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All she could do was look in the mirror and play with her hair, look at herself and remind herself that she was okay with who she was. That she heard the rumors and whispers but that she was okay. She could look in the mirror and remember that.
Because look, Van considered herself reasonably well adjusted and okay with herself for a 17 year old lesbian stuck in fucking Wiskayok New Jersey. Still there was something incredibly off putting about Allie’s comment, she brushed her off and told her she was done and honestly Allie is so into herself she didn’t even seem to notice the shift in Van’s attitude. But the comment stuck with her through the rest of the day.
Van knew she was different from the other girls around her from a young age, like elementary school young. She was always just into different things and she dressed differently and instead of playing dress up Van was taking care of Vicki or playing how do I hide this bruise. The only other person who kind of got it was Natalie, similar shitty alcoholic druggie parents and thrift store wardrobe along with a similar disdain for pink and barbies.
But Van had soccer and that was her thing because everyone was in shorts and a t- shirt there, the only difference was after practice Van would switch to cargo shorts and a t- shirt and Jackie or Lottie would be in a dress and doing their makeup while Van would goof off. Still even though she was different from a lot of the girls and she wouldn’t necessarily say all of them were her friends they were her teammates and they accepted who she was.
After freshman year they all just stopped asking her about boys, never commenting anything else but just never asking about boys. Sometimes Jackie would beg to do her makeup but Shauna and Tai would tell her to stop. Van’s single tube of mascara that she assigned to parties and pep rallies lasting her all four years of high school.
Fall of senior year was when she clocked that Tai liked girls too and her teasing turned into something beautiful and undefined. So by the time spring rolled around and prom, Van knows she isn’t getting asked and she doesn’t care because at night when they’re in Tai’s bed, Tai tells her she’s beautiful and makes her feel more wanted than some dumb jock asking her to prom ever would.
But Van is human and 17 so that night while they’re getting ready in Tai’s room she doesn’t even realize she had spaced until Tai sits next to her on the bed and bumped her shoulder.
“What’s going on, thinking about Allie?” Tai asked, hesitantly, Van made it abundantly clear to Tai the minute they were alone that she didn’t think she did it on purpose but it was still a raw subject.
Van gagged a little, “God no, well yes but not her leg.”
Tai gave Van a confused look.
“Today I was finishing up her face paint or whatever before the pep rally and she was complaining about missing prom because she had a great dress and I told her at least she could use it next year. She told me I didn’t get it because no one asked me.”
“I would ask you, if I could.”
Van smiled, a little sadly at Tai and got up, extending a hand and pulling her up.
“Ah, I know you would,” honestly Van wasn’t sure she would, “Let’s go get drunk and hope Natalie brought the good shit.
**
Van looked in the mirror, some of last night’s mascara was smudged. She sighed and wiped it and threw her hair up before packing a fist full of elastics and her brush and toothbrush. Once she had checked it all over again she loaded the car and of course Vicki was still fucking passed out. There was a moment where she considered just taking the car and leaving it in the parking lot, making it Vicki’s problem for later.
Not wanting to deal with that fall out later instead led to her hitting Vicki awake and getting her out the door by the skin of her teeth to be on time. All things considered though it was a great morning because Vicki was too pissed and hung over to say shit and Van practically jumped out of the car ready for her week of freedom in Seattle.
The next time that day that Van looks in a mirror it’s Tai’s tiny compact mirror she keeps in her backpack and Van feels like she barely recognizes the face looking back at her from all the soot and charring from the plane. Being left to die on a plane, by her friends, by her teammates was the last fucking thing Van had expected to happen that morning. But there it was, the proof of it smeared across her face. Lottie had tried to get some of it off but it hurt and Van was more concerned about helping Misty with Coach Scott who was far worse off than she was.
It wasn’t till later that night, Tai taking some make up wipes from her bag and apologizing everytime she ran over one of the cuts on her face. They were on the other side of the plane, just a little hidden away in this perfect moment, one that was just theirs.
“So, will you tell me what you meant, telling Jackie that you were supposed to be the one on fire?”
Van sighed, she figured it was self explanatory between the soot Tai was washing off and the daggers she had been shooting at Jackie. Maybe it wasn’t though because how could you believe someone could do what Jackie did, drag Shauna away and leave Van for dead.
