Chapter Text
“Ms. Ibarra, these photos are excellent!”
Mari looked up from the crappy library school computer and to her left to see Mrs. White, her photography teacher. In her hand, held a folder labeled Mari Ibarra. She recognized the folder. A submitted assignment from a few weeks earlier without much of a thought. She’d taken the camera to a night practice, and the field lights were especially bright, so she snapped a few photos without much care, not even double checking to see how they looked.
She didn’t care for photography class. She had applied for ceramics, but since that was full, they put her in the next remotely artsy option, that being photography. She frequently complained about it to the likes of Gen, Melissa, and Akilah, but most girls chuckled in response.
Now, however, one of the more shocking things to come of it was her photography teacher hunting her down in the library to tell her how good her work was.
“Oh- uh thanks. Why wouldn’t they be?” she chuckled, putting on the familiar facade of confidence that slipped on and shielded her whenever she was scared, or in this case, caught off guard.
“This is not the work I expected from you, seeing as you always seem to talk or fall asleep in my class,” Mrs. White sighed, “but these photos are certainly amazing for someone your age! I believe you have a natural talent,” the woman raved.
Mari found herself at a loss for words, stammering.
“I mean- obviously, right?” she stuttered, looking up at the woman.
“You know, I heard that you and your little soccer team are going to nationals, right? I actually was going to ask Misty to take photos and videos, but-” the woman sighed at the mention of the odd blonde girl, before continuing, “I feel you’d be more qualified to take videos, seeing as you can document a lot of things well in photos, videos should be no different. You’d get extra credit for it, obviously,” the woman added, smiling down at Mari.
Mari gaped slightly. Now, despite being the smartass she was, she never found herself being an overachiever. Her grades, soccer skills, hobbies, and anything else that required skill were mediocre in her own opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet, despite that, she still got acclaimed for such mediocre feats. She was placed on varsity for soccer, and was getting acclaimed for an assignment she didn’t give two shits about. She was only a Junior, but already, she found herself looking at certain schools, most of which needing a high GPA.
If doing shitty photography extra credit assignments would raise her GPA, then so be it. She was sick and tired of being compared to her sister, Morgan, in literally everything. For once, she’d allow herself to excel.
“How much extra credit are you talking about?” Mari asks, a smirk on her face.
Nobody questions the comically large camcorder that Mari has to drag everywhere. She’d record little tidbits, such as a shot where she focused on Lottie’s navy backpack as she stepped up the steps to the plane, or a shot of Van laughing at whatever Natalie said from across the aisle of the plane. She got a shot of Rachel and Nicole sharing cassette tapes for their walkmans. Well, except Akilah. She questioned it a bit.
“What is this for?” the dark haired girl giggles, shifting her weight onto the arm of her seat.
Mari grins wildly, shoving the camcorder into the girl’s face.
“You’ll see when it’s done,” she laughs, continuing with a comically deep, funny voice “now- what are your opinions on us about to kick butt at nationals?”
Akilah laughs at the voice she made.
“You sound like Hannibal Lector!”
“Who the hell is that?” Mari laughs, not moving the camcorder.
Akilah practically gasps.
“Have you not seen ‘The Silence of the Lambs’?”
“And what if I haven’t?” Mari replies smugly, turning off the camcorder, despite the lack of answer she got.
With that, Mari puts the camcorder into her bag, not giving it much thought. The camcorder goes untouched in her suitcase through everything. Through the crash, through both Van and Laura Lee’s maulings via claws and flames, through Doomcoming, through Jackie almost freezing to death, through Travis & Javi being found, face down in the snow not even a mile from the cabin, through Coach Scott flinging himself off the cliff not too far from the cabin, through Maria freezing to death whilst coming back from going to the bathroom when a snowstorm hit, through through Crystal going suspiciously missing, through Shauna giving birth, then beating the utter shit out of Lottie, and through Nicole’s recent death that was done at the hands of a bunch of delirious, hungry teenagers doing so due to a deck of cards.
The most recent tragedy to strike, however, was the death of Melissa at the hands of asthma, which Mari didn’t even know she had. Gen was mourning, and seeing as Mari somewhat considered her a friend, she tried not to get annoyed by her mopiness. She’d get over it. Mari had. She’d gotten over Rachel, Nicole, Maria, all girls she knew relatively well due to them being in a lot of her classes, so she felt she knew a rough estimate as to when Gen would be pulled from her depression.
