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“Mom?” Nat called out cautiously. Her feet navigated mess, soundless over the creaky spots of the floor, carrying her from the doorway and into stale darkness. “You here?”
Nothing.
The wedding photo grinned at her. A lipsticked smile, teeth. Strangers that she knew as parents, a line of blood in the dirt guiding home. She turned and saw her own face in a cracked, dingy mirror, acting as the only proof of life left inside of four walls and a roof.
“Mom?”
Pieces of Vera Scatorccio were scattered around the double wide. Nat didn’t have to look very hard just to see the outlines of her in dirty ash trays, the assortment of empty bottles scattered around. A note was left face down on the coffee table and she didn’t even bother flipping it up, letting it sit exactly where Vera left it.
The fridge door hung open, neglected. Moisture collected across the floor and tiny flies swarmed the windows, buzzing from tight corners. The entire placed smelled rotten. Nat skirted around shadows, feeling her way through the dark for her bedroom to switch items out of her bag.
Flicking at the light switch did nothing. The power had been out for a few weeks already.
Dirty clothes landed on the floor. She yanked up a different shirt and harmlessly spritzed it with a cheap spray of body mist before cramming it in between a textbook and beat up notebook, blindly rearming herself to leave.
A single bottle of whisky sat beneath her bed harmlessly. The little light coming through the window illuminated the curve of the bottle, that tiny treasure stored away with old homework and forgotten CDs.
Nat looked at it and tried to forget it, tried to forget that greedy desire snaking up for the sake of consuming it, tried to forget how dry her flask was from the last time she broke to that same greed.
Somewhere a dog was barking. Traffic was a soft, rasping hiss from the road nearby. If she opened the window, the entire space would be purged of it’s ghosts. But Nat kept the door sealed, the windows tightly drawn. Dust grew like fur across every surface and she was better alone in it, tossing pink detention slips towards her unused bed like scraps of confetti.
If the double wide was a mouth, Nat was the rot. She felt teeth in the walls, awkward lines of grief marking up every single square inch. She was hunched over her bag on the floor right where her father pulled her up for the very last time, and she could follow invisible breadcrumbs to the exact moment where she lost her mind.
She got hurt in this place. That hurt didn’t stop. It went back through the years and Nat didn’t know herself without that old phantom pain, without seeing her father’s face in the mirror.
So she picked herself up and followed that trail, leaving out the door and wiggling her fingers in the vague place where her father’s face blew wide open, going for the sake of being somewhere different.
“I’ve got it,” Nat said briskly, pulling up stray pylons left on the far side of the field.
Ben looked her over. Her knees were green from being dragged across the grass and she knew her ankle was ugly from scabs. “I’ll leave the storage unit unlocked. You know where the spare key is, right?”
She stacked five neatly. “Yeah.”
“If you showed up on time, you’d be leaving on time. Just letting you know how that works,” Ben said. His fingers were hooked on the whistle hanging around his neck by a lanyard. “If you’re looking for some kind of time piece, I could help you out with that. Hook you up with a real fashion statement.”
She barely resisted the urge to spit venom. Nat was a Scatorccio. It didn’t matter how colourless she bleached her hair, her blood always came up the same. “I got held up. Next time I won’t,” she managed to say, squeezing anger out of her words until it was practically toneless, strangled and muted. A mere statement, nothing else. “School stuff.”
“About the course work you’re behind on?”
Bill was the one who sentenced her to cleaning up alone while everyone else left the field in a herd. And that was after the sets of crunches and push ups, running dead sprints from goal post to half field and back, twisting on her heel and flying so fast that her bones ached. Of course, Nat realized, Ben was plotting until she was alone to nag at her.
He must have been sitting on the bench the entire time she charged distances while Bill barked orders at her, short bursts of a whistle telling her to go faster.
“Shauna can’t tutor you if you’re not going to show up,” Ben said, continuing when she stayed silent. “That whole deal pretty much requires you to be an active participant.”
A few stray balls were knocked over by the bleachers. They were next on her list before she could finish up for the day, shuffling through Bill’s hasty instructions. “I’ve got it figured out.”
“Yeah? What’s the plan?”
“Top secret. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“The school’s trying to get in touch with your mom.”
“I’ll pass on the message.”
“Natalie—”
Ben forced her into the Yellowjackets and her name got hacked into a blunt syllable as a consequence. She liked it better that way. The full name sounded stretched out and awkward, cold water down her spine. Natalie, Natty. Nat felt different. Nat felt safer. Nat wasn’t a lone wolf anymore. “Seriously, Ben. Don’t you’ve got a hot date, or something?” She forced her mouth into a smile and shoved another pylon onto her stack, dragging it back a few feet to return to her work. “Get out of here.”
He stood and watched her for a few minutes before sighing, hand a fist around that whistle. “Key’s where it should be. Stay out of my snack drawer, Scatorccio.”
Music popped and fizzled from Van’s shitty player propped up on the counter. She yanked a brush through her hair a few times before yanking sections into a messy, crooked braid. “I blame Alice. This is basically like being in a trench with a cloud of Japanese Cherry Blossom rotting our lungs out.”
“Sorry,” Alice snapped back, eyes narrowing from another mirror. “I totally meant to drop it. You’re right, Van. I’ve been plotting for three weeks to ruin your life by dropping my perfume on the floor.”
“So you admit it.”
Tai sidestepped Allie and a rogue shoe to make it back to her cosmetic case on the counter, digging out a slender stick of eyeliner. She somehow managed to apply it in a sharp, perfect wing without being jostled by someone also trying to do the same art, casually achieving five star results with one try. “Are we not done with this yet?”
“When one of us is dead, maybe,” Van grouched back.