“When we crashed, the whole fucking way done my mask wouldn’t come down and when we crashed my chair moved and my seatbelt was stuck too. After the door was open everyone ran out, Jackie and Shauna were the last two left. I was screaming for help and Shauna ran to me, to help me. We just we couldn’t get in unstuck and the fire was light right fucking there, like licking the back of the chair. Eventually Jackie decided there was apparently no chance and they needed to go and she dragged Shauna away. Left me to burn up and die.”
Tai’s hand stopped from where it was rubbing the soot out of Van’s temple and hairline. Stopped and pulled Van practically into her lap, as close to her as she could get. They stayed like that for a while, Van pressed against Taissa until she eventually loosened her hold and moved her hand back to Van’s forehead.
“I can’t fucking believe that, well I can. I was running around screaming for you, neither of them told me where you were. How did you even get out?”
“The clip was stuck and I was freaking the fuck out, especially once they left and the clip still wouldn’t budge but I figured maybe if I made the belt a little bigger and because of the angle I was at I could slide out the bottom.”
“Jesus Christ Van, I hate how close I was to losing you.”
Tai looked around quickly before pulling Van in and kissing her, only breaking apart when they heard Natalie calling out for them.
*
After that Van didn’t care much about looking in the mirror. She picked at the scabs on her face and threw her whole buddy under water, hoping this lake in fucking oblivion could wash away the remaining sins of her teammates. They found the cabin and although she might see her reflection in the mirror she wasn’t like Jackie, sitting in front of a caboodle every morning or Natalie who was still committed to her eye liner.
No, Van found herself more in the lake at night while Taissa wrote words in her skin and spoke them into her collarbone. The fact that they had to run off to a fucking lake in the dead of night was something she tried not to think about, wishing they could just be together. Wishing she could find herself in more than just midnight swims.
There was something almost liberating though, about the wilderness in general for Van. Her moments with Tai felt like coming home and being herself so fully but now in the wilderness, she felt like for the first time very herself around the group. The conversations of boys and prom, and colleges and a future Van was never truly picturing for herself weren’t the hot topics anymore. It was survival and practicality and trying to make it through the day, no one was really too concerned with what could have and should have been, it was too sad to think about.
She found herself being more fully herself, her love of movies and retelling them giving them all something to look forward to. Her own general style and the clothes she had packed turned out to be a great blessing compared to the skirts and dresses her teammates loaded their bags with. For once she felt like maybe she had found a place she fit, which was fucked if she thought about it for too long but at least here her mom wasn’t drunk and throwing an empty Smirnoff bottle at her.
But then Taissa decided she wanted to try and find help and that future Van had never thought was really for her, well she hoped maybe it could be because she had to at least try to give herself a future with Tai.
So she packed a backpack of clothes and rebraided her hair, throwing her handful of elastics in the bag. She looked at herself once more in the small compact mirror, noticing the small white scars, the only traces of her near death experience. Funny, she thought how something that would forever haunt her nightmares left just the smallest, faint white marks.
Van didn’t realize then, looking at her reflection, that it was the last time she would ever see it look that way.
*
Van was asleep and then she was in pain, pain so intense it felt like she was on fire. Her first thought as the wolf sunk its teeth into her forehead, was that Tai must be dead. They must have gotten to her first, attacked her neck just like the wolf was about to do to her. So fast she couldn’t even warn them about their fate.
All Van remembered was screaming and pain and her mouth filling up with blood. She was vaguely aware of the flare going out and more pain as the wolf just put harder into her cheek. More pain as her mouth filled with blood. More pain until everything was black.
The next thing Van knew, there was more fucking fire of all things. Then there were Tai’s screams, so she was alive, and Tai’s hands on her and her voice telling her she had her. Van cracked a joke because that's what she did. Always the funny one.
All she remembered after that was Tai crying, and so much pain and her mouth filled with blood. Distantly she heard Misty telling Akilah and Mari to make bandages out of one of the shirts they had with them. Her head in Tai’s lap as Tai brushed a hand through her hair and gently rubbed her good cheek. Moving Van’s hand away when she tried to touch her face.
She was painfully aware of Akilah and Misty putting the bandages on her face, Tai constantly telling them to be more gentle everytime Van made even the smallest noise of discomfort. She must have fallen asleep or gone unconscious from the pain because the next thing she remembered it was light out and Tai was helping her to get up.
She told Tai to let them go, with very little expectation they would come back for her, for them, and even less expectation of surviving till they did or even after that. She sat for a whole day going in and out of consciousness while Tai held her close and rubbed her back and her arms.
“You’ll be okay Van, I promise, they’re gonna get help and come back and I promise I won’t let Misty stitch your face up.”