Misty, as fucking weird as she was, had seemed fine after a few days without Crystal, similar to Natalie a month at least without Travis. However, Mari, unlike usual, was not interested in learning about and making fun of others' problems. No, she found something far more interesting. She felt the tension coming from well- literally everyone. At this point, she knew her death was coming soon.
A morbid fact for a girl who was 16 (17? How long have they been out here?) to accept, but she felt most in her situation would do the same. Nowadays, she spent the days thinking about how she’d be remembered, all of which ways weren’t the prettiest.
A mediocre soccer player lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to make varsity.
A shitty student who couldn’t care less about most things.
A bad friend who nitpicked anything about anyone
A bratty daughter who only found it in herself to complain.
An annoying younger sister always attempting to one-up her older counterpart, always failing.
It was safe to say, she couldn’t think of any achievements that made herself worthy enough to even be remembered.
Just that bitchy girl who died in a ‘tragic’ plane crash.
Because of this, she found herself thinking about a way to change these things, but she knew she couldn’t do much whilst out here. She knew that probably only Akilah would have anything nice to say about her, but she, as mean as it was, didn’t see Akilah surviving this either.
Legacy seemed to be her word of the week, surrounding every thought that popped into her head like a virus. How would she be remembered?
This all came to a breaking point when sure enough, digging through her suitcase for more clothes to add to the communal clothes pile, she uncovered it. The RCA Camcorder was in excellent condition, barely even cracked, and its only issue being covered in a layer of dust, which Mari easily wiped off with her hand. Next to it, was a small plastic baggy with countless replacement battery packs, and a shit ton of film cartridges, which Mari admits she overpacked, but she just decided to pack all the equipment for it anyway.
Mari, at first, was about to move it to the side and continue digging for clothes, but an idea bloomed in her head like a spring flower. She looked around, letting out a relieved breath that nobody was in the cabin with her. She grabbed the camera, seeing the battery was about half, but she didn’t need to replace it for a while.
Mari stuffed the bulky camcorder into her jacket, and made her trek away from the back of the cabin, and into the forest. After a few minutes, she set the camcorder on a log, positioning it towards her.
She fiddled with the settings before pressing record.
She found herself at a loss for words, staring at the lens of the camera.
“Uh- my name is Mari Ibarra… I’m like- 16… 17 years old? I kinda lost track of how much time I’ve been here but erm… I am a member of the Wiskayok Yellowjackets,” she started after a pregnant pause.
She found herself at a loss, staring at the camera. She thought about how bizarre she must look. Sitting in snow, wrapped in layers and layers of clothing to attempt to keep herself warm. She felt a faint chill rise up her spin as she continued.
She rolled her eyes slightly. “ This is so fucking stupid. We’ve uh- been here since about late spring, early summer. It’s late winter, now,” Mari continues.
She finds guilt bubbling in her stomach as she continues.
“Uh… Melissa just died. I don’t know how she didn’t die sooner,” Mari chuckles, before her expression soured.
“Sorry, that was mean. I mean, she took it like a champ. I didn’t even know she had asthma until it killed her,” she continued, a frown on her face.
“I know this probably isn’t gonna be found, but I still have to confess something,” she starts, wringing her hands under her gloves.
She looks into the lens again, attempting to keep as straight of a face as possible.
“I have come to the realization that we are not going to be rescued, and if we are, I will not be alive at that point,” she sighs, adding on, “I just think I need to apologize for a few things.”
She thinks for a moment, before in her own words, she spills her guts. She apologizes to everyone she can think of. Her mother, her father, her sister Morgan, Allie, most of her other friends back home, and especially to those who recently died, those being Maria, Melissa, and Nicole.
“Yeah, uh, I know unlike most possible people who would see this, the last people I think would even see it would be Nicole, Maria, and Melissa, y’know, because their fucking dead, but I feel like they need an apology,” she says, looking up from her hands and staring at the camera.
“I’m sorry that we ate you, Maria. I just- y’know, you died, we tried to cremate you and snow fell on you and we just- we were so hungry,” she almost sobbed, but she found it in herself to suppress it, the sound not escaping her mouth and the tears not falling.
“Nicole, I’m sorry we killed you. I mean, I could go on about how we all agreed to the game, and you were just the unlucky one, and you would have done the same to me, but I won’t. I’m sorry we had to kill you,” she sighed.
She meant what she said. Nicole had agreed to the game as much as anyone else, agreeing with the common sentiment that both they and the forest needed to be fed or they would die. It was just unfortunate that the girl lost the luck of the draw.
“And uh- Melissa. We’re probably gonna eat you next. Honestly, I’d be kinda glad if I went out like that instead of being like- hunted by a group of teenage girls, so I’d take the win, you fucking dork,” she chuckled rubbing her eyes.
