Callie’s mom doesn’t even want her to go to Natalie Scatorccio’s funeral, not really. She wants to keep it private and separate from her family life the way she always wants all that shit, even though it constantly bleeds over the lines. Fucking hell, she can barely look at Callie without that stupid look in her eye, like just by existing Callie is reminding her of twelve different traumas at once. Her dad is an idiot, obviously, but at least he can hug her. At least he doesn’t pretend he’s in charge of her, like her parents have given her any reason to trust their judgement.
So Callie sneaks in. It’s not hard to spot the Yellowjackets, or at least what’s left of them, Taissa Turner and her girlfriend and Callie’s mother all in a neat little row in their mourning blacks, play-acting at being normal people. Her dad sits beside her mom, seemingly even more out of place than Callie herself would’ve been. Callie sits in the back, tucks herself away from whatever is happening between the rest of the pews and her mother, the way the whole room seems tense from the moment the women walk in.
Two of them that were at the cult thing are visibly missing, the one she’s pretty sure is Lottie from all the desperate whispering she’s been eavesdropping on when her mom thinks she’s off fucking policemen or whatever; and Misty, the one who’d killed Natalie, the one they’d all staunchly avoided when the sirens came around. Callie had heard them talking about her, too, even as she leaned into the rare show of warmth from her mother.
It pays to be nosy, she guesses.
She keeps a careful eye on the rest of the room, trying to take in all the information she can like the desperately starving child she is. At some point, she kind of figures, someone will kick her out or notice she’s not with her mom or ask her how she knows the deceased and she’ll fuck up her excuses. Whatever. She’ll take what she can get.
It’s why she notices the other girl— woman?— in the first place. She’s wearing a leather jacket that reminds Callie of Natalie in all the old photos, with kohl- and red-rimmed eyes. There’s a purple sweater under her jacket and that’s actually what connects the pieces of the puzzle in Callie’s brain enough to place the strangely recognizable face. The cult. The hunt or whatever the hell it was. Misty and the syringe and Callie’s mom and the fear in her eyes. It’s the girl Natalie dove in front of, the one Misty had wanted dead.
Callie has no fucking clue who she is— a part of her thinks maybe another of the Yellowjackets has kids, besides her mom and the state senator, thinks she must be blood to be tied up as nastily in this shit as Callie is. The purple was giving cult day of, though her determination to stick with a theme is admirable. Whoever she is, Callie can glean two critical pieces of information by her presence here, in the nosebleeds of the church where only Callie and the people who want a peek at the famed Yellowjackets are sitting. One: Natalie Scatorccio was important to her. Two: she doesn’t want to be caught.
Callie inches closer on the pew. She’s wearing dark jeans and a black shirt, the only fancy funeral attire she owns a size too small from disuse, and she hopes it endears her to the other girl, this awkward not-quite-fitting in vibe.
A pair of dark eyes slides her way, gives her an obvious once over. Callie sees the moment the recognition lands, the way this girl clocks her as one of the non-Yellowjackets present at Natalie’s death.
Someone is at the pulpit, reading from the Bible. Callie couldn’t care less.
“Hey,” she murmurs, watches the way the other girl’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “Callie,” she says, sticking out a hand, when it becomes clear she’s going to have to do the lion’s share of the conversation. And then, because she kind of wants to see what reaction it gets, she adds, “Sadecki.”
The other girl is unmoved. She reaches out a hand regardless, takes Callie’s in her callused, warm palm. “Lisa,” she says, and does not offer a last name.
Callie wonders if she knows what she’s been offered by the utterance of her own last name. Sadecki,she’s saying, like the sad-eyed woman by the front, like the Yellowjacket, like the reason you even recognize who the fuck I am. The fact that Lisa doesn’t seem to give a shit is interesting— maybe she doesn’t know all that much about the team. It doesn’t help Callie figure anything else out about her, though.
“Sorry for your loss,” Callie adds into the silence, “I think that’s the bullshit I’m supposed to say.”
Lisa’s lips quirk ever so slightly, like she doesn’t know if she’s amused or pissed off.
“You don’t really have a filter, do you?” Lisa asks, and Callie scoffs.
“It just seems stupid,” she says, “to, like, avoid it. It’s not like we don’t both recognize each other.”
Lisa inclines her head and cedes the point, fair enough. “I just want—“ She cuts herself off, runs a hand across the back of her neck. “To understand,” she says, after a moment. “Like— Nat was getting better. She wanted to live.” Something flickers across Lisa’s face, too quick and intimate for Callie to read. “At least, most days.”
Callie hums. “I don’t think that’s how it works. At least, not with them.” She makes an aborted sort of gesture toward the front, where her mom is sitting with the other two women.
Lisa raises an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”
“Y’know,” Callie replies, “their whole thing. Crashing and living in the woods. It certainly fucked up my mom. Can’t imagine what it did to everybody else.”
She sees it land for Lisa this time, the way the other girl realizes who Callie is beyond that girl from the day Natalie died. Her gaze slides over to Callie’s mom, giving her her own appraising once over. “It’s still not fair,” Lisa says, when her eyes meet Callie’s again. “They couldn’t just let her go.”
