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It’s a new morning, and the sky is crying its white tears. The snow doesn’t stop sobbing when Melissa does. Her face is still swollen and red and itchy like poison ivy, and her eyes feel like they’re buzzing. Her throat hurts, more than it ever did when her dog died or when she was just sad and hungover.
Gen’s hands had been firm on her shoulders, half-dragging, half-guiding her. Melissa barely felt it. Her skin was already raw, rubbed down to nothing by fear, by the echo of the gunshot still reverberating in her skull, even now. The snow keeps falling, taunting them of the coming winter and their unrescue. It’s catching in her eyelashes, in the damp streaks on her cheeks, melting into the heat of her body like it’s trying to soothe her. It doesn’t work.
Melissa barely noticed when they stepped inside the hut. The shift from the settling cold to not-quite-warm was muted, like she was underwater. She remembers Gen making a noise—something small and annoyed—but she was careful as she pushed Melissa down to sit on the furs in the corner. Melissa guesses she’s just glad to have a roommate back.
"You're shaking," Gen says, back in the present.
Melissa isn’t sure if that’s a question or an accusation. She tries to stop, but her body isn’t listening. It’s like her bones are rattling against each other, trying to break loose.
Gen sighs and crouches down in front of her. Her face is flushed, her hands pink and stiff when she reaches out to untangle Melissa’s fingers from where they’ve twisted into her sleeves.
"You need to breathe, okay?”
Melissa exhales, sharp and ragged. It doesn’t help. It especially doesn’t help when Gen takes one of her plaits, drapes it tenderly over her shoulder and smiles that girl-next-door smile.
Yeah, it’s not helping.
Gen’s hands tighten on hers.
"Not like that. Just—just breathe in. Hold it. Let it out slow."
Melissa obeys but it doesn’t really fix anything, doesn’t make her feel less like she’s still standing in the clearing with Shauna’s gun aimed right at her, but it’s something. A shape to fit herself into. A rhythm.
Gen watches her, expression unreadable.
"I don’t think she was ever actually gonna kill you," she says, after a long pause.
Melissa's stomach lurches, and she feels slightly sick. "She almost did."
"But she didn’t."
Melissa jerks her hands away.
"That’s not the fucking point !" Her voice cracks at the end, thin and wretched. She digs her fingers into her knees to stop herself from shaking again.
"She had a gun in my face and she shot me."
Gen leans back, stretching her legs out in front of her like they’re just having a normal conversation, like Melissa isn’t still clawing her way out of something that almost killed her.
"Yeah. And it scared the shit out of you. I get it." She tilts her head, considering. "But you’re still here."
Melissa laughs, wild and humorless. "And that’s supposed to make me feel better?"
"That’s supposed to make you think."
Melissa’s mouth snaps shut.
Outside, the snow is still falling, blanketing the world in indifference and some ever-present chill, but Melissa can still hear Shauna’s voice, sharp and hard and furious. Can feel the gun’s muzzle like a ghost against her skin, snapping and biting and slavering.
She curls her arms around herself, pressing her nails into her ribs.
"I guess I kinda knew she wasn’t messing around," she says, quiet now, like saying it too loud will summon Shauna into the room like some kind of wilderness Beetlejuice. "She looked- pissed. She fucking hates me. But I didn’t- didn’t think she would actually—"
Gen shifts, something like pity flickering across her face.
"Shauna doesn’t hate you."
Melissa snorts, but it’s weak. "Yeah, okay."
"She doesn’t," Gen says, but she doesn’t sound convinced of what she’s saying. Melissa guesses that it’s more for her benefit than to defend Shauna.
"She’s just—she’s just— messed up. Like everyone here.”
Melissa doesn’t say anything.
Because it’s true. Because it doesn’t change anything. Because the image of Shauna’s finger on the trigger is burned into her like frostbite.
She presses her face into her hands, breathing deep. The hut smells like damp fur and old smoke. She breathes again.
Gen sighs, shifting closer. Her hand ghosts over Melissa’s back, not quite touching, like she doesn’t know if it would help. "Just lay down," she mutters. “Take your mind off it.”
