackie,” Tai and Nat say in unison. Van comes from behind Tai and tugs at her pinnie warningly. Jackie narrows her eyes. Are you serious?

“Excuse me?” Jackie says, her own deceptively short fuse lighting with a single spark.

All three of them start arguing, voices overlapping until Shauna can’t even tell who’s arguing about what. Van looks at Shauna the same way Nat does, pleading with her to do something as if she’s capable of reasoning with any of them. 

But maybe she doesn’t have to, she thinks, as she walks up to the girls and conveniently places herself between Tai and Nat’s line of sight.

“Rachel!” she yells, too loudly and too brightly, but at least it’s uncharacteristic enough to  distract all three of them from their yelling. And well, she might as well make some use out of it. Rachel looks at her with fear in her eyes. “What were you thinking when you were defending Nat? Like, what was your plan of action or whatever.”

Rachel hesitates, still looking between the rest of the seniors like anything she says might set them off again. Shauna tries to give her an encouraging look. “Um, I didn’t know if Nat was gonna cut in or take the sideline, so I tried to, like, position my body? In a way so that I could react to whatever she did?” Rachel acts it out while talking, slightly crouching and standing on the balls of her feet as if she’s about to pounce on something.

Shauna hums. In writing, it’s a reasonable way to defend, but it depends on her reacting fast enough, which isn’t a viable way when facing up against someone faster than her. “Okay, I get it. But it’ll be a lot easier if you just force her to move how you want her to.” Rachel tilts her head, confused. Shauna grabs both her and Nat’s arm (a little hesitantly) and drags them to the sideline where the mistake was first made.

“Go back to how you defended Nat originally.” Rachel stands her up directly face to face, going back into her crouching stance. She can feel her teammates behind her, curiously watching her demonstration, probably because Shauna never does this. Then again, Shauna’s been doing a lot of things she never does lately.

“When you’re standing directly against her like that, Nat has the option of going inside or sticking to the sideline, right?” Shauna looks at Nat for confirmation and receives a silent nod. “Instead of waiting for her to pick a direction, you force her into one.” Shauna replaces Rachel’s position, angling her body toward the sideline. “If you wanna force her to the sideline, place yourself on her inside and just shepherd her. Sure, it gives her space down the line, but you know where she’s going and you’ll be able to react faster. Got it?”

“Oh,” Rachel says, processing the information.

“Look, you only started playing last year, right?” Rachel nods. “A lot of this just comes with experience. You’ll get there. You’re pretty good for someone who just started playing,” Shauna says, giving Tai a pointed look. Tai huffs and looks away. “But you still have a lot to learn.” Shauna gives the same look to Nat. Nat stares back—not exactly defiant, but maybe a little petty.

“Shauna’s right,” Lottie says, rubbing the back of her neck. The rest turn to look at the centerback like she’s a judge in a court room, ready to deliver the final verdict. “You might get away with defending like that if you were more agile, but for now just focus on anticipating their next move rather than reacting to it.”

Ever since the Ellie and Justin thing (aka yesterday), Lottie’s been coming to Shauna’s support a little more than usual. It’s nothing much, but Lottie has a certain air about her that makes people get out of her way a smidge faster. Shauna took a guilty pleasure in this when Lottie walked with her from economics to math for the first time ever, the tall girl almost acting as a bodyguard. 

(Shauna also savored the look on Jackie’s face when they entered together. Instead of the wide smile that was usually sent her way as soon as Jackie saw her in the doorway, Shauna received narrowed eyes and a thin-lipped acknowledgment, Jackie’s eyes straying to Lottie too much to not be suspicious.)

After practice ends, Shauna’s at her locker when Nat comes up to her. “Nice going today, Shipman.”

Shauna glances at her uncertainly. “Thanks?”

“The defensive advice was good. If Rachel can get some of the strategic stuff down, our right side’ll be a lot stronger.” Shauna hums, feeling vaguely apprehensive as Nat leans against the locker. “Tai could’ve been less of a bitch about it.”

Ah, there it is. Nat says the words with a certain edge to them. It feels like a trap. Shauna doesn’t have the energy to disarm it, so she does what she does best—she avoids it. Shauna hums again, noncommittal and straight-faced and so neutral as she packs her bag with a newfound urgency. This is the wrong thing to do apparently, as Nat clicks her tongue with the expression that she wears so often around Shauna: a mixture of disbelief and disappointment.

“Why do you always do that?”

Shauna sighs, already tired of the conversation. “Do what?”

“You know what.”

“I wouldn’t be asking if I did.”

“You never say anything!” 

Funnily enough, Shauna doesn’t respond. Nat plows forward.

“It’s like you don’t have opinions of your own. When you have to, you’ll go with whatever everyone else is saying because it’s easy. You know Tai was being a bitch and you didn’t say anything-”

“Tai doesn’t mean to be a bitch,” Shauna bites. “She just says shit the wrong way most of the time.”

“It just- you never take initiative to call out the shit that some people pull. I mean, even if Tai is a bitch, at least she’s straightforward about it. You never say what you’re thinking,” Nat says, jaw clenched.

Shauna doesn’t want to blow up at Nat, but she’s making it really hard not to. “I didn’t know you were entitled to my thoughts.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Nat rolls her eyes.

“And why is it me you’re pissed at?” Shauna spits, closing her locker. She doesn’t slam it, but it’s loud enough to draw the attention of some bored freshmen. She lowers her voice. “It’s not like everyone on the team says everything they’re thinking, why am I the only person that you have such a problem with?”

Nat opens her mouth, hesitant. “I just- you-” She shuts her mouth quickly. Turns around and walks away. “Never mind, Shauna. Forget I said anything.”

Shauna scoffs and grabs her stuff, walking out to her car with a weird and uncomfortable feeling in her gut.

(The truth is, Nat doesn’t know. Nat can deal with the nicknames, can deal with the rumors of her sexuality and substance use. When people say shit to her, she can at least respect their adherence to their opinion. It’s the people that shut up that bother her. Shauna never adds to the comments that other people spit, but she never says anything against them. She just stares at her with something that Nat’s decided is a little too close to pity. 

And she barely knows the girl. That’s why it hurts a little when Shauna looks at her like that.)

-

Shauna’s still pouty when they head to Steffie Aguilar’s house later that night. It’s the softball player’s eighteenth birthday and apparently her parents are out of town, so she’s been spreading the open invite the entire week. Shauna would be annoyed because she’s kind of in a bad mood and the last thing she wants is to be at a party, but…

“Coasters, people! Coasters!” Steffie says, picking up the multiple drinks resting on her living room table. There’s a crashing sound from another room and her shoulders drop.

…there’s already one person in a miserable mood.

“Happy Birthday, baby!” Some random girl yells out. Steffie responds with a stiff smile, sticking a weak thumbs up. Shauna thinks she must not host parties that often.

Steffie’s house isn’t Lottie’s or Jackie’s or any other rich person’s, but it was decent. Two stories, a pool, and a large backyard made it as good as any house for a party, and people flowed in and out like they’ve all been here before. Not to mention, Steffie’s parents have an extensive liquor cabinet for whatever reason. Shauna has no idea how Steffie will replace all the missing alcohol before her parents get back.

“Hey,” Jackie says, sidling up to her. Shauna bumps her shoulder as a greeting. “What’s going on?”

“Just people watching.”

“Really?” Jackie smirks. “What’ve you got for me so far?”

Shauna gives her a small smile. Sometimes, if she’s quiet and still enough, people have certain conversations around her that they really shouldn’t be having in public. It’s become a little bit of a thing growing up that she and Jackie would exploit for various reasons, boredom being one of them. It’s not gossiping (it absolutely is), it’s just relaying information.

“Most of it is irrelevant, but Jessica,” Shauna points to a light brown-haired girl with a shot in hand, “missed her last period and is apparently seeing an older man.”

Jackie’s eyes light up with amusement, a bewildered smile pulling at her lips. “Sheesh, that’s not fun for anyone.”

“No, it is not,” Shauna responds, taking a sip of her mystery concoction. It’s a fruity blend that dances on her tongue, and the taste is amplified by the way Jackie looks at her—not with her characteristic excitement and joy, but with this quiet kind of contentment that Shauna usually gets with a book and a rainy day.

“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you…” Jackie starts. Her voice has that tone she uses when she’s trying hard not to piss Shauna off. “What happened with Nat earlier?”

Shauna groans and rolls her eyes. “Nothing.”

“You sure? Mari said it looked like you two were whispering pretty intensely-”

“Mari says a lot of things.” Jackie tilts her head and glances away, conceding.

“Just let me know if I need to have a civilized conversation with her.”

“Literally four hours ago you started arguing after she told you to fuck off.”

“She did it in front of the team! I have a responsibility as captain and it undermines me when she does shit like that!”

“You’re getting mad just talking about it right now—civilized conversation my ass.”

“Shut up.” Jackie pinches her wrist lightly. Shauna responds by squeezing the back of her neck, one of Jackie’s weaknesses. She always looks like a cat being picked up by their scruff. 

“Jackie!” someone calls from outside. Said girl wiggles her way out of Shauna’s grip, fixing the hairs that have fallen out of place. She waves enthusiastically to someone that Shauna thinks is from the cheerleading team, clearing her throat afterwards and turning to Shauna. 

“Well, I’ll be outside if you need me. Stay out of trouble,” she says, rubbing her forearm comfortingly. Shauna’s arm tingles long after she leaves.

Shauna floats from room to room for a while. She even gets into a conversation with Mary about an upcoming LIT project, Devin close behind her. He’s talking to a different group of people, but Mary leans back against his body and Devin hooks a finger in one of her jean’s belt loops. Shauna goes into a different room and suffocates herself with a couch cushion after that one.

“Dude, she’s literally like Madonna and Winona Ryder in one person!”

“Whatever you say, man.”

Shauna raises her head from the couch she’s lying face down on. The people moving around the room have left her on the couch by herself, most likely too afraid to get close while she’s drunk. Which she’s not! She might be tipsy, but Shauna’s sure she’s not drunk. Probably. 

“I’m just saying, she’s got a nice body. Fuck, the things I would do to it,” an obnoxious voice says above her. Shauna wrinkles her nose in disgust. The nasally aspect of it combined with the overwhelming amount of cologne signals that the comments come from one Bobby Farleigh, someone that Shauna typically had the urge to cover her ears around.

“Dude… she was not into you. Your flirting fucking sucks. Scatorccio looked like she would rather sit on a bed of hot nails than suck your dick.” Bobby’s friend (James? Jason? Shauna couldn’t remember through the haze in her mind) stubbed his cigarette in the tray next to him, flicking some of the ash on the carpet. A part of Shauna thought that Steffie would have an aneurysm if she saw it, but a larger, much more significant part of her was stuck on the Scatorccio part of it all. 

“She’s a slut. She’ll sleep with me,” Bobby slurred, gulping down the rest of his drink. Shauna’s stomach rolled. It’s one thing to hear Jackie or Tai refer to Nat like that in fits of anger—both saying things more for the purpose of wounding than truth—it’s another to hear someone they barely know talking like that. Nat has a reputation, she knows, but the tone of Bobby’s voice sends her reeling.

She almost misses it. The way Bobby picks it out of his pocket—the small plastic bag so threatening in a house with a large crowd. Shauna only gets a glimpse of the bag’s contents, but the party lights shine just right to illuminate the powder in it, dropping her stomach all the way down until she feels like she’s sinking into the padding of the couch.

James/Jason widens his eyes. Bobby wiggles the packet like it’s something as simple as coke. “I’m getting that,” he motions his head to where Nat’s talking outside, “one way or another.”

His friend is speechless for a moment. “Bobby…” 

But he doesn’t say anything else. The look of shock fades from his face, lip curling in mild disgust. “Do what you want, man. Just leave me out of it.” He gets up from the couch, walking across the room and striking up a conversation with someone else.

That’s it? Shauna thinks, willing her body to catch up with her mind. Your friend is going to drug someone, and all you do is walk away? That’s it?

Bobby rolls his eyes and starts walking away. Shauna’s head is slightly spinning, and she can’t tell if she gets off the couch quickly or not, but she gets up nonetheless. Her limbs are heavy (and she should really get a bottle of water), but she can’t afford to take her eyes off Bobby. She follows the fucker around even as they go outside, the music much louder and her vision much more strained. People are milling about, but there’s a small group of people crowding near the left side of the yard. Bobby follows the sound, so Shauna does too.

It’s a beer pong game—Nat and one of her friends against two guys on the football team. No wonder there’s a crowd. In the hierarchy of beer pong skill, the people currently playing are at the top of the food chain. There’s water splashed on both ends of the table, both sides looking like they’re on a different plane of reality. Both of them are down to one cup. 

“I’ll take this one,” Shauna hears Nat say to her partner. Bobby hears it too. And with all the attention on Tommy Banks gloating for his shot, no one sees him open the plastic bag and dump some of the contents into the last cup. No one except Shauna. There’s an urgent beat in her head as she starts to push through the crowd, like a drum that’s acting eerily like a clock. 

Deafening cheers rise from around her; Tommy sinks it. Elbows dig into her side and she stumbles over shoes, but she can’t really feel it. Nat and her partner groan and look up at the sky defeatedly. Nat rubs her hand over her face and picks up the cup, raising it in the universal cheers gesture. When Shauna finally reaches her, she doesn’t think twice.

In her defense, she goes for the cup. She has this entire sequence in her head where she knocks it out of Nat’s hand, tells her very calmly that Bobby put some shit in her drink, and drags her away gently by the wrist while the masses stone Bobby like they’re back in medieval times. But with her rush and the drum beat in her head, Shauna slightly miscalculates and ends up lightly smacking Nat in the face.

Whatever, it yields the same result. Nat drops the cup—but Shauna also miscalculated how fast she was going and she sends both of them to the ground with an undignified yelp. The liquid seeps into the grass beneath them and their clothes, but Shauna has the great idea to check if Nat’s swallowed any of it.

“Shauna? What the fuck?” Nat scowls, squirming. Shauna ignores her and sticks her fingers in her mouth, much to the entertainment of the people around them. Nat’s eyes widen in bewilderment as she makes a sound in the back of her throat, hands flying up to try and force Shauna’s hands away. But Shauna’s stronger, and she forces her mouth open to inspect its insides. She doesn’t really know what she’s looking for, realizes she wouldn’t be able to tell anyway if Nat did swallow it, so she just has to trust that she didn’t.

Bobby Farleigh tried to drug you! Shauna says. He has something in his pocket that he tried to put in your drink! I would like to not see you get assaulted, so I had to stop it. Also—I sincerely apologize for smacking you in the face.

“Drink,” is what actually comes out of her mouth when she opens it. Nat narrows her eyes.

“Yeah. Drink. Y’know, the thing I was about to do before you so helpfully tackled me. Appreciate it, Shipman.” Shauna doesn’t reply as she lifts her weight off her body, both of them scrambling to stand. Most of the crowd has cleared out and moved on to the next amusing thing. Bobby, much to Shauna’s dismay, has disappeared.

Again, Shauna gently goes for her wrist. She meets Nat’s hand instead, settling on intertwining their fingers in a crushing grip and dragging her away. Nat struggles to get free, even using her other hand to try and pry Shauna’s fingers open, but Shauna’s grip has been scarily strong since Carson Gray tried to take her favorite stuffed bear back in second grade. Nat eventually gives in, muttering something along the lines of are you fucking kidding me.

Shauna wanders around holding Nat like a possession until she comes upon the other yellowjackets on a bench. They spot the two approaching with a weird fascination, like they’re seeing a lion and a gazelle interact without going at each other’s throats. Jackie’s there too, and she’s locked onto their hands with this look on her face that Shauna has neither the willpower nor the brainpower to decipher.

“What’s going on here?” Lottie asks, eyebrow raised.

“I don’t fucking know. She fucking tackled me and then dragged me here after I lost. I tried to get away, but she has the grip of a goddamn rock climber.”

“Yeah, she’s always been like that. You might wanna get your blood flowing after she lets go,” Jackie chuckles. She looks at Shauna with sympathy. You okay?

Shauna opens her mouth. Closes it again. Drops Nat’s hand like it’s burning her. Nat looks at her with—if Shauna didn’t know her any better—concern, but ultimately doesn’t question it.

“Wait, you lost to Kush and Tommy?” Van asks.

“Asshole cheated, I swear. I sank, like, six cups and somehow there were still seven on the table.”

“I don’t think that math adds up.”

“Hence the cheating accusation, genius.” Van flips her off in jest. Nat responds similarly.

Shauna groans, rubbing her temples. Her tongue isn’t working properly, and she would really like to get some words out before she looks more like a drunken idiot than she already does.

“Hey, you good?” Lottie asks. Since when was she in front of her? Shauna takes her time before replying.

“Yeah,” she says cautiously, willing moisture to come back to her dry mouth. “Yeah.”

Lottie holds up her cup. “Want some? It’s just soda, no whiskey or anything.”

Shauna eyes it warily. “Are you sure? Have you been watching it?”

Lottie furrows her eyebrows. “Yeah, mostly. I mean, I left it on a table for a couple seconds, but I didn’t-”

Shauna shakes her head fervently, already distrustful. The motion makes her lose her balance a little, and Jackie jumps out of her chair to help steady her. She feels the rest of the girls looking at her worryingly as Lottie and Jackie guide her to sit down.

“Here,” Tai says, handing her a plastic water bottle. “I brought it from home. It’s not cold or anything, but it’s been capped and in my jacket the entire time.”

Shauna looks at it for a second, but she concedes and unscrews the cap, hurriedly gulping most of it down. She pants and hands it back when she’s done, looking up at Nat. “Bobby Farleigh drugged the cup,” she says, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her jean jacket.

Van’s lips twitch in a snarl, the rest of the girls wearing similar expressions. Nat stiffens. “What?”

“During beer pong. I don’t actually know what it was, but he poured some powder in it while you were distracted. And he said some, uh, bad things earlier. About your body. And stuff.” Shauna stutters over her words, but the message gets across well enough. All of them look disgusted and, with an unspoken collective agreement, drop their drinks to the ground. The red solo cups thud against the grass. (Steffie will never host another party again.)

