Archive of Our Own

Shauna Shipman hates America.

Her family’s just moved to New Jersey two days ago, after her Papa’s job brought them to this new country. Her maman had made it sound exciting. "Shauna, on part à l’aventure!” We’re going on an adventure!

Well, this adventure sucks. 

Shauna hates it. The air in New Jersey smells like wet garbage, old gasoline, and the burning rubber from the tires of the big yellow school bus that passes Shauna’s house every day. Even the name of the town sounds gross. Wizz-kay-yuck.

She’s meant to learn English, which is an ugly language. Every time people open their mouths, it just sounds like—click-clacks, or something. When they stopped at a gas station after crossing the border, the man behind the counter had spoken to Shauna in English, and it sounded like his mouth was full of marbles. Shauna had hidden behind Maman’s coat, pressing her face into the wool under the strange noises stopped.

Now, she sits on the bottom step of her new house, the wood creaking as she shifts her weight to tuck her knees even closer to her chest, curling up until the buckles on her denim overalls bite into her collarbones. 

She likes these overalls — they have a pocket right on the tummy, like a kangourou pouch. It’s big enough to carry Monsieur Lapin, her best friend — a small stuffed rabbit whose ear had gone bald from when she used to chew it too much.

(Not anymore. Shauna was three back then, but she’s big now. She’s five! And five-year-olds don’t chew on their buddies like that. Apparently biting is a bad thing, which Shauna thinks is unfair, because she really likes biting things. So much that she likes doing it to everything she loves, just so she can share the same space with it. If you put your teeth into something, it stays yours. It leaves a little wet shape of your mouth on the world.)

She chews furiously on the collar of her shirt instead, a nervous habit that leaves a damp circle in the fabric. Her eyes flit over the unfamiliar yard in front of her, before she leans her cheek against the worn wood grain of the porch railing. 

There’s a green beetle crawling along the stem of a plant, trying to make its way from one leaf to the next. She watches it climb, shiny back reflecting the grey sky, and tries very, very hard to not let herself think about—well, everything.

The beetle suddenly falls, landing on another leaf on its back, its little legs immediately flailing uselessly in the air. Shauna scoots forward, tapping at the leaf with chubby fingers, trying to help it get back upright.

Instead, she taps too hard, and the beetle plummets in a puddle.

Shauna feels a wave of intense frustration. She bites down harder on her collar as she tries to fight off the icky feeling that comes every time she wants to cry. She hates that feeling.

“Qu'est-ce tu faisais, là? Grosse nouille! T'aurais dû rester là. Mais t'es parti, pis là t'as l'air bête.” She mutters angrily at the bug, her voice dropping into a stream of rapid mumbled French as she scrambles for a twig, trying to fish out the beetle. “Regarde-toi maintenant. Tout trempé. C'est stupide.”

She knows if Maman heard her right now, she’d be in trouble. Both because of what she’s saying, and also for not practicing her stupid click-clack words. 

But she doesn’t care. She’s not wrong. It’s like she said: maybe if the bug had stayed where it was, it wouldn’t have fallen into the mess that it’s in.

But it tried to leave, and now look at it. Scrambling, nowhere to go and no one to help it.

Stupid, stupid bug. 

The next morning, her new school feels like an even worse adventure.

Her old school in Quebec was quiet, full of the soft hum of Mrs. Nadeau’s radio and her Maman’s cooking at lunchtime. It was familiar, and safe, and not—this. 

Wiskayok Primaire — no, Elementary — doesn’t have any of that. It has big paper suns taped onto the window, a giant blue rug with all the letters of the alphabet written in big yellow squares, and a room full of other kids screaming at each other. The language is so click-clacky. Like wooden blocks being thrown against each other. Never mind that the boy in the corner seems to actually be throwing wooden blocks at everyone else.

The teacher meets them at the door, smiling so widely that Shauna can see the pinks of her gums above her top teeth. “Hello Shauna! I’m Mrs. Martin. We’re so excited to have you!”

Shauna doesn’t understand any of it, and the lady is very loud, and her hair is very big. She tries hiding behind Maman again, but Maman pushes her forward gently, before turning to the teacher. “We didn’t really get around to teaching her English at home yet. She’s also… a little shy, in general.”

There’s a familiar and soothing accent to Maman’s voice, but Shauna can’t understand the words she’s saying. All she knows is that the two adults discuss for a few moments, before Madame Martin nods and absentmindedly pats Shauna on the head like a stray puppy.

Shauna scowls. She is not a puppy. She is a shark. She even has a shark lunchbox, just to prove it.

Maman leans down and presses a big kiss to both of Shauna’s cheeks. “Tout le monde va vouloir être ton ami,” she promises. Everyone will want to be your friend.

Maman is lying, and lying is wrong, Maman and Papa tell her that all the time. 

But Shauna forgives her anyway and hugs her hard, sniffling, catching a whiff of Maman’s familiar perfume. 

And that’s all she gets before the door clicks shut, and Maman is gone, and Shauna is all alone.

She clutches her blue shark lunchbox closer to her chest, like a shield. The other children are starting to look at her, and Shauna’s tummy hurts.

“Class, class, yes!” Madame—no, Mrs. Martin claps her hands. Clap clap clap. It’s the only thing Shauna really understands, because what follows is a jumble of words that she can’t even begin to make sense of. “Criss-cross applesauce and quiet coyotes please! We have a new friend joining us today. This is Shauna. She came all the way from Canada in a big airplane!”

Air-plane. She knows that word. It means, um—oh! Avion.

No air-plane, Shauna thinks fiercely, her little jaw clenching as tightly as it can. She imagines something clamped in her jaw, imagines biting down, teeth digging in even harder. We took the blue car. My legs got sleepy in the backseat. 

Mrs Martin doesn’t seem to understand Shauna’s very clear and loud telepathic message. “Everyone say hello to Shauna!”

“HI SHAW-NUH!” All of the mouths roar back at her, and Shauna is very proud of herself for not jumping. It’s all too loud. She wants her Maman. Or at least Monsieur Lapin. He would protect her.

Shauna shrinks until her collar touches her chin. She wore her prettiest green jumper today, with her favoritest shoes. 

She looks down at her shoes now, and sort of wishes she could throw one at someone.

She knows that she has to say the word that Papa taught her in the kitchen before they packed the blue car. He was supposed to help her practice last night, but he wasn’t home. It’s okay. Shauna is brave, and she’s big, and she said it five times in the mirror this morning. She can do it all by herself, even if her tongue feels like a big dry éponge right now.

She shifts on her feet, looking down. “Al-lo. I am Shauna.” 

Her voice cracks as she tries to pronounce her name correctly, her vowels rounding out at the ‘au’ sound.

A boy in the front row lets out a laugh, but it’s not a sunny laugh, like the one Maman does when Shauna says something silly, the joy scrunching up her whole face before she pulls Shauna in to attack her face with kisses. That laugh makes Shauna’s chest feel like it’s bubbling, until Shauna feels like she can’t contain the feeling and has to giggle along.

No, this boy’s laugh sounds like the laugh that her Papa gives her Maman when they have their quiet conversations sometimes, the ones that Shauna isn’t supposed to hear, but she tip-toes out of her room to listen to anyway. 

She shrinks back at the sound as he points to her. “She sounds weird! Like a cartoon robot. Al-lo! Al-lo!” A few of the other children giggle, and Shauna’s not sure how much smaller she can feel or make herself.

“Randy, we use kind hearts in this room.” Mrs. Martin gently chides. “Shauna speaks French. Can anyone say ‘bonjour’ to Shauna?”

No one says it, except for one very loud, very enthusiastic, very bad “bon-joor!” from the other side of the room. 

Shauna doesn’t look for who says it — she’s too focused on how the rest of the kids stare at Shauna like she’s an alien from a distant planet. 

She wishes she was. Maybe then she’d have a cool alien spaceship that she could use to blast people from outer space. Starting with that boy Randy.

By the time they have their first recess, Shauna wants to burn down this stupid school and maybe the entire country too.

The entire morning has been one mess after another. She didn’t understand the counting song, so she just had to move her mouth along. She didn’t know how to ask for any of the toys during playtime, so she just sat in the corner and colored — until some girl came along, said something, and snatched the crayon right out of her hand.

Now, she lingers at the edges of the playground, her hands shoved deep into her pockets so no one can see her fingers shaking. Two boys run past Shauna, their faces red and sweaty. They’re making loud wee-woo-wee-woo noises, like they’re police cars on collision course with Shauna. 

She steps out of the way just in time, and they speed past her, weaving around her like she’s invisible. 

So she wanders until she comes across a big wooden sandbox perched at the end of the asphalt, under the shadow of the fat oak tree. She climbs into it, paying little heed to the sand sticking to her jeans. The sand is a little damp and it gets under her nails right away, but she doesn’t care. It’s the only thing that hasn’t made fun of her today, and maybe she can throw it at anyone who gets too annoying.

She starts gathering the sand into a little lump. “Un grand château,” she whispers to herself, her small voice lost under the roar of the police car boys. She shovels some sand around the structure and pats it into a wall. "Avec un mur solide pour les monstres."

Yes. She likes that idea. She’d want that. A big castle for herself, surrounded by a protective wall to keep out all the monsters.

She keeps working, patting the sand into place, using the shovel to build the wall taller and taller and—

“Hi!” 

