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The weather was getting warmer. It turned out the only world which had stopped turning that night in the cold was Jackie's.
Even then she'd survived, something that she wasn't sure she was pleased about. A returning Nat found her outside as it had begun to snow, and Jackie tried to play dead, but she wouldn't hear it. Nat was honestly the only person she could trust now, her best friend. She'd been out with her on hunting trips, anything to stay out of the cabin, learning to track - and found a little less rejection here than she did indoors. She found some semblance of a place in Nat's apathy as opposed to everyone else's spite.
Nobody but Nat could convince her they cared. Where were they as it had started to snow? So Nat was her best friend, and Shauna was relegated to... whatever Shauna was now.
The memory of her betrayal still incensed Jackie, sending those tendrils of anguish and despair more than rage twisting in her gut whenever she thought of it. Made her feel like less than nothing, made her feel so unbearably angry, and also half-deserving. But when had anything between them ever been more simple than the difference between love and hate?
She held Shauna's hand as she gave birth to her stillborn child at the end of the Winter. She held her as she shook and sobbed after, when she wouldn't let anyone else come near.
Even so. She tried to stay away from her as much as possible, but Shauna was persistent. Even if Jackie pushed her away, she always woke up with Shauna fast asleep next to her, sometimes even curled up against her. Jackie had tried her hardest not to cave, because how could she act like she cared, when the truth had been written clearly in her journals? But she had been acting... strange. Possessive. Jackie wasn't sure what to think. Was it guilt? Some kind of power play? Good old fashioned baby blues making her crave some company? Either way, she'd like to believe she wasn't biting.
That would be a lie though. Because the truth was Shauna made her crazy in more ways than one. She cared so much about her that it frightened her. Maybe even more than before, she cared too much. Everything about Shauna was just… too much. Two nights ago Jackie woke to Shauna straddling her chest and braiding her hair. She laid there and didn't tell her to stop.
She laid there and liked it.
The braid was still in. She's always known there was something wrong with her. A something Shauna really brought out in her - of course, she knew Jackie's flaws, she'd laid them out for the whole cabin to see - but Jackie's not talking about that something. She's thinking about the big, dark, terrible something, the something her mother started to scorn her with all the way back in 6th grade.
"You need to start putting yourself out there," she'd said. "Talk to some boys. Shauna's not the whole world - she's not a boyfriend, Jaqueline." She hadn't said it outright, but Jackie knew what she meant. The letters flashed neon-clear in her head: D-Y-K-E.
"You have a name, Jacqueline. Don't let me hear 'Jax' again."
"Don't you think you ought to wear a dress to that party tonight, darling?"
"No girl is beautiful without makeup, Jaqueline. Not you and not Shauna, so don't let me hear you talk that way again."
"You ought to at least speak to Jeff again, darling. People will start to assume things."
Jackie didn't fold to her mother's thinly veiled demands because she agreed with them. It was moreso that disagreeing with the motive didn't make the core accusation false, and that was something she couldn't face. Jackie wasn’t a homophobe by any means, but equally, it just couldn’t be in the cards for her to be - well. She knew it didn't matter anymore, she didn't matter as Lottie had so eloquently put it, but that didn't mean it hadn't burrowed into her chest and made a forever home there years ago. It felt often like a lost cause.
Another lost cause was any hope of rescue. Somehow they’d managed to starve and struggle their way through the whole winter. So yeah, the weather was warmer, and the months were trickling by. It was about 6 in the morning and she was sitting on the porch in the sun, no longer a luxury. Nat would be out soon.
The unwelcome avalanche of thoughts that had fallen on her didn't seem to show any sign of melting. Well, she was familiar with the snow. Maybe she could like, shape it into something, she mused. Between addled thoughts of Shauna, her mother and home, half an idea started to piece itself together in her head. Out here, nothing mattered.
She thumbed at her braid, enjoying the cool air it left on her neck. She bet Shauna didn't expect her to keep it there. Or maybe she did. "Maybe you never did," says an echo of the other girl.