Alice’s rebuttal stung the overly perfumed air and Nat tore her focus away, looking around the room before peeling her shirt off. Her back was to a wall of lockers and she changed quickly, motions robotic and stiff, breathing out when she was armoured back up again. The perfume bottle had shattered right before practise and despite being in her own bag and locker, the scent had seeped into her clothing. She couldn’t move without bringing up a wave of Cherry Blossom.
“Pretty sure this is a fucking biohazard,” Nat tossed in for the sake of agreeing with Van. “War crimes and all.”
“Thank you,” Van said, snapping her fingers. “Fuck.”
Laura Lee was sitting crosslegged on a bench while Lottie slowly got dressed. Dark hair was piled back by a single, tiny clip that defied gravity. Nat went to cross the crowded room to snag a ride before Lottie could vanish but Akilah and Rachel swept by, latecomers to the fragrant party, making her pause beside Shauna’s locker. “—isn’t actually hard,” Shauna said confidently from where she leaned against metal. She traced her finger in the air in a straight line. “You just have to…. you know?”
“I know. I just don’t want to do it,” Jackie huffed back. She plucked at a yellow scrunchie on her wrist, shifting to lean her shoulder into a locker when Allie moved closer. “It isn’t fair.”
“Literally everyone has to do it. Consider it a rite of passage.”
“I’m sorry, but is it unreasonable to want to do no harm?”
“It’s a frog, Jax. A frog. It lived a full life and now it’s serving your academic purpose.”
“I’m gonna refuse. I’ll say no and just take the fail.”
“You can’t just fail because you don’t want to do a frog dissection!” Shauna laughed. She tipped her head back and laughed loudly, the sound echoing around the room. Yellowjackets were everywhere and they were all sharing tiny little conversations, snapping around the space in fifteen minutes and less before vacating, quick to finish the day. “Three weeks, Taylor. Buck up. You’re not taking a loss because you’ve got feelings about an amphibian.”
Nat twisted. She managed to cross six steps without stepping on toes or taking an elbow to the stomach, a cautious dance built up from grudging experience of being on the team. “What are you doing tonight?” She asked Lottie, loudly interrupting for the sake of escaping the perfume cloud.
“What are we doing tonight?” Lottie asked instead, a smile curling up at the edges of her mouth. She pulled her buttons together, threading each one through the hole. A door finally slammed open and they charged into exodus together, shrieking and laughing in a herd of Yellowjackets.
Nat howled and thrashed, fighting against her own blankets. She felt the impact of her foot catching the metal part of the bed but kept clawing, wild and livid, a drowning thing struggling for air.
Inky darkness didn’t shatter. No lights burst on. An echo of a gun firing kept ringing in her ears and she shrieked louder, pushing her face into her pillow. She didn’t bother trying for the lamp. It wouldn’t do anything.
It hadn’t been real. The nightmare slowly withdrew and left her awake and alone. Half the whisky in the bottle vanished for the sake of shutting her brain down from that residual fear and grief, banishing ghosts back to the shadows.
It was stupid. Nat had frivolously wasted her last twenty dollars from mowing lawns the summer before on cheap, burnt coffee at Rosa’s Diner before school every morning. It left her pointlessly broke. Every so often Nat would reach into her bag just to touch her wallet and hope a stray dollar bill would show up, but it stayed empty as a grave. A tiny umbrella from a long ago finished drink was crammed into the pocket along with a folded score card from mini putting, but she was so broke that it made her chest burn just from the knowing of it.
She could have stretched that money out for food. It could have gone somewhere else, like tape on a hole of a boat taking on water. Packages of a ramen, or bread and peanut butter. The Scatorccio family were experts at milking a dollar into a full course spread, and if their hunger went in another direction? Beer and cigarettes usually satisfied the worst cravings.
But she had chosen to haul herself to Rosa’s Diner every morning at five AM just to order cups of black coffee, watching every waitress gliding around, scribbling her own pen in the margin of her notebook with a book propped open beside her, the very image of careless.
A tiny poster was pinned up on the community board by the doorway. Nat tossed her last bit of small change and dragged herself out, looking at the promotion material for the Yellowjacket’s upcoming game. The larger poster next to it dwarfed it, showing the full line up of the boy’s baseball team.
She resisted the urge to yank it down.
The town was a bit like a solar system. If Nat was a lone space shuttle ambling around in circles, everything else was planets and moons. A dusty antique shop marked one end of a street, and then it was the library with massive stone columns framing the doorway. She drifted along with a few other classmates and tucked her head low, buzzing from the music cranked up on her music player. The headphones were old enough that she had to pinch the wire right where it plugged into the player to keep the sound quality decent, and the music was enough that it turned the world grey and flat, a present soundtrack to her feet marching a steady pathway.
A car slid up beside her. It looked needle nosed, like a shark on wheels. Lottie cranked down the window and beamed up at her. Her music fell away into muted static at the sight of Lottie and her heart-shaped sunglasses, that smug smile. “Get in, Scatorccio. We’ve got stuff to do today.”
It was an option, but it also wasn’t. None of her assignments were done. Nat flung her bag into the backseat and took shotgun. Lottie’s car was a treasure trove of forgotten items like packs of cigarettes and old hair clips, a few stray tarot cards abandoned from the time she drove Gen home after a party. Her boot nudged a stray bracelet made up of pearl beads. “What’s the stuff?”
“Not the academic stuff,” Lottie teased back. She hit the gas pedal hard enough that the tires squealed and jerked forward, launching them straight down the street. “Unless you’re into that? Because I don’t mind dropping you off at the front door. Get you to class before the bell rings…”
“You’re fucked, Matthews.” Nat looked at a stray pack of cigarettes. Lottie liked buying them for the sake of social smoking, but she never finished what she started. “You mind?”