Shauna jumps, her hand jerking forward, straight through the wall. Under her palm is a flat pancake where her walls stood tall.

Standing right at the edge of the sandbox is a girl. A girl who is so pink, with her pretty pink dress and pink shoes and pink cheeks. She’s staring at Shauna with the biggest eyes Shauna has ever seen — like a bug.

Shauna thinks bugs are so cool.

She thinks this girl is less cool.

She knows a few English words, but they all escape her at the moment. Her anger overtakes any desire to be polite.

“Qu'est-ce que tu fais? Tu as détruit mon château! Je te déteste!” Shauna swings the shovel in front of her like a sword. She means every word — her castle is ruined, and she’s mad. “Je comprends pas l'anglais! Arrête de rire de moi pis laisse-moi tranquille!”

The girl does not leave her alone. Despite Shauna’s clear warning about her lack of grasp on English, the girls drops onto her knees in the sand and scoots forward, her eyes going wider than the plastic dinner plates in the classroom’s play kitchen.

“Wowza,” the girl breathes out. She leans close — so close that Shauna can smell the artificial strawberry of their morning fruit snacks on her breath. “You sound like a princess! Are you a princess? Like Belle from Beauty and the Beast! She has brown hair too. Do you have a beast at your house? Oh, yuck, if you did, you’d have to kiss him—”

Shauna blinks. Her fury pauses as confusion takes over. She stares at the pink girl, utterly baffled and the strange noises coming out of the girl’s mouth: wow-za, beest, kiss.

She vaguely recognizes some of the things that the girl is saying. ‘Princess’ sounds familiar enough, and ‘belle’ is from her language, although she’s not really sure what the girl is talking about, or what a belle princesse has to do with Shauna’s broken wall. 

Maybe the girl is talking about herself? Shauna decides to appease her — maybe then she’ll leave her alone. “Oui, t'es une belle princesse. Tu es... très rose”

It’s not a compliment, or even a lie. It’s objective. The girl does look like a pretty princess. The girl is very pink. Shauna is very honest. That’s all it is.

The girl can’t understand Shauna, objectively, but her face is still pure. unadulterated delight. Shauna squints. Is the girl making fun of her? Is Shauna just not understanding the teasing?

The girl ignores Shauna’s suspicious gaze and just claps her hands, as if Shauna just said the best thing ever to her. “Wowza, you’re so cool! Bon-joor!” 

And—oh. Shauna recognizes that voice and the worst, ugliest, most click-clacky bonjour Shauna has ever heard in her whole entire life. 

This was the lone voice that tried — and failed — to greet Shauna in her native language earlier.

Shauna lowers the shovel. What a weird girl.

“I… no English. French.” She tries to explain to the girl, the words rounding out strangely through her accent. 

“Oh!” The girl jumps up, as if she’s been kicked into gear. “I’m Jackie.” she enunciates, thumping herself on the chest with her thumb, right over a little embroidered flower. “Jack-ie. Me. And you’re Shaw-nuh! Mrs. Marty said it on the rug. I said hi! Did you hear me say hi, Shaw-nuh?”

Shauna squints at the girl — Jackie, she reminds herself. “Shauna,” she tries correcting, her voice small as she waits for the ridicule. 

“Ohhh! Sorry! Shauna!” The girl claps her hands, the pronunciation almost correct. It’s the nicest Shauna’s name has sounded in the click-clack language. 

Okay. Shauna decides right then and there that maybe she doesn’t mind this way of saying it. 

Shauna ducks her head, the tips of her ears feeling hot, and that’s when she sees the flattened messy ruins of her once-proud sandcastle wall. The scowl returns to her face, her lower lip poking out in concentration as she prods the lump of sand with the tip of her sneaker. 

“T'as brisé mon château…” she mumbles, her voice dropping into a whimper.

The girl clearly doesn’t understand Shauna, but she notices the drop in Shauna’s face, and her brow furrows in response. She follows Shauna’s line of sight until her gaze falls on the misshapen lump of sand, to which she gasps so loud it sounds like a vacuum cleaner. She slaps both hands over her mouth, then looks up at Shauna with sheer remorse swimming in her eyes. 

“Oh no! Did I break your sandcastle? Wait—don’t cry! Look, I can fix it.” Shauna doesn’t know what Jackie is saying, but she’s so expressive, it’s like Shauna can read whatever she’s meaning on her face. 

Jackie scrambles up, kicking sand everywhere before she crosses over the oak tree, crouching at the base and picking at the dirt like a hungry squirrel. The entire time, she keeps talking over her shoulder. “Sorry for making your castle go smoosh! We gotta make it big again. Just wait, I’m gonna fix everything!”

Shauna blinks. Jackie is… bizarre.

A few seconds later, Jackie marches back with her hands full of acorns and a big stick. She dumps her treasures in front of Shauna, then gets to work, her tongue sticking out a bit in concentration.

First, she jabs the stick in the middle of Shauna’s castle, taking care to make sure that the big sand mound stays intact. “See? A flag! For your castle!” Jackie declares proudly, and Shauna is so blinded by the radiance of Jackie’s smile that she forgets that she doesn’t actually know what Jackie’s saying in the first place.

Jackie begins sticking the acorns around the intact parts of the wall. Shauna stares dumbfounded at Jackie’s fingers as she begins lining the acorns up around the intact parts of the wall. Jackie’s nails are painted, glittery and — of course — pink. Shauna’s nails have dirt under them as she hesitantly reaches out, imitating the way that Jackie pushes the acorns into the sand.

Jackie lights up. “Yeah! These are the army guys. They can protect your castle from stupid boys. Like Randy! Randy’s stupid. You know he eats glue?”

Shauna tries to decipher the words, and she’s pretty sure she can pick out some familiar-sounding ones. She nods slowly. “Oui, Randy est stupide.”

Jackie beams at her, and Shauna ducks her head, choosing to examine an acorn instead. “Ce sont eux qui peuvent être nos petits soldats?” She mumbles to herself, then nods firmly. Yes. The acorns will be their little soldiers. Hopefully Jackie will figure out their meaning soon.

Carefully, Shauna reaches over and presses the sand down firm with the flat of her palm, just like how Maman taught her at the beach last summer. She builds the walls up a little more, then gives it a little pat-pat before looking up at Jackie, bracing warily for her reaction.

Jackie just nods enthusiastically, delighted as if Shauna’s just given her a present. Shauna wonders (not for the first time) where all her energy is coming from. Maybe she had magic fruit snacks.

She watches as Jackie copies her directly, right down to the pat-pat. The moment the lump of sand stands by itself, Jackie looks up, face shining like it could clear out the grey in the sad cloudy sky. She points at the sand. “See, Shauna! Did you see? I did it!”

Shauna feels something happen to her face that hasn’t happened since she moved to this stupid country — the corner of her mouth tugging up, all on their own.

They build until the castle has two crooked towers. Shauna handles the structure, while Jackie works on the decoration (which Shauna realizes very quickly just means shoving acorns into random spots and narrating each one).

When they’re nearly done, Shauna notices Jackie staring at the structure, brow furrowed. Before Shauna can complete the wall, she tugs on Shauna’s sleeve. Shauna looks down at the grip, slightly stricken. “Quoi? Pourquoi tu m'arrêtes?” Why are you stopping me?

Jackie ignores the question — or doesn’t. Shauna’s still not sure what’s coming out of Jackie’s mouth at any given moment. “You gotta have a way to let people into your castle!” 

Shauna stares at Jackie helplessly, trying fruitlessly to decipher the rapid stream of click-clack. “Euh… les monstres,” she tries to explain, gesturing weakly at the wall. 

When the confusion doesn’t clear, Shauna holds her hands up like claws, and lets out a small ‘grr’ noise, before pointing at the wall and shaking her head. 

Jackie giggles, slapping her hands over her mouth. “Shauna! You’re silly.” 

Sil-lee. Shauna doesn’t know what it means, but Jackie is smiling, so it must mean something… good? 

A tiny spark of warmth opens up in her stomach. Yes, Shauna decides. It is a good thing when Jackie smiles.

Jackie points at an acorn, and then at Shauna, before putting it at the top of the castle. Then she grabs another acorn, jabbing her thumb at herself, before walking the acorn around the wall. She acts out a skit, letting out little sound effects as the Jackie-acorn tries to get in, bouncing it back when it hits the wall, before coming across the gap she stopped Shauna from filling in and walking the Jackie-acorn in to meet the Shauna-acorn, settling the two together at the top of the castle.

“See! You gotta keep some room in the wall. How are we gonna have playdates if you’re stuck in there all by yourself?” Jackie nods proudly at the Jackie-and-Shauna acorns standing side-by-side at the top of the sand mountain.

Shauna has no clue what Jackie is saying, but she thinks she understands anyway. It is Jackie and Shauna’s castle now. And Shauna finds that she doesn’t mind sharing the space.

The bite-feeling comes up hot in Shauna’s chest, fizzing and sparking till Shauna has to swallow to keep it down. But it’s not the angry kind, not the kind she wanted to do to that dumb kid with the dumb name, Randy. 

It’s the other kind of bite-feeling. The same one she gets with Monsieur Lapin, where she likes a thing so much that her teeth want to sink into it so it can never, ever go anywhere. 

