Chapter Text
Natalie doesn’t know what the fuck lead her to talking to Shauna fucking Shipman today but nonetheless her black combat boots lead her directly to where Shauna was headed after the warning bell rung allowing the academic nerds to drift onwards to their classes and all the others to just sit there cluelessly, like they didn’t have anywhere else to be. Unmoving, except her who for some reason started following behind Shauna like a dog, panting and gearing its head for the closest ounces of attention she could already smell out. Though it can be certain to even her, that it was unusual, weird for her to actively seek out another person other than maybe Van or Kevyn, maybe even Charlie or the other guys she hangs around with in her spare time. Especially the resident of academic role models, A-pluses and attendance marshal, though if anyone deserves that title it’s definitely Taissa Turner in accord to all the other academic prude assholes. She is the biggest of all, though as much as she is uptight, a beast on the field, and honestly scary as fuck, none of the words she’d have the audacity to speak in her head would be spoken aloud, cause even she doesn’t wish to probe those waters. She’d rather not, as they say “fuck around and find out”.
Reality rears its ugly head once more, as she soon realizes where she stands, and whose attention she had just gained. Whose arm she had just grabbed, which what the fuck, why would she do even do that. Moments like this really make her question if her brain is nonexistent, because even her grades and teachers seem to hold it above her, like a status quo, reading “Natalie Scatorccio resident dumbass”.
She says something really original like “Hey” because that’s all she knows how to say apparently. Then the rest follows, she rambles, stammering like a fucking bumbling idiot. If she had a reputation to uphold this all would be more fucking embarrassing, but at least being a “slut burnout” has it’s perks. This leads to Natalie agreeing to hang out, which is so foreign. Because who would think in their right minds that they would just have light chit chat, and maybe after they'd go get mani-pedis or some other stupid shit like that. Whatever it is that girls who haven't had to smell smoke and ash more than any other scent, more than the smell of food being cooked and simmered in their kitchen constantly do.
Girls like Shauna who haven't almost stepped in the brain that spilled on the creaky, dust, and blood filled linoleum flooring of her trailer. Who didn’t hear a bang, a loud sound that erupted to follow the silence of an emotionally and physically abusive father. As it rang in her ears through every nightmare, and the aftermath of cleaning the spot filled with extra droplets or puddles of scarlet red. Ones who especially, don't live in trailers, don't get scared that their mom is dead from alcohol poisoning on their living room couch after her shifts at work that bleed out more than a work day should, proving itself at night when her body goes loose from drinking and cigarettes inflating her lungs and liver in toxic soot and fatty acidity or fermentation. Well, maybe that's why she's so buddy buddy with Van, they can relate to coming/welcoming home (to) exactly that.
Either way it's no fantasy living in a shitty mobile home with someone she has to be wary of, because her mother hasn't exactly forgiven her for killing her own daddy and isn't afraid to show it, plastered on her skin in bruises and cuts. Ones that can be covered up like accidents that are essential to the commitments of a rigorous high school sport. Maybe less than before, will there appear to be small indents of green, purple, and yellow all forming a collage, familiar since the day she became old enough to become a full fledged flesh bag made to take punches, rather than the punching bags held by a chain, with their leather covers. In that way she is exactly that, her leather is her armor, and the chains on her neck were viewed as exactly that, holding her up, defying the pulls of gravity. Their own handiwork, her mom and dad made, a crafted punching bag that only took 9 months to create. With her feet that plastered her to the ground despite forces that threw only punches and inflicting more jabs throughout what was supposed to be a childhood. She’d get back up, regain balance like a leather-wearing-inflatable-car-dealership-advertisement. Being the air dancers or tube men except instead she’d be advocating for burn outs across New Jersey, sponsored by the screw ups that created her. Once she fully grew into a full fledged punching bag by the age of ten. Though more now than before, Viera will speak her truth, that is when her words aren’t too slurred to understand. She’d accompany her words with the old scars and bruises that are now a pasty white, back to her normal skin tone. Jabbing a knife in places she’d already held scars, reopening them. Condemning her to the cold trailer and even colder words once again. Her mother was even advocating for a potential profession, told her a business would be in store if she finally began charging the men whose dicks she sucked or could have sucked. That’s not her taste, it's not, It's of course not Shauna's aesthetic either, Nat's been desperate but this trailer park trash doesn’t do any of that shit despite the profit that could be made in times of agonizing need, though most importantly they— people like Nat, don’t hang out with people like Shauna.
They’re both seated next to one another under the battered bleachers. It’s rather awkward just being seated next to someone she doesn’t know well enough to pretend they’re even friends with, no matter how long they’ve held soccer in common. Not being easy to just strike up a conversation, other than maybe using the information she learned about her today. That she likes the same music or at least she thinks. It's not exactly like she can say “hey, so have you ever shot your dad with a shotgun before and shattered his head in, leaving brain and blood on the floor? No? Huh, I guess it's not as relatable as I thought then? Oh well.” and then just shrug off the looks of disgust and pity she knows would overflow and spill on whomever she would dare tell, like the way it all spilled on the wooden floor, like scraps of bodily fluids, brain, and blood that spread around the entrance of their trailer, leaving the smell of bleach and Clorox as an aftermath. Sullying the mood like a popped balloon, or a child deprived of their innocence, shattering the looks on people's faces instantly. So of course she does what she does best, what was always intended of her, she fucks it up but this time without even opening her mouth very much. Grabbing a hold of her usual company, her cigarette and lighter, that accompany her so kindly underneath these bleachers. Typically amidst classes when she doesn’t feel bothered enough to attend.