Maybe she never did. But Shauna wasn't right about everything either. She wasn't a 'perfect little princess'. She sure as Hell wasn't a fucking Jaqueline.
Jaqueline Taylor was dead. She had died that night in the snow, she decided.
She thumbed at the braid again.
Nat left the cabin and shut the door behind her. Her eyes fell on Jackie. She propped the gun she was holding against the cabin wall and stared at her for a moment before nudging at her side with a foot. "You decide to sleep outside again or what?"
Jackie shook her head sincerely. "No. I'm just... thinking."
"Shit, don't hurt yourself."
Jackie looked up at her humorlessly.
Nat, noticing this, dropped to one knee at her side and placed a hand on her shoulder. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Shipman?"
A bitter chuckle escaped her. Nat knew her too well. Was she really that easy to read? She decided she couldn't be, that Nat was just very perceptive, which was half-true. "Uh, duh," she said dryly. "Her, and... some other stuff."
Nat sat down. A rare invitation to talk.
"You know, home, my mom. That stuff." Jackie wrung her hands in her lap.
A long pause hung in the air. Nat sighed and wouldn’t meet her eyes, placing an awkward hand on her shoulder. "We aren’t going home, Jack," she said eventually. The words were surprisingly gentle, as if she was talking to a child, telling them their pet rabbit had moved on to the great bunny paradise in the sky.
Jackie took no offence. She knew what they all thought of her - that she was the same as she had always been, and it wasn’t as if she’d actually said or done anything to prove them wrong. Well, that could change, couldn’t it? "Yeah, I know. I meant... being out here is kinda starting to grow on me." She smiled weakly.
Nat let out a harsh bark of a laugh, eyebrows raised. "Whoa, okay, Stockholm Syndrome.”
Nat never gave a fuck about what anyone thought of her. Jackie still hung on to those expectations even after a goddamn plane crash. She's jealous, maybe. Nat adapted so quickly, and she could prove anyone's assumptions wrong with ease. Jackie didn't have that, because the assumptions in question were mostly true. But did anyone even expect anything of her anymore? Had she just faded into the background noise of their day-to-day survival? She isn’t sure how to feel about this idea.
The wilderness is in us all. She's starting to get her head around that, starting to see that out here they were nothing but animals. Lottie said she was nothing, meant nothing. Almost everyone acted like it too. At first that made her want to be dead. But now she was living pretty much out of spite. All this to say: that meant she could do whatever she wanted, right?
Jaqueline Taylor had died, but that didn't make her a husk of her former self - no, it was more like a rebirth. The wilderness offered her one thing - the ability to find out who she really was, to discover and face the truth. At first it was an unbearably heavy burden, one that Jaqueline couldn't carry. But now... She was Jackie full-time, Jax, Jack - that was what Nat called her - the tracker. The wilderness drowned her, then dredged her body back out of the water and gave her new life.
God. Lottie was getting to everyone, wasn't she? Still, there was something in it about the whole rebirth thing. Shauna would probably have some prose or something to quote about this, some passage from a dead manchild's philosophy book with a stupid pretentious name, but Jackie was far too shallow for that. Wasn't she?
"Hey, Nat?"
That idea from earlier began to take shape in the form of a half-forgotten spectre - a suppressed whim she’d dismissed years ago.
"Hm?" Nat hummed absentmindedly.
Who was Jackie Taylor, given the chance to decide for herself? Now she had discovered the freedom to do whatever the hell she wanted, she could really figure that out. Get into the real gory details of it. They weren't going home. It didn't matter.
"Can you cut my hair?"
Nat choked on air. "What?"
"Like, off, I mean," Jackie clarified, before she could back out.
"Yeah, I got that," Nat said slowly, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I just- Jackie, what the fuck?"
"It's getting warmer.” She shrugged a little too stiffly. A moment passed and Nat’s confused silence felt like a thousand ants crawling up her spine. She might have made her decision, but it didn’t mean she was ready to explain her justifications just yet, or even had a real explanation at all.