There’s a familiar feeling in Shauna's chest. A familiar, dangerous feeling. She’s done her job—she prevented Nat from drinking poison, she notified the rest of the girls, and they’re probably going to notify everyone else about what Bobby’s trying. On all accounts, she has no reason to do anything else. But she makes the mistake of looking at Nat’s face. There’s discomfort written all over it, sure, but there’s not a trace of shock. Somehow, the prospect of being taken advantage of is not surprising to her. Nat lets go of her clenched fists with a devastating resignation and hugs her own torso. Shauna doesn’t know if it’s an act of protection or comfort.

So yeah, she’s going to do something about it. Fuck it, she takes back what she said earlier—she is drunk. At least she has an excuse this time if something goes haywire. 

Shauna gets up from the seat Jackie provided her with, feeling much more stable than before. She wonders if this is what an addiction feels like, feeling unbalanced until she gives in and does it all over again. But if this qualifies as an addiction, she’s not planning on getting clean anytime soon. 

Not right now, anyway. She has a piece of shit to find.

-

Bobby disappeared off the the face of the fucking planet. Seriously, Shauna can’t find him anywhere in the sea of people. The crowd doesn’t seem to be thinning out either, despite the late hour. She feels like she walks around the house for ages without seeing his shortly chopped hair. 

She finds him eventually, all pissed off and drunk on his ass. He’s ranting about something again to Jackson (see, she knew it was a J name) and he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. For the first time in forever, she stops and thinks about her plan of action.

She has no idea if he’s thrown out the bag. But she knows he didn’t pour all of it, and Bobby’s not the kind of scum to waste it like that. She thinks about pulling the same pocketing thing she did on Justin, but Jackson beats her to it. Suddenly, the boys are wrestling over something in Bobby’s hand. They’re both yelling at each other in the kitchen, but the inside of the house is so loud that it mixes with the noise and no one spares a glance at the two.

Also, the two are so drunk it looks less like wrestling and more like aggressive hugging.

Shauna watches them from close by, seeing Jackson finally grab what’s in Bobby’s hand. It’s the bag with half of its contents, if Shauna had to guess. Bobby tries to grab it back, pulling on Jackson’s collar and jumping, but the taller boy slams it into the trash can. Bobby’s panting like a middle-aged man who just ran a lap for the first time in fifteen years, all red-faced both from rage and exhaustion. Jackson whispers something harshly to Bobby before gripping his jacket and tugging both of them out of the kitchen. Shauna groans because not only does she have to go find him again, but she now has the displeasure of rummaging through the trash like a starving raccoon. She’s hoping with her entire soul that there’s no vomit.

And well, she gets kind of lucky. After she glances around to make sure no one’s watching, Shauna removes the lid of the trashcan. She doesn’t see any vomit, but she certainly smells it. The baggie itself looks untouched so Shauna grimaces through the situation and pulls it out. She also gives the bag (and her hands) a quick rinse under the sink just in case. 

She grabs a new cup from the counter and mixes tequila with a swig of orange juice. It’s a simple drink that she’s seen Tai make, but Shauna’s special ingredient? Approximately half a small bag of unknown powder. Is this illegal? Most definitely. But, if this is the real deal, it’s not like Bobby will remember what happens anyway.

When Shauna steps outside, she feels like a predator. Her eyes are unblinking as they scan the other party-goers. Lady Luck smiles down at Shauna, because she spots Bobby leaning backwards on a fence relatively away from everyone else. Jackson is nowhere to be seen.

Shauna walks toward the guy, focusing on keeping her face sympathetic and her voice light and even. When Bobby spots her, he looks somewhere between confused and excited. He cracks his neck and lifts his arm to smell himself in a way that he probably thinks is slick. Shauna’s never been less excited to talk to someone.

“Heya, Shipman,” he says, taking a cigarette and a lighter out of his jeans. He lights it and takes a puff, blowing the smoke into the midnight air. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Shauna struggles not to cringe, mostly because Bobby’s likely saying it in a completely unironic way. Regardless, she responds, “Well, I saw this guy all by himself and thought I would have a drink with him.” She raises her cup to her mouth, keeping eye contact with Bobby. She makes an exaggerated slurping sound, never actually letting the liquid touch her lips. Bobby’s mouth falls open as Shauna swallows nothing, eyes transfixed around the bobbing of her throat. When she finishes her little show, she barely gets out a want some? before Bobby practically snatches the cup out of her grip and gulps down the drink, lips not so subtly in the same place hers were. She feels sweat build at the small of her back and he drinks it so fast there’s a little falling from the corners of his mouth.

When he finally finishes, he takes a large inhale like he hasn’t breathed for a millenia. He licks his lips too deliberately for Shauna’s liking. She has to rock back on her heels to put distance between them when he leans in close, breath an unpleasant mixture of cigarettes and alcohol.

“Wanna get out of here?” Bobby says, eyes settling on her chest. He’s not even being subtle about it. Shauna squeezes her cup. Why does she do all this shit? Can’t she just be a normal friend and kick his ass? She pools all the information she has on Bobby Farleigh (which isn’t much) and tries to find a distraction. Boys, boys, boys, what are guys into again?

“Hey, how was your wrestling thing last weekend?” Shauna asks, teeth clenching so hard her smile looks more like a threat.

Bobby’s jaw drops comically. “You know about wrestling?!” Shauna’s a little confused, considering wrestling is a fairly popular sport and all. She wonders how uninformed Bobby thinks she is just because she’s a girl. Hating herself for it, she plays into it.

“Um, kinda?” she says, twirling a lock of hair the way she’s seen Jackie do when trying to get a discount. “Like, I know it’s about getting on top of people, but-”

“Oh man, it’s awesome!” Bobby exclaims, both cutting her off and almost smacking her in the face with the wild way he gestures. “I was going against this guy from Asbury and I put him in a headlock—that’s when you choke someone with your elbow, by the way-”

Fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes, Shauna stands by a fence and listens to him talk about wrestling, switching between regaling his own matches and explaining basic terminology. Of all the conversations she’s had tonight, this might be the most depressing. Of course Shauna spaces out for a majority of it.

The only thing that brings her out of it is a thumping noise and the noticeable lack of chatter from Bobby. His mouth is still moving, but it’s mainly incoherent mumbling. The thumping noise was him falling back against the fence, arms and legs trying desperately to hold himself up. Shauna has to weave her arms under his in a weird half hug to ensure he doesn’t fall completely to the floor.

“Fuck, okay, that was faster than I thought,” Shauna mutters, looking around for a place to go. Initially, she wanted to drag him back inside the house into an unoccupied room, but Bobby’s weight is heavier than she thought it’d be and his feeble attempts at walking only makes things more difficult for her.

She spots a shed near in the back left corner of the yard, already pretty close to where they are now. It’s old and dusty and it looks like it houses multiple safety hazards but it’s the best she can do right now. So she gathers her strength and heaves the amateur wrestler into her side to haul him across the short walk. He tries to nuzzle her in his haze and Shauna has to fight every instinct not to drop the guy. 

When they finally make it into the shed, Shauna lets go of Bobby like a bag of rocks. He goes tumbling to the floor, loud clattering noises making her chuckle. The only light source in the shed is coming from the moonlight peeking through the small, dirty window. Everything else is shrouded in darkness, and Bobby’s passed out form on the floor makes it look like a scene from a melodramatic soap opera.

As for the actual contents of the shed, there’s mostly miscellaneous items. Much of it reminds Shauna of the junk drawer she and her mother have at home: completely random and filled with items that they never use but never throw away on the off chance they need it one day. Granted, it also houses some power tools and arts and crafts supplies that Steffie probably used for the class she and Shauna took last year.

To be safe, she inspects the body before she does anything with it. Bobby’s breathing, but that’s pretty much the only indication that he’s alive. His muscles are limp with deadweight and his eyes are rolled into the back of his head when she lifts up his eyelids. And even if this is exactly what she wanted, it freaks her out a little. 

She feels an unpleasant shiver run down her spine at the thought of Bobby like this with Nat. Because the most horrifying thing is the fact that she feels it—the power that runs through her veins at the sight of Bobby helpless at her feet. The absolute control she feels at the fact that she could do anything to him and he would never fucking know. Even if Bobby is a misogynistic, creepy asshole, she feels weird about the whole situation.

And then she remembers that if she hadn’t intervened, it would’ve been Nat passed out on the floor at the mercy of Bobby Farleigh, and her eye twitches.

She isn’t going to do anything that bad. A little humiliation would be enough, she thinks, spotting some paint tubes on a low shelf. When she and Steffie were in art, their teacher once said that some of her favorite pieces were often the most simple. She said that although she appreciated those with multiple meanings, the ones with a definitive message force the audience to acknowledge the artist’s perspective; there’s no beating around the bush or overanalyzing details, there’s just the truth behind the brush strokes.

When Shauna strips Bobby of his clothes and makes bold streaks across the blank skin, hands covered in red, she thinks she knows what her teacher meant.

-

Shauna practically sprints into the bathroom. She looks like a murder scene, red paint over her hands like a second skin and even more flecks of it over her body. She has no idea how it got all over her (if she stumbled because she’s drunk and it was dark, that’s nobody’s business) but she knows she has to get it off before people see her and wonder what the hell happened. She made sure to take off her jacket beforehand and she’s wearing dark clothes underneath so any small paint splatters won’t be too obvious, and now all she has to do is ensure her skin is clean.

The clamor starts when she steps out of the bathroom. The music is much lower than before and people are fighting to get outside, so she follows the crowd with anxiety.

Truthfully, she didn’t have a full plan. After she finished… decorating, she figured she would just leave him there for a couple hours before wandering in and putting on a performance. She didn’t think people would find him immediately. But when she pushes her way to the front of the crowd, she sees a naked Bobby Farleigh on the ground, a couple guys checking his heartbeat and his breathing. All over his body is the same word, written in a hue of blood. Some are bigger, some are smaller, but all were drawn with a hint of contempt and a lot of alcohol-induced rage—’RAPIST’ in big capital letters. People are whispering like mothers in church and some of the guys that found him are unsure of what to do with an incapacitated human. Shauna spots Jackson looking at the sight with an unreadable expression before spinning on his heel and walking out the wooden gate in the fence.

“Wow,” Lottie says from her left. Shauna flinches. “That’s fitting.”

“Hah! Yeah…” Shauna feels the same way she did when her mother used to catch her reading instead of sleeping. She turns around and faces the rest of her teammates. Most of them look at her with a range of emotions, starting with exasperation and melting into something dangerously close to pride. “What?”

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Jackie cuts in from her right. Shauna flinches again. Maybe she should get her teammates bells for their birthdays. “It’s late, and we still have practice tomorrow.”

The rest of the girls groan. “Okay!” Tai shouts. “I am the designated driver, so please make your way to the car in an orderly fashion, please and thank you.”

On the way back, Jackie bumps her shoulder affectionately. “Nice one, Shipman.”

Shauna trips slightly on a weed. “What?”

Jackie looks at her with what Shauna thinks is something between astonishment and awe. Or maybe she’s just seeing what she wants. “Nothing,” Jackie says, shaking her head and laughing. Shauna doesn’t know what to make of it.

Nat is noticeably quiet. She’s never been loud like Lottie or Jackie, but she’s also not usually this withdrawn. Whenever she and Nat look in each other’s direction, Shauna searches for eye contact while Nat’s eyes stray down to her neck.

It’s only when she gets home, stumbling into the bathroom and utterly exhausted, that she sees it. On the collar of her jean jacket that she thought was meticulously unstained is a medium red paint splotch, harsh and mocking in the fluorescent light.

- 

Practice doesn’t go too well. It’s early and hot and most of them are hungover and it doesn’t help that Coach Martinez is unreasonably irritable at nine in the morning. Coach Ben, rather inconveniently she might add, isn’t there to act as a buffer either. Everyone’s tightly wound and Shauna herself kind of wants to strangle someone.

“Nat!” Tai snaps. Her voice comes out more as a pant, chest heaving up and down. The entire team is in various states of distress trying to catch their breath after their fifth rep of full field conditioning. Most of them are bent over with their hands on their knees, some have taken to raising their arms above their head, and others—including Nat—are sprawled out on the floor. Tai is using the goal post as support as quietly as possible.

“What?” Nat snaps back. Shauna’s sure she would start glaring at Tai if she had the energy to crane her neck in her direction.

“If you don’t pick up your shit, I’m selling all your weed,” Tai snarls. Coach Martinez has a rule that if he spots anyone he thinks is slacking or not trying their hardest, he adds another rep. According to his arbitrary system, Nat was the slacker on that last rep.

“Fuck off, Tai. I wasn’t even last—Van was.”

“I’m a keeper,” Van says, starfished on the ground. Her face is flushed and she’s gazing at the sky like she’s unsure where she is, but she raises a finger in justification. “I don’t count.”

Tai gets a look on her face. At the sight, Shauna ponders whether she should start crying or strangling. “You know, for someone who fucks so often, you’d think you’d have a lot more stamina.”

On a regular day, Nat would’ve come up with something equally as snippy as a response. But today, when she’s surely hungover and struggling with the drills, all she mutters is a quiet go to hell before spacing out. It’s that same look on Nat’s face that does it for her: the vague expression of discomfort but not surprise or hurt. Shauna thinks of the looks Nat gives her followed by disappointment, thinks of the silence in between the verbal lashings, thinks of do what you want, man. Just leave me out of it and the sight of Jackson’s back as he walked away without a single protest. The usual weight on her tongue lifts.

“Lay off, Tai. You’re being mean,” Shauna says. The phrasing makes her cringe, saying it like they’re back in third grade. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

Shauna pretends to fix her cleats while she dutifully ignores the blinks of surprise. She absolutely does not glance in Nat’s direction, the presence of the girl feeling like a tingle in her spine. Tai opens her mouth as if to say something, but Van grips her ankle and gives her a subtle shake of her head. She mouths something to Tai that makes her look a little reluctant, but she concedes to the ginger (as she usually does).

“Sorry,” Tai mutters, fingers picking at her shorts. “I’m just tired.”

After practice when most people have filtered out of the locker room, Nat comes up to her again. Shauna gets an eerie sense of deja vu that makes her shiver despite working out in eighty degree heat. 

“Why’d you do that?” Nat asks, arms crossed. She looks both wary and uncertain, two things that Shauna didn’t know the bleached-haired girl was capable of being.

“Do what?” Shauna responds, this dance of theirs becoming awfully familiar.

“Are you ser-” Nat stops and sighs, biting the inside of her cheek. “You never do that.” Nat’s looking at her neck now like she’s looking for a stain on a jean jacket collar and suddenly Shauna truly doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Nat takes a tired breath before speaking again.

“I don’t need you to defend me.” Shauna’s not sure if she’s talking about Tai or Bobby, but Nat says it with a hint of something that makes Shauna pause. It’s a mixture of wariness and defeat, almost like a warning. She says it like there’s a debt to be paid, and she isn’t in any position to pay it. Shauna realizes with a painful jolt that it sounds like her own voice after she gets a call from her father, listening to half-hearted excuses and unsolicited kindness that he expects to be returned with interest. With Martin Shipman, something as precious as love is often conditional and transactional.

Is that what Nat feels like?

(Because, like they’ve both said, they barely know each other. Why would anyone, let alone Shauna, do anything for Nat without wanting something in return?)

So Shauna drops the defensive posture she didn’t even know she was holding and makes eye contact with the girl that she’s beginning to think has that wariness for a reason. “I know,” she says, walking out the door. She doesn’t look back. Nat doesn’t look away.

Chapter Text

“What do we know about Iago?” Ms. Clarke asks, leaning forward in her chair. “To understand a work, you have to understand the characters. If you want to do well on your upcoming essay, I suggest you get to know your characters. So,” she leans backwards in her chair again, reminding Shauna weirdly of a seesaw. “What do we know about Iago?”

“If I focus on the ticking any longer, I’m gonna go insane,” Tai whispers from her right. She’s glaring at the clock like the power of her stare will forcefully move the hands around and trigger the bell that releases them from this prison of desks and Shakespeare. It’s a valiant effort.

Ms. Clarke is a good teacher. She truly cares about her students’ understanding and she’s not afraid to do one-on-one time with anyone who needs it. She’s also incredibly considerate about everyone’s situation, whether it be a difficult home life or a busy schedule that sometimes results in absences and missing homework. All she asks is that everyone tries their best and communicates effectively. Today’s recap of Othello is probably necessary for other people, but for Tai and Shauna—two people who understand the play fully already—the infodump is more than tedious. 

“Relax,” Shauna mutters, doodling in her notebook. She fights to keep her eyes open. “We have, like, five minutes left.”

“Well? Anyone?” Ms. Clarke says.

Ms. Clarke’s question goes unanswered, her classmates fidgeting and looking around with the same reluctant demeanor all students have when a teacher asks a question. It’s not more common, but it is more prominent in advanced classes. Everyone has an answer (they’re capable enough to conjure one) but no one wants to share it for the fear of being wrong. 

Almost everyone, at least.

Tai lets out a small annoyed groan before raising her hand, chin resting in her other palm.

Ms. Clarke doesn’t even glance at her. “Anyone beside Ms. Turner?” Tai furrows her eyebrows and turns her hands upwards as if saying, really? Shauna huffs out a quiet chuckle. It’s one thing to raise her hand to answer a question she didn’t care about answering, it’s another thing entirely to raise her hand and then be denied like she’s not the only one willing to participate in discussion. Shauna can feel Tai’s pettiness rise up inside her as she sits up in her chair, hand straightening like she’s daring Ms. Clarke to ignore her again.

Ms. Clarke sighs in defeat and turns to face Tai. “Yes, Ms. Turner?”

“Iago’s most important attribute is his manipulation. He’s constantly keeping secrets and telling lies to the other characters to turn them against each other and ruin their lives. And they all mostly believe him because he’s considered older and wiser, but his manipulation is driven by hatred and jealousy.” Tai states this all very factually, as if she were the one who wrote the play. She does a lot of things with the air of someone who can’t get anything wrong.

