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The tile is cool against Van's back, and Tai is smiling into their kiss, and all is right with the world.
They got to the locker room early, and they have, by Tai's count, five-and-a-half minutes before classes let out for everyone else. Tai got out of AP Gov after breezing through the exam, and Van—
"Shh." Tai interrupts Van's train of thought with a finger pressed to her lips. They freeze. The room is quiet, but the faint clack of shoes against linoleum can be heard in the locker room beyond. The footsteps get closer to the showers, then stop. Tai and Van stay locked together in a rigid embrace, all bunched nerves and wide eyes, ready to shove each other away, to hide, to dig in their minds for a litany of improbable excuses for why they're here, together, flush-faced and fully clothed.
They should move, Van thinks. They should break apart and hide out in separate stalls, or else Van should traipse out of the showers with a sheepish laugh and a lie about forgetting her uniform in her bag.
They don't move. Van's muscles feel stiff and sore, her throat raw. She is, for a moment, more exhausted than she can ever remember being.
A voice calls out.
"Hello? Anyone there?"
She doesn't recognize the voice.
It's low, feminine, with the faint singed rasp of someone who gave up smoking years ago. There's an urgency in it that makes Van's pulse pick up.
"Who—" she whispers, but Tai shakes her head, keeps her eyes on the door.
They don't move. The lights flicker. A drop falls from a leaking shower head with a faint plink on the tile.
They wait.
Eventually, the footsteps move away. Van breathes out.
They wait a good two minutes before slipping into the thankfully empty locker room, taking out their uniforms and looking perfectly innocent by the time the bell rings and the other Yellowjackets file in, looking haggard and sleepy from a long day of school. Shauna is linked arm-in-arm with Jackie, the two of them acting, as usual, like no one else exists in the world. Nat and Lottie are talking shit about some sexist asshole Nat demolished in gym. Laura Lee slips her messenger bag into her locker, watching Lottie out of the corner of her eye. Mari looks pissed about something, throwing death glares at anyone who isn't named Akilah. Akilah, for her part, is quiet, slipping into the showers without a word. Misty's there, weirdly, even though she doesn't normally need to change into a uniform or shower or anything.
"So," Van says after a most of the team is done showering, "did anyone see some weird old lady skulking around the locker room?"
"That's a rude thing to say about Taissa," Nat says, smirking as she ties the laces of her cleats.
"Ha ha," Tai says flatly. "Van and I got here early. We thought we heard some woman in here. A stranger."
Shauna finally looks up from her interminable conversation with Jackie and frowns.
"...No? No, I don't think I saw anyone weird. Maybe it's a new teacher or something?"
"A new teacher blundering into a student locker room and asking if anyone's in there?" Van asks. "She'd have to be pretty damn lost."
A pause. Lottie coughs, rubs the back of her neck. She looks like she hasn't slept.
"I thought I saw someone in the hallway earlier," she says quietly. "A man. He didn't look like a teacher or anything." She stops, looks away, back. "I think he was looking for something."
"Maybe they're cops?" Nat asks, grimacing. "Looking for some kid's stash or whatever?"
Tai gives Natalie a pointed look. Nat throws up her hands.
"I don't keep my shit in school, Tai, I'm not an idiot."
"Except the flask in your bag, and the weed in your pocket, and whatever it was Shauna saw you brown-bagging the other day—"
"The fuck, Shipman?"
"I'm sorry, Tai cornered me and I couldn't think of a good lie!"
Van keeps waiting for Jackie to swoop in and break up the impending spat, but she just keeps looking at Shauna like she's waiting for her friend to give her a cue. Instead, it's Misty of all people who interrupts everyone.
"Oh! Look at the time, we're almost late! We don't want Coach Scott getting upset, you know how he gets." She giggles. Van doesn't know how he gets, is the thing, because the guy's kind of a pushover, especially compared to Martinez. There's something in Misty's tone, in her look, that settles uneasily beneath Van's skin. She's not exactly subtle about her weird crushes, Misty, except the way she talks about Coach Scott feels more like—
"Hey, you alright?"
Van looks over at Tai, who's got her head tilted to the side. The others, Van realizes, have already left for the field. She didn't see them leave.
"Yeah, all good," Van says. She gives Tai a quick, easy grin and heads out onto the field.
It's March, and the ground is still stiff beneath her cleats. The air nips at the back of her neck and Van shifts her weight from one foot to the other to keep warm. Her gloves feel thin and worn, which is bullshit because she just got this pair and they're already falling apart on her. Serves her right for getting them secondhand, she supposes.