She looks at the soft pink skin of Jackie’s arm, and her jaw suddenly aches with the heavy urge to leave a mark there. To press her teeth down until Jackie is marked with Shauna’s secret sign.

J'ai envie de te mordre, she thinks. I want to bite you. I want to keep you.

When the bell rings, Shauna freezes. It’s an ugly sound, but it’s nothing compared to the ugly feeling that forms in her tummy when she sees Jackie standing up, brushing the sand off of her knees, Jackie getting ready to leave.

“Laisse-moi pas seul,” she tries, but it comes out tiny and cracked and French and useless. Don’t leave me alone. She grabs onto Jackie’s sleeve before she can even think about it, clutching onto the fabric the same way she did Monsieur Lapin’s ear before they left their house in Quebec.

“S'il te plaît,” she mumbles. Please.

The bottom drops out of Shauna’s stomach as Jackie tugs herself free, but before tears can begin to sting her eyes, Jackie’s hand closes around Shauna’s own, fingers clumsily intertwining. “C’mon Shauna, we gotta hurry so we can get the good crayons. Allie always steals the nice blue ones.”

The relief is so big and fast that it nearly knocks Shauna flat. She has no clue what Jackie is saying, but she happily lets Jackie pull her along, back to a classroom where this time, Shauna doesn’t have to brave it alone.

As they shuffle inside the classroom, Shauna hears Randy’s obnoxious voice somewhere by the cubbies. “Shauna’s a weirdo. She talks like goo goo ga ga. Like a baby!” 

Shauna doesn’t understand the actual words, but she recognizes her name and that awful tone, the one that sounds like how Papa talks to Maman during their quiet conversations, before Maman’s eyes get very sad and Shauna has to go up to her room. She watches as two boys giggle and look over at her, laughing harder when they notice her watching. 

Shauna’s face goes hot. She tries to stand very, very still. Tries to be very, very quiet. 

Jackie has no such reservations, apparently. Her voice comes out loud, louder than anyone in the class as she plants herself square between Randy and Shauna. “She does not talk like a baby. She talks like—she talks the prettiest in the whole class, and you talk like a butt.”

Shauna’s not entirely certain what Jackie said, but it must have been serious with the way that the air fills with a chorus of high-pitched oohs. Randy turns completely red, his little mouth twisting as the other kids look back and forth between him and Jackie.

“Jackie!” Mrs. Martin swoops in out of nowhere, putting herself in between the two. “We do not call our classmates butts. My goodness!”

Jackie’s bottom lip wavers, her eyes growing big and wet. Shauna’s still lost, but she recognizes the frustration in the way Jackie stamps her foot and balls one hand into a tight fist. “But Randy was being mean. He said Shauna sounds like a baby. And she doesn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean you can call him a bad word, Jackie. Calling people names means you sit at the quiet table till storytime and think about your words.”

Jackie’s hand starts to slip out of Shauna’s grasp, and she turns and gives Shauna the saddest look. Shauna’s starting to pick up on what’s happened here: Jackie’s being taken away from her for something, and now Shauna’s going to be alone again, she’s all alone—

“Non!” It rips out of Shauna, panicked and desperate not to lose the only good thing this click-clack country has handed her. Not when she’s just found it. 

She doesn’t know how to communicate it, but she looks at the teacher with her widest eyes, hoping they don’t look as wet as they feel.

“Shauna, honey, what is it?” Mrs. Martin is endlessly patient as Shauna’s mouth tries to form uselessly around the words that she simply does not know.

“Jackie est mon…” Shauna trails off, looking helplessly at the teacher as she tries to remember the English word for ‘amie’. She tries to point at Jackie, then herself, but at the teacher’s puzzled look, Shauna can feel herself beginning to shrink and curl in on herself.

A familiar hand grabs onto Shauna’s own. Shauna startles, and blinks at Jackie, who’s smiling her sunshine smile at Mrs. Martin. “Shauna’s my friend! We’re friends! Right, Shauna?”

Oh. Yes. That’s the word. “Oui, Jackie est mon amie. Um—friend. Jackie is… friend.” Shauna tries explaining, gesturing between the two of them, hoping that the meaning comes across.

Mrs. Martin looks between the two girls, looks at the way Shauna clutches onto Jackie’s sleeve desperately, before sighing very loudly. “Okay, but Jackie, please remember that we protect each other with kind hearts. If anyone is mean to Shauna, you come tell an adult, okay?” Jackie nods enthusiastically, and Mrs. Martin shoos them away.

As Jackie drags them over to the crayons and starts inspecting the boxes, Shauna’s brain is busy coming up with a plan. A big important plan that fills up her whole head.

Tomorrow, she’s going to wear her favorite overalls with the pocket over the tummy, and she’s going to put Monsieur Lapin in his little kangourou pouch. She’s going to bring him to school and introduce him to Jackie.

Shauna’s cheeks go as pink as Jackie’s outfit. Yes. She likes that idea. Her bestest and oldest friend, meeting her newest one.

As the weeks go by, Shauna starts adjusting. 

The world is no longer totally inaccessible. It’s all just a little too loud. Shauna lives in a messy middle now, where the words are just out of reach from her grasp. She knows what she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t know enough to learn it. She gets by on the few words she can say, but most days, her head ends up feelings like an overstuffed drawer.

The cafeteria is the loudest room they’ve ever put Shauna inside. It always smells like old milk and floor cleaner, and the sounds pinball around like a roaring cave of clattering trays. 

Still, it’s usually doable when Shauna sits with Jackie, who never seems to mind that Shauna can’t understand her. She just talks and talks, her mouth moving a mile a minute while Shauna’s brain tries to catch up.

But today is different. Shauna is happily opening her own shark lunchbox when she hears it. 

Or rather, the lack of it. And by ‘it’, she means Jackie’s click-clacking.

Shauna looks over at the silence, only to see Jackie staring down at her Barbie lunchbox like there’s a dead bee in it. 

That sounds cool. Shauna likes bees, even if they poke her sometimes. She leans over to look inside, only to blink in confusion when all she sees is a sandwich. 

She deflates. Another boring day — no French, no bugs at all. Just cheese and bread.

She glances over at Jackie again, and that’s when her tummy twists.

Jackie’s frozen. Shauna hates it immediately. She’s never seen Jackie freeze like this, and she never wants to see it again.

“Jackie?” Shauna’s not sure what to do. She searches fruitlessly for the English words, but after hours of speaking in the unfamiliar language, her brain has locked up completely, leaving only French at the tip of her tongue.

Jackie doesn’t react at all. She just keeps staring at the lunchbox, her face turning a shiny sort of pink. Her hands are locked into tight little fists in her lap.

Shauna leans closer, trying to communicate. “Qu'est-ce que tu as là? Tu manges-tu pas?” She wants to know what’s wrong, why Jackie isn’t eating.

“My daddy did it wrong.” Jackie’s voice barely comes out a whisper, but it has a jagged edge to it. “He gave me squares, and it’s wrong. It’s wrong, Shauna.”

Shauna squints at the sandwich. She knows some of those words: ‘square’ from Mrs. Martin teaching them shapes, ‘wrong’ from when Shauna got in trouble for accidentally biting Mari on purpose. Shauna gives Jackie a bewildered look. It’s… bread. Why is she mad at bread?

“It’s squares. Mommy gives me triangles. Squares are too heavy. They’re for blocks.” Jackie’s voice is starting to wobble, rising in pitch. Tears stick to her eyelashes as she blinks at the sandwich. “Shauna, if I eat a square, then my tummy will turn into a square. And squares are sharp, and it’s gonna hurt. And— and— squares feel bad.”

"Pleure pas," Shauna murmurs, panic fluttering in her chest like a trapped bird. She reaches out hesitantly and pats Jackie’s pink sleeve. Pat, pat. "C'est correct. Écoute... pleure pas. No sad, Jackie. No sad”

But even if Jackie could understand French, it doesn’t look like she would hear Shauna telling her that it’s all going to be okay. She lets out a tiny, choked squeak — a sound she seems desperately trying to keep inside — before she completely gives up. Her hands come up to press harshly over her eyes, hiding the sandwich from sight. “I don’t want a square tummy. It hurts. I want— I want Mommy’s triangles. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong!”

Shauna watches Jackie shrink into herself, and the dread begins weaving its way through her. She’s never seen Jackie sad before, and she hates it. It makes the sky feel grey to Shauna, like the day they left Quebec. 

Jackie’s whimpering is turning into sharp breathy gasps as she rocks back and forth. Randy looks over and notices it, a mean little grin forming on his face. Shauna glares at him when he opens his mouth, baring her teeth and snapping them together at him till he pales and looks back down at his pudding cup.

Shauna needs to fix this. If she doesn’t fix it, then one of the adults in the bright aprons is going to make Jackie sit at the quiet table, and Shauna’s going to be all alone again. And Jackie will be too, and that’s not fair.

Shauna doesn’t know what Jackie’s saying, but she recognizes the tight, bubbling squeeze of fear in her voice. It’s the same feeling Shauna gets when kids laugh at her accent, or when her Papa doesn’t come home again. It’s the feeling of wanting her Maman.

Her stomach twists in sympathy. She tries searching for the words — she knows all of the “tout va bien se passer” and “regarde ce que j'ai”, but all of her English words have run away from her, and now here she is, useless while her friend looks like she’s about to break into a million pieces, right there on the bench of the kindergarten lunch table.