“Thank you, Taissa,” Ms. Clarke smiles. “Iago’s hatred for Othello first sparks when Othello chooses Michael Cassio over him for the role of lieutenant. Iago hardly thinks Cassio is qualified, especially with his lack of experience, and cannot stomach the disrespect he feels at being passed over. Iago then hatches his revenge plot, yada yada yada, if you’ve done your assigned readings then you know what happens. It’s a tragedy that destroys multiple characters all because of one man’s envy.”

A girl a couple seats away tentatively raises her hand. Ms. Clarke brightens. Shauna looks at the clock with a heavy sigh—two minutes left. “Technically, not all of it was brought on by Iago though, right?” The girl asks, hands fidgeting with a button. Shauna feels Tai shift in her seat, intrigued. “I mean, Iago’s definitely the villain, but I feel like if the other characters weren’t so easily influenced, then things could’ve turned out a lot better.” Ms. Clarke opens her mouth to say something, but Tai beats her to it. Ever the debate kid, Shauna thinks.

“That’s the whole point of his character. It’s not that Othello and the others are easily influenced, Iago is just an exceptional manipulator. Also, almost none of the characters think Iago is playing them in the first place. It’s easier to fall for a scheme when the person running it is someone you wouldn’t suspect,” she states, arms crossed.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess…” the girl shrinks back in her chair. There’s a faint sweat outline at the girl’s hairline, and she wipes at it with the haste of someone that desperately wants to leave the room. Tai stares at her before speaking in a hushed voice, almost like a stage whisper. 

“But you know, Othello didn’t have to kill Desdemona over it. Iago might be the villain, but Othello was just fucking stupid.” Tai smirks at the girl, both of them laughing silently. 

“I like to think that both characters are multi-faceted,” Ms. Clarke says, voice loud and clear in the quiet. “Othello is a talented general and a passionate man, but he’s also hot-tempered and quick to jump to conclusions.” She shoots a look at Tai and the girl, making it known that she did in fact hear their conversation. “Iago is cunning and deceitful, but he’s also a deeply envious and insecure man. Shakespeare’s way of story-telling makes it more of a black-and-white morality tale, but Iago could very much be portrayed as morally gray.”

Ms. Clarke rounds her desk and sits back down, flipping through some papers on her desk. Some kids start to quietly pack up, ready to burst down the hall to get to lunch as soon as the bell rings. She continues, “Imagine working hard for something you are so clearly deserving of and then having someone else being chosen instead of you.” Shauna glances at Tai, the curly haired girl watching the seconds tick by with her grip secured tightly on her backpack straps. Ms. Clarke’s words ring behind her head. 

“I imagine it would cause some kind of a complex,” she says, sipping her tea. “Being runner-up or second-best in something like that—Always an angel, never a god, right?”

The bell rings.

-

Taissa Turner. Straight A-student, supportive family, one of the best players on a well-known soccer team, the list goes on. People that don’t know her assume Tai’s been blessed with a life of ease and success. Especially because she’s able to ride the line of being smart and witty but not nerdy or annoying. 

She has the sort of charm that makes people think she’s far past her years. Shauna imagines relatives going up to a five year old Tai and asking her what college she’s going to, and she finds that the image isn’t as absurd as she thought it would be. When she speaks, there’s hardly any faltering in her words. It’s for this reason that their classmates often see her as this confident, assertive girl that takes debate way too seriously. 

Shauna knows otherwise. 

(Kind of. They are right about some things—Tai could probably afford to relax when it came to making other people on the debate team cry.)

She plays with Tai more closely than the other girls. Both of them are two sides of the same coin, being center midfielders. That’s why Shauna knows that behind all the bravado, there’s an almost desperate need for control. Center midfielders are the control towers of the team: they get the most touches on the ball, they distribute it smoothly between players, and they’re usually the people that everyone looks to get the ball to.

If a team dominates the midfield, they dominate the game. Therefore, center midfielders are typically the most skilled and most flexible players on a team. They have to be able to make quick decisions, adapt to situations, and hone their technique to carry out the ideas that they have. There’s a certain confidence that’s required with the position because it’s an unrelenting and taxing workload. Anyone that can’t handle it gets left behind in the grass. 

It makes Shauna more anxious than anything. There’s a lot of responsibility involved, especially as a defensive midfielder, and sometimes the weight of it all makes her stomach twist. But Tai gets off on it—being the designated attacking midfielder makes it so the ball is at her feet more than anyone else. She plays like a puppeteer, and everyone is being controlled by her strings and forced to act out the choreography she’s already planned out in her head. 

(Sometimes when she watches Tai play, she recalls a memory of her aunt taking her to see a magician. In hindsight, the tricks were obvious and could be dissected with logic, but nine year old Shauna was amazed. She spent the next week or so trying to replicate it, failing miserably every time. 

When Tai has the ball at her feet, Shauna often wonders what it must feel like to create magic with only leather cleats and skinned knees.)

Tai is the ideal midfielder. Opposing teams get frustrated with the way she weaves through them like they barely exist. They’re even more annoyed with her work ethic and her inability to yield on any aspect of her game. If Jackie didn’t exist, Shauna would bet her money on Tai’s captaincy in every lifetime.

Except Jackie does exist, and it seems like that’s the only thing that makes Tai waver. Because no matter how good she is, how hardworking she is, how much of an obvious leader she is when it comes to strategy and game sense—she doesn’t understand people quite like Jackie does. If Shauna had to comment on it (which she avoids doing at all costs), she’d put it like this:

Jackie’s capable of rallying heroes and civilians alike to defeat the big bad villain with a single speech. Tai would prefer to defeat said big bad villain all by herself to prove that she could, and she’d probably succeed. 

Sometimes, when she gets really into it, Tai moves and thinks at a speed that the others can’t really comprehend. Shauna can barely keep up, and that’s only due to their many shared classes and similar field vision. And when Tai notices this, when she realizes that she’s skipped ahead in her choreography without bothering to look behind her and see if the others are following, she gets this look on her face like she just wants to go faster (and wishes the rest of them would too.)

Taissa Turner may be a straight A-student, part of a supportive family, and one of the best players on a well-known soccer team, but she moves through life like if she stops and looks around, she’ll sink. 

The people at their school couldn’t possibly know that.  Shauna has no idea why some of them act like they do.

“Sorry, Abby. She’s always been like that.” Shauna catches the end of a statement while on her way to her locker. Students are slipping through the hall on their way to lunch, creating a relentless stream of traffic that almost sweeps her away. 

“Like what?” the girl from class—Abby—asks, furrowing her eyebrows. 

“She thinks she knows everything. Trust me, it gets even more infuriating when you have to actually compete against her,” the guy says, his bleached hair hurting Shauna’s eyes. 

“I know you don’t like her, but Tai’s not that bad-”

“No, you don’t get it.” The guy leans back against the lockers, tilting his head. “God, I can’t stand how pretentious she is.”

Abby pinches him in the side, earning a sharp yelp. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking, asshole.”

“Hello,” Shauna says, approaching them. Abby flinches a little, but the guy just opens a single eye and looks at her disinterestedly. “How exactly is Tai pretentious?”

This part of her day has been a newer development. It’s been getting easier for Shauna to retaliate against the insignificant snarky comments that she hears people make. She doesn’t get violent or anything—most of it is just gossipy whispers in the hallway—but she doesn’t turn a blind eye to it anymore. It reminds her of that one phenomenon she learned in psychology last year, the one that says something appears more often after you learn about it, even if the actual frequency of it hasn’t changed. It’s like ever since she heard those giggles about Van in the bathroom, everyone’s gotten the nerve to try something in front of her. She feels like an enforcer with the amount of times she’s glared at people after a loose comment.

Normally, the person she confronts loses their fire as soon as they see her. Shauna doesn’t know what about her makes her seem so intimidating, but she tries to lean into it. Yet this guy only seems to be egged on by it. It ticks her off.

“Good afternoon to you too,” he smirks, sticking his hands in his pockets. “My name’s Dylan. You?”

“Shauna,” she replies, smiling disdainfully. “How is Tai pretentious, according to your amazingly credible standards?” Abby looks between them like she’s watching a tennis match, only the ball is on fire and also screaming.

“Well, Shaun- can I call you Shaun?”

“No.”

“Well, Shaun, It’s just her nature. She thinks she’s some hotshot because your soccer team happens to be successful and because she’s in a couple AP classes. Honestly, most of her achievements are purely for her ego,” he says. It’s a little ironic with how much he sounds like Tai—they both carry the same tone of absolute certainty with their words. The only distinct difference is how much it annoys Shauna coming from his mouth.

She grits her teeth. “That’s pretty bold coming from-”

“Also,” he interrupts. Shauna blinks purely at the audacity of his actions. If it weren’t directed towards her, she’d probably be impressed. “Not only does she flaunt it around everywhere, she has the gall to be a cunt about it to everyone that doesn’t meet her amazingly credible standards, if I were to use your words.”

Shauna curls her knuckles so tightly she hears them pop. She’s pretty sure he hears it too, and his smirk grows because of it. “Don’t call her a fucking-”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you’re willing to go to bat for her like this. I’m on a team with her too, so I know it must be insufferable when she goes off at people.” Shauna glances away. Dylan’s also irritatingly perceptive, because he sees through her instantly. “She does, doesn’t she? I don’t know soccer, but I’m assuming she yells at the rest of them when they’re not performing like professionals.”

Say something. Shauna grits her teeth. Say something, for fuck’s sake! But she feels like her voice has been stolen, ripped away from her throat like it was barely there at all. Any ability she has to think of rebuttals vanishes into thin air. 

“Sorry, it must be hard having to see that bitch every day for practice. Maybe we should start a support group.” He has the nerve to salute her as he walks away. “See you ‘round, Shaun.”

Shauna’s mouth is dry. Her jaw has been dropped for so long, all the moisture completely evaporated into the air. Abby looks between Shauna and Dylan’s back helplessly. She mouths a pained apology before jogging to catch up to him with a Dylan, what the fuck was that?

One thing to know about Shauna is that her voice doesn’t always work when it needs to. It’s been getting better the past couple weeks, but it’s hard to break bad habits. One thing (or two things, more accurately) that have never failed her are her hands.

Before she knows it, Dylan’s shirt is in her hands and his back is slammed against the lockers. Abby releases a choked gasp. She revels in the flash of fear in Dylan’s eyes and twists her grip a little tighter. Some people stop in their tracks to watch the scene unfold.

“Shauna!” She looks toward the voice and sees a teacher walking toward them. She curses, letting go of his shirt and taking a step back. He shrugs his shoulders and straightens out his shirt, flashing a triumphant expression at Shauna. Her eye twitches. 

“Is everything alright here?” The teacher—Mr. Jacobson—asks, crossing his arms. 

Dylan flashes a bright smile. “We’re good.” The teacher turns to Shauna expectantly. She gives a begrudging nod. The teacher huffs and walks away, throwing suspicious looks over his shoulder.

When Shauna can’t see him anymore, she turns to Dylan swiftly. “Watch your mouth.”

Dylan straightens up fully, leaving his hunched position against the lockers. He’s only a couple inches taller than her, but something about his demeanor makes it feel like he towers over her. She hates it. “If you feel that strongly about this,” he leans over and gets close, his face inches away from hers. She doesn’t flinch away. “Debate me about it.” 

When the words come out of his mouth, her first instinct is to say something like, What kind of dumbass movie do you think we’re in? What actually comes out of her mouth, to her immense disappointment is, “What? Aren’t you on the debate team?”

“Yeah? If you’re scared, you could always say no.” He’s goading her, she knows that. She doesn’t even know how to debate someone. 

“I’d give you until Friday evening to learn what you need to. We’ll be debating over the topic of whether Taissa Turner is…” He bobs his head like he’s considering something. “Not a great person. I’d personally use different words, but I don’t want to be thrown against the lockers again.” She rolls her eyes.

“What do you say, Shaun? Wanna waste your evening trying to defend your unbearably obnoxious teammate?” He says, raising his eyebrows.

Shauna heaves her backpack higher on her shoulders and looks him in the eye. This is stupid and impulsive, so of course she’s going to do it. She smiles at him. “I’ll see you on Friday, Damien.”

His smug mask slightly cracks. “It’s Dylan.”

“Whatever.” Shauna turns and walks away, heading to the cafeteria while angrily swinging her arms. She has the worst feeling that she might regret this later, so she focuses on the bright side.

At least she’s not doing anything violent or illegal.

-

“Let me get this straight. You want me to teach you how to debate?” Shauna nods stiffly, lips in a thin line. Tai stares at her incredulously before closing her locker softly with an air of confusion.

Shauna may have made a mistake. She doesn’t regret talking back to Dylan or even agreeing to his dumb proposition, but once again, she’s in a situation where she’s way in over her head. Who would’ve thought she’d have to face the consequences of her actions?

She doesn’t do monitored arguments. Believe it or not, she’s self-aware enough to know that debate requires a logical mindset, which is something that she doesn’t have. If she did, she wouldn’t have done half the things she has in the past month. But she figures if she has to beat him at his own game, she might as well learn from the best. 

“The last time I talked about debate in front of the team, you called it a sport that consisted of egotistic people that argued to ‘compensate’ for something,” Tai deadpans, striding her way to the locker room. Shauna hides a wince and speedwalks to catch up with her.

“You were probably being a bitch that day.” Shauna can’t see her face, but she knows Tai rolls her eyes based on the sigh she lets out.

“Why?”

“Why were you being a bitch?”

“No, asshole, why do you wanna learn how to debate?”

Shauna glances away and clears her throat. “There’s this history assignment that has us reenact a presidential debate for extra credit. It wouldn’t hurt to have that extra bump on my grade.” It’s a believable lie—Tai knows she’s not the best at history and that Shauna takes every extra credit opportunity, so she thinks she’s in the clear. She forgets one thing, though.

“Shauna, we’re in the same class.”

Shauna glances away, embarrassed.

“Okay.” Tai shuts her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. They enter the locker room to the regular chaos of girls putting on equipment and gossiping by the showers. “I don’t care, actually. You can come over later if you’re free.”

“I was going to the mall with Jackie later…” Shauna trails off. They’re supposed to go dress shopping (“For the celebratory dinner after we win nationals!” “Assuming we win, Jax.” “Which we will. Duh. Have some faith.”) but she has a lot more important things on her plate. “I can reschedule.”

Tai drops her bag by her locker, putting in the combination and twisting it open. She pauses. “Hey, you aren’t in any deep shit that I’ll have to save you from, are you?’

Shauna digs out her clothes from her own bag. “No, of course not. When have I ever been in deep shit?” She needs to stop talking. Tai gives her a look that says she agrees. Shauna readjusts her stance. “When have I ever had to be saved from deep shit?” At this, Tai acquiesces.

Practice goes quickly. Shauna’s yelled at more than usual, obviously checked out as she desperately tries to remember every court case she’s half-heartedly listened to over the radio. She’s in the middle of recalling the way one girl cried over being sentenced—also realizing that debates probably aren’t conducted the same way as court cases—when she takes a shot and absolutely shanks it over the goal. Van, ever the provoker, raises both of her arms in the universal field goal gesture. 

Coach Martinez yells, “Shipman! Bend your knee and lean forward!” as if she hasn’t heard that same advice since she first started little league. She curses under her breath and jogs to the back of the drill line. 

“You okay?” Jackie asks, hand shielding her eyes from the sun.

“It bounced weirdly,” Shauna lies.

She gets through it. When practice ends, she and Jackie walk over to the locker room, sweaty and groaning. They’re talking about nothing in particular when Tai comes up to her.

“Hey, my parents should be making dinner soon, so if you’re hungry you don’t have to go get something.” She says, wiping her forehead with the hem of her shirt. Shauna groans inwardly, already feeling the way Jackie’s eyebrows furrow.

“You’re having dinner with Tai?” Jackie asks, slowing her gait. Shauna opens her mouth to explain, but Tai does it for her.

“She wants me to teach her how to debate for some reason,” she says, slowing her pace. She glances behind them towards Van and some JV girls, facing forward again when she’s satisfied.

“Does it have to be today? We’re going to the mall!” Jackie whines.

“I’m kind of in a time crunch,” Shauna sighs. 

“But-”

“You guys have all the time in the world to go dress shopping,” Tai says, exasperated. She throws her arm around Shauna’s shoulder and tugs her into her side, turning to Jackie in one swift move. “You’ll survive without Shipman for an evening. Let me borrow her.” Tai says it jokingly, likely to annoy the captain and prompt one of her good-natured eye rolls. Instead, Jackie looks gloriously sober. 

“Can I come?” Jackie says, crossing her arms at the same time the three of them cross the threshold of the locker room. Tai’s arm slips off her shoulder.

“Jackie,” Shauna hisses.

“What?” Shauna wants to explain the social magnitude of inviting herself to something she wasn’t originally included in, quickly realizing it’s probably a new experience for her, but Tai just shrugs it off.

“Sure, I don’t care. My parents sort of think you guys go everywhere together already.” 

So when Jackie and Shauna both buckle into her car, Shauna follows Tai out of the parking lot all the way to her driveway. Tai’s no Jackie or Lottie, but her house has the clean look that screams of financial stability. The four of them (Van rode along with Tai, to the surprise of no one) enter the Turner household to the smell of stew and veggies.

“Hello girls!” Mrs. Turner greets, arms wide as she embraces Tai and plants a kiss on her cheek. Tai murmurs a returned greeting, looking much less intimidating than when she’s around the other girls on the team.

“Hi, Mrs. Turner,” the rest of them parrot. Jackie and Shauna stand awkwardly on the welcome mat while Van takes her shoes off and walks in like she’s been there a thousand times. She probably has. 

“Jesus Christ, it’s not the first time you’ve been here. Hurry up and come inside,” Tai shouts over her shoulder, padding up the stairs. She and Jackie roll their eyes before toeing off their shoes and following. 

Tai’s room is full of dark tones. Her made bed has navy blue sheets and fluffed pillows with a small stuffed dog sitting neatly in the front. Tai grabs it and hurriedly hides it behind her back as if they didn’t have a good two seconds to spot it. There are minimal decorations on the wall, but she does have a vision board in the space above her bed—it’s filled with statements like apply for scholarships and ace exams and win nationals. Her desk is a dark oak finish with one of those old green lamps Shauna expects to see at vintage libraries.

