thousands of unused tj bucks
For an agonising moment, Nat freezes, chest heaving as she locks onto Lottie’s chocolate eyes. The sounds of desperate screaming and roaring flames and popping electricity fade out into a heady buzz, making her body jostle with dizziness; it feels as though she’s been thrown into a washing machine, flipped and spun to oblivion.
“I don’t understand,” Lottie breathes, staring down at her pristine, youthful hands. “I don’t fucking understand!”
“Yeah, well, neither do I,” Nat snaps, forking fingers through her frazzled bleach blonde hair. God, she forgot how shitty it used to feel before she quit the dye. “Last thing I knew I was-” She pauses abruptly, remembering the barrel of the shotgun.
“You were what?” Lottie probes, jaw set. “You were what, Nat?”
“Nothing! I was getting into bed,” she lies, spitting through her teeth. Lottie doesn’t need to know the truth. Doesn’t need to know that she can still feel cold gun metal against her palette. “And then I was- I was suddenly on that fucking- that fucking plane - and I could hear Jackie fucking Taylor screaming at Shauna to wake up and now I’m here!”
“Okay, okay,” Lottie exhales, blinking her eyes shut. “Well, we must be here for a reason.”
“Oh come on, Lottie!” Nat shouts, kicking a boot against the ground. “Don’t give me that bullshit!”
“It’s not bullshit, Nat!” She argues, shaking her head. “It’s what I feel!”
Great, Nat thinks. Just what she needs. A version of Lottie Matthews who is already all spiritual and witchy and visionary, who thinks the forest is fucking talking to her. A version of Lottie Matthews who knows that half of the girls will take her word as gospel.
“Yeah, well what you feel doesn’t matter right now, Lot!” Nat storms over to a tree, pressing her head against the trunk. Her skull throbs. “We’ve got bigger fucking problems on our hands!” She swings her arms out, gesturing to the wreckage and the screaming gaggles of teenage girls surrounding it. “I don’t know, maybe we can- maybe we can change shit! Save people who fucking died, Lot!” Nat grinds her teeth, glaring up at the taller girl.
Lottie shakes her head solemnly. “No.”
“The fuck do you mean no?” Nat screams, and stomps back over to her. “The fuck do you mean, Lottie?”
“They had to die,” Lottie states sternly, placing her hands on Nat’s shoulders again. “Either way, they will die, Nat. It doesn’t matter what you do. What I do.”
Nat seethes. “Oh, and who told you that?” She crosses her arms, cheeks flushing crimson with brewing fury. “The fucking forest, Lottie? Did the trees tell you that?”
“I-”
“No!” Nat continues. “Look, either way, we’re fucking here, Lottie. Whether you wanna do something about is up to you , but I’m going to go and do something useful like stopping Travis from seeing his dead fucking dad fall out of a goddamned tree.”
Before Lottie can get a word in edgeways, Nat spins on her heel and darts off into the wilderness, feet thudding against the forest floor with relentless pace. She has to focus intently on the path ahead of her, or she thinks she might collapse; none of this makes sense. Why her? Why Lottie? Why no one else?
Then again, she doesn’t know that yet. She hasn’t had time to speak to any of the other girls. Hasn’t had time to look into their terrified, innocent eyes and search for signs of knowing, of remembering. Maybe there’s more of them caught in this totally fucked up, tangled web of confusion and horror. Hell, maybe this is some sort of shared…delusion?
Nat stumbles into the clearing adjacent to the wreckage, turning around on the balls of her feet in circles as she hurriedly scans the treeline. Laura Lee. She needs to find Laura Lee.
There’s Jackie and Shauna and Taissa and Van and Misty fucking Quigley and Lottie, still standing on the raised bump of dirt, watching her with wide eyes, and there’s Melissa and Mari and Travis and Akilah and Javi trying to re-enter the wreckage to look for his poor, already damned father and-
“Laura Lee!” Nat hollers into her cupped hands, and pounds across the ground. In the distance, Laura Lee stumbles through the shrubbery in search of her suitcase, back turned with her shoulders hunched in tension. “Laura Lee! Wait!”
Laura Lee freezes and twists back, honey blonde hair whipping across her shoulders. “Nat?” She’s just as baby-faced and beautiful as Nat remembers.
“Wait, wait,” Nat heaves, sweat coating her brow. “Can you- can you go find my suitcase? There’s some whiskey in there. You know what it looks like?”
“Yes, Natalie, I know what whiskey looks like,” she responds with a slight edge, and Nat immediately feels stupid.
“Yeah, yeah, I need you to go get it and take it to Misty by the plane wing. Tell her it’s for Coach Ben’s leg, and she’ll know what to do.” It’s a punch to the gut to part with the whiskey so early, because god, she’s never wanted a drink so fucking badly, but maybe it’ll be better for his mangled leg than whatever the fuck Misty pours on it.
