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The first time started at a sleepover, legs crossed on Shauna’s bed, just like all the others. The difference? There’s a boy. There’s always a boy with Jackie but it seems like this one is going to stick around. This is what brings them to an exasperated, “Ugh, Shipman.” Jackie pouts her usual pout, her wide eyes pleading.
“Come on, Shauna,” She whines. “It’s nothing. It’ll be fun.” Shauna frowns but to her disadvantage, she’s already thinking about it. Considering. Wheels turning. There’s no reason they shouldn’t. Jackie’s right, why can’t they just.. practice? She’s annoyed with herself at the thought. Sure, she wants to but Jackie is pushing her. Does Jackie even care about what she wants?
She’s broken out of her trance when she realizes that Jackie’s rambling. Again. No doubt trying to convince her of her stupid idea. No, not stupid. Ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. Though it’s not any of that to tune her back in, but the mention of Jeff. She checks in at the words, “—and Jeff is going to ask me on date soon, I know he will. Everyone’s already acting like we’re a couple. I should know how to kiss, right? Besides, it’ll be fun. It’s just practice.” Jackie’s emphasis stays on the last part. Fun. Practice.
God, she hates Jeff. He’s cocky. He’s annoying. Worst of all, Jackie keeps trying to set her up with his dumb friends, even though she hates it. (Jackie must be sure that Shauna isn’t scaring them off on purpose. Maybe she pities her.) Shauna can’t even remember the name of the latest one within the lineup of boring jocks. Ryan? Randy? Doesn’t matter. Jackie’s still talking but Shauna’s mind is somewhere different. She finds herself thinking that she should do it. It doesn’t mean anything.. yet she can’t shake the thought that.. well. Jeff has taken enough Jackie-time from her, so what if she gets to kiss her first? It’s just practice anyway, it’s not like this makes her Shauna’s. (It does, Shauna thinks. She pushes that to the back of her mind.)
“Shauna? Shauna?” Jackie pokes her thigh to get her attention. “What’s up with you?” Shauna looks up and meets Jackie’s eyes. Her expression is soft like it always is when she’s looking at Shauna and it sparks something in her. (Something that Shauna promptly ignores and swallows away.) She was never really going to say no, was she? She didn’t even have a choice. Not with Jackie. “Fine. For practice, I guess.”
Jackie beams like she’s just won the lottery. If Shauna hadn’t been working so hard to push away her own feelings she would have thought a little harder about that. She chooses not to. “Uh— so how do we..?” She trails off as Jackie leans in and pecks her on the lips, gone as soon as she came.
Oh.
Something stirs in Shauna’s stomach, familiar and warm and just a little bit fluttery because it’s Jackie. It’s here that Shauna knows she is utterly, completely, truly fucked. She should’ve known it would be Jackie. It always was, Jackie and Shauna, Shauna and Jackie.
-
The last time, Shauna is coping. It’s different, so, very different from the first time. And all the other times. She spends her days with Jackie, criss-cross on the floor of the meat shed. There’s no Jeff here, which Shauna would be celebrating in any other situation, if this one weren’t so complicated.
Jackie is different too, changed with their circumstances. The wilderness isn’t an ideal place for any friendship to thrive but the strain it puts on them is undeniable. Jackie’s cold most of the time. Physically, sure but more towards Shauna. Emotionally. She can feel it, the way that she’s being iced out. That’s just a classic Jackie though, isn’t it?
Shauna does Jackie’s makeup a lot. It makes her look more alive. Jackie’s icing her out, sure, but she’s also freezing over herself. (The image of Jackie’s body in the snow enters mind. She pushes it away.) She gets paler by the day but her personality is just as fiery as Shauna once thought it was.
There’s a day where this becomes clear. Evident. Jackie’s cruel today. Mean. She taunts, she teases, she bites the same way Shauna did that night in the cabin. “And you only had sex with him so that you could imagine being with me.”
Shauna’s ran out of defenses. She grabs Jackie’s face, she tells her to stop. Jackie doesn’t listen. There’s a moment of confusion. A flash of a frozen body, snuggled in a blue blanket and coddled by a bank of freshly-fallen snow. Not her Jackie. Her Jackie’s gone.
She’s sure of this until.. “That’s not what you’re hungry for.” Jackie’s voice grabs her attention like a slap in the face. That’s not what you’re hungry for. She remembers following Jackie onto the soccer team, sticking by her side in school and at parties, practice kissing in her bedroom, making out in bathrooms drunk and she hates Jackie. She loved Jackie. She’s sure now that this is the version that insisted every time they kissed and then laughed it off. Shauna was sure that there had been something forced about her nonchalance when she kissed that version of Jackie. That she had liked it more than she let on. She must’ve misinterpreted that.
Shauna’s sure her emotions are going to come flooding out of her like a fucking dam had broke. That’s not what you’re hungry for. What really comes out is this: She kisses Jackie. Angry, furious but still tender at its core. She hates Jackie. She loves her the same. Jackie’s lips are cold and when she pulls away all she sees is the pale, dead body of what used to be her best friend. Not her Jackie.
The lipstick that she had been so eager on applying everyday was smudged, proof of what she’d done. The warmth that once occupied her stomach, dizzied her mind with giddiness, made her forget all her resentment towards Jackie was gone because her Jackie was gone.
She doesn’t stop visiting her in the shed, even when the illusion is gone. When Jackie’s ear falls off, frozen in her hand, Shauna only hesitates a second before eating it. Shauna is hungry. This hunger isn’t new. It’s been within her since she first befriended Jackie. Kissing her before Jeff does. Eating her before the rest of the girls do. Shauna thinks that makes Jackie hers, but it makes her Jackie’s all the same.