“So,” Tai says. “You want to learn how to debate. We have a lot of work to do.”

Van, currently reading a trashy magazine on Tai’s bed, diverts her attention. “You wanna learn how to debate? Why?”

Shauna fiddles with her fingers long enough for Jackie to stop studying Tai’s room and glance over at her. Shauna flounders. “I, uh, I made a bet.”

Van narrows her eyes. “Uh-huh…” When Shauna doesn’t elaborate, Van shrugs and goes back to reading her magazine. 

Jackie walks over and sits on the floor next to Shauna, crossing her legs. “You’re not in any trouble, are you?” 

“Why does everyone assume I’m doing something shady?”

“Because you pull impulsive shit like Bobby Farleigh at Steffie Aguilar’s house,” Tai mumbles.

Shauna’s response dies in her throat. “That…” she gulps. “What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, let’s not do this right now. Debate. Let’s go.”

For the next hour or so, Tai doesn’t teach her how to debate, but she does go over the rules. Shauna doesn’t know how organized Dylan’s going to be with it all, so she does her best to follow along, jotting down what she says onto a stray piece of paper from her backpack. From what she gathers, she and Dylan will each get about thirty seconds to present and defend their arguments. She tunes out when Tai introduces things like speaker roles, body language, and presentation—she’s the only one debating, so she has to do all the roles anyway, and body language and presentation only matters when there’s an audience. She doesn’t think there’s going to be an audience, so she takes half-hearted mental notes when she goes over those aspects.

The more Tai talks, the more Shauna wonders what she got herself into. For one, she has no idea who’s judging the thing and how she’s supposed to win—assuming this is something that she’s supposed to try and win. Is there a point system? She rubs at her temples and squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t even know what her end goal is. All she’s certain about is the burning in her chest that wants to make Dylan eat his words. 

“Hey,” Tai says softly. Shauna looks at her tiredly. “Who are you debating anyway? Someone’s character can play a factor in the way they debate.”

And Shauna’s too stressed to think about her words, so she mumbles out, “Dylan, from your debate team,” before she can properly measure the consequences. The consequences present themselves in Tai’s widening eyes and Van’s hand shooting out to grab her arm, almost on instinct.

“Fuck,” Tai curses, dragging a hand down her face harshly.

“What?” Jackie asks, having zoned out as soon as it became clear Shauna and Tai were genuinely just talking about debate. “What’d I miss?”

“Tai,” Van starts, tone placating.

“Out of everyone you had to make a bet with, you made a bet with him?” Tai huffs out exasperatedly.

“Wait, wait, is he like, super good?” Shauna asks.

“Seriously, what the hell is happening right now?”

“Jackie, shut up for a minute.”

“He’s not good,” Tai sighs, leaning back on her bed and cracking her neck. “He’s just aggravating. And an exceptionally bad matchup for you.” Shauna tilts her head questioningly. Tai bobs her head uncertainly, like she’s trying to conjure up an explanation in the least offensive way possible. “In debate, you win by getting more points than the other team. Instead of refining his own strategies and getting as many points as possible, he focuses on making sure the other team gets as few points as possible.”

“What do you mean?” Jackie asks, scooching near Shauna like she’s trying to shield her.

“He flusters his opponents. Besides the actual arguments, you get a lot of points with your body language and speaking. He fucks with your head until you lose substantial points from shit like a shifty stance or a wavering voice. And if he does a really good job, sometimes people fuck up their original arguments.” Tai paces around the room, wringing her hands. It makes Shauna’s heart race, even as she recognizes that the situation doesn’t matter in the slightest. The only thing on the line is her pride and maybe Tai’s honor.

“Damn, why is debate so strict?” Jackie murmurs.

“Right?” Van whispers back.

“He even researches his opponents before he goes against them. He’ll target your insecurities and bring up moments that besmirch your ethos.” Tai crosses her arms and sinks to the floor abruptly. “I don’t like it because it’s dirty, but it’s not illegal. It’s actually gotten us a couple points during meets.”

Shauna takes a deep breath and rubs the back of her neck. “Okay, why is he a bad matchup for me though?”

Tai and Van blink and exchange a glance. Simultaneously, they both look at Jackie, who notices instantly and adopts a sour expression. “Seriously? Ugh, you guys suck.” Jackie turns to her and gently takes her hands. “Shauna, if what Tai is saying is true, this Dylan guy is really good at pissing people off. You,” she says, hesitantly, “are very easy to piss off.”

“What?” Shauna asks, wrenching her hands away. She mourns the loss of the warmth for a millisecond. “No I’m not.”

“You stripped and painted the word ‘rapist’ over Bobby Farleigh because he failed to drug Nat.”

“I did not, but the person who did had the right idea because he deserved it.”

“I don’t disagree, but it doesn’t change the fact that your fuse is as short as your impulse control.”

“Whatever.” Shauna stands and stretches, raising her arms above her head and releasing a long groan of exhaustion. “I’ll beat him anyway.”

“Girls! Dinner!” Mrs. Turner calls from downstairs. Van rolls off the bed with an oomph, landing straight on top of Jackie. Affronted, the two of them start tussling and rolling around on the ground with yelps and giggles. It’s almost pathetic how the smile seems to weave its way out of Tai, and Shauna can only imagine how her face is contorting itself beyond her control. When she sees Shauna raising her eyebrow at her, she clears her throat and straightens her back.

“Just try and keep your cool, okay? He usually loses his steam if you don’t take his bait. I’ve never lost to him.” She gets off her bed and walks to the door, kicking both Van and Jackie lightly on her way out. “Come on, I’m starving.”

-

“So where are you guys going in the fall?” Mrs. Turner asks, leaning forward on the table. The stew in front of her is rich and warm, and Shauna finds that her usual grip on her future plans is loosened in the face of her full stomach.

“Mom,” Tai groans.

“What? Let me talk to your friends,” Mrs. Turner says, lightly smacking Tai’s arm.

“Shauna and I are rooming together at Rutgers,” Jackie smiles. For a second, she looks so happy that Shauna wants to smile too and say to Tai’s mom proudly that they’ll be Scarlet Knights. But the indignation rises up in her like instinct because Jackie never asked and I applied to Brown and never told her. Still, she smiles and eats another spoonful to avoid saying anything.

“Van, I know you’re going to Middlesex.” Mrs. Turner winks at her, getting a cheeky grin and another wink in return. Then she places her hand on Tai’s shoulder; Shauna doesn’t know what it is, because Tai doesn’t flinch, but she does tense just a fraction. “Tai’s following Teddy to Howard, aren’t you sweetie?”

“Mhmm,” Tai hums, shoving a spoonful of stew in her mouth. She swallows like she has to choke it down. “I’m not following him, but-”

“Oh, also—make sure your weekend’s clear, baby. He’s coming home this weekend and we wanna spend time with him as a family.” Mrs. Turner dabs at the corners of her mouth with a napkin, standing and taking her bowl to the sink. Van looks at Tai worriedly as she clenches her jaw and rolls her neck out.

“Okay.” She enunciates like she’s straddling the line of her composure, legs on each side as she teeters back and forth. Shauna half-expects her to bite—to say something cutting like she usually does when something pisses her off. But Tai swallows it down with a bite of stew and a resignation that Shauna can only guess reveals itself in front of her mother.

Teddy—Tai’s older brother—is someone that Shauna’s seen a grand total of twice in all the years that she’s known her. Both times, even at her young age, she could tell that there was something polished about him. Like everything about him was ironed out, from his crisp suits to his polite smile. He was nice, but she used to think he was a little bland. 

The most interesting thing about him was the way he made his little sister, someone Shauna always considered to be big, look so small next to him. 

But the Turner family have always been closely knit; anyone that’s spent even a couple hours with them can see that. So Shauna doesn’t really know what Tai’s damage is when it comes to him, and she’s certainly not about to ask. 

“Hey, I meant it, okay? Don’t let him bait you,” Tai speaks up, clearing her throat.

“Who’s him?” Mrs. Turner asks from the kitchen.

“Dylan Brenner!” Tai yells back.

“That lil’ boy? Shauna, do us a favor and beat him into the ground, okay?”

Something about the way she says it makes the cloud above Tai’s head dissipate. It also startles a snicker out of Jackie and Van, both of them hiding their chuckles in another bite of stew. Tai rolls her lips inwards in an attempt to stop laughing. 

“Mom.”

“What?”

Shauna’s smiling too. Not just because of the comfort of the moment, but also because of the idea that spawns in her head to level the playing field. In Tai’s words, it’s a little dirty, but it’s not illegal.

-

“Hi, Shauna! What’s going on?”

Times have truly gotten desperate. She’s going against Dylan tomorrow in the debate room after practice, and she still doesn’t have a solid strategy. And God, Tai won’t ever know what the debate’s about, but Shauna kind of wants to tell her just so she’ll understand the absolute lengths she’s going to for her. She’s one line into this conversation and she’s already getting the urge to run as far away as possible.

“I need you to dig up some dirt on Dylan Brenner,” Shauna says, clenching her jaw.

Misty pushes her glasses up her nose. Her arms are full of practice jerseys as she does it, one of them slipping out of her grip. She yelps far too loudly for the minor inconvenience and rushes to pick it up. “Dylan Brenner? Sure! Why?”

“No reason. Just do it,” Shauna bites. Misty looks at her, big eyes staring at her from behind the glasses in a way that makes the hair on her arms stand on end. Shauna rolls her eyes. “Please.”

Misty stops whatever Kubrick Stare she had going on and rocks back on her heels, satisfied. “Do you want my old folder on him?”

Shauna does a double take. “Your what?”

“My old folder! Dylan was a subject of a prior… investigation of mine. There are some notes about his life that may be useful if you want it.”

“Uh, sure. Thanks,” Shauna says warily. 

“Great! I’ll drop it off at your house later!”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll stop by your-”

“Nonsense! I already know where you live, I’ll be over as soon as I can!” Misty smiles widely and rushes off, jerseys in arms like they’re the most important scraps of fabric to ever exist. Shauna rolls her shoulders like it’ll physically shake off the chills that run over her body. Lottie sidles up next to her, hands on her hips and scrunching her face in the direction she left.

“What kind of crap did you get into for you to willingly talk to Misty?”

Shauna opens her mouth to deny it, but she ends up sulking. “Something stupid.”

“That’s not surprising.” Shauna glares at her. Lottie smirks back, pulling a scoff from Shauna’s chest as she punches the taller girl in the shoulder. Lottie takes the hit with a laugh.

“If you need my help, you can always ask,” she says, bending down and examining her socks. Shauna hums an affirmation.

“You in trouble?” Shauna looks behind her to find Nat with a lollipop in her mouth and hands in her shorts. Lottie huffs out a puff of air.

“Hey, where’d you get that?”

“Mrs. Jenkins had some in a jar.”

“No fair, I want one.”

“Sucks for you.” Nat sticks out her tongue, showcasing the red residue from the lollipop. Lottie launches at her, aiming for her hand while Nat displays an impressive defensive position. Shauna smiles while the two wrestle, stepping out of the locker room and walking to the field. It only takes a moment before she hears Nat jog up to her, breathless and red.

“I have another one in my bag if you want it later.” Lottie’s only a second behind her.

“Oh, you bitch.”

When Misty comes by her house later with all of Dylan’s vices in her hand, Shauna thinks of this moment for a reason that she can’t quite pinpoint. But it settles into her bones and fills the spaces between her ribs; it feels oddly like a warm bowl of stew.

-

He’s late. Go figure.

Shauna feels like an idiot sitting down next to the door, legs splayed out like a child whose parents forgot to pick them up. She goes over the index cards in her hands with her bulleted arguments feeling oddly nervous. Over the course of the day, she memorized the most hard-hitting parts of Dylan’s insecurities to try and throw him off his game.

Will she be good at it? Probably not. Will she try her hardest? Abso-fucking-lutely. But it won’t matter if the asshole never shows up.

Right as she thinks that, she hears the obnoxious voice strolling down the hallway with his hands in his pockets and his bag slung over one shoulder. Abby’s behind him too, looking thoroughly unimpressed and bored out of her mind. When Dylan spots her sprawled out on the ground, the familiar annoying grin takes over his face.

“Hey, Shaun, ready to get your ass kicked?”

“Only if you are, Damien.”

Dylan laughs heartily, something about him becoming uncannily wolfish. When he unlocks the door and they both step in, Shauna feels like she just entered a hunting zone—and not as the predator.

The debate room looks similar to any regular classroom. There are chairs and desks scattered around with no real pattern, papers left around the room with little organization, and a stage-like area with two lecterns facing each other. She and Dylan move in sync, placing their bags down and taking their place on the stage. 

It’s synonymous with the way she feels right before a game, when she takes her place as a center-mid and looks across to the player on the other team in the same position. Aside from winning, aside from whatever motivations they have, she always has the same thought for every player: no matter what, I’m gonna beat you.

“Abby’s going to be our judge,” Dylan says, cracking his knuckles.

“What? No. The judge is supposed to be someone neutral,” Shauna replies, furrowing her eyebrows.

“Do you see anybody else here?” He raises an eyebrow and gestures to the empty room. “Besides, she’s as unbiased as it gets. If anything, you might have the edge over me because she’s judging.”

Shauna shoots a look at Abby. The blue-eyed girl shrugs. “I think he deserves to be taken down a notch or two. Please, for my sanity, do your best.”

Shauna sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fine. Fine. Are you ready?”

“Born ready.” Shauna wants to scoff, his dialogue sounding increasingly like someone from a campy coming-of-age novel. 

Abby fishes out an index card from the back pocket of her jeans, beginning to read what’s very obviously an opening script with the most disinterested voice Shauna’s heard in a while. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Today we are overseeing the argument between Dylan Brenner and Shauna Shipman about the merit of Taissa Turner.” Abby rakes a hand through her hair and mutters, “This is so stupid,” before continuing, much to Shauna’s embarrassment. “Shauna will take the affirmative, Dylan will take the negative. Debaters, are you ready to proceed?”

Both of them nod at her. A short silence covers the room before Abby speaks again. “Uh, have at it, I guess?”

Dylan nods at her. “Affirmative starts.”

“I know,” she whispers harshly, clearing her throat. “Hello, my name is Shauna Shipman, I’m taking the affirmative-”

“I know this is supposed to be kinda formal, but we can just skip the introductory sentences.”

Shauna looks up at the blonde, his chin on his hand and a bored expression on his face. Shauna takes a deep breath. Don’t let him bait you, don’t let him bait you…

“Fine.” Shauna glances at her index card before beginning her spiel. “Tai is the most determined person I know. She always does things the right way and to the best of her ability, which is a trait that isn’t present in everyone. She’s ambitious and perseverant no matter how many obstacles stand in her way and no matter how many people—people with half her achievements and double her arrogance—have something to say about it. She-”

“Time. Sorry,” Abby whispers, eyes on the clock at the back of the room. Shauna dismisses her with a wave of her hand. Across from her, Dylan claps softly and patronizingly. Abby rolls her eyes and gestures for him to start, glancing at the clock to start her mental timer.

For the first five seconds, he just stares at her. It’s unnerving, and she almost says something to him before he finally opens his mouth. Shauna thinks he’s going to open with an argument of his own, but he says something that she didn’t plan for.

“Where’s your owner?”

Shauna blinks. “Huh?”

“Sorry—I meant Jackie. Where’s she at?”

Shauna tenses. It feels like all her muscles activate in the span of a second, ready to jump at the guy and claw at his face. Of course he’s going this route. Tai’s voice echoes in her mind.

He loses his steam if you don’t take his bait.

Shauna releases her grip on the lectern and schools her face into something neutral. “Caught a ride home. Why so interested?”

“No reason. I just thought it was weird seeing you two apart from each other. Especially with the leash she has around your neck—aren’t dogs supposed to stay close to their owners?” He asks lazily, rubbing a finger into the wood of the lectern like he’s talking about the weather. Shauna, self-aware and very much disappointed in herself, falls for it.

“She’s not my fucking owner,” she spits. “I’m not a goddamn dog.”

Dylan smirks. “Are you sure? Last I checked, you go everywhere she goes, do everything she says, bite anyone who threatens, etcetera, etcetera. Have you done anything without her?”

This. I’ve done this, and so much more that I can’t say because it’s illegal and would genuinely land me in jail, Shauna thinks. She grits her teeth so aggressively that she feels the enamel wearing down.

“I mean no offense,” Dylan lies, “I only say this because I question your authority to defend Taissa’s shitty personality. I mean, how are you supposed to advocate for someone’s personality when you barely have one of your own?” Shauna feels a lump come up her throat. She swallows it back down, only for it to rise again in defiance. “Let’s face the facts—when people see you, they don’t see you as Shauna. They see you as Jackie’s best friend that clings to her at every waking moment.”

“Time,” Abby says harshly, glaring at Dylan. He leans backwards satisfied, raising both of his hands in a surrender. She turns to a shaking Shauna and nods at her to start. Shauna forces her hands to uncurl to look at her notes, but everything’s hard to read from the crimson that seems to cloud her vision. When she does start, she can barely hear her voice.

She stutters something about Tai’s strength and academics, but even she can tell her arguments are fragmented and vague. Dylan smiles while she stumbles through it and she can see Abby—who knows as little about debate as her—wince from the corner of her eye. Abby calls time before she can get her head on straight. She motions for Dylan to start, and this time he doesn’t spare a single second.

“Taissa is, by all accounts, overly harsh and cutting in a way that negatively affects everyone around her. Her superiority complex leads her to believe she has the authority to dictate the way everyone does anything, as if her way is the only correct way. She also acts like any failure to do so lessens their value as a human being. She yells at the underclassmen in debate, and I’m willing to bet that she does the same to those on your little soccer team. She has no right-”

“Time.” Dylan actually looks annoyed when Abby calls it, leaning back with a controlled puff of air. Shauna looks at her index cards for a long moment before tucking them back inside her pocket with a finality that sinks into her shoulders. As Tai explained it to her, this would be her last chance to work in final arguments and rebuttals before Dylan’s final turn, and then the judges count the points and declare a winner. 