“Jackie,” Shauna tries, her voice urgent. “Non. Regarde. Regarde-moi.”

Jackie just lets out a miserable hiccup and clamps her hands over her eyes even harder, refusing to look at Shauna. 

Shauna’s hands are shaking now too. 

She digs through her lunchbox, pushing past her thermos till her fingers find a small plastic container. Every Friday, Maman gives Shauna a treat, just to bring a little bit of Quebec back to this unfamiliar world.

This week, it’s des pets de sœur. Shauna wrenches open the container and finds three round golden pastry spirals, sticky with melted brown sugar and cinnamon.

She might not know much English, but she knows that her Maman’s treats always make her feel better. And right now, it seems like Jackie might need to feel better too.

Shauna grabs a pastry and thrusts it directly under Jackie’s nose, getting a little bit of smudge of brown sugar on her chin.

“Jackie, look!” Shauna tries, her English vocabulary straining to its absolute limit. “Regarde. No square. Rond. Circle.”

The buttery smell cuts through the sourness of the cafeteria. Jackie sniffs loudly, and slowly, she peers through the cracks in her fingers, eying the treat suspiciously.

“What is it?”

“C’est un pet de sœur,” Shauna says automatically, before deflating at Jackie’s blank stare. If Shauna had the words, she’d explain that it’s her favorite treat on the planet. She’d tell her what the name actually means — nun’s farts — and they would both giggle till their tummies ached from saying a bad word in front of the lunch ladies. 

But Shauna can’t say any of that. So she just takes an exaggerated bite and hums loudly, rubbing her tummy. “Miam, miam! Trés bon. Look, Jackie. Circle! Is good!”

Jackie sniffles, but a watery giggle cracks open her expression. “…miam?”

Shauna nods rapidly. “Miam! Good. Miam, miam. Eat.” She pushes the plastic container in Jackie’s direction and points at it with a sticky finger.

Jackie hesitates, then reaches out with two fingers, examining the pastry suspiciously. She takes a tentative nibble from the edge. Then her eyes go wide. 

Her eyes go wide as she chews. “Wowza,” she breathes. The rigid tension in her shoulders melts away so fast, it’s like it was never there at all.

Shauna watches her carefully. “Miam?”

Jackie nods, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. The tears on her face are rapidly drying from the familiar, blinding sunshine smile. “Yum! So yummy, Shauna!” 

Shauna breathes out a sigh of relief, the world turning bright again with Jackie’s excitement. She watches Jackie hum happily, and an idea pops into her head. 

Without asking, Shauna reaches into the Barbie lunchbox and snatches the offending sandwich. She takes a big bite out of it, chewing purposefully, then shrugs. It just tastes like cheese. 

She swallows and points to herself. “Me, square.” Then she pushes the box with the remaining pastry towards Jackie and points at her. “You, rond. Circle. Oui?”

Jackie lets out a happy bounce on the bench. “Okay, yay!" She finishes the pastry in two big bites. "Yum. It tastes like a hug!” 

“Houg?” Shauna mumbles to herself, her lower lip poking out. Her brain scrambles through her tiny mental dictionary and comes up empty. But before Shauna can figure it out, Jackie throws her arms around Shauna’s neck and squeezes so tightly that her nose smashes into Jackie’s collarbone. 

“That’s a hug, silly!” Oh, un câlin. Shauna doesn’t really like people touching her, but then she feels Jackie’s face press into her shoulder. She hesitantly puts her arms around Jackie in return, then squeezes harder.

Yes, it does taste like a hug.

They have their first sleepover six months into their friendship — best friendship, Shauna reminds herself often. Jackie is very insistent on being best friends.

Shauna’s Papa is gone for the weekend again, so Maman lets Shauna invite Jackie over after school on Friday. She has tea with Mrs Taylor while Shauna and Jackie run around, shrieking with laughter. Shauna tries tapping Jackie, yelling out “tu es le chat!” before running away.

Later, when they’re lazing around, grass creating twin stains on their clothes, Jackie finally asks. “What are you saying when you tag me? Tool lay shuh?”

Shauna giggles at Jackie’s awful pronunciation — she’s gotten used to the horrible click-clackiness of Jackie’s voice, and she thinks it might not be as horrible when it’s Jackie who’s saying it. She rolls over to look at her.

“You are the cat! Like when you are saying… um, tag, you are it!” Shauna explains, hoping she gets the meaning across.

“I’m a cat? Meow?” The two of them dissolve into giggles, making ridiculous meowing noises till they’re laughing too hard to say anything at all.

That’s how Maman finds Shauna when she tells her it’s time for Jackie to go. But Shauna is having fun, and she doesn’t want Jackie to go, not yet. Home is too empty nowadays, with Papa’s absences weighing on her more and more like a heavy coat. Her stomach twists at the idea of the house becoming quiet again.

Jackie and Shauna glance at each other, and without having to say a word, they both start speaking at the same time.

“Pretty please can I stay for a sleepover, pretty please with a cherry on the top—”

“S'te plaît, s'te plaît, s'te plaît, Maman! Can I do a sleeping over with Jackie? S'te plaît d'amour with the sugar on the top!”

Shauna is so excited she can barely stop the garbled mess of French and English coming out, layering on top of each other till the sentence is almost incomprehensible. She can see Maman give Mrs. Taylor a long, amused look, and she and Jackie clutch onto each other tighter, burying their faces in each other's shoulders until Maman finally sighs.

“Okay, ma chouette, but you have to promise to sleep on time. And you come see me if you don’t understand what Shauna says, okay Jackie?”

Which is how Jackie and Shauna end up watching cartoons together the next morning, eating the sugary cereal that Jackie’s mom never lets her have. 

They sit on the floor in front of the television, leaning on each other. The big blue monster on the screen is ambling around the city, and they both watch with wide eyes as he trips over a tree branch and lets out a loud, roaring cry.

“Woah! He’s so clumsy!” Jackie points at the screen, where the monster trips again.

Shauna freezes. Her brain spins. Clumsy. She’s never heard that word before, and she repeats it in her head, her lips moving soundlessly around the word. Clumsy. Clomsy. Clum-see.

“Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire, clum-sy?” She mutters to herself, her face wrinkling in deep irritation as she tries to map the word. "C'est un mot pour dire qu'il est bête? Ou qu'il est bizarre?” No. She knows the words for those: stupid and weird. So what is this new one?

She turns to Jackie, hesitant. “Jackie, what is… clomsee?”

Jackie scrambles up, her hair falling messily over her eyes. She doesn’t try explaining with words at first. Instead, she uses her whole body, mimicking an enormous pretend-trip, her arms windmilling comically before she crashes back on the couch with her tongue out and eyes crossed. “Clumsy! Like—bonk. When you fall and bump and drop stuff.”

Shauna stares at her for a second before the word finally clicks into place. A bubble of laughter pops out of her chest. “Oh! Maladroite! Like when you are falling all the time when you go up the stairs.”

“Yeah! Mala— that!” Jackie slides back down to where Shauna is sitting on the floor. “You’re also clumsy. You never catch the red ball during recess.”

“No, I am not!” Shauna sticks out her tongue, then smiles at Jackie’s giggle. “The ball is… trop glissante. Too slippy.” 

“Slippery,” Jackie corrects, shoving another spoonful of cereal in her mouth. 

“Slippery,” Shauna echoes, tasting the new word on her tongue. 

She likes it. She realizing more and more that she doesn't mind learning the language that much. Not when it’s Jackie she’s learning it from.

Shauna’s birthday lands in the spring.

Her birthday last year was on a Saturday. It was just her and her parents and the cloudy New Jersey sky. And then Maman and Papa started having their quiet conversations again, so Shauna had to take her cake upstairs to her room and read her new book by herself. When she tried to tell Jackie about it on the following Monday, Jackie nearly shrieked at learning that she missed Shauna’s birthday. 

Now, it’s the following year, and things are a little bit different.

In her year and a half of living in America, she’s finally made enough friends to have a few kids over for a small party. There’s Tai, who met Shauna and then came in the next day with ten new French words and an insistence on learning twenty more straight from the source. Nat, who doesn’t talk a lot, but always shares her Gushers with Shauna. Van, who showed Shauna The Little Mermaid and didn’t even care when she had to turn on the French subtitles. Lottie, whose dad makes her go to French tutoring after school; it’s a weird, stuck-up kind of French to Shauna, but they still find a way to babble excitedly.

And of course, Jackie. Jackie is friends with everyone (even if she does glare at Lottie when her and Shauna speak in French sometimes), but she’s best friends with Shauna.

The party is very fun — Papa isn’t there, gone for work again, but it’s okay. Maman is smiling very big, and Shauna can hear her laugh as she talks to Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Turner.

When it comes time to sing happy birthday, Jackie and Maman sing the loudest, but Jackie takes the extra step to try and conduct the rest of their classmates like she’s leading a choir, arms flailing and waving everywhere.

Shauna watches, and gives Jackie a toothy smile when she catches her eye. Then, there’s a set of expectant stares as the song ends, and Shauna quickly screws her eyes shut, thinking very hard about her wish.

“J'aimerais que Jackie et moi soyons meilleures amies pour toujours.,” Shauna mumbles at the cake, and blows out the candles on her cake, the flame on the big number 7 candle going out last.