Van wanted to tell her that it was okay, she could be honest. That she knew she was going to die. But all she could do was moan and spit out more blood. Somehow though she didn’t die and the others game and Lottie and Shauna more or less carried Van back to the cabin.
Laying on that bed, Tai at her head and Natalie draped across her, Coach holding her feet down, and Akilah at her face with a fish hook, laying there Van fucking wished she had died. Van thought she might die from pain if not from blood loss or infection. It felt like hours, and it very well could have been before Akilah was done, Van having gone unconscious a few times during. Her face throbbed and her arm and neck throbbed and burned. Taissa still sat vigil at the top of the bed brushing her fingers through the other side of her head and telling her it would be okay.
She was unfortunately aware of the wounds being cleaned again, Lottie and Natalie stepping in to help, telling Akilah she had done a great job. After that everyone went to sleep, Tai promising she would be back down first thing in the morning. Leaving Van to lie there in her pain, with her own thoughts, and a face that she wasn’t sure was even hers anymore.
*
That was really all she had for a few weeks after the attack, pain and her own thoughts and awful fevers that she just had to ride through. She never looked at herself, never wanted to. Sometimes she would hear some of the girls gag looking at her stitches, looking at her. She became another chore they had, all taking turns taking care of her, attempting to get her to drink water at the very least. Misty was constantly harassing her to talk so she doesn't lose the use of her mouth. She didn’t even bother to tell them that she could barely see out of her left eye, every passing day realizing it wasn’t getting better.
One day, when no one was around Van reached up and gently touched the stitches. She could feel how jagged they were and how swollen her face still was. She could only imagine how bad she must look, people were gagging for christ sake. But she wasn’t stupid and she knew that while some of the swelling and freshness would die down she would always be disfigured. She covered her right eye while she was still alone, an involuntary whimper leaving her lips at just how little she could see.
Van had never been a pretty girl, like the way some of her teammates were pretty. She was a tomboy her whole life and she had come to terms with that. Her mom had long stopped trying, spending years saying “God Vanessa, would it kill you to act like a lady for ten seconds. It was never that Van didn’t want to be a girl, despite some of Vicki’s more drunken insults, she just didn’t want to wear pink or dresses. She was just different and she knew that, she was okay with that.
Playing soccer, it gave her a home and team and they mostly didn’t care if she only wore baggy t-shirts and rugby shirts, they cared far more that she was a good goalie. Of course being goalie came with coach Martinez making weird and kind of hurtful analogies, comparing Van to walls and fences. But she saw her teammates pride in her when she saved the ball and that was enough. Plus she had Tai, Tai who told her she was beautiful and gorgeous and every word Van had never heard used to describe her, Tai used it and Van knew she fucking meant it. So really she was okay with not being everyone’s idea of the pretty girl, she knew what the people who really mattered thought.
But now, laying in this bed with wounds that felt like they were pulsating, Van realized that she wouldn’t just be the tomboy, the dyke as she was so often called since entering high school, she wouldn’t just be that girl, she would be the disfigured girl. The girl with scars spanning across her face.
If they ever made it out of this place, which Van doubted more and more each day that passed, well her mom would have a fucking field day with this shit.
*
After two weeks of fevers and pain Misty told Van that if she wanted it was probably safe to cover her stitches up with bandages, and so that was exactly what she did. She wrapped her face up, sat against the wall and refused to talk to anyone or let anyone see her. She was sitting there fighting the fucking pain when they came up with the idea for the stupid dance.
Van had absolutely zero intention of going, she didn’t feel particularly celebratory. It was like the wolf attack set something off in her, made her realize just how fucking shitty everything was and that even if by some miracle they were rescued, she would never be okay again. She had also decided she was never going to take the bandages off her face, she didn’t want to gross out the others anymore than she had and she didn’t want anyone to have to look at her, didn’t want to be looked at.
But Taissa was just, really everything Van needed because she came to her with those masks and really how could Van say no to that. She didn’t let Tai see her get ready though, she ran up to the attic and got changed facing away from any windows. Hoping the scars on her arm and shoulder weren’t super visible and tying the mask on without ever looking. Feeling the mask over the raised scars and knowing it was on right.
Tai kissed her that night in front of everyone and even though Van felt far from good, she thought that maybe that was the best moment of their entire time in this awful place, Tai admitting their relationship to the team. Finally showing everyone that she wasn’t the sad lonely teen lesbian she knew they all secretly thought she was, that she was loved and she loved her back so much even if they had never said it.
