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1997
As the seasons change, memories of starvation and the cold fade. As the temperature rises, so do their spirits.
It was hard after the cabin burned down. Not only were they hungry and freezing, they were homeless too. Back at square one.
But they couldn’t dwell. They had to rebuild, and they did.
They found new grounds and started all over. With Nat’s leadership, and Tai and Van’s guidance, they managed not just to survive but to flourish, somehow.
Now it’s spring, and they have huts on green grass, animals in pens, and most importantly, they have the time and the will to have fun again.
It feels almost like that first week, when they still thought this was just a temporary detour from their lives, a fun little story they’d be able to drop at parties to impress strangers.
Or so Misty thought, with all the games they were playing and Van’s storytime, among other things.
She hadn’t realized the hope they all had back then hadn’t returned.
“What are you most bummed about missing out on if we die out here?” Van asks the group that’s gathered around the fire, the grin on her face a stark contrast to dark question.
“Van,” Nat warns sternly from the other side of the circle.
“What?” Van asks innocently, and it isn’t until she sees the look on Tai’s face that she relents. “Okay, fine, sorry,” she grumbles, holding her hands up, then rephrases the question. “What’s something you didn’t get to do that you wanted to before we got stuck out here?”
They’re not playing a real game like they sometimes do - True or Dare, Never Have I Ever and other classic slumber party games Misty has never gotten to partake in before - and not everyone is here, but Van has a natural way of keeping them entertained. If it isn’t sharing detailed retellings of her favorite movies, it’s sparking up conversations like this around the campfire.
It doesn’t always land with everyone, but Misty appreciates and admires it. She wishes she had Van’s social capabilities, or at least her ability to command attention.
“I always wanted to visit another country,” Akilah answers first.
“Hey, you don’t know, we could be in Canada,” Van reminds her.
“I definitely think we are,” Misty pipes up, pretty confident in that guess.
The weather, the mountains, the wildlife they’ve encountered, and the sheer size of the wilderness around them, it just makes sense based on their route and where they went off course.
Akilah seems to consider this for the first time, the only other girl that knows anything about nature, and gives a sad, small smile.
“I guess that’s kind of cool,” she says softly.
There’s a beat of silence around the group, and Misty looks around in confusion, until she realizes there’s a sentimentality to the exchange that she missed.
But she’s not the only one.
“I wanted to have sex,” Mari announces suddenly, breaking the moment. “I’ve only done hand stuff.”
Van grins and nudges Mari’s shoulder. “Well, there’s nothing stopping you from doing it out here, you know.”
“Except her heterosexuality,” Tai snorts from Van’s other side.
“Just treat it like prison,” Van suggests. “Gay for the stay.”
Tai laughs again, leaning past Van to look at Mari. “We won’t tell.”
“Are you guys propositioning me for a threesome right now?” Mari laughs, shoving Van into Tai lightly. “Because I think I’ll pass.”
“There’s always Travis,” Melissa points out.
“Ew, harder pass,” Mari quickly vetos, pulling a face. “No offense, Nat.”
Nat doesn’t seem to take any.
“I had a date with this guy I’ve crushed on since freshman planned the weekend after Nationals,” Britt is next to share.
“Oof, that sucks,” Van commiserates and Misty silently agrees.
She can’t imagine how upset she’d be if she finally managed to score the date of her dreams only to never get to go on it. That’d be just her luck.
“I wanted to win Nationals,” is Melissa’s answer, and that’s one the entire circle voices their agreement on.
“God, me too.”
“We totally would have.”
“Yeah, fuck that seance.”
“What about you, Quigley?” Van wonders once the chorus has died down. “Anything you didn’t get to do yet?”
Misty isn’t expecting the attention to suddenly be on her. The other girls usually forget she’s there unless she butts into a conversation.
But it makes sense, she guesses; Misty has gotten better at reading their expressions and gauging their intentions, and judging by the smile on Van’s face, she’s hoping for Misty to say something weird or embarrassing for them to laugh at.
Unfortunately though, Misty hasn’t gotten much better at knowing how to reply to them in a way that will minimize that laughter.
So she decides to just be honest and hope for the best.
“Have my first kiss,” Misty admits truthfully.
It’s far from the only aspiration she had before the crash, but definitely one of the biggest.
All those romantic shows and movies she’s watched made it seem like such a big deal and she was curious what all the hype was about.
And it sure would be nice for someone to like her enough to want to kiss her. Most people didn’t even want to talk to her.
She’d thought Ben did for a while there, and that had made her feel really special. Misty can’t imagine how much better it would have felt if she’d gotten to kiss him.
“Well, you can also do that out here,” Van teases. “You just need a volunteer.”
