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“Oh, please don't go—we'll eat you up—we love you so!”
— Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Lottie almost regretted that when Laura Lee died, there was nothing left for them.
When the flames swallowed Laura Lee whole, they devoured everything. Laura Lee had burned, and so she could not be buried. She had been devoured by the flames, and so she could not be devoured by the still-surviving Yellowjackets.
Jackie would have curled her lips in disgust, scrunching her face as if she were better than them for abstaining from their consecration. That kind of thing was why it had taken her. Why she had served as the first true repast in the place of Laura Lee.
Here was the truth as It had told Lottie: meat was meat. It was snared in the white of their teeth. Shredded by their canines into tendrils. Mashed by their molars into oblivion. Crawling down their throats and toward their bellies. Lying beneath thin coats of flesh.
Here was the truth as It had told Lottie: they were meat, too.
Lottie was meat, and Van was meat, and Shauna was meat, and Natalie was meat, and Misty was meat, and Coach Scott was meat, and Travis was meat, and Mari was meat, and Akilah was meat, and Javi was meat, and Jackie was meat, and Laura Lee was meat until she was nothing.
Some nights, when the wilderness was a static hush over her body, Lottie wondered what Laura Lee would have tasted like on her tongue. The meat of her thighs. The slick of her cunt. It was all the same, to eat someone.
She asked Shauna once. What is it to eat a girl you used to love?
Shauna had dragged her hunting knife through the rabbit’s throat, draining it as if any of them would settle for rabbit after tasting their own, and she had said, Fuck off. Like that meant something. Like there was any call for civility when they had killed and cooked and consumed Jackie already.
We are the same, Lottie could have said. We eat what we love.
She hadn’t said anything, though. Just tilted her head and understood. No matter how much Shauna did not want to be seen for what she was, no matter how she refused to see the tangled parts of her that were Jackie’s and not her own, Lottie saw everything. Or as much of it as any of them could.
Lottie almost regretted that when Laura Lee died, there was nothing left for her.