“Take them. Oh, here.” Lottie did a terrifying thing and let go of the wheel entirely, turning in her seat to fumble in the backseat for something. Nat lurched for the wheel and forced the car straight before it could hit the curb. “I picked this up for you.”
Her stomach twisted as the car slammed through an intersection. Someone honked at them and Lottie was tossing her package of liquorice. “Thanks, Lot.”
The sweetness bit back at the bitterness in her mouth from Rosa’s coffee. She opened up the pack and tore a piece free, muting the hunger down a fraction.
“Bet we could snag Van before she hits school.”
“Tai’s driving her.”
Lottie’s brows pinched slightly. “What?”
“Tai drives Van now.”
Lottie stole a piece of the candy before Nat could duck away and shield her supply. “Weird. Okay, so we grab her later.”
Wiskayok looked smaller in the rocket ship of Lottie’s car. They took the road that went opposite from the school and ended up getting high in the woods together, sharing a joint and sleeping in stray patches of sunlight in drowsy contentment, a pair of aliens temporarily grounded.
Because Ben left the key where it always was, Nat was able to sneak into the school before it opened up to shower in the locker room before class.
She felt vaguely like a criminal, sneaking around an empty locker room without anyone around, borrowing Lottie’s conditioner for the sake of getting clean.
Jackie liked setting up an entire ecosystem when she did homework. The contents of her bag would be dumped out and she would studiously position her notebook in the middle of her table, framing it with a rainbow of highlighters and two pens, a sleeve of sticky notes ready by her elbow.
It was always the same. Nat liked watching the concentration on her face as she shuffled through index cards, one hand hooked on the coffee cup smuggled into the library.
She was so busy watching Jackie that she didn’t realize the moment when the girl looked up and caught her. “What?” She asked, confusion prickling her expression. “Do I have something on my face?”
“Want one?”
“Want one what?”
She held out two protein bars stupidly. “They’re so healthy it’s like chewing on cardboard.” Nat could feel her own face going pink. A few nearby tables were occupied by seniors on spare and she was supposed to be in the biology lab going over the life cycle of a frog, but wandering hallways seemed better at the time. “Ben has garbage taste in snacks.”
“Oh, no. Thanks, though.” Jackie pinched a pen between her fingers but didn’t write with it. Instead she rolled it back and forth, idly looking up at her. “Actually, whatever. I’ll take half of one.”
She slid into a chair and tore one bar into near perfect halves, giving Jackie the slightly bigger piece. “Here.”
A librarian somewhere shushed loudly and Jackie made a face at Nat. She then nudged her drink over a bit. “Have some. You know, since we’re sharing.”
It was hot chocolate. The sweetness of it took Nat by surprise, the slight hint of peppermint laced through. Jackie must have ditched during lunch to grab it from the new coffee shop. “Cool,” she managed to say, the rest of her vocabulary drying up in her throat. “Hey, do we really have to go see Mari’s stuff in the art show?”
Jackie broke her half into smaller fractions. “Do you really want to listen to Mari bitch and complain in the locker room for the next three months because we didn’t go see her stuff?”
Nat had expected some generic response about team bonding. “You mean you haven’t figured out how to tune her out? Mari’s white noise.”
She laughed. “Mari’s one of those nuclear sirens going off. If you’ve got a secret to making that go away…”
One of the librarians swooped in. “Are you marked down for spare?” She said scornfully, finger already jabbing at the doorway. “I’m sure you have better places to be, Miss Scatorccio.”
Nat looked at Jackie. “Doubt it.” She got up and left. The door swung shut behind her and she turned to see Jackie watching her through the little window of it, this time catching her in the act. The reverse made her smile, made her boots feel lighter as she walked down the hallway alone.
Dylan Roy was supposed to be harmless. Everyone knew he was one of the nicer guys on the baseball team, winning the Spirit Award annually for his dedication to food drives, charity fundraising, and the one time he picked up trash from the side of the road for part of his project for Ecology.
The entire school loved Dylan Roy.
He drove a flashy car and made a point of pulling over to pick turtles up from the road, saving their shells from the wheels of other cars less willing to do the same. When he laughed, everyone laughed. Everyone got to be in on the same joke. It was a luxury being in the same room with him, supposedly, with his money coloured hair and tension free smile.
Lottie wanted to go to the party and Nat was supposed to be her partner in crime, done up in matching fishnet tights and smudged eyeliner, meant to cut through the party and have a good time before getting the fuck out.
Parties were fun, and Dylan Roy always had a fun time at a party.
“Here!” Allie shouted in Nat’s face, pushing a drink into her hand. Beads of sweat made the red cup slick. Beer sloshed over the rim of it when Lottie stumbled into her side. “Want another?”
“No!” Nat shouted back, trying to be heard over the music. One of the speakers had blown out already so the entire sound was disorienting. Lyrics came out crisp for one moment before collapsing into fuzzy static.
Allie ended up giving Nat another drink. She ended up taking it. Lottie vanished and she couldn’t find her anywhere which turned into another refill.
The problem with drinking and getting high was that the world never ended. Alcohol made Nat burn and she liked feeling that strange incoherence, fire drifting through her veins sluggishly, the taste of a cider sweet in her mouth. Maybe, she thought, if she died, she could stop drinking. She wouldn’t want it anymore. She wouldn't have to want it.
Her dad used to like a beer after work. He started liking it before work, though. And on break. And when he didn’t have work, time didn’t count anymore. He could drink around the clock because every minute was his again. Nat used to find him fused to the couch and sneering over an empty bottle, an extinguished forest fire still bleeding hot ash. When Nat first started drinking, she used to be afraid of it, of the person she could become. She started making rules for herself to keep whatever she was separate from him. But tiptoeing over one line didn’t trigger nuclear mushroom clouds on the horizon. She could go further, and the rules would become distant. One drink never ended.
