Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts because they, or Shauna, need to make sure nobody finds out about what happened out there.

“Shauna, she won’t even talk, period.”

Shauna crosses her arms. “That’s exactly why we should all be worried, Nat. She’s fucking… lost it. What happens if she snaps one day and blurts out everything, huh?”

“So, what’s your plan, then?” Nat scoffs incredulously. “You gonna fucking kill her?”

It’s a joke, obviously.

But no one laughs. No one says, “Jesus, Nat. Of course we’re not going to fucking kill our friend.” Tai and Van don’t even offer a grim “don’t be so dramatic.” Instead, the three of them exchange glances in loaded silence, as if the idea warrants serious consideration.

Honestly, Nat should have seen it coming. Shauna has practically been vibrating for the next crisis cliff to throw someone off of since everything spiraled with Melissa. After all, survival has always come at the cost of someone else’s life, and now they’re just onto workshopping the next sacrifice.

She scoffs again, trying to laugh the fear out of her lungs. Her eyes dart between the other two, who she thought at least had some semblance of sanity left. “For fuck’s sake, guys, this can’t be real. Tai, Van?”

“No one is killing Lottie,” Van steps in, thankfully. Because denouncing murder is apparently a chore now. Nat thought this would all be over once they left that place.

“But we still have to make sure she doesn’t talk,” Tai declares.

It all sounds so eerily similar to the conversation they had just two months prior. And Nat feels sinking dread that no matter how far they get from that fucking forest, the Wilderness will always be just a few steps behind.

So, Natalie is at the treatment center in Wiskayok.

It’s intensely bright, with harsh panel lights blinding her eyes when she looks up. It smells clinically clean, like the walls have been scrubbed to hell with Clorox. Expressionless doctors in lab coats bump past her shoulders in a rush, probably late for the afternoon lobotomies they’ve got scheduled. It’s all too much, too fast. And Natalie really doesn’t understand why she’s the one here.

All eyes flew to her in consensus, as if she’s the only one who could somehow make sure that Lottie Matthews doesn’t have a meltdown where she accidentally, or intentionally, reveals that they fucking hunted and ate their friends.

If anyone, it should’ve been Van. Van has always been better at leveling with Lottie, not that that was even possible by the end of their time out there. But no, it’s Natalie they’ve dragged into this. Natalie, who Lottie never once listened to.

Hell, that was the whole problem between them out there, wasn’t it? Because they never used to fight—Lottie might be the one person she never once got into an argument with before. But out there, they were at odds. Natalie had tried countless times to reach her. She had tried to shake the Wilderness out of her. She had tried to make her come home. Every attempt failed.

The only reason Lottie came back with them the second time was because she had no choice. The rescue plane landed so close that they heard its engine before seeing it. Nat only had to pin Lottie down in the snow long enough for a flock of black-jacketed men, charging at her like a SWAT unit, to haul her onboard themselves.

The room is uncomfortably silent when she gets there. Lottie sits upright on her bed in white pajamas, her eyes vacant and ghostly, like there’s nobody inside. Nat doesn’t know if she feels frustrated or just… fucking terrible.

“Lottie.”

(Lottie probably hates her. She didn’t want to come back precisely because of this—being locked up here.)

Word was that Mr. Matthews shipped her off almost right after they got back. Nat wasn’t surprised when she heard it through Van just a few weeks later. Last they saw each other, Lottie was already in an unsettling state. She stopped speaking long ago.

Not a word on the plane. Not a word in Vancouver. Not even a word back in Jersey.

In fact, Lottie hasn’t spoken a real word to Nat since they were in the Wilderness, when she begged Nat not to force her to leave. Nat had to shut her up with hands over her mouth to stop a scream. But at the emergency medical center in Vancouver, as they boarded the plane to New Jersey, Lottie got her chance to scream—a full, gut-wrenching, everything-inside-of-her kind of scream. Nat forced her from the tarmac onto the plane, shoved her into the first unoccupied seat she could find, and snapped the tongue of her seatbelt into the buckle. That scream was the last sound of any kind that she made.

For the rest of the plane ride, she was silent, but her eyes were fixed in this catatonic stare. It was the same stare she has now, sitting on this tiny white bed in her hospital room.

“Lottie,” Nat repeats, getting closer, but still far. “Will you talk to me?”

Nothing. She stares blankly at the white wall, so still that she may as well be a wax statue.

“Will you look at me, at least?” Nat pleads. She finally comes close to the bed, kneeling on the cold floor beside it. “Please?”

Lottie doesn’t speak. But she turns her head. And on her lips, there’s the faintest of smiles, so small Nat isn’t sure if it’s really there.

It’s not much. It’s definitely not anything for Shauna. But for Nat, when it comes to Lottie Matthews, she’s always been the kind of person to hold onto hope even when it tastes like ash.

For Nat, it’s progress, at least.

She goes back.

Then she goes back again. And again. And again, like she’s caught in some masochistic orbit circling the same dead star.

She’s tried lots of different things. She brought a National Geographic magazine with a snow leopard on the cover from somewhere in the depths of her drawer, probably from junior high. But it’s like the ones Lottie used to read in study hall. Animal trivia had actually been her first religion.

(Did you know female hyenas have pseudo-penises? Lottie did. She told everyone during their team hike through Scudder Falls when they were up in Trenton for States junior year and saw an animal that looked like a hyena, but absolutely was not.)

No luck with that, though.

She’s also tried music. She brought her scratched up CD player and got through the entirety of Lottie’s favorite Elliott Smith record—and the entirety of Vienna by Billy Joel because Lottie used to sing it quietly at sleepovers and on buses and kind of fucking everywhere—before she gave up.

She’s tried asking her questions and telling her stories about the good stuff, even though it’s all dwindling in Nat’s brain, too. But each time, day after day, Lottie still doesn’t talk. Doesn’t even give her a smile like she did the first time. It’s fucking infuriating.

At first, Nat felt… not pity, exactly, but close. She knew something was mentally wrong with Lottie out there—it was pretty damn obvious when she was kneeling by trees and trying to whisper to them. But no one had known exactly how severe it really was until they came back. A diagnosed schizophrenic who ran out of medication pretty much right when they crashed. Nat knows everything Lottie did, but she can’t help but feel bad. How can she not? She’s no expert, but she can’t help but imagine how uncontrollable and pervasive Lottie’s mind was out there.

But now, Nat feels anger boiling in her chest, heating every drop in her bloodstream.

“Why are you doing this, Lottie?” she demands, fists clenched and digging into the hard mattress. “Why did you fucking do any of this?”

Lottie doesn’t say anything, but she looks at her curiously. Nat doesn’t know if she should take that as a win.

“You’re really just gonna sit there?” Nat asks. She knows she shouldn’t do this. The attendants told her as much in their initial briefing—don’t provoke emotional distress, don’t take anything personally, don’t do exactly what she’s doing right now. But she grabs Lottie by the collar of her pajama shirt. “You’re really not gonna talk to me? After you started everything out there?”

Her lips are trembling now, but Lottie hasn’t reacted to any of it. Not until: “Shauna wanted to kill you so you’re not a liability. Maybe I should’ve just fucking let her.”

That’s when Lottie finally smiles again. And this time, it’s hopeful—like she’s hopeful for the Queen of Hearts. Like it’s finally her turn to draw a card and win. Nat tumbles back from the bed in a sickening surge of nausea and guilt.

Really, there is no reason for Natalie to go back. The last time she walked out, she was completely fucking done, vowing to never set foot in that place again. Because what’s the use? Lottie’s never going to talk, even if she believes her life depends on it.

(Hell, she seems to be less inclined to talk now that she knows becoming some kind of chosen sacrifice by their Queen is on the table.)

But she goes again, this time perching herself fully on the creaky little bed, as if personally invited by Lottie. Begging hasn’t worked, and neither does yelling, so Nat’s… not trying anything at all.

She just talks. It’s kind of nice—strangely therapeutic. She can say whatever the fuck she wants, and Lottie won’t react.

“Being at home is fucking…” she breathes, shaking her head. “Feel like people are looking at me everywhere I go. Like they know what I did, or something. We’re all over the news, you know that? Shit, you probably have no idea what people are saying about us.”

She laughs to herself in bitter amusement. Laughs a little more as she takes in Lottie’s blank expression. It’s not like she envies this, or anything, but must be kind of fucking nice to stay oblivious to all the shit in the real world. Nat doesn’t know what it’s actually like, but it looks like her brain is switched off. As if she can just dissociate.

(She’s sure there’s more to it—the voices, and all. But she likes to picture that it isn’t so bad anymore. That Lottie isn’t suffering, wherever she is.)

“Fuck,” Nat sighs, leaning back against the metal frame behind her. She furrows her eyebrows. Lottie’s head is turned to the other wall.

So, this is also definitely against all protocol and recommendations from everyone who briefed her, but by now, she’s crossed enough lines to not really give a shit. Plus, the curiosity has gotten to her.

She leans forward, pressing a firm hand on the side of Lottie’s face, and pushes it to align with the center of the room. With her.

Of course, Lottie doesn’t react. She maintains the same blank expression. Fuck this. Does this even count as Lottie anymore? Because maybe she still has the same face, but whoever this is certainly bears no inner resemblance to the Lottie she used to know. The one who’d teasingly fire a middle finger at her after telling her how shitty her pass was during a scrimmage.

(None of them are the same, really, but Lottie is the most different of them all.)

“I know my mom’s always been a shit mom, but you’d think she’d care a little more after her kid was fucking missing for almost two years, right? She’s never happy to see me. Worst part is, I think she was probably happier when I was gone.”

Lottie looks at her, her lips parting. Her eyes look soft, like they actually hear her and might care. Nat blinks, thinking this is it—this is when Lottie finally talks to her.

But her lips shut again. Nat’s heart lurches down into the pits of her stomach.

For the first time in months, Natalie calls Travis. His mom never used to pay much attention to him, but now, he’s kind of all she has left.

So, Nat understands why he didn’t reach out. He came home without his dad. Without Javi.

But she thinks about him often. She wants him to be better. She misses him. She fucking hates herself for what she did to Javi and knows that half of Travis’s pain—probably most of his pain—is all her fault.

(She thinks about Lottie. How sometimes, her mind blames Lottie for everything. But deep down, she knows she’s just as fucked up. Maybe worse, because she could’ve stopped it. She should’ve.)

The Jersey heat is brutal in the summer, humidity carrying through to the evenings. But she pushes through, finding Travis in a secluded section of the park. The sweat drips from his neck as he pulls the lighter to the joint between his lips, the flame burning hot in close proximity to his skin. She watches him smoke a cloud as she takes a sip of the shitty vodka she dumped into a silver flask. They take turns trading the flask and the joint.

Travis looks a little high, a little drunk, his eyes red and small. But he turns to her with a smile.

“I fucking missed you, Natalie,” he says.

And it makes everything feel better, just for a moment. He doesn’t hate her. He misses her, and wants her here. She kisses him, liquor still on her lips. He kisses her back.

Everything is better.

Kevyn and Rich are home for the summer. They’re both in college—clearly, they’ve cleaned up their lives a lot. Kevyn is studying criminal justice or some shit, which is ironic because once he’s back in Nat’s orbit, the three of them are smoking a joint in Kevyn’s backyard while his parents are off at work.

Both of them called her when she first got home, but this is the first time that they’ve seen her since. They both don’t look at her the same anymore. Now, they look at her wide-eyed and cautiously, like she’s some fragile thing made of glass. They can hardly believe that she’s here, and honestly, neither can Natalie most days. But she’s afraid that they’re going to start asking too many questions.

“Shit, how are you, really, Nat?” Rich asks, concerned.

“Fine,” she waves him off, taking a drag. When she blows out smoke, she looks at Rich with curious eyes. “Your cousin still dealing?”

Rich blinks slowly. He’s not going to turn her down because she’s his friend who was supposed to be dead for two years. “Yeah, I mean… If there’s something you want, I could ask him.”

She’s got a couple of ideas in mind.

Kevyn looks at her like a concerned puppy dog, even after taking a hit. “Are you thinking of going to college, Nat?”

“Uh, not really on my mind,” she laughs bitterly, snatching the joint back from his hands. He presses his lips together.

“Oh yeah, no. That makes sense. A lot of people take gap years,” he says, trying to be polite.

But she wants to fucking sock him for it. Just because he’s all changed and studious now doesn’t mean that Nat’s suddenly going to also want a college degree. There was maybe a time in the distant past where someone could’ve convinced her to go—she’d browsed the college brochures when the counselors made her have a meeting, and she’d eyed the scouts that came to her soccer games. But now, why should she give a shit about any of that? What’s the fucking point?

She turns back to Rich instead. At least Rich is being useful for something.

“Hey, how about you give me your cousin’s phone number?” Nat asks.

“Are things… going okay? With Lottie?” Van asks.

Nat blinks down. They’re huddled in a fucking alleyway like some group of evil conspirators who need to make sure no one can hear about their homicidal plans. Her eyes move through Van, Taissa, and finally Shauna, whose arms are crossed and eyebrows are furrowed, ready to pounce if Nat says the wrong thing.

“She’s getting better,” Nat says, and it’s not a total lie. They’ve gone from blank-eyed stares away to actually making eye-contact.

But Shauna sees through it. She glares. “She’s still not talking, is she?”

“Shauna,” Tai says. But she turns to Nat, a look in her eyes that isn’t threatening like Shauna, but still a warning. “Is she?”

“Not yet, but–”

“Fuck this,” Shauna scoffs. “I should just go talk to her myself.”

“Give her more time,” Tai says steadily, looking at Shauna pleadingly. “Natalie will figure this out.”

Nat presses her lips together. She’s not sure if she will, but she doesn’t say that. Shauna is still seething.

“Hey, if she’s not talking, she’s not talking at all,” Van reminds calmingly. Because that’s a good thing, right? As long as Lottie shuts up, nobody finds anything out. “But me and Tai will go see her soon, too.”

Well, at least there’s that. It’s not all on Nat’s shoulders anymore. Tai and Van will probably be better at getting Lottie to talk.

Nat is fucking losing her mind. Her room is a mess, she got through the rest of the vodka she had left, and all she hears is the sound of Wheel of Fortune on the television in the other room where her mom is. Pat Sajak’s voice grates against her ears, each “spin the wheel!” making her want to stab out her eardrums a little more. All she wants to hear is the ring of the landline. Travis telling her he’s sorry for not calling her back sooner, but he just needed to hear her voice.

For two weeks now, she’s been trying his phone. She sifted through the answering machine, met only with irritatingly chipper messages from Misty Quigley asking how she is and if they should all get together sometime. She even tried the Martinez landline, but when Mrs. Martinez’s soft “Hello, who’s this?” came through her end, her throat closed up. She hung up right then.

(How can she face Mrs. Martinez when she killed her son?)

She groans loudly, burying her face into her pillow. Maybe her mom will hear it and actually give a shit that her daughter’s drunk on a Tuesday afternoon.

She hears “spin the wheel!” again, this time at a much higher volume than before.

“I’ve been seeing Travis again,” Nat admits slowly. She sighs. “Well, I thought we were…” She swallows, looking at Lottie. She thinks Lottie is listening. She’s looking at her really intently, at least. “I don’t know what I thought we were. But the last few times, it was good. We were good. And now… it’s like he’s, fuck. I don’t know. Distant, I guess. Won’t pick up the phone.”

Lottie’s eyebrows narrow, like she might be thinking. Nat wonders what she would’ve said back in high school.

She’d take Nat’s joint from her hand, a stern look on her face. “Nat, you’re too good to be taking shit from a fucking loser like that. He looks like a knockoff Judd Nelson.”

Nat would laugh. Lottie never talked shit unless someone deserved it, and to her, all the boys Nat dated really deserved it.

She looks at Lottie, eyes dampening. She wishes that Lottie would say something like that now.

“Any luck with Lottie?” Van asks, taking a seat on the park bench.

“Nope. You?”

Van shakes her head, red hair flaming brightly in the summer sun. “Couple visits, but she won’t even look at us. Just… stares at the wall.”

Lottie looks at Nat now. Maybe that really is something.

“Fuck,” she sighs, momentarily shutting her eyes.

Van observes her, half-smile tugging her scarred cheek. “Hey, I know you weren’t exactly thrilled about being the one that has to talk to her, but I appreciate you doing it anyway.”

“It’s… whatever,” Nat shrugs, waving her off nonchalantly. “I just don’t want anyone to die, or anything.”

“Honestly, I don’t think Shauna’s actually gonna do anything to her,” Van says.

And Nat looks at her, eyebrows raised. Are they talking about the same Shauna Shipman?

“You know what happened with Melissa,” Nat reminds, voice quiet as can be, in case passersby at the park recognize them from the news and want to eavesdrop to see if they can catch what really happened out there.

Van looks down at the grass, bearing shame in her lip bite. “We didn’t really do anything to her,” she says.

And it’s true; they didn’t physically kill Melissa. Melissa killed herself. Left a suicide note about how she’s planning on jumping off a span over the Raritan. They never found the body, but they never found her anywhere, either. She carried too much guilt about Hannah and was talking all kinds of crazy shit about how they owe it to her daughter to reach out to her.

So they weren’t the ones to push her off the bridge, but they might as well have been. They basically drove her to it. And Nat wonders if Melissa hadn’t done it herself, would Shauna have taken matters into her own hands?

“Besides, this isn’t Melissa. This is Lottie,” Van says, as if her name means something more than Melissa’s.

“I don’t think Lottie’s too concerned with leaking shit to the press right now,” Nat scoffs, looking down at the grass, too.

“I know. But Shauna and Tai are really worried, is all,” Van explains. “It would just be… reassuring, if she could give her word.”

“What’s her word mean if she’s really fuckin’ lost it, anyway?” Nat asks bitterly.

“Don’t say that to Shauna,” Van chuckles.

“Trust me, I’m not planning any brunches with her any time soon.”

Van pats her hands down on her lap, chuckling again quietly. Nat wants to laugh, too, but she can’t find the joy in any of this. Tai, Van, and Misty—especially fucking Misty—look at her like she’s some kind of savior just because of dumb luck. She made that call, but it’s not like she really saved anyone.

Most of their friends still wound up dead, and she let it happen. She participated.

“I don’t know why you guys picked me. Lottie doesn’t give a shit what I have to say. Never has.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. You remember what it was like out there between us.”

“She was off her meds, Nat.”

“Yeah? And now, she’s on them again. Doesn’t look like they’re helping much.”

That’s enough for Van to go quiet. They’ve both seen how bad Lottie is right now. In some ways, it’s worse than before. At least out there, she would actually speak.

But Nat thinks maybe that’s for the best. Because when she did speak out there, everything she said led to bad things happening. So, she’s not so sure why everyone’s in such a rush to make Lottie talk again.

(Nat can’t bear hearing her talk again. Not unless it’s how she remembers Lottie talking before all of this.)

“For what it’s worth,” Van starts slowly, turning to look at Nat. “I think you and Lottie have always had this… soft spot for each other. If she’s gonna listen to anyone, it would be you.”

“So I got a job as a bartender at—you know, that shitty, divey bar near Ridgewood where Jackie would flirt with the bouncer to get us in,” Nat tells her with a quiet, sad laugh, because she laughs when she thinks about memories involving Jackie now.

Back then, she’d roll her eyes when she thought about Jackie and all of her overbearing ways and enthusiastic, too-spirited team-bonding plans that Nat would try to get out of. But now, Nat laughs fondly, because she realizes that all of the annoying things that Jackie did actually made most of their best memories on the team. She didn’t appreciate it—the kind of friend and team captain Jackie was.

“You’d never guess who came in on my first day,” Nat says, smile stretching slowly. “Joey Sanderson. Remember him? He was really tall, on the baseball team. Anyways, he ordered a bunch of–”

“Hair gel.”

Nat’s freezes, but blinks rapidly. She looks at Lottie.

“What?” she asks, her voice thin. She doesn’t know what the hell that was, but Lottie spoke.

Lottie’s blinks are slow, as if she’s processing her own words. She looks at Nat—not through her. At her.

“He always smelled like hair gel,” Lottie says quietly. Nat’s eyes widen, afraid to move closer. Afraid that she’ll accidentally break whatever miraculous spell just was cast on Lottie. “He used too much. It gave me a headache.”

Nat’s mouth hangs open, stunned. She doesn’t know what to say, but she needs to say something—she needs to keep this going. She looks at Lottie with hope.

“What else do you remember about him?”

“He asked you out,” Lottie says. “We were both in the parking lot after practice.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I knew he asked you out first at Mari’s birthday party,” Nat laughs.

“I hated him,” Lottie says.

“Why?” she asks, even though she sort of knows.