The awkward quiet quickly became unbearable. “You will, right?” Jackie croaked.
Nat still looked puzzled, but she nodded slow and tentative with her jaw still hanging slightly open. “…Okay.”
Jackie let out a breath, slowing down some where she was tracing a repetitive pattern into the grain of the wood planks. At the end of the day Nat knew to just let bullshit be. If it wasn't a matter of life or death it didn't usually concern her. Jackie thought she might be eternally grateful for the lack of what some would call judgement and some would call fucks given this created.
Nat looked at her. "Uh, right now?" She asked.
“Yeah."
She got to her feet. "Alright. I'll be back."
Jackie swallowed and gnawed mindlessly at her nailbeds. A giddiness was beginning to build in her stomach. She couldn't picture what she'd look like with short hair; without one of the features that had defined her in her old life, where she never really mentally recovered from being a toddler bleaching her teeth for beauty pageants. Well, maybe that was a good thing. She wasn't the same person anymore. That’s what all this was about, wasn’t it?
The nerves didn’t falter. Neither did the giddy feeling.
Nat returned a minute later holding a rusty pair of scissors and a weathered cloth. She walked to a patch of dry grass a little around the side of the cabin and knelt and patted the ground.
"Sit here. People will get pissy if we leave hair all over the porch."
Jackie obeyed wordlessly and sat criss cross applesauce in front of Nat, half-nauseous with apprehension. She thought she might be shaking a little bit. Nat wrapped the cloth around her shoulders and pulled her hair through, fingertips grazing the back of Jackie’s neck. She shivered.
The scissors hovered over her head, glinting in the morning light. Nat clacked the blades together as she spoke. "You're sure, Taylor? I don't want to do this and then you get mad later because I did it when you were in a weird mood or whatever."
"I promise I won't get mad. I might regret it, but that's not your fault. Anyway, I think... I have to do this. For myself."
"...Yeah, you lost me." Nat threw up her hands a second, then focused again and brought a measuring finger up against the nape of Jackie's neck. For a moment, Jackie could have closed her eyes and felt herself sitting on a grimy tiled floor in the middle of the night, worrying how pissed her parents would be when she got home from sleeping over. Except it wouldn’t have been Nat sitting behind her, perpetrating the crime. Holding the weapon.
Well, Nat could probably do a better job than Shauna ever did with these things anyway. Jackie gets the sense that she was a little more well-versed in giving angsty teenagers impulsive and drastic haircuts. That came with the whole grungy thing she had going on, right? Both Jackie and Shauna had endured their fair share of homegrown choppy bangs and layers, but Nat’s hair had always looked good. And Jackie knew that she definitely never had the cash to see a professional about it.
"How short?" she asked casually.
Jackie drew a sharp breath. She white-knuckled a tuft of grass.
Nat’s hands were surprisingly gentle. Jackie, still caught in the past, thought back to her mother: to a faraway feeling of a hot iron curling through golden strands, of a comb pulling a little too hard at her. Gritting her teeth as her mother tore through the knots - that’s what she always did, just rip out anything she deemed imperfect. Shauna used to take the time to untangle them, although she wasn’t gentle, either. But Jackie didn’t mind as much with her. At the time, it seemed like her mother was the one with the worst intentions.
"Real girls have long hair, Jaqueline. Anything else is unbecoming.”
“(dykedykedyke-)”
Jackie ripped the tuft of grass out. Then, she placed it back in the dirt, for some reason racked with guilt. She looked away and steeled herself.
"The whole braid. Then... even it out from there." Her voice shook. Nat just let out a low whistle and laughed, deftly weaving her hands through Jackie's hair. She tucked it behind her ears and pushed it back in places, trying to get a sense of what to do with it. "Damn. Well, I'll make you look like a real punk. Or like shit, I guess we’ll see.”
"Yeah."
Nat didn’t hesitate - Jackie felt a slight tug as the blades of the scissors slid up against the base of the plait without warning. She really was trembling now. Her teeth chattered and she bit into her cheeks to stop them.