Fuck that.

Shauna remembers why she doesn’t like debate. The idea of an argument being condensed to thirty seconds and three rounds in a controlled environment? Shauna’s not built for that. She’s fire and teeth and passion that has its own time frame. She was always going to lose against someone formally trained.

But it’s time to drag him down to reality.

Abby nods at her to start. She lets instinct take the wheel, throwing caution to the wind and letting loose everything in her chest. She’s not a dog, but Dylan’s right—she bites, and she burns.

“I acknowledge that Tai’s way of speaking to others can come across as vulgar and mean, but she never views someone as lesser because of it. She gets frustrated because she sees everyone as the best they can possibly be, and she wants them to get there as fast as possible. She has an unshakeable will to improve and she positively influences everyone around her to do the same.” Shauna chuckles as she cracks her neck. “The other day, I drove past the park and saw a bunch of the freshmen and sophomores working with the ball. Do you know who was setting up the drills? Tai. She took time out of her day, a day where we didn’t have practice, to help the girls that wanted to improve. She-”

“Time.”

“-she doesn’t believe her way is the only way, but it does tend to be the most efficient.”

“Uh, time?” Abby says, glancing at Dylan. He narrows his eyes and grips the lectern, the first crack in his confidence.

“Shauna. You’re done.”

“Fuck you.”

She cherishes Abby’s widening eyes and Dylan’s irked look before she bulldozes through. One thing to know about Shauna is that her voice doesn’t always work when it needs to. Another thing to know is that sometimes, it does.

“Aside from being hard-working and persevering and stupidly smart, she’s kind. She-”

“Kind?” Dylan laughs in disbelief. “That’s such bullshit-”

“Yes, she’s kind.” Moments run through Shauna’s head like a film reel. First and foremost, unsurprisingly, is Van. “She ties shoelaces for people who can’t,” Mari, “and she gives tips to people on how to shoot,” Nat, “and she offers a shoulder to people if they really need it, and-”

“Here,” Tai says, handing her a plastic water bottle. “I brought it from home. It’s not cold or anything, but it’s been capped and in my jacket the entire time.”

Shauna sighs, some of the passion bleeding into something fond. “And she offers the rest of her water to people who don’t trust anything else to drink.” Shauna glares at Dylan fiercely. “She’s one of the most loyal friends a person can have, and she’s twice the person you are.”

“Oh my fucking God,” Dylan mutters, running a hand down his face. He’s smiling, but it’s lost its smugness and turned into something sardonic. “Whatever. She’s still the person that pushes other people way too hard to make herself look better. The only reason she cares about people improving as a group is because it makes her look better as a captain, or a president if we’re considering all the clubs she’s in. Did you know her brother was the captain of the debate team when he went here? It’s so obvious she doesn’t actually give a shit about debating—she just wants one more accolade under her belt to make her feel like she’s important.”

Abby’s making a T with both of her hands—the universal sign for time out—and frantically looking back and forth between the two. Shauna couldn’t care less. “What kind of argument is that? We’re debating Tai’s personality, aren’t we?” Dylan’s eye twitches. “Her brother has nothing to do with her, and even if he did, there’s nothing wrong about looking up to him.” The lightbulb above Shauna’s head lights up, a reminder from the folder Misty provided. She smiles sadistically as she feels the hunting ground mold around her—prey turned predator.

“And since we’re talking about personalities and how someone can ‘negatively affect’ someone, why don’t we talk about yours? Or, more specifically, what yours did to Kelly Emmsley?”

Dylan’s face instantly loses all its color. It’s almost weightless, the moment she can tell she’s about to ruin him. Then everything comes crashing down.

“Both of you were at a party and you wanted to ask her out, right?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dylan spits, voice quivering.

“And, probably for the first time in your life, she said no.”

“Please.”

“But you were her ride home, weren’t you? And when she got in the car, you slammed on the gas and high-tailed it down every road.” Abby ceases her attempts to make them stop, lowering her hands as Shauna keeps talking. 

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Are you sure? She begged you to slow down, but you were so pissed that you barely heard her, not to mention all the alcohol you had during the night that you didn’t tell her about. You wanna know what happened next?” Shauna asks, turning to Abby. She doesn’t say anything. Shauna turns back to Dylan.

“You crashed. You walked away with bruises and cuts, but she broke her fucking leg. It wasn’t even a clean break, it shattered.” Shauna lowers her voice, tone becoming mockingly soothing. “And she was our star swimmer. She had an athletic scholarship, y’know—one that got her through to college without her parents having to worry about paying for it. You wanna guess where she is now?”

Without knowing, Shauna moved from behind her lectern, stalking toward him. She only realizes when his back hits the wall, looking so small that Shauna has to double check if she’s magically grown taller. She leans in and speaks softly.

“You know what I think? I think you’re a jealous and insecure little boy. You’ve had success handed to you on a silver platter your entire life, and the second someone challenges you, you crumble. You lash out and break things, because that’s the type of personality you have. You have no authority to question the negative effects of Tai’s personality when you stole someone’s future.”

The room is deadly quiet. She feels a flame of triumph when she sees the first tear roll down his cheek. 

“It was an accident,” he hiccups, sinking to the floor. Shauna stares down at him, blood dripping from her fangs, satisfied by her meal. She collects her bags from the place she dropped them at, sparing one last look to the broken boy on the ground.

“Congratulations, Dylan. You win. Based on your track record, you probably need it more than I do.” With that, she walks out the door, leaving Abby (somewhat heartlessly) to pick up the pieces.

She then promptly chokes on her own spit when she sees Tai leaning against the wall next to it. Cue the coughing stint and the elevated heartrate, all in front of someone who does literally nothing to help. 

When she catches her breath, Tai’s looking at her with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, holding out her water bottle. “It’s not cold or anything. Sorry.” Shauna stares at her, hands on her knees and panting. She huffs out a breathy chuckle before reaching for it and swallowing its contents gratefully.

“How long have you been there?” Shauna asks, wiping her mouth. The two of them start slowly walking to the parking lot.

“Since you guys started. You said you needed to learn debate by Friday and Dylan usually takes the keys home for the weekend, so it wasn’t hard to put together where you’d be.” Tai scrunches her nose. “Is that seriously what you were debating about? My personality?”

“It sounds stupider when you say it like that.”

“Duh, it is stupid. I don’t give a fuck about what Dylan has to say about me.”

“Yeah, I figured. He still pissed me off though.” Shauna says, fiddling with the strings on her backpack. Tai’s silent for a couple steps, sighing as they turn the corner to exit the building.

“For a long time, my brother was the definition of perfection.” Shauna turns her head slightly to show she’s listening, but she doesn’t do more than that. “He was the president of every club he joined, the captain of every sport he played, and the top of all his classes. He was never rude or angry at people, and he never seemed to fail at anything. He got into a top college as soon as he graduated and a respectable internship as a freshman.”

For a second, Tai looks resigned in a way that knocks Shauna off kilter. “Everyone in the family loves him. For good reason too. But no matter what I did, it never seemed to amount to his accomplishments. Either he did it better or he did it first. I know my family loves me and, really, they’re the most supportive people I know—but I can’t help but feel like… like an ensign trying to become a lieutenant.”

Shauna looks at her until she looks back, brown eyes holding a weariness that makes her heart hurt. A slow smile creeps across Shauna’s face. “I think that’s the nerdiest shit you’ve ever said.”

Tai’s mouth opens in a shocked laugh, facing forward again. “Shit, we really need to move on from Othello, don’t we?”

“Ms. Clarke should introduce Macbeth next semester.”

The two of them laugh gently, the sound carrying away in the wind. “I know I push people hard and I push myself too much. I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t know how to be anyone else,” Tai murmurs.

Shauna doesn’t hesitate. “Well, I think you’re pretty cool.”

Tai’s lips wrangle themselves into a smile. “Yeah, I know. You learned to debate and argued with the most annoyed guy on the planet for me.”

“Fuck off, it was actually really hard,” Shauna smiles. They get to Shauna’s car, sun setting just below the horizon as they do. When she sits behind the wheel, Tai gestures for her to roll the window down.

“You know you’re pretty cool too, right?” Tai asks, folding her arms in the space.

“Uh, sure,” Shauna replies, confused.

“No, I mean you’re cool. Not as Jackie’s best friend or Jackie’s dog, just as you. Shauna.”

Shauna doesn’t reply—just nods goodbye and pulls out of the parking lot. But the words go down her throat feeling like a warm bowl of stew.

Chapter Text

A long, long time ago, Jackie was deathly afraid of butterflies. 

Shauna, who had possessed an unending curiosity for bugs and insects, was shocked. To her, Jackie was exactly the kind of girl who attracted all sorts of pretty things. She belonged in a clearing where light shone through and the trees all curved toward her and the chirping birds would fly down from their branches and land on her shoulders. Maybe she’d giggle and stroke a finger down their feathers, squealing in delight when the butterflies fluttered from their hiding places. But Shauna also used to read a lot of fairy tales, and assigning the princess role to Jackie became something she did out of habit.

It wasn’t a phobia or anything that serious; she never screamed or ran away from the winged creatures. Jackie’s fear has always been quiet—it presented itself in choked whimpers, a slight trembling, and the action of hiding her face in Shauna’s shoulder. 

They were having a playdate at the park. Shauna’s in her overalls with dirt on her knees and Jackie has a little sundress that falls over her shins. Shauna digs through the soil by the bushes to watch the bugs squirm around and dig deeper. Jackie, uninterested in that type of playing, just talked her ear off while Shauna fascinated herself with the life under her palms. On that day, Jackie went quiet for a long time—it’s the only reason Shauna looked up from what she was doing.

When she turned around, Jackie had her left arm extended from her body like it was unrecognizable to her. On the back of her hand rested a butterfly, wings painted orange and black gently moving against the air. Shauna gasped.

“Woah!” she said softly, abandoning her place by the bushes. She moved as slowly as possible to get close to the insect, eyes twinkling with wonder. “Jackie, you got a butterfly! I read that they’re attracted to sweat and bright colors, but they don’t usually land on people unless you’re really still. You’re so lucky…” Shauna trailed off, finally looking up at Jackie with a smile that she expected to be mirrored. To her horror, there were silent tears racing down her cheeks. Her bottom lip quivered and she sucked in a choked inhale before biting that bottom lip to muffle any other sounds from escaping. In what seemed like a fight-or-flight reaction, Jackie froze.

“Jax?!” Shauna yelped, rushing toward her. The volume and the sudden movement spooked the butterfly, causing it to take flight away from the two girls. Jackie let her arm go limp immediately, stumbling over to Shauna and launching herself at her. Shauna caught her easily, alarmed at the way her entire body felt like it was shaking. “What’s wrong?” 

Jackie shook her head against her shoulder, tightening her grip around Shauna’s midsection. “Jackie, it’s just a butterfly. They won’t kill you.” This only seemed to make her cry harder, making Shauna sigh and wrap her arms around the smaller girl until she was sure her dirt-covered hands stained her sundress. 

After a while, Jackie unlatched herself from Shauna, sniffling and wiping her cheeks with a mumbled apology. Shauna wanted to tell her to stop, wanted to tell her that she’d hold her forever if she was scared. But Jackie looked up and backpedaled with her mouth parted, lips forming a word that never got produced by her vocal cords. Shauna turned over her shoulder to find another butterfly coming their general direction, wings flapping to a rhythm she couldn’t hear.

In those fairy tales she used to read, Shauna always assigned herself the knight to Jackie’s princess. Nevermind her own awe of butterflies or her distaste of hurting bugs, Shauna’s hand shot out like lightning and swatted at the insect before it could get any closer to Jackie. She felt when her hand made contact, felt when the wings crumpled, felt when it hit the ground in an unmoving, unalive way. Yet what she felt the most was a hand taking her own, dragging her away from the scene of the crime with a grateful smile and watery eyes.

Shauna thought distantly of the butterfly effect, of how the flap of one butterfly’s wings could cause a natural disaster in some other part of the world. She wondered how much destruction she just caused with a single swipe of her hand, an action so automatic that she barely computed it. She found she hardly cared, and will always hardly care as long as a girl in a stained sundress holds her hand without blinking at the dirt beneath her fingernails.

-

Shauna is now long past her bug phase and Jackie couldn’t care less about butterflies, but Shauna thinks back on that crushed form and speculates whether natural disasters could take years to brew. It certainly feels like the calm before the storm—the hotel room is creepily quiet with Jackie’s anger.

The truth is, Shauna barely understands Jackie. It’s frustrating, considering how much space she takes up in her head. All her mental notebooks detail countermeasures to take when she gets in one of her moods; except for the times when this specific instance happens, and then Shauna has to do this specific thing to make her feel better, unless this one thing also happened.

See? Confusing. 

She’s only keeping up by pure luck and trial and error. It’s a miracle she’s got even somewhat of a system down. But the one thing—the one thing—she thought she had on lock was figuring out who she was mad at. When they were still dating and Jackie scratched the back of her neck excessively, she was mad at Jeff. When she got a faraway look in her eyes, she was mad at her parents. When she was mad at one of the girls, there was a faint snarl in her top lip.

Right now, Jackie was quietly folding her jersey on the other side of the room, mutedly humming a tune. Shauna supposes it’s the quiet that’s getting to her; Jackie hasn’t ranted about Jeff trying to get back together or about what the plan for tomorrow’s game is. Shauna’s tried to get a glimpse of her face in any reflective surface, but her expression is unnervingly blank. There’s no scratching or snarling to be seen. She’s not even sure if it’s anger, the look on her face much more dull than the usual emotion that takes over. Shauna’s trekking new territory.

She dips a toe in to test the waters. “Tai’s invited a couple of us to talk about tomorrow’s game in her room.”

Jackie doesn’t turn around or even stutter in her movements. “Okay.”

“We should go,” Shauna swallows, massaging her wrist.

“Okay.”

Shauna opens her mouth to say something else, but closes it after nothing comes out. After everything she’s done, the one person she doesn’t have the courage to talk to is the person she knows better than anyone else. 

(And the person who knows you better than anyone else, is what one voice whispers in the back of her mind. Shauna isn’t sure that’s true. Dylan—that asshole—said something that stuck itself to the side of her brain and wriggled its way into her nightmares. Shauna barely knows who she is, so how could Jackie?

Maybe she knows you better than you know yourself, the voice says. One part of Shauna protests immediately because how pathetic would that be? Another part of her believes it full-heartedly; it looks a lot like eight year old Shauna, the one that looked at Jackie as if she hung the stars in the sky.)

“Are you okay?” Shauna concedes, sitting on the edge of her bed. Jackie finally turns to look at her, giving Shauna a clear look at her face. It doesn’t help. It’s no longer frustratingly blank, but it’s an expression that oscillates through various emotions so quickly that she can’t tell what she’s feeling.

“No, Shauna. I’m not. I haven’t been for weeks, and you didn’t know that.” Jackie points at her angrily and throws the rest of her unfolded clothes in the drawer. She slams it shut and paces across the room, gnawing at the fingernail on her thumb.

Shauna is utterly baffled. “Did- What- Well, what happened? Did your parents say something? Did Jeff try anything?”

“It’s you, Shauna! It’s always been you!” 

Shauna won’t lie, she’s imagined Jackie saying those words before. Just not in this context. Her walls come up immediately, her defensive nature kicking in before she can do anything about it.

“Me? What did I do?” she asks, pointing to herself. She cycles through everything she could’ve possibly done wrong. Did she talk shit about one of her friends again? Did she forget something that Jackie asked her to pack? Is she wearing something that pissed her off, which is something that has unironically happened before?

Jackie’s mouth opens and closes for a couple rounds, obviously trying to figure out a way to organize her words. Eventually, she tires out and shuts it completely. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She goes for the remote on her bed to turn the TV on, most likely planning on sulking until they silently agree to go to bed. Shauna’s not having it.

“No,” she says, standing and yanking the remote out of Jackie’s hand. She places her own hands firmly next to Jackie’s thighs on the bed, trapping her while she leans into her space. “You don’t get to say you’re pissed off at me and then not explain why.”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want, actually,” Jackie spits, lip curling in that familiar snarl. She crosses her arms over her chest, her defensive posture matching Shauna’s own walls. “You haven’t been shy about that lately, huh? Running around with everyone on the team?”

Shauna presses the heels of her palms to her eyes and groans. “What the fuck are you even talking about?”

“The team! What, are you best friends with all of them now?” Jackie isn’t yelling, but it’s at the volume where it’s loud enough without worrying about a noise complaint from their neighbors.

Shauna grabs at her shoulders and shakes her. “Jackie, I’m begging you—what the fuck did I do?”

Jackie shakes her hands off wildly. “You went to Tai’s house and had dinner with her family!” she blurts out.

“You literally came with us!”

“Only ‘cause she invited me as an afterthought!” Shauna wants to remind her that she technically invited herself, but she figures it’s probably not the right time. “Not to mention the way Lottie is always hovering around you now.”

“Lottie hovers around everyone. Her favorite thing to do is hover,” Shauna sighs, walking to her side of the room and fluffing her pillows. She needs something to do with her hands.

“And Nat-”

“Watch it,” Shauna shoots her a warning look. It’s empty of any actual threats, but Jackie latches onto it.

“See?! Exactly! Since when did you become her knight in shining armor?”

“I’m not her-” Shauna cuts herself off and takes a deep breath. She clasps her own hands together and turns sharply to face Jackie, whose eyes are firmly trained on the black screen of the TV. “What is this about? I mean, really about?”

“It feels…” Jackie starts, her voice weak and slow. “You’re with the girls all the time. Fuck, I saw you talking to Misty the other day, but you have no problem blowing me off because ‘Tai and I have an assignment’ or ‘Van wants to go to a blockbuster this weekend.’ It feels like you’re pulling away from me.”

Shauna furrows her eyebrows. She wants to understand her so badly, the sag in her shoulders looking unbearably heavy, but she doesn’t know what more Jackie could possibly want from her. “I’ve always done those things with them. You’ve never had a problem with it before.”