They both know. Lottie was the one who spent the entire practice after telling her what an asshole he was, and that she shouldn’t listen to what people are saying about her, even though Nat already insisted a million times that she didn’t give a shit—she’s used to this.

“He told everyone you gave him a blowjob after you turned him down,” Lottie says. “He’s an asshole.”

Nat smiles softly at that. After a lengthy pre-practice locker room session of Tai and Jackie hounding her about what went down with Joey, Lottie was one of the only ones who believed her when she said she absolutely didn’t go anywhere near him. “I didn’t think you remembered that.”

Lottie’s lips shift in reaction, but she doesn’t say anything more. Nat’s heart is skipping beats. She doesn’t want this to end here. She scoots closer on the bed.

“Can you tell me something else?” she asks, wet pools forming at the bottom of her eyes. “Anything at all. Just… keep talking, please.”

Lottie nods her head slowly. “I don’t like the food here.”

Nat chokes a laugh. “What do they give you?”

Lottie shrugs, and it’s the smallest movement, but it feels monumentally bigger. “Soup. Always soup. Like they think if it’s warm, I won’t notice it tastes like cardboard.”

Nat snorts, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She’s not sure if she’s tearing up because it’s funny—it isn’t, really—or just because she can’t fucking believe that Lottie is really speaking again. “Jesus. That bad?”

“It’s like… punishment soup,” she says, and it sounds like it might be an attempt at a joke. Nat’s not sure if she gets it, but she spits another teary laugh.

“That is so fucked,” Nat says, a crooked smile on her lips. “What else?”

Lottie seems like she’s thinking for a moment, but then her lips press together again. Something softens her dark eyes. She looks incurably sad.

“Nat,” she says softly.

Nat can’t believe she’s hearing her own name from Lottie’s mouth. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” Lottie says.

Nat’s unsure what her apology is for. For not talking, for everything that happened out there, or hell, for not punching Joey Sanderson for her like she said she wanted to do in high school.

“It’s okay,” Nat says anyway.

“Are you going to see me again?” Lottie asks.

“As long as you want me here,” Nat says, and she doesn’t know why she says it. She didn’t even want to be here in the first place—she was honestly planning on quitting soon, maybe. But now that she’s got Lottie talking again, she can’t let this go.

After all, she still has to make sure she gets the reassurance that Shauna and Tai need.

Nat meets up with Rich’s cousin in the early afternoon. It’s not much—just a couple tablets of LSD, which she’s done before, and a very small bag of coke that she’s not even sure she’s actually going to do. She stores it away under her bed, not that her mom’s going to come looking for her, then leaves for the hospital.

The orderlies know who she is by now. They smile and greet her, let her sign in, knowing exactly where she’s going.

Lottie’s been talking more. She told Van about it. That they’ve been getting somewhere; they’re having seemingly-normal conversations about mundane shit. They haven’t gone much deeper. She hasn’t asked if Lottie remembers what happened out there. She still knows what she’s here to do, but she’s treading cautiously; she doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. Lottie could snap at any moment and go back to the way she was.

“Shauna’s fucking dating Jeff Sadecki. Can you believe it?”

Lottie’s nose wrinkles. “How’d that happen?”

“Fuck if I know, but I’m not gonna ask. Tai probably knows,” Nat laughs quietly. She looks at Lottie, who also seems to find this news puzzling, too. But she isn’t sure why exactly Lottie finds it so puzzling. Is it because of the surface knowledge that Jackie and Jeff were together first, or is it because she can remember what happened to Jackie?

Who could forget?

“Saw them at the grocery store yesterday,” Nat continues cautiously slow. “Shauna was acting all lovey-dovey on his arm while they picked out produce.” She pauses, her throat feeling dry when she swallows. “Kinda fucked up, right? After… everything.”

Her eyes test Lottie. They watch for the movements, the changes in her eyes. Lottie tilts her head, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

“It’s… wrong,” she finally says, after what feels like minutes of silence. “Jackie…” She stops, her eyes clouding with something, and Nat is bracing for the collapse.

“Yeah, super weird,” Nat jumps back in, hoping to keep this afloat. She can see Lottie’s eyes retreating, trying to find another place to hide. “I don’t know how Shauna acts all normal about what she did.”

“What we all did,” Lottie corrects.

“Yeah,” Nat breathes.

She remembers.

“Shauna. She’s…” Nat continues slowly, a tremor in her lips. Last time she brought this up, Lottie looked like she was happy about it—about being a fucking Wilderness sacrifice. She doesn’t want to lead her back to that place. “Lottie, do you remember what we were all talking about? After the emergency room when they first found us?”

Lottie’s eyebrows lower. She shakes her head.

“We promised that we wouldn’t tell anyone,” Nat says. “About what happened out there.”

Lottie’s non-responsiveness drives Nat’s nails into her own palm. She exhales, moving desperately closer. She clutches the fabric of Lottie’s pink pajama top, hand squeezing her bicep.

“If you talk, Shauna’ll—fuck, she’ll do whatever it takes to keep you quiet. Promise me, Lot,” Nat begs. “Promise me you won’t say anything to anyone. Ever.”

Lottie nods her head. “I promise.”

She delivers the news as soon as she can. They meet outside the same corner store, in the same alleyway. Tai and Van look beyond relieved, but Shauna still looks skeptical.

“How do we know she’s not just saying that?”

“Do you want me to go back and get a fucking recording for you, Shauna?” Nat scoffs.

“That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” Shauna says.

“Shauna,” Tai says sternly, putting a hand on her chest and making her back up. “I trust Natalie. We all should.”

“Fine,” Shauna says, sighing as she breaks free from Tai’s grip. She still glares at Nat. “But stop acting like I’m doing this because I’m fucking crazy, okay? I’m doing this for all of us.”

“Yeah, well, Lottie’s been dealt with, okay? She’s not a threat. She’s not gonna tell anyone, so you can stop your worrying. We all can,” Nat says.

After that, Nat stops seeing Lottie. There’s no point, right? She did what she needed to do—Shauna’s backing off, Lottie’s talking again, and everyone can just go back to how they were before.

She spends the nights after work fucking around with Kevyn and Rich again. The summer’s almost over, so they’ll be back in college soon. The three of them smoke and drink often, and go see Tuscadero in concert at the Meadowlands. She convinces both of them to take the acid with her before the show, and it’s fucking sick. They mosh and scream, Nat thinks she might see Misty Quigley appear on stage for a second, and it freaks her the fuck out until Kevyn’s pulling her back to reality. They end the night by buying matching t-shirts for ten bucks from a shady seller outside the venue.

She tries calling Travis again a few times that week. The first two ring the entire time, but on the third, he finally answers. She asks how he’s doing, asks if he wants to go smoke somewhere together. He agrees, and they do that. They smoke in the park like last time, they make out, and they fuck in his car. He tells her he’s sorry for ignoring her for so long—he was fucked up after Javi’s birthday passed.

She understands, because how can she not?

They lie down together in the backseat of his car, her hand on his chest, and it’s really fucking cramped. But he asks her what she’s been up to. She tells him about Kevyn and Rich, the concert, and her new bartending job. He tells her he’ll come visit her at work sometime and she laughs, says he really shouldn’t or she’ll get too distracted.

She thinks about mentioning Lottie—how she’d been visiting her. But she doesn’t. Travis and Lottie have a strange fucking history that Nat likes to forget about, or at least forget that Travis was ever a part of. It’s better to keep that locked away.

But as they lie there, she keeps thinking about Lottie.

Travis ignores her calls the next day. Or, he’s somehow too fucking busy all morning and afternoon. Nat chugs from a new bottle of vodka while she tries him one last time. She slams the phone back down into the cradle and closes the bottle. When she starts thinking about Javi, she starts thinking about Coach Scott, and then Mari, and then–

Fuck.

She kneels beside her bed, fingers running over the bag of coke underneath. She knows it’s probably a bad idea, but she needs a distraction. She shuts her eyes, sighing heavily, and tossing the baggie into the darkness under her bed. She gets up, hastily pulling a pair of black jeans over her bare legs.

There are still two more hours before visiting hours are over. The doctors welcome her in, but when she opens the door to Lottie’s room, she feels anything but.

“Hey,” she says meekly, shutting the door behind her. Lottie looks at her with such surprised and lonely doe eyes that Nat wants to curl up and die. “Miss me?”

Lottie looks down. Nat’s afraid that she’s gone quiet again. She holds her breath as she makes her way over to the bed.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Lottie admits.

Nat’s just relieved she’s still talking. “I–” she starts. “Things were busy.”

“I believe you,” Lottie says, and Nat blinks—it’s not like she thought Lottie wouldn’t, or at least that she’d even care.

Nat sits down on the bed, more distantly than she had been before. “How is everything here? How are your… treatments, and whatever?”

“They’re okay,” Lottie answers. “They’re happy I’m talking again. They ask me a lot of questions, especially in group therapy. I don’t tell them everything, obviously. I wish I could sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Nat says.

She and Lottie look at each other for a few moments. It feels heavier than it did before.

“Nat, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah. Anything.”

“Why did you really stop seeing me?” Lottie asks.

“Uh…” Nat’s tongue runs over her bottom lip contemplatively before biting down. “What do you mean?”

“You came so regularly before. Why did that change? You can tell me.”

“It’s what I said, Lot. Shit got busy, you know? I had work, and it was Kev and Rich’s last week in town,” she explains slowly, but her darting eyes don’t help her make her case. When she looks back at Lottie, she can tell she isn’t being very convincing. “I got into some shit with Travis. It’s nothing.”

“Okay.” Lottie nods, and Nat can’t tell how she feels about that answer—not that she should feel any type of way, because why would she? But Nat just feels kind of bad. She told Lottie that she’d keep visiting as long as Lottie wants her here last time. Does Lottie remember that? “Can you keep talking to me? I like hearing your voice.”

Nat swallows, unsure of why her stomach is flipping and she feels those words everywhere in her. She nods her head, scooting closer on the bed.

“So, there was this fucking crazy dude at this concert I went to with Kevyn and Rich,” Nat starts, because it’s the easiest thing she can think of.

“What concert was it?”

“Tuscadero. You heard of them?”

“No…”

“Fucking loser.”

“Shut up. What did the guy do?”

Nat thinks she likes talking to Lottie.

She can go on about all of the stupid shit that’s been eating away at her brain all week—how her manager’s been breathing down her neck, how a guy ordered like twenty drinks for his buddies but left zero dollars on the table, how her mom doesn’t even give a shit when she comes home at four in the morning. When Nat vents to Lottie, she listens so intently, like she gets everything. It reminds Nat of those good nights in high school, high as hell together in someone else’s basement, bitching about their parents, tests, or just fucking annoying teachers. She and Lottie grew up very differently, but also, strangely, sort of the same.

So Nat thinks she might like listening to Lottie more.

After those long, silent months where Lottie wouldn’t speak—would barely even look at her—Nat realizes just how much she missed her voice. Even when Lottie was whispering to trees out there, it was better. It scared the hell out of Nat, but she was speaking. Now she’ll listen to Lottie ramble about anything: her therapy sessions, other patients who are fucking annoying, and, most recently, her parents coming to visit for just one weekend. They checked in, but flew out before Lottie even had time to process that they were here.

“I think my mom has a new boyfriend,” Lottie suddenly says, stretching her legs out over Nat’s lap. Nat is surprised by it, but lets her hands rest on top of her ankles. The weight on her is kind of nice. “This is how she gets when there’s a new one.”

“Fuck, she’d rather be with some guy than her own daughter?” Nat asks stunned, as if her mom isn’t the exact same.

“She doesn’t have to deal with her boyfriend’s crazy,” Lottie says.

You’re not crazy, Nat wants to say. It jumps at her throat almost instinctively. But her tongue stops the words. Lottie is crazy, isn’t she? Batshit, to some extent.

But looking at her, she doesn’t seem that way at all. She’s gentle and has the warmest brown eyes. And she’s wearing fucking pink pajamas.

Instead of overthinking it, Nat just says, “I thought your dad was the one who’s worse about this shit.”

“He is. But she doesn’t get it either, not really,” Lottie shrugs. She looks down sadly, dwelling on something. “My dad’s actually just in New York.”

“Really?” Nat asks, surprised. “NJ Transit fucking sucks and all, but he couldn’t even take the hour train down here?”

“Apparently not. The whole time he was saying he has to go for work, I thought he’d at least be halfway across the world, you know?”

The room is quiet again, but Nat’s stopped getting scared of Lottie going quiet again. Without realizing it, her hand begins tracing slow, comforting circles on Lottie’s ankle.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly.

“It’s okay. I’ve stopped expecting anything from them.”

“That’s the worst part, though, right? When you stop having hope that they’ll change,” Nat says.

“Yeah,” Lottie sighs a laugh.

Nat gave up hope for her dad well before he died, but part of her thought that, maybe, after he was gone, her mom would wake up. She never did—still acted like losing her would’ve been better than losing him. Nat gave up on her back then. But when she came home, when she was waiting to be picked up at the hospital, something in her still hoped. And Nat found that it really is true: her mom would’ve been fine losing her.

She wonders if Lottie felt that way, too. If something in her still hoped they’d show up for her, actually stick around for her, because they thought they’d really lost her.

Nat’s thumb now brushes over the exposed skin at Lottie’s ankle, between her fuzzy socks and the cut of her pajama pants. She blinks, her cold hand stilling over warm skin.

“I should… I should probably get going. Earlier shift at the bar tonight,” she says.

Lottie nods, retracting her legs. Nat’s hands brush over her jeans, where Lottie’s feet just were. She hesitates, wanting to pull them back onto her, stay just another five minutes, but she pushes the thought down—it’s stupid. She stands up.

She’s halfway to the door when Lottie says, “Nat?”

She pauses her step and turns. “Yeah?”

“Thank you for coming.”

“Tai’s applying to schools again. She’s trying for the spring, but maybe next fall if she has to.”

“Can’t even fuckin’ imagine,” Nat sighs a laugh before taking a sip of her beer.

“Is it not weird drinking at the bar you work at?” Van asks.

“Nothing weird about the drinks being free,” Nat grins.

The Ridgewood bar is surprisingly packed for a Thursday afternoon in central Jersey. But a crowd of people drinking this early makes her feel less alone in it—especially now that she’s roped Van into it, too. As Nat finishes her beer and waves to her coworker for another round, Van has turned to eye somebody across the bar.

“Is that Joey Sanderson?”

Nat doesn’t need to look to know that it’s him. “He’s been coming here every week.”

“Dude’s probably trying to get in your pants again,” Van laughs. “He was such a homophobic prick. He was always making comments about me and Tai.”

“Yeah, he was a fucking asshole,” Nat agrees. She chuckles to herself quietly. “I kind of forgot, but Lottie reminded me that he started that shit about me giving him a blowjob junior year.”

Van looks at Nat, furrowed eyebrows. “Lottie reminded you? You’re still seeing her?”

Nat’s mouth pushes open, then halfway shut. “No, uh—this was from before, when I was trying to get her to keep her mouth shut.”

“Oh,” Van says, nodding. “So, you’re not visiting her anymore?”

Nat blinks. “I… guess I still am. Sometimes. Just… I don’t know,” she sighs. “She was pretty fucking bad before. Just wanted to check in. It’s not a secret or anything.”

“Didn’t say it was.” Van lifts her shoulders innocently, but there’s a hint of a smile on her lips. “You just didn’t mention it, is all. How is she?”

“She’s good. Better than she was before, at least.”

“I should visit her again. I meant to, but all this shit with Tai…” Van sighs.

“What shit? Her going to college?”

“Yeah, sorta. She’s been really in her head about her career, I guess. She heard this story about her dad’s friend’s friend, or some shit. He’s a lawyer and he couldn’t land any cases because people found out about his boyfriend,” Van explains.

“Shit,” Nat’s eyes widen.

“It sucks, but what’s her plan? Dump me and pretend-marry some white-collar dude just to be a lawyer? Seems like a pretty miserable way to live, if you ask me.”

“Why’s she stressing, anyway? She hasn’t gotten in anywhere yet,” Nat scoffs.

“It’s Tai. You know she’s gonna. Besides, who’s gonna turn down having one of the plane crash girls at their school?” Van scoffs.

“You really think she’d write an essay about that?” Nat asks.

“It’s Tai,” Van repeats.

Nat takes a long sip of her beer. She tries to imagine what an essay about that would look like. How frail and scared they were out there; how they hunted and foraged for survival like brave little soldiers.

“She’d have to leave a lot of details out,” she chuckles bitterly.

There’s a certain comfort in talking to Lottie that Nat finds jarring, considering how out there, especially during their first winter, any conversation with Lottie spiked every nerve ending in her body. Eventually, she’d learned to let it go most of the time because she had to pick her battles with Lottie. There was nothing she could do if Lottie wanted to take shrooms or crawl into caves with Travis and Akilah to talk to It. If you’d told her then that someday, she’d find talking to Lottie be the best part of her day, she would’ve called you a fucking lunatic, because that used to be one of the worst.

She finds comfort in Lottie even when everything else in her life is going to shit. Even when Travis is ignoring her again, though he at least had the decency to come up with an excuse earlier this time: his mom busted him for drinking at home. Maybe Nat believes him, maybe it did actually happen, but it’s been weeks since she last saw him.

It bothers her all morning, despite downing a half-pint of vodka right when she upped from bed. It isn’t until she’s stumbling over to Lottie’s bed that she finally smiles a full-fledged, excited grin. She hops onto the mattress on her knees, partially hovering over Lottie.

“Lo-ttie,” she sings.

Lottie is momentarily quiet. Then, suddenly, she asks, “Have you been drinking?” Nat pulls back, bemused, but Lottie continues. “You shouldn’t do that.”

Nat has to fight an incredulous scoff because, really? Lottie Matthews is trying to give her health and wellness advice while she’s still locked in a mental hospital? Fucking ironic.

“Just a couple of beers,” Nat lies, waving her off. But Lottie’s still looking at her like she’s turning into some kind of alcoholic. “It was really hot outside today, okay? You jealous or something because I didn’t bring you one?”

Lottie is quiet, lips pressed together, hands folded in her lap. She doesn’t move, and Nat wonders if Lottie’s senses are so strong that she can smell that it’s vodka instead of beer. Not that Nat ever believed that Lottie is fucking supernatural, or anything, but she seems to genetically have heightened forms of all five senses.

“Come on, Lot. Tell me about the fucking meal of the day, or whatever.”

Lottie does. She had stew and potatoes today for lunch. And she doesn’t bring up the drinking again—at least not for some time.

“Would you rather,” Nat says, leaning back against the metal frame, “have teeth for hair, or hair for teeth?”

Lottie blinks slowly. “Jesus Christ.”

“This is important!”

Lottie sighs. “Hair for teeth, I guess.”

“Wrong answer.”

“How is there a wrong answer? I like my hair.”

“I like your hair, too, but then you can’t eat. That kinda fucking sucks.”

“I tried eating meat the other day,” Lottie says quietly, but her words still feel heavy as Natalie looks up at her. “Roast beef. I couldn’t stomach it.”

“To be fair, cafeteria food’s never been very good,” Nat tries to say lightly. But she hasn’t even bothered trying to eat meat since coming home. Just the sight of it makes her feel nauseous. “Same, though. I don’t know if I ever will again.”

“Me neither,” Lottie agrees.

“What did you do then? They let you pick something else?”

Lottie shakes her head. “I just picked at the vegetables on the side, mostly.”

Lottie breathes a disbelieving laugh. “How did you even get this in here?”

“I called ahead,” Nat says, sitting on her side of Lottie’s bed. She has a side now. It’s the one that’s closer to the door. Lottie always moves over when she hears it open.

Nat pulls down the crinkling sides of the plastic bag, unveiling three paper takeout boxes by the pail handles, two for Lottie, one for herself.

“This is the Chinese place you like, right?” Nat says as she digs into the bag again for a plastic fork.

“Yeah,” Lottie smiles, accepting the fork. One container has white rice, and the other has Mapo tofu. “You remember my order?”

“Duh,” Nat scoffs. “You got the same shit every time we all went to the mall.”

Lottie laughs quietly. It is true, after all. She never liked to switch her order at that, or any, place. Once she likes something, she fixates on it. It’s hard for her to want anything else.

Nat’s hands are a little wobbly around the string as she tries to push it through the needle. She’s kind of regretting that last drink she had now—her fingers keep slipping.

On the left, Lottie sets aside the small square of fabric she’s been embroidering. She stretches closer to Nat.

“Here,” she says in a quiet voice. She takes Nat’s hand in both of hers, steadying it. Carefully, she guides Nat to thread the string through the tiny eye of the needle, then closes Nat’s fingers around it. “Just like that.”

In a smooth motion, she coaxes the needle down under and back up through the cloth, forming the next stitch.

