Chapter Text
Jackie Taylor doesn't receive a lot of mail. Actually, she had to be reminded that she even had a mailbox.
It's a rare occurence for her to really be addressed. There's culprits, sure, but Jackie hardly ever sees consistency. If she's really adamant over making herself sad due to how empty her box is, she'll see maybe three names.
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Her mom in some half-hearted attempt to 'reconnect'. Even if the paper drenched in floral perfume wasn't enough to turn Jackie away, the idea of talking to her mother was far worse.
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Natalie, who thinks it's funny to send Jackie a Wish You Were Here! postcard from Wiskayok every few weeks. Which, okay, yeah. It's gotten a laugh out of her once or twice. She keeps them all in her desk drawer.
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And, finally, Misty, who apparently knows all of their new addresses and tells them all about the new team. Jackie doesn't really give a fuck about JV or the new varsity, but she guesses it's nice to see familiar handwriting.
She lost the other half of the Yellowjackets, as Nat liked to put it, in the divorce. Not that she really expected them to send her letters anyway. It was a week of constant defeat; Shauna going to Brown. Shauna sleeping with Jeff. Losing Nationals.
Honestly, Brown?
Jackie had just wanted to get through the week. Maybe she coped by instigating one or two (or three) fights at parties that she had to drag herself to, but, hey. She graduated. She thanked the girls for a good season nonetheless, avoiding someone who she doubted was looking at her anyway.
She hardly ever notices her mailbox. Who's gonna send her a serious piece of mail?
The one person that ever would've reached out is someone Jackie's not sure she wants to hear from anyway. She goes back and forth. A message, any kind at all, of Shauna's is a craving that wanes. Jackie's angry, but when she tucks herself into her bed, a bed across from a roommate snoring that is not Shauna, she's not angry anymore. She's little again, on a vacation of a week or home sick in bed, and she just misses her best friend.
She's never considered the mailbox as anything but a slap in the face. There's grief in the little things. She's come to understand that, now. For grief does not only come to be after death, but loss of a tether, too.
Jackie still has green sheets in her closet at home that she pre-bought. Real waste of $21.99, honestly.
Shauna has never stepped foot in Jackie's dorm, and still, Jackie catches the scent of the laundry detergent that lived on her flannels.
Live. Still lives. She has no clue, no way of knowing. There are facts about Shauna that Jackie will never again memorize, never replace with what she knows now. They could be outdated, no longer true, never true to begin with. It's perhaps the most devastating part of the loss itself; what remains in the after.
She knows now that Shauna is a traitor. For a heliocentric girl to learn that her Sun was, in fact, just some lame fucking star with plans to scorch her alive, Jackie thinks she's managing quite well.
Well. As well as one can when they are revolving around empty space in the cold.
Though it hardly feels like it at all, though she hardly feels like she's dramaticizing anything when she says she feels like half of herself, Jackie has found a life of her own. Soccer keeps her fairly busy (and bruised), she has friends from various classes to keep her company. It's a hollow life, but it's one all the same.
It's New Jersey. Jackie has never seen herself making it out of this state. It takes a courage she has never been able to conjure up, so she'll watch it all slip away on top of her pretty pink bedsheets.
She knows the feel of the satin. She knows the pressure of a soccer ball against her foot. She knows it all, she knows the comfort and the safety and the nostalgia of it. Maybe it won't take her anywhere, but does she even want to go anywhere?
The halls echo and the parties are lame and Jackie's hair just doesn't curl the same. Lanky and flat; she doesn't even know why she bothers anymore. Still, she gets up and tries through shaky hands while avoiding her vanity mirror. If she doesn't see who is sleeping behind her, she can pretend in a sleep-induced haze. Living half in a dream before she is inevitably forced awake.
Who came to be her actual roommate is perfectly nice. She's neat, she likes blue; if Jackie can base any of that preference on her sheets alone. She's quiet. Jackie has started various conversations, just to be met with a polite laugh or a huff of breath.
Samantha? Jackie thinks that's her name. Something with an 'a' at the end and an 'S' at the start, which feels too taunting to just be a coincidence.
So. Fuck the universe, she guesses. Fuck her space without a Sun, fuck…Jeff, maybe. Sure. Fuck him, too.
Well.