Melissa doesn’t believe that’ll work, and Gen knows it. But she complies anyway.
She lowers her body into her old fur bed and the hut creaks with the wind. Her body is lead-heavy, but her mind is restless, a dog gnawing at a bone, worrying over every second of what just happened.
(She had a gun. She aimed. She fired.)
Sleep doesn’t come.
Every second is too small, too dark, too filled with the sound of her own breath, still uneven, still shaky. Every time she blinks, she sees it again. Her body is still locked in that moment, frozen in the space between the trigger pull and the bullet just about grazing her.
She shifts, curling onto her side, trying to get comfortable. Her clothes are still damp, clinging to her skin in patches.
(Gen was the one who pulled her into the hut before anyone else could see the full extent of whatever happened. She was led by Van. Van kept patting her shoulders, reassuring her, covering her when she needed it. Van kept her close when she couldn’t stop shaking, when the warmth of any fire wouldn’t be enough to thaw her.)
Melissa’s hands feel strange, too light without the weight of a knife or a branch or something solid. She clenches them into fists, then uncurls them again. (Shauna was the one who gave her the knife in the first place, or the motivation to cut. The sudden loneliness she’s struck with is pushed into her palm like the blade, accompanied with: You shouldn’t be scared of the bad parts of you, either.)
(But she is.)
The snow outside has muffled everything. It should feel safe, but it doesn’t. It feels like she’s been buried alive. Melissa presses her face against the fur beneath her. She’s still trembling. She hates it. She feels like a kid again, small and helpless and unable to stop crying. (Gen was the one who found her after her brothers locked her out of the house that night, years ago. She didn’t ask questions. Just let Melissa stay over, gave her a blanket, put a movie on.)
Her breath hitches. She tries to keep it quiet.
Gen shifts beside her. There’s a pause, then a rustling, and then her hand is on Melissa’s shoulder, careful and steady.
"Hey," she murmurs.
Melissa doesn’t answer.
Gen hesitates, then tugs at the edge of Melissa’s sleeve. "You should change."
Melissa stiffens.
She doesn’t want to move. Doesn’t want to acknowledge the cold dampness between her legs, the humiliating reminder that her body gave up on her when her mind couldn’t.
Gen doesn’t say anything else. She just waits. Melissa swallows hard. Her throat feels thick, clogged with everything she doesn’t want to feel.
Then, finally, she nods. Just once.
(Some summer, before the crash—Melissa puking outside a party, Gen’s hand firm on her back, the quiet “You’re good, Mellie” she almost didn’t hear.)
Gen helps her sit up, her hands light, nonjudgmental. She doesn’t comment when Melissa flinches, when she keeps her head down, her face hot with shame. She just moves carefully, pulling a blanket around Melissa’s shoulders before easing her out of her wet clothes, replacing them with dry ones.
(Another party, another lifetime—Melissa unzipping her dress in Gen’s bedroom, giggling, slurring, “Help me, help me,” and Gen rolling her eyes but helping anyway. She never wanted to wear the dress, which made it easier to take off, she supposes.)
Melissa lets Gen help her change now, because she’s too tired to argue. Because she still feels like she might fall apart if she moves too fast. Because Gen has always been there, even when Melissa didn’t ask her to be.
(In the wreckage of the plane—Melissa shaking too hard, Gen taking the matches without a word, striking them on the metal seat frame, flames licking up like magic, just for a few minutes. They never told the rest of the team about that. They sat in the fire for a minute and sang Wonderwall.)
By the time she lies back down, Melissa’s body feels a little less foreign. A little more like hers.
Gen settles beside her, close but not too close.
But when Gen’s hand brushes against hers, she doesn’t pull away.
So it feels like a betrayal when she dreams of Shauna.
(Not the Shauna with the gun. Not the one who looked at her like she was nothing, like she was less than nothing. Made her something, then nothing.)
No—this Shauna is softer. Like she used to be, back when Jackie was still around, back when they all still had baby fat and stupid worries, when the cold hadn’t carved them into something hollow like Javi with his stupid fucking wolf.