Something bounces around low in Nat’s stomach as she tries not to think about Lottie’s lingering hands on hers. She swallows, forcing her eyes to remain on the stitch.

“How’d you get so good at this?” she manages out when Lottie finally pulls back.

“A lot of time alone and bored at home,” Lottie laughs, almost a little sadly.

Each visit follows a loose structure: Nat arrives, Lottie smiles at her. They’ll catch each other up—mostly updates from Nat on what’s going on beyond these four walls. Lottie listens like she’s starving for every mundane detail. Lottie shares whatever she can—whatever Nat can get out of her, because she just likes hearing Lottie talk.

But today is different.

Today, Natalie walked her ass to the goddamn Wiskayok Public Library—she hasn’t stepped foot in a library since she was seventeen and wanted to use the campus computers to print out bootleg Blink-182 tickets for her, Kevyn, and Rich. She got a card, filled out a form, and half-listened to an annoying librarian lecture her about policies and overdue fees for what felt like hours. All because Lottie offhandedly mentioned this book that she used to love. She didn’t ask for it. Hell, she never asked for anything, but it had stuck to Nat like a burr and she had wanted to bring it for Lottie anyway.

But the book isn’t actually why today is different. Activities are already sometimes a part of their routine. It’s different because of this feeling in the air; Nat isn’t quite sure what it is, but she first notices it when she unveils the book, and there’s this look in Lottie’s eyes, and this inexplicable warmth in the air.

Nat sits on her designated side of the bed, flattened hand on each side of the stamped paperback copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She’s never heard of this book before, but apparently, Lottie would reread this all the time growing up.

She reads, “She doesn’t love me as much as she loves Neeley. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.”

Lottie listens like every syllable absorbs into her skin, nodding along to each word. Nat scoffs when she reaches the end of the page.

“I can’t believe this is your favorite book.”

“It’s a classic,” Lottie insists, but Nat’s not sure who considers this a classic. She’s not an avid reader or anything, but she’s at least heard of the big titles like Wuthering Heights and The Catcher in the Rye that she was forced to read in English class—at least the Cliff’s Notes version. But Lottie snatches the book from Nat’s hand and continues reading the next chapter, which Nat hardly listens to.

“Was that supposed to be profound?” Nat teases. “This is depressing. You should try Goosebumps. That shit’s actually fun.”

“You’re an asshole,” Lottie huffs. “It is profound—and it’s not depressing. It’s hopeful. You’ll understand in time. You just have to wait and see.”

“I’ve waited and seen enough,” Nat scoffs. “Spare my ears.”

She slaps the book shut between Lottie’s fingers. Lottie’s eyes flare with the challenge.

“Fuck you. Give it back,” Lottie laughs, tugging hard.

“Make me.”

Nat doesn’t really mean anything by it. It’s all in good, innocent fun. Lottie’s arms lunge forward, in the same skillfully swift method as her speedy footwork on the soccer field, and she’s wrestling to weaken Nat’s grasp on the book. Their arms jostle and tangle, pushing at each other and straining in all directions. They laugh through the struggle. It’s still all in good, innocent fun, until suddenly, Lottie is playing to win.

She climbs on top of Nat, straddling her thighs. All at once, the laughter tapers to quiet, heavy breaths. They go still, their faces inches apart, the book now a forgotten thing pinned flimsily between their hands. Lottie’s bangs fall forward, curtaining dark over her already-dark eyes. Nat is stricken dumb by how beautiful Lottie looks, flushed and breathless above her.

She realizes how hot her skin is burning when the paperback slides out from between them, landing facedown on the mattress, but Lottie’s hand doesn’t go with it. Instead, she keeps it curled around Nat’s fingers.

They stay there: breathing and touching, neither talking. Someone should break away and stop this. Someone should wave a white flag. But Natalie waits, and Lottie kisses her.

And Natalie realizes that oh, this is what feels different about today.

Her eyes flutter shut, her lips at a surprised standstill. When Lottie kisses her for the second time, Nat processes the softness of her supple lips. She opens her mouth and lets Lottie inside, inhales her, and it’s unlike anything she’s felt before.

Her body is quivering as Lottie drops her hands and readjusts to hold her hips. She’s making quiet, breathy noises when Lottie’s tongue slips inside of her mouth. She reaches for something—anything, and finds her hands on Lottie’s shoulders, sliding up to wrap around the base of her throat. They kiss and they kiss, quiet suctions and rustling touches, and Nat fears she might want to do this forever, especially when Lottie’s hands skirt around under the hem of Nat’s shirt, teasing the skin of her abdomen. It all becomes too much, too fast, and Nat’s head snaps back against the metal frame behind her.

Lottie’s breath hitches when she pulls back and their eyes meet for the first time. Nat’s face burns with a much deeper shade of red than before they started this, and she desperately needs reprieve.

“Fuck, I–” Nat chokes, and Lottie is voluntarily and apologetically shifting off of her. “I’ve gotta go.”

She isn’t in the headspace to come up with a proper lie, but she doesn’t really give a fuck because she needs to get the hell out of here. She doesn’t look at Lottie’s face again, but she assumes this is all obvious to Lottie, who’s a mind-reader or whatever, because she doesn’t say anything as Nat hurriedly leaps off the bed and bolts through the door without an excuse.

She feels guilty after Lottie kisses her.

That night, lying in bed, it’s all Nat can think about.

She should’ve tasted the regret. The rot of their past. She should’ve felt it on her tongue—the blood, the carved and cooked flesh. But all she tasted was soft, salty-sweet lips. All she felt was warm skin beneath her hands, the delicate veins of Lottie’s throat, and the unsteady-ticking pulse beneath her collarbone.

Lottie’s kiss lingers on Natalie’s lips.

When Natalie visits Lottie a few days later, it’s because she’s not an asshole. She doesn’t kiss her friends and fall off the face of the earth like none of it ever happened. She reserves that kind of casual cruelty for total strangers; hell, she practically made an art form out of it the first few months they were back. But for someone she actually knows, for Lottie, the very least she can do is show up and speak words out loud like a human being, right?

It’s basic decency. Nothing more complicated than that.

Granted, she does need to pour a couple of drinks before she’s worked up the courage to go, but that’s basically her standard operating procedure these days, so it hardly even counts as self-sabotage anymore.

By the time she’s signing her name at the front desk and exchanging the usual greetings and nods with the orderly, Natalie has her plan rehearsed to muscle memory: say it was a stupid, heat-of-the-moment mistake. Say it can’t happen again. Say it didn’t mean anything.

Because it didn’t mean anything. It can’t mean anything. She’s just sick. And you’re… you.

She’s pushing the door open. Lottie is there, curled up on the narrow bed in a shapeless gray sweater. Her hair is messy around her face. She looks up with tender eyes when she hears the door, her whole expression brightening.

It’s fucking disarming.

“Hey,” Nat says. She stands by the door.

“Hi,” Lottie returns. Her smile is so reserved that it’s as if she’s not sure she’s allowed to look happy about this.

Nat continues hovering by the door. It’s easier to do this if she keeps distance—but Lottie is already sitting up straight, already scooting over on the mattress like she always does to make room for Nat.

Goddamn it. Lottie isn’t going to make this easy for her.

Nat crosses her arms tightly over her chest. But she finds herself moving across the room like a moth in a hypnotic daze. She clears her throat as she takes a seat on the bed, at least having found the strength to sit on the opposite end.

“Look, I’m not here to… I just thought we should talk. About what happened…”

Lottie watches her for a moment, so patiently sad and intense that it makes Nat’s skin itch.

“I figured,” she says.

“It’s not gonna happen again,” Nat blurts before she can chicken out.

Lottie’s head tilts. “Okay.”

And that should be the end of it: a merciful, surgical severance with no questions asked. Lottie gave her the out, and if Nat followed what was best for her, she’d take it and run.

But Nat’s eyes flutter. Her knees bounce restlessly. She should probably say more, right? An I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I’m just fucked up.

“It’s just—we shouldn’t. It’s not–”

“You don’t have to explain,” Lottie says.

And Nat can and should take this second out that Lottie is putting right in her hands, but why doesn’t Lottie want an explanation? Every time Travis doesn’t give her enough, all she wants is an explanation—some sort of justification that makes her understand the disconnect, or at least enough of one that she can pretend to. But Lottie has always been better at lying to herself than Nat, hasn’t she?

“Aren’t you, uh… don’t you want to know why?” she asks, stupidly. Might as well have thrown herself onto her own funeral pyre.

Nat chews on her bottom lip. She doesn’t even know why—at least not in a way that she’s figured out how to express.

“You think it was a mistake,” Lottie says, like she fucking knows everything. “Don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but–” Nat chokes on her own words, blinking rapidly. “What do you think?”

Lottie seems to contemplate this. Her head tilts from side to side, and her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip. “I think you needed something. So did I.”

Nat wonders if Lottie’s considerations were between telling the truth and telling her the thing that’ll make her stay. Her eyebrows narrow in something of confusion, even though she knows, deep down, exactly where this is heading.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything if we don’t want it to,” Lottie continues, and somehow this is more cryptic than any of the bullshit she used to spew out there. “We can just… take what we need.”

And Nat would like to argue with that, she really would, but she’s a little too busy trying to remember how to breathe because Lottie is closer now, and she’s not quite sure when that happened.

“What is it that we… need, exactly?” Nat manages out, though it comes out embarrassingly thin.

The tilt of Lottie’s head and the hungered sheen that glosses her eyes fill in the blanks for Nat. Lottie’s fucking horny. That’s what this is, isn’t it? She’s touch-starved and sick with it. Probably hasn’t been touched by anybody in God knows how long, and Nat hates the way that thought lights something giddy in her stomach.

Lottie is climbing out of the blanket now, crawling forward, and Nat’s window to run away is thinning by the second. Not that she’s doing a damn thing about it.

“We can just talk,” Lottie says as if it’s a real suggestion and not a moot point when she’s inches away, the caps of her knees pressing into the side of Nat’s leg.

And Natalie realizes—oh, she realizes in full fucking color—that she is so, so fucked when she looks into Lottie’s slow-blinking doe eyes, patient like a saint waiting for Nat’s inevitable fall. And fall, she does.

She doesn’t start talking about mundane shit or bolting out the door, pretending like she’s got an early shift at the bar like she probably should. No, she does exactly what a rational, self-preserving person wouldn’t do: she crashes her mouth against Lottie’s like she’s under some kind of compulsion, kissing her in ways she didn’t even think to warn herself not to.

Lottie welcomes it wholeheartedly, taking Nat’s tongue into her mouth, giving her own back, messy and urgent and utterly starved. In fact, she worsens it all by shoving Nat down with a palm to her chest. It’s so quick that Nat doesn’t realize it’s happening until she sees the metal end of the bed looming above the edge of her forehead.

There’s creaking of springs and a disoriented blur of movement, and then, through dazed eyes, Nat finds that Lottie has crawled up over her, straddling her hips, even hungrier than before. Nat helplessly paws at a mound of soft fabric near the small of Lottie’s back, mostly for stability. But Lottie interprets the gesture differently. She lifts the oversized sweater over her head, leaving it to hang off the side of the bed.

Involuntarily, Nat’s head tips up, her elbows shaking where they prop her on the mattress. Lottie, whose hair is disheveled from the removal of her sweater, runs one hand back through it. All Nat can do is bite down on her lip and revel in the sight of a topless Lottie on top of her. Her lips pull apart as Lottie dives back down and kisses her again, sloppier now, sliding off her mouth and down her jaw and across the sensitive place where her pulse pounds at her throat. Shuddering out a breath, Nat screws her eyes shut, trying not to implode on the spot.

Lottie’s kisses grow lazier and half-distracted as her hand wanders down, popping the button on Nat’s jeans unceremoniously, slipping beneath the denim waistband and teasing over the abundantly-gathered heat there. Nat’s breathing sputters in a mortifying hiccup, blood rushing to her cheeks in a scorching surge that only takes a turn for the worse when Lottie’s fingertips hook beneath her underwear and drag experimentally over the surface before dipping inside of her, circling slowly.

“Fuck,” she finally lets herself groan out between bitten teeth, but is met with the punishment of stilling fingers and stagnating lips. She feels the smug quirk of Lottie’s lips on her neck. Then there’s a finger pressed to her trembling lips.

“Shh. Don’t make a sound. They might hear.”

And that might’ve only made Nat belt out an even louder, unholier cry, if not for Lottie one-handedly snagging her discarded sweater from the side of the bed, bunching it up, and stuffing it into Nat’s mouth. Nat’s eyes fly wide, but she bites down on the fabric, the excess gray cashmere infiltrating her nostrils purely with the embedded scent of Lottie.

Lottie moves her fingers again, working slow circles around the most sensitive spot until Nat’s hips are jerking helplessly against Lottie’s fingers, her throat fighting the battle of accidentally making a sound. Most of what shakily escapes is thankfully muffled by the sweater, but she’s losing faith in herself as the pressure coils inside of her. Her chest heaves, one hand tangling viciously in Lottie’s hair, the other digging into the sheets.

Sweat salts Natalie’s neck, but Lottie licks it up in a lazy line, warm and wet, never losing the steady rhythm of her fingers. She slips her free hand under Nat’s shirt, pinching hard at a nipple she manages to free from her bra, and that’s all it takes to tip Nat over.

Nat’s body convulses, head snapping back against a flat mattress, cashmere drowning the broken sounds she’s making as she comes hard around Lottie’s fingers. The saliva-damp sweater finally falls from between her teeth.

It takes a few long, scattered breaths for her brain to reassemble itself into anything remotely resembling functional thought.

Lottie pulls back slightly, proud and a little breathless herself, brushing fallen hair out of her own face. “Was that good?” she asks. “Did you get what you needed?”

“Uh-huh…”

Lottie casually rolls onto her back beside her as if she didn’t leave Nat lying there with red-painted cheeks and a scrambled brain. She stares at the ceiling, no fucking clue what to say now.

This can’t happen again.

Natalie might’ve been able to put a stop to it the second time, if it weren’t for Lottie’s mouth on her tits. She thinks this might be blacking her brain more than any of the liquor she drank did.

Lottie uses a hand to push her shirt up higher, suctioning her lips around a nipple while looking up through half-lidded eyes for the reaction she wants. Because, as Natalie quickly learns, Lottie is intent with everything she does. Everything Natalie’s chest rises at, Lottie commits to memory and does again better the next time.

Natalie’s eyes flutter open, trying to paw the back of Lottie’s head to keep her breathing grounded while Lottie switches between tongue and teeth, left and right. “You like doing that?” she asks curiously.

Lottie pulls back wet-lipped, looking up. She nods her head eagerly, and there’s a serious look in her eyes. “I like everything when it’s you.”

Natalie’s eyes blow wide, her chest feeling like it’s spasming as Lottie just goes on like she was before, bowing her mouth down once again like she didn’t just fucking say that.

Nat’s chest presses to Lottie’s back, breathing into the crook of her neck from behind. One hand climbs up from Lottie’s stomach to her chest and, finally, to wrap around her throat. Her other hand pulls the hair tie holding Lottie’s braid, fingers weaving through the plaits until her hair spills down. She presses her nose to the depths of her hair, the light smell of lavender shampoo. She then presses a warm kiss just below Lottie’s ear. Lottie only allows herself a hushed moan. Her hand meets the one around her throat, aiding the pressure.

Nat keeps kissing around the side of her head—her ear, the baby hairs on the line—while her free hand travels around to the hem of Lottie’s pajama pants. She pauses there, fingers brushing the cotton.

“You smell so fucking good,” she mumbles, pressing a kiss to her earlobe.

Lottie breathes in response, hand tightening over Nat’s. Nat weaves her hand under the waistband, fingers meeting wet heat. Lottie can be eerily quiet when she needs to be, but Nat will never forget the sound of her shaky whimpers each time she comes undone.

This is weird—to show up, fuck Lottie, and then awkwardly shuffle out afterwards. She’s not entirely sure how they got into this absurd pattern.

See, Nat has tried to make this dynamic different. Every time, she walks into Lottie’s room with that very intention, in fact. She’ll start a normal conversation, like the ones they used to have, telling Lottie about her day or bringing her some book she’d mentioned.

But then Lottie will do some cute thing, leaning her head on Nat’s shoulder, or playing with her hand or her hair while they read, and then Nat can’t help it. Then they’re making out. Then Lottie’s head is between her legs, her hands squeezing at her inner thighs, pushing her further apart, and Nat is trying her very best to suppress the noises that might get her permanently banned from this place as Lottie’s tongue laps around her center skillfully.

“So, uh—” Nat pants, breathless but still dangerously curious. This might be the weirdest way they’ve done this so far—sitting upright, pants off, straddled and straddling, face to face under broad daylight and unflattering overhead lighting that she hoped to never be inspected in outside of those once-a-year mandatory doctor’s appointments before the school semester. It should be the opposite of sexy, except for the inconvenient fact that it really isn’t, because Lottie’s knee is moving between her legs too precisely. “Have you… done this before? With girls?”

She feels like a total guy for asking. But it’s been swarming her brain since the first time Lottie put her mouth on hers, and it’s only gotten more incessant since.

Lottie’s eyebrows tick up, her mouth curving into a fond smirk of amusement. For a second, she looks genuinely excited by Nat’s momentary lapse in cool. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I mean, fuck—” Nat groans, because Lottie has the audacity to speed up right as she says it, her thigh flexing with metronomical rhythm. Nat’s hands scramble for purchase, finally finding the back of Lottie’s head like her life raft. She tugs on the back of Lottie’s hair as her hips rock along in sync, chasing friction, and she almost forgets what the hell they were talking about. “I’m asking, aren’t I?”

Lottie laughs before it softens into a smile. She gazes into Nat’s eyes. Just for a moment, she slows her pace just enough so that she can kiss Nat.

“None of them were you,” she says.

Almost embarrassingly, Nat comes at the same time, with Lottie’s dark eyes piercing right through her.

After last time, Nat decides that this thing—this stupid, secret thing between her and Lottie—needs to stop. For real this time. She’s certain of it in the sound way that all the best decisions are made: crossed between drunk and high. She saw Travis last night. They didn’t do anything, but they smoked a pack of Reds and drank cheap vodka straight from the bottle in the parking lot outside of the liquor store. It was nice for him to need her again.

When she walks into Lottie’s room the next day, she’s ready. Or, as ready as can be with a rehearsal done within the spinning and throbbing walls of her mind from the hangover due to last night’s overconsumption. It’ll be a clean break—no more fucking around in between Lottie’s group sessions and nightly bed checks like two teenagers humping in the back of a Civic so their parents don’t know. No more pretending it wasn’t deeply, fundamentally fucked from the start to be sneaking around in a mental hospital for this.

She likes getting off, and Lottie’s, like, really good at getting her off, but it’s not like this really can or should be anything, right?

But the plans, like most things in Nat’s life, get caught somewhere and dissolve, because Lottie isn’t curled up in bed in pajamas or shapeless loungewear. She’s standing upright. And—Jesus Christ—she’s dressed.

It’s almost offensively unreal how good she looks. She’s wearing a ruffled white v-neck with a baby pink skirt that hovers just past her knees. Her hair is neatly combed and parted, bangs falling just right over her forehead. There’s a golden glow to her.

“Got plans without me?” Nat teases, because she can’t help herself. It’s like her brain slammed the emergency brakes but her mouth refuses to listen.

Lottie smiles at her, and it’s the kind of smile that makes Nat forget for a second where they are.

Lottie doesn’t just look good—she looks healthier. She looks almost like a picturesque snapshot of what she used to look like in high school, beautifully and effortlessly put together no matter if they were last-minute grabbing burgers at a diner after practice or going to a party Jackie mandated their presence for weeks in advance.

“They’re letting me out now—for supervised outings,” Lottie tells her.

“Holy shit. You serious?”

Lottie nods her head. “They said I’ve made good progress for three months. I’ve been taking my medication and doing well in group.”

Without thinking, Natalie is flying toward her, engulfing Lottie in her arms, squeezing her too hard. “That’s fucking amazing, Lot,” she gushes into the frilled cotton over her shoulder, overwhelmed by how stupidly emotional she’s feeling.

Lottie’s still smiling when they stop hugging. She looks down at her hopefully. “Do you want…”

“To supervise you?” Nat chuckles.

“We could go somewhere for a few hours. I only have to be back by six.”

And Nat doesn’t really have to think much about it, because she knows she’s saying yes. She’s probably been saying yes to Lottie—or at least, always coming around to a yes after her initial protests—since the first time they locked eyes across the field freshman year, spring semester, during soccer tryouts.

After Natalie signs her out, she and Lottie end up at Willow Creek Park, a gallery of orange and gold leaves decorating fading green grass.