She bit down harder as she heard the soft snicking noise of the other girl working at closing the blades, and squeezed her eyes shut tight.
Oh, Shauna was going to fucking flip when she saw this.
Jackie grinned.
“Fuck,” muttered Nat absentmindedly as the blades snapped shut. Jackie’s heart skipped a beat at the implications of the cuss, but she swallowed it down. I’m not shallow. Not anymore. (That wasn’t quite true and would likely never be, but she was doing a good job of pretending for the time being). Her head jolted forward unceremoniously with the loss of weight where the braid had been detached. She gasped for air, unaware that she had even been holding her breath. That hadn't taken very long. She expected the first cut to be excruciating. However it felt though, she couldn't go back now. It was happening. It was actually happening. Jackie started laughing, accepting the delirium. Nat scrutinised her reaction with a furrow between her brows, concern written clearly on her face.
"Keep going," Jackie assured her.
"You sure?"
"Please, Nat." She didn’t mean to sound so achingly desperate.
Nat brushed some strays from her nape and the towel. She placed the braid on Jackie's lap and didn't seem to notice as she slipped it into her pocket, or more likely, did not care to. Nat carded her hands through what was left of her hair, making it stick up in jagged tufts. "Okay. Head back."
Then she was tugging and cutting and tugging and cutting, finding a steady rhythm. More hair hit the floor. Jackie let herself drift away, lost in the sensation of the sound and the feeling of strands falling along her back and nape. She itched a little, but she'd never seen Nat be so careful with anything. It was nice. Once the initial rush died away, she didn't think she'd been as relaxed since before the plane crashed.
Soon Nat was finishing up in the front, Jackie's gold-blonde locks in the grass all around them like rays of sunlight. It filled her chest with a lilt of satisfaction.
"Done," Nat said with a smirk. She drew back, admiring her handiwork. “Looks good, Jack. Seriously.”
The genuine compliment was nullified somewhat as she leant in suddenly and ruffled her haphazard haircut. Jackie just giggled and elbowed at her. "You're messing it up," she complained good-naturedly, bringing her own hands up to fix it. It made her stomach drop a little to reach up and expect to find hair where there wasn't any. To run her fingers through it and have it just - stop. It was strange, but… it was a good strange. She decided she liked it a lot.
Short - really short. Not quite even. Free.
The girl she had once been - trapped under layers of expectation, of pretty perfect curls and wide homecoming queen smiles, was well and truly gone. Dead and buried. Or frozen, whatever. It occurred to her that though the wilderness had already stripped her of so much, this was the first time she had chosen to give something up herself. Hopefully that pleased the tree spirits or whatever.
"It’s great, Nat, really," Jackie pulled her into a hug before she could escape, her tear ducts prickling. "Thank you."
Nat struggled free. "My pleasure, I guess," she said gruffly, standing up. "Now let's go catch some shit. I'm not going hungry tonight 'cause we were too busy playing fuckin’ hair salon." She grabbed the gun where it was leaning against the wall.
Jackie grinned. She ran her hands through her hair again and followed Nat out into the woods.
—
Shauna had grown predictable in her anger, which tended to flail at anything and everything like a fox in a trap. Especially to do with Jackie; it was her shield from the mess between them. This was to the extent that as they dragged the deer carcass over towards the meat shed, Nat looked to Jackie with an intense visage of half-caution, half-irritation, let out an apprehensive grunt, and placed the animal down just outside. This was Nat speak for, I’m not dealing with this shit. Jackie let out an amused breath. She nodded to the side, and Nat accepted her silent dismissal, turning and trudging back into the cabin with her hands in her pockets.
Jackie took a deep breath. Then she leant and grabbed the deer where its feet were tied together, the force of the action required causing her to stumble haphazardly backwards into the shed. The door swung open and hit the wall with a loud thunk, Jackie’s head having slammed into it. She winced, and rubbed at it, one hand moving easily through the short locks. After slightly more dragging, the deer was just about inside, and that was good enough, she decided. She stood with her hands on her hips staring at it. Nat had made a clean job of killing it, the bullet hole pitch-perfect in the middle of its head. Bullseye. Or, deer’s eye, I guess.
