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Another sunset, another day wasted as Natalie and Travis come home empty-handed. Tai should stop getting her hopes up at this point. Still, she can’t help herself, her heart’s impulsive need to say something overriding her brain screaming at her to not poke the bear: “Nothing, again?”
Travis ignores her, predictably. Tai watches as he toes off his boots, goes to warm his hands by the fire, avoiding everyone's disparaging gazes. Nat, though. Nat clenches her jaw, stares down her nose at Tai, like she’s got something to prove, like she’s not the one who keeps—for lack of a better term—fumbling the ball.
“What does it look like, Tai?” she grouses, scrubbing a pinkish, frozen hand at her jaw. Her stupid fucking headband plasters her bangs to her forehead, still stubbornly bleach-blonde, like her roots have given up on trying to grow themselves out. Or, more likely, it's the starvation rearing its head, slowing the growth of their nails and hair, shrinking their breasts, sapping their skin of life.
Tai flashes her a sarcastic smile as Nat settles herself down next to her, mindlessly patting at her coat pockets, like she’s fishing for a pack of smokes. Muscle memory. “Well, you must be glad that it’s fucking freezing out there.” Tai grins a little, nudges Nat’s shoulder, bulky under all her layers. “Or else we’d probably all accuse you two of wasting time out there. You know. Getting to third base.”
Nat doesn’t laugh. Tai doesn’t know why she expected her to. Stupid, really. Nat’s never laughed whenever Tai’s poked fun at her…unsavory reputation. So, yeah, Nat doesn’t laugh. Instead, she just looks at her with this miserable little expression, one eyebrow raised, and bites out: “Shame there aren’t any bongs out here for me to hit.”
It’s not a laugh, but it’s not Nat backed into a corner, hackles raised, jaw snapping like some sort of wild, half-dead animal, the way it was before. It’s the world’s most pathetic olive branch. Tai decides to laugh for her.
“I should’ve known Travis would be too pussy to go down on a girl,” she says, “pun fully intended.”
Nat shakes her head, and a smile is finally twitching at the corners of her lips. “Mmm, that’s what you think.” And before Tai has any time to process that, Nat’s adding on: “And you’re spending way too much time with Van. Pun intended? Seriously?”
The others grumble around her as Tai giggles, feeling a little hysterical. And it must be contagious, because Nat’s giggling too, leaning forward until their foreheads knock together. Nat’s face is sub-zero; the sound their skulls make at the contact reminds her of the clinking of ice cubes in a glass, a relic from the days before this, before a rickety old cabin and old game and wearing seven layers to bed just to not shrivel up and freeze in your sleep. The mirth leaves her quickly, in and out, like she’s performing one of Lottie’s breathing exercises for Van’s benefit. Nat sobers up, once she sees that Tai’s had enough.
Tai stares at her, watches in real time as the exhaustion and despair find their way back to Nat’s body, and still can’t help herself. “Is there really nothing out there?”
Nat scowls, but Tai doesn’t regret asking. “It’s the middle of winter in the Northwestern wilderness. What do you think?”
Again with the sarcasm, the snappy rhetorical questions. Tai feels a flash of irritation, the way she always inevitably does with Natalie. There’s just something about her that grates, gets on her nerves. She’s never been able to describe it.
“There has to be—”
“You wanna come out with us for once, see for yourself?” Nat demands, fully pissed off now. Tai shuts her eyes, breathes through her nose, tries to be the bigger person, even though she’s annoyed that Nat interrupted her.
“I was trying to say,” she gets out, “that all the animals have to be hibernating. A bear, in a cave somewhere. Maybe, if we…”
She trails off. Nat waits for her to finish, then laughs, derisively. “You’re no Lottie, Taissa.”
The words twist, cut somewhere inside of her, even though it’s not really an insult. It’s not a compliment though, either. Tai thinks of Van, staring up at Lottie with those sycophantic, worshipping eyes. The thought makes her bite down on her lip, hard.
“So, what? You’re just gonna give up?” The question stabs, bites. Tai stares right at Nat as she asks it, into her hurricane-blue eyes.
Nat blinks, like she’s misheard. “Are you for real? Give up?” She scoffs in disbelief. “Tai, if I’d given up, I’d stop fucking waking up at the ass-crack of dawn to freeze my tits off every morning.” She mutters something under her breath, something like, the fucking nerve.
Tai just shakes her head. “Something needs to change, Natalie. I don’t know what: you and Travis need to figure that part out. Shauna’s due soon, Coach looks like a fucking corpse. We can’t keep doing this—”
“We? We?” Nat’s voice has gone up an octave. Taissa sees Travis stumble into the bedroom in her peripheral vision. The others are fully watching now, like an audience at a play. Nobody’s been this entertained in weeks. “Stop saying we! You’re not doing shit, Taissa! You fucking sit around and chop firewood and pick fights with the people who are actually trying to keep us alive—!”
“The firewood that keeps you warm every night before you waste the day away making maps?” Tai snips, stung by her words, “that fire?”
“Guys, stop it,” Akilah tries to interject, but Taissa ignores her. Natalie, however, gathers up the blankets she’d been sitting under, gets to her feet, scowling down at her.
“You can bitch at me all you want,” she says, “but either way, we’re still gonna starve.”
Tai watches as she maneuvers around everyone cuddled up on the ground, like picking her way through a minefield. Nat disappears into the bedroom after Travis, the door clunking shut behind her. Taissa can feel her breath deepening, heartbeat slowing, like a good laugh and a good fight was all she needed to satisfy that twitchy, angry urge within her heart.
“You didn’t have to be such a bitch about it, you know.” Mari leans across Akilah to pout at Tai, which is even more annoying, because Mari had just been whining yesterday about how she has to cut back on bear meat, because of how “useless” Nat and Travis are.
“Shut up, Mari.”
Tai grabs her own blankets, leaving the warmth of the main room to trudge up to the attic for the night. As she passes the bedroom, she hears muffled voices: Nat and Travis, hushed like they don’t want their argument to be heard. Funny, considering they’d never had a problem before about making their fights everyone else’s problem.
Up in the attic, Van seems to be muttering something to herself. Praying. Tai feels irritation rise back up inside of her, but can’t bring herself to say anything as Van turns around, smiling at her.
“Hey! Everything good?” she asks, scooting over to make room. Tai flattens herself out, pulls the blankets up and over her chin. “I heard some raised voices down there.”
Tai closes her eyes, feels her heart twitch, considers telling the truth. For once, she decides not to, rolling over to face the door, back to Van.
‘Everything’s fine,” she murmurs, and promptly slips into sleep.