Laura Lee’s eyebrows furrow into a thin line. “Coach Ben? Is he okay? Do I need to say a prayer?” Her eyes are big, terrified, shaking. Nat’s gut sinks a little at the realisation that whatever fucked up blip in time she and Lottie are caught in, Laura Lee is not part of it.
“No, no, he’s gonna be fine, Laura Lee,” Nat tries to assure, head jumbled with spinning thoughts.“Now go, go! I’ll find your suitcase for you.” Without giving her a second to interrogate further, Nat speeds away into the forest, leaving Laura Lee in the dust. She feels almost guilty for lying to her, for brushing her off, but this is for her own good. For the good of everyone.
It takes a minute of searching but Nat comes to the tree, the one with the symbol that has taunted so many of them for the last twenty-five years of their lives. Or not. Do those twenty-five years even exist anymore if she’s back here? Does her future self even exist? Can she die out here, even if she made it out the first time?
Nat scrambles up the rough bark, skin rubbing raw against the jagged wood. It’s agonising and slow and a long ascent and she wants nothing more than to drop back to the forest floor and let her skull crack and bleed out, but she keeps going, for Javi, for Travis. All she needs to do is dislodge the branch before Travis does.
After what feels like an eternity of painful exertion she reaches the treetops. It’s narrow, wobbly, dangerously high, and she has to dig her torn up nails into the branches to keep herself from falling. Her heart roars in her ear like a fire, her blood hot, pulse thumping. But she makes it, just about, clinging on for dear life as the wind rustles the leaves around her.
Coach Martinez is still very much dead with a jagged branch impaled through his chest, the spike pointing up to the clear sky like the flint of an arrow. Cautiously, Nat edges forward with her legs wrapped around the branch, shuffling along inch by inch until the wood begins to creak and faultlines start to radiate out. Frantically she darts back with not a second to spare, the Coach’s body falling fast to the ground with an echoing thud.
Nat scrambles back down the trunk, skin grazed and raw, and hurries over to where he lies. With a groan she tips the branch over, and uses all of the strength she can find to slide him off of the offending spike. It’s gruesome and bloody and fleshy and new, because she didn’t do this the first time, but she has to now; Travis and Javi shouldn’t see him like this, their father, broken and bloodied. She can at least make it more dignified. That’s something she never got.
Finally, his body wiggles all the way off of the wood with a sickening squelch. She gags into her hand and feels whatever the hell she ate for breakfast on this day 25 years ago rising up her throat- probably leftovers or a half-burnt piece of toast, she barely remembers- but forces it to stay in the pit of her stomach, ignoring the churning nausea. She needs to conserve all the food she can get.
Food.
Food. She should gather up as much as possible now, before the other girls start to scarf it down thinking that they’re going to be rescued tomorrow. If she’s lucky, the food cart should be nearly untouched and the snacks for nationals should be intact- it’s a decent supply, if she can convince the others to ration it out.
Nat files the thought of food away for later and drags Coach Martinez’s body into the bushes, nestling it in the bracken. Meticulously, she repositions his clothes so that the giant, gaping hole in his body isn’t as obvious- Javi, poor, little, innocent Javi, shouldn’t have to see his dad like this. Neither should Travis.
Should she tell them she’s found him here? Lie? Or leave him for someone else to discover?
She knows damn well what Travis is like. She remembers what happened when Javi disappeared into the wilderness in that first, frosty, finger-biting and flesh eating winter. Remembers what happened when Travis had been resolute in the fact that he could be out there, alive, while she was convinced that he was dead. Remembers searching tirelessly, day on day, mile on mile, until her ankles ached and her toes were purpled. Remembers the slice of the hunting knife against her calf, the feeling of Javi’s shorts against her skin, the damp, uncomfortable feeling of her blood oozing into the fabric and dropping against the white snow. Remembers what it took to make him stop. Even if she was wrong in the end.
Nat turns her back on Coach Martinez with a sigh. She’ll tell Travis, if no one else finds the body soon. She at least owes him that.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the night sets in and the forest is cast into smoky black, Nat manages to scavenge through a dozen or so unattended bags, stuffing as many packets of peanuts and bars of half-melted chocolate into her pockets that her leather jacket will allow. She catches a few furious stares, a few tut-tuts and raised eyebrows, but for the most part her plan glides along smoothly; nearly everyone is too preoccupied with their own shit to notice her.
She’s half-way through what she thinks is Jackie’s bag, based on the preppy taste in clothing, when she is alerted to gentle footsteps padding across the ground. She doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is. The weight and rhythm of the footfalls is familiar as the lines of her palms.
“Nat?” Lottie’s soft voice breezes through the wind. “Aren’t you gonna come and sit with us?”