Music fell away. She tumbled next to Dylan Roy outside on a blown up inflatable pool chair and laughed about it, jostling next to his shoulder.
He laughed with her, amused by the same thing.
Stars literally spun over her head. Nat squinted at them to try and make the whole world stop moving and Dylan Roy started moving in turn. Lottie wasn't outside and it was just them, alone and in the dark.“—good season. Didn’t think organized sports would be your thing,” he said. “We had a class together last year.”
She couldn’t remember any of her classes. “I can do organized,” Nat told him. “It’s not actually hard, you know.”
He laughed again. His hand ended up on her leg. It made her feel small being beneath that hand, feeling his skin on her own. “Yeah?” He asked her, squeezing lightly.
“Another time, hotshot.”
“Why not now?”
Nat sluggishly did the math. They were alone outside together and the rest of the party was inside. Saying yes would make it easier. Her mouth manage to comply and give him the answer he was listening for and that was it, burning out with the nicest boy in the school, laughing so it was like they were laughing at the same joke.
The punchline wasn’t so funny, though. Nat ended up washing the taste of it out of her mouth with more beer.
Letters swirled. It was enough to make Nat want to ball up her hand and scrub her fist across the surface of the page, banishing the words away entirely. She turned the page of the textbook when Van did, sticking in sync while the rest of her class concentrated on the material in front of her.
Miss Spencer, English Lit warden, stopped in front of her desk and sniffed at the blank page in Nat’s notebook facing up. “I’m still waiting on that package of missing work, you know.” Her voice was loud enough to carry across the room. A few people popped their heads up, vultures narrowing in on her. “I’ll have to call home if it isn’t on my desk by end of the week.”
Nat’s mouth went dry. “Sure.”
“I understand that you’re having similar difficulties in your other classes.”
“Only the shitty ones.”
A pink slip for detention was slapped down on her desk and Nat missed the first hour of practise entirely for the sake of sitting at a desk, alone with her arms crossed while a clock ticked at her with reproach.
Shauna was talking to Jeff and Nat couldn’t see Jackie anywhere. “What do you think they have to talk about?” She asked Van, nodding in their direction. Shauna seemed like her spine was actually curving from the weight in her bag, all those books pulling the zippers apart. “Or is it one of those shitty friend things you get when you and a person know the same person?”
“String theory, maybe.” Van was quick to dismiss, flipping her hand to wave them aside. “You missed bio, by the way. Frogs hoped around in their enclosure time.”
“Tadpoles were cuter.”
“They’re all slimy and wet.”
“Tadpoles were less work,” Nat clarified wryly. “They swam fucking circles.”
"Yeah, well. I did notes for us. So you owe me a drink," Van told her quickly as they slid up another spot in the line towards the cash. "Because I am so getting us a passing grade."
She touched her wallet. Nat pawned off some cheap jewelry for quick cash and now she had temporary relief. "You once told me you guaranteed us a pass and somehow? That was a fail."
"I didn't fuck up the frogs."
"Whatever."
"This place is way better than Rosa's, you know. Lottie says you're practically haunting a booth there." Van squinted up at the options. "Hey, you know how cars are expensive? What if we bought a golf cart and shared it?"
The entire menu was written in elaborate script. Words swirled into other words and Nat couldn't decipher any of it. "What do you want?"
"A golf cart, duh." Van rolled her eyes. "Dunno. Cherry lemonade. You?"
She shrugged. "That sounds good, sure." Nat stepped up to the cash when the line dwindled down to nothing and ordered for both of them, releasing a shaky breath when the process was finished. The barista slid back change and she shoved it in her wallet, ducking to the side to wait for their drinks. Van was plucking away about her idea of liberating a golf cart from the local golf club, stepping on every single designed crack in the floor as they shifted from the bar to a table.
"Tai went on this whole thing about the French Revolution and shit, right? About the people rising up and everything. I think they'd like a chance to steal a golf cart."
"The spirit of the revolution lives in you, huh?"
"They could've timed it better. If they knew what an ecological waste fucking golf clubs are, they'd be hauling ass to bring back the guillotine.” Van passed her a straw automatically and swirled her cup slightly, mixing the lemonade into the cherry syrup better. “Are we avoiding the elephant in the room still or we gonna talk about it?”
The lemonade was sour. Nat belatedly wished she opted for a hot chocolate. “I think shit’s been said enough. Why waste more words on it?”
“Okay, well. Dylan Roy is using lots of words.”
The coffee shop was still new. It used to be a hardware shop until someone gutted it, cramming in tiny mismatching seats and tables around the space, walls covered in oil paintings from local artists. A large canvas was mounted to the wall and featured a pack of wolves in winter, their oily furs illuminated in golden highlights against the dark blue shadows. “I’m honestly impressed he’s capable of stringing them into a sentence,” Nat said to Van, said to the painting, said to the sourness burning in her own mouth. "Words can be really challenging for some people."
Van leaned back in her chair. Shauna went out the door of the coffee shop with two drinks in a tray, Jeff holding it open for her before leaving as well. “He’s saying a lot of stuff. And the other guys on the team are also—”
“I didn’t fuck any of them," Nat clipped out, automatically shoving aside that part of the story. "They're just talking. It's all made up."
She rolled her eyes at her. “I’m not dumb. I know that.”
“Then why are we talking about this?”
“Because it’s shitty.” Van’s voice had a trace of heat to it. “You know it’s shitty and I know that it’s shitty.”
Everyone was talking about it. And the story kept shifting around, details and names being swapped for new ones. Nat was infamous. Dylan Roy was famous. The boys of his team were starting to become famous as well, striking up a casual score about who apparently fucked Natalie Scatorccio.