When she truly thinks about it, she doesn't even really care about the Jeff of it all. He's just there. She doesn't even really recall what he looks like, and it's only been a couple of months.
He's just a guy. Shauna's the Sun. Jackie does not bask any longer.
What she does do is walk alongside her new soccer team, a laugh on her tongue. She's not sure what she's laughing at. Their voices are like static, white noise. Enough to make her brain buzz, for her to know when the time is to interject, but she feels no challenge.
They're her classes, where she passes but it feels more like she's merely just taking a seat. They're another piece of pressure on her skin that forces her down.
She knows who they're not.
These girls are not really her friends. But they talk, they laugh, and she feels once again a part of something larger when she's with them. They distract, ultimately, which is perhaps her biggest draw to them.
They're a team. And yeah, whatever, she's a huge pining stereotype over Shauna. But maybe, slightly, she misses her girls, too. They're not enmeshed in Jackie's soul, but they dance around it. She suspects these girls beside her could dance, too, if she gives them a song.
It's a difficult consideration. Jackie has slowly retreated back into geocentrism, where she spins and spins and spins and everyone watches in awe. She pays no mind to the stars around her. It's easier this way, it's surface-level attention, but it's something.
Jackie swallows, trying to catch up to the conversation. They're talking about a..professor, she thinks?
"He's a fucking dweeb, first off. I got the date wrong by a day, and he took a point off. Like, I'm pretty sure being a calendar was not the assignment," Bridget, Jackie believes, says. Her hands gesture around wildly, blonde ponytail swinging in tandem.
She's getting better at names. The one thing she'll cut herself a touch of slack for. She's off her game. Jackie does, however, know Ellen. The girl beside her, slightly poking her with every swing of her arm.
Jackie might give her a song. Ellen's sweet. They all are, really.
Jackie is so sick of herself.
"Yeah, but he looks like Gregory Peck," Ellen sighs, glancing down at Jackie for support. Jackie wades in brown eyes for a half-second before giving her a tight smile.
"Oh my God, you and Gregory Peck."
"Look at him! How am I even slightly wrong here? Jax, back me up." Jackie feels an elbow softly prodding her in her side, but she hardly feels it.
Jax. The word sits on her tongue and she wasn't even the one to say it. It feels illegal to come from someone else, though Jackie is facing the consequences. Jailed and forced to hear that name from lips that don't belong to her.
She feels eyes on her, so she blinks as a courtesy, smiling as a brace. Can they see her jaw trembling? Can they see her gritted teeth?
"I'd always get the date wrong if my professors looked like that."
No. She supposes they didn't. Her smile sags slightly as they look away, as she seeks out the light in their laughter. Ellen gives her an appreciative glance that Jackie allows herself to sit in, if only for a moment.
They walk past the desk receptionist, Jackie flashing her a half-hearted wave. Usually she gets a flat smile, but to her surprise, she gets spoken to this time.
"Ms. Taylor." Her voice is bored, accompanied by sharp-nailed fingers tapping at the counter. "Are you ever going to clean out your mailbox? We're going to have to toss what's inside soon if you don't."
That certainly grabs her attention. Her mailbox? Jax slips off of her shoulders as she blinks, eyebrows furrowing. After faltering for a moment, she nods for her teammates to carry on along as she sidles up to the counter.
"There's stuff in there?"
"Do you know how mailboxes work, Ms. Taylor?"
Okay, rude, but hardly the thing she's focused on. If a few choice words pop into her head, however, well. That's between her and the way her stare hardens.
"I just— I had no idea I got sent things."
The lady's look becomes even more bored, turning back to her computer as she slides a key across the counter.
"Enjoy your surprise."
Jackie stares at the key for a moment. Mail. For her. Natalie, if Jackie has finally figured out her schedule, shouldn't be sending anything until next month. She assumes JV's doing poorly with the way Misty hasn't sent anything recently. And she's seen no swarms of locusts recently, so it can't be her mother.
The chill of the metal bites into her palm as she tucks it between her fingers, a newfound curious determination spinning her around.
A break in her lull would be nice, for sure. Something to hope for, an oasis, maybe. Something that won't nauseate her with nostalgia, or freeze her into relying on the same three sweaters.
Her name isn't too difficult to locate, the first amongst a sea of T's. She inserts the key and twists, prying the door open.
