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Melissa finally makes her appearance, collar popped and hat lopsided. The other girls acknowledge her return with varying levels of attention and enthusiasm.
“Find anything interesting on your walk?” Akilah asks, lifting her attention from the rabbits she’s raising so painstakingly. Melissa just shrugs, trying to hustle into one of the yurts with great haste. She’s stopped by Gen, the new hunter grabbing her arm and forcing her to stop.
Melissa sees that she’s staring at her sleeve, and she knows she’s been caught.
“What’s this?” Gen asks with concern, free hand lifting Melissa’s sleeve, revealing a bite mark. It’s purpling, the indents the culprit’s teeth left barely-there.
“Uh, well. It’s, uh…” Melissa stumbles, really not sure how to explain how that bite got there.
Gen’s eyes draw up to Melissa’s face, but stop short at her neck. Her collar doesn’t fool the new hunter. Gen pushes it down, the way it’s supposed to be, and this reveals… God knows how many more.
“Jesus, Melissa,” Gen breathes.
“What’s up?” Natalie asks, quick to notice something’s wrong during her brief return to camp between searches for Mari. Melissa opens her mouth to try and explain that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why she’s absolutely covered in bite marks, but Gen beats her to the punch.
“Mel’s covered in bites,” Gen says plainly, and Nat looks Melissa up and down, eyes getting caught on the rings of purple forming on her skin. Melissa realises that she actually has no idea how to explain this, especially not in a way that was reasonable.
“Did she get the Shauna Special?” a girl eavesdropping nearby jokes. This results in laughter from some of the other surrounding girls. Melissa joins in, though her voice is a bit too high and loud. She remembers how Shauna bit Mari during the game of Catch the Bone, and she realises that this is her out.
“Did you do something to piss Shipman off?” Gen asks, and though she tries, her face betrays her as her mouth tries oh-so-hard not to smirk. Melissa is stuck for a moment, then finds herself nodding a bit too enthusiastically.
“Yup!” Melissa confirms, perhaps a bit too happily. “Pissed her off big time. Just that.”
Gen and Natalie raise two eyebrows between them, giving Melissa double vision with their twin expressions of confusion, concern and questioning. Melissa feels sweat run down her neck. Are they on to her?
“Uh, well… you should probably wrap those up, I guess?” Natalie says, clearly unsure of what to make of this whole thing. She steps aside, giving Melissa the opening to enter the yurt. It takes Mel a moment to realise what’s expected of her, then she awkwardly nods and stumbles into the shelter.
Melissa hopes nobody comes inside as she takes her shirts off to wrap up her torso. She was hiding a lot more bites than the others could already see, and the jig would really be up if they saw what could only be described as an attempt to rip out a chunk of her flesh peeking out the edge of her bra.
To be fair, Shauna probably was pissed when she bit Melissa. Maybe at her, maybe at the world, their circumstances. Her circumstances. Maybe she’s like a dog, using Melissa as a chew toy unto which to expel her frustrations. Each time her teeth sunk into Melissa’s sun-kissed flesh, it was a thousand words unsaid, unscreamed. They’re confessions, like what Melissa can only assume Shauna scribbles out in her journals. In a sense, Melissa’s just another kind of page, Shauna’s teeth another way to etch, the bruising another kind of ink.
…Is it bad that Melissa finds that thought to be kind of hot?