There’s a small café on the corner of the street that excites Lottie as if it’s a Parisian import. She orders them drinks—a decaf latte for herself, a full-leaded black coffee for Nat that she doesn’t fail to harass her for—and a paper bag full of whatever pastries she and Nat can think to point at in the glass display.

At first, they circle the paved pathway around the park, just exchanging small talk and catching up. It finally feels like when they’d talk during Nat’s visits, except now it’s not so claustrophobic. It’s lighter and sweeter, because Lottie is basking in every moment of fresh fall air that she can get.

There are people and things all around them, and Lottie’s eyes dart to everything like a child seeing them for the very first time. There are joggers puffing past them on the pathway, families walking their dogs, sparrows chirping in the trees and diving down for breadcrumbs. The mid-September sun showers their skin, and Lottie soaks it in, so enamored that she might stare directly at it.

When they finally stop walking aimlessly, Lottie tugs her off the path, to a little secluded corner of the park. They drop down onto the grass, shoes kicked aside, socks and bottoms dampening with dew, and there’s just the right amount of sunshine bleeding through the trees that surround them on all sides. And it’s only then, when Natalie looks over at Lottie, at her soft smile and starry gaze, that she realizes this feels an awful lot like a date.

Not that she’s been on too many cutesy, sunny park dates—it’s mostly been late-night ones back in high school with the end goal of hastily making out, and now the ones with Travis that she’d never consider a date, more of a smoke or flask-sharing session. But Lottie is tearing her half of an almond croissant and the sun speckles her brown eyes to a shade of honey, and Natalie is so distracted by the aching prettiness of it that she nearly forgets to grab her half.

“Thanks,” Nat says. She scarfs down the flaky pastry, watching Lottie lie back on the grass, hair fanning out angelically.

Natalie tries to look away, to people-watch the strollers and the joggers, or count the Goddamn sparrows she can spot, as a distraction. But Lottie gazes at her from the ground, and she can’t help but look.

“Come here,” Lottie suddenly says, beckoning her with two fingers.

Nat gives her a skeptical look, but finds herself lying down on the grass anyway.

“What?”

Instead of answering, Lottie, almost maddeningly slowly, turns onto her side and brings her thumb to Nat’s cheekbone, swiping across it.

“You had an eyelash,” she says with buttery innocence. She holds the dark lash out in front of Nat on the pad of her thumb. “Make a wish.”

Nat’s cheeks are flaming. She wants to tell Lottie to go fuck herself for that, but her stupid smile betrays her, and she blows the eyelash and wishes that she’ll be able to stop being in this hole of purposelessness and guilt. That maybe, someday, she’ll know what it’s like to be happy.

“What did you wish for?” Lottie asks.

Nat scoffs, cheek pressed to damp grass. “Aren’t you not supposed to say or it doesn’t come true?”

Lottie smirks a little. “When did you get so superstitious?”

Nat thinks to scoff again and argue that she’s fucking not, that she mostly just did it to entertain Lottie, but she says nothing at all. They’re staring at each other, soft smiles on their lips. Natalie feels her heart thumping in her chest and her mind fraying and then, suddenly, she’s doing the stupid thing she always does: leaning in to kiss Lottie.

Except this is different, in the middle of a serene park on a perfect fall day.

This kiss is soft and warm, just lips against lips, in a sugary-sweet kind of way. Lottie’s hand touches her cheek, and she’s about to go in for another kiss, but Nat breathes against her lips, eyes fluttering open.

“Fuck,” she curses. Their noses are still ghosting. She can feel Lottie’s breath on her mouth. “Someone might see.”

“I think my house is close to here,” Lottie whispers.

“How much time do we have?” Nat asks.

“At least two more hours.”

Natalie doesn’t have much time to consider that this is probably Lottie’s first time back to this house since her parents had her committed, because they’re stumbling up the grand staircase, furious hands and even more furious lips, losing clothes along the way to Lottie’s bedroom.

There are pictures of them in her room. Yellowjackets team photos from away games and sleepovers, which Nat nearly knocks down on their way to Lottie’s bed.

It’s different doing this here. Lottie’s real bed is silken and plush; Nat’s back melts into the memory foam as Lottie gets on top of her. And now that they’re in here, everything is moving slower. Lottie’s kissing her slower, touching every part of her slower, gazing at her slower, mapping her like it’s the first time. They’re already half-undressed by the time they’re in her bed, but they take everything off for each other this time. It’s not hurried and frenzied touching while nearly fully dressed anymore. She feels Lottie’s warm skin against hers, their bare chests pressed together.

Lottie scoots back on her knees and then stretches, just far enough for Natalie to get a good look at all of her. It’s the first time she’s seeing Lottie in full—in this context, at least. Her tan skin, the expanse of her long legs, the slope of her breasts, the lines of her ribcage. She’s beautiful in that effortless way that makes you hate yourself a little for staring. Natalie stares anyway. She can’t not.

Lottie is staring at her, too. Her eyes are cloudy with awe, her lips hanging apart as her eyes thoroughly cover every inch. It makes Natalie feel oddly vulnerable. It’s not just the naked thing—though sure, that’s a part of it. It’s this look in Lottie’s eyes, like she can see her inside and out. Natalie thinks Lottie might never stop staring if she isn’t forced to.

“Please,” Natalie rasps, and she isn’t sure if she’s begging Lottie to touch her or to stop looking at her like that.

Hazy-eyed, Lottie slots their legs together, bringing Natalie’s hiked leg over her shoulder to hold onto. And fuck, Nat didn’t know they were doing this. She props herself up on her elbows, gripping Lottie’s ankle for support as Lottie begins rocking her hips forward, and Natalie gasps. All she can do is try to reciprocate the motion, but the feeling of Lottie against her turns her brain and limbs into mush. She chokes out moans that are nearing sobs while holding onto Lottie tighter.

“Lottie, fuck,” Nat pants out unsuppressed, because she finally can be as loud as she wants, no one listening.

When her ears finally work again, she hears a breathless “Natalie.” Her hips buck forward and she comes so unbelievably hard that her head slams painfully against what might be the softest pillow she’s ever rested her head on.

She tenses between her legs from the uncomfortable sensitivity as Lottie continues moving against her, riding out the final wave of her own. But through heavy-lidded eyes and her own aftershocks, Natalie watches Lottie finish—how she scratches down Natalie’s knee, how her head tilts back, how her body thrusts forward one last time and then goes slack as she finally comes. She collapses forward, her sweaty body pressed against Natalie’s before sliding off her side.

And Natalie expects them to redress and drop Lottie back, but neither of them move. Lottie stays partially on her. She tangles their legs together and touches Nat’s jaw tenderly. With the most gentle smile, Lottie leans in and kisses Nat slowly.

Natalie strolls around the bedroom half-naked while Lottie is lying in bed, disheveled hair, tangled lazily beneath a white comforter. She grazes her fingertips over the bookshelves and baby pictures, smiling sadly at them.

“You’ve got a Polaroid?” Nat suddenly asks, wriggling out a slate blue camera tucked behind a silver photo frame with one of their team photos.

Lottie stirs beneath the comforter, but straightens up, rubbing away at bleary eyes. She squints to get a better look at the camera. “Oh yeah,” she says like she’s just remembering its existence herself. “It was a late present from my dad when he couldn’t make it for Christmas sophomore year. I never really used it much.”

Nat has a lightbulb behind her eyes, a little smirk on her lips. She jumps on the bed on her knees, camera in hand, pointed at Lottie. “We should put it to use, then.”

Lottie groans, pulling the comforter up to cover half her face like a shield. “Nat… don’t.”

“Come on.”

“I look a mess.”

“No,” Nat looks at her like she’s ridiculous. She sets the camera down beside her, sliding closer. She smiles, tucking a strand of dark hair behind Lottie’s ear. “You look so fucking pretty, Lot.”

Lottie makes a small humming noise in her throat before smiling into a brief kiss that Nat gives her. She only gets one before Nat’s scooting back on her knees, lifting the camera up to her eye. Lottie groans again, but lets the comforter slip down to her hips in defeat, baring the glow of the afternoon light pouring through the window.

Lottie is posed there effortlessly like some kind of model out of a French magazine—Nat doesn’t know, but imagines that’s what they’d look like: bedroom eyes, kiss-swollen lips, bra strap hanging off the shoulder. The shutter clicks, flash goes off, and Lottie’s waving her off with a shy kind of laugh before Nat can convince her to take another.

The camera begins developing the photo, but Nat sets it down, not looking at it just yet. She’d rather look at the real thing while it’s still in front of her.

They’re just stepping out of a cozy Italian spot on the edge of Paramus when a parasitic man with a fancy tie and a clipboard in hand steps straight into their path more jarringly than a pothole.

“Excuse me,” he says, flashing his unnaturally pearly whites like he won the lottery. Nat feels dull-aching dread already. “You’re Natalie Scatorccio, right? And you’re—Charlotte Matthews? Malcolm Matthews’s daughter? Wow—we heard you were institutionalized.”

Lottie asks, “Can we help you?”

“Oh, no—well, yes, actually. Peter Fenwick, The Bergen Bulletin.” He flashes his shiny laminated press pass like it makes this any better. “We’re working on a piece. Everyone’s talking about you girls, you know. The Yellowjackets. The survivors. I mean, it’s unimaginable what you girls went through.”

Nat has been through shit like this too many times to buy the faux-sympathy. So it comes as no surprise when he tacks on: “And, uh—there’s been a lot of speculation. A lot of rumors. People just want to know what really happened out there.”

“Cool. Go bother someone else, dude,” Nat says flatly. This might be new for Lottie, but she’s used to shit like this. She grabs Lottie’s hand, side-stepping him.

But he’s fast and persistent, shifting to get in front of them again. “I understand it’s hard. But I want to give you the chance to tell the world your story. Your truth—straight from your mouths, and nobody else’s.”

“Fuck off,” Nat growls, readying to move again.

Quickly, Peter adds: “There’s been a lot of talk about Benjamin Scott. Your assistant coach.”

That stops her cold. She shouldn’t engage in this—that’s what they all agreed on. But she can’t help herself. “What about him?”

“Well,” Peter says smoothly, “the official statement you guys made says he died right when the plane first crashed, with the others. But his family seems to think otherwise, since they never found his remains. He was a strong, fit guy, you know? Seems like out of everyone, he’d have the best fighting chance out there.”

Nat’s face has already drained of color. Her mouth is open, but she doesn’t think her throat is going to be able to produce any words. All she can see is Coach Scott with his back against the pen, eyes wet and pleading, while her hands tremble around the base of the knife.

Lottie steps forward. She looks pissed. Nat hasn’t seen that on her in a long, long time. “We’re done here.”

She grabs Nat’s hand again, this time harder, pulling her past Peter.

“Don’t you think his family deserves to know? Maybe his girlfriend?”

Lottie doesn’t look back, dragging her far away, to the car. Nat’s eyes are wrestling with tears as she leans against the trunk.

“Fuck this,” she grumbles tearfully. “Those fucking low-life leeches.”

“He was an asshole.”

Nat eyes the pavement. “You know, Coach’s parents never gave a fuck about him before. They gave him so much shit,” she says.

“Yeah, well, some shitty parents like to pretend to give a shit to look half-decent. Just not ours,” Lottie says. Nat sighs, looking away. Lottie rubs Nat’s shoulder for a moment. “Are you okay?”

Nat lets out a bitter laugh that isn’t much of a laugh at all. “No, not really,” she mutters. “But when am I ever?”

She sighs, reaching in her pocket for a cigarette, thinking Lottie might stop her and tell her it’s a bad idea. But Lottie just watches the lighter’s flame meet the tip of the cigarette. Maybe she knows that Natalie needs it this time.

“You think this’ll ever die down? The reporters, the stares...”

“It’ll get better,” Lottie answers. She gives the smallest, saddest smile. “Never fully, though. Not unless we disappear.”

Nat considers that as she smokes. “Tempting.”

It’s silent, but Lottie keeps watching her.

“You’d want to?” she asks.

Nat spits a quiet laugh, but when she looks over, she thinks Lottie might actually be serious about it.

“Everywhere I go, I’m reminded of things. People recognize us. And staying with my mom is…” Nat sighs. Lottie’s fingers trace the dips of her ribcage as she listens. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay in this fucking town anymore.”

“What’s keeping you here?” Lottie asks.

Nat looks down at her, wedged over her chest. Her arm is around Lottie, hand over her upper back, twirling a strand of dark brown hair.

“I can only think of one thing right now,” Nat breathes.

Lottie brings her hand up to Nat’s cheek, kissing her tenderly. She presses her head into the crook of Nat’s neck, just resting there.

Nat’s fingers trace down her bare spine as she thinks. They probably have twenty more minutes or so before they should be heading back to the hospital, checking Lottie back into that tiny cage. Since they’ve been able to do this at Lottie’s house, it’s gotten strangely more intimate—maybe it’s the extra space in the Queen bed, or maybe it’s because she’s getting used to this.

It’s nice to lie here together, even if only for a short amount of time each visit. But as Lottie nuzzles in closer, leaving a light peck on her neck, Natalie can’t shake the feeling that she would give anything to just fall asleep right here, and wake up with Lottie still beside her in the morning.

Lottie kisses her, slow and pretty. They’re half-undressed, tangled together on the linen sofa in the Matthews house, the living room dim from only the old lamp in the corner. Lottie’s skirt is at her ankles. Nat moves down to kiss her neck while her hands work the clasp of her bra.

“You know, you can stay here whenever you want.”

“What?” Nat peeks up, mouth still over the hollow of Lottie’s throat.

“If you don’t want to go home—if you don’t want to see your mom. Mine is never home,” Lottie explains, running a hand affectionately through Natalie’s dark hair. “You’d have the place to yourself.”

Nat lifts her head, eye-level with Lottie now. “Lottie, I can’t do that…”

“I’m not saying you have to,” Lottie says, thumb brushing over her cheekbone affectionately. “I just… I know what it’s like. Not wanting to be around your parents.”

Nat’s eyelashes flutter, a half-smile there before she presses a chaste kiss to Lottie’s lips, and then dips back down to kiss her collarbone.

Since that one lunch, Natalie has been thinking about Coach Scott a lot these days. He shows up mostly at night and lures her to the bottle at the foot of her bed. She used to tell herself that she was sparing him from worse, but it never feels that noble no matter how many times she rewinds it. She thinks about what he’d be doing right now if she hadn’t taken away his chance at coming home. Maybe things would’ve been different if she hadn’t played God.

She imagines him getting on the first train out of Wiskayok, heading straight to New York City. He’d show up on Paul’s doorstep and say, I’m here. I love you. I thought about you everyday out there. I was scared back then, but I’m not anymore. And Paul would pull him in wordlessly and kiss him because he thought about Ben everyday, too—some part of him held onto hope that he’d come back, even if it was stupid, because there’s no such thing as false hope. They’d move in together and be really, really annoyingly happy. He’d find a new job that he loved. And he’d never look back at the life he left behind.

She cries when she thinks about it. She cries harder when she thinks about how Paul must’ve felt when he heard they’d been rescued, scoured every name on the list over and over again, but never found Benjamin Scott. She cries and she cries, and she drinks in between the crying, until her tear ducts have lost all function and she thinks she might throw up if she has one more sip.

Natalie goes to Lottie’s house. She doesn’t know why—she told herself she wouldn’t do this, not without Lottie with her. But she hates being at home, and she hates thinking about things.

Lottie’s house is eerily empty, every footstep echoing across absurdly spacious walls and mahogany furniture. Natalie hadn’t noticed all those times she was with Lottie. She half-expects Mr. Matthews to jump out of a shadowy corner at every turn, back in Jersey for a surprise seasonal check-in for his own daughter. Nat also pictures Lottie living here before everything, and how lonely she must’ve felt. Lonely with her own thoughts that she couldn’t trust.

She misses Lottie. She couldn’t visit or take her out today because they were doing observations, apparently. Nat hopes that means she’ll be able to leave that place sometime soon, then.

She lies in Lottie’s bed. It’s still soft and leagues better than her own, but it’s not the same without Lottie. The sheets smell like her, at least.

As she drifts asleep, she begins to think about what life might be whenever Lottie is released. She wonders what Lottie would do, and how different things would be. She wonders if they’d continue as is, doing… whatever it is that they’re doing now. Or, the thought that scares her most, is if they’d become something different.

Something more.

Stumbling into the parking lot outside of the bar, Natalie wipes the snot pouring out of her nose from the chilly November air. As usual, she drank on the job, but it’s not enough to numb her brain. She still thinks about everything she shouldn’t.

“Natalie?”

She blinks through stray tears and finds Travis standing across the lot, hands in his pockets. He smiles at her faintly. She follows him like it’s the only thing she can do.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

He doesn’t say it outright, but he came here to see her. Natalie knows that he did.

“I’ve thought about it. So many times,” he says through a choked-up breath. His lips are wobbly from the tears.

She and Travis are in the backseat of his car again. She’s drunk and he is now, too.

“I’ve thought about it, too,” she admits.

He looks at her. “Sometimes I think I should just fucking do it. Get it over with, you know.”

Natalie shakes her head. She holds his hand, feeling the tears welling up in her eyes. This is all her fault. He wouldn’t be like this if it weren’t for her.

“No,” she says. “Promise me you’ll never do that.”

He’s quiet.

“Promise me, Travis,” she says again, louder this time.

“Okay,” he gives in. “Do you promise, too?”

She nods her head. He’s crying now.

“You’re all I’ve got, Natalie. Don’t leave me.”

That undoes everything inside of Natalie. She starts crying, too. He kisses her, and it’s salty from the mix of both of their tears. She clings to him because he needs her, and she needs him.

“Drinking isn’t helping anymore,” Travis admits, though he still sips from the flask. “I thought it was. I mean, it was, at first. But now…”

“Too weak?” she chuckles bitterly.

“Something like that,” he agrees, passing the flask back to her.

Absentmindedly, her nails clack against the silver metal. She could finish off this vodka—there isn’t much left, anyway. But she’s been aching for something more, and she’s pretty sure now that Travis has been, too.

“I might have something that could help.”

They go through the stash she got from Rich’s cousin like water.

Her mom’s been screwing some new guy and in all honesty, Nat’s grateful because any asshole her mom gets attached to would probably be better than her dad. Not that her mom would tell her about any of this, anyway—Nat just found a condom wrapper by the fridge and kicked it under, and assumed that’s where she’s been off to instead of sitting on the couch all day.

Travis does another line off the back of a plate, head tilting back as he stumbles backwards to the bed where Natalie’s lying on her elbows. He grins at her boyishly, a jittery laugh coming out before he leans in to kiss her. She flinches a little when his hands move to her waist.

“You good?” he asks, pulling back.

She nods her head. Her brain is buzzing, but there’s something stuck to the underside of her tongue. Everyone used to think she was the school slut, but she’s never been good at this. She isn’t doing anything wrong, is she? She and Lottie are just fucking sometimes—a lot. But why does it feel like she’s supposed to say it?

Her mouth almost forms the shapes. I’m fucking Lottie. No, obviously not. I’ve been visiting her. Too vague. I’ve been seeing her. What the fuck?

“Natalie?”

She doesn’t say anything at all. She forces a smile and kisses Travis again. It’s messy and dry-mouthed, and her brain is barely processing what her body is doing, but they don’t stop.

Lottie’s been quiet the whole way to her house, which isn’t that weird in and of itself—she’s not exactly known to be a chatterbox—but this particular brand of silence is odd, even for her.

Maybe Lottie knows about Travis. Maybe she can smell it on Nat—guilt and boy sweat from last night clinging to her skin. Maybe she read into why Nat’s visits have been less frequent lately. Maybe she figured it out by osmosis or her mind-reading, or Nat left behind some other self-sabotaging trail.

But also, it’s not technically a secret. Not in any official, state-of-the-union capacity. Travis isn’t her boyfriend. Lottie isn’t her girlfriend. If Lottie were to ask, Nat would tell her—she thinks.

Nat stumbles through the doorway, undoing her belt before she’s even touched Lottie, who’s setting the keys down. Nat reaches for her clumsily, fingers dabbing her jaw before attempting a kiss. Lottie barely kisses her back. When Lottie pulls back, her hands are firmly on Nat’s shoulders, holding her at a distance.

“Nat,” she says. “You’re wasted.”

Nat blinks, swaying slightly. Half the time she sees Lottie, she’s had at least one drink. Sure she’s had a little more than she should’ve today, but she thought that Lottie was done bringing this up after that one time. “I’m not.”

“You are,” she says. “We… can’t. Not like this.”

“Oh my fucking God,” Nat groans. “Are you serious? Fuck, Lottie. Why are we even here, then?”

Lottie touches her cheek, tracing along the curve. There’s a softly sad look in her eyes. “I missed you.”

