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Lottie doesn’t remember when she became fascinated with Shauna Shipman—purely from an objective, non-obsessive point of observation. She’s better at remembering the small, tiny, in-perceivable details than the big, all-consuming moments.
She does remember the first time she met fascinating, quiet, something-hidden-that-she-can-sense Shauna Shipman. It was the third day of highschool, September 3rd 1992. In fact, it had been the day Lottie had met most of Wiskayok’s teen population—having been sent to a private elementary and middle school by her father.
Lottie doesn’t remember saying goodbye to her old friends—if they could be called that—or how she’d begged her father to attend public school for high school. She does remember the smell of her old Principal’s office, wilting roses and fresh paper, and the distinctive squeak of her shoes against the shiny floors of the private schools halls. She doesn’t remember the names of those schools.
Truly, Shauna hadn’t made too much of an impression on Thursday, September 3rd, 1992. She’d been so incredibly shy as they’d been forced into ice breaker after ice breaker after ice breaker—she and Lottie had been in most of the same classes in Freshman year. Each of Shauna’s answers to those questions are as fresh in Lottie’s mind as the day she’d first heard them. Her favorite color was green, she had a dog called Moose who died when she was 9, her favorite meal was the burgers her dad makes but she hadn’t had them for a while, and her favorite class was English Literature.
If you asked Lottie what classes she’d shared with Shauna, she couldn’t give you one correct answer.
It hadn’t been until mid-way through Freshman year—which, by that time, most of the future Yellowjackets had made the junior team and spent most of the time warming the bench—that Lottie had taken notice of Shauna. It was a friendly game for the less experienced players. Lottie can’t recall what school they’d been playing against, or how the fight had really started. They’d been playing pretty poorly, she remembers that, and it’d been just before half-time, 2 minutes and 43 seconds, when things took a turn. Someone pushed someone else, a crowd of adrenaline fuelled fourteen year old girls gathered, and by this point Lottie had already started to tower over the rest of her peers. There at the centre, Lottie could clearly watch as Shauna Shipman, just fourteen and tiny as a mouse, swung her fist fight into the jaw of an opposing player twice her size.
The blood—dripping from the girl’s broken nose and soaking Shauna's shaking knuckles. The emanating anger and pure violence coming from her as she was escorted off the field by the order of Coash Martinez. Lottie remembers that—and perhaps that had been where her obsession, no not obsession, fascination, had begun. She could never know for sure.
Jackie and Lottie were the ones tasked with calming Shauna down. By this point Jackie and Shauna had already been friends for, well, Lottie’s never been entirely sure how long. A while. A lifetime. An eon, maybe. She’d believe it, watching Jackie calm down her best friend with intimidatingly smooth ease. Shauna transforms from enraged, to antsy, to a mixture of embarrassed and tired.
Of course, being the honorary captain for the match, Jackie had to return to the game after half-time was over. Lottie opted to stay with Shauna—who’d been sent off officially by the referee after they’d pulled her away. The pair of them sat silently side by side, neither watching the game but pretending to.
“Sorry,” is what Shauna said to break the silence. It was a mixture of a whisper and a mumble, her voice slightly raspy—probably from the prior screaming. “I… I don’t usually, you know, incite violence.”
For some reason, the obtuse phrasing made Lottie laugh—it earned her a perplexed look from Shauna. Most people tend to think she’s a little out there, laughing at things that aren’t funny and thinking things others don’t. Not that Lottie has ever minded, it’s been like this since… Well, probably since she was eight.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Lottie said, still giggling which had only been spurred on by the funny look on Shauna’s face. Her features scrunched up, lips pursed almost into a sort of pout, her eyes searching for whatever had made Lottie laugh. A million passing thoughts and feelings hidden within the brown—embarrassment, anger, indignation, amusement, isolation, anxiety. “Just, why are you apologizing to me?” she asked, settled into a smile rather than outright laughter, “you didn’t incite violence at me.”
One thing Lottie had noticed already about Shauna by this point was her intelligence. Of course, she’d witnessed her in class, but those were the type of things Lottie didn’t bother remembering. Assignments and tests, they passed as routinely as clouds swim across the sky. It wasn’t likely Shauna was quite as in-tune with her own or other people’s emotions as Lottie. Most people rarely were. But she had this ability to read between the lines—or in this case the words. A flicker of recognition in her eyes, realization that Lottie was simply laughing at her wording and not her.
Her shoulders relaxed into a small shrug. “You’re not playing, right?” she had pointed out, eyes glued back to the pitch. Lottie could tell what her gaze was following. Who. The blur of the number 9—honey blonde hair and a perfect grin. Their future captain. “If I hadn’t punched that girl you’d still be in. We both would.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“You don’t?”
Lottie had shook her head, gaze returned to Shauna rather than the mediocre game. “I don’t care about soccer that much. It’s fun. But, it’s not my entire life—not like it is for Taissa and Jackie. Nat too, I think.”
A small hum had come from Shauna. A short noise that said so much, so much that Lottie could decipher without even trying. No words, but so much said. Shauna feels the same—soccer doesn’t mean much to her beyond being a sport. Perhaps, she wouldn’t have tried out at all without her best friend guiding them into it. The only reason she cares or she tries is because of Jackie, and it wouldn’t surprise Lottie. Shauna is incredible on the pitch already, just on a technical level, but she lacks the spark that Taissa and Jackie have.
That’s likely why, three years from this moment, despite all four of them—Lottie, Shauna, Taissa, Jackie—being considered for captain by Coach Martinez, only one of them gets it.
“She said something about Nat,” was what Shauna said next. “The girl. That’s why I punched her.”
She said as if it might surprise Lottie. As if she’d even needed the explanation. Lottie had already accepted that whatever made Shauna swing that punch had been entirely justified. Maybe she even expected Lottie to ask her elaborate further—ask what they’d said.
Lottie didn’t do that. She smiled at Shauna, big and wide, and said, “I knew she deserved it.”
That had made Shauna laugh, and that was the moment, quietly in the back of her mind, that Lottie had decided that was the best sound she’d ever heard. Beating out any song, any voice, any birdsong or syllable or anything.
The tiny noise is what she committed to memory in that moment, and the rest had melted away with time.