solemn acceptance
The haunting morning cacophony of screeching birds and crackling embers and Coach Ben’s distant groans awaken Nat to a clear sky and a sun-lit canopy. Memories of the previous night wash over in a violent wave. Arguing. Lottie’s eyes. Searching for food. Deciding to look for the black box. Lottie’s hands.
Lottie.
Nat sits up slowly and rubs her eyes, blinking as the fuzzy horizon clears. It’s still, the breeze low, the leaves twinkling under the dawn. It’s fucking freezing, too; colder than she remembers, so cold that her teeth chatter and her goosepimples rise into statues. She pulls her leather jacket tighter around her shaking torso, and her stomach rumbles noisily. She’s ravenous. It feels selfish, and she almost hates herself for doing it, but she can’t help but rustle in her pockets to dig out Jackie’s packet of cherry gum. She plucks out a piece between shaking fingers, popping it between her lips. It’s tacky and artificially sweet and disgusting, and she wishes it was a shot or a cigarette or something fucking fun, but it’ll at least stave off the gnawing hunger for the time being.
Slowly, she glances around. The other girls are still asleep; based on the position of the sun behind the jagged Rockies, it’s barely breaking sunrise, everything washed in a warm amber glow. But the spot beside her is empty, the dirt cold. Lottie is long gone.
Lottie.
“Lottie?” She calls out, cracking her neck to scan the treeline. It’s only then that she notices it: that symbol, scratched into the dry soil. It’s miniscule, dainty, carved by the tip of a lithe finger, and it’s damn obvious who put it there. Without thinking twice she scrubs it away with her palm, movements vigorous until the lines blur.
“Lottie?” She calls out again, and pushes herself up from the ground. No response. “Lottie?”
Carefully sidestepping around the dozen slumbering bodies, she tiptoes away from the smoldering fire and into the thick of the forest. It’s bizarre how familiar and yet foreign the trees around her feel. She knows she’s walked these paths before, knows she’s touched the trunks and scratched her skin against the pine needles, and yet everything feels different.
“Lottie!” She yells more boldly once she’s far enough. “Lottie!”
A hand suddenly touches her back, feather light and tentative. Nat startles, her boots rising as she jumps.
“Jesus!” She spins around to come face to face with Lottie. “You scared me!”
Lottie’s lips curl up a little. “Sorry, sorry.” She drops her hand away from Nat, and gestures over her shoulder. “I think I found it.”
Nat’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. She has a million questions, like: How long have you been up for? Why didn’t you wake me? How did you find it so fast? But she decides to leave them out, settling on a staunch, “Where?”
Lottie spins on her heel and floats off into the foliage, her steps light and poised. She’s so fucking tall that Nat can barely see over her broad shoulders. She forgot how tall she was.
As they navigate through the labyrinth of pines, side by side, Nat tries to breathe it all in. The clarity of the air, the smoldering smell of the crispy flight attendant’s flesh, the pungent rot of death, the sweet flora of Lottie’s expensive perfume. The aromas rush over her in a wave of nostalgia, and it really does make her feel seventeen again; not like a forty-three year old trapped in an adolescent’s body. Smell is powerful like that. Maybe that’s why doing lines has always felt so easy. God, what she’d give for a line right now. If only Misty fucking Quigley hadn’t blown it. Maybe she’d still feel high and it’d be easier to deal with whatever the fuck is happening here.
Lottie guides her over a fallen trunk, swinging her smooth thighs over the jagged branches. Nat follows suit, her boots hitting the ground with a dull thud, and follows until Lottie comes to a sharp halt, crouching down.
“Is it here?” Nat whispers, lowering her body beside her.
Lottie nods, and brushes clusters of luscious leaves out of the way. Behind them sits a tinny, scraped, red box, clearly stamped with the words FLIGHT RECORDER in bold black lettering. It’s bashed up almost beyond recognition, the metal irreversibly contorted, the transmitter light blown.
Nat’s heart sinks. There’s no way the inner workings survived the crash.
“It was a stupid idea anyways,” she grunts, smacking a palm against her forehead. “Fuck.”
Beside her, Lottie shakes her head. “No,” she denies quietly. “It’s not stupid, Nat.”
“God, Lottie!” Nat cries. “You don’t have to make me feel better. You don’t need to fucking lie.”
“I’m not lying to you, Natalie.” She says firmly, her gaze steely. “I’m not.”