“It’ll go away. Whatever, God. None of this is going to kill me or anything, so basically I’m super good.” Nat made herself sound confident and cocky, drumming her fingers on the table. “I fucked a whole team of mediocre boys, apparently. I’ve been busy.”
Van skillfully adapted to the forced humour but her mouth stayed tight, smile looking similar to a line of barbed wire. “Should’ve fucked the tennis club instead. You might’ve actually snagged cool points in your favour.”
“Give it a week and I’m sure that’ll happen.” They were all going to come after anyways, eager to crucify Natalie Scatorccio for the sake of talking about it afterwards. Staying cool about it meant nobody would see the blood coming up, weak spots ripe for the taking. “Gonna pass on the drama club, though. Fucking weirdos.”
Nat looked into the mirror and started searching for something to fix. Her eyes looked tired. Her eyes looked like her father’s. Eyeliner was decent camouflage at reducing the similarity so she applied it carefully, dragging it along her waterline lightly.
Mari hung over her shoulder like a ghoul with the soul quality of lukewarm Mountain Dew. “So… all at once, or was there some kind of shared calendar to keep track?”
She winged out slightly. Nat was patient when it came to make up. She used to mix green eyeshadow into yellowish foundation to conceal bruises. The whole process was a bit like sliding into a suit of armour, pulling herself into a hardshell. “How’s Danny Mear’s cousin doing?”
That triggered a red flush. “Don’t be so nasty,” Mari joked mirthlessly, sliding around to take advantage of the mirror herself. She ran her fingers through her hair and fluffed it up, brittle smile fighting to stay in one piece. “They’re second cousins. Everyone knows that’s legal.”
“Isn’t Dylan Roy kind of hot?” Jackie asked suddenly, cutting in from no where. She leaned into her reflection like she was checking her lip gloss but her eyes caught Mari’s in the reflection. She dropped her make up bag onto the counter with a thud, claiming her spot between them.
“I mean, yeah. He’s got a whole look,” Mari said, rolling her eyes.
“So, what’s the problem?”
Mari frizzled out and left, a storm cloud without a target. She nearly knocked into Akilah exiting the locker room and the girl scoffed at her retreating back, dumping her book bag onto a bench.
Nat made a similar, slightly softer retreat for the sake of not talking about Dylan Roy with Jackie and immediately got caught by Berzonsky who must have been waiting. He had a pained expression on his face. “Natalie.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve been called five times today to the office. I figured you might’ve gotten lost.” Berzonsky gave a weak attempt of a smile. “Maybe I could walk you over and save on the grief, because I’m sure you haven’t been ignoring the pages.”
Lottie was waiting for her but Nat didn’t have a better choice to avoid the sit down. In a perfect world, she would have slipped right out the doors before getting caught like this. “Sure.”
“Great.”
They walked together and enough people were still around to start whispering, eager to kick up a new spin to the rumours floating around. She took her regular seat in the office and frowned back at Berzonsky, steeling herself for whatever hit was coming. “I haven’t messed with anything,” Nat informed him sharply. “And I was in class for every class today.” And sober, which was a definite achievement.
“Yes, I saw your new personal record.” His finger pointed at an attendance sheet sitting on his desk. “I was almost impressed.”
She kept her spine straight. “Okay, so what?”
“I’ve heard distressing things today. Certain things about your involvement with… the entire boy’s baseball team, I believe?” Berzonsky looked like he was wilting. Late afternoon sun flooded his office. “I’d like to talk it over with you and get a handle for the situation moving forward.”
It took sincere effort to hold herself in place. A framed photo of the Yellowjackets line up was propped up on the desk facing her like she needed a reminder of the team. Tiny faces beamed out at her, including her own. Lottie was in the back row with Shauna, and Nat was crouched down low between Van and Jackie. Misty was on one end with Tai on the other, everyone mixed together for a staged shot.
“This school… has a certain pride. We expect every student to follow a code of conduct. And I know we’ve tolerated incidents from you in the past, Natalie. Coach Ben has been fighting for your case and I see it, I really do. I think you’re a valuable member for your team… but this? This is going a bit far this time,” Berzonsky said carefully, clipping his words together like puzzle pieces. “Your reputation is at stake here, and I’m aware that you're young enough that you might view it as something disposable—”
“I fucked Dylan Roy. And technically Dylan Roy fucked me, I guess. Did you have him in here? Any of the other guys? Because yeah, I get it. I’m a fucking legend,” Nat sneered, unhooking that rage and tossing it out in the open like a grenade. “You’ve had a busy day, right? Getting us all in here to tell us to keep it in our pants?”
“This is different.”
“Yeah, because this? This is sexist.” Nat stood up. “I’m done.”
“We are not done.”
“What do you want me to say?” Nat snapped, frustrated. “I’m never touching Dylan Roy again? Yeah, don’t worry. I’m definitely never doing that again.”
“We’ve sent a notice home. A few, actually.” Berzonsky looked as tired as she felt. “We’re trying to support you, Natalie. Eventually you’ll have to take an inventory and figure out what it is that you need to go forward.”
She left, door slamming open hard against the wall. Nat blinked hard to push away the memory of her father yelling, her father on the ground, that gunshot between two moments. Lottie’s car wasn’t in the parking lot which meant she was alone for the walk home, stuck beneath the glaring sun.
Halfway home she ducked into the bushes to throw up.
The community mail box was right beside the large sign marking the entrance to the trailer park. A scraggly garden grew beneath it, mocking little flowers wiggling back and forth from a soft breeze.
Nat took out her mail key and slid it into the lock before turning it, bracing herself for the contents that showered out at her feet.