That night while they had sex, off their minds on shrooms Tai asked Van to see and maybe it was the shrooms or maybe it was just the love and trust Van had for Tai but she said yes and when Tai told her she was beautiful,Van actually believed her.
The next morning, she looked in the mirror after she talked to Tai. she looked in the mirror for the first time in probably a month, maybe more she had honestly lost track and she saw herself as she was now. Forever marked by this place. Maybe the place where she would eventually die.
Regardless, after that Van stopped wearing the bandages, she also stopped wearing her hair up, not necessarily eager to highlight them even if the girls had seen them at their worst. But honestly who has time to care about their reflection when they’re watching a fourteen year old drown or the only home they’ve known burn up.
*
By the time they were rescued, Van honestly forgot about her scars. She was used to the chronic and unrelenting pain she felt in her face and jaw, especially in the cold that it had become background noise and her eyes had long ago adjusted to the lack of vision. Mirrors were long gone alone with the windows they used to have on the cabin. Honestly she still wasn’t even sure how they were ever rescued. The people looking for them had stopped a long time ago, but the people who did find them, a group of hikers or nature extremists or some shit, going to their hell for fun. The group of them all looked horrified at the group of them, but she saw the faces they pulled when their eyes fell on her.
The first place they had ended up was some hospital in Canada, that’s where they had been the entire time. They let the girls all shower and when Van stepped out of that shower into the bathroom, she nearly screamed when she turned around and saw a mirror. Seeing her face in the bright bathroom lights, all clean and no question of what was dirt and what was scarred. Her shoulder too, she hadn’t really seen much of what happened to her collarbone and shoulder but it was glaring at her now.
She also realized once she was staring at herself in the mirror just how frail she looked. She almost couldn’t fathom how she had survived nineteen months looking at how pale and boney she was. Clothes had started to get loose not too long into their time there but with wearing so many layers and the furs it was almost easy to forget just how much they were starving. She looked ahead at that mirror and realized she was crying, she felt like she was looking at a body that wasn’t even hers.
Being in the hospital meant they were all immediately hooked up to IV’s and not long after getting there they were also all given feeding tubes through their nose because the first time anyone tried to eat, they all threw up violently, no longer used to eating food. They were all in rough shape, malnourished, insanely psychologically damaged. The doctors were extremely concerned for all of them but Van and Shauna quickly became their biggest focus,
Lottie too once they realized she had been injured, beaten by Shauna, to the point of peeing blood. They told the doctors she fell down a small cliff, explained it away and covered it up, protecting each other they promised.
The doctors all told Van her being alive was a miracle and she wanted to tell them that a miracle would imply her being alive was a good thing. Van didn’t feel like getting into that though. They poked and prodded at her face and she could see the horror everytime a new nurse or doctor came in, she could see them try to school their expression as best they could.
They told her she had lost mobility in her jaw and that the scars didn’t heal great and they could recut it if she wanted but there were no guarantees any surgery would give her back mobility. They also told her there was very little they could do cosmetically, which Van figured and sitting there having just thrown up crackers, it really wasn’t her concern. They finished by telling her that from what they could see she had lost 80% of her vision in her left eye and that they would have her follow up with an ophthalmologist once she got to New Jersey but that there was almost no chance of her regaining any vision. Van wasn’t surprised to hear that, having grown used to her limited vision.
Tai on the other hand was very surprised given Van had never mentioned it .
“You knew you had lost vision?”
“Well yeah, I mean at first I thought it was from the swelling but then it just stayed and I learned to deal with it.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“I mean, there was nothing anyone could do about it Tai and I didn't want to be seen as a liability.”
The unspoken, I didn’t want to seem weak because I didn’t want to be hunted, laid thick between them.
They spent two weeks in that first hospital before being told they were going to be brought back to New Jersey. They knew their story had goe international, they knew the hospital was constantly surrounded by reporters and they all agreed to keep their story as straight as possible.
In the two weeks they had been in the hospital they had limited contact, and none with their families at the advice of some psychologist. They had also taken the time to take their statements, and in turn notify all the families of the deceased. She wasn’t looking forward to going back to Wiskayok, a town full of families of those who didn’t survive.
Van knew they would end up splashed across the new paper and she knew everyone would ask about her face. God she had to face her mother soon and she knew she would have something to say about it. More than that though, she knew everything had become sensationalized.
Two sets of reporters that Van dodged with her hood up as much as possible and a plane ride that she spent drugged out of her mind later, all seven of them were in this big room. Van thought they might be at another hospital,but she was pretty drugged up getting off the plane. They were all set there, waiting for their families to come in.