Nat groans and flops down against the forest floor. Rough twigs and scattered rocks prod at the curve of her narrow back, but she can’t find the energy to give a fuck about it. She can’t find the energy to give a fuck about anything, right now. “God, I want a drink,” she sighs, recalling with a flash of longing how she surrendered her alcohol up to Laura Lee. “And a smoke.”
Lottie settles down beside her, except her movements are far more delicate. “And I want to wake up from whatever the fuck this is,” she breathes earnestly. “But I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”
“Nothing ever is,” Nat says with a bitter laugh. “Nothing ever has been.”
Lottie is quiet for a moment, and Nat can almost hear her think. Can almost feel the cogs whirring away in that extraordinary, peculiar, strange yet brilliant little brain of hers.
“But it can be,” she finally responds, and Nat can’t help but roll her eyes. She’s gone full hippy-dippy since the crash. The first crash. What the fuck did they do to her in Switzerland? “Things get better, Nat.”
“Yeah, well, maybe for you,” she bites back, and rolls her head to face her. “What are you doing now, anyway, now that you're outta the loony bin? You living in a van and smoking pot, or something? Vacationing on nudist beaches?”
A sharp elbow jabs into Nat’s side, and Lottie huffs. “No,” she denies, a hint of amusement in her tone. “I’m…still in New Jersey, upstate. I own and run a commune, a camp, in the woods.”
Nat freezes. New Jersey? Commune in the woods?
“Wait, you’re still here? I mean there?” She darts up, bracing her body on top of her arm. “When did you get back?” How didn’t I know, she wonders. Why didn’t you call me, she doesn’t say.
“I’ve been back for a while,” Lottie answers calmly. “I hear you and Misty and Taissa and Shauna stayed in town, too.”
Nat’s brain just about explodes. Everything about this is so fucking weird. They know the fate of the other Yellowjackets, who have no fucking idea about the future of their lives. Shauna has no fucking idea that she’s going to have a daughter and marry Jeff fucking Sadecki. Taissa has no fucking clue that she’s going to run for state senator. Misty has no clue that she’s going to go even more batshit than she already was. None of them know that they’re going to help cover up the murder of Shauna’s fucking side piece.
“Woah,” is what her tongue spits out, her neurons firing too fast for anything remotely coherent. “This is fucking weird.”
“Really fucking weird,” Lottie echoes.
“Well,” Nat says, and stands up. She offers a hand to Lottie, who to her surprise, takes it without hesitation. Nat hauls her up from the ground, cataloguing the weight and length of her fingers as she does; they’re identical to memory, still plush and soothing, and there’s still a tiny little nick on the inside of her ring finger. She doesn’t know why she remembers that. It’s a stupid thing to remember. “It’s been a nice reunion and all. But we should probably get back. I think I have a plan.”
And a million fucking questions to ask Lottie. But she leaves that part out, for now. They’ll have plenty of time for catch ups, if they’re caught up in this weird time blip for real. Is that what it is? A time blip? Do those even fucking exist?
“Which is?” Lottie asks, almost teasingly.
“Maybe the black box being broken isn’t such a bad thing.” She bends down and starts to lift it up from the ground, her back straining under the intense weight. “Help me out?”
Lottie furrows her brows, but obliges. It’s a long trudge back to camp, sweaty and full of sighs, and by the time the fire comes into view Nat feels ready to hibernate. With a clatter they drop it down against the earth, the metal ringing in the quiet air. The sudden noise startles some of the sleeping bodies, and one by one the other girls begin to rouse.
Van is the first to rise, darting up from her spot right next to Taissa. In hindsight, it’s fucking obvious that the two of them were together. Nat doesn’t know how she didn’t spot it the first time.
“What the fuck is that?” She exclaims, rubbing her eyes. When she catches the lettering imprinted onto the side of the metal, her mouth drops open into a gaping hole. “Holy shit! Is that the fucking flight receiver?” She shakes Tai violently. “Tai! Tai fucking get up!”
“Shhh,” Natalie hisses, but by now the whole group is sitting up with blinking, excited eyes.
“Holy shit!” Jackie cries, her apple cheeks blooming as she cracks into a grin. “You found the flight receiver?”
“We’re going home!” Taissa collapses with a sigh back against the ground. “Thank fucking god.”
Natalie takes a steely, deep breath, and braces herself to drop an atomic bomb. “No,” she exhales, biting down so hard on her lip that blood springs from the flesh and her mouth turns to iron. “No one’s going home.”
A dozen pairs of wide eyes blink. Nat can feel all of them on her. Watching. Scrutinising.