Plenty of mail, not enough junk. She flipped through the envelopes like a deck of cards until the school’s familiar logo came up, plucking them out and tossing it out for the window to take.
The rest she brought back into the double wide and left beside the wedding photo of her parents so that her mother couldn’t miss it.
Nat wasted a dollar on bad black coffee at Rosa’s. She used the last ten to buy one of Kevyn’s old essays to hand in. Van kept taking notes on frogs in a tank and wrote Nat’s name down at the top of everything she submitted. Someone painted a slur on her locker and by the next day it was gone, washed away like it was never there in the first place.
Empty cupboards in the kitchen started hosting little families of spiders, the state of neglect growing enough that even the flies looked pathetic against the closed windows.
More letters showed up. She didn’t have to look at them to know the contents, that familiar red written across ever single envelope. Overdue, overdue, overdue—
Bill had a history and a legacy in shaping student athletes for their next steps. His name popped up in articles and alongside award plaques, a blurry shadow next to seasonal champions. And despite all of his efforts to build the Yellowjackets into constant winners, Nat knew, Bill Martinez was their biggest enemy who enjoyed throwing rocks at weak spots.
“C’mon, burnout. You’re gonna be riding bench if you don’t cut your time down any.”
Nat knelt on her line and waited for that whistle to shriek before lunging forward, sprinting across the field. Her lungs were burning and she wanted to throw up somewhere and die, frustrated enough with her own limitations that she was dangling closer to the edge.
“Barely even with the last one.” Bill flipped up the stop watch at her and grimaced. “Try again.”
So she did. She circled the field on a loop and kept at it, counting every single pylon laid out. He was going to break her for the sake of improving her, and Nat didn’t know if it was worth it.
A whistle shrieked. “Again.”
Her hair felt heavy from sweat. She wrestled a choppy, short piece back from her forehead and struck a bobby pin through, holding it in place. The wind was a lonely companion to run with, either smacking into her face in one direction or coming at her spine to push helpfully.
Bill sent her for another lap and by the time she returned to the finish line, he was gone. His car wasn’t even in the parking lot.
She could choke for air because Bill wasn’t around to watch her. Every greedy inhale felt like sandpaper down her throat. Her legs buckled and she was on the ground struggling beneath the blue sky and feeble wind, barely stitching back the pieces together.
I'm going to die on my back, Nat thought to the sky. I'm going to die because I can't run fast enough.
Eventually the sun sank low enough that the whole sky turned pinkish and tissue coloured. Nat peeled herself up off of grass and limped for the distant locker room door, hobbling for her bag left on the edge of the bench.
She plucked a cigarette free and lit it, greedy for smoke and nicotine. The action helped settle her, soothing the nerves left frayed.
Ben met her by the doors. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of the detrimental effects that smoking has on lungs,” Ben told her. "As a runner, I think you'd care."
She held it between her fingers and forced her legs to hold herself upright. “I’m fine.”
“If your body is a house, why are you trying to burn it down?”
“Because recreational arson is my favourite sport.”
He looked angry enough that she stubbed it out and gave up that cigarette, shoving through the doorway for the locker room. Her shower was brief and cold, desperately chasing through the motions of getting clean to go back home. And, Nat realized with a sting of irritation, Ben was still loitering around outside the locker room, clearly waiting to resume whatever issue he wanted discussed. “I’m not going to rob the place or anything. You don’t need to hold my hand or anything,” Nat said, voice caught with a reflexive edge.
Ben’s mouth wasn’t even trying to smile. “Are you in trouble?”
“What? No,” Nat immediately said, scoffing.
“I’m aware you’re going through something. People are starting to get worried.”
“Why?”
“Because you look like someone who’s actively drowning. And I don’t know if you’ve figured out how to ask someone for help yet.”
“I don’t need any help. Can you just— just stop, okay? I’m fine. I am going to be fine,” Nat snapped, frustrated. Everything hurt. Her legs ached and her skull throbbed, lungs tight like they were laced up by an iron corset. “Nobody is drowning because nobody is in water right now.”
“Is your mom still working the morning shift?”
Nat went to leave but Ben physically blocked her, making her skin suddenly go cold. Her mind started calculating the space between him and her, measuring out the exact distance to the exit.
“Nat,” Ben said, louder like he was trying to sigh and curse at the same time. “I called the diner—”
“Don’t do that.” Anger was so close to fear. It all bubbled up. “Don’t fucking call her. She’s busy.”
“They said she hasn’t shown up for work in two months.”
“She got a new job,” Nat said, slapping down an excuse as fast as she could. “So yeah, she hasn’t been there.”
“Great. What’s the place? Is she still waitressing?”
“None of your business.”
“I hate to break it to you, Nat, but you’re kind of my business.”
“Yeah, on that field, sure. I’m here because you made me try and I am trying! But outside of this place? I’m not your business.” Nat backed a step up from Ben. If he went to grab her, she had to increase space between them to have better odds at staying free from his grip. Because a hand could squeeze so tight it would summon up a bruise, crushed little blood vessels turning skin black and blue. And, Nat thought, a hand could be an open slap cracking down. It could turn into a fist. Hands were dangerous and couldn’t be trusted, because Nat was fluent in the language of hands. “I play this fucking game and I’m on this team— what do you want from me?”
“You’re burning out and I’d like it if you stopped,” Ben said like it was the easiest thing in the world. “I want you to take some help because I don’t think you can do this alone anymore.”
“Fuck you,” Nat snapped, stung by his disbelief. "I've got this."
“Your mom isn’t around and that’s something we need to talk about. And if you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll find someone else. There are whole systems here to help you. I want to help you, but you have to let that happen!” His voice turned sharp, almost as sharp as her own. “You need to open up your mouth and tell someone that there’s a problem.”