As she holds her cigarette and fumbles her lighter, she feels hands snatching them away. The girl mutters something she thinks were attempts at helping or guiding. Her eyes dart toward the brunette beside her who holds the lighter, inspecting it, and flicking her thumb over the spark wheel, as it leaves a lined indent in her thumb, and finally a spark ignites itself. The fire flickers over her cigarette and the determined face on the doe eyed girl is proven through lowered eyes and frowned brows undoing themselves with the newfound success.
She feels it’s impolite to smoke alone. Almost greedy, so she offers the cigarette to the brunette who frowns and nods their head to say no without speaking it aloud. As she shrugs the nod off, and her lips catch the flamed stick to take a drag, a soft voice speaks abruptly, before she can berate herself for offering it to a nerd, a goody goody for all she knows. Asking for the stick of tobacco politely, Shauna reaches her arm out, unforeseen to her own ears, to note that the role model herself, the star athlete, daughter, and student, wants to take a drag of a cheap brand from a shitty liquor store near Raritan Falls. From the exact opposite of herself, of Shauna. A girl whose reputation is so fucked that even the nerds, the fucking band freaks and theatre geeks themselves, all speak her name in the hallways like a stupid myth or warning. With the implications of which being, don’t be like that slut who fucks anyone, the girl who gives blowies like a dentist gives lollipops. And for the same reasons, so customers would come back in more heaping loads. The tale in school is that she gets railed anywhere and to anyone. The graffiti that plasters itself on the bathroom stalls, and her locker all say the same. Words that never seem to stop ringing or impairing her eyes, leaving a stinging that never leaves upon the reinspection of the words. All burning away at her like the cigarettes and blunts she's smoked in her lifetime.
Why would Shauna wish to even bother with the unworthy piece of shit that Nat is and has lived up to? A slut who’ll ruin her reputation if she’s even seen near her. All of her thoughts vanish upon the brushing of Shauna’s fingertips when she holds Natalie’s cigarette.
It’s a new feeling, a new pair of soft hands. Unrecognizable, not like the one’s she’s touched before, or that have touched her. It was unlike the large, dry, rough skin that had torn away her innocence as easily as the teenage boys who had done so, had leapt at the chance of groping at her boobs with entitlement, upon a lust filled inspection. Yet it was different, exceptionally soft, she can tell Shauna has all the more privileged and name brand skin care or lotions she can’t afford, to attain a soft and plump finish. It is deemed impossible in the implications in Nat’s mind that Shauna can just naturally feel that supple to the touch, there must be an answer that she doesn’t attain, with accordance to the differences in their hands. Nat’s feel unlovable, worn, tattered, calloused, and overused though Shauna’s hold their own delicate, sturdy, yet still strong. Properties that hers can’t seem to hold. She can feel the indents, and Shauna’s fingerprints as proof, marking their identity upon her index and ring finger. It provides a warmth that emits from her hands through each touch, a sting, jolt, a feeling she can’t begin to understand or complicate as it settles in her stomach. Like the feeling of an empty stomach that rattles with hunger she hasn’t quite understood, a craving not in full vision to view at the moment.
Then her attention drifts to her mouth as a puff of smoke wisps away from her un-chapped, pretty pink lips. Probably never have they been sullied by another teenage boy ramming his tongue down her throat and forcing chapped, torn lips and the saliva that contaminated them as a form of lubricant, a substitute for a lack of maintenance or a potential savior, vaseline. The residue of flavored Chapstick is left on her cigarette, she stares for a moment at it, before she hesitantly places it onto her mouth in the same way her teammate had just done. Though the difference being that when Shauna took it to herself it looked rebellious, it looked appealing, like a girl on the cover of one of those filthy magazines she saw men take home from the liquor store in Raritan Falls, or like the ones her father shamelessly read on their battered couch.
It was attractive, weirdly enough, not like she was fucking attracted to her, she wasn’t a dyke. Despite how soccer seemed to make it seem that way. Not that she’s a bigot, she is fine with people being gay or whatever, I mean she’s pretty sure Van was as queer as a bowl of fruit punch or a pride parade, but that wasn’t her. Sure she can admit she’s a slut, and a father killer in most likely more ways than one, Kevyn’s father looked like he had a stroke the day he stumbled upon the absolute bundle of joy being the Natalie Scatorccio in his living room. Even worse the way his face sank and surely blood pressure fell, when she entered and left Kevyn’s room after his door was shut for potential witnesses.
Back to the point, being that she isn’t a queer. Though time went by quicker than it typically did, her cigarette tasted better, and she had company that was rather unexpected but nice or something along those lines. That doesn’t make her gay though (she thinks). Or a lesbian, whatever. It just makes her a lonely, pathetic, desperate, girl who has no friends, and apparently seeks the attention now in the form of an academic stickler.