She turned the camera off, and assumed that would be the last of it.
It was not the last of it.
Over the course of her time in the woods, hours upon hours of videos were recorded by Mari, unbeknownst to the rest of the team. Footage going from her just talking about what she did that day, to whatever rituals they had been doing, to whatever inner turmoil she was feeling. Sort of a video diary, one she was positive nobody would ever see.
She sometimes felt it was fun to hide the camera sometimes, such as at dinner, and just let it record for about half an hour before picking it up and hiding it in her suitcase once again, before taking it out and messing with it more.
It became one of the only hobbies she could even have in the wilderness, and with so many batteries and film cartridges packed, she practically could use it as much as she wanted. Guess she and “Cabin Guy” were alike in that regard, seeing as he way over-stashed his ammunition, and she packed far too much film equipment.
How they were also alike was the fact that they were now dead.
Mari’s recordings on her last day of life were like almost any other. Gen had died at that point, Akilah not long after, leaving slim pickings as to who would be next, the only girls remaining being the Seniors, or Jackie, Shauna, Natalie, Laura Lee, Lottie, Van, Taissa, Misty, and of course, Mari.
Of course, the recordings being like any other showcases her paranoia, and of course, her acceptance of death. She turned on her camera for one last time, eliciting the last time Mari would be seen by anything besides the Wiskayok Yellowjackets.
“ Um, alright,” she started, her breath already quickening.
The background was not of the forest, but instead the cabin, currently empty.
“So- I noticed a um- a pattern in the wilderness choosing who lives and dies and all that junk, so I have come to the realization that I am gonna die tonight,” she states bluntly.
“Ever since Akilah died, and we ate her like a week or two ago, I’ve been an outsider. I am not as close as the other girls are, seeing as all of them are Seniors and I’m a Junior. I’ve just- I know I am going to die very soon. I’ll do their little song and dance, running away and getting caught and shit, but I’m gonna die. I think when I first found this stupid fucking camera, I did my apologies and shit, so I’m not gonna do them again.”
She let out a sigh, turning off the camera.
Her camcorder was shoved into her suitcase, which was never checked by her family due to the belief that there was nothing in it.
That evening, she did pull the queen card, as predicted.
That evening, Mari Ibarra died in a pit of spikes, carved to kill her, akin to an animal.
The Wiskayok Yellowjackets were rescued three days later.
They hadn’t even finished preparing her body to eat her yet.
Mari Ibarra died for nothing.
Morgan Ibarra ran her hand through her hair in frustration, staring at the array of moving boxes that littered her childhood home, which she used to share with her parents and sister before her sister died in a fucking plane crash. Morgan had fun college years, to say the least.
Now, about 25 years later, she found herself there again, looking through her old stuff as her parents were now in an assisted living facility. Morgan did not find herself looking back at the home with nostalgia, for the house had been home to nothing but frivolous arguments between her and her bratty younger sister, who was now dead.
Despite her memories of Mari being far from perfect, she always found herself missing the girl. Nowadays, she can barely remember the girl's face. She always found herself telling herself to get over it. After all, it was 25 years ago. She’s 45 now. She needs to get her shit together and quit blaming every issue in her life on the grief she holds from the death of a sister she was barely close with.
So here she was now, in the room she had saved for last for a reason. The last room she currently wanted to be in, Mari’s former room. Band posters littered the wall, Morgan being able to recognize a few such as Nirvana or Salt-N-Pepa. The room hasn’t been altered a bit since the girl had left for nationals 25 years ago. A thick layer of dust covered her shelves, the books on her shelf had their pages yellowed, the navy blue beanie baby seated on her windowsill barely recognizable to its original color due to the sun having its plush fabric sunbleached.
The woman sighed, pulling at the collar of her button down. She walked forward, only to nearly trip and fall onto her face due to an object on the floor. She looked down, only to frown at seeing the dirty, stained suitcase. It had still been returned, but according to Mari’s teammates, they had to ransack it for supplies to survive the winter.
Morgan picked up the suitcase, attempting to move it to the corner, only to raise a brow at the heaviness of the object. Peculiar, seeing as she was told the bag was empty, and she was almost pretty sure her parents hadn’t touched a single object in this room since Mari left, only rolling the suitcase into there.