Jackie sighs and runs an agitated hand through her hair. “I know, but-”

“I mean,” Shauna interrupts, half hysterical and half exasperated. She starts pacing on her side of the room. “I drive you to school every day, I drive you home every day, you sleep over every weekend… We see each other all the time and that’s still not enough for you? I always have to be by your side?”

Jackie has the decency to look mildly ashamed. “No, hold on-”

Shauna laughs mirthlessly. It comes out before she has the restraint to stop it. “I’m not- I’m not your dog, Jackie,” she says, a little meanly.

“That’s not- I didn’t say that,” Jackie shrinks into herself, her own flash of meanness rearing its head.

“No, but you certainly act like it,” Shauna snarks, grabbing at the remote harshly and turning on the TV. If Jackie wants to be petty that she can’t play with her favorite toy all the time, Shauna’s not going to work herself up over it. 

This time, it’s Jackie coming over and wrenching the remote out of her hands, shutting off the TV with a single click. There’s a stubbornness in her eyes that makes Shauna want to cower in fear and blaze with righteousness all at the same time. It’s dizzying.

“Can you just…” Jackie trails off and sucks in a ragged breath. When she speaks again, her voice is raw, like the question clawed at the sides of her throat on its way up. “When did you stop wanting me to be your best friend?”

There it is, Shauna thinks. The emotion she couldn’t decipher on Jackie’s blank face wasn’t anything fiery at all—it was this hurt, somber expression that screamed of reluctance to let go. Like a child who just got told they were too old to go to bed with their stuffed bear.

As for her question, Shauna almost says it. She almost says, when my mom made us her ultra chocolate chip brownies that made both of us sick after eating too much and I still thought the honey in your eyes would taste sweeter, but she can’t, so she keeps her mouth shut and leaves Jackie to overanalyze like she usually does.

“Oh.” Jackie’s face drops before she can cover it with that practiced mask of hers. Shauna’s heart sinks. “Okay.”

She wipes at her face aggressively and leans back out of Shauna’s face. Shauna’s hand twitches to grab her as she walks away, but it freezes right as it makes contact with the fabric of her shirt. (A shirt that, Shauna’s ninety percent sure, is hers.)

As she grabs the remote without a word, turning on the TV and sitting on her bed with her knees tucked to her chest, Shauna feels like screaming. Something along the lines of I love you, and it makes me feel stupid or I love you, and it’s killing me or I love you, and people think it’s the only thing I’m capable of, but that would warrant an explanation that she’s not even sure how to give. So she reverts to what she’s best at.

She grabs a hoodie from her unpacked suitcase and slides her room key into her pocket. “I’m going to Tai’s,” she mutters. Jackie doesn’t flinch, eyes glued to the TV screen like her life depends on it. As Shauna’s hand grips the doorknob and opens the door, one more adage pops up in her mind.

I love you, and I hate both of us for it.

-

When she was younger, Shauna actually wanted to be a striker. She only started playing soccer because Jackie was into it, so she figured she could get away with playing a position that didn’t require a lot of work. 

Being a keeper seemed scary. Not only was the pressure insane, she had to worry about balls hitting her fast and hard? No thank you. Defense and midfield ran a lot, and Shauna knew she was fast but that didn’t mean she liked running. So striker it was; all they did was wait for the ball up top and put it in the goal when they had the chance. Seemed easy enough.

And then there was the glory of it all. Everyone else could do the hard work of breaking the other team’s defense and getting the ball to the striker. But those five seconds the striker has with the ball, slamming it in the back of the net—everyone runs to them like they’re the savior of the game.

She doesn’t remember much from the time she and Jackie went to see the high school girls play, but she does remember the striker—and Jackie’s reaction.

The team back then wasn’t anything to blink at, but they did have one exceptional striker. Not only was she tall and fast, but there was also this gravity to her that made her someone you wanted to pass to. Even Shauna, who hadn’t yet known the pleasure of sending a perfect ball to someone that will smash it in, was intrigued.

She was good. Not in a way that some people are good, but in the way that Shauna could see why people had so much fun playing. Her turns—God, her turns—pretty much became the blueprint for Shauna’s own technique. And she was bubbly. Even when her teammates fumbled the ball, she played the majority of the game with a smile on her face.  But what was new to Shauna was that she was chatty. She’d spew off one-liners or make vague comments with a cheeky smirk that made the defenders tackle harder and mark closer. The most interesting thing about her game was, after all those comments and moves she did to piss off the defenders, she’d make a really wide run. 

Spiteful and tunnel-visioned, the entire defensive line would shift to her side, ready to counter whatever she pulled. Then, the midfielder that had the ball would send it all the way to the other side where the other striker, overshadowed and forgotten, would receive it with twenty-five yards of open space. Shauna’s fairly sure they got at least two goals like that, but she can’t be sure—she was far more focused on Jackie. 

Jackie, who was talkative and cheerful on any normal day, was quiet. Not the fearful quiet or sad quiet that Shauna could recognize, but a wondrous and shocked quiet that felt like it would break if she breathed. Shauna thinks that was the day that Jackie’s far-fetched plans of them joining the high school soccer team became something cemented in stone. It was also the day she thinks Jackie wanted to be a striker too, for much different reasons than herself.

Strikers get almost all of the praise. They get to sit prettily up top and await a pass that allows them to steal an easy goal. They don’t have to play defense, they don’t have to be smart, and they don’t have to work hard for success. These are the common impressions of strikers, especially those that play traditionally.

But Shauna’s learned there’s more to it than that. The number one weapon that a player could possess is influence—and a striker’s influence is maybe the most lethal of all.

A striker has to be dangerous. There’s no point in having someone up there that the defenders aren’t scared of. They have to be someone that people are drawn to, someone that people can’t help but watch. They have to be someone comfortable in the spotlight, in the two extremes of glory and scrutiny. They have to be someone that can say, I’m over here. Follow me, and have the defenders trip over their feet to mark them.

They have to be someone that can say, If you let me get the ball, I’ll score.

And thus, Shauna’s dreams of being a striker ended right then and there. She wasn’t the kind of person that had that type of influence. She wasn’t the one that thrived in the spotlight, not like Jackie was. But as she watched the midfielder—the one that sent the ball spinning in a gentle arc to land right at the striker’s feet—she thought she could be the one controlling it.

What other purpose did she have anyway, than to make sure Jackie shined as bright as possible?

-

It’s a little before ten when Shauna leaves Tai’s room. There was only about thirty minutes of actual discussion before the conversation devolved into something delirious and completely unrelated. It was an atmosphere she knew Jackie would’ve thrived in—the sleepover vibes of it all—and it made her so sick that she ended up walking out the door before the girls could make another ill-timed joke of Jackie’s unknown whereabouts.

The walk back is silent. The only thing on loop is When did you stop wanting me to be your best friend?

For a while now, even before everything happened, Shauna’s been wondering what a best friend is. In the purest sense of the concept, she thought it was your favorite person. The person you run to when things are inconceivably dark. The person you call when things are euphorically light. The person who knows you better than anyone and vice versa. The person, no matter how far apart you are or how long it’s been since you’ve seen each other, that always feels the same when they’re around.

And it’s always been Jackie for Shauna. She’s the person she ran to when her dad left, she’s the person she looks at when either of them score, and she’s the person that she just can’t let go of—the feel of her arms around her body is more familiar to her than the feel of the ball at her feet. Sometimes she has to check in the mirror to make sure there aren’t permanent indents in the shape of her embrace.

But even if Jackie fits the description the best, she doesn’t think of her as a best friend. She hasn’t for a while. There’s something undefined about them, something that Shauna is too afraid to acknowledge, let alone name. Jackie’s presence is suffocating, but Shauna gets itchy when she can’t see her. Jackie is bossy and inconsiderate, but Shauna still shows her her outfits  before they go out. Jackie is whiny and clingy, but Shauna grasps at her when she pulls away.

It’s her least favorite paradox.

This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. It’s always a push and pull between them; they test how far they can pull away before the other pulls them back, claw marks on their wrists and bite marks on their collarbones. But Shauna hasn’t been doing anything intentionally this time around, so Jackie’s unusual possessiveness is a mystery.

When did you stop wanting me to be your best friend?

I don’t know, Shauna thinks, her tongue scraping the back of her teeth. When did you stop being just my best friend?

When she finally gets to her room, she unlocks the door and pushes it open gently, spilling fluorescent light into the dark room. The TV is switched off and the only sound is the mechanical whir of the air conditioning. Jackie’s lying in the bed closer to the door, hair wildly splayed on the pillow and facing away. The door clicks softly behind her.

Shauna squints and blinks until her eyes adjust to the darkness, opting to avoid turning on the lights. No need to wake Jackie up and confront another awkward situation. She grabs her toothbrush and pajamas and heads to the bathroom, shutting the door and wincing at the brightness of the overhead light.

When she finishes her nightly routine, she climbs into the bed next to the window and snuggles into the covers. For some reason, the sheets feel much more vast than usual.

Shauna’s almost asleep when she hears rustling from the other side of the room. Jackie’s prone to tossing over a couple times during the night, so she doesn’t think much of it. But after a couple huffs, a lot more tossing, and an ungodly amount of rustling, Shauna deduces that Jackie is not asleep like she thought she was.

“Jackie,” Shauna says, voice rough and tired. “Relax.”

“I’m trying,” Jackie whispers loudly, grunts of struggle interrupting her words. The rustling gets a lot more careful and slow, but the consistency doesn’t cease at all. Shauna rolls over and squints at her silhouette in the dark.

“Jackie.”

“Hold on,” Jackie bites. She grips the blanket and turns toward the door, bundling up tightly. “It’s just cold, sheesh.”

“Then turn down the AC,” Shauna says, burying her face into her pillow. Jackie murmurs something that has her lifting her face up again. “Huh?”

“You like it cold,” Jackie mutters. The breath leaves Shauna’s chest in one swoop. Somewhat contradictorily, the first thing she feels is annoyance. Of course Jackie would say something like that as soon as Shauna shows even the slightest bit of pushback. Jackie can’t let her have anything—not even her own anger. It pisses her off so much that she throws the covers off and maneuvers into a crouching position, launching herself at Jackie’s bed with only the quick prayer that she doesn’t land on her.

She crashes onto the mattress to Jackie’s yelp. “What the fuck, Shipman?” 

Shauna crawls under the covers and glues herself to Jackie’s back, wrapping her arm around her and entangling their legs. “Shut up and go to bed. And for the record, I told you to bring warmer clothes.”

Jackie replies with a soft scoff, bringing her hand to cover Shauna’s own around her midsection. Shauna sinks into it, nuzzling her face into the back of Jackie’s neck. She must’ve been colder than she was letting on based on the slight shiver Shauna feels through her body. She smells like hotel soap, but there’s a vague scent of vanilla that seems to stick to Jackie’s being like tree sap.

Jackie leans back into her and sighs. “Shauna?”

“Hmm.”

“I… I don’t think of you as a dog. You know that, right?”

Shauna grasps at the front of Jackie’s shirt to stabilize herself. I know, she thinks. That makes it worse. In her silence, Jackie continues.

“I’m sorry. Whatever I did to make you avoid me, I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel like that.”

Shauna stifles a yawn. “Jax, can we talk about this tomorrow please?”

“Okay,” she whispers. “Whatever you want.”

Shauna thinks that’s the end of it, but Jackie turns over in her arms and faces her, eyes hard to read in the darkness of the room. “We’re still best friends, right?”

No, she wants to say. No, we’re something else. But that ‘something else’ is much too intense to deal with, and ‘best friend’ is the closest thing they’ve got anyway. So she just pulls her in closer, hand cradling the back of her head and Jackie’s arms wind their way around her midsection, settling themselves into the nonexistent indents Shauna has to check for.

“Yeah. Always will be.”

-

“What the hell?”

One of the underclassmen says out loud in a mix of fear and awe what the rest of them are thinking. Shauna can already feel the bruises forming.

They won their first game by a landslide earlier that day. A whopping nine hours later finds them back at the field, muscles on the fine line of being loose and tired. The team they’re going up against is more intimidating than the others. And by intimidating, she means that each player on the field has at least three inches on most of them. And that’s not even mentioning their physique, most of them sporting strong legs and a stability that screams we’ve all played for multiple years!

Yeah. She’s feeling great.

The most impressive one is their number ten—she stands tall at six feet, has a body perfect for shielding, and to make things even worse, a wicked left-foot shot. They exchanged information they’ve heard through the grapevine about her last night, and Coach Ben told (warned) them about her on the bus ride, but seeing her in person sucks all the energy out of them.

“If she’s a midfielder, she’s your mark,” Tai whispers, staring at them grimly as they warm up. 

Shauna looks at her, horrified. “What? No, you’re taller.”

“You’re stronger,” she replies. She smiles at Shauna teasingly. “Good luck!”

“She’s a striker,” Coach Martinez says, coming up from behind them. The team follows him as they walk to their bench, haphazardly placing their stuff down and lacing up their cleats. He slows around Lottie, who loses the color in her face quickly. 

“Wait.”

“Matthews.”

“Coach, you don’t have to do this.”

“She’s yours,” he says, looking at some paperwork. “When you’re ready, get your stretches going and start your passing lines.”

Lottie stands there defeatedly as he leaves to sit on the bench. She puts her hands on her hips and turns toward the sky like she’s savoring her last glimpse of the stars before she goes to war. Nat sidles up to her, putting in her shinguards.

“You’re our center back and the tallest on the team. What else did you expect?”

“I expected to live past my twenties. But instead, I’m going to die defending a grown woman. Hey, Laura Lee,” Lottie says, turning to the blonde girl on the ground stretching her hamstrings. “Do you think you could put in a good word for me before I get there?”

Laura Lee sends Lottie a cheeky smile. “I’ll do my best, but I don’t think He’s going to like all the thievery you’ve committed from TJ Maxx.”

“I told you that in confidence,” Lottie hisses, shoving the girl to the ground. Laura Lee falls easily with a laugh, switching to stretching her quads.

“But seriously, did someone check if she’s actually a high schooler?” Van says, leaning forward. She has her hands on Tai’s extended leg, stretching the other girl’s calf and hamstring. “Her shots are like fucking missiles. I’m gonna die. Lottie, you better make room for me in your coffin.”

“You’ll be fine,” Tai grunts, breathing through the stretch. “Our defense is going to stop her before she even gets a chance to shoot. Right, guys?” Tai yells the last part out for the rest of the team to hear. The people in the back line give a weak huzzah of an affirmation from where they’re stretching—it’s not very affirming.

“That’s right!” Jackie claps, voice encouraging. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall. We just have to play our own game. We got this.”

Shauna hears someone grumble, the bigger they are, the harder we’ll fall, but she’s laser–focused on the bump in Jackie’s hair, hidden by her ponytail.

They woke up that morning in a similar fashion to how they fell asleep. Shauna’s hand was tangled in Jackie’s hair and Jackie was slightly drooling on Shauna’s shirt, but the most pressing aspect was that they woke up fifteen minutes before they had to leave. The next fifteen minutes was spent in a whirlwind of toothpaste, uniform searching, and hair brushing, (“Do you have a hair tie?!" “Shipman, did you seriously not pack any hair ties?!”) and left no time for any conversations, which Shauna was eternally grateful for. 

“Regardless,” Nat pipes up, “it’s going to be a hard game.”

Their warm-up is passable. There’s uncertainty in their movements from their collective anxiety manifesting itself in sloppy touches, weak shots, and slow reaction times. But they’re not hopeless, and Shauna hopes that this is just them getting all their nerves out before they step onto the field. 

With a couple minutes left, Coach Martinez announces the starting lineup and motions them to take the field. Laura Lee does her team prayer, the team does their cheer, and everyone goes to do their personal pregame ritual—Van cracks her knuckles, Lottie jumps in the air, Nat drags the tip of her cleat along the sideline, Tai rolls out her ankles. Jackie tightens her ponytail. Shauna takes a deep breath.

While the other team does their cheer, Shauna jogs up to Jackie. “Hey, your ribbon’s messed up.” Jackie stands still as Shauna unties and reties the yellow ribbon in her hair, her mouth parted in concentration. “I know you like to talk to the defenders and piss them off, but don’t do it today.”

Jackie pouts. “Why not?”

“Because they look like they’re not scared to throw a punch,” Shauna says, eyeing the players across the field.

“Good. That means they’re easy to bait,” Jackie responds. Shauna sighs, lacking the energy to argue with her about it. Jackie gives her a reassuring smile and turns to jog to her spot. Shauna catches her wrist.

“Hey, I’m serious. Be careful.”

Jackie entwines their fingers for a beat, squeezing once before letting go. “I know.”

Shauna nods at her and jogs to her own spot at the top of the circle. She looks across to the girl in her respective position, crouched down and getting a few last minute stretches in. The dark red-haired girl is tall, but lanky—Shauna most likely beats her in strength. As for her technique, she’ll have to judge it while they’re playing.

As with every game, Shauna looks at her and thinks, no matter what, I’m going to beat you.

-

Once they start, it becomes glaringly clear that they’ve overestimated the other team. Their plays are simple and easy to read, sometimes even sloppily performed. Shauna can’t begin to count the number of intercepted passes they’ve gotten so far. 

That being said, it’s not like they’re dominating either. The other team’s pure physicality makes up for most of their technique. Their speed gets them to balls that Shauna are sure are going out and their strength makes every shot, even the weaker ones, a lot more dangerous than they should be. Van’s getting her fair amount of work today.

And that’s not mentioning their aggressiveness. It’s no surprise to anyone, but everyone’s looking over their shoulder like they’re making sure there’s no train about to run them over. In the first ten minutes, Nat got tripped on the sideline, Tai got shoved off the ball, and Jackie got a mouthful of dirt. Shauna had to bite her tongue to stop herself from screaming at the ref.