It makes Natalie want to kiss her more, but she knows Lottie won’t. So she follows her upstairs and they lie down in Lottie’s bed doing nothing much at all, which Nat doesn’t mind. She just likes sitting in Lottie’s presence.

Showgirls is playing on the box TV. Nat’s mind weaves in and out, but the haze of Lottie’s dark hair and beautiful eyes is always there. Lottie is playing with her fingers. Nat breathes sleepily, eyes beginning to close. But she reaches out to touch Lottie’s soft face above hers.

“‘M sorry, Lottie,” she slurs.

Lottie laughs, scrunching her eyebrows. “Sorry for what?”

“Travis,” she says.

Lottie just stares, not saying anything. But it’s not like Nat’s in a state to give her anymore information. Her hand falls from Lottie’s face as she dozes off.

Okay, so Lottie is definitely acting differently. She still hasn’t been able to piece together what happened at the last visit—it’s fragmented and mostly black towards the end. She remembers being in Lottie’s bed and falling asleep. She isn’t sure if she woke up that evening or how she signed Lottie back into the hospital, but she knows she found herself still in Lottie’s bed in the morning, just without Lottie there.

As soon as the front door shuts, Nat is turning around to face Lottie.

“Hey, I’m, uh… I’m really sorry for last time, Lottie,” she says. She does remember the part where Lottie told her they can’t fuck because she’s too drunk.

“It’s okay.”

“I’m not drunk this time,” she adds on, as if it’s some kind of accomplishment. And for her, it actually, really is.

“Okay. That’s good.” Lottie smiles at her, but Nat can’t shake the feeling that it’s a little forced.

Still, she accepts it when Lottie kisses her. She presses her hands into Lottie’s cheeks, pulling her closer. They’re tumbling back to the sofa, Nat nearly tripping back over the arm. But Lottie steadies her, guiding her to perch on the arm instead.

Nat’s legs wrap around Lottie’s hips as their mouths collide again. Lottie pushes Nat’s leather jacket off, then begins working at pulling her black tank top up. She always stops to admire, and always stops to give special attention to her tits with her mouth. Nat moans quietly, reaching for Lottie’s hand to pull her up closer. Her hand meets thick, clothy gauze. Her eyes shoot open.

“What happened there?” Nat asks, holding onto her wrist. It’s her left hand, bandaging wrapped around the center of her palm.

Lottie stills, lips wet as they pull apart. “Um… just an accident—utensil malfunction. I was trying to cut my food at lunch.”

Nat doesn’t buy it, blinking in slow confusion as Lottie resumes by dipping down to kiss her. She manages to partially kiss back, but she feels a pang in her stomach—and not the good kind to get off. It’s sinking and scary, and it’s pulling her elsewhere, so far away that she feels like she’s back out there.

In the snow, Lottie is kneeling, knife to her palm, blood dripping down into the altar of the trees.

The picture of it presses vividly on the forefront of her mind like a bruise to the brain, like she could touch the snow if she reached her hand out a little further. She tries to shake it away, but doesn’t know if she can, even as Lottie hastily pulls her jeans down, wriggling them off her ankles.

Not until Lottie is getting on her knees on the floor, pushing Nat’s legs apart. Her hungry eyes look up, and Nat drowns in them. She presses a kiss to the side of Nat’s knee, and then to the inside of her thigh. Her hands slide up the back of Nat’s calves. Nat feels her core throbbing in desperation, and she’s practically tugging Lottie up higher by the back of her head.

Lottie rises slowly, sitting tall on the full stretch of her knees in worship. But the hunger in her eyes subsides as her hands trail up from Nat’s thighs to waist. Nat’s hand tightens in her hair, legs spreading over Lottie’s shoulders. But Lottie doesn’t move closer to the heat. She looks up, suddenly.

“Are you here because you want to be?” Lottie asks, fingers dancing up Natalie’s sides. “Or is it because Travis ignored your calls again?”

Nat’s fingers loosen entirely in Lottie’s hair. “What the fuck?”

“I remember it now. You told me he was pulling away. He wasn’t answering your calls,” Lottie elaborates.

Nat looks at her incredulously, with raised eyebrows and a sharp breath. She hardly remembers telling all that to Lottie, but she figures it was one of those times where she thought Lottie was barely conscious and wasn’t listening anyway. And it certainly must’ve been before… all this started. “Fuck, Lottie. You don’t get to judge me for this.”

Lottie’s eyes are soft and hurt.

“I’m not judging,” she says. “I’m asking.”

“Yeah. Asking stupid questions while your head’s between my legs.”

Lottie draws her lips in, moving back slightly. Natalie feels the ugliness boiling in her chest, especially when her eyes find the bandaged hand at Lottie’s side. She pictures what’s underneath the gauze: the marred, bloody, scarring skin of her palm. She pictures Lottie in the corner of her tiny hospital room, whispering to It, or the Wilderness—or whatever the fuck—dripping her blood in some kind of sacrificial ritual that takes them all back to the catastrophic beginning where twenty-three people left, and only eight returned.

And truthfully, Natalie doesn’t know the answer to Lottie’s question. Or she does. She wants to be here, but she also wants Travis to need her.

She shouldn’t want Lottie. Crazy Lottie, who put an axe through a man’s head. She needs Travis to love her because he’s the only one who understands—the only one who wasn’t fucked up.

She needs Travis. Travis saved her life. Travis, unknowingly or not, gave up his brother’s life for her. That has to be worth something in the end. They have to need each other.

(She shouldn’t need Lottie.)

“Natalie…”

“I don’t know, okay?”

“Is that why–is that what you and Travis do? Drugs?” Lottie asks.

“Oh my God.”

“I’m worried about you,” Lottie says pleadingly. “I just want you to be safe.”

“Oh, fuck off, Lottie,” Nat scoffs, exasperated. “Where do you think we got that from? Did you forget that you’re the one who got him on shrooms? He had to stay high to deal with your bullshit, and so did I.”

“He came to me. You both did.”

“Is that what you’ve deluded yourself into believing?” Nat’s almost amused by how deeply she believes her own bullshit. Hastily, she hops off the arm of the couch and begins pulling her jeans back on, and then her shirt. “You know what? This is real fuckin’ rich coming from you, of all people. We both know that cut on your hand wasn’t an accident.”

“It’s—it’s not what you think.”

She’s pretty sure Lottie doesn’t even believe that.

“Oh really, Lottie?” She furrows her eyebrows. “Then what is it?”

Silence gives Nat the answer she already decided on.

“You don’t get to act like I’m a mess when you’re carving up your hand again for your blood sacrifices,” she continues, shaking her head. “God, I can’t believe I ever thought that–” She swallows her words down, pressing her lips together. She slides her jacket back over her shoulders. “I’m fucking done, Lottie. Fuck this.”

“Natalie,” Lottie says before she reaches the door. Nat’s eyes soften just slightly as she turns around. “Do you love him?”

Fuck, Nat doesn’t know why she had hope that Lottie would say something sensible—something that could give her a reason to stay and believe that things are different now than they were out there.

“What—of course I fucking love him,” she says defensively. How could Lottie even ask her that?

(Maybe Lottie sees through her bullshit—knows that if Nat loved him enough, if she were a good enough person, she wouldn’t have let his brother die for her.)

She walks out the front door and doesn’t look back. A surge of cold kisses her scalp, and she looks up at the darkening sky—at the first snowfall of the winter, and she begins to cry.

Chapter Text

When she drinks, when she’s with Travis, when she falls asleep, she thinks of Lottie.

Some days, she wonders if, in some parallel version of the world—one where the plane never crashed in the middle of nowhere, and they didn’t do all of the unspeakable things that they did—she and Lottie could’ve worked out. Life back then wasn’t perfect; it was a kind of hell in its own regard, but it sure was better than this. Even in its heaviness, there were intermissions of light. The rush of the team scoring a last-second goal. The relief of unexpectedly scraping a C on a test she hadn’t bothered studying for. The joy of ditching class to sneak a smoke with Kevyn and Rich behind the gym. The pure innocence of the aftermaths of school dances where the girls would cram into Jackie’s bedroom and dissect the night’s drama and idiocies of boys before collapsing into off-key karaoke until Mrs. Taylor had to come in to quiet them down. That version of her might’ve been capable of loving properly.

But recalling that version of life is like trying to remember the flavor of some foreign fruit she only tried once as a kid. She tasted it, and it was sweet and hers, but now it’s gone. All she knows to taste now is the bitterness of the life she returned to.

Other days, she pictures Lottie as she is in this world—trapped in that small room, those four white walls caving in closer the more days that pass by. It’s an unsettling image.

Still, she doesn’t visit.

She doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s easier to bury herself in Travis and whatever substance she can get her hands on than to face whatever it is that’s happening with Lottie.

And yet, on the nights she really lets herself go under, she has this recurring dream. It comes in slight variations, but they all feel the same.

It usually goes something like this:

She’s lost deep in a forest that’s shrouded by complete darkness, thick as pitch. Any comprehension of her surroundings is left up to her ears. For a while, all she can make out is the wind whistling through the trees, until the footsteps emerge. With each passing second, the sound of sloshing snow grows louder and heavier. She nearly drowns in the darkness until a singular sector catches jaundiced light from one of the old, dim torchlights salvaged from the cabin after the fire. Its light cuts through the dark just enough to illuminate one figure, and of course, it’s Lottie.

It’s always Lottie, every time.

This is where, for a fleeting second, Natalie allows herself to believe that this could be a beautiful dream. Dreams are the only place that Natalie can see Lottie, so she chooses to stay inside of it. Time and time again, she falls for it, but it always unravels seconds after.

Lottie stands calmly in snow up to her ankles. Fur is draped over her shoulders like a priestess’s robe. Antlers crown her head, jutting out like they’ve grown from her skull. Blood stains her hands and soaks her sleeves. Even her mouth drips with fresh red, curving into a smile so serene it’s terrifying, like a Goddess of evil.

But a Goddess nonetheless, and Natalie aches to follow her into the dark.

“Natalie,” Lottie whispers so softly. It leaves Natalie sick with dread, that constant sense of certainty that something somehow more irreversibly terrible than the last has happened. What has Lottie possibly done this time? Whose blood is on Lottie’s hands? And whose blood will inevitably be on Natalie’s hands in due time?

Natalie tries to flee, but her feet won’t obey. It’s as if she’s tethered to the snow—to the Wilderness, or to Lottie. Behind her, something she can’t see writhes in the trees.

“I told you,” Lottie murmurs calmly. Everything that surrounds them is known to her and understood deeply. She looks at Natalie with only the hope that she’ll understand it soon, too. “It followed us home.”

Natalie wakes in a full-body sweat, still trembling from what never is a dream, but always a nightmare. She ignores this nightmare, and she ignores the incessant thoughts of It. After all, ignorance is bliss, though she doesn’t seem to be reaping any of the bliss.

The ignorance continues when she’s stoned in some dark parking lot, in the backseat of Travis’s car. The windows are foggy from late winter air as they hotbox. The joint moves between the two of them over the static radio hiss of Marcy Playground’s Sex & Candy. For a moment, in her dizzy high, all is well. But Travis kills both the ignorance and the faux-bliss with a single question:

“Do you ever think about visiting Lottie?”

She inhales the joint all wrong and it burns everywhere—her throat, her lungs, her chest. It all aches, and she can’t stand to look him in the eyes. She coughs until her ribs sting and her throat is raw. Between his past with Lottie and her own, there’s too much burn.

“No,” she says, hoarsely and hurriedly, once the coughing fit has finally ceased.

Because she can’t tell him any of this. That she’s already been. That she thinks about going back everyday, but doesn’t because she knows she shouldn’t. That she dreams of Lottie in blood. That somehow, now, she has an even more fucked up relationship with Lottie than either of them did out in the Wilderness.

So no, she doesn’t tell Travis shit about Lottie. She never encourages him to visit her. She never asks if he’s visited; she decides he hasn’t, and never will. And she doesn’t visit again either, until she does.

The snow has long since vanished by the time she makes the decision; the spring is slipping into summer again. There isn’t any grand catalyst—no dramatic revelations, not even a cold period or argument with Travis. In fact, these days, he pays her much more mind, answering her calls like a loyal fucking retriever and showing up whenever she needs him. It happens when she’s having a fucking terrible comedown from doing too much, too fast, of something she doesn’t even remember taking last night. All she knows is that her skin is on fire, her head is pounding, her anxiety is through the roof, and if she doesn’t get out of this cramped trailer to breathe, she might just die right here.

So, she starts walking. Out the door, until she’s far from the trailer park, until she’s breathed enough fresh air to soothe her stomach so its minimal contents don’t come back up. She paces around the block, down streets that begin to look vaguely familiar, and that’s when Willow Creek Park comes into view. It’s the place where she and Lottie had gone during their first supervised outing.

Looking back, she thinks that’s the day where everything really changed between them.

She doesn’t step foot in the park. She stays planted across the street because maybe that way, she can keep that day a picturesque, unruined memory. But she observes from afar: the birds, the families, the joggers, the sunshine—every simple pleasure that Lottie soaked in like it was the epitome of happiness. Nat misses her. The entire painting of a monster that she’d created in her head disintegrates at the memory of Lottie picking petals off of little white daisies in the grass. She’d looked so blissfully unbothered that you wouldn’t know what was going on in her pretty head.

So, Nat misses her, she worries about her, and she wonders what led her to cut her hand that day.

She should’ve asked. She should’ve done something. She shouldn’t have pushed her away. But it wouldn’t be the first time that she’s let everything spiral to shit because she doesn’t do things right.

She wonders if she can finally do them right this time.

When she arrives, the hospital is quieter than she remembers. It feels like a ghost town, with fewer staff members than before. The remaining doctors and attendants spare her short glances at her as they pass by, but there isn’t enough of a familiar spark in their eyes for her to be sure that they remember her. After all, a lot of time has passed since her last visit.

At the front desk, the receptionist doesn’t immediately assume that she’s here for Lottie. That in itself gives her an answer.

“I’m here to see Charlotte Matthews,” she says.

The woman behind the desk frowns. She shuffles through manila folders and stapled papers, each one that flips sounding like another door slamming shut in her face. Part of her worries that she got herself blacklisted after that disastrous final visit, when she didn’t return to check Lottie in.

Finally, the woman lifts her gaze, but it’s bleak. “I’m sorry. Charlotte Matthews is no longer receiving care here.”

Nat’s heart goes still.

“What? Where–what does that mean?”

“I can’t disclose that information. Patient confidentiality,” the woman says robotically, like she’s reading off of a script.

“I… I just want to know if she’s okay. Please.”

The woman’s face seems to soften. “Her family made arrangements elsewhere. That’s all I can say.”

And in that moment, Natalie knows. She knows in her gut that it wasn’t Lottie’s choice. Her father always had a way of making his problems disappear, and Lottie’s impending relapse was bound to become a problem. She only wonders how bad it got before he decided to ship her away.

“Where did they send her?”

She’s not really expecting an answer. She knows there are rules and regulations, and she already probably got more information than she legally should’ve.

The woman leans closer. Her voice quietens. “Switzerland,” she answers.

There isn’t much meaning to the location other than that it’s really, really far away. She doesn’t know what else to think. She wonders if they remember her here, after all.

It would be easier if Natalie’s mind were capable of inducing one of those familiar nightmares where Lottie takes on the form of a monster. She drinks enough that her brain should be able to concoct lucid visions of an antlered Lottie, of a blood-soaked Lottie, of a Lottie that wants to hurt her.

But the Lottie that arrives is anything but. She comes with equally broken eyes, dark and wet, hurting everywhere.

In the dream, Nat never knows where they are. They’re sitting in lush green grass, surrounded by tall, healthy trees, and the sun shines radiantly. But it isn’t Willow Creek Park, and it definitely isn’t the Wilderness. It’s somewhere unknown that she can’t recognize—somewhere new.

Lottie is lying flat on her back. There are tears endlessly streaming down her cheeks. She just looks like a girl whose biggest fear is herself. Nat wants to help her.

“I’m sorry,” Nat chokes on a sob. “I’m sorry that I let you down. That I brought you back here.”

Lottie doesn’t look at her. It’s like she doesn’t even hear her.

Nat reaches out to touch, but before her fingertips can graze the curve of her soft jawline, Lottie is gone. Before, Nat thought that she couldn’t escape Lottie, but now, she realizes that she can never catch her.

“Hey, what ever happened with you and Lottie?”

Nat glances at Van, furrowed eyebrows. They’re back at the bar. It’s become their sad, occasional routine, but part of Nat thinks that this is what keeps her sane. Seeing Van is the only thing she looks forward to these days.

“You were visiting her, weren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nat says nonchalantly, clutching the base of her beer pint. “She’s, uh… she’s in Switzerland now. Her parents had her moved there.”

“Oh.” Van’s eyes dim. She and Lottie were always sort of close. And Van blames herself for how bad Lottie’s condition got out there—she thinks she egged Lottie on and followed her around, making her believe things that weren’t there. “Fuck. I–I wish I saw her one last time before she left.”

Doesn’t Natalie know the feeling. “Yeah. Me too.”

“You didn’t get to say goodbye?” Van asks. “I thought you were seeing her often enough.”

“It just happened one day,” Nat says, but feels her eyes growing wet. She wants to tell Van everything, but how can she even begin to explain the fucked up situation between them? She settles for: “We got into a fight. I got mad. I said some really stupid shit, and I stopped seeing her for some time. By the time I figured my shit out and went to see her again, she was gone.”

Van looks at her sorrily. “Hey… It’s not like it’s impossible to go to Switzerland. You can still see her again.”

Nat shakes her head. “But I can’t. I… fucked up. She probably hates me.”

Shouldn’t she? Nat has given Lottie a million reasons to hate her. She dragged her back to this hell-hole, and when things got rough, she abandoned her. She regrets how she handled things that day.

But really, above all else, she just wants to know if Lottie’s okay.

Van sighs, putting a hand on Nat’s back, patting comfortingly. Nat’s afraid she’s going to ask for more details but, thankfully, she doesn’t. “I don’t think there’s anything in the world you could do that would make Lottie hate you.”

With Lottie gone, it’s easier to focus on Travis. Seeing her is no longer an accessible option, so she doesn’t have to worry about that.

She and Travis meet wherever they can—at hers when her mom is gone, at his when his mom is gone, in dark parks and darker parking lots. They alternate between smoking and drinking, and occasionally, when she’s scraped up enough cash tips to spare, or he’s got some extra pocket allowance from his mom, she picks up another fix of coke from Rich’s cousin.

It’s fine, really. It’s manageable. They’re good about it for the most part. The only time it’s a problem is when she does a bump before her shift at the bar—not even a big one. She usually can get away with being a little drunk, since most bartenders drink on the job anyway. But this makes her a little keyed up and jumpy, and she gets into it with a customer over something so fucking stupid, so it escalates, and some glasses break when they fall off the bar top, and her manager comes running out the back and is fuming.

She’s not surprised when she loses her job, but it fucking sucks.

She rants all about it to Travis when they meet up after her shift-cut-short that night. By the time she’s done with her story, Travis has already arranged the lines on his desk, and she really shouldn’t after the day she’s had and how fucked up she already is, but it’s here, so she does it, then she does it again, and it’s good. It’s really good, and then she’s not so sure.

She’s on the floor somehow. Everything feels too heavy—the light, her limbs. All she can hear is the ringing in her head and the faint sound of Travis’s voice calling her name over and over, but her mouth can’t figure out how to get a sound out.

She wakes up to beeping.

The first thing she sees is a ceiling with those too-bright fluorescent panels and a tall metal IV stand looming over her. The second is Taissa, sitting beside her bed with crossed arms and a look on her face that Natalie can’t quite pinpoint between anger and concern.

“You fucking idiot.”

Anger, Nat decides. She blinks slowly. Her mouth is dry and her tongue feels too big inside of it, and Taissa is beyond angry with her.

But then Tai’s face softens. Now, she just looks like she’s on the verge of crying. But she holds herself together enough to not. “You almost died.”

Nat shifts enough to sit up against her pillow on the bed. “Is Travis…”

“He’s okay,” Tai tells her. “He’s the one who called 911. And me. But he had to go home—his mom’s back today from his grandparents’.”

Nat’s chest floods with relief. She nods, and wants to feel like everything is fine now.

“Fuck,” she breathes suddenly, more to herself. “I don’t have insurance. This is gonna… Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Tai’s lips part. “Don’t worry about that. I, uh… I took care of it.”

“What? Why?”

Tai tilts her head. There’s a softness to her eyes. “You’ve done a lot more for all of us,” she says.

“Tai… No, I’ll pay you–”

“Stop,” Tai says firmly. “Don’t focus on the money. Focus on getting your shit together, Natalie. No more of this.”