Nat glances back over towards the glowing fire. The team is hunched around it in a tight circle, just as she remembers- making light of everything, telling stupid stories, laughing at Laura Lee’s absurd notion that the plane went down because she said cunt in her head.
“Shitty clothes from TJ Maxx,” Nat recalls, unable to help a fond smile curling at her lips. “Thousands of unused TJ…”
“Bucks,” Lottie finishes. “Thousands of unused TJ Bucks.”
“Never understood that, you know,” Nat hums. “You. Loaded Lottie Matthews. Stealing. That’s for the fuck up kids like I was. Am? I don’t know.”
Lottie shrugs and crouches down beside her. “Guess I just liked the thrill of it.” She starts to rifle through one of the half-zipped bags, slender fingers dipping into the luggage.
Nat’s brows furrow. “You’re helping now?”
“Food can’t hurt,” Lottie replies gently, tucking a stray strand of thick black hair behind her ear. “My stomach hurts like a bitch.”
Nat continues to file through the contents of Jackie’s suitcase, not looking up to meet Lottie’s eyes. For a while it’s quiet, peaceful, the only sounds the crackling of the nearby fire and the cicada song. Nat follows the rise and fall of Lottie’s breaths, trying to match her rhythm. How the hell is she so calm and collected in the face of all of this?
“So…what now?” Nat breaks the silence, zipping Jackie’s case shut, a packet of gumdrops and cherry chewing gum richer. “Do you think anyone else…”
“No,” Lottie quickly says and sits down against the earth, tucking her long legs underneath her. “I don’t feel it with anyone else.”
“ It? ” Nat replies through gritted teeth, and hunches down to face her.
“You don’t feel it, Nat,” she explains quietly. “But I do. And I feel that it’s just us.”
Nat scrubs her palms against her eyes, and her fingers come away streaked with makeup. “I just don’t fucking get it, Lot,” she grumbles, and drops her head back against a tree trunk. “Why am I here again ?”
Lottie shakes her head. “I’m here too. You’re not alone in this, Nat.” She stretches a hand across and curls her fingers around Nat’s lithe bicep. They’re soft, warm, and still grounding, even after all this time. Nat hates to admit it but she really has missed Lottie. Maybe it’s a good thing that they’re in this together. Maybe this time they can see more…eye to eye, if she plays her cards right.
“I haven’t seen you in years.” Nat whispers to the sky. “Years. We all- I don’t fucking know. We all heard you got committed and moved to Switzerland of all places.”
Lottie drops her hand to her lap. “Last I heard you got out of rehab for what? The sixth time?”
Nat rolls her eyes. “Is that necessary?” But then Lottie’s words register, and she stops in her tracks. How the fuck would Lottie even know that if she’s in Switzerland?
She could bring it up now, but it’s probably a shitty idea. She’s tired and back in 1996 for some fucking reason and hasn’t seen Lottie since, well, shortly after their rescue. It’d be stupid to drive yet another stake between them now. If nothing else, they at least need to try to work together here.
“We should look for the black box,” Nat suddenly pipes up, surprising herself. The thought somehow never occurred to her the first time around, but now it seems glaringly, painfully, obvious. “See if it’s still intact.”
Lottie tenses. “It’s dark.” She brushes the planes of her open palms against the dirt, flattening the dips and rises. “You need sleep for a healthy mind, Natalie.”
Nat grumbles. “I don’t remember you being logical like that,” she bites, but for once agrees. “Fine. But I’m looking in the morning, as soon as the sun comes up.”
Lottie nods, and offers her a weak smile. “Come on,” she says and stands up, pulling Nat with her. It’s impossible to resist; Nat forgot how ridiculously tall she was, how much power her presence exerted, how strong she could be.
Slowly they trudge back over to the fire, the dying, charcoaled embers immediately warming Nat’s chilly fingers. Lottie leads her over to a quiet, open space, and nestles down against the forest floor, using her arms as a pillow. Cautiously, Nat follows suit, leaving a couple of feet between them, but not straying too far.
Lottie falls asleep first, her features settling into a pretty picture of peace. Nat forgot that she looked like that. So distinct and angelic, tall and willowy, like some kind of religious figure that she never could believe in. And she hates to acknowledge it, hates to think about it, because it stings like a wasp: maybe, somewhere, nestled in the back of her mind, Nat had wanted her back then. The first time round, when they were really kids. A little, hidden, repressed part.
Hell, it doesn’t matter now. She doesn’t have time for romance. Not even with Travis. It’s all fucked up anyways, and she just needs to get out of here for a second time with as little distractions as possible.
After what feels like a lifetime, Nat lets the tides of sleep wash over her, the rise and fall of her teammates’ familiar breaths a gentle lull. Hell, maybe if she’s lucky, when she wakes up she won’t be here.
Maybe she won’t wake up.
God, how she fucking hopes so.