The others are taking positions, stretching their hamstrings and rolling their shoulders. Tai, Nat, Laura Lee, and Akilah on her side; Shauna, Jackie, Lottie, Mari, and Allie on the other. They didn't warm up, Van realizes vaguely. Coach said some vaguely motivational shit and just started the scrimmage without fanfare.
The whistle blows, and the field erupts into coordinated chaos. Nat seizes the ball, dodging past Lottie with a playful chuckle, and weaves between Shauna and Jackie. Shauna wheels around, Jackie mirroring her movements, and the two close in on Nat as Shauna sweeps the ball out from under her. She kicks it to Jackie, who fucks up the pass, and Tai steals back the ball. Taissa is music in motion, fluid and elegant. Her feet glide across the frost-glazed ground. The muscles in her calves are strong and fine, sending a shot of warmth through Van's body even from this far away. It takes Van a second to realize she's staring. She shakes her head and turns her attention to Lottie, who's stolen back the ball and is making a run for her. Shauna charges toward the goal, taking the ball as Lottie passes it between Natalie's feet. Shauna meets Van's eyes eyes for a fraction of a second. They're wide and wild. Her foot connects with the ball. Time slows.
Left, Van thinks, and dives.
The ball lands in her palms with a force she isn't expecting, sending a dull wave of pain through her hands and up into her wrists. It's fast, and lopsided, and the weight of it is wrong in her hands. She stands, staring at the ball like a dumbass, when Nat calls out:
"Palmer! You gonna keep holding that thing like a baby or are you gonna pass it back?"
Her stomach twists. She presses the heel of her hand against one eye and throws the ball back onto the field.
The game resumes.
Tai and Shauna are facing off down the field when Van sees them.
A group of people, seven or eight, watching them from the bleachers. Men and women. None of them family to anyone here, as far as Van knows.
Blank-faced and silent. Watching.
Van gulps.
She tries to focus on their faces. Their features ripple and run like watery ink. Their eyes and noses blur from one face to another. Their mouths are gaping pits.
Van blinks. They're gone. The bleachers are empty, gathering rust.
The sky above them is flat and grey. Getting darker and darker with the freezing rain swimming inside it. Soon ice will burst from the clouds above and sap the warmth from their bones, and still they'll continue, she knows, because there's nothing else they can do.
Out of the corner of her eye she sees a flash of movement and turns to find Akilah in the middle of the field, arms at her sides, seemingly oblivious to the maelstrom of cleats raging behind her. She stares at Van with watery eyes. Her lip trembles.
"Akilah? Are you—Ah, fuck, shit. Don't cry. What's wrong?"
Akilah stares. And stares. And stares.
"Akilah...?"
Suddenly, Shauna's rushing her again. Akilah does nothing as Shauna skirts past her, launching another shot. Van's slow on the draw, and takes it in the stomach, wheezing as the ball slams into her abdomen. She bends double, hands twisting around the ball. Already she can feel the bruise blossoming under the skin.
Someone yelps. Van looks up to find one of the strangers moving toward her, raising an arm. Their head is a smear, a moving light caught in a photograph. Van lurches back. The ball lands with a thud on the ground.
Shauna intercedes. The flickering figure towers over her.
"Who are you?" Shauna asks, standing as tall as she dares. Her hands shake.
There's a sound. Low. Droning. Muffled. A radio playing underwater. A television deep beneath the earth. The figure is talking, she realizes. Incomprehensible and grating, like the teachers in Charlie Brown, pitched lower and lower still.
Van laughs. The sound is wrong in her ears.
The rest of the team gathers around. They're matched by a growing procession of figures, faceless and droning, talking to them. Tai moves to Van's side. Van can see the furrow of her brow, the nervous twitch of her eyelid. Calculating. Deciding whether to fight or flee. The figures circle them, closing them in. One figure bleeds into another. They tower, taller and taller. Van can't tell where the figures end and the flat grey sky begins.
"I don't understand," Shauna says. "Jackie, what—" She turns, and Jackie's not there. Akilah's gone too, Van realizes, along with Laura Lee, and Mari, and—
"What?" Natalie says. She stares at the figures, eyes glazed. "I don't...w-what?"
Lottie says nothing. Her head turns skyward. Her eyes close. She sways.
Taissa grabs Van's hand, and for a moment Van's too startled by her audacity (here, in front of all these people, and if they weren't going to hurt us before—) to respond. Then Tai whispers in her ear:
"We have to go. We have to run."
The droning, wordless voices continue. The figures close in, arms outstretched.
"Okay," Van whispers. "Okay."