Nat looks down shamefully. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not saying this because I want you to apologize to me, okay? I don’t give a shit about that,” Tai says, scooting her chair closer to the bed. She looks at her seriously. “I’m leaving for school in the fall. I’m not gonna be around to clean this up anymore.”

Taissa keeps her word. It isn’t long before she’s off to Howard University, all the way down in DC. Nat has been trying her very best to keep her shit together and limit her drinking. It's not going that well, since she wound up at a bar with Van—a different spot, because Nat can never show her face in fucking Ridgewood again after what happened. She's not sure if Tai would be proud of her, but she's doing marginally better than she was before. She hasn't landed in the ER again, at least.

Nat hasn't seen or spoken to Tai since she left, and it doesn't seem like Van has, either.

“You could just visit her.”

Van practically slams her pint down on the bar top. “And you could just visit Lottie.”

Nat blinks in surprise, eyebrows scrunching. “That’s different, and you know it.”

“Yeah, because Tai fuckin’ ditched me, and for–for what?” Van scoffs bitterly. “A fancy degree and a career in law? After everything we’ve been through?”

Nat doesn’t know what to say. For the first time, she thinks Van is a lot drunker than she is.

“I’ve gotta get out of here,” Van continues.

“Van, we just got here.”

Van huffs. “No, I mean out of this fuck-ass town."

“Oh,” Nat blinks slowly. She tries to mask her disappointment. “You gonna go to New York?”

“Fuck that,” Van shakes her head. Nat can’t even remember how many times Van talked about wanting to move to New York back in high school. But she figures that Taissa was always supposed to be a part of that plan. “I don’t know where. Maybe somewhere like… fucking Ohio.”

“Ohio?”

If you handed Nat a map, she wouldn’t be able to point to Ohio on it. It's a lot further from New Jersey than New York is, that much she knows.

“Somewhere no one’s gonna know me.”

“What if—what if she comes back? Changes her mind?” Nat asks, and she doesn’t know why. She’s not an optimist, she’s the fucking opposite, but… it’s Tai and Van.

“Tai’s not coming back. And neither am I,” Van says. “She made her choice when she left.”

Nat understands the sentiment. She's thought about leaving it all behind before, too. There's nothing much for her in Wiskayok except too many strangers who know her name from the news and too many small-town reporters with a lack of boundaries because there's nobody else exciting in this town. So she gets it—why Van would want to start fresh. Still, she hates the thought of Van being gone. If Travis leaves her, too, she’ll have nobody.

But that's life, isn't it? People come and go. In the end, she's always alone.

It's been a few months, and Nat has gotten used to spending most of her day inside and alone.

One morning, bright and early, she wakes up to a knock outside of her trailer. It’s not out of the ordinary—there are crazies that live in the park, and it wouldn’t be the first time that prodding reporters have tracked down her address and shown up outside her door. She usually pretends to go back to sleep, and whoever it is eventually gets lost.

That’s not the case this time.

“Nat! I know you’re in there!”

That voice makes her groan into her sheets. She thinks about ignoring it until it goes away, but it just doesn’t seem to go away. Reluctantly, she pushes off her bed and opens the door, just enough to squint through the crack. Lo and behold, all five feet of Misty fucking Quigley peer at her through thick frames that she’d gotten replaced since coming home. “Jesus, Misty. What the fuck do you want?”

Misty scrunches her eyebrows, clearly hurt but trying her best, and failing, not to show it. “I–I was worried! No one’s been answering my calls. Not you, not Taissa, not Shauna. It’s like you all fell off the face of the earth!”

“Yeah, maybe take the hint.”

Nat tries not to think about Misty. Because when she thinks about Misty, she thinks about the transponder, and then she thinks about everything that wouldn’t have fucking happened if Misty didn’t fucking—

“I brought coffee,” she adds brightly, lifting up the paper tray. “And I was in the neighborhood.”

“You don’t live anywhere near here.”

“I was in the extended neighborhood.”

And then Misty’s somehow coming inside like she’s been invited, and Nat just doesn’t have the energy to oppose her. Misty sets down the coffee tray on the table. Nat eyes it, since coffee doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world right now, but refuses to move from where she’s posted by the door with her arms crossed.

“Do you know your propane tank’s leaning sideways?”

“Misty,” Nat huffs. “Say what you’ve gotta and get out.”

“I’m just saying, a gas leak could really cause a lot of problems, you know. Most people don’t even realize it’s happening until it’s too late!”

“Misty.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just—we swore we’d all stick together, but now I’m in the dark, and you’re ignoring my calls, and I can never catch Shauna without Jeff, and Taissa hasn’t been checking her campus mailbox. I even called the student center to do a wellness check! And I’ve been trying the Blockbuster that Van’s been working at, but I haven’t had any luck reaching her directly because she hung up when she heard—”

“You know where Van works?” Nat blinks in surprise. She hasn’t even processed the rest of that insane shit Misty just casually spewed. But she didn’t even know that Van was working at a Blockbuster. Hell, she didn’t even know which part of Ohio that Van wound up in, if she even ended up in Ohio at all.

But it seems like Misty knows all of that, and so much more.

“Yeah! In Ohio, just outside of Columbus. Her manager said she’s got a knack for finding good comedies. Plus, she’s known to give honest reviews, which is rare these days. Apparently, she told some mom not to rent 2001: A Space Odyssey because it’s way too long and boring for her kid. Isn’t that funny?”

Nat stares at her. “You called her manager?”

“Well, technically, I called and asked for a job application, but then I started chatting with whoever picked up,” Misty explains.

Nat rubs her eyes. She hasn’t even brushed her teeth yet and Misty Quigley is in her trailer talking about 2001: A Space Odyssey while detailing the lives of the other girls. She doesn’t even want to ask what Misty knows about her life.

“So, you’re stalking everyone,” she says plainly.

“I’m checking in. We’ve all been through so much together! I think it’s important that–”

“Fuck off, Misty.”

Misty’s face falls, and it looks like she just might actually fuck off this time. But then something clicks in Nat’s head. She turns to Misty before she can leave. “Wait.”

Misty’s entire being brightens.

“You’ve… ‘checked in’ on all of the others, right?” Nat asks, watching her carefully. Misty nods. “What about Lottie? You know where she is, don’t you?”

Misty hesitates, then gives a tiny nod.

“Well?”

“Montreux. It’s this lakeside town in Switzerland. It’s really pretty; there are lots of fancy spas and old people.”

“Okay, and where exactly did they send her to?”

“Um, this place called… Les Arcanes—it’s a private clinic.”

Nat stares at her frightened, but also a little bit impressed. “How do you even know all of this?”

“I subscribed to the international section of the mental health directory,” Misty explains cheerfully, as if that’s something that normal people do. “And… I may or may not have sent a few inquiry letters.”

“Inquiry letters?”

Misty shrugs casually. “Fake doctor credentials, nothing major. Just to confirm that she was really there. And she is.”

“You’re fucking insane.”

Misty smiles proudly, sitting down on the couch. Nat sighs, but sits down, too. She finally takes the coffee from the tray.

And maybe, just maybe, she’s a little grateful that Misty is here.

“How is she?”

Nat doesn’t know how Misty does it, nor does she bother asking, though Misty tells her anyway.

Apparently, it involved a string of long-distance calls and some faked medical credentials—Nat is now aware of the fact that Misty knows a lot about this because she’s on the pre-nursing track at some college in Jersey she can’t remember the name of. Though, Nat does wonder if she can’t recognize the name because Misty purposely chose a no-name college close to home. Because Misty was always good at school. Nat doesn’t know the first thing about the college admissions process, but surely Misty had the grades and SAT score to get in anywhere she wanted, like some fancy Ivy League. But she’s still here, too, as one of the last three in fucking Wiskayok.

Nevertheless, Misty did a convincing enough job on the phone to make whoever was on the other end think that she’s some emergency psychiatric contact of Lottie’s.

From the debrief, Nat learns that Les Arcanes specializes in long-term trauma cases and emotional dysregulation—it all sounded really elite and hush-hush, and Nat didn’t understand half the jargon that Misty threw at her. But most importantly, and the only thing that matters, really, is that Lottie is still there, and she’s responding to treatment.

So Nat isn’t planning on doing anything with that information. It’s not like she can, anyway. They don’t allow letters or calls with the patient at this time. Part of Nat wonders if it’s a special case because Lottie was so bad when she got there, but she tries not to think too much about it.

She just is… relieved that Lottie’s okay now, at least. Even if she’s halfway across the world.

The day comes where her mom finally kicks her out.

Well, she’s not officially kicked out, but it certainly feels that way when her mom insinuates that she’s mooching off of her and sits around all day doing drugs. Nat’s only surprised it took her mom this long to do it—she guessed her mom’s eyes opened after she got a job waitressing instead of living off of unemployment, and consequently got tired of sharing her newfound “wealth” with the ungrateful daughter who took away her husband.

(The first thing she thinks about is how she wishes she could tell Lottie about this.)

Needless to say, Nat packs one small bag with whatever clothes and shit she can fit and stays in a shitty motel until she finds a listing for an even shittier apartment with four roommates she manages to never interact with.

She doesn’t see anyone much. Obviously not Lottie, tries her hardest not to see Misty—though she’s pretty sure she saw someone with strikingly similar curls and glasses loitering outside of her new place. Tai and Van are both gone. She doesn’t see Shauna for a long while. Not until she starts running into her on unexpected occasions—with Jeff, of course. Nat has to bite her cheek not to scoff about the absurdity of their whirlwind romance.

But she guesses she has no room to judge or talk.

She’s a little past tipsy the first time she sees Shauna and Jeff again in a ShopRite, pushing around a cart filled with ham, turkey, and vegetables meant for some nutritious family dinner.

“Natalie!” There’s a smile so forcefully sweet that it doesn’t sit right on Shauna Shipman’s face. She loosens her grip on Jeff’s back. “You’re still in town?”

“Yeah. You trying to get rid of me or something?”

Shauna’s eyes widen, a flush on her cheeks. Guess she didn’t like the joke much. “No, I just thought you of all people wouldn’t have stayed in this town.”

Nat raises her eyebrows. She could say the same for Shauna, but doesn’t because, clearly, she’s deluded herself into believing that she enjoys this little bubble of suburban domesticity with her dead best friend’s boyfriend.

“Well, Natalie, it sure is good to see you again,” Jeff steps in with an awkwardly boyish grin. He looks more grown up than he did in high school. More proper, with his baggy jeans and loose long-sleeves swapped for khakis and a fitted polo that’s tucked into his pants. “Man, has it been… three years since I last saw you?”

She realizes it has been around three years since they last ran into each other at this very grocery store. That was when she found out that Shauna was dating Jeff. She remembers running straight to Lottie to tell her about it the next day. Her chest aches at the reminder, but she forces it from creeping up to her face.

“Guess so.”

“Where are you staying now?” he asks. “Still at your mom’s?”

Nat snorts. “God, no. I–uh, I just got a new place off Maple. With some roommates.”

“Nice!” he exclaims. “That’s great! Anyone we’d know?”

Nat raises her eyebrows. She stares at him for a moment. “Uh, no.”

Is it not obvious? Any mutual friends they had are fucking dead, considering they were all on the soccer team because they met through Jackie—oh, who’s also fucking dead.

“I’ll see you guys around,” she says.

She’s got a busy day ahead, after all. She has plans to load her basket up with instant noodles and frozen TV dinners, then spend the rest of the evening tending to the poor new bottle of whiskey she'd abandoned in her bedroom.

“Actually—uh, do you mind if we get your new address?” Jeff suddenly asks before she can turn around.

Shauna’s widening eyes and furrowed eyebrows target him. “Jeff.”

“Sweetheart, come on,” he insists, waving her off. He grins at a confused Nat once again. “Shauna and I are getting married next year, and we’d love for you to be there!”

That’s when Nat’s eyes finally find the ring on Shauna’s finger. The diamond is plain and small, but honest. It's the exact kind of ring that Nat would envision Jeff Sadecki choosing, if she spent any time wondering about him at all, that is.

“Wow. Congrats, Shauna.”

Shauna smiles politely, but her cheeks are burning red with embarrassment. “Thanks, Natalie.”

Nat doesn’t know what she thinks about them tying the knot. It’s fucked, of course. They clash like two puzzle pieces just not meant to fit together. When she thinks about Shauna, it’s hard to not picture Jackie there next to her, even after all this time.

Everyone is back in town for the wedding.

Well, everyone but two people. Misty didn’t manage to snag an invite and, in a town as small as Wiskayok, and with Misty being Misty, there’s no doubt that she’s heard about the wedding’s existence. Surely Misty was beyond upset to not be on the guest list.

Lottie isn’t there either. There’s no place card awaiting her presence at their so-called high school table. Whether an invitation was extended at all is another question. Shauna, for all her differences with Lottie, has never despised her the way she despises Misty. But even if Lottie received an invite, she didn’t accept. Maybe she isn’t in any sort of place to accept. It doesn’t stop Nat’s eyes from scanning the venue, hanging onto partial hope that Lottie will appear somewhere, miraculously discharged from the institution.

The rest of the table is still interesting. Taissa and Van are next to each other, trying their hardest to avoid all eye contact. Randy Walsh is up at the main table as Jeff’s best man, not in their high school reunion group. Nat isn’t sure how Allie Stevens secured an invite, but at their table, too. Nat thinks about the other place cards that could’ve been here.

Laura Lee would’ve been so happy for them, despite how fucked their relationship is. Mari would’ve been making snide comments about how poofy Shauna’s dress is or how much of a cunt Shauna is for marrying him—if she even got an invite. And Jackie…

Jackie might’ve objected before the I dos. Hell, she might’ve been the reason this wedding never happened in the first place, if she were still here. If Jackie didn’t stop it herself, Nat doesn’t think Shauna would’ve been able to go through with it—marrying Jeff, or marrying anyone at all.

The wedding hall is cheap. Not offensively cheap or hideous, or anything. It’s just… small and simple, with beige walls, plastic folding chairs with lilac ribbons, and tables dressed in white linen. There are poppies everywhere, from the cake, to the arch, to the table decor. Nat never thought Shauna would have this kind of townie wedding. Not that she ever really spent any time picturing what Shauna Shipman’s—or Sadecki’s, now, she supposes—wedding would be like.

Her eyes fly to the three-piece band covering love songs. Currently, they’re on Because You Loved Me by Céline Dion. Nat smiles sadly as she watches Shauna and Jeff slow dancing to it at the center of the room. Jackie used to go crazy for this one at sleepovers. It was her favorite love song.

“Nat, are you drinking?” Tai eyes her.

“It’s just one glass of champagne,” Nat waves her off. It’s a wedding, after all. Everyone else is drinking, so champagne won’t hurt. Though, Nat doesn’t inform Tai about the copious amounts of vodka she drank before she got here. Though, based on the dirty looks Tai’s been giving her all night, Nat is pretty sure Tai can smell it on her anyway.

Shauna and Jeff finish their dance and feed each other buttercream cake. Their parents and relatives (and Randy Walsh) give speeches and raise toasts. If Jackie showed up and made it through the wedding vows without objecting, she probably would’ve given a toast like Randy. It would’ve been full of unsubtle digs that Nat would find riveting.

Jackie isn’t here, but Mr. and Mrs. Taylor are. Nat doesn’t even want to look at their faces, but she’s sure their expressions are related to how this should’ve been their daughter’s wedding, not Shauna’s.

Nat plays catch-up as best as she can with Tai and Van. Tai finished taking her LSAT last summer and is about to start law school at Columbia in the fall. Van’s still in Ohio, seemingly pleased with a humble life working at Blockbuster. Her life is even more quaint now, having moved from the bustling city of Columbus off to wherever the hell Oberlin is. Nat even engages in some painful small-talk with Allie, who seems to think it’s some kind of badge of honor to be a part of the Yellowjackets table.

Once the cake is served and people are dancing, Nat slips outside in the cooling evening spring air to light a cigarette. She feels fucking hollow, like her insides have been vaporized and she’s just a bag of skin and flesh.

The smoke she blows through her lips makes the liquor she chugged before the ceremony churn in her stomach. She quickly snuffs out the cigarette against the wall and takes deep, heaving breaths to stop herself from vandalizing the wedding venue’s exterior with her vomit in front of the extended Shipman-Sadecki family.

“Nat, you good?”

Fortunately, the question doesn’t come from a Shipman or a Sadecki. Unfortunately, Van has just stepped outside.

“I’m fine,” Nat mumbles, palm to the wall. She collects herself, half-turning to face Van.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Well, I am, so just… fuck off,” she snaps, desperate to be alone again.

“You barely touched your food. You barely even said a word in there.”

“So what? Sorry I didn’t—wasn’t in the fucking mood to raise a toast to Shauna and Jackie’s boyfriend’s happily ever after,” Nat slurs.

Van’s eyes widen. Shauna and Nat rarely see eye to eye, but aside from some side comments, Nat’s not really the kind to give a shit about what Shauna chooses to do with her personal life. Because really, Shauna fucking Jeff Sadecki isn’t even on the top ten list of fucked up things she or any of them have done. “Nat… What is this really about?”

Nat scoffs and turns her head away. “Nothing.”

“Is it Travis?” Van guesses, stepping closer. Nat doesn’t say anything. “Is it Lottie?”

Nat’s eyes shine, her jaw tight and trembling as she tries to fight the sob breaking loose. “She didn’t wanna come back, Van. She warned me that this would happen, but I didn’t listen to her. And now she’s locked up in the fucking Alps and no one really knows if she’s getting better.”

“What were we supposed to do? Leave her in the middle of the woods by herself? You did the right thing.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

“She would’ve died, Nat.”

“She died anyway. Maybe we all fucking died,” Nat says, eyes half-closed as she stumbles closer to Van, who puts a hand on her shoulder to hold her up.

“You can’t think like that.”

“Why not?” Nat’s head snaps up. “Why the fuck not? You think we’re better off now? Look at me, Van. My life’s a fucking shitshow, and Lottie told me that this would happen. What did I come back for? What did any of us come back for? We didn’t escape the Wilderness. We brought it back with us.”

Van’s face scrunches as she stares at Nat, lips quivering, as if she’s fighting her hardest to deny it, but it’s seeping through anyway. She can’t find any words, but doesn’t have to, because Nat hunches over, curling down by a flower bed. She gags and coughs, bile and champagne and the little bruschetta she snacked on all hurling out in discolored chunks. Van kneels down beside her, holding back dark hair in a ponytail.

The door swings open and Taissa steps out, eyes widening at the scene. “Van? Nat? What the hell–”

“She’s okay,” Van says quickly. Nat finally stops throwing up, heaving to catch her breath while the excess drips from her lips. “She just—she needs to go home.”

“Alright,” Tai sighs, her nose wrinkling slightly at the foul smell as she crouches by Nat to help her up. “Let’s get her out of here.”

Tai and Van help her off the ground, holding her up on the whole trek to Tai’s car across the parking lot. Nat is only half-conscious in the backseat, but through her blurred vision that fades in and out, she sees Van’s hand brush over Tai’s on the center console.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Nat loses another bartending job. She can hardly distinguish between night and morning anymore. Her apartment smells like liquor and weeks-old cup ramen noodles left out. One of her roommates moved out without saying anything. She still doesn’t really see or talk to the rest of them.

She has to find a different dealer because Rich’s cousin won’t budge anymore. He says she’s too fucked up and he can’t do this to Rich’s friend. Travis finds another guy, some Wiskayok High dropout from ‘93, so they buy from him instead.

Travis still comes to her apartment sometimes. He’s been better with her lately. He’s been consistent. Sometimes she thinks they might actually be able to become something real.

When he’s not here, she sleeps through most of the days, then finds some divey bar at night to fuck around in. She’s mostly numb, but it helps her think a little less.

Life is fucking bleak, but she doesn’t fuck up too badly. Though, the fuck-up limit has gradually been pushed upwards over the past few years.

But one morning, when she wakes up behind the bars of a holding cell at the Wiskayok Police Department, she knows that she has fucked up beyond all limits.

Natalie’s sure she looks like as much of a disappointment as she feels when she trudges out of the processing room and Taissa’s eyes are moving up and down her in sweeping judgment. She’s lucky that Tai just got home from school, or else no one might’ve come for her at all. Maybe she shouldn’t have called her, but she didn’t know who else to turn to who’d be willing to put the money down for her.

“Let’s go,” Tai says coldly, exhaling as she motions to the door. She barely looks at Nat as they exit the station. Nat imagines that this is what it would feel like to be scolded by parents who actually gave a shit in a good way.

She feels ashamed of herself. She knows how bad this looks—she didn’t mean to get into a bar fight and get caught with the coke in her pocket. Honestly, she forgot she even put that in there; she was already wasted before she left. Not that any of this would help her plead her case to Taissa or the cops.