This train of idle thought led her to momentarily forget the reason why Nat had made her hasty exit, and left Jackie to perform the last of the heavy lifting herself.
“Jackie,” said the reason.
She crossed her arms and turned. Shauna’s face from where she was sitting bordered on almost pleasant surprise at seeing her for a second, but then, she froze, and seemed to realise what she was looking at in its entirety.
Jackie raised an unimpressed eyebrow as her demeanour shifted quickly into rage. Yep, there it is.
“What the fuck did you do?” Shauna spat, dark eyes alight with unjust fury. Jackie felt a smug satisfaction settle in her stomach. She hadn’t realised until now just how much she’d been looking forward to seeing Shauna’s reaction. This was as mad as she’s seen her since they had their almost-deadly fight all those months ago - and this time, Jackie wouldn’t rise to it. She had said her piece already - so nothing she said to Jackie would ever hurt as bad as the first time, no matter how hard she tried. And wasn’t that just delicious for her to soak up? Who’s the tragic, boring one now?
She’d learnt her place out here, and it wasn’t with Shauna - not anymore.
Jackie rolled her eyes, exaggerated and obvious. “Hello to you too, Shauna.”
This only seemed to aggravate her more. Shauna shot to her feet, her face twisted into almost a snarl. “No, seriously, what the fuck?” she shouted, taking several heavy steps towards Jackie, then jabbing her index finger into her chest. Jackie blinked, and then scoffed.
“Jeez, Shipman. It’s just a haircut.” Jackie didn’t bother to hide the mockery in her voice, and smiled bitterly. Shauna bit her cheeks, flexing the hand against Jackie’s chest so that it assumed a kind of claw shape. She was digging in hard, probably even leaving nail-marks under the several layers of fabric she was wearing. Including one of her own flannels, which Jackie hoped she wouldn’t notice, momentarily flushing.
“Did you do this? Did Nat?” Shauna said Nat’s name with a harsh vitriol, as if the word created a bad taste which she was trying to spit out. She drew in close, scrunching her nose up in scrutiny. Then she moved her hand from Jackie’s chest and started - well, playing with wasn’t really the right word, more physically examining - the cropped hair on the left side of her head. Obsessively weaving her fingers through it, feeling the length of it out, like Jackie had been doing before.
She swallowed, and looked away.
Shauna wasn’t finished. She put her thumb and index on Jackie’s chin, and pushed her head back to where she was facing her. She tilted her head down slightly and looked over the top of Jackie’s head, searching for something that - very fucking clearly - wasn’t there. Regardless, her hands stayed keeping Jackie firm in place.
Jackie found herself a little slack-jawed. She was expecting to get yelled at, sure, but not whatever this was.
She felt a flush creeping across her face again, much to her own chagrin. She was embarrassed. Exposed - like this, she felt as if she was one of the skinned animals strung up around them, Shauna’s stare the knife peeling back the layers. Jackie also identified the soft hum of her insides; a buzzing feeling in her chest and gut.
Shauna’s fingers trailed to the nape of her neck, where the hair was shortest, her thumb ghosting over warm skin.
Jackie shivered.
What was she saying, again?
This was bad. She had to stop this.
Jackie pushed Shauna’s hand away. “Does it matter?” she said, meeting her eyes; she tried and failed to put a stern resolve behind her words.
This seemed to break Shauna out of whatever haze she was in, too. She drew back. Her jaw was clenched hard. “Of course it fucking matters. I could have- you let Nat do this?” she spluttered, her voice drawing up high and loud again.
“Yeah, maybe I did.” Jackie shrugged, letting the ‘and so what’ go unspoken.
Shauna’s signature pout deepened. But before she could retort, Jackie continued. “Maybe I asked her to do it.” It slipped out kind of by accident, and Shauna’s eyebrows raised, as if for some reason she hadn’t considered the possibility that hey, maybe I don’t know Jackie so well, either.