Tai turns on her heel, practically wrenching Van off her feet, and they run. Tai shoulder checks the figures behind them, parting the blurring sea just long enough for them to slip through. Figures shout after them. Girls scream.
Freezing rain begins to fall. The ground becomes slick and icy beneath them. Van stumbles, staggers, stands. Keeps running. Taissa's hand is clammy in hers. She can feel the thundering drum of Taissa's pulse, the frantic percussion to a violent song.
The figures call out after them. Their voices grow louder.
Run. Runrunrunrun.
They're running blind. The school's nowhere to be found. The field stretches on, for miles and miles. The rain falls heavier and heavier, snatching the warmth from her veins. Her muscles scream in protest. Shadows stretch behind them, swallowing up ground and sky. Droning voices call out to them.
"...ait! ...ce...eak...!"
A terrible, shuddering creak sounds beneath them. They stop. The ground beneath their feet shifts and groans. The figures behind them are louder now, more frantic. Van sways. She's struck with a memory, faded and terrible and strange. The ground begins to crack and splinter. Van grips Taissa's hand tighter. It makes a monstrous karmic sense that she's here now, though she couldn't begin to explain why. The ground shatters beneath them and everything goes black.
It's hard for the rescue team to make sense of what they're seeing.
Five girls, emaciated and ragged, standing in a clearing beside the rusted ribcage of a fallen plane. A smooth rock, about the size of a cat's head, passed mutely between their battered feet, blood soaking through their shoes. Every now and again they'll pass the rock to an empty space in the clearing, blinking in confusion when the rock lands with a dull thud in the dirt. Occasionally, one of them will lift her head and talk to no one. Beside the game, a boy and a girl sit on a pile of debris, watching their companions with blank expressions.
When the strange game's apparent goalie, a scarred girl with dirty red hair, takes the rock to the gut and groans, the team moves in. The girls look up, staring at the team with wide, startled eyes.
The team tries to talk to them.
"We're not going to hurt you—"
"Are any of you injured?"
"Where are the others?"
"Are you the Yellowjackets?"
Silence. Blank stares.
Some of the girls open their mouths, mumble inaudible words. Their eyes are dull, their cheeks sallow. They look dead, like zombies dragged from the earth, longing for rest.
Out of nowhere, the goalie laughs.
"Sedation may be necessary," one team member whispers to another. "Signs of delirium, possible psychosis."
The rescue team approaches, as slowly and gently as possible.
Not slow or gentle enough.
A tall, willowy girl grabs the hand of the goalie and they run, shoving past survivors and rescuers alike. They're startlingly fast, sick and starving as they are.
Special. Exceptional. Champions.
Two of the rescuers take off after them while the others work to subdue and sedate the kids in the clearing. The runaway girls barrel through the trees, nearly losing their pursuers in the tangle of branches. The chase drags on, the girls weaving through the forest like they know every turn. They swerve around roots and stones, slip like shadows between tree trunks.
(If anyone notices the strange symbols carved into the bark—hooks and slashes and eyes—none of them stops long enough to try and understand them.)
When the girls get to the lake, their pursuers panic. Cry out.
"Wait! The ice is going to break!"
The girls hear the groan beneath them and freeze. A spider's web of cracks forms beneath them. They hold one another tight.
And fall.
She's in Tai's bedroom. She's on a bloodstained cot. She's at the bottom of a pit, spikes piercing papery flesh.
She's—she's—
Where is she?
It's loud. A chorus of beeping, blaring machinery, a screaming orchestra. It's more sound all at once than she's heard in months, more sound than she remembered existing in the world. She raises her hands to cover her ears and finds the underside of one of her elbows stuck with a needle. A tube snakes out of it, feeding into a bag of fluid strung to a pole.
She shivers. Heated blankets wrap around her, holding her snug in the stiff bed. When she turns her head, she can see Taissa in the bed beside hers, safe in the arms of a deep drugged sleep. Her heart monitor beeps steadily, and Van's breathing evens out.
Her thoughts are sluggish, stumbling lethargically past one another like sleepless teenagers.
Lockers and jerseys. Masks and spears. Cheers and snow and chants and wolves and stories and meat and—
She remembers.
She peels back the dream of children at practice, worrying about tests and games and girls and boys. She pulls apart the memories and fantasies blurred into honey-sweet lies, and remembers.
Where she'd been. What she'd been.
She should probably cry, or scream, or tear out her IV. She should probably be a wreck, be horrified, be human.
Instead she looks away from Taissa. Lies flat on her back. Stares at the ceiling.
She stares and stares and stares.