A couple of envelopes spill into her hands, about ten more teetering along the precipice of the iron. Her eyes flutter, alarm spilling through her system. Anticipating this new fit of life, this new person's pursuits of contact. Until they catch along the address, where a different sort of panic begins to settle in the pit of her stomach.
No.
She's seen that scrawl before. Her eyes dance along the bends of each letter as if it isn't the name she sees on the backs of her eyelids.
Shauna Shipman. Shauna Shipman. Shauna Shipman.
No fucking way.
Nevermind. She's nauseated. She's frozen. Jackie could very well jump for joy, if it meant it was off of the nearest cliff.
Her nails scrape against the paper, fingers trembling. She wants to ball the envelopes in her fist, make them hurt as if they are the ones that dealt the blows. She wants to hold them to her heart as if Shauna can hear it beating. She wants, and she's overwhelmed, because what does she do with this?
Letters. Shauna has sent her letters.
It's a dream. It's a dream and a nightmare and she's never actually believed lucid dreaming could happen, but maybe she cracked it.
If the counter lady didn't dislike her before, she certainly does now. Well, if Jackie can tell by her exhausted stare as she struggles to hold every envelope in her arms. Paper scrapes against her shirt, crumpling in her grasp.
It's a very silly thing. She is working on a one-track mind. Her autonomy has honed in on simply making it to her room. In one piece, preferably, but the chances get slimmer with every step she climbs.
The letters spill over the second she crosses the threshold.
Shauna Shipman. Shauna Shipman. Shauna Shipman.
For in the haze of black ink and a shake in her hands that will not subside, Jackie slides down to sit on the floor. Her fingers scramble amongst the mass, grabbing onto the earliest date she can find.
This is some sick joke. Some sick fucking joke. It has to be.
Her fingers are ripping into the envelope before her mind can truly catch up, but she's losing faith it ever will. She's still standing in front of her mailbox before it all sets in, before this becomes her reality.
The paper unfurls, writing barely legible from how terribly she's shaking.
This is not some sick joke. Not even half of a laugh, not worth anything that makes her smile.
She'll know this handwriting for the rest of her life.
Jackie,
I read this thing somewhere that it's healthy to write letters to people and never send them. It's cathartic, apparently. I guess I'll be the judge of that.
I hate(d) you. I don't think there's an end or a beginning to it. I love(d) you. I'm not sure there will be an end to that either.
I don't think you liked me as much as you claimed, anyway.
Her brows feel as if they're in a constant furrow.
Parentheses. Her eyes miss every word she skims back over, tracing over the curve of the parentheses instead.
Hate(d). Love(d).
The words themselves are caught between an end and a beginning. Stuck. Her fingers graze over the curve of the parentheses, as if she can will them away with a scrape of a nail.
To say she never loved Shauna Shipman is perhaps the most laughable thing she's ever heard. To say she still doesn't love—
No. Actually, no. She's not going there today. Another day that ends with mascara on her pillow, maybe, but not today.
She has mail and it's from Shauna Shipman.
What the fuck.
Jackie had always pictured how'd she react if Shauna ever reached out. It always ranged between complete indifference, hanging a phone up with a shrug and a scoff, or clinging back on to unhealthy habits; nails gnawed right to the cuticle, her lunches falling more and more on a scattered schedule before they disappear completely.
She was wrong on both fronts. She feels a wringing in her chest, tugged tight with defeat. With relief, with anger and with melancholia and with glee and fuck, she's running out of emotions.
Her eyes can't stop reading. Every jab she had meant as being playful, every compliment misconstrued to be an insult; Jackie doesn't think she's ever been more clawed apart. She is staring at every word she has ever said, angry and lost.
Jackie lets the letter fall to the floor. She thinks the slip of paper should be grateful it isn't in tatters.
The address, the name on the envelopes stare up at her.
Shauna Shipman. Shauna Shipman. Shauna Shipman.
She takes a breath. Then another, and another, and another, until her lungs ache. Her arms reach out in front of her, collecting as many as she can balance atop her palms as she stands. The envelopes find a new home on her bed.
Perhaps she is falling into an unhealthy habit, as she predicted. Investing completely, once again, in Shauna, in her penmanship and her loops and her dots.
She has a long night ahead of her.