Curiosity bubbled in her gut, causing the woman to slowly open the suitcase. She winced at the sharp sound of the zipper unzipping for probably the first time in 25 years. She peered inside, her eyes widening at the sighting of an object inside. Inside, nestled among the cushions was the recognizable logo of RCA, plastered onto a bulky camcorder. Morgan raised a brow, picking up the item and setting it onto the floor. Directly under it, laid a couple of film cartridges.
She picked them up, staring at them. She recognized these, seeing as she grew up at the time in which they were in use. A feeling of dread in her stomach formed. She’d remembered Mari bragging about getting an extra credit assignment to film for nationals, but there was no way there was enough footage to fill up multiple cartridges on a simple plane ride.
“See this Morgan? I bet you didn’t get extra credit for photography, or make it nationals, did you?” the younger girl sneered, a deep grin on her face.
Morgan scowled, crossing her arms. She really wasn’t in the mood to fight with Mari as per usual, she needed to pack. Yale was pretty far from home, it being in Connecticut, so she knew she’d need to bring everything she could possibly need, as opposed to having it sent to her in the mail.
After all, Mari had died when the plane made impact with the ground, like almost 20 of the other girls, right? The only ones who survived the initial crash were the 8 girls who survived overall, those being Natalie, Shauna, Misty, Van, Lottie, Laura Lee, Taissa, and Jackie, or at least that's what she remembered their names being.
Her mind began to wander. Could those girls have used it? Would they have known how to use it? She needed to get these converted.
Van has had an extremely long day. Probably one of the most stressful days she’d had since her early twenties. If you had told her a week ago she’d be seated around a campfire with a married woman now cheating with her highschool best friend who is seated next to her, a mentally ill cult leader flirting with a blonde ceo of a vitamin company, who’s face had been practically burned off two decades before, a mentally deranged nurse, a suicidal drug addict, and her own ex girlfriend who recently killed her own dog and almost her wife, she would have actually laughed in your face and then told you to kill yourself.
She had found out an array of things about the girls just 25 years ago, she had been fully prepared to die alongside. For one, Laura Lee had decided to start a vitamin company, and was now a multi-millionaire. Van realized that she had decided to tune out the world around her for far too long. Shauna, who had married Jeff as an apology for the death of his son, a move to this day Van could not wrap her head around, mostly due to the fact she had lost Jackie in the process. Speaking of Jackie, the girl was apparently a gym teacher, which Van was not expecting. Lastly, the fact that Lottie now had a cult that followed her every whim, which Van couldn’t say she didn’t expect. The rest, she was vaguely aware of, such as Misty of all people becoming a nurse, Taissa running for senator, and winning in the process, and of course, Natalie’s substance abuse.
It had been a tough night. Van was not expecting to be seated around a fire in Lottie’s compound, on top of all those things. She felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She had forfeited her spare phone at the entrance of the compound, but she kept her business phone in case. Sure enough, it was an email to her business email. Without another thought, she glanced at it.
“Hey, what did I say about phones?” Lottie chided, standing up.
“This is for my business email, so I kinda need to look at it,” she tells her, pulling the phone just out of grasp.
She hears Shauna sigh something about her daughter doing the same thing and ignoring her in favor of her phone, but Van can barely hear her as she reads the email. Her eyes widened.
Hey Van,
I had some film from a camcorder I needed digitized. A few different cartridges. It hasn’t even been converted to cassette tapes or disk yet. I don’t know what you’d convert camcorder footage to yet. It is an RCA camcorder, if that helps. I know you live out of state, but I came to you because this is some footage that Mari took. I don’t trust anyone else with it. I know you will never tell me, much less anyone else what happened out of these, but you at least owe me the truth about what actually happened to my sister. If you don’t, I’ll bring these to someone else and they’ll have to bear witness to whatever the hell my sister recorded.
I’d like to watch you digitize it, as well.
Thanks, Morgan Ibarra
“Van?” Van heard Laura Lee ask.
The red head looked up, her jaw dropped. Taissa looked at her with concern, much like the others.
“You guys remember that camcorder Mari brought on the flight?” she asks suddenly.
The playful mood drops in an instant at the mention of the crash, as well as Mari. Mari was a particularly sore spot, seeing as only they were the reason she was no longer alive. The girl had pulled the queen card in the final card pulling they’d had out there, which resulted in her falling in a pit of spikes that Laura Lee had made. That wasn’t the part that was bad, seeing as many girls had met a similar fate. No, seeing as Mari had died three days before their rescue. They hadn’t even finished preparing her body to eat when they were rescued, meaning the girl could have been spared.
“What happened?” Natalie responded sternly, looking up from her mug of tea that Lottie had gotten her to drink.