“This has to end,” Tai says sternly when they get to her car. “This isn’t healthy, Nat.”

“I know that, and I swear, I’ll–”

Tai sighs. “There’s this treatment center in Los Angeles that my uncle went to, and it’s supposed to be really, really good. He’s been clean for twenty years.”

Nat’s face contorts like Taissa poured cold water over her head. She blinks in horror. “You mean fucking rehab?”

“Yes, Nat. I mean fucking rehab. You need it,” Tai says bluntly.

“No, I—fuck you, Taissa,” Nat growls, and Tai barely reacts to the hostility. She’s probably used to it from Nat by now. “After being fucking stuck out there for years, you want me to go willingly lock myself back up somewhere? Are you fucking insane?”

“It’s not like that. It’s not some prison, which is where you’re inevitably ending up if you don’t do this,” Tai warns. “You can talk to my uncle if you need to. They treat their patients really well. It’s nice and it’s comfortable. And most of all, you need it.”

Los Angeles is nice. It’s sunny and bright and covered in thriving palm trees in a way that feels like it was designed for people to be happy. She always heard that the people in this city are phony, but she finds it refreshing that they’re so engrossed in their own worlds. Some people who recognize her from the news still try to find out what happened out there, but they’ve got too much going on to give that much of a shit about some plane crash girl from fucking Wiskayok, New Jersey. She’s unimportant because there are too many important people here.

She can’t tell if she loves or hates it. It’s nice to not be harassed, but it hasn’t helped with the emptiness inside of her. Maybe the rehab’s going to help with that.

The center is tucked away in the hills, somewhere in Calabasas, far from any downtowns. It’s unnaturally quiet there. Taissa wasn’t lying when she said the place is nice. It feels more like it’s a celebrity spa retreat than a hole where cracked out junkies like her are destined to die in, but hey, they give her lemon water and clean sheets, and the whole place smells like eucalyptus, so can she really complain?

They also give her a journal and make her attend group therapy where they sit in a circle and talk about their feelings. For her first assignment, they ask her to write about her intentions—what she wants to get out of this. She writes down “DON’T DRINK” in big letters, because isn’t that kind of the whole fucking point of rehab? But the counselors laugh and think it’s a joke. They ask her to try again.

She doesn’t want to try again. She doesn’t think she even believes in recovery. But she promised Taissa that she’d give it her best effort.

That night in her room, she messily scribbles down some notes:

This is so fucking stupid

I want a fucking cigarette

I want five fucking cigarettes

I hate this place. I hate everyone here. They smile too much and look at me like I’m a kid.

I miss Travis. Does he think about me being here?

I WISH I WAS DRUNK RIGHT NOW.

Sometimes I think Lottie was the only person who saw me as I really am. If there’s something dark in me, she

I don’t know who I am without the crash.

I want to figure out how to live with myself.

I want to be someone who wants to live.

Her counselors seem to like that one better. She thinks she might like it better, too.

When the settlement first came in, a quarter of a million dollars seemed like a lot of money.

Shit, it is a lot more than she ever thought she’d see in her lifetime. $250,000. But it turned out to be just as easy to blow through. The new Porsche Carrera was a quick $50k gone in one afternoon. A couple slips with coke plus the alcohol added up. Rent is always a fucking bitch. And she, out of whatever pity she’s got left, still sends her mom a check every month just to make sure she doesn’t end up dead on the side of the fucking road.

But she buys an economy plane ticket from LAX to Geneva just like that, before her mind can decide if it’s really a good idea.

It’s bizarre to think that hasn’t seen Lottie since that day.

She’s been in and out of rehab, funded (and pushed for) by Taissa each time. But honestly, it’s probably for the best that she hasn’t seen Lottie because she still sees Travis every now and then whenever she’s out. It’s not like it’s exclusive or anything. He doesn’t visit that often. In between, she fucks no-names from bars—men, women, she doesn’t really give a shit as long as they get her off. But she sometimes finds her eyes drawn to girls with watchful dark eyes and hair and tan skin and gentle voices. They’re never the same, but they feel familiar enough.

Travis is attached to her these days, though. He tells her he loves her all the time now. They get unbelievably high and fuck. It’s not good. She’s not sure she wants it anymore. She doesn’t know when it stopped, but she doesn’t get the same desperate thrill she used to when he picked up her calls. But she keeps going back anyway.

It’s the longest she’s been out of rehab in a minute when the phone in her apartment rings. She takes the phone off the cradle and it’s Travis on the other end.

He tells her that he misses her. He’s been thinking about her a lot lately. He’s going to be in LA this weekend and wants to know if he can see her.

Travis crashes at her apartment when he visits, like always. She promised herself that she wouldn’t do coke or drink this time because she doesn’t want to fuck up again and waste any more of Taissa’s money, but he shows up with a Ziploc full of shrooms—and, well, shrooms aren’t coke, and they aren’t alcohol. Before she knows it, she’s got a bitter handful going down her throat.

At first, she feels light and fine. Her limbs begin to feel strange. Soon enough, they’re both laughing and stumbling towards the bed.

Travis kisses her, and then he’s getting on top of her. It feels okay—it feels nice. But when she blinks, she swears, in the corner of the room, she sees Lottie standing there like a devotional statue brought to life. Nat pulls her lips from Travis’s and stares in sheer awe. Lottie is in a white nightgown that’s soft around her thighs. She has a stoic expression on her face. There’s a golden silhouette around her. She’s beautiful. Nat has to clamp her mouth shut to keep herself from breathing out Lottie’s name.

“Nat?” Travis is touching her chin gently, trying to reel her back in. Lottie isn’t real. She blinks Lottie away, apologizes quietly, and kisses him again.

Travis is inside of her when she sees Lottie again—this time, closer to the bed, thighs pressed against the edge. At first, Nat does her best to ignore her. She shuts her eyes tight and tries to chase the friction that’s supposed to feel like pleasure but mostly feels like punishment. Travis is groaning her name and telling her she feels so good. She doesn’t think she’s going to be able to get off from this, no matter how hard she tries to put her mind to it.

When she opens her eyes, Lottie is above her instead, the thick straps of her nightgown fallen off her shoulders. Nat can do nothing but watch her, hands desperate to push the straps further down. It’s as if this Lottie can read her mind, though she’s expressionless as she slowly, one at a time, pushes a strap off each shoulder until the nightgown slips down low on her chest. With one more swipe of a hand, the gown crumples to the ground, nothing underneath it. Natalie shudders, needing to touch her everywhere. She feels a low ache between her legs.

Another blink and it’s Lottie’s breath in Natalie’s hair. It’s Lottie’s hips that move in slow circles over Natalie’s core. It’s Lottie’s fingers trailing lightly down the line of Natalie’s ribs. It’s Lottie’s mouth brushing hers, soft and slow and terrifyingly tender. It’s Lottie who whispers, “Natalie, you feel so good.”

And then it’s Lottie who rides her until she comes, her thighs trembling, her hands clutching the sheets as a lifeline.

It’s Travis who rolls off of her, but it’s Lottie that she needs.

It’s the night before the flight. She doesn’t know if she’s getting on it. The ticket is tucked away in her sock drawer below two pairs of fishnet tights and a Polaroid of Lottie.

Travis holds her against his chest in her bed. His fingers are combing through her hair with rhythmic gentleness that doesn’t suit either of them. There’s a weird purity to it, like they’re role-playing stability. She stares at her apartment wall.

“You should probably get to the airport soon. Isn’t your flight at ten-thirty?” she asks.

He nods his head, but there’s something more to his expression.

“What if I… stay in LA a little longer?”

She presses her lips together. She hasn’t told him about her ticket—not that she’s decided on anything. She hasn’t, and she doesn’t need to go, anyway.

She rolls onto her side to face him. His eyes are soft and earnest. This whole time, she’s felt like he’s been slipping away from her. He says all of these things, and she believes he loves and cares about her, but it would feel like he’s got one foot out the door at all times.

It doesn’t feel that way anymore, and it hasn’t for some time—not since he found out that she was leaving for LA.

“Travis…”

“I’ve been thinking,” he says slowly. “Maybe we could… try this. Like—really try.”

(This is all she wanted, so why doesn’t she feel happy?)

“I don’t…” she chokes. “I don’t know if I can.”

He’s looking at her with confused and broken eyes. She’s afraid he’s going to ask her for more. She conjures reasons: rehab, being too fucked up, not being in the right headspace for a relationship right now, or—

“Is it because of Lottie?”

“What?”

She sits up straight, her heart dropping from her chest. Why would he think that? What the fuck?

“Just tell me if it is,” he pleads.

She feels a strange sickness stirring in her stomach. She cares about him so much. She doesn’t want to hurt him, or ruin anything else in his life. She thinks about lying. She thinks about deflecting. But when her mouth opens, her quivering lips manage out just one word: “Yes.”

It might be the first time she’s been honest with herself in years.

She boards the plane to Switzerland the next morning.

When Nat steps out of the taxi, a light breeze hits her face. Switzerland, especially Montreux, is so beautiful it looks like it’s a watercolor painting come to life. The lake glitters in the distance. Everything is so absurdly green and blue and lush that she has a hard time figuring out if she’s really here.

Les Arcanes could pass as a boutique hotel instead of a loony bin. In a way, it reminds her of her rehab center in LA, which, all things considered, wasn’t the worst.

She stands outside for longer than she should, mind cycling between three main thoughts:

1. Switzerland is stupidly pretty.
2. This place is so much nicer than the hospital back in Jersey, thank God.
3. She’s about to see Lottie again.

She thinks a lot about the second one, mostly to distract herself from the third. She hates that Lottie is so far away, but she’s mostly just relieved that this place looks a lot more comfortable. Maybe she isn’t suffering as much as she was there. They’re all cages—Nat knows that—but she just hopes that things have been better here. That Lottie is doing better, and that she’ll be able to see that with her own eyes instead of hearing it from Misty, whose perceptions might not be fully trustworthy anyway.

Her brain feels like it’s only half-on as she glides through the front-desk protocols of signing in and getting her visitor’s badge that come back like muscle memory. Here, they even offer her some fancy jasmine tea that she declines before following a staff member down the hallway that, despite the lux, still feels uncomfortably clinical.

Nat thought she’d feel ready. She has spent a lot of these years thinking about what she’d say if she got a do-over. The entire plane ride, she mentally worked through what she’s going to say now—unusual for her, since the handful of flights she’s taken since have all consisted of anxiously gripping the armrests while she tried to bully her brain into not drawing vivid pictures of the plane going down in flames. She even thought about what she’s going to say during the entire taxi ride from the airport, but as it always goes, everything she’s rehearsed in her mind vanishes when she steps through the door and sees Lottie.

And suddenly, it’s as if all the empty years between them—those rusted years full of silence and letters unsent—never passed at all. Time doesn’t feel linear in Lottie’s presence, and it never has.

Everything is different. Lottie’s hair is short to her shoulders, and her face looks softer and fuller, with color restored to her skin. Natalie is different, too. Her hair is longer now, and the bags under her eyes have gotten lighter. But everything Natalie felt—the way her heart beats for Lottie—hasn’t changed, and no amount of time or therapy or purposeful detachment has been enough to expel that truth from her bloodstream.

Lottie sits cross-legged on the bed, wearing a pair of cream pajamas with a baby pink cardigan over her shoulders. She sits there doe-eyed, as if she’s in sheer disbelief, waiting for Nat to speak first.

Nat doesn’t know what to say now. All she can get out is a pathetic “Hey,” which feels criminally insufficient given that her body is vibrating with the million emotions accumulated from their years apart. But apparently, her lungs have stopped participating in the process of speech.

Lottie smiles tearfully.

“Natalie,” she breathes. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again. I didn’t think you’d come.”

Nat’s mouth trembles as she slowly approaches Lottie’s bed. She doesn’t sit down. She doesn’t know if she should.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think I would, either.” She looks around slowly, thinking. “You look different. Your hair…”

Lottie lifts a self-conscious hand to the blunt ends. “It’s new. They told me that cutting it might help. That change can be grounding.”

“Well, is it?”

Lottie laughs quietly. “Sometimes I still forget it’s short and try to push it behind my back, so… I don’t think so.”

“It looks good, though,” Nat smiles faintly. “You look good. How are you?”

“I think I’m better most days,” Lottie says. “How are you?”

“Been worse,” she says, a slow smirk curving on her lips. “I, uh… I got out of rehab a few months ago.”

Lottie’s eyes soften with worry. “You went to rehab?”

“Yeah,” she answers, shrugging one shoulder. “Tai practically dragged me in.”

“It’s good she did. I’m glad you’re safe now,” Lottie says solemnly.

Emotions well up behind Nat’s eyes like floodwater, and she isn’t even sure what for yet. “Lottie…”

Lottie’s gaze casts down, eyes blinking contemplatively. “For a while, I didn’t know what was real. The meds, the treatments—they blur things. I’d wake up and feel like I was dreaming. Like I’d dreamed my whole life up until now. I couldn’t tell what I believed.”

Nat watches her, quiet. They’ve talked here and there about the treatments and therapies, but she’s not sure she’s ever heard Lottie talk so plainly about this before.

“But I kept picturing you,” Lottie continues, eyes finally lifting to meet Nat’s. “That part always felt real. Even when I didn’t trust anything else, I’d see your face, and I’d know I wasn’t making it all up.”

Nat swallows, her throat feeling tight. “You pictured me?”

“More than I should’ve,” she admits, a faint, sheepish smile tugging at her lips. “I liked to picture you happy and safe, somewhere beautiful. Somewhere far away.”

Nat chuckles sadly. “I did move to LA for rehab.”

Lottie smiles at that. “Are you happy now, Natalie?”

There’s a part of her that wants to lie just to give Lottie peace—to wrap it in a fairytale that makes her believe that there’s hope for happiness. But something about the earnest way that Lottie is looking at her makes her want to tell the truth. That’s what they used to do with each other. Lottie always understood every thought in her head, no matter how dark it got.

“I don’t know,” she admits honestly. “Some days are good. Some aren’t. It’s… not really about being happy, I think. It’s just about… not wanting to die anymore.”

Lottie nods like she knows the feeling. “That’s important,” she says. She stares at Nat through the lingering silence. “How is Travis?”

Nat furrows her eyebrows. There’s a lot to say about Travis. She mostly thinks about his hollow eyes and too-slow walk out of her apartment, rolling his small suitcase. But this isn’t exactly good territory for her and Lottie to chart, considering the last conversation they had before this. Travis was always this thread between them and now it’s as if Nat has severed it.

“Uh… He’s fine. He’s getting by. Why?”

Lottie is still as she stares, lips apart. Nat takes another step forward, eyebrows narrowing further. “Have you… Have you been talking to Travis?”

Though Lottie shakes her head, Nat doesn’t believe her. That night at her apartment, she didn’t understand how he could’ve guessed that there was something going on between her and Lottie. But it all makes sense now. “Oh my God. Lottie, did you say something to him about—about us?”

Lottie shakes her head faster this time, more adamantly. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Lottie.”

“He came to see me,” she admits. “Before I left New Jersey. He was… hearing things again—Javi.”

The mention of that name spikes the nerves in Nat's body. She should have known. Travis could never stay away from Lottie, no matter what she put him through, and no matter what he claimed. Deep down, he believed in her.

“Tell me you didn’t put that bullshit back in his head,” Nat growls.

“I didn’t. I swear, I told him that we left all of that behind. That it isn’t real,” she says, and Nat isn’t sure if she believes that Lottie believes that. Not entirely, at least. “I told him to find you again.”

“What?”

“That you two need each other. You do,” Lottie says eagerly, as if this information is going to please Nat. “He was pushing you away.”

And suddenly it makes sense, why Travis suddenly latched onto her—why he came around to the idea of a relationship with her. He always listened to Lottie’s word like Gospel, so this is no different. He needs Lottie more than he needs Nat, and that has always been the case.

Lottie had to make him need Nat.

“Oh, so is that what that was, huh? You and Travis fucking conspiring together for him to pity fuck me. Is that it?”

“No,” Lottie says, scrunching her eyebrows in hurt. “I wanted you to be happy.”

“What is wrong with you?” Nat demands, feeling like her whole face is trembling and hot. There are a million answers to that question that she’ll never be able to comprehend. Couldn’t Lottie just be a normal jealous person and try to fuck up her love life?

“Natalie, I love you,” Lottie says.

Those three words collide with Nat's head and dizzy her uncontrollably. Her eyes widen, speedily met with a downpour of hot and stinging tears. Her face wrinkles. “Fuck, don’t you fucking say that, Lottie."

“No, I do. I love you, Natalie,” she says. “Don’t you see that?”

“Why are you doing this? Stop.”

“No, I love you. Why can’t you just let me?” she asks.

“Because,” Nat chokes. “Because you can’t say that.”

Lottie blinks, furrowing her eyebrows. She looks confused or hurt, or both, Natalie doesn’t fucking know. “Then can I fuck you?”

“What?”

Lottie studies her horrified face. “That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

“No.”

Lottie looks more confused. “Then why are you here?”

“You think I flew across the world for a fucking hookup? It would’ve been less expensive to hire a hooker, Lottie.”

Lottie looks away, her gaze falling to the floor, eyes soft and shadowed like a wounded deer that hasn’t quite figured out if it’s going to run or lie down and die. Nat shuts her eyes for long enough to inventory the damage, to feel the full-body self-hatred of saying the wrong thing at maximum volume in the one moment it actually mattered. She always gets everything wrong—says all the wrong things, does all the wrong things. She wants to change that this time.

She lowers onto Lottie’s bed and takes a deep breath.

“I’m really sorry,” she says, slow and husked. “I didn’t come here to fight with you. I’m not gonna make that mistake again. I just…”

Lottie waits. And every second that Natalie doesn’t speak seems to jab another splinter through Lottie’s heart.

“There isn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t thinking about you, Lottie.”

She reaches for Lottie’s wrist, thumb stroking her inner arm. Lottie looks down at the touch, flinching in surprise. “I thought you hated me.”

And oh, Natalie tried. Really, she had. She poured everything she had into hating Lottie for what happened out there, but she never could.

“I don’t hate you.”

“You should. You were right that day. I’m… the reason for everything,” Lottie says, blinking through each word like it brings her pain. “I… caused all of that harm. And you—you were good. You never wanted any of that. You saved us, while I tried to destroy us.”

“Lottie…”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Lottie,” she says again, this time slower. “I was wrong. We all did things we regret out there. We’re all fucked up, okay? I blamed you because it was easier than accepting that.”

Lottie is wet-eyed and trembling; she doesn’t look like she fully believes the words.

“No, I…” Lottie chokes, shaking her head and looking further away. There are tears pouring down her cheeks now. “I can’t remember everything, but I remember hurting you. And I hate myself for it. I’m sorry, Natalie. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m—”

Natalie presses her fingertips underneath Lottie’s chin, gently pulling her head up so they’re forced to face each other. She wipes a tear away with her thumb.

“Look at me,” she pleads.

Lottie finally stops resisting her touch. Her eyelashes are wet and her cheeks are tear-stained, but she manages to look at Nat, even if it’s unsteady.

“I don’t hate you, Lottie. I…” She swallows, eyes shutting and trembling. She only opens them when she’s ready. Her heart is beating a million times per minute. “I fucking love you, too.”

If Lottie doesn’t believe that—Natalie can only convince her with the press of her lips to Lottie’s in worship, cleansing any doubts out with her tongue like the first rain after a years-long drought. Lottie breathes her in and accepts the flood. They kiss and kiss and cling to each other like they’d rather drown than ever go so long without touching each other again, and Natalie feels those words in the marrow of her bones.

She doesn’t know when it started, or if it’s been inside of her all along, but it’s taken over her completely now.

Nat comes to see Lottie as much as they allow her to. She sublets an apartment and stays nearby. This time, it seems like Lottie is doing better—like really, doing better.

They take things slower this time, but Nat doesn’t mind. It’s nice this way, to just be with Lottie, even if they don’t do anything but talk.

Lottie’s head is leaned on Nat’s shoulder as they lie in the bed. With every ounce of focus inside of her, Nat listens as Lottie talks all about the food, the patients, and every treatment.

“They’ve got me in CBT-p now. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis,” Lottie explains, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Weirdly, it’s kind of like… soccer drills for my brain. We go through all these thought patterns, and I have to challenge stuff that used to just… feel true.”

“That sounds…” Nat hesitates, still feeling like she’s no good at this, but wanting to know more. Wanting to understand every groove of Lottie’s brain. “Actually helpful?”

Lottie nods. “I used to think nothing would help, but I think my doctor—I think he’s actually good. He doesn’t look at me like I’m crazy. My old doctor used to.”