Van watched as the door opened and their families all came piling in. Tai was quickly enveloped by both of her parents on Van’s right and she saw Natalie and her mom embracing. Travis’mom was hugging him and sobbing and she distantly wondered if Travis being the only one returning hurt more than if they had all died. Last in the door of course was fucking Vicki Palmer who slowly made her way up to Van.
Van who stood there in hospital sweatpants and a hoodie, her hair down, bracing for impact. Her mom didn’t immediately hug her, no she held an arm out, grabbing onto her right bicep.
“Oh Vanessa, what happened to your face? You never were a pretty girl but this is just ugly.”
Van put her head down, looking at her feet, they were all given weird hospital sneakers with no laces.
Vicki pulled her into a hug, Van’s entire body was tense.
“Well, we’ll just have to see what the doctors have to say, maybe they can fix it. We can use whatever settlement money comes from this for it.”
Nineteen months Van was in the wilderness, all of them presumed dead, but in that moment Van realized more than ever that her mother would never change. Standing here telling Van how pretty she would never be and planning to spend money Van didn’t have and hadn't even thought about.
Van turned around and walked out of the room they were all in, asking some nice nurse who looked extremely concerned to take her to her room.
Another room with another IV and much to her dismay another feeding tube but the doctors kept talking about feeding therapy and taking things slow to get used to digesting food again. Some of the girls had already been doing better with it but with out the pure adrenaline of having something to eat to distract her Van was beginning to realize just how painful chewing was for her, aside from the throwing up.
In that room was where Tai found her, curled into herself and staring at the wall. Tai climbed right up into the bed with her.
“Hey, how are you holding up?”
Van looked up at her, not even realizing Tai’s question would bring tears to her eyes.
“Did you hear Vicki?”
“Yeah, I did. She’s a fucking cunt.”
Tai pulled van close so she was pretty much on Tai’s chest and she ran her fingers through Van’s very clean hair.
“You are beautiful and your mother is a bitch.”
Tai said them with so much conviction, like they were facts of the universe. So much so that Van was inclined to believe her.
*
Like Van expected her scars were a major point that every single tabloid picked up on, the girl with the scars and how mysterious that no one would talk about how she got them. She got recognized a lot more than everyone else because of them, even when she was with Taissa.
When it was all said and done Van thought about how lucky the other girls were to walk out of the wilderness with no physical scars, not like she had. Lottie’s scar from the window was barely there while they were still in the wilderness and while everyone got nicks or cuts, and Travis’ hand scarred from when Shauna was in labor nothing was quite like hers. Walking around with her biggest trauma on her face everyday, the world already knows her biggest trauma just by looking at her.
She did in some ways come to terms with it, aside from her questions of why she was left with this physical burden. They were a part of her and one she grew used to after a few months of it staring back at her, the bigger adjustment being that there was a mirror and a toilet and four walls and running water.
There were of course times where people were particularly cruel. Afterthat first year and the cameras died down, there were still times the mere existence of her scars made Van want to never leave her house again because of other people's shit.
At Shauna’s wedding Mrs. Taylor was particularly boozed up and she had looked at Van so sadly and said “You had such a decent face dear, what a shame you came back with all these horrid scars.” Taissa had quickly pulled them away from that conversation as fast as she could, and straight to the open bar.
There was her first hook up after Tai, she was twenty five and they met in a dark club and the minute she saw Van in the shitty street lights she had pulled a face and called her scars gnarly. Van slept with her anyway.
She moved out of Wiskayok, used the money her mom was thinking about before it ever came to buy her store that was also her house. Made a life for herself. A few people asked about her face, usually just new customers but she usually just blew the question off. She only told the truth to a few of her favorite customers, the semi closetted teens who smiled despite how gruesome it was because Van still thought killing a wolf for her was pretty damn romantic.
*
They faded just a little as she got older and people became less inclined to ask and Van became the same seventeen year old who was relatively okay with herself. If she never went to the beach without a t-shirt on, well that was her business but the scars on her shoulder were teeth marks and burn marks and sue her if she didn’t want to explain that to every inquisitive person around her. The pain became the soundtrack to her life, just like it had in the woods. Her vision, never fixable like they had guessed, was something she was just used to. It all became just something that happened to her. Stuffed in the back of her mind.
Until of course Taissa walked through her front door and she suddenly was transported back to that place and that life and who she was before a wolf's mouth ever took hold of her face. But well Taissa Turner was a whole different story.