There was a long, awkward pause, and they were still stood awkwardly close. Jackie fiddled with a loose thread on her jeans as she watched Shauna cycle through confusion, anger and then go back to confusion. Knowing someone was different to being able to read them. Or was it? What was the distinction, exactly, between recognising with ease a person’s every tell of emotion, and being able to figure out they were fucking your boyfriend and pregnant with his baby?
Jackie clearly didn’t have a goddamn clue.
“Why?” Shauna said eventually, hushed. She had her arms held a little stiffly at her sides which told Jackie she felt insecure. About what, was the question.
“I don’t know,” Jackie admitted, and this was true. “Just felt like it, I guess.” She crossed her arms again, more defensive than standoffish this time.
Shauna’s face scrunched up, and her throat bobbed. Her words were low and dangerous. “You just felt like it.”
“Yeah. It’s my fucking hair, Shipman. I don’t get why you care so much.” Jackie stepped back. She turned towards the door. This was really starting to get on her nerves. It was fun at first, and then it was weird, and now it was just pissing her off. She had shit to be doing back at the cabin (probably).
Shauna didn’t have an answer, because Jackie was right (as usual). Jackie could picture how she was standing behind her, crestfallen face like a kicked puppy, hands still stiff at her sides.
She let out a long-suffering sigh, then turned back and took Shauna’s hand. Shauna drew a sharp breath.
Jackie reached into her pocket for her severed braid. She pressed it into Shauna’s palm, and gently closed her fingers around it.
It felt right, like a key to a lock. She hadn’t, upon taking the braid, consciously intended to give it to Shauna. She hadn’t really intended anything at all. But ultimately, who else would it have ended up with? Was she just going to carry it around forever, otherwise?
Shauna looked at her, eyes wide. She opened her mouth for a second as if to speak.
But she wasn’t going to say it - whatever it was. Not out loud. Her jaw clamped shut and her gaze flicked to the side. She was only betrayed by her blown-out pupils.
Jackie patted her hand and offered her a weak smile. Then she turned once more and left before she could dwell on this moment any longer.
—
It was late evening. Jackie was busy scratching her initials into a plank of wood with a different piece of wood when Taissa burst into the room, asking after her. She looked frantic.
This could only mean that there was a Shauna-related issue.
Her stomach leapt, and she jumped to her feet. Locking eyes with Tai, she seemed to let out a breath of relief at finding her target. Then she steadied herself and paced over. Jackie’s heart slowed some knowing from this that Shauna was in no imminent danger - she had probably just asked after her or something.
Still, that rarely meant good news. Or at least it meant that something probably confusing and definitely concerning was about to happen.
Jackie reminded herself she was under no obligation to deal with this. (Oh, who was she kidding?)
Tai’s face was seriously grim, Jackie noticed as she finally got within speaking distance. Her heels were already itching to make for the ladder. A few people were giving the two of them odd or worried looks, but Jackie couldn’t care less. Shauna was always a loaded gun, and Tai and Jackie just so happened to be her suppressors - they should all know that by now, and should mind their own business, she reasoned.
“You need to go up there. Like, now,” was all the other girl said.
It was all Jackie needed to hear. She was in the attic in a flash, half-braced for a fight or the birth of a second baby or hell, an apology.
But the sight that greeted her was weirder than anything she could have come up with.
Shauna sat in the middle of the room with her back to Jackie. She was holding her knife in her right hand, and her left was balled in her hair. Her red flannel sat comfortably around her shoulders, and on top of that was a blanket of thick, dark strands, which also littered the floor around her.
Jackie watched in shock as she took the knife and continued to hack at her hair with a violent fervor. It was more of a stabbing motion she was making above cutting it.
“Shauna, what the fuck?” Jackie said, feeling a strange sense of deja vu from the previous day. She shook her head and blinked hard, but the sight ahead of her remained the same. Shauna totally blanked her and continued on her mission. It already looked way too late to salvage, with the parts she had cut already only a couple inches out from her head. Not nearly as long as Jackie’s. And it didn’t look exactly as good either. The cuts were jagged and the violence inflicted to create them was obvious. Still… something about how perilously short it was made Jackie’s head spin.