Nat opened her mouth and nothing came out. She heard a gunshot, the sound of her mother crying. Scatorccio blood was a spiderweb with no real winner. Vera hadn’t been home for weeks and her dad was dead.
“There’s no problem,” she managed to force out, spitting out a needle sharp lie so sharp that she thought her tongue might bleed. “Because I’m fine.”
I’m fine, Nat thought. The mantra spun circles inside her skull. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine—
She got home and slammed the door shut. “Mom!” Nat shouted into the empty space. “Where are you?”
No one was left to answer.
She picked up an empty beer bottle and whipped it at a wall. Glass shattered from the impact and she screamed at those broken pieces, hurling two more bottles for the sake of making something else break.
The double wide was a broken place, and everything left inside was designed to be ruined. Nat screamed and ripped up pages of old magazines, fingers shredding waxy images of families and country living, choking on her own rage.
This, she knew distantly, was her father’s anger. Her hands were the same as his.
She broke more things. She made up a galaxy of ruin until nothing was left. A wedding photo sat crookedly on the shelf and she sagged before it, unable to take another step in it’s direction. They looked happy, she realized, because she wasn’t real in that photo. That was a tiny window into a life of her parents that she never knew.
Frothy veil, a black suit.
It was the same one he got buried in. The wedding rings, though, got sold off for a power bill already.
Nat stumbled towards her bedroom and yanked up the whisky like it was a life preserver and she was a drowning sailor, choking down the bitter burn until the fire was comfortable again.
She stole loose change from the donation box at the church left open for confessionals just to call Van.
“I’ve got an idea,” Nat coaxed into the phone, leaning against the booth’s wall. “I think it’ll be fun.”
Fun involved Van and Lottie as willing accomplices.
Fun also involved liberating an entire tank of frogs the night before the dissection unit. It also involved spiriting away a golf cart from the local club, speeding as fast as they could on a single battery’s charge, screeching for every hair pin turn Lottie managed to wrench up. Tires kicked up a wave of dirt and gravel.
“Hold up,” Nat said, laughing and drunk. The tank sloshed back and forth which summoned up a chorus of frogs protesting the efforts to liberate them from their execution. “Hold this,” she corrected herself, making Van take a better hold on the tank.
Thirty frogs grimaced.
She stood up slowly and felt the bumps beneath the tires, jolting into the one corner post of the golf cart. “What’s happening?” Van called up over the sound of the tiny engine working overdrive. They had ditched local security five streets back already.
Nat hooked one foot up and managed to climb awkwardly, scaling the sight to cling to the roof, face full of starlight. It was like riding a chariot. She shrieked and laughed, tipping her head back and sending her delight straight up to the moon.
Van tugged at her leg. “You’re gonna break your neck!”
“Relax! I’m a safe driver,” Lottie said back from where she had the wheel, pushing a little harder on the gas. “Everything is totally safe!”
“You ever notice, Lot, that we’re always the ones that get banged up and you’re always walking away damage free?” Val said, referencing the time they went down a hill in a shopping cart. “She’s gonna fall and crack her head open. You’ll hit a fucking tree and she’ll go into heart failure or something. C’mon, Natalie. Sit down. Ass on the seat.”
“You know what a perfect heart is?” Nat said up to the moon, to the scratches of branches coming overhead. “No heart. That’s the best kind. Won’t fail if you don’t have one.”
“Having a heart is so overrated,” Lottie agreed.
Eventually they ditched the golf cart-literally in a ditch- and took off with their haul to the closest swamp. Van unceremoniously pitched the whole tank over on it’s side and let them go free, splashing straight for the water.
With no frogs available to be cut up for the sake of science, the entire senior class was left to write a paper about the subject in theory in the library.
No harm was done, Nat imagined. It achieved the same results in the end.
“—so tired of this place. Like, climbing the walls and jumping out the window tired of this place.”
Ben kept looking at her like she was about to self implode and he needed to say something about it, so Nat kept avoiding him. She stopped stealing the protein bars from his desk, stopped borrowing the key to shower before school. She went hungry instead, and opted for hasty showers at Van’s place.
Space made it easier to keep breathing.
Two classes ended up dismissing her stack of unfinished work for the sake of pushing her further along, and it wasn’t quite defeat. Next year she would be someone else’s problem to suffer through. Nat could keep occupying a desk and a chair, and eventually graduation would roll along, everyone gathering for a finish line just to see her through.
She could do this, Nat told herself. She kept her hair colourless, went through the motions; laughing with Van, conspiring with Lottie, running with the Yellowjackets—
But the trailer stayed empty. Vera Scatorccio’s ghost was beginning to fade, and if Nat was being honest with herself, she wasn’t ready for that total absence.
The locker room was crowded as it usually was, music pumping and voices snapping, a riot of bodies moving around to claim a better spot. For two days Nat had tried summoning up the courage before clamping back down on a quick retreat, unable to drag up the words she needed to say.
And she couldn’t face Ben.
She felt shame burning up through her whenever she thought about going to him.
He wasn’t an option, Nat decided. Which meant Lottie was her second choice. If someone could give her help, it might be Lottie.
“Hey, Lot,” Nat tried softly catching Lottie’s attention, trying to break through the one sided conversation chattering at her.
But it went unheard.
“—we’re getting ice cream after. You in?”
The mirrors framed them. “Sure,” she said automatically. “Sounds good.”
Lottie’s brows arched slightly. “Movie after? Can you stay out late tonight?”
“My mom isn’t around,” Nat said, looking up at where the two mirrors warped her reflection, looking at every version of herself that could ever exist in a single moment.
“What?” Lottie looked confused.