“Look,” she says, and reaches inside the innards of the box. With a grunt she yanks out the ripped cable, the torn copper wiring gleaming in the sun. “We’re not. We’re not going anywhere.”
Tai’s smile falls, her gaze clouding. “What the fuck, Nat?”
“Yeah, what the fuck?” Jackie yells, leaping up from the ground.
“How do we know you didn’t break it?” Taissa’s eyes are furious, accusing, her expression stung.
Nat scoffs, her forehead scrunching. “Now why the fuck would I do that?” She yells, and throws the frayed cable back inside the flight recorder. The split, razor sharp wire scratches against the side of her hand, digging a rut into her skin, and she bites back a hiss.
“I don’t fucking know!” Tai exclaims, stomping over towards her. “But what I do know is that those- those things aren’t supposed to fucking break like that!”
“Hey!” Lottie suddenly interjects, and leaps in front of Nat’s body. “She didn’t do anything, Tai.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because I was there!” She argues, her hair swishing over her shoulders as she tilts her head down to meet Tai’s eyes. Nat is still, breathing heavy, seething as she observes. Tai has no fucking idea just how badly she wants to go home. God, Nat would put all of her money on the fact that she wants to go home more than the rest of them. “We found it together. It was broken like that when we got there.”
Tai’s breathing evens slightly, her shoulders dropping, but it only makes Nat angrier. Why is it that everyone listens to Lottie, but not her? She’s a drunk, a druggie, but she’s not an idiot and she’s certainly not a fucking liar.
Nat clenches her fists, and tries to quell her irritation.“I wanted to show you all now because I think we should move to somewhere with resources,” she rushes out. “Water. There’s a lake over,” she stills, tongue between her lips as she fights for the memory, “Over there.” She points her finger into the distance.
“She’s right.” Lottie nods beside her, and steps aside, breaking the wall between Nat and Tai. “We noticed this morning.”
Nat represses a sigh of relief at Lottie’s words, and makes a mental note to thank her for the back up later. “There’s a cabin too,” She adds, hoping that it’s the right decision to reveal it so soon. “Guys, we need shelter. Coach needs help. There might even be food there,” she lies, knowing damn well everything in that crumbling shithole is at least a decade past its expiry date. “It’s not far. A couple of miles.”
She holds her breath, expecting the other girls to put up one hell of a fight. Last time, it’d been hard for Tai to tear them away from the wreckage. But this time, much to her relief, the glances exchanged between her teammates are much more unified, the girls nodding and sharing expressions of solemn acceptance. The broken black box must’ve done the trick.
“No,” a little voice suddenly pipes up. Nat turns her head to find Javi, looking tiny and youthful against the ground. “I still haven’t found my dad.”
Nat tenses. Mentally cusses herself out. How could she be so fucking stupid? She forgot to accidentally discover Coach Martinez’s body. She was an idiot for thinking migrating to the lake would be this easy.
“Okay. We’ll look for him,” Lottie announces from beside her, and god, Nat thinks she could just throw her arms around her. She doesn’t think she could look Javi in the eye and pretend like she hasn’t already seen his fathers fucking body.
“Yeah. Good idea.” Nat says rigidly. “Okay, everyone. Split off in pairs. Call out if you find something.”
She doesn’t have to ask Lottie to pair with her. When the girls disappear into the forest, she’s still standing right beside her.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They easily locate the body again, and Nat wishes she was dead.
Travis is crouched over his father, looking only like a lost, hopeless, boy. A terrified boy. He claps his hands all over Coach Martinez’s blanched face, arms, legs, torso, searching for something, anything, that feels familiar. That feels like his dad, that feels like home. But Nat knows he won’t find anything. There’s nothing like home out here.
Meanwhile, Javi stands frozen between the clustered girls, Mari and Akilah trying to shield him from the view of his father’s body. It doesn’t work. He can still see, and Nat can still meet his eyes. Can see every inch of the fucking pain register with each second. He’s just a fucking kid . He shouldn’t be here. He’s not even on the team.
She blinks her eyes closed, fighting a wash of tears, and sees ice. Sees a queen of hearts and a frozen lake and her boots against snow. Hears the animalistic war cries of her friends, these girls, and the cracking of the surface; hears how they howl with hunger, hears the splash as Javi slips through into oblivion. Hears her cry out for him. Sees herself do nothing.
“Nat?” Lottie nudges her and whispers. “You ok?
Nat swallows. “Yeah. Fine,” she says, and watches the Martinez boys fall apart.