The only ones matching them for physicality so far are her and Lottie. Still, Shauna can see the wariness on Lottie’s face every time she shoulders number ten, her bottom lip raw from all the nervous biting. As for herself, the girl she’s marking is one of those girls that can get away with fouls really smoothly. Annoyingly smoothly. They’re never big enough to be a true bother, but they’re enough to throw her off her rhythm. She’s keeping up with her own speed and anticipation skills, but it’s not like she or Lottie can be everywhere on the field.

It’s not a bad game. Just a very panicked one.

“Calm down! Get your head up and look for each other!” Jackie yells, bangs mussed from the wind. One of the defenders saunters up to her and whispers something Shauna can’t hear. Whatever it is, Jackie looks affronted before responding with a smile on her face. Shauna can tell it’s strained, but the defender sneers back at her and slinks back to her line.

“Scatorccio! Join Taylor up top!” Coach Martinez calls, hand curving around his mouth to project his voice.

“He’s switching to a four-four-two?” Tai says, jogging up to her. One of the other players seemed to pull something, so the entire field is just waiting for play to continue. “They’re playing a four-five-one, right? We’re gonna be outnumbered.”

“Yup,” Shauna groans, rubbing her thigh. “We just have to fucking get through it, I guess.”

Tai curses, massaging the back of her neck in stress. “Mari! Allie!” she calls, waving them over. They scamper over tiredly. “Listen, I need you guys to start talking more. We’re about to be outnumbered in the middle, so we need to make sure we shift correctly. Got it?” They nod their confirmations, jogging back to their places as the ref blows the whistle to restart play.

Things get significantly more difficult after that. Especially for Shauna, because now she has to make critical decisions about who to mark on the counterattacks. Even when she makes the right decision, there’s nothing stopping them from playing a one-two and sprinting past her effortlessly. She’s switched gears from stopping them to delaying them, hoping the rest of her team can fall back for support before they get by her.

Still, they’re getting a decent amount of attacks too. Tai went on this one run, dribbling through three players that all tackled too late, and got their closest chance yet. But it hit the bottom of the crossbar and rebounded to the ground, allowing the keeper to dive on top of it before Jackie had the chance to rush. Shauna could’ve sworn it bounced over the line before the keeper caught it, but no whistle was blown (much to the coaches’ dissatisfaction). 

The first half may very well end in a tie, both teams getting good chances and neither of them capitalizing. Shauna could only hope they end in a tie with the way things are going. She’s not sure how much longer she can mark two people. Both of them are somehow getting faster with the way they avoid her.

The ball is at Mari’s feet. There’s only one midfielder in front of her, and Jackie and Nat are already making separate runs, but she doesn’t pass it to either of them. Shauna’s annoyance flares. Mari’s not a bad player, but her decision making is slow and she has the curse of being an arrogant junior. Shauna already knows she’s going to try and copy Tai’s run from earlier.

Shauna also knows she’s going to fail, because a defender quickly joins to double team and Mari doesn’t quite have Tai’s magic on the field.

Time to reset. “Mari! You have me back!” If you don’t let the ball go, I swear I’ll put hair dye in your shampoo.

Mari turns marginally, looking irked that she’s even asking. But she must feel the proximity of the other players, because she drags the ball to create space and passes it back to Shauna. She’s knocked off balance as she does it, so the pass is weak and to her far left. She thinks Mari’s wide eyes are about the bad pass, Shauna gritting her teeth as she adjusts, but she hears Lottie scream from behind her.

“Man on!”

One of Shauna’s weaknesses is that she rarely checks her shoulders. She usually relies on the sound of someone’s footsteps and the calls of her teammates to alert her of someone’s presence. And when neither of those happen, Shauna gets a certain tingle in her spine that she quietly refers to as her sixth sense.

She feels it now—a tingle that represents impending doom as Shauna feels their number ten on her back, rushing to the ball at the same time Shauna is. And because Shauna’s caught off guard, she gets there first. The entire game, their number ten has never come back to receive the ball. She always waits with the last defender in hopes that her team can get a breaking through ball so that she can just run past Lottie instead of battling her for it. The fact that she’s this far down the field is unprecedented.

Why now, of all times?

“On your left!” Tai yells, sprinting to catch up. To make matters worse, their attacking midfielders are rushing up the field, Tai and Mari at least two steps behind them. Their number ten has two options to pass to now, and another option to just take the ball herself. The entire team drops—but not fast enough. For the first time in a while, caught between whether she should press or cover the passing lanes, Shauna freezes.

They capitalize instantly. Number ten plays a one-two pass around her, receiving the ball again behind Shauna in a matter of seconds. She’s slow to react, slow to turn, so fucking slow and she already knows she going to get an earful from Coach Martinez later. Lottie goes to step to buy more time, but number ten does her second unpredictable thing of the day.

Or maybe it should’ve been predictable. Especially with how much they’ve internalized to watch out for her left foot.

Number ten winds her leg back before Lottie even has a chance to get within ten yards. Shauna watches in befuddlement. 

She’s thirty-five fucking yards out!

But number ten hits the very center of the ball, sending her strongest shot of the day towards their goal. Van didn’t exaggerate—it even sounds like a missile. It’s a knuckleball, its wobble in the air dramatic and impossible to predict. It’s a wonder how Van manages to get a hand on it anyway. 

It doesn’t matter.

It ricochets off Van’s hand into the net. Number ten gives a shout, cheer, roar—Shauna doesn’t know. She just lets the bitter feel of failure rest itself on her shoulders. She groans loudly and falls to her back, watching the girls on the other team huddle in a circle of excitement and hollering. The wind blows grass in her face to mock her as the ref blows the whistle, signaling the end of the first half.

Fuck.

She hears someone come up to her splayed body. Lottie leans over her and offers a hand. “Sorry, I should’ve warned you earlier.”

“You’re good,” Shauna huffs out, taking her hand. “I just know Martinez is gonna chew me out.”

The team jogs back to the bench, wary of a stewing Martinez. Shauna almost swears she can see the smoke coming out of his ears. Even Coach Ben is sending him nervous glances, likely estimating how much damage control he has to do. At least Coach Martinez patiently waits until they get their waters and sit down to start yelling at them.

“What the fuck is wrong with you guys?” He interrogates sternly, crossing his arms. “Are you scared? Because I haven’t seen a single one of you do a decent tackle. You’re playing soft!” The team is silent. They all know it’s easier to let him ride his frustrations rather than to combat them. But it’s been a while since they’ve been turned on her, Shauna thinks, as he sighs and looks at her.

“Shipman.”

She gulps. “Yeah?”

“What happened?”

It sounds more like a demand than a question, somehow. The last time she felt like this, heat crawling up her spine as the others’ scrutinizing gaze picked her apart, was probably her freshman year when she was still a bumbling, clumsy mess that happened to have good field vision.

“I didn’t expect number ten to drop back from the front line.”

“And after that? Why didn’t you defend?”

Shauna bunches up her shorts in her hands, needing something to ground herself. “I didn’t know whether to press or cut off her other options.”

“Well you didn’t do either, so it doesn’t matter now, does it?” Coach Martinez bites, his stare cutting and heavy. Shauna curses in her head. These lectures of his never actually demoralizes her, but they’re embarrassing in a way that makes her want to crawl into a hole.

“It started with Mari, though,” A firm voice states. Everyone, players and coaches alike, look at their captain. Jackie’s adjusting her shinguards as she says it, but her stare bores creepily into Mari’s when she looks up. Mari physically shivers. “Right?”

When they’re losing, Jackie becomes a different type of intimidating. It’s not like Coach Martinez’s harsh critiques or Tai’s naturally threatening demeanor, it’s more like an analytical spotlight that shines on all of their thoughts. No one can hide from her.

“I know you saw me and Nat making runs. Why didn’t you pass to one of us?”

Mari flounders. “I- uh…” Mari can be cocky and snarky, but she bends the knee in the face of someone like Jackie, whose social status overpowers hers by a mile.

“And when you didn’t do that, you tried to move up the field yourself. Then you realized you couldn’t dribble past everyone like Tai, and you sent a crappy ball to Shipman and put her in a difficult position.” 

When Jackie gets like this, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for the person she’s berating. Especially because it feels like she’s berating everyone—everyone looks away awkwardly, wincing at the way Mari looks down. Jackie sighs and glances at Tai, motioning her to take over.

“It’s okay to take your chances when you think you have them. Just choose those chances wisely,” Tai says. Mari nods solemnly.

The coaches say something about the defenders shifting in more, but Shauna clocks out for most of it. Jackie and Tai make their rounds with the players in a good cop, bad cop fashion, offering encouragement and adjustments. They split off eventually, Jackie coming over with a soft smile on her face.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi back,” Shauna responds, flicking the ribbon on top of her head. Jackie gently knocks on her shinguards. 

“You’re doing good, don’t worry about it. Mari should’ve played it earlier,” Jackie says, fiddling with the bottom of her shorts. 

“Yeah, but I could’ve done something.” Jackie hums. Shauna wants to say something about last night, an affirmation maybe, but she catches a glint along the side of Jackie’s neck. 

“Hey,” Shauna murmurs, hand cradling Jackie’s jaw. She turns her head to the side, finding a drop of blood just under her jaw. “Did you get scratched? You’re bleeding.”

“Hmm?” Jackie asks, sounding somewhat strangled.

“Under your jaw. You’re bleeding.” Shauna wipes the droplet away with her thumb, feeling grieved that it’s even there. She licks it off her thumb to avoid accidentally staining their jerseys. “Did one of those fuckers grab you?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Jackie says, clearing her throat. “They’re getting dirtier back there. I’m fine though! I didn’t even feel it. Honest.” Shauna presses her lips into a firm line. Something about her feels similar to last night, like she’s experiencing the calm before a storm. But it’s not anything angry—she just feels subdued. Muted. 

It’s weird.

“Did they say anything to you?” Shauna asks, her fist curling behind her back.

Something flickers behind Jackie’s eyes. Gotcha. “Just the usual trash talk. Nothing I can’t handle.” Jackie smiles, but Shauna’s already plotting.

The ref blows the whistle to signify the end of the halftime break. The team’s shifted back to a four-five-one so they’re no longer outnumbered in the middle, much to Tai’s relief. Shauna takes her position with something more fueling her adrenaline and activating her instincts. The red-haired girl across from her meets her eyes this time, lips spreading into a slow, smug smile.

Oh. Okay.

So when the whistle blows and the play starts, Shauna waits. She waits for them to bring the ball up, to bring the ball to the red-haired, lanky bitch she’s guarding. When it finally does, not even the cries of her teammates can save her. 

The red-haired girl receives the ball and turns right into Shauna’s shoulder. Shauna plows through her, stealing the ball and giving the girl a whiplash that she’ll feel throughout the entire weekend. There’s outrage rising from the the opposing coaches, but Shauna couldn’t give a single fuck. She takes it up the field a little farther, taking advantage of the defender’s surprise, and takes a shot uncontested. It sails to the top right corner, but the keeper gets her finger on it and redirects it out. It crosses the end line for their corner kick.

Shauna lets out a noise of frustration, mirrored by all the groans on the bench. But as she turns around, the whistle blowing to stop play again, she watches the red-haired girl stay on the ground and clutch her chest like the wind’s been knocked out of her. The other midfielders swarm around her, but Shauna just turns around again and stares at their defensive line, doing her absolute best to cement her intended message.

Yeah, you’re big. But we’re not going to roll over and die.

-

The game is a lot more physical after that. It borders on the line of dirty, honestly. The ref starts giving out yellows left and right—one of them for dragging Shauna to the ground, Nat for clipping a girl’s ankles, another for a late tackle to Van’s ribcage (Livid, Tai humiliates the girl who did it at least three times over). Laura Lee of all people gets one for a last ditch slide tackle on the sideline. But it was funny watching her apologize to the sky before she apologized to the girl.

Anyway, everyone gets into it. Shauna feels it, the way the team becomes less of eleven players and more of one unit with one like mind and one sole purpose: win. The other team can feel it too, if their uncertainty and the way their defense gets more packed is anything to go by.

But even as the game goes on, all her thoughts set toward making them win, she saves one of them for Jackie. Jackie, who keeps chatting with the defensive line. Jackie, who keeps grimacing at their responses. Jackie, who takes hit after hit as the defenders start fouling her for the fun of it.

Shauna hates it all. 

The ball’s at Mari’s feet again. Shauna’s dizzy with the deja vu. This time, as Nat and Jackie make their runs, Mari doesn’t hesitate to send Nat down the line, their left wing riding the wind as the rest of the team soars down the field. Their right back doesn’t stand a chance against Nat’s momentum. 

Jackie’s near the penalty spot. Mari takes the space near the front post. Tai crashes the back post, ready for any balls in the air. Allie hovers behind the back post to send back any balls that bounce out of the area.

Shauna herself is behind, sprinting toward the top of the box. As they are right now, everyone inside the penalty box is marked. Nat would be sending a ball and hoping they win against their defender. And while Shauna has a fair amount of faith in her teammates’ abilities, she gets an idea that’ll up their chances by tenfold. An idea that’s been years in the making, but Jackie nor Shauna has had the opportunity to pull it off before.

Driven by impulse, Shauna yells out, “Alex Scheffield!” 

Jackie wakes like a sleeper agent. She moves toward Nat from the penalty spot, screaming bloody murder for the ball at her feet. And because it’s Jackie, Nat sends it to her perfectly.

And because it’s Jackie, she’s eye-catching. Because it’s Jackie, she shines in the spotlight she created for herself. Because it’s Jackie, she’s screaming, I’m over here, follow me. Because it’s Jackie, the defenders trip over their feet to mark her. Because it’s Jackie, she’s challenging, if you let me get the ball, I’ll score. Because it’s Jackie, who’s pissed off the spiteful and tunnel-visioned defenders more than enough, she drags three of them with her, all of them hoping to crush the princess that gets on their nerves.

And Jackie—damn good striker Jackie—promptly lets the ball go through her legs, allowing it to glide its way in front of Shauna at the top of the box, who now has a clear path at goal.

Shauna’s shots are okay. Sometimes they’re really good, other times they’re laughably bad. Sue her, she tries not to shoot too often. Plus, the pass has her shooting with her non-dominant foot, which has an even lower rate of success. But this is the same Shauna who debated a kid without even knowing how to.

When has she ever shied away when the odds are stacked against her?

Bend your knee, lean forward. Bend your knee, lean forward. Bend your knee, lean forward. Shauna repeats it over and over again as her foot makes contact with the middle of the ball. 

It slots itself in the bottom right corner before the keeper even dives.

The cheers are way too deafening for a simple tournament game. Shauna barely has the time to grant herself a tiny fist pump before she’s swarmed by her teammates, Jackie reaching her quicker than anyone. Jackie jumps onto her, legs wrapping around her hips and arms mirroring around her neck. Shauna catches her without a second thought. Next it’s Tai, then Mari, then Nat, then Allie, then their backline joins the fray too. 

“A dummy?! You fucking assholes!” Nat yells, a wide smile taking up her face.

A lot of people are hugging her, someone’s messing up her hair, another person’s slapping her on the back. There’s definitely a lot of incoherent yelling. (If Shauna had the idea to look behind her, she’d see Van jumping up and down in the goal, spreading her limbs like a starfish.) But the only thing she focuses on is the heart pumping against hers, fast and fluttery. She grips Jackie’s thighs a little tighter. 

Eventually, they die down and disperse, mainly because the ref blows the whistle and returns the ball back to the kickoff point. Jackie lingers, hopping down from Shauna’s hold and looking at her like she’s something good.

But then, Jackie steps away. Which isn’t a big thing, but it’s the way she does it that raises all the red flags in Shauna. She steps away like their proximity is something hostile, and she tugs her hands behind her back like they’ve betrayed her. Shauna doesn’t know what happened, considering they celebrate like that every time they score, but she catches it just in time. The quick, miniscule glance that Jackie sends to the defenders.

Shauna follows her gaze and feels a tingle in her spine. An impending sense of doom. The defenders don’t look aggravated after being scored on—each of their gazes flicker between her and Jackie, something about it cold and calculating. 

It feels like a guillotine above her head.

-

It all goes downhill from there. In retrospect, everything could’ve been avoided if Shauna was a calmer, rational person. But Shauna is not a calmer, rational person, and therefore it all ended the only way it could’ve.

After their goal, the team as a whole seems to be invigorated. But Jackie’s thrown off her rhythm. Something’s changed about the banter between her and the defenders, morphing into what Shauna thinks is past the usual trash talk. But whenever she tries to ask her about it, Jackie waves her away without looking at her. She knows she shouldn’t, but the easy dismissal makes her feel like something at Jackie’s beck and call, something that Jackie only requires when she feels like it. 

(Like a dog, a voice whispers. Shauna banishes it to the depths of her mind.)

Pettily, she stops trying. She lets Jackie deal with whatever heckling she’s being put through, vowing to make the girl come to her first for once.

It’s a little harder said than done, however, because Jackie’s ability to deal with it is directly affecting their success. The team is doing well on defense and in the midfield, but they can’t seem to get the ball in the back of the net again. Jackie’s runs become predictable, her touches get heavy, and her shots are hastily done. All of them are either miles out or easily blocked. Shauna even sees Coach Martinez tell Robin to warm up, the freshman striker jumping off the bench and shucking off her hoodie.

So yeah, it was only a matter of time before things blew up. Shauna just wishes the game could’ve ended first.

Shauna has the ball at her feet. The red-haired girl is back and more pissed than ever, pushing into her back with the energy of a hyperactive child. Another player is on Shauna’s right, trapping her between the other girl and thoroughly restricting her movements. She’s doing her best to hold them off, but her stamina’s already running low.

“Shauna!” Tai calls, hand raised. Thank the Lord for Taissa Turner, Shauna thinks, sending the ball her way. As Tai moves toward their defensive line, Shauna cuts right to draw her defenders and then quickly cuts back the other way, successfully shaking them off. Tai feels her and backheels the ball back in front of her. 

She sees Jackie making a run on her right. Shauna sends it to her without hesitation. Like a spotlight, she thinks dazedly, equal parts jealous and admiring. It’s almost like Jackie steals it from her, like she made Shauna pass to her just by being in her line of sight. It’s annoying. It’s inevitable.

