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[transponders]

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[transponders]

[ The reply comes immediately, from someone who has Natalie on her own notification chime for exactly this reason. ]

Where are you? You should come back, I'm looking at paint swatches for the bathroom but I'll feel awful if I pick something you hate.

And we can talk about that.

[doped]

scar over my chest

( if you placed a bet on natalie being sober, you'd owe the house some money. your own fault — it's as losing as losing can be. )

feels empty

[transponders]

They had you piled with everyone else. You should have been with us. So Shauna and I...

Are you sure you don't want to come home for this?

[doped]

( it is out of body, to imagine herself meat instead of natalie scatorccio, not number seven, not a soccer player with deadly aim, not a hunter, not a temporary failure of a queen — but she knows exactly how long it takes when you're starving to see the flesh of your friend's corpse as food. shorter than you might think. everyone had the idea before jackie went up in flames — unspoken, but shared in the commune of feral girl minds, watery ideas tunneling in a basin, all to the same knife sharpened point. we have to survive somehow.

there's a loud sound as nat slams the door of her room shut and stomps in from her room into the bathroom, eyes bloodshot and skin sallow, like you might expect from a person on a bender. erratic, she seizes misty's short ass by her collar and slams her into the nearest bathroom wall, smudging the paint swatches. it's natalie, so even this is done with watery wet eyes, misery writ in the fabric that makes her. )

What the fuck is "come home"? This is not — fucking — home! ( she shakes her, rattling her against the wall. ) Admit it you little fucking rat.

[transponders]

[ But the meat is never just meat, is it? It has to come from somewhere. It's another creature. It suffers so that you don't have to. It's crammed in a pen with a thousand other fat, squealing pigs, raised to be slaughtered and plucked from the shit so that normal people can start their day with bacon and eggs. It survives a plane crash, two winters, an amputation, and a fire only to beg for the knife and fill someone else's belly. The meat has a story. Act one, birth. Act two, suffering. Act three, hunger.

Ironic then, that she and Shauna weren't hungry at all. Not in the way that feels like an empty part in their middles, that had them boiling belts and celebrating earthworms.

It's deeper still than that. Natalie shoving her against the wall at 6 in the morning, fists in her flannel pajamas and toothbrush clattering against the tile, only feeds it. The closeness is the hunger. The hint of the scar she can see when she looks down her shirt is the blood in her mouth, the harshness is the veins flossed between her teeth. She always dirties her mouth for her. Misty fucking Quigley. An endearment. A promise. ]

Okay. [ Voice calm, infuriatingly so, but eyes wide, a challenging spark in them. ] I thought 'your-future-my-past-wierd-English-sex-mansion-shared-suite' didn't roll off the tongue as well, but if you insist.

[ Misty sees her misery, and the goodness that makes her that way. She wants it for herself. So she took it. There's no excuse to make, no lie to tell, just her back against the wall and her breast against Natalie's. Heart to heart, lung to lung. ]

The night before she was arrested and then killed, Shauna and I opened you up and ate your heart. [ Quieter now, as if there were nosy neighbors in the hall, as if Danny Johnson hadn't already seen them. ] Because it's the best part of you. Because that fucked up game stole you from us and I needed you somewhere they couldn't reach.

[ Misty does, in fact, know how crazy it sounds - but they'd torn into Ben's together, passed it back and forth like a cheap bottle of vodka at a party Nat got too high at and Misty wasn't invited to. The equalizer, the blood they've shared. What greater way than this? ]

[doped]

( she goes from hot to cold the instant the words leave misty's mouth — more than half of her expected a denial or dismissal, some classic quigley wordplay that never works, but at least makes you more annoyed than pissed. instead, it's blatant. it's not decorated, it's not colorful. it's the fact of the matter as explained by the same girl who trashed the transponder, who decided to stick it out in the wilderness because she felt useful.

(this rings like a moment of clarity for nat, staring at misty and getting it, finally. we more than anyone found purpose in the wilderness. outcasts. who would miss us if we were gone? only the people who need us. only the yellowjackets.)

so, misty doesn't lie. natalie already knew that was true, but she intended to get mad at the cover up, not listen to some venerated confession, like misty isn't even sorry, like she doesn't see the weight of her choices. natalie lets her go and takes one step back, eyeing her the way a dog eyes another before launching an attack. her expression moves from summer to winter, the sunburn thrall of anger into the icy thrush of betrayal. even that is an effort though — beneath it all is resignation. she killed coach and they ate him. it's what they do to their dead. (we'll always be hungry, nat.)

after a beat, natalie reaches her hand up and snags misty meanly by the chin, fingers bruising on her jaw. )

Here? ( she shoves two fingers in her mouth, pressed against her tongue, the pads of her fingers flattening against her back molars, feeling the ridges, the bumps. wolf teeth, tearing into flesh. her flesh. ) You put me right here. And chewed, and swallowed.