Shauna and Melissa are in the hut they used to share, curled up on their respective beds, talking in low voices while the others sleep. Melissa can’t remember what they’re talking about—something pointless, something warm, something that makes Shauna’s nose scrunch the way it used to. Some soccer thing, maybe. Shauna’s eyes are bright, her hands gesturing as she speaks, and she’s telling a story and she’s getting carried away. Melissa watches her, stomach light, the way it used to be before everything.
(Before hunger made them desperate. Before Jackie and blood and bone and silent, empty nights. Before Shauna pulled the gun on her and pulled the trigger.)
Melissa tries not to think about that.
She focuses on Shauna’s voice instead, familiar, and she wants to close her eyes and stay here. Just for a little while. Then Shauna pulls the blanket up over both of them, like she used to when it got too cold at night. She smells like pine, like leather and candle wax, like the pages of her stupid little notebook. Sorry— journal.
“God, it’s freezing,” Shauna murmurs, tucking her arms around herself. “I miss my mom’s house. The heat was always blasting in winter. Jackie used to complain about it all the time.”
Melissa swallows. “Yeah?”
Shauna huffs a laugh. “Yeah. She hated it. She’d come over and immediately start peeling off layers, rolling her eyes, like, ‘Shauna, your house is a sauna.’”
Melissa doesn’t say anything.
Shauna shifts, tilts her head. “What’s wrong?”
Melissa opens her mouth. Closes it.
Shauna shifts, turning toward her, expression soft. The pause is long, but time is warped in the dream so it’s not really.
“Hey. I’m sorry,” she says.
Melissa frowns. “For what?”
Shauna reaches for her hand. Her fingers are deathly cold.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she murmurs. “I just—I needed you to understand.”
The dream tilts.
Melissa tries to pull away, but Shauna’s grip tightens.
“I had to do it,” Shauna says, voice still sweet, but wrong now. Too sweet. Like syrup gone bitter.
Melissa’s breath shudders. The walls of the hut seem farther away, the furs thinner, the cold creeping in. Shauna’s fingers tighten more. Her nails bite into Melissa’s skin.
“You get that, don’t you?”
Melissa shakes her head. She doesn’t want this anymore. She wants to wake up.
Shauna leans in, breath warm against her ear. “It could’ve been real,” she whispers. “I could’ve—”
Melissa jerks awake.
Her body is trembling, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know when she is.
Gen moves beside her. A hand on her arm, steady, grounding. “Hey. Breathe.”
Melissa squeezes her eyes shut, fists tangling in the furs. She can still feel Shauna’s grip, still hear her voice.
“Breathe,” Gen says again. Firmer this time.
Melissa gasps in a breath, shaky. Holds it. Lets it out slow.
Gen doesn’t move away. Just stays close, hand still on her arm, solid and warm.
After a long moment, Melissa exhales again and whispers, “I fucking hate her.”
Gen is quiet. Then: “Yeah. Me too.”
Melissa presses her face into her hands. Her skin is damp. She doesn’t know if it’s sweat or tears. Maybe both. She feels Gen shift, the bed dipping. Feels an arm drape over her, loose but there.
Melissa doesn’t push it away, just lets herself sink into the warmth of Gen’s body, into the steady rise and fall of her breath. Gen’s arm is heavy over her, anchoring. They fit together easily, the way they always have—like when they were kids and Melissa would fall asleep on Gen’s shoulder during sleepovers, when they’d sneak out of houses they didn’t belong in, running breathless and laughing through the New Jersey dark.
Before the crash, Gen would skip class to smoke behind the tennis courts, and Melissa would tell herself she wasn’t looking for her even when she always ended up there anyway, and hey, she learnt how to roll a killer joint.
(Now, Gen keeps a hand on Melissa’s wrist when they walk in the woods, watches her out of the corner of her eye when she talks too much or not enough.)
So, in some other life, Melissa thinks that they would’ve figured it out, and maybe they would’ve kissed at the end of some shitty party, tasting cheap beer and regret but mostly just each other.
But it’s this life where they hold each other for warmth and sleep in the same bed so they don’t wake up alone.