Jackie paced over to where she was sat, and grabbed her shoulder. “Shauna, hey,” she said firmly, giving her a shake for good measure.
Shauna’s head whipped around. Under her flannel, she was wearing only a black bra. She bared her teeth, a wild look in her eyes, and brandished the knife. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
Jackie stumbled back. She put her hands up in surrender, brows furrowed in confusion. “Okay, okay.”
Shauna turned back to her hair. She cut out another clump haphazardly and slammed it onto the floor.
“Shauna…” Jackie started softly. Tentatively she sat down next to the other girl, and brushed some of her remaining hair behind her ear. The strands were all different lengths, some falling away immediately, some staying put. “What is this? Are you, like, okay?”
Shauna stopped her crusade for the moment at least. She hugged her knees, and spoke still not facing Jackie. “I could ask you the same thing so don’t fucking give me that.”
“You know it’s not the same.” Jackie spoke a little lower, annoyance tinging her words. It was a familiar and specific kind of irritation prickling under her skin, the kind only Shauna’s tendency towards relentless deflection had ever invoked in her. Jackie just couldn’t fathom why she was doing this. Was it a bid for attention? Some kind of twisted revenge for cutting her own hair? An even more complicated reason? Probably a blend of all three, knowing the other girl.
Shauna finally looked at her. “Just leave me alone,” she said. Her face was scrunched - as was its usual state - in anger, but this didn’t align with the tremor in her voice.
Jackie sighed and then gave Shauna a small, reassuring smile. “Alright, but just let me-“ she started, carding a hand through the hair on the side of Shauna’s head to figure out what length she would have to cut it all to. She didn’t have much of a clue how to do hair, but she could even it out at least.
Shauna suddenly pulled back as if burnt. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed again. “It’s mine. You don’t get to- it’s not fair.”
She reached up and grabbed another chunk with even more reckless aggression than before. Jackie reached out too and grabbed the hilt of the knife. She was quickly picking up that this was a situation she had to handle with tact. These days she tried not to humour Shauna’s volatility, but this wasn’t just a result of her usual funk. It was something deeper. Jackie couldn’t help but care.
God, I’m doing a really shitty job at keeping my distance from her.
Shauna struggled and snarled. “Let go,” she hissed.
“No,” Jackie shot back, surprising herself with the sharpness of it. Her grip tightened, fingers digging into Shauna’s wrist, but her voice softened. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
Shauna’s breathing was ragged. For a moment she looked like she might actually slash at Jackie just to prove she could. But then her hand faltered, just slightly, and Jackie seized the moment, prying the knife from her fingers. She tossed it across the attic, where it clattered against the floorboards.
Shauna made a choked sound, halfway between a sob and a growl. “You don’t get it,” she said hoarsely, curling in on herself. “You don’t- you can’t just-”
“Then tell me,” Jackie pressed. Her voice cracked despite herself. “Tell me why the fuck you’re doing this, Shauna, I really want to understand.”
Shauna lifted her head slowly. There were strands of uneven hair clinging to her damp cheeks. Her eyes were rimmed red, but her gaze burned hot and accusing.
“Because it’s not fucking fair.”
“What isn’t?” Jackie coaxed gently.
Shauna spun back towards her. Choppy, short bangs fell over half her face. “I wanted this first, you know?” Her words were sharp and quick like the cuts she’d made. Jackie thought she might be trying to keep herself from crying.
Still, she cocked her head; she didn’t follow.
Shauna scoffed at the motion. “Well, that’s just fucking typical,” she huffed, and a short, humourless chuckle escaped her.
Shame curled in Jackie’s stomach, even though she didn’t even know what she’d done yet. Not knowing was already bad enough.
“I always- I said to you that I wanted short hair. And every time you said no, don’t cut it. You’ll look like a boy. I won’t like it. So I never did.” Her voice is torn somewhere between anger, nostalgia and a hint of something animal - something raw and violent and husky. Jackie could say that. Or she could just say that she sounded like a whiny, petulant child. Both were equally true.