She made herself open her mouth and say it louder, trying to cut through the static inside her head and the noise in the room. “She’s gone. My mom isn’t around.”
“Lucky. Either my mom or my dad is always home. They never sync up their trips or anything. So, yeah. Movie. Yay or nay?”
She struggled against the uneasy panic coming up. “It’s just— I don’t think she’ll be back this weekend.”
Tai hopped on one foot, struggling to squeeze into a pair of leather leggings. “So you’re having a party, right?”
Her vision went white. Nat wanted to claw her way out of this pit. Fuck, she thought. “No—”
“What’s happening?” Van asked, half listening from where she was digging in her locker for a change of socks. “What party?”
“Nat’s gonna throw a party,” Lottie told her, speaking up louder. It caught attention. Everyone was starting to look at their little cluster. Nat looked up and saw Jackie’s eyes scanning through the locker room until they landed on her, interest frozen on her face. “Her mom’s out of town.”
“Your place, right?” Mari sneered at her.
“No. The bush,” Nat said immediately, killing that idea fast. The double wide still had the evidence of her melt down. “Bonfire.”
“Please tell me you’re actually planning something, because if you invite everyone to a fucking pile of sticks, I’ll kill you,” Tai warned her. “You know what? No. I’ll plan this.”
“Is it hard driving when you’re in the backseat?”
Tai rolled her eyes at her. She then slammed her locker shut in a way that finalized that Nat Scatorccio was absolutely throwing a party and everything was totally fine.
Tai could throw a decent party, Nat admitted.
Everyone from school showed up for the sake of seeing what a Scatorccio party looked like, and Tai was the puppet master managing the entire situation. A fire pit was burning by the very second the sun went down and everyone was gathered around, mysterious cases of beer propped up around in very convenient places.
“Here,” Allie said, practically shoving a red cup at her. “Cheers, right?”
Nat took it and immediately dropped it. Beer sloshed over Allie’s shoes. “Thanks. That was refreshing.”
“What’s your problem?” Allie jerked back. “Aren’t you, like, always drinking? Don’t be a dick. I was trying to be nice.”
She didn’t want to drink.
People raced around the trees, playing some kind of bizarre game that was definitely going to end with a sprained ankle and a concussion. Tai was holding court at one end of the bonfire and it seemed safer to avoid that general space or else Nat would be forced to give grudging compliments.
Tai’s ego didn’t need a boost.
Trees thinned out for a slight hill. She sat down on a log and dragged her boots through the dirt, considering her options.
Staying meant partying, meant inevitably saying yes when someone offered her alcohol.
Leaving meant retreating back to an empty place.
The outskirts was safest for the moment, she realized. Everyone could have a good time and Nat sat right on the edge of everything, a spectator to her own show.
But through the smoke Nat could smell the faint catch of roses from shampoo, a delicate perfume threading through the air. “Party looks good,” Jackie complimented. Someone had tossed a crown of plastic flowers on her head. It sat crookedly, a fairy queen coming up out of the trees. “Everyone’s coherent and no one’s died yet. Good job.”
“Give it another five minutes.”
Jackie sat down. The whole party seemed like a different world entirely. Nat liked her current world better, she thought idly, less lonely and less stuck. Jackie then ducked down and started digging around her bag, yanking out a package of liquorice. “For you.”
Nat cradled it weakly in her hands. “Wow, Taylor. You know the way to my heart.”
“My mom told me to never go to a place without a gift for the host.”
“You actually think I’m hosting this thing?” Nat scoffed, jerking her chin in the general direction of Tai. “Pretty sure you’re supposed to give her this.”
“I didn’t bring it for Tai.” Jackie rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, thanks.”
“I hate when my parents are gone.”
She blinked, surprised. The sudden twist of conversation made her stiffen up, watching for the right moment a trap came down. “Yeah?”
“Whole house gives me the creeps when it’s empty. Like, horror movie kind of creeps. I can’t stand it. Just you… I don’t know. Places aren’t meant for one person, I think.”
Nat was pretty sure it was the lingering trace of smoke in the wind making her eyes sting. “It sucks, right?”
Jackie hummed in agreement.
The fire was orange coloured and distant. Looking at it made Nat feel a bit like a moth. She shared a reckless desire to burn up for the sake of consuming, dangerously in love with bright things.
“How’d your lab go?”
“Oh, aced it. Some genius broke in and stole all the frogs,” Jackie said, laughing. “Didn’t have to maim anything after all, so that was super cool.” She then looked at her, bright faced and lopsided crown, smile soft around the edges. “You good?”
She might have managed the truth in that single moment if she hadn’t seen the flashing lights cresting through the darkness, a party spoiled by the intervention of local police. It was time to abandon the party like a sinking ship and leave, sprinting for the hills. “Jesus, fuck. Let’s go!” Nat said, grabbing Jackie’s arm and pulling her up. “C’mon.”
Nat was a professional at evading law enforcement. They crashed blindly through the woods and peeled off, doubling back for cars and trying to evade struggling police officers. Jackie hopped into Tai’s car and Nat ended up with Lottie, barrelling down the roads until she was dropped off at the edge of the trailer park, hands still hooked on her single prize.
The door home was left open, moonlight illuminating the entrance.
She stepped very carefully up the three steps and through the opening, peering into the interior. But fear turned to nothing when she saw Vera stretched out on the couch, smoking with a blanket tossed over her legs.
Nat froze. “Mom?”
Vera looked at her. “Power’s out. You know that, right?”
Her head nodded. Her voice turned to nothing.
“Right. Well, whatever,” Vera scoffed. “Night.”
And that was it. Vera hauled herself up and went to bed and Nat was still standing alone inside her home, still in the darkness and shadows of it, numb straight to the bone.
Everything was fine again.