Nat looks at her apologetically. She hates that she’s one of the people that made Lottie feel that way, too.

“You know, my dad had someone fired from the hospital for leaking my patient information without his consent,” Lottie laughs against Natalie’s chest. “He was afraid that it would affect his deals.”

“Fuck, that’s my fault,” Nat says, eyes widening.

“You were checking in on me, loser?” Lottie teases.

“Fuck off,” Nat laughs tearily, poking her thumb playfully along the deepening dimple of Lottie’s cheek. “It was actually Misty.”

“Misty Quigley?”

“Yeah. Pretty sure she’s got Rolodex cards with our every move written down.”

“You don’t sound too concerned.”

“She helped me find you.”

Natalie huffs lazily as she unpacks the clothes from her suitcase, shoveling them unfolded into already-messy drawers. She hates being back in LA, but she doesn’t want to go back to New Jersey, either. She’s suspended in the middle, but doesn’t belong anywhere.

She doesn’t know how long it’s going to be until she can see Lottie again. The observation period has started, and they said around eight weeks, but Nat has heard this all before—she knows that nothing is set in stone until Lottie really passes. And even if she does pass, even if she gets released, there’s no saying for sure that things won’t get dark again.

She’s halfway done with her unpacking when her hand brushes along the spine of the paperback of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn nestled in the back of the drawer—an overdue copy that was meant to be returned to the Wiskayok Public Library in 1998.

She never did finish the book. They’d gotten a bit carried away, obviously. She smiles bittersweetly when she thinks about it: Lottie kissing her for the very first time. She’d been so afraid about what it meant. She was confident that she could somehow force Lottie out of her head. But here she is, seven years later, with Lottie fucking Matthews still occupying every crevice of her brain.

She abandons her unpacking and returns to bed with the paperback in hand. This time, she reads it all in one night, starting from the very beginning. It’s still sort of depressing at times, this little girl Francie’s in poverty and has a dead dad, but Nat doesn’t know why she ignored how glaringly obvious it was that Lottie was right. Maybe Nat wasn’t ready to see it then, but it’s a hopeful story, with a hopeful ending.

She imagines the words in Lottie’s voice: “People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains—a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone—just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

It’s sort of cheesy, and she sort of wants to make fun of Lottie for it. But she sort of gets it now, too.

Like a captive wild animal set free, Lottie is brought out by the orderlies and released into the thrush of green outside.

Originally, Lottie’s dad was meant to be here. After years of this nonsense going on, his visits had already become nonexistent long ago, but when he received the update that she actually passed her observation period, he promised to be there on the day of her release, at least. Business came up, as usual, this time in Amsterdam. Lottie doesn’t mind, though. She doesn’t bother checking how surely short the flight is between the Netherlands and Switzerland, how he could easily be here if he wanted to. By this point, she’s already aware that his promises don’t carry much weight. More importantly, she gets a much better getaway car.

The stunning blue lake and luscious green Sycamores that she hadn’t gotten the chance to admire before blur into obscurity when Natalie comes into focus with a smile on her perfect lips.

So really, Lottie isn’t all that upset that her parents aren’t here for this moment. Not when Natalie throws her arms around Lottie, burying hands in the back of her hair, pulling her impossibly closer.

“I missed you,” Natalie whispers into her shoulder.

Lottie never wants Natalie to let go of her again.

The biggest upside of the perpetual absence of her parents is the luxurious stay fully funded by Mr. Matthews as compensation for his negligence. Their escape lodging is a warmly-lit chalet somewhere partway between Montreux and the Alps.

Natalie is impressed, but really, it wouldn’t matter to her where they went. Lottie could’ve picked the back alley of a Swiss McDonald’s for all she cares. Hell, the airport bathroom would have sufficed. She would’ve followed Lottie anywhere. All she wants is Lottie—all she needs is Lottie.

Despite the plush sofa just a few feet behind them, they’ve opted for the hardwood floors, wrapped in woolly blankets. They sip Swiss hot chocolate from ceramic mugs. The cocoa is thick and sweet, each sugary swallow scalding their tongues. The fireplace beside them crackles, but kindly offers them both immense warmth and the flicker of a beautifully golden light.

“I should’ve come sooner,” Natalie says, thumb fussing the curve of her now-empty mug.

“It’s okay.” Lottie’s smile is soft and sincere. She has already set her own empty mug aside on the floor, hand now free to reach across the narrow distance to tuck a disobedient corner strand of Natalie’s overgrown fringe. “I would’ve waited forever for you, Natalie.”

And fuck. Natalie feels the words everywhere inside of her from head to toe. Her skin is crawling with goosebumps despite the heat radiating from the fire and the blankets and the close proximity of their bodies. Even her kneecaps feel like they’re blushing.

Lottie makes it easy to make up for lost time. She plucks the now-empty mug from Natalie’s hand, exchanging it for the interlacing of their fingers. Her other hand glides to Natalie’s hip. Instinctively, Natalie sheds the blanket off her shoulders and it puddles behind her.

Lottie lifts the other half of her blanket and drapes it around both of them like a canopy as Natalie climbs into her lap. Their noses nudge as Natalie balances herself with one hand at the nape of Lottie’s neck. She can feel the residual dampness in Lottie’s hair from her shower. Just when she thinks Lottie is going to close the distance between their lips, Lottie instead brings their woven hands to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to each knuckle in slow succession. It’s unbearably romantic, and Natalie feels a hot, unrelenting ache course through her as she watches it, heart pounding in her chest. Everything Lottie does sends her further over the edge.

It finally dawns upon Natalie how much she’s thought about this moment. In all of her dreams and between the one-night-stands, she’s been desperate to touch Lottie and be touched by Lottie once again. And here Lottie is, out of her dreams, warm and real in her hands.

“Lottie…” she breathes.

Lottie answers with her mouth. Their lips linger there motionless, until Natalie finally pulls back. She admires Lottie’s divine face, hued with the burnt orange glow of the firelight, her eyes looking an even deeper shade of brown. Their noses brush before Natalie slips her lips between Lottie’s again, this time more fervently, her tongue tracing the shape of everything she missed. They spend so much time kissing around each other’s mouths, letting their tongues tangle, feeling everything like it’s going to be taken from them again. It ignites Natalie’s core, burning her, making her desperate for more. She guides Lottie’s hands up her sides, under the hem of her oversized Tuscadero t-shirt. Lottie trusts the hint, feeling the skin of her abdomen for only a moment before lifting the t-shirt over her head, revealing the red bra that frames Natalie’s chest so perfectly.

Lottie stares breathlessly, as if she’s never seen this before. She feels around the bottom of each cup with slow fingers before sliding a hand around her back to undo the clasp, the straps falling down her shoulders until the bra falls between them and is shoved aside by Natalie. Lottie stares down again, kiss-bruised lips parted. She allows herself to touch for only a short moment.

“Lie down,” Lottie whispers, and Natalie obeys.

Lottie steadies the blanket flat below Natalie before her head hits the floor, then follows her down. Lottie gets on top of her, their bodies pressing together as one. The wet strands of Lottie’s bangs and their framing pieces drip brush over Natalie’s forehead, and Natalie can smell the lavender shampoo from the shower. Lottie’s hand gently brushes Natalie’s cheek. Her gaze swims in the blues and greens of Natalie’s eyes, drowning every second she’s suspended there.

“What you said that first day,” Lottie breathes. “Do you still mean that?”

Natalie furrows her eyebrows. “What–oh.” She arches up, catching Lottie’s mouth in another kiss. “Yes,” she says, finally. She thinks about saying the words themselves again, but they’ve always tasted strange in her throat. “Do you?”

“Always,” Lottie promises, and Natalie’s stomach barely has a second to flip and stutter at that before she’s being thoroughly kissed again.

“I missed this,” Lottie says between kisses, tugging at Natalie’s bottom lip with her teeth. She descends to Natalie’s neck next, planting a biting kiss that makes Natalie moan low in her throat. “And this.”

She continues along, trailing kisses and announcing anywhere she missed, which is everywhere—collarbone, shoulders, sternum, lingering around Natalie’s breasts. She squeezes over them with both hands, watching up at how Natalie shudders at the touch, back arching, and then moaning again, louder and harder, when Lottie’s tongue swipes over her nipple in circles.

Lottie’s mouth meets everywhere in slow-motion, taking her sweet time like she’s been deprived for ages and needs to savor every droplet. It’s so slow that it burns Natalie between her legs, her chest falling up and down in rapid pants as Lottie covers every inch of her skin with the kiss of her lips and the drag of her tongue. She’s really taking her time around Natalie’s abdomen, butterflying kisses around her belly button until her nose is grazing the waistband of plaid pajama pants.

“Up,” Lottie says, fingers hooked around the waistband.

Natalie lifts her legs, and Lottie has risen to drag her pants and red panties down together. The nakedness makes her painfully aware of how clothed Lottie is, and she leans up again.

“I wanna see you, too,” Natalie whispers, wetting her lips as she sits up just enough for her hands to meet the top button on Lottie’s silk pajama top. She watches Lottie’s lustful eyes on her as she ever-so-slowly goes down the line, the silk splitting more and more with each button popped. Lottie is bare and beautiful underneath, and fuck. Natalie missed this. She pushes the silk off Lottie’s shoulders and buries her face in the valley between while Lottie grasps at her hair.

Lottie’s throaty moans fill Natalie’s ears like music as she works her mouth all over her chest. Panting, Lottie brings two fingers to Natalie’s chin, raising her one head below, leaning down to kiss her once more.

By the request of Lottie’s hands, Natalie sinks down over the blanket as their mouths move together. Lottie parts their lips and lowers her head because this is her favorite thing to do to Natalie. Her hands wedge on the underside of Natalie’s ankles, curving up to her calves as she pushes them up. Natalie obliges and tents her legs. Lottie squeezes along the underside of Natalie’s legs, especially hard when she reaches her inner thighs. Natalie’s hips buck at the contact, granting full access to the broad swipe from Lottie’s tongue between her legs. And fuck, Natalie had forgotten how good this feels—how Lottie knows her body inside and out, knows exactly where to touch and kiss, exactly where and how to move her tongue, and that drives Natalie fucking crazy. Her hand is buried in the depths of Lottie’s hair, pushing her deeper inside.

“Fuck, Lottie.”

Lottie finds the limp hand on Natalie’s stomach and holds it, lacing their fingers while her tongue and lips remain occupied with their deliberate work. She devours Natalie with no restraint, and savors every drop, moaning into her like she’s the one who’s being touched, and it drives this primal urge in Natalie as she thinks about Lottie underneath her instead. Lottie squeezes her hand, and sucking Natalie’s clit one striking time before Natalie comes crashing down with pleasure, thighs imprisoning Lottie’s head. But Lottie welcomes it, pressing her nose deep, soaking in every tremor and shudder until Natalie rides out her final wave.

Once her legs finally grant release, Lottie, mouth and nose glistening with Natalie, comes up to kiss her again. She tastes the salt and heat of herself. All she can do is kiss back languidly, now utterly desperate to taste Lottie instead.

“Let me touch you,” she begs.

“You can touch me anywhere,” Lottie says needily.

And Natalie does. She touches and kisses everything she can before peeling off Lottie’s pajama pants and underwear. Her hands slide down patient hips as her eyes feel frozen on this new skin. Just to feel Lottie, to feel how much Lottie wants her, Natalie teases a finger shallowly, shuddering at the sticky warmth. Hands on Lottie’s thighs, she buries her face in, lips and tongue meeting the heat she’d just touched. Her head spins dizzily from Lottie’s quickening moans, so much so that she has to pull back, just for a second.

“I fucking missed the way you taste,” Natalie breathes, and Lottie chokes out something indiscernible before pleadingly grasping at hair instead.

Natalie drinks her up again, squeezing at inner thighs, savoring every whimper and moan that escapes Lottie’s lips like it’s the last time she’ll hear her. She savors every “Natalie” and “fuck” she can elicit. Lottie comes like she’s been holding her breath for this since the day they met, her long legs trembling until she can get Natalie out from between them and up into her arms to kiss her desperately.

When they part, Lottie is smiling, dazed. “I’m gonna need, like, five business days to recover from that.”

Natalie laughs into her mouth. “You’re not getting five business days. You’re getting, like, an hour. Max.”

“You’re insatiable,” Lottie grins.

“No, I’ve just waited too fucking long to do this again,” she says.

Lottie smiles as Natalie folds down into her chest, pulling the blanket up simultaneously.

“Where do we go now?” Lottie asks, her voice slightly muffled by the roots of Natalie’s hair against her mouth.

“Uh… to bed,” Natalie says, the corners of her lips twitching into a tiny smirk. She tilts her face up, kissing Lottie syrupy-slow for a few indulgent seconds. “To do this all over again.”

Lottie rolls her eyes fondly. “I meant after this,” she says, drawing tiny circles on Natalie’s back. “After Switzerland.”

Natalie sighs as she thinks. “I don’t know. I’ve got some shit in my apartment in LA, but I don’t wanna go back there. Or Jersey. God, especially not Jersey.”

Lottie laughs, but then breathes in contemplation. Her fingers have begun making lazy figure-eights now. “What if we go somewhere new?”

Natalie’s head lifts partially, her lips curving into a small smile. “And disappear?”

“Something like that.”

She studies Lottie. “You don’t wanna go home?”

“No place has ever really felt like home,” Lottie says. “Not until you.”

And the most shallow shore of Natalie’s heart wants to punch Lottie in the shoulder and tell her she’s being a fucking cornball, but instead, she feels something like tears wetting the cliffs of her eyes. Because the truth is, all her life, Natalie has never felt like she belonged anywhere—not in her haunting trailer, not beneath those fancy rehab sheets, and certainly not in either of the two shitty apartments she’s leased—but somehow, being here with Lottie, even in this ridiculously overpriced Swiss chalet, she finally feels something close to home.

She could go anywhere with Lottie, and it would feel like home.

“Let’s go somewhere new,” she says. A smile tugs her lips. “You know that game people play, where you spin a globe around, and go to the first place it lands?”

Lottie laughs. “Is that what you’d want to do?”

Natalie shrugs. “Could be fun. But what if it lands on… I dunno, Oklahoma? Or, worse, fucking Wiskayok.”

Lottie doesn’t seem to flinch at the mention of their abysmal hometown. She hums thoughtfully.

“There are worse places to be.”

They’ve survived them, after all.

Natalie climbs onto the bed on her knees. She holds out a cold glass of water from the kitchen and waits.

“Thank you,” Lottie says while unscrewing the cap of a bright orange pill bottle. She tosses a single pill to the back of her tongue before accepting the glass from Nat and washing the medicine down her throat.

Nat takes the water and pill bottle away, setting both neatly on the nightstand. Clad in her Tuscadero tee, she slips back under the covers to warm her shivering bare legs, and Lottie follows. Both of them stare up at the ceiling in thought.

Instinctively, Nat reaches for Lottie’s hand, draping it gently over her stomach. She plays with her fingers, weaving and unfolding before finally bringing the hand closer to her line of sight.

She studies the topography of Lottie’s hand like a map. There’s a mass of scar tissue on her palm that’s evidently been opened and closed and opened and closed, for God knows how long. But thankfully, the wound at least appears to have not been reopened for some time. Nat’s thumb traces gently over the oddly soft ridges. It’s begun to resemble the scarring on Lottie’s forehead, only more recent.

Lottie notices her inspection, but doesn’t say anything.

“Can I ask…” Nat begins slowly. “Why were you doing that again? Hurting yourself?”

Lottie sighs a spout of shame. Her hand flinches back slightly, trying to retreat to its side, but Nat tugs it back, squeezing it in place.

Nat feels a giant lump forming in her throat, every succeeding swallow growing more painful. She tries not to let herself cry. “Was it because of me? Is that why your parents sent you here—to Switzerland?”

“Natalie…”

“You can tell me.”

“We don’t have to talk about this,” Lottie says quietly.

“We can talk about anything,” Nat assures her. She holds Lottie’s hand to her heart. “I won’t run this time. I promise.”

Lottie looks ever-contemplative, biting down on her lip. Something stirs in her mind, but it gets her to shift onto her side, head propped up with one hand, while the other, the scarred one, rests on Natalie’s heart. Nat mirrors her position without thinking.

“It was a lot of things,” Lottie answers.

“Oh my God.” Nat’s eyes burn with tears she no longer can restrict. “It was me, wasn’t it?”

“They were already going to send me away; I wasn’t well.”

“I should’ve noticed. I should’ve done something. I should’ve been there—”

“Stop blaming yourself,” Lottie says. “There was nothing you could’ve done. It’s my head.”

Nat nods her head, feeling like an asshole for making Lottie console her about this. “Can you tell me what it was like?”

Lottie swallows, looking at her hesitantly. “Are you sure?”

Nat nods again. “I wanna know everything.”

For a scarily long moment, Lottie’s eyes shut, as if she’s reliving all the terrible, hazy, half-forgotten years in between then and now. When her eyes finally open, her eyes are glossy.

“I know this is fucked up,” she breathes. Nat squeezes her hand.

“I know I sound crazy. But my whole life, I’ve… never been able to trust my own brain. Out there, it was different. It was horrible, what we did, I know it was horrible. But, I remember waking up some days and thinking, this… is what being alive is supposed to feel like. Like I finally understood myself the way that everyone else does so naturally. I wanted to feel that again.”

There’s no way Nat can blame her. She nods. “You wanted to hear It again?”

“It, or just— something real, I don’t know,” she says, her voice strained. “They were putting me on new meds, and I thought I was hearing things again. I just… I wanted to see if I did what I used to… if I tried to communicate, and I got a response, that maybe everything I did out there was for something greater.”

She swallows, looking at Nat with wet eyes. “That maybe I didn’t hurt people for nothing.”

Nat’s eyes shut, matching tears welling behind them. She’ll never know what it’s like in Lottie’s head, but she knows the why. She’s felt it. Even when she didn’t believe it in her bones, sometimes she wanted to—she tried to convince herself of it.

When she trudged forward through the snow, the others marched behind her with Javi’s corpse tied to a stick with a belt like a pig bound to a spit roast for a feast. The Wilderness chose. She chanted that in her head as they walked back, as she prepared to face Travis. And she chanted it in her head everyday through the rest of winter and the spring, until she could finally look Travis in the eyes again.

She felt it then, and she felt it every time someone else was chosen, because the alternative was knowing that they were just monsters wearing the skins of teenage girls.

She squeezes Lottie’s hand tighter, clinging to it for life.

“Natalie,” Lottie says. “Sometimes I think I would’ve been better off if I stayed. Is it… bad? That I feel that way?”

Nat shakes her head. “No. I didn’t know what I came back for, either,” she admits. “I’d never go back there now, obviously, but, fuck… at least I had a purpose there. Here, for the longest time, I felt like I had nothing.”

“Do you still feel that way now?” Lottie asks.

“Sometimes,” she nods. “But I want to be better.”

Lottie smiles. “I want to be better, too.”

Nat looks at her so earnestly.

“I’m sorry. For running. For not listening.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing to me,” Lottie says. “I understand why you did.”

“I know, but… I just… I was in a really fucked up place back then, and I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Losing you,” Nat admits shakily.

In the stilling room, Lottie touches Natalie’s face tenderly, thumb over her cheekbone.

“I lost you once out there. I didn’t know if I had it in me to lose you again.”

“You won’t lose me,” Lottie promises. She wipes a falling tear from Nat’s cheek.

“But if I start to… if things get bad again, I won’t leave,” Nat says. “I won’t ever leave you again, Lottie. I promise.”

She shifts up, pressing soft lips to the raised but fading scar on Lottie’s forehead. She likes to keep her promises.

When Natalie’s grogged eyes open slowly to white haze, for a split second, there’s that old ache in her chest that warns her that if she reaches out, she’ll find nothing but empty bedsheets beside her. But then she feels two arms slung low around her waist, palms pressed to her stomach. The heat of someone else’s skin—Lottie’s skin—tucked against her back, breath ghosting steadily along the nape of her neck.

Careful not to shift too much, Natalie twists in the sheets until she’s facing Lottie, fingers skimming along the bare skin of her arm.

“Hey, Lot?”

All she gets back is a drowsy hum to tell her that she’s been heard. Natalie smiles softly.

“I love you,” she says, and the strange, sour taste of the words has turned sweet.

Lottie’s eyes flutter open. She pulls Natalie in closer, their foreheads pressing together. They don’t say anything after that, but really, they don’t have to.

Natalie doesn’t know exactly what comes next. She doesn’t know what the rest of this day looks like, let alone the rest of their lives. But what she does know is how grateful she is to, at long last, wake up next to Lottie in the morning. And in that moment, happiness doesn’t feel like such a faraway thing.