“Shauna! Shauna, what’s that mean? Shauna, what did you wish for?” Jackie’s voice is incessant, her hand already tugging on Shauna’s sleeve before the smoke has even begun to dissipate from the wicks.

Shauna giggles. “I can’t tell you, nono! You said it won’t come true.”

Jackie stomps her foot. “But you said it out loud! What if I spoke French?”

“But you do not. You are very bad at it,” Shauna points out, amused at how genuinely offended Jackie looks at the truth.

Jackie huffs, but quick as it came, her irritation disappears. Instead, she snags some frosting on her index finger and dots it at the tip of Shauna’s nose, giggling helplessly as Shauna goes cross-eyed trying to see it.

I wish that Jackie and I would be best friends forever, Shauna thinks to herself as she wipes sugar from her nose. Just in case the magic needs to hear it in English too.

Maman leaves the car running when she drops Shauna off at the Taylor’s house. 

“Thank you so much again, Marilyn. I’m so sorry, but…” Maman gives a glance towards Shauna and trails off, apparently not wanting to say enough to give anything away.

It’s useless. Shauna already overheard Maman talking to Mrs. Taylor on the phone. “Yes… he’s leaving today… transferring back to Quebec… he’s being an ass…"

“Don’t worry about it, Deb. Of course she can stay. We’ll take her to school with Jackie tomorrow morning. Go do what you have to do.” Mrs. Taylor’s voice is warm, dripping with sympathy. As Shauna’s grown up more, she’s come to recognize that Jackie’s mom can be cutting and judgmental, but right now, her face holds nothing but resounding, quiet pity.

Shauna hates it more than the meanness.

When she gets upstairs and into Jackie’s room, the first thing she does is unzip her bag and pull out Monsieur Lapin. She doesn’t need him anymore, she swears. She’s eight now, and eight-year-olds don’t carry around stuffed animals unless they want to be called babies on the playground.

But right now, Shauna thinks he might be a little scared too. Scared of the quiet, empty house she’s just left behind. So she holds onto him, burying her nose in his bald ear, protecting him.

Jackie bursts into the room a few seconds later in a blur of butterfly hair clips. “Shauna! Shauna, my mom got me the glittery gel pens, and we have to draw with them!” Her cheeks are flushed pink as she practically bounces with excitement. “By the way, my mom said we can have Pop Tarts right now, which is so cool, because she stopped letting me have them for a while and now she got the strawberry ones—”

Her enthusiasm comes to a screeching halt when she finally lays her eyes on Shauna, sitting on the floor, knees to her chest and Monsieur Lapin clutched tightly against her face.

“Hey.” Jackie drops to her knees and scoots forward on the carpet. She reaches out, fingers tugging on Shauna’s sleeve. “Hey, Shauna. Why are you quiet? Is it a game? Quiet coyote? You don’t have to be quiet coyote right now. We’re at home, not school."

Shauna’s lip trembles, and she tries desperately to reach into her collection of English that she’s grown over the years. She’s fluent now. She knows how to read chapter books and write essays and get gold stars on all of her spelling quizzes. She should know how to say ‘my dad is leaving, he’s abandoning us to go back to Quebec, he didn’t even look at me before he got in the car’.

But nothing comes up. She hasn’t felt this locked out in ages. She tries to force the words out, and it spills out in French. "Il est parti. Il est retourné là-bas. Il m'a laissée ici. C'est pas juste, Jackie. C'est chez moi. Pourquoi suis-je ici s'il s'en va?”

Jackie looks at Shauna, confused, and Shauna feels an bright flare of anger. Of course she’s confused. Everyone is. 

No one except for her Maman and Papa would have known what she was saying: He’s gone. He went back there. He left me here. It’s not fair, Jackie. That’s my home, over there. Why am I here if he’s leaving? 

And now her Papa wouldn’t know either. Because he’s gone.

“Shauna, I don’t— you know I don’t know what that means,” Jackie says in a gentle, pleading tone. “Just tell me in real words.”

Shauna stares at Jackie. Real words. It stings like a slap across the face — of course her language wasn’t real to Jackie. Of course her grief wasn’t real if she didn’t say it in the stupid words of this stupid country.

A terrible, suffocating pool of resentment bubbles in her chest. For a second, she can’t tell what she hates more: Papa or this country he forced her to live in.

He was the reason she left her real home behind. He was the reason she spent a year crying into her pillow when kids like Randy mocked her accent. He chose the life that Shauna had clawed and scraped and bled just so she could try and learn how to survive here. And now he was gone. He got to go home, to her real home, and he was leaving her here.

She glares at Jackie for a moment, jaw tightening till her teeth ache.

And then the anger leaks out, leaving her hollow and cold. She doesn’t know what to say, but she can’t cry. If she cries, then she’s weak. And if she’s weak, then maybe Maman will leave her next. Maybe everyone else will leave her too. Maybe she was too weak, too small, too something to make Papa stay. That’s the only reason she can think of for him to choose a bunch of cardboard boxes over his own daughter.

She has to say something, something in a language that Jackie will understand. Something that makes sense, so Jackie won’t dig and find out the pathetic truth.

“My papa… he is leaving.” Shauna throat closes up, but she forces her way through the burn. “No more America.”

Jackie’s brow furrows. “Like, on a trip? Or did he— is he fired? Are you guys poor now? Are you gonna move to the trailer park?”

“Non! No. It is because he—” Shauna grits her teeth, not sure of what to say. She knows the truth right there, knows it so plainly in a way that makes it even worse. 

But what if she tells Jackie the truth, and Jackie decides that it’s time to leave her too?

Her eyes dart around the room looking for something, anything to hide the shame — and then they land on a pencil case sticking out of Jackie’s backpack. 

“He is having a new job,” Shauna’s voice drops into a flat, factual declaration, her brain unable to process much English beyond the simple words coming out of her mouth. “He is the new President of Hello Kitty.”

Jackie’s mouth drops open slightly, her eyes growing wide wide wide. “Woah. The president of… Hello Kitty?”

“Oui,” Shauna nods fiercely, her heart thumping heavy against her ribs. She clutches Monsieur Lapin a little tighter and blinks very fast, hoping the tears don’t fall. “He have to live in the big toy factory now. In Japan. Very busy. No kids allowed. That is why—why he did not take me.”

“Shauna! That’s so cool! Your dad is so cool! Do you think you can visit—” Jackie cuts herself off as her eyes follow the rigid, trembling line of Shauna’s shoulders. 

Immediately, her hyper, bouncing energy melts away. She sits down next to Shauna carefully, then scoots in. Closer, closer, closer, till she’s close enough to wrap her arms around Shauna, who goes stiff at the contact.

“Actually, he’s dumb for not taking you.” Shauna whimpers at Jackie’s words, but Jackie just squeezes her tighter. “Hello Kitty is for girls, anyway. He’s gonna look so weird in a red bow.”

A tiny, breathless sound escapes Shauna, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. She leans forward, burying her face into the fabric of Jackie’s sweater, trying to breathe in the familiar detergent, waiting for the rest of the English words to come back to her. 

Willing her Papa to come back with them.

Time goes on. Lost teeth and light-up sneakers turn into braces and bra straps. Now their lives are Cosmo quizzes and Lip Smackers, and the girls around them start noticing things like boys, while the boys around them fail to notice things like when to wear deodorant.

Shauna’s French becomes something of a background noise. Her entire life is English English English — the click-clack becomes the entire soundtrack. 

And Shauna’s good at it! She’s placed in Honors English for seventh grade, and her teacher marvels over her vocabulary, telling her that there are colleges she can study both English and French. She loves reading, but she likes writing even more. Coming up with her own worlds, prose she can understand and feel slipping through her teeth completely naturally.

It’s fun! She’s having a good time. She is. It’s just— 

It gets to her, sometimes. Having no one to speak to in the way that she dreams. At night, the characters in her head appear to her in a flurry of garbled Frenglish — the English is almost natural for her now, but the French never disappears. It stays at the root of her brain, like a perennial bulb waiting for winter to end.

Yet, in her waking hours, there’s no one, really. Lottie’s dad stopped sending her to French tutoring, and it faded all in one summer. Tai pivoted her focus to Spanish and a million other high-achievement courses, already thinking about college before she even enters high school.

The only real French speaker Shauna knows is her Maman. But with middle school comes new activities, like soccer, and Deb Shipman has to work overtime just to afford Shauna cleats. 

Shauna feels awful, but her Maman says it’s more than worth it to see her happy. And there are other people in her life who tell her they want her to be happy, but Maman’s the only one who does it in French, those rare moments that both of them are at home and awake, sharing bread at the dinner table.

But those moments become rarer and rarer, and French is something that gets relegated to her head more than her lips.

Every so often, she’ll mumble under her breath, and Jackie’s ears will perk up from the other side of the bedroom. Then Jackie will try to imitate what she’s heard — pointing at a dog and proudly exclaiming ‘la chien!’, or running her fingers through Shauna’s hair and butchering the pronunciation of “t’es jolie”.

Sometimes, the way Jackie goes about it feels teasing, and not in a fun way. She’ll let out a harsh ‘speak normal, Shauna!’ and then a pointed giggle that Shauna can’t laugh along with.

Shauna recognizes its source immediately — she’s familiar at the tone Mrs. Taylor uses when she’s making a snippy comment about someone’s furniture, or a bad haircut. Jackie doesn’t mean to be cruel, Shauna hopes. But she’s learning how to weaponize her charm, and sometimes Shauna is just the easiest target to practice on.