Still, her eyes widened as a half-forgotten memory of the situation Shauna described began to surface. She remembered her heart kicking like it is now at the thought of it when Shauna brought it up. She remembered understanding it couldn’t happen at any cost because she might let herself surrender to the fact that Shauna looked close enough to a boy for her to, well, like like one. There were things about her that she’d always found made her stomach turn the way that nothing else could. Not Jeff, not any actual boy. Just Shauna.
The way she switched gears with her sleeves rolled up when she drove. How she always drank more than she could handle, which was more than half of the boys at that. The way her hair looked when she had just pushed it out of her face.
She couldn’t imagine back then what would happen if she let Shauna stray further into the realm of these things, these little lapses of Jackie’s inhibition.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She could imagine, and did. Clearly.
Shauna of the present drags her back in, not yet done with her tirade. “And then you - you cut your hair because you just felt like it, and you didn’t tell me, and- and-”
Shauna was starting to get glassy-eyed, the words catching in her throat like hiccups. Jackie reached out and pulled her into a hug. She balled her fists into Jackie’s shirt, and fell into the crook of her neck - not as if seeking comfort, but as if she could not hold herself up any longer. Her forehead knocked against the bone of Jackie’s shoulder. “It wasn’t fair,” she croaked miserably.
“I’m sorry,” Jackie said quietly.
Shit, why was she apologising? After all Shauna had put her through?
She said it again.
Because, equally, how could she not, with the other girl so exposed like this?
“I’m sorry.”
Ultimately, she loved Shauna more than she hated her. And despite it all, that wasn’t going to change.
They sat in the embrace in silence, before eventually Shauna reached for the knife, and resumed cutting her hair. Jackie watched, wide eyed but motionless. She had a grim, steadfast determination about the action. Anyone could guess she was their butcher.
It was still uneven as shit, though.
“At least let me clean up the back,” Jackie murmured.
Shauna looked to her with narrowed eyes. Then she looked away, and loosened her hold on the knife, which Jackie knew was as close to confirmation as she would get.
She sighed in fond exasperation as she took it again, and moved to sit behind Shauna. She leant in and smoothed down a jagged tuft.
Shauna flinched at the touch, but didn’t move away.
Jackie worked in silence. By the time she was done, the floor looked more like a crime scene than the end result of a haircut, with the shadow of the dark strands scattered across it.
Shauna’s hair didn’t end up quite a buzzcut, but it was seriously short. Shorter than Jackie had ever seen it, even when they were little kids.
And she was right. It did look good. Her worst fears were confirmed.
“There,” Jackie said, trying to find the words to cut through the lump in her throat. “Better.”
Shauna’s breathing settled, but her body stayed tight and rigid. Jackie noticed it hitch as she ran a hand across the back of her head.
She turned to look at her. Jackie nearly choked. Her eyes were still watery, but her jaw remained locked in place, emotions half-suffocated before they could ever reach the surface.
Shauna reached into her lap. Pulled out a brown braid to match Jackie’s. Held it out towards her.
Jackie took it.
“Now we match,” she joked weakly.
Shauna didn’t laugh. Just sat and stared. Then she reached over and guided Jackie’s forehead to sit against hers, squeezing her eyes shut tight. Her bottom lip wavered ever so slight. Jackie smiled. She put her hands on the other girl’s hips.
“I got you,” she whispered, hoping it was clear she meant it in a deeper way than just physical. “I got you, Ship.”
Shauna still offered no reply. She pulled back and turned away, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. Her face was a blank slate, the contents of her heart shuttered away from Jackie once more.
She longed to reach for her again. To brush the hair from her shoulders, or the top of her head. But the moment had passed, and she settled for standing up and brushing away what had settled in her lap instead.
“Get some sleep,” she said quietly, heading for the ladder, still holding the braid.
Behind her, Shauna’s silence was like a hand around her throat.