“Or a victim,” Misty hears Mari mumble to Akilah.
Van looks around the circle with a growing grin. “Anyone wanna step up?”
“Be nice,” Tai tells her girlfriend lightly, and she adds a soft smack to her arm.
Misty’s cheeks warm when everyone laughs, sensing they’re laughing at her instead of at Van. Like the idea of kissing her is so funny.
She tries to force her own laughter, but it doesn’t work as well as it usually does, so instead, she averts her gaze to her lap, hoping that if she doesn’t speak, someone else will say something to pull everyone’s attention away from her.
“I always wanted to go to Lollapalooza,” Nat says, cutting through the laughter. “The radio station I listen to was doing a contest for tickets a couple years ago and me, Kevyn and Rich had the radio on all day and night so we wouldn’t miss the cue to call. We heard it a few times, but could never get through.”
“I remember that,” Van replies. “Dude, I so would’ve gone with you.”
The conversation then devolves into talk of different concerts everyone has gone to and what musical artists they’d most like to see live, and Misty’s first kiss is quickly forgotten by everyone.
Or so Misty thinks.
/
Nat stops Misty from disappearing into her hut when the group disperses for bed an hour later, and instead silently tugs Misty into her own.
She doesn’t say anything even once they’re alone and inside. Nat just stares at her for a minute, eyes flickering across Misty’s face like she’s searching for something.
Then she reaches up and gently cradles the side of Misty’s neck.
Misty stiffens at the contact, not used to it at all. She’s not sure Nat has ever touched her, let alone like this.
When Nat leans forward, Misty leans back in surprised confusion.
“What are you doing?” she questions warily, eyes wide behind her glasses.
“Trying to kiss you,” Nat says, simply but with a hint of frustration at having to do so.
Misty’s eyes get even bigger. “Really?”
Nat’s roll. “Do you want me to or not?”
Suddenly losing the ability to speak for the first time in her life, all Misty can do is nod vigorously and try not to faint when Nat leans in again.
Even though Misty knows it’s coming this time, she’s still surprised when Nat’s lips meet her own.
She always expected kissing - at least her first kiss - to be more mechanical than anything. Just mouths pressed together.
She didn’t expect it to elicit much feeling in her body, and definitely not her heart. But suddenly she’s tingly all over and her chest feels like it might explode in a really awesome way.
So when Nat starts to pull away, Misty isn’t ready for it to end.
She moves on instinct, reaching up to hold Nat’s neck the way Nat’s holding hers and deepening the kiss in a way she doesn’t know how to, but quickly learns with a little guidance from Nat.
Misty follows her lead, mirroring what Nat does as best she can, sliding their lips together, eagerly meeting her tongue, nipping after she does, even tangling her hands in Nat’s hair.
By the time they pull apart, they’re both breathless and dark eyed, their mouths as swollen as each others.
“Wow,” Misty pants, touching her bottom lip with two fingers in awe. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Nat says back, more of a plea than a command.
Misty gets why Nat thinks she would, but she wasn’t planning to.
She’d rather keep it between them. A secret they can share.
2021
Misty’s hair is still wet from the deprivation tank when she finds Nat loitering outside her room, and she doesn’t say anything as she stomps over to her, grabs her arm and drags her inside.
She expects Nat to swear and protest, but she doesn’t, not even when Misty closes the door and locks them in there alone.
They stand a few feet apart, staring each other down, waiting for the other to speak. Until finally…
“Is it true?” Misty asks at the exact same time Nat questions, “Who’s the guy?”
They stare at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to elaborate, but when they both speak, it’s over each other again.
“Who’s what guy?”
“Is what true?”
Frustrated, Misty stomps her foot and rushes to get her question out before Nat can. “Were you really going to kill yourself?”
Misty watches Nat’s face carefully for a tell, but it’s hard, because Nat is acting so strangely here.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” is all she says, placatingly, like it’s no big deal, or she’s at least trying to believe it is.
Misty doesn’t know what kind of drugs they’ve pumped Nat with or brainwashing techniques they’ve employed, but she doesn’t like it. It’s freaking her out. Nat hasn’t been placid in decades, if ever.
This isn’t her Nat.
“Yes, it does!” Misty insists, making up for the emotion Nat isn’t showing.
But then she catches a hint from her, a flicker of annoyance, and it makes Misty feel a little better.
“I didn’t do it, did I?” Nat points out tiredly, moving towards her bed to perch herself on the edge. “I’m still here.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Misty argues, and then adds, “And no thanks to me,” as a petulant afterthought, but it seems to work to annoy Nat further.
“Oh, so that’s what this is about?” Nat scoffs. “You’re pissed you missed the signs or something? Feeling like a shitty detective?”