But most of the time, it feels sweet, like Jackie’s trying to peek inside a part of Shauna’s world that she usually can’t share with anyone. Shauna is grateful for it, she is — she just wishes that maybe Jackie would try to do more than peek. That she would stop giving up before she’s barely started trying.

She’ll say a word or two, butcher it along the way, and then all of a sudden, life once again becomes about what color eyeshadow she likes the best, or who on Jackie’s list of boys deserves to be her crush that week.

The window shuts, and Shauna’s left on the other side, holding a part of herself that nobody wants to learn.

Jackie is Shauna’s whole world, sometimes. But sometimes, there’s a whole world inside of Shauna that Jackie doesn’t seem interested in even trying to know.

The first time they get drunk, it’s at Mari’s sixteenth birthday. 

Mari’s parents are out of town, so it seems like half of Wiskayok High has turned up to spill beer all over the hardwood floors. Jackie gets Jeff to agree to be their designated driver. They’ve only been dating a few months now, and Jeff seems eager to please Jackie still. 

If she didn’t hate him so much, Shauna would tell him that he’d be waiting for some time before Jackie was ever truly pleased with anything.

But now Shauna watches Jackie spin with Jeff, her laughter loud and melodic over the bass thrumming through the floorboards. All while Shauna stands to the side, the sour taste in her mouth having nothing to do with what’s in her cup.

She downs the last of the Malibu and crumples the cup before tossing it away. 

“Pick it up, Shauna.” Mari’s voice comes tumbling unpleasantly through Shauna’s internal misery. She rolls her eyes and huffs, glancing at Mari, who’s standing there, arms crossed and swaying from her own drink. “Don’t fucking litter at my party, gaywad.”

Mari needs to shut the fuck up. Actually: “Ta gueule, Mari,” Shauna grumbles.

“The fuck are you saying? Where’s Jackie?” Mari follows Shauna’s line of sight and a mean grin splits her face. “Oh, she abandoned you, huh? Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll come get her charity case before curfew.”

That gets Shauna’s attention fully. The alcohol helps the anger burn away all the false politeness. She turns and stalks up to Mari.

“Tu veux savoir quel est ton maudit problème, Mari?” The words are unnecessarily vicious, but Mari dealt the first blow, and now Shauna’s pissed. “Tu as tellement peur d'être seule que tu lèches le cul de tout le monde, et tu penses que personne ne le voit. Tout le monde s'en câlisse de toi. Tu fais pitié.”

Still. Maybe it’s a good thing Mari can’t understand that she’s saying “You want to know your damn problem, Mari? You're so scared of being alone that you kiss everyone's ass, and you think nobody sees it. Nobody gives a shit about you. You're pathetic.”

Mari can’t understand the words, but she immediately picks up the low venom in Shauna’s tone. Her eyes narrow. “What the fuck did you say to me? Say it in English, fucking coward.”

Shauna surges forward to shove Mari, maybe bite her like she used to when they were kids, when a hand grasps her arm and yanks, sending her reeling backwards.

“Shauna, what the hell is wrong with you?” Jackie’s hiss is instantaneous, falling sharply through gritted teeth. Her eyes are wide and furious, and Shauna refuses to shrink under their gaze.

“You’re fucking psycho, Shipman!” Mari yells at Shauna, a crowd starting to form around them. 

Shauna goes to lunge at Mari again, but Jackie loops her arm through Shauna’s, locking them together with a terrifying, vice-like strength.

“Right, I don’t know what the fuck is happening here, but we’re going home.” Jackie drags Shauna through the crowded hallway, flashing a practiced smile to the murmuring onlookers, trying to fix the damage already. “You need to get a fucking grip, Shipman." 

Shauna wrenches her arm out of Jackie’s grasp and starts ranting. “J'suis tellement tannée, tu m'énerves.” Part of her is glad that her brain is defaulting into French right now. If Jackie heard her say this in English — I’m sick of this, you’re getting on my nerves — it would devastate them both.

“I have no clue what you’re trying to say, Shauna.” Jackie sounds exasperated, her voice tight with frustration. She shoves Shauna into the backseat and climbs in after her despite the protesting grunt from Jeff.

Shauna scoffs, pressing her forehead against the cool glass of the window as the car pulls away. “Tu ne me demandes jamais de quoi j'ai envie de parler.” That one is objectively true. Jackie never asks her what she wants to talk about. Just talks and talks and talks. Ever since they were kids, it’s Jackie talking a mile a minute, and Shauna exhausted from sprinting after her, afraid to be left behind.

“Shauna. You need to speak in English. People were— you were being weird. People are going to stop inviting you to things if you talk like this—”

“Bref, je m'en fous complètement de ta fête niaiseuse!” Her voice bursts out of her chest. I don’t give a shit about your stupid party anyway!

She knows Jackie won’t understand, but Shauna doesn’t care if people think she’s weird — they’ve been treating her that way since she was five. But Jackie can understand Shauna’s tone, maybe, because the rest of the car ride is quiet, save for the buzzing in Shauna’s ears from the mounting, sick guilt over how ugly she’d been to Mari. She isn’t usually like that — or at least, doesn’t want to be. Something about the alcohol and seeing Jackie pressed up so easily against Jeff left the edges of her frustration bleeding raw.

When they reach Jackie’s house, both her and Shauna stumble through the front door, their parents gone for the night. Jackie might be as drunk as she is, but at least she’s drunk in English, which makes her better than Shauna. Always better than Shauna.

They get ready for bed in silence, slip under the covers in silence, stare at each other in silence.

Jackie seems to work up the courage. “What’s wrong, Shauna? Just say it in English, and I’ll fix whatever it is.”

It’s how they always are. Come to my side, Shauna. Make yourself small enough to fit inside my world, and I’ll love you so well. But never once, not one inch, will I try to grow it for you.

The weight of what Shauna wants to say is so immense, she doesn’t know how to fold it down till it fits in the boundaries of a language that’s never felt truly right to her. She knows it’s been over a decade since she moved to this country, and her world should have grown bigger. But every time she tucks away that part of her — the part she feels at her core — everything grows a little tighter, a little more claustrophobic.

“Parfois, j'ai l'impression de ne plus vouloir être en ta présence. Mais je ne sais pas non plus comment m'en éloigner complètement.” The words escape Shauna in French, but her thoughts are in plain English.

Sometimes, I feel like I don't want to be around you anymore. But I don't know how to not be around you at all.

Jackie just looks at her helplessly, like her face could hold a translation that Shauna’s mind can’t seem to fathom. 

“You’re doing the French thing,” Jackie breath is warm against Shauna’s cheek as she whispers, and—oh. Yup. In the silence of the twilight, Shauna can definitely hear the slurring that kisses the edges of her words. “I just— I thought that was our thing. Like, when we’re alone. I dunno. But I guess you’re really drunk. Or you’re mad at me. Are you mad at me, Shaw-nuh?”

Shauna lets out a soft sigh, her anger dissolving into a permanent sort of ache. Her fingers instinctively reach up to twist the loose ribbon of Jackie's hair, her mind swimming in a haze of coconut liquor and old, deep love.

“Je ne sais pas.” Shauna murmurs. I don’t know.

Their eyes stay stuck on each other for a moment. They’re both perfectly still, but somehow the space between them grows smaller and smaller. Jackie’s gaze shifts, dropping down to land directly on—

On—

On Shauna’s… lips.

Before Shauna’s brain can catch up with the vicious thump of her heart against her ribs, Jackie leans in. 

The kiss is clumsy, tasting like mint toothpaste and the hint of Jackie’s strawberry lip balm. It hits Shauna with the dizzying force of a plane crash, and Shauna chases the rush, her teeth grazing Jackie’s bottom lip as she resists the familiar urge to bite. 

Jackie’s hands curl in the fabric of Shauna’s t-shirt, and now they’re both panting deeply into each other’s mouths, pulling themselves closer and closer and closer—

A shudder goes through Jackie, and it somehow snaps her to attention. When she pulls back, her chest is heaving, her cheeks bright pink in the moonlight, her eyes glowing with a sharp panic. 

“We are so drunk.” Jackie lets out a nervous, airy giggle, her voice high and trembling. The warmth in Shauna’s stomach flares unpleasantly till her mouth tastes like ash. She watches Jackie pull the covers up to her chin. “Good thing we practiced. Now I can be better for Jeff, and you— well, I don’t know when you’re going to get a boyfriend, but maybe it’ll help then. Just best friend stuff. Practicing.”

“Yeah,” Shauna says, not even a hint of an accent sliding through her words. “Just practice.”

It’s another sleepover. Another sleepover that Jackie forces Shauna into. 

She doesn’t even ask. Instead, she gets Jeff of all people to drop her off at Shauna’s house, knocking on the door as if Shauna has the whole evening free.

And yes, technically Shauna does have the whole evening free. But that doesn’t matter.

It’s one of the rare evenings where Maman is home, which means that Shauna can usually let her guard down a bit and speak in the comforting rhythmic syllables of French. They haven’t been able to spend time together in ages — either Deb was on shift, or Shauna was at soccer practice, or something else was pulling them apart. But tonight, Shauna had been looking forward to sinking into the couch, maybe watching one of the French rom coms from the little international section at the back of the Blockbuster, and letting her brain drain out of any complications, if only for a night.