“Well,” Callie says, feeling somehow both defensive of her mother and understanding of her actions for a rare moment, “put yourself in their shoes. Nobody else gets them, except each other. It’s hard to give that up.”
Lisa nods, slow and uncertain. “But you saw them,” she points out, “you knew they were gonna kill your mom, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t have had the…” She trails off, looks meaningfully around at the people just a little ways off from their secluded little corner, like she doesn’t want to say gun and watch some paparazzi’s head whip around. “That’s not just using each other to come to terms with shit.”
“My mom knows how to protect herself,” Callie says, though she doesn’t know why she sounds so certain about it. Her mother is the height of middle-class repression, afraid to recognize whatever happened back there. Or maybe afraid of what happened once she did, Callie wouldn’t know. Her mom is like a brick wall, the kind that only spills out telling emotions by accident, like when Callie had dug Jackie’s uniform out of the attic for Halloween. For all she knows, her mom would have died that night, had she not been there aiming the gun at Lottie. Maybe she can only kill strangers, but can’t imagine sinking a knife into one of her old friends.
Lisa’s lips flatten into a thin line. “They all know how to protect themselves,” she replies. “Sometimes I worry that’s all they know how to do. At least, the— the ones I got to know.”
“Weren’t you in Lottie’s cult?” Callie asks, unable to wrangle her curiosity into submission.
Lisa’s eyebrows furrow. “It wasn’t a cult,” she says, steadfast. “It was an intentional community. We needed— we all needed somewhere to heal, to figure out how to live.”
“And did you?” Callie asks. “Figure out how to live?”
Lisa sighs. “Some days,” she repeats, and Callie has the feeling she’s referencing some sort of important moment in her own life, the kind of wry tension in her words that feels like she’s talking more to herself than to Callie. “I want… I want to be better. For Nat.”
It’s the second time she’s shortened Natalie Scatorccio’s name into a fond little epithet, and Callie latches onto it. “She was important to you.”
Lisa’s mouth quirks again, this one clearly broadcasting well, duh, even without the little eye roll attached to it. “That’s why I’m here,” Lisa says. “That’s why you go to funerals, usually.” She pauses, considering Callie for a long beat of quiet. “But that’s not why you’re here.”
“I didn’t really know her,” Callie admits easily, but she feels kind of bad about it with all Lisa’s attention on her, like somehow she’s taking away from the only real grieving happening in the entire room.
“But you’re not up there with your mother,” Lisa points out, but Callie doesn’t agree or disagree. She’s sounding out the problem out loud, considering the facts of Callie’s existence in the room at all, never mind back here with her. “What do you think you’ll learn? From being here today?”
Callie shrugs. “More than I would from being at home, I guess.”
Lisa snorts. “Misty’s not here,” she says, after another moment. “What does that tell you, Harriet the Spy?”
“Maybe she’s grieving privately,” Callie offers, not because she believes it but because she’s interested in why Lisa pointed her absence out specifically, wonders what it’ll teach her to dig her nails in at the topic.
Lisa scoffs. “Bullshit,” she says. “She couldn’t leave well enough alone, that’s all.”
“If she’d left well enough alone, my mom might be dead,” Callie says, the second the idea slips into her mind.
“So it’s better that Nat is instead?” Lisa’s eyes burn into the side of Callie’s head as she turns away, looks at the wood grain on the back of the pew in front of her.
“You don’t want me to answer that,” she replies after a moment, swallowing hard. “I don’t know.”
Lisa’s gaze finally leaves Callie and she falls back against the pew with a sigh. “Least you’re honest,” she says.
It’s the kind of thing no one ever says to Callie. She’s too honest for her own good— the kind of girl who tells her mother about the lies she crafted in the interrogation room because she wants credit for the performance. Blunt and harsh and unable to avoid pointing out how badly she wants things.
Up in front, the Yellowjackets are shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
“Hey,” Callie says after a moment of just staring at them, “I am, though.” She pauses, reroutes. “Sorry for your loss, I mean. I didn’t mean to be, like, a bitch about it.”
Lisa is smiling again, small and sad, the visual sweeping through Callie’s gut like a gust of wind. All Callie ever does is make bad decisions. All she ever does is pick older men and women who can give her the attention she wants from her own parents, the power she craves. To see this girl in front of her, the curl of her lips and the warmth bleeding through her jeans, and want to know more? It’s different. She thinks she might like it. Lisa isn’t a stand-in for anyone else— she’s just herself, refusing to let Callie or anyone else off the hook for their stupidity, tied up in nastiness but unwilling to budge.
“Thanks,” Lisa replies.
“Do you want— can I buy you a coffee, or something?” Callie asks, desperate to keep this conversation alive. “After the service?”
Lisa thinks it over, the seconds stretching into minutes, into hours. “Y’know what?” She says, finally. “Yeah. Sure. Screw it.”
Callie grins.
When the service draws to a close, just before the three women in black at the front stand and turn, Callie and Lisa slip from the back pew and out the doors of the church into the sunlight.