( she knows these motions. she remembers jackie. her opposite hand strokes a finger down misty's throat, bisecting her chest, ending near her stomach. natalie sat there. natalie smudged the walls on the way down. natalie's still in her mouth, in every breath she takes, because you never really lose the people you eat. her eyes snap back up to misty's, and it's not any kindness that she asks, )

What do I taste like, Quigley?

[transponders]

[ Is this what it would feel like to draw the queen? To be hunted? She’s thought about asking Nat a dozen times, but never did, each girl in that makeshift village stuck in their own specific traumas in addition to the ones they shared. There’s a thrill to this, Natalie forcing herself over and inside her, that speaks to a feral, pounding impulse that hasn’t gone away after all this time. Misty doesn’t believe that she’ll hurt her, not really - there was a time for that out there that’s long passed – but she looks like she’s back in the role she belongs in. The hunter who seizes, the queen who demands.

They all needed purpose to survive out there, but the other girls found it in ghost stories, in following whoever had the most conviction. The two of them found their own. The hunter and the healer, roles that any just world would have reversed. Psycho Misty should have been hauling home bloody kills and teary-eyed Natalie should have been slaving over a makeshift mortar and pestle, inventing salves and making tea. Maybe there would have been enough meat to save Javi. Maybe Shauna’s son would have a name.

Misty takes the intrusion with a dangerous brightness behind her eyes, not breaking her stare at Natalie’s, even with her head knocking against the wall and the smudge of turquoise paint smearing in her hair. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt, the kind that brings her back to the woods and lets her meet Nat where she is. She tastes minty toothpaste and sweet sweat, and closes her lips around those fingers for more of it. Tongue stroking beneath the knuckles while Nat’s fingers test the sharpness of her teeth. Like a dog. A loyal companion that will follow her home no matter where on the outskirts of town she drops her off, wagging her tail and howling with excitement to see her either way. Fun game. Abandon me again next week, my queen? ]

Mmhmm.

[ Pleading guilty with fingers between her teeth, jaw pressing together lightly, just the hint of a bite. Not enough to hurt (maybe she’ll be disappointed), but the imprint of her teeth reveals the truth that she’d wanted to protect these girls from, that the wolf is still there and it will never stop howling.

She swallows around them before she lets them loose to spread minty-fresh spit all over her chin and it makes her burn, with everything but shame. ]

Gamey. Kind of sweet. Like you, like... home.

[ Home, in the woods. Home, where she ruins everything. Home, in that old leather jacket. Home, where she dreams of being this close. ]

[doped]

( there's only one word for it, and natalie knows it — shameless, from tongue to toe, her wet chin, her easy admittance, her unapology, her no remorse. something flinches in natalie's expression, disgust or a bleeding wound, or that one dark thing none of them ever talk about, the wolves howling in the distant dark, the little piece of it that infected all of them slowly, over the course of a year and a half. it's in natalie. gamey. she can feel her own heart gnashed between her teeth, a taunt and overworked muscle, finally given peace in misty's maw. kind of sweet. jackie was kind of sweet, too. overripe. something plucked from a vine, at just the right time.

(all the rest of them are rotten, through and through. natalie might protect her brood, but it's a fact that needs little contesting — she loves her horrible little monsters. she means, meant to, wanted to save them all, whether they deserved it or not.)

one step back she looks down at her fingers, the indents of misty's sharp teeth fading away as she rubs her spit into her skin, fingertips left red from the assault. the same hand rubs against her chest after a second, as if double checking the organ's still there, that misty didn't steal it with her greedy mouth when she swallowed it down. although — what difference would it make? spike didn't have a soul, and natalie never noticed. people are just lego collections of parts, and when pieces go missing you make due. she snags down the collar of her shirt until her scar is unveiled — stark and obscenely red against her chest, bumpy with irritation and yet carefully laid, one even stroke. a talented hand. nat sniffs. )

You know, Shauna taught me how to do it too. With Coach.

( sly now, she leans into misty's space — not a comfort, not a come on, but a threat. )

I know exactly how to do it. Where to cut.

( this memory, of shauna's hands over hers and coach's blood sifting like lattice work through their fingers, a strange understanding between them — like a butcher block made them equals, like we're all the same in the dirt — is something she doesn't think about often. the intimacy of ritualistically taking something apart. soft hands, hard pressure. you never feel closer to someone than when you're elbow deep in them. butchery isn't a delicate thing, it's not romantic or lovely or kind. but shauna's maternal governance, shauna's quiet understanding, shauna's big brown eyes guiding you through the motions? sometimes, sometimes. those are.

she bites out her next words in misty's ear, quiet, intimate, hissed, )

I wouldn't eat you if I was starving in the woods, and you were the only meat for miles.

( she gives her another hard shove into the wall before turning on her heels and leaving for her room. )