But now Jackie’s here, and Deb Shipman, just like the rest of Wiskayok, loves Jackie. And so they all share leftovers and pets de sœur and have a great conversation, and the entire evening is all in rapid, unyielding English.

Which is—fine. It’s fine. Shauna’s literally majoring in English next year — English and French, to be precise. 

It just so happens that she’ll be studying it at Brown. And not Rutgers. Which is a massive looming problem, because—

“You know, when we’re roommates at Rutgers next year, we’ll need to figure out a schedule for having boys over.”

Jackie sits on Shauna’s bed, flipping idly through a fashion magazine as she speaks. She doesn’t even look at where Shauna is standing against her dresser, hunting for her favorite nighttime flannel. 

Shauna’s already—on edge. Not only did she get her night of sanctuary snatched away, but she knows exactly how the rest of the night is going to go. 

Jackie’s going to talk about boys, or Rutgers, or something else she expects Shauna to do at the drop of a hat. She won’t ask Shauna about anything she wants.

And then, once they’ve changed into their pajamas and showered and squeezed in a little too close together on Shauna’s bed — Jackie’s going to ask to practice.

Just like they’ve been doing at every other sleepover since Mari’s birthday party. Practicing.

The edges of the dresser bite into her palms as Shauna clenches the wood. “That’s not going to be an issue.”

She can practically feel Jackie rolling her eyes, and the dismissive tone after all but confirms it. “Don’t say that. You know Randy Walsh is also going to Rutgers, right? I don’t get why you won’t give him a chance. Jeff was telling me that Randy would totally take you to prom if you—”

“Arrête!” It bursts out of Shauna like an explosion, sharp and violent enough to cut through the air of the room. 

She just— she is so fucking tired of hearing about all of this. She hates Randy Walsh, and Jackie knows it because Shauna’s told her at least twenty times, including one time when she threatened to rip Randy’s dick off.

It isn’t just Randy, though. It’s the certainty with which Jackie defines their futures. The way she so easily dictates where Shauna should go and who Shauna should date and how Shauna should exist — only for Jackie, always for Jackie.

She hates it. And it’s starting to burst out in the same language she’d been so desperate to feel safe in tonight.

There’s a heavy beat of dead silence, and Shauna almost feels shame start to creep in, when—

“What?” Jackie scoffs out the word, and Shauna feels her anger go practically incandescent. 

She steps away from the dresser, her whole body quivering with rage as the dam finally, finally breaks.

“J'en ai tellement marre!” Her voice is shaking as she spins around to face the bed. “J'en ai tellement marre de tout ça ! Je ne veux pas aller à Rutgers ! J'vas à Brown ! Je m'en fous de Rutgers, Jeff et du bal de promo. La seule chose qui compte, c'est toi ! Je t'aime. Mais tu ne t'en rends même pas compte. J'essaie tant bien que mal de te parler en anglais, mais tu te fous complètement de ce que je ressens en français. Dans ma propre langue. Tu te fous de moi. Tu te fous que je sois en amour avec toi.”

By the end of it, Shauna’s breath is barely anything more than a ragged gasp. It’s everything that she’s wanted to let spill from her lips for the past few weeks, months, years. Everything that’s been bubbling up, fizzing under her skin, begging to be let out. 

I'm so fed up! I'm so fed up with all of this! I don't want to go to Rutgers! I'm going to Brown! I don't care about Rutgers, Jeff, or prom. The only thing I care about is you! I love you. But you don't even realize it. I try so hard to speak to you in English, but you don't care at all about how I feel in French. In my own language. You're making fun of me. You don't care that I'm in love with you.

The familiar, bitter despair washes over Shauna. Once again, she’s bared her soul in a way that Jackie will never care to learn. Nothing’s going to change. She already knows it. 

She waits for the classic response: the judgement for speaking in a different language, the eye roll, the familiar irritation of ‘Shauna, you’re being weird again, just talk normally—’.

But Jackie’s face is frozen and pale. All of a sudden, the terrifying image of a five-year-old Jackie holding the wrong shape of sandwich flashes through Shauna’s head.

A sudden suffocation squeezes at Shauna’s chest. This is—wrong, or something. This isn’t how it goes. There’s supposed to be cruelty and dismissiveness, like all the times before. Jackie looking at Shauna like half her identity is just an inconvenience.

Instead, Jackie looks completely struck. Her lips are parted, her big eyes swimming with a chaotic, near-frantic shock. 

And all that comes out of her mouth is: “You’re in love with me?”

Shauna’s heart stops. 

Or the world lurches under her feet. Or—something. She’s not sure how to describe the overwhelming feeling of wrongness and panic that climbs up her throat, the way the world tilts on its axis as the burning anger turns into an icy panic. “What?”

“That— that last part.” Jackie swallows hard, her voice cracking as she scrambles for the pronunciation. “Um… je sois en amour avec toi. Is that— are you— you’re in love with me?”

There’s a buzzing in Shauna’s ears, and she shakes her head sharply, like that can get rid of it. “You don’t— how do you know what that means? You don’t even speak French.”

“Shauna, we’ve been best friends since we were five.” Jackie’s voice cracks, a sudden incredulity beginning to crack through the shock. “You’re always talking under your breath, and— and your mom— and— I just picked up on it, okay? Like ten percent of it, just from being around you.”

Of course she did. Just enough to make fun of Shauna. “Right, great, cool. Ten percent.” Shauna spits out, her voice turning vicious to hide the terror vibrating in her ribs. “Enough to catch a keyword and turn it into a fucking joke, I guess. Congratulations.”

“It’s not a joke!” Jackie surges to her feet. Her fists are clenched so tightly that her knuckles are stark-white, her whole body trembling with the tension.

“Isn’t it?” Shauna takes a step forward, a decade and a half of suffocating resentment finally boiling over. “You don’t give a single fuck about what I think, Jackie. Did you ever ask if I wanted to go to Rutgers? No! And even if I answered, you wouldn’t listen. You just want me to fit into your perfect little fantasy where we play house and talk about boys and I do whatever the fuck you want.”

“That’s not—”

“It is! That’s exactly what that is.” And now Shauna’s shouting, and she’s so grateful that the room is relatively soundproof, because the last thing she needs is Maman hearing the years of resentment spilling out in an ugly rush. “You don’t care that I have a life outside of you. I’m not even fucking going to Rutgers next year!”

That stops Jackie dead in her tracks. “You’re— what?”

“Here, look—” Shauna yanks open her desk drawer, her hands shaking as she pulls out a letter that she’s read a hundred times by now. She shoves it towards Jackie. “I got in early to Brown, and I did it by myself. And I don’t need your fucking permission, because I’m going.”

Jackie stares at the Ivy League letterhead, her eyes moving blankly across the page like her brain can’t process the text. “Why—”

“Because I am so fucking sick of being your accessory, Jackie! Or your fucking shadow! I’m so tired of just being— I’m just practice to you.” Shauna can’t help the way she spits out the word. Now that she knows Jackie translated the end of her rant, it’s like there are no more moral boundaries to what she can say. No limits to the vastness of her hopeless anger. “Isn’t that what you always say? You want me to fit into your world so badly, and you make me, like— so fucking small! Just stupid fucking practice!”

“That’s not fair! You think I don’t give a shit about you? That’s so fucking unfair, Shauna!” 

Unfair? Jackie wants to talk about unfair? Shauna’s going to lose her fucking mind. “Yeah, well it’s not like you’ve done anything to prove—”

“I’ve been taking classes for you!”

The bedroom goes silent. It’s like the gravity disappears, and the frantic momentum of her anger slams into a brick wall.

“You— what?”

“Classes! For like a year now.” Jackie grabs her backpack off the floor and yanks it open with a violent motion. It takes her a moment of digging, but she finally pulls out a notebook and three cassette tapes, dumping them onto the mattress. “I bought those conversation tapes for my Walkman first. And you know how I said that Tuesdays were date night with Jeff? They weren’t. I was going to to the community center to take classes — which, by the way, everyone in that class is like sixty years old, and they’re kinda mean sometimes.”

The top of one sheet reads ‘Leçon 4’ in Jackie’s unmistakeable cursive. It’s in pink gel pen, with little decorations around it — something Shauna knows Jackie does when a subject is draining her, just to brighten it up enough to keep going.

Shauna feels faint.

Jackie’s voice is shaking now, like she can’t decide whether she should be pleading or pissed off. “I’m at, like, thirty percent. Thirty-five on a good day, when the person talks slow — which you didn’t, by the way. I didn’t really get the part about Brown — also, what the fuck, Shauna? Or— or that part about something in ‘your own language’? But I’ve been— I’m trying.”

Maybe Shauna’s forgotten English, because she’s not processing a single thing she’s hearing right now. She tries again, her mouth forming uselessly around the words. “I— you—”

Jackie takes a ragged breath, stepping closer. “I’m really bad at the verbs, okay? And the stupid conjugations. And also, your accent is so difficult to understand, because all the classes and the tapes are in, like, France French. But I’m— I was going to try to surprise you for graduation. Or, probably at the end of the summer, actually, because I’m, like, really bad at it.”

Is it—is the room spinning? Shauna feels like her universe has been fundamentally upended. It’s a terrifying weightlessness that she’s only ever felt twice before: on her first day of school in America, and when her dad left.