Misty scowls at the implication. As if she’s the selfish one here!
“I’m upset because I’m finding out that my best friend almost killed herself and I had no idea,” she spits out, pointing a finger accusingly at Nat.
But as she hears her own words, Misty finds herself wanting to turn that finger around on herself.
Some best friend she is, she thinks, but doesn’t say.
Nat seems to hear it anyway and softens. She understands guilt better than anyone.
“I wasn’t… there were no signs you missed, okay?” she tries to assure her. “I was acting normal so you wouldn’t notice, because I knew you’d pick up on anything off and ruin it.”
Misty’s not sure she believes her, about either thing, but she wants to, because otherwise...
“I would have found you, you know,” she says softly, just realizing that.
“What?”
“If you had the chance to pull that trigger, I would have been the one to find you in your room with your brains blown out,” Misty explains plainly, the words tasting sour in her mouth.
Usually such things don’t even make her blink, but imagining Nat like that makes her chest tight.
Nat looks just as uncomfortable with the image, but knows it’s true. “I guess.”
“How could you do that to me?”
“Believe it or not, Misty, but I wasn’t thinking about you when I had a gun in my mouth.”
Something about hearing those exact words again washes away the last of Misty’s indignation and replaces it with her usual desperate need to help her.
“Well you should have been!” she says, her usual perkiness returning to her voice. She moves to the bed and sits down beside Nat gingerly. “Instead of thinking about Travis and other things you’ve lost, think of the people and things you do have. Like me, your best friend, who just spent days searching for you because she thought you were in trouble!”
Nat doesn’t look convinced, of course. She’s nothing if not stubborn.
“With your boyfriend,” she points out dryly, jutting her chin out and narrowing her eyes.
Misty’s thrown by her comment, head tilting as it takes her a second to understand what she’s talking about.
“Oh! He’s not my—” Misty stops herself from saying the word, remembering her supposed epiphany earlier, that already feels like one of her impulsive mistakes. What had been in that water? Also, is Nat jealous? She shakes those thoughts off. “He was just helping me find you!”
Misty squirms under Nat’s gaze, feeling as if she’s being studied. Which is very uncomfortable, because she’d much rather be the one doing the studying.
But she thankfully moves along quickly enough.
“Look, I’m not suicidal anymore,” she tells Misty, trying to hold her gaze so she’ll believe her. “So you can save your terrible therapy advice, okay? I’m better now.”
Oh, how Misty wishes she could believe that.
“Because of Lottie’s cult? Fat chance!” she snorts. “Feelings like that don’t just go away. So next time you find yourself battling those ugly thoughts, and you don’t want to call me, you should try to think about something you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t gotten to do yet.”
Misty’s pleasantly surprised to see a flash of recognition in Nat’s eyes. She wasn’t sure if Nat remembered that night - the game or what happened after, because of it - since they’ve never talked about it since.
But then again, there’s lots of things from back then that they never ever talk about.
“That simple, huh?” Nat says, and Misty knows what it sounds like when she’s humoring her. But it just makes her more determined.
“Then maybe you’ll think, ‘well, I can’t die before I’ve done that, now can I!’” Misty spells out confidently. “Let’s try it now! I’ll go first. I don’t know who the Zodiac Killer is yet. What about you? What’s something you haven’t done yet but have wanted to?”
“Jesus Christ,” Nat mutters.
She looks at Misty like she did before, like she’s studying her again, considering her. Or at least considering something.
When Nat leans in, Misty leans back.
These days, her first instinct is to expect violence. As if Nat would ever headbutt anyone! At least when she’s sober.
But if not that, then…
“What are you doing?” Misty asks.
“Trying to kiss you, you fucking idiot.”
“Really?”
“You asked what I always wanted to do,” Nat reminds her, face still close to hers. “And even though it’s something I’ve done before and always is being really fucking generous—”
Misty surges forward and crashes their lips together before Nat can finish.
She doesn’t know if Nat really means it or if she’s just trying to distract her to drop the subject, but Misty doesn’t care.
Because she’s wanted to do this again too, always.
For all the ways this second kiss is like their first, it’s completely different too.
Misty isn’t tentative or surprised this time, she’s more experienced and doesn’t need to follow Nat’s lead.
She’s hungry and desperate and in love. The way she kisses Nat back is the same.
It’s rougher, messier, and with more teeth. Nat moans into her mouth and pulls at the back of her head and they both put their whole bodies into it.
Whatever Nat’s motives, it feels like so much more than a kiss. Certainly more than the first one, which Misty knows was more pity than anything.
It’s a culmination. Decades of love and hate and resentment and secrets, all poured in one bruising kiss.
It’s an ending, but neither of them know it yet.