“Her sister found it, and she had multiple cartridges that needed to be developed from it,” Van began.
“That’s impossible. She only recorded like- three things before the crash,” Jackie stammers, looking at Van.
“I know, which is why I’m asking, did you see her recording anything else?” she asks sternly.
Everyone shrugs, mumbling about how they don’t know. Except for one, that being Laura Lee.
“I saw her sneak out of the cabin with it a few times,” Laura Lee said bluntly.
Despite all the time recovering from the woods, Laura Lee had never dropped the deadpan, stern nature she had adopted all those 25 years ago.
“And you didn’t stop her?” Shauna practically gasped, causing the scarred blonde to shrug carelessly.
“I didn’t think it mattered. I assumed we’d never leave, so I didn’t think too much about who could see it. I forgot about it when we got rescued,” Laura Lee sighed, adjusting the turtleneck of the sweater she was wearing.
Van put her hands on her face. “Oh my god we are so screwed,” she groaned.
“You’re screwed? Who knows what Mari could have said about me? We all did some things we weren’t proud of out there, but imagine if what she said about me got out?” Taissa stammered.
“You’re not the only one with things to lose, Taissa,” Laura Lee told the woman bluntly, her icy glare feeling somehow colder than the entire wilderness.
“Don’t develop the footage, then,” Jackie suggested.
“She said she’d bring it to someone else, and that is probably going to end so much worse,” Van sighs, leaning back in her chair.
She reaches for the vodka next to her, but her hand is slapped away by Taissa, who gives her a knowing look.
“Look, I do not care what information about me gets leaked, it won’t really matter in the long run,” Van sighs, and Taissa sends her a knowing look.
Van has pretty much accepted she is going to die. She knows her life has not impacted many others, so she really didn’t give a shit about how she was remembered.
“However, I don’t doubt, whatever Mari said or recorded, could ruin some of your careers,” Van tells them.
“So what do we do?” Taissa asks, wringing her hands.
Van shrugs.
“Look, I’m gonna probably have to be the one to digitize it, unless you want a rando to do it. She said she wants to watch me do it, too. Probably so I don’t try to destroy them, or something. We can either come clean to her on what actually happened to Mari, or let her find out from whatever Mari says or shows in those tapes,” the red head concludes.
“I think we should just let her watch the tapes, and answer questions later. Who knows, maybe some of the shit on there isn’t that bad,” Shauna shrugs, leaning against Jackie.
Taissa however, seemed disturbed by the thought of anyone knowing what could have happened.
“What if she goes to the press?” Taissa stammers, worry in her tone, sending a glance at Jackie, the journalist standing just a few feet away.
Laura Lee shrugs. “We all know Allie made a statement, lying about how we told her bits and pieces of what happened. Nobody takes that book seriously,” she said bluntly, continuing with “she’d have no way to prove it unless she showed them the tapes, which I doubt she’d do, and even so, some of the stuff Mari captured might not be as incriminating as we think, like Shauna said.”
Laura Lee’s is blunt, always carrying that dull, little-to-no-emotion tone. Van struggles to grasp the fact that just merely weeks ago, the woman had apparently had a mental breakdown that had gotten her sent here by her sisters in the first place.
“Still, there is risk. I don’t want to-” Taissa begins, but is cut off by the blonde.
“You don’t think I have things to lose, too? Everyone does. Taissa, it will most likely end worse if we don’t let her find out what happened to Mari. Not only that, she deserves to know. All of the families deserve to know,” Laura Lee uncharacteristically sighs, standing up.
Her scars are illuminated by the flame, practically glowing in the light.
Taissa glared at the blonde, standing up, the action causing Natalie to follow in suit.
“You guys aren’t gonna fucking fight,” the short brunette practically barked.
“This shit could ruin my life!” Taissa stressed, fidgeting with the cuff on the jackets Van had lent her, ignoring that it was slightly too small.
“More than you ruined your own life in the past few months?” Natalie asked, crossing your arms.
“Oh, fuck you too, Natalie,” Taissa growled, stalking towards where both Natalie and Laura Lee stood.
“Knock it off, all of you! I’m telling her I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna drive back to Ohio and develop them, and you guys can come or not!” Van suddenly barks, standing up.
Jackie stands up, looking on in discomfort. Shauna stands with her, seeing as she was leaning on her to begin with. Everyone looked at her, even Misty. Other than Lottie in the woods, Jackie had always been seen as the leader, being team captain and all. Jackie’s hazel eyes flicker around the group for a moment, before sighing and nodding.
It was decided whether all of them liked it or not.