And Jackie had been her center of gravity for it all.

“But why? Why would you…”

“Because I could feel you leaving!” It bursts out of Jackie, raw and unmanaged, the pressure building up over what seems to be years. Like this is the first time Jackie has ever been fully honest with her. The first time either of them have said what they meant to each other. “Every time you get sad or drunk or angry, you go to this place that I can’t meet you at, and it’s like— like you have this whole other world that I can’t be a part of. And I guess I never asked if you wanted me to be there, but I wanted to be a part of it so badly. I just wanted us to be together.”

“I…” Shauna doesn’t know what to say.

Jackie cares. Jackie’s been learning for her. Jackie cares.

It repeats in Shauna’s head till it sounds like nonsense, still not fully settling into the grooves of her brain.

While Shauna tries to process, Jackie deflates completely, her arms growing limp by her side as she gives a helpless shrug. She looks so—small. “But I guess I didn’t learn fast enough. Because you hate me.”

“I—what?” It snaps Shauna out of her stupor, the absurdity of the statement breaking through her shock. Hating Jackie? That’s never even been an option for Shauna. She’s been angry with her, deeply envious of her, suffocated by her — but hating her? That’s—no. 

It’s pure instinct when she reaches out for Jackie blindly, pulling her firmly into her chest. Thankfully, the tension melts out of Jackie’s spine, and she lets herself collapse into Shauna’s embrace. “No, I… I don’t hate you, Jax.”

“You do. You just said it.” The wet sound of Jackie’s voice is muffled against Shauna’s shoulder, but the misery in her words comes through cleanly, and something in Shauna splits open, straight in half, till all her guilt is spilling right onto the carpet. 

“I don’t. I just… I don’t hate you.” The conviction in Shauna’s voice is something new. She’s spent years hedging around her actual feelings, and she’s never meant something more firmly than this.

Jackie sniffles, clutching on tighter. After a moment, her voice comes out a little bit pathetic. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, okay? I know I’ve been shitty sometimes. I just get scared, and I don’t think, and sometimes I just got too excited at having you around.” 

Shauna can feel her shirt twisting under the nervous movement of Jackie’s hands, and her heart clenches at the thought of Jackie ever being nervous around her. “I’m sorry too, Jax. I… I should’ve talked to you about this. About Brown, and— and everything. I’m sorry.”

They stand there for a moment in silence, the rage evaporating into something warmer, spreading across her chest, lighting up wherever her and Jackie make contact.

And Shauna can’t help but ask the one thing that’s still not registering for her. “So… you’ve been learning French?”

A watery, embarrassed giggle bursts out of Jackie, and it’s like the air in the room itself relaxes at the sound. “Yes, you idiot. I’m better at reading than speaking, but it’s really hard. Your vowels make no sense. And the grammar is completely backwards.”

Shauna pulls back just an inch, tracing the pink flush on Jackie’s cheeks. “Can you… can you say something?”

“Okay, um… je sois en amour avec toi… aussi?” Jackie’s lower lip is sticking out, that same childhood look of concentration that Shauna remembers from all their afternoons of doing homework together. 

Then the words register, and the breath punches out of Shauna’s chest. There’s still a chance that Jackie doesn’t know what she’s saying, that she meant to say something entirely different, and Shauna’s frozen in place, too scared to get her hopes up. 

Jackie notices and closes her eyes, seemingly trying to gather the courage to say something. “It wasn’t just practice, Shauna. Not to me. I mean it. Je sois en amour avec toi… or— wait, is it je suis?”

“You…” Jackie’s looking at Shauna, half in hesitation, half in hope. A tiny breathless laugh escapes Shauna’s chest, the last of the ice finally melting out. “You… really are kinda bad at French.”

“Oh my god, shut up!” Jackie shoves at Shauna, failing to move Shauna at all. Then she twists her hands in Shauna’s shirt again, clearly still anxious. “…can you tell me in English, then? Just to make sure I got it right?”

Shauna looks at Jackie, looks at the pleading gold of her eyes, the artfully messy hair, the absolute center of her universe.

It comes out without her even trying.

“Yeah, Jax. Je suis en amour avec toi. I’m in love with you.” Her skin prickles at the vulnerability. “Is that… is that okay?”

Jackie’s glares at Shauna like she’s an idiot, and Shauna’s starting to think she might be. “You know, for someone leaving me behind to go to an Ivy League, you’re really fucking dumb.”

And then Jackie closes the distance. 

The kiss is, for the first time, free of hiding or resentment or longing.

Everything makes sense. Years of friendship, of feeling lost, of speaking in echoes — it all falls into place alongside the wet slide of Jackie’s lips against hers, the familiar taste of cinnamon from the pets de sœur, and the thrilling, overwhelming feeling of rightness.

There’s no claustrophobia, no worry about where the French ends and the English begins. The world is wide open, and somehow, it only belongs to the two of them.

When they part, they’re both panting slightly, their foreheads resting against each other like even an inch of space is too painful to bear. Jackie’s eyelashes are still spiked with tears, but her breathing is slowing down, matching up to the rhythm of Shauna’s chest.

Shauna speaks first. “I’m not leaving you behind, Jackie. I mean—I’m going to Brown. But— it’s only a few hours away. We’ll figure it out. Okay?”

Jackie’s eyes flicker around Shauna’s face, seemingly searching for even a hint of hesitation, before she nods firmly. “…Okay, good, because I better not have wasted a year of my life learning French. Even if I’m shit at it.”

The laugh that leaves Shauna is sharp and breathless and entirely unburdened for the first time in years. She pushes gently at Jackie’s shoulders until Jackie tips over the edge of the mattress, landing flat on her back. 

As Shauna clambers onto the bed and hovers over her, Jackie’s face splits into that familiar sunshine smile, golden hair framing her face like a halo. 

And Shauna just has to stop and look.

God, she’s beautiful. 

Shauna leans down, finally ready to sink her teeth into Jackie like she's wanted to since the first day they met. 

“Ne t'inquiète pas. Don’t worry, Jax. You’ll learn. We have all the time in the world.”

Cutting across the quad on Brown’s campus is no easy feat, especially when with a brand new cell phone in one hand and a very hot cup of coffee in the other.

Shauna should have probably learned this by now, given that she’s starting her third year at Brown, but regardless, she keeps the phone pressed to her ear, weaving through students meandering along the path.

“Okay, so, when does your train get in again?”

She sidesteps a guy shoving flyers at her, then curses under her breath as she nearly drops the cell phone — a joint birthday present from Maman and Jackie.

Speaking of Jackie—

“Mmh, two forty. Okay. Yeah, j’vais être là, I’ll be right there on the platform. I just have to drop off Jem’s hoodie first—”

She stops dead in the middle of the path, ignoring the disgruntled pedestrians behind her to pull the phone away, staring at it incredulously before bringing it back to her ear. 

“Jackie. Pas encore ça. I have told you a million times. He’s gay. And even if he weren’t—” Shauna starts walking again, faster, trying to overtake the clump of tourists posing for photos near the gate. “—he’s my friend. You can’t just—”

A beat as Shauna waits at the crosswalk, waits for her turn to speak again, the garbled Frenglish coming at her a mile a minute.

“Yes, I’m sure. C'est juste un ami. He’s just a friend, my best friend, I don’t—”

The pedestrian light turns on, but Shauna doesn’t move right away. Instead, she forces a deep exhale through her nose. “Wha— Jackie. Non. He’s my best friend, you’re my girlfriend. That’s the whole—okay! Okay. Mon dieu.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, managing to ward off the headache, but doing little to tamp down the grin taking over her face. “Fine. Jem is my good friend. And you are my best friend and my girlfriend. Better, mon trésor?”

Shauna rounds the corner and decides to pause for a second, dropping onto a stone bench next to Rhode Island Hall. She takes a sip of her coffee, listens, then tips her face up towards the familiar grey of the New England sky, watching the sun break through the clouds before exhaling forcefully once again. 

It comes out as half a laugh. 

“…best friend. And girlfriend. And l'amour de ma vie. Love of my life. There. I said it where everybody can hear. Est-ce suffisant?”

She goes quiet, drumming her fingers softly on the lid of her coffee cup as she listens. And her whole face goes soft, draining all the tension and wariness of the past fifteen years, until it settles the way it did when she was five years old and playing in the sandbox.

“Oui, Jax, I’ll wait at the platform.” Shauna glances at the plant in the dirt next to her. A green beetle is working its way along the stem, shiny back reflecting a familiar pattern. The wind gusts, and the beetle gets knocked off onto another leaf, landing on its side. 

Shauna’s chest twinges as she watches its legs struggle for traction, but before she can reach out, the beetle rights itself. It crawls to the edge where another bug basks. 

Then, it settles in the thin golden line from the glow peeking through the sky, going nowhere, in no hurry at all.

Shauna stands up and stretches her legs. Jem’s place is about a ten minute walk, and the train station is barely further than that. 

She’ll start making her way now, but she’s not worried. She has plenty of time. 

“Je t’aime. I’ll—yes, two forty, I heard you.”

It must sound, to anybody that passes her at the moment, like exactly what it is.

“Go catch your train. À tantôt, mon amour. I love you too.”

Two languages, braided together so tightly that the sentences become nonsensical. 

Two girls, babbling at each other, still understanding every single word.