Jackie controls the long ball with her chest, cushioning the ball to drop at her feet. There’s a defender on her milliseconds after the ball settles, but Jackie’s expecting it—she rakes the ball back and turns with it, using her arms to shield the ball and redirect the player, leaving them eating the dirt behind her heels. Jackie takes another touch inside to set herself up for a shot. Shauna holds her breath.

In her sophomore year, the yellowjackets went to an out of state tournament. There was one game they watched where, in the first half, one of the left wingers broke their leg. It was a deliberately dirty tackle and the defender earned the red card the ref rose in the air, but the damage was already done. The winger clutched their leg, bent in all the wrong angles, and wailed into the stillness of the air. The sight of the abnormally deformed leg and the sound of her sobs stuck with Shauna for a good while after.

She thinks of that moment now as Jackie’s legs are completely swiped out from under her, the defender going for the slide tackle from behind. 

Her cleats are up.

Shauna sees the moment the rough studs of the cleats make contact with Jackie’s knee and ankle, both of them bending unnaturally inside. She falls down with an anguished cry, hitting the ground hard and worsening the grass stains on her jersey.

The field rages. The ref blows the whistle and halts the play immediately, but there’s no stopping it. Coach Martinez and Coach Ben stand up and yell so fiercely that it seems like their voices shake the ground. Their teammates react in a similar fashion, yells and accusations reaching a decibel almost unheard of. That’s what it seems like at least. Shauna stands frozen, the ringing in her ears making it feel like every atom of hers is vibrating.

When the ref presents the red card, their sideline cheers obnoxiously. Before stepping off the field, the perpetrator approaches Jackie, who’s still on the ground.

Shauna thinks she’s going to apologize (she’s hoping she apologizes, for everyone’s sake) but it doesn’t happen that way. The girl’s mouth moves, saying something in the span of five seconds that has Jackie’s expression changing instantly.

Look. Shauna knows she doesn’t have an excuse for what happens next. Jackie may be battered and bruised, but she’s not broken. A quick glance and the fact that she’s not writhing in pain is evidence of that. Additionally, the person who did it is currently walking off the field and granting them a penalty kick, which is pretty much a guaranteed goal if Tai steps up to take it. If Shauna lets this go, if she lets it roll off her shoulders, they can get a goal and win this game that only has ten minutes left on the clock.

She doesn’t. She can’t. Because the face she made after the girl made the comment wasn’t the usual anger or annoyance at a dirty opponent, it was fear. And Jackie’s fear is quiet—it presents itself in choked whimpers, a slight trembling, and the action of hiding her face in Shauna’s shoulder. But it can’t manifest in choked whimpers (her pride would never allow it) and it can’t hide in Shauna’s shoulder (Shauna isn’t there, Shauna isn’t there) so it only shows itself in the shakiness Shauna can spot even from where she’s frozen.

The ice in her limbs melt, quickly turning into lava running through her veins. She takes off in a sprint toward the girl so abruptly, she wouldn’t be surprised if the grass where she was standing was nothing more than patches of dirt. The rest of her teammates join her in the sprint, gunning for the girl like an army attack squad.

(What Shauna doesn’t know is that none of them are actually going for the girl—they’re all going for her. They’re trying to stop her from doing exactly what she’s about to do. Like Shauna, they’ve all read fairy tales as children. And they know as well as anyone that you can’t attack Wiskayok’s princess without facing the wrath of her loyal knight.)

Someone calls her name. She doesn’t register it. She only registers the way the girl turns at the sound of her footsteps, confusion clouding her face. Then she registers the way that confusion crumples under the force of Shauna’s fist slamming into her with such a velocity that she hears something crack.

It reminds her of a crushed butterfly, limbs all twisted and unmoving in the soil.

Chaos erupts. The girl cries out, clutching her nose and falling to the ground. Blood spills through her fingers like gushing water through a cracked dam. Shauna mutters nonsensically as she dives after her, straddling the girl’s hips and pulling her up by her jersey.

“What the fuck did you say to her?” Shauna growls.

“Fuck you, you- you psycho!” the girl screams. She claws at Shauna’s face as she says it, catching her in the eye. Shauna hisses and pulls back slightly. It gives the other team, who rushed forward as soon as Shauna made contact, the opportunity to tackle her off the girl, sending her sprawling in the grass. The girl who tackled her now straddles Shauna, fury written all over her face and her fist curled into a tight ball. She doesn’t say anything. She just lets Shauna watch as she pulls back her fist and sock her in the side of her head.

Pain explodes from her right temple. Fueled by adrenaline, Shauna simultaneously grabs the girl’s hair and bucks her hips, using the action to throw her off. As soon as she does, Shauna gives her a taste of her own medicine, the skin on her other knuckles splitting.

People are yelling all around her. The ref blows his whistle nonstop, desperately trying to regain control of the game, but he’s no match for a bunch of wound-up teenage girls. Especially when the game they were playing was a dirty one.

Most of the team went back to the bench as soon as the fighting broke out, either scared of the way Martinez was yelling at them or unwilling to be involved. Shauna can’t blame them. The other team is much more free. None of them return to their bench, all of them opting to go where all the violence is at and contribute their own share.

The good news is that none of them go after Jackie and the others. They’re only after Shauna. The bad news is that none of them go after Jackie and the others. They’re only after Shauna.

It doesn’t stop her teammates from trying to get her out of there.

Shauna starts throwing hooks and kicks at anyone not in a blue and yellow uniform. She knows she lands hits on at least four girls, but she’s not leaving unscathed. They scratch at her neck, pull at her hair, and connect punches to her jaw that makes her head swim. Even so, Shauna splits the lip of one girl and thinks, Don’t you dare fucking touch her, and then she turns around and knees another girl in the rib and thinks, Say one more word to her and I’ll cut your fucking tongue.

In her inexperienced scramble, one of them gets a lucky shot to her liver. Her body shuts down in a way that has her limbs twitching uncomfortably. The ref uses the momentary lapse in fighting to come between them, yelling insistently for them to go back to their bench. Lottie and the others use the momentary lapse in fighting to subdue Shauna, much to her dismay. Lottie hooks her arms under her armpits while Tai and Nat each take a leg. They lift together, essentially putting her in air jail. Shauna’s entire body aches at the motion, cutting through her adrenaline so sharply that she mouths off a choked groan.

“Shit, are you okay?” Van asks, hands hovering above her torso as they start carrying her back to the bench. 

“Perfect,” Shauna moans. She squeezes her eyes shut in pain before glaring at Nat and Tai. “Put me down.”

“No.”

“Tai, put me the fuck down. Right now.”

“Unless you can convince me that you’re not going to run back there and go crazy again, no.”

Shauna scoffs. She looks at the aftermath that Tai and Nat can’t see. There are girls collapsed on the ground, crying out in pain, limping off the field with the help of a teammate. For all the strength and bravado they showed on the field, they fucking crumpled in the face of Shauna’s fire.

The girl that fouled Jackie looks back at Shauna, tears in her eyes and face crumpled in pain. Something in her delights at the sight. She smiles at the girl, hoping the metallic tang on her tongue shows on her teeth.

“Dude, stop that. It’s fucking creepy,” Nat mutters.

“I’m fine,” Shauna says, actually meaning it. She stops smiling, but she can’t suppress the tiny upward quirk of her lips. “The look on their faces is enough for me.”

It’s only when the ref blows the whistle, ending the game ten minutes early and at a tie, that Shauna loses the humor. Jackie leads the rest of the girls silently, heavily leaning on her right side and face torturously out of Shauna’s line of sight.

Shauna hates that her first thought is, Fuck, Jackie’s gonna be so mad.

-

“So who the fuck is Alex Scheffield?”

Shauna glances tiredly at Van, the only person brave enough to sit in the back of the bus with her and break Coach’s isolation punishment. She’s munching on a bag of Fritos, offering one to her as she asks. Shauna takes it dejectedly. “Huh?”

“When you scored that goal, you yelled ‘Alex Scheffield!’ all cool and shit. Who’s that?”

When they were younger, she and Jackie used to have practice weddings at recess. They both swore they were going to marry each other, lamenting that boys were gross and had cooties. One of their classmates, Alex Scheffield, saw them and told them that girls can’t marry girls. But neither of them cared about the opinion of someone who ate his own boogers. 

Jackie called him a dummy before taking Shauna’s face in her hands and giving her a peck on the lips.

“Just some kid we used to know in elementary school,” Shauna mutters, fidgeting with the bandages around her hands. When it becomes clear that she isn’t going to elaborate, Van shrugs and eats the last Frito, crushing up the bag and stuffing it in her backpack.

The bus is quiet to avoid the wrath of Coach Martinez, but it’s undoubtedly alive. There are hurried murmurs wafting through the air with the underclassmen giving their perspective on the brawl, even though they all saw the same things. Shauna inwardly groans every time one of them describes her destroying the girl’s nose, as much as she enjoyed it at the time.

It gets worse when they actually get back to the hotel. Being in the back, Shauna’s forced to wait until everyone gets off the bus before she can gather her things and leave. Stepping down the stairs with everyone’s eyes on her, the streetlights highlighting the bruises on her face—it feels like a special kind of humiliation ritual. 

Everyone circles around Coach Martinez, waiting for him to tear into them. But he just looks around and sighs, putting a hand on his hip and using his other to massage his temples. “We’ll go over it first thing tomorrow morning. Make sure you eat breakfast and are ready to go by ten thirty. Get some rest.”

They all drop their shoulders, a unified feeling of relief entering their bodies. They shuffle to the warmth of the lobby.

“Shipman.”

Shauna flinches, stopping and turning to look at the impassive expression on Martinez’s face. The others stop and turn too, sympathy written all over their faces. Nat gives her a good luck pat on the shoulder, and continues toward the lobby, the others following her one by one. Jackie lingers, glancing between her and Martinez hesitantly.

“Go on ahead, Taylor.”

Jackie gives Shauna one last cryptic glance before turning away, still favoring her right leg. Shauna gulps and turns to Martinez, fiddling with her aching fingers like a toddler that just got caught taking something they weren’t supposed to. He waits until he sees all the girls get into the elevator, ensuring there’s no audience for what might just be her murder. She hopes Jackie has the sense to bury her books with her.

“You know that was your last game, right?” Shauna nods. As one of the main instigators, there’s no doubt in her mind that she earned a red card. She’s definitely out for the rest of the tournament, probably even for a couple games after. “And you realize there were only ten minutes left on the clock after the penalty they would have given us, which we would have scored and guaranteed our win?” Shauna nods again. She doesn’t try to speak, sensing anything that came out of her mouth would only agitate him further. Unfortunately, even her silence agitates him.

“Goddammit, Shauna!” Martinez claps his hands loudly in the silent parking lot, startling Shauna and triggering her need to run. He blows through his nose slowly and rests his fists on his hips, staring into the night sky. “This team needs you. You’re the main source of stability in the midfield. You’re reliable. You can’t lose your shit because some dumbass on the other team makes a dirty tackle. It’s selfish and unprofessional.”

Shauna nods again, her head getting increasingly more fuzzy from the movement. She probably should’ve had the field trainer check for a concussion. Martinez takes one more look at her, eyes trailing over the red swelling on her face and ending at the maroon seeping through her bandages. He sighs.

“I hope you got what you wanted out of it. Get some rest.” He strides toward the lobby without looking back. Shauna slowly raises her hands to her face and lets out a muffled scream.

“Are you okay?”

Shauna jumps, tearing her hands away from her face and resting her eyes on Coach Ben, who she completely forgot about. “Mhmm.”

“How much does it hurt?” he asks, walking up to her with his hands in his pockets. His eyes are full of sympathy and worry. 

“A lot,” she responds truthfully, her voice raspy.

“Come on,” he says, placing a light hand between her shoulder blades and nudging her toward the lobby doors. “You’ll feel better after you lay down.” When they finally enter the lobby, warm air blasting in their face, he speaks again. 

“For what it’s worth, I think you won.”

And despite everything, she laughs.

-

Shauna opens the door hesitantly. She finds Jackie sitting on the chair, still in her dirtied uniform and watching TV. She’s chewing on her thumb obsessively, but she stops as soon as she notices Shauna, jumping up immediately and shutting off the TV. They stare at each other for a beat before Shauna has the courage to break the silence.

“I thought you’d be showering by now,” she murmurs.

“I wanted to wait,” Jackie replies, voice equally as low. Shauna opens her mouth to say something, but Jackie beats her to it. “Sit down.”

Shauna obeys, sitting on the edge of Jackie’s bed while said girl gets up and goes to the bathroom, shutting the door with a soft click. She hears the shower turn on and wonders whether Jackie’s making her sit there while she showers as some kind of punishment—both for costing them the game and rendering herself unable to play. But she comes back out after about three minutes, holding one of the small hand towels. Shauna furrows her eyebrows.

“You still have blood on you,” Jackie explains. Shauna blinks as Jackie goes to cradle her jaw, wincing at the firmness of her touch. She loosens her grip at the sight.

Shauna’s eyes flutter shut at the first gentle wipe. The towel is warm and damp, and it relaxes the tense muscles in her face pretty much instantly. Jackie wipes all around her face and down her neck, adjusting her pressure every time Shauna flinches or groans. She feels Jackie’s fingers trace down her throat, following the angry red scratch marks. 

Once she’s finished, Jackie places the towel down and holds her face in her hands. Shauna’s eyes flutter open. Jackie’s mouth is set in what seems like a permanent frown, eyes scanning every inch of her skin like if she does it hard enough, she can make the aching go away. Slightly delirious, Shauna leans into her palm and sulks—she prefers when Jackie smiles.

“Are you okay?” Jackie whispers, the air in the room chillingly still. Like it’s holding its breath.

Shauna nods once, hand coming up and gripping her wrist. “I’m sorry,” she mutters. She’s not sorry about decking the girl—she would do it again in a heartbeat—but she is sorry the game ended in a tie. But Jackie doesn’t relax or say, I know, like she expected her to. She actually looks more confused.

“Sorry for what?”

“For making us end in a tie.”

Jackie scoffs, equal parts shocked and offended. “Shipman. Do you really think I care about that?” Her hands fall away from her face, opting to fiddle with Shauna’s hoodie strings.

Shauna misses her touch greatly. “I know you wanted to win more than anyone-”

“Shauna.”

Shauna shuts up quickly. Jackie’s staring at her with this desperate look that makes her stop in her tracks. “Your eye is swelling. There are scratches down your entire neck. Your hand is bleeding through your fucking bandages.” Jackie lifts her own hand and shows it to her, as if Shauna hadn’t stared at it the entire time the trainer was wrapping it. Jackie huffs and drops it gently. “I don’t care about the game. I care that you got hurt, okay? You are my priority. Everything else can take a backseat, as far as I’m concerned.”

Shauna lets out a shaky breath. Every part of her hurts right now, but her heart might be the only thing that kills her. It beats wildly in her chest, like a caged animal fighting to bend the bars and be let loose. 

Jackie flicks her gaze away. “Why’d you do it?” Shauna must give her a weird look because she stumbles forward quickly. “I don’t care about the outcome, I don’t, but… I was fine. I mean, it hurt like a bitch, but nothing broke. And we both know Tai would’ve scored the penalty. You didn’t have to go after them. Why did you?”

Shauna responds reflexively, barely even thinking about it. “She hurt you. Why wouldn’t I?”

Jackie stares at her, eyes pleading and lips quivering. Shakily, she takes Shauna’s face in her hand again and moves forward slowly. Her lips meet her forehead first. Shauna’s eyes close with her exhale. Jackie trails her lips over the same path her eyes took—she kisses her eyes, her temples, her cheeks. She grazes over Shauna’s nose and breathes against her jaw. And finally, they hover over her lips, scared and on the precipice of breaking.

Shauna doesn’t push. She waits for Jackie to come to her for once.

She doesn’t. Not exactly, at least.

Jackie moves excruciatingly slowly, kissing the corner of Shauna’s mouth before pulling back. Shauna’s hands twitch forward to grab her hips, but she stops herself in time. She won’t push. She’ll make Jackie come to her. In the heavy space, she asks the question that’s been pressing on her mind since she saw Jackie’s form trembling on the ground.

“What did she say to you?”

Jackie hesitates. Shauna waits for her to unload, to release all the shit they spewed at her that threw her off so badly. But Jackie just raises her hand to her mouth, planting one final kiss on her knuckles. “I’m gonna take a shower,” she smiles weakly, stepping out of Shauna’s space completely. Shauna can’t even find it in herself to be annoyed. Not when she’s a girl in a stained uniform that holds her hand without blinking at the blood beneath her fingernails.

Jackie gets into the shower quickly, leaving Shauna alone with her thoughts. She should be relaxing—her body’s begging for it—but there’s a restless energy in her limbs that just won’t let her. She grabs a couple dollars from her wallet and opens the bathroom door, steam hitting her in the face almost aggressively.

“I’m gonna go downstairs and grab a snack. Want anything?” she asks, raising her voice so Jackie can hear her over the spray.

“What? Shipman, don’t go downstairs by yourself.”

“Jackie, I’ll be gone and back before you even get out.”
 

“Don’t care. It’s dangerous. Just wait for me.” Shauna rolls her eyes and leans on the doorframe.

“You can’t really stop me. Either I go and come back without your M&M’s or with them.”

Jackie releases an exaggerated groan. “Fine. Peanuts, please. And be safe.”

“Mhmm. See you in a bit.”

The journey down the hall, through the elevator, and to the lobby shop is eerily quiet. It’s late, but there are less guests around than she thought there’d be. It makes every sound seem enhanced in a way that has her ears prickling. 

The kid behind the desk is bored and tired. Shauna pays for her Skittles and Jackie’s peanut M&M’s and leaves quickly before he can tell that she’s a dollar short. She mulls over whether she should get ice for her and Jackie’s bruises or save it for tomorrow as she approaches the elevator, ignoring the silence that only appears when there’s nobody around. 

In the reflection of the shiny doors, she sees a couple figures behind her. The prickling in her ears turns into a tingle down her spine. An impending sense of doom. She turns slightly, getting a glimpse of dark red hair.

It’s the last thing she sees before pain blooms in the side of her head.