Chapter Text
One year, two months and sixteen days of not speaking, and the first words out of Jackie’s mouth are: “I need you to drive me to Phoenix.”
The first thing Shauna thinks is, she looks different.
Her hair is shorter, just above her shoulders and parted in the middle, and maybe it’s just the light but she could swear it’s blonder, like maybe she got highlights or something. She’s wearing a pair of pink running shorts and the gray sweatshirt she’d bought from the gift shop on their seventh grade trip to the zoo, and her nail polish is chipping off, bubblegum pink peeling off and betraying cuticles bitten nearly to the knuckle. She has a tan, face golden and smattered with freckles, with the exception of her nose, which is a blotchy, angry red, like she’d lain in the sun too long and, without someone there to put it on for her, had forgotten her sunscreen.
It’s crazy but she seems taller, almost, although maybe that’s just time playing tricks on her. Shauna was always the taller one, but standing across from Jackie now, she feels small again for the first time in a long time, like one sudden movement from Shauna and she’ll walk forward and stamp on her like a stray bug, and come out more annoyed that she’d gotten a mess on her shoes than that she’d stolen Shauna’s last breath in a split second.
“Jackie, I…” Her name tastes bitter in Shauna’s mouth, curdling like milk left out on the bench on a hot day, metallic like the fresh sting of a burst lip after diving headfirst towards the ball in the last twenty seconds of play, desperate for the win. It’s acrid, and she hates it, hates the way one six letter, two syllable word can make her stomach churn like she’s seventeen again and hoping furiously to wake up in a new life. “What are you doing here?”
“Jesus, are you fucking deaf, or what?” She can feel the anger bubbling in Jackie from across the threshold, simmering beneath her skin like it could burst out any minute and spew her hatred all over them. “I need you to drive me to Phoenix.”
“Literally what the fuck are you even talking about?” Shauna feels like her head might explode. “You need me to drive you to Phoenix?”
“That’s what I just fucking said, isn’t it?”
Jackie, never one to wait for an invitation, storms past her and into the house, doorframe practically rattling on its hinges as she slams it shut. Never mind Jackie’s anger, Shauna can feel herself getting more and more agitated by the second, because who the fuck does she think she is? She thinks she can just waltz in here after a year of radio silence, and just demand that Shauna drops everything and does what she says, like she’s still got her on her leash after all this time?
It hits her, then, that despite all of the surface-level differences she’d originally mistaken for change, Jackie is exactly the same person as she was the last time Shauna spoke to her. She’s changed her hair and her clothes and maybe even she thinks that she’s changed, thinks herself better for it, but when it comes down to it, she’s still the exact same -- seventeen, fourteen, twelve, nine year old -- girl that she always was, one who didn’t have a best friend, but a lap dog, trained to follow her every command just because that’s her job, because that’s what she was born to do.
Well, fuck that.
Jackie might not have changed any in the past year, but Shauna certainly has. She’s not the same pathetic, snivelling little sidekick that she once had been, building her life entirely around the wants and whims of another person and getting angry at herself when it didn’t make her happy, hating herself because no matter how hard she tried, she always ended up choosing and doing things that she knew she wouldn’t have if she was alone.
Like it was her fucking fault, or something, that she hadn’t known at six years old that by accepting a seemingly innocent offer of friendship, she was actually signing herself up for a lifetime shackled to someone else, a binding contract with no break clause that committed her to spending the rest of her life as one half of JackieandShauna rather than just Shauna.
She’s not going to let herself get sucked down this black hole again, no fucking way. Not now when she feels like she’s finally starting to learn who she actually is, who she maybe could have been, separating the parts of her personality into those that actually belong to her and those that had just been borrowed from Jackie, adopted into her perception of herself so easily it was like she was just stealing one of her sweaters rather than an entire facet of her being.
She looks up, and Jackie’s leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping impatiently against the linoleum, and the familiarity of the sight almost knocks the breath out of Shauna’s lungs. She hasn’t missed her -- really, she hasn’t -- but there’s something too real about it, about Jackie Taylor materialising right in front of her after a year of carefully removing herself from every aspect of Shauna’s life, and managing to somehow look like she’d never left in the first place.
Shauna blinks the thought away, grounding herself in the present. The girl in front of her, that’s not the Jackie she knows, and she herself isn’t the Shauna that Jackie had known. They’re strangers, now. Jackie has no hold over her. For a second, she has to remind herself that she can do this -- for the first time in her life, she can stand in front of Jackie, and be her own person, even if Jackie doesn’t like who that is. It should feel freeing, she thinks, but instead it just makes her feel claustrophobic.
“Well?” Jackie’s voice is cutting, disgust seeping into her tone. Her hatred for Shauna is palpable, like even just sharing the same air as her is making her itch. She’s looking at Shauna like she used to look at the door when her mom left the room, like she wished that she had the courage to run after her and take her by the shoulders, shake her and scream in her face.
“Well what, Jackie?” she asks, unable to stop the scoff that comes out. “No, I won’t drive you to fucking Phoenix, are you crazy? You can’t just- you haven’t talked to me in a year. You can’t just come in here and fucking-- demand that I drop everything and drive you two thousand miles across the country, like it’s nothing, without even telling me what the fuck is going on. You can’t just make me do shit for you anymore, it doesn’t work like that. No.”
“Do you really think I’d be asking you if I had literally any other choice?”
And that’s the thing, because no. Shauna doesn’t. Her whole life, she was always certain of one thing only, and that was that no matter what it came down to, she would never be Jackie’s first choice. It was always Jeff, or some party, or whoever was willing to make Jackie feel like she was the most important person in the room at that particular moment -- no matter what Shauna did, how hard she tried to contort herself into the person that Jackie wanted her to be, it was never enough, and eventually it got to a point where she resigned herself to the fact that no amount of trying would ever make it so.
“I don’t care, Jackie,” she says, and it’s true. She can feel the reunion sucking the life right out of her, making her bones feel heavy, exhausted. It’s taking so much energy just to stand in the same room as her, to come face to face with a lifetime of bitterness and anger and love and hate all rolled into one miserable existence, she can’t even stomach the idea of sitting in a car with Jackie for two minutes, let alone two thousand miles.
“Shauna, you fucking-- you owe me one. Actually, you owe me about a million ones, but I need you to do this. Trust me, I want this even less than you do, but I wouldn’t ask if I had any other choice.”
Shauna almost laughs despite herself, because really? This is what Jackie thinks constitutes asking?
It makes sense, though. She’d never really gotten the hang of that one.
When Shauna says nothing in reply, something in Jackie’s expression shifts, some of the anger melting away into discomfort. She looks to the floor, maybe wishing it would swallow her up, and then as she starts pulling at the sleeves of her sweater, she grunts out a small, “It’s Nat, okay? It’s Nat,” like she’s expecting Shauna to just somehow get what she means, like she thinks their pseudo-telepathic connection still exists after all this time.
But it doesn’t. Shauna just squints, more confused now than she had been in the first place, and asks, “What’s Nat?”
The anger is back, again, and Jackie’s looking at her like she’s never seen someone so stupid in her life, which is at least a look she’s familiar with receiving. “She’s in Phoenix. Travis called me--”
“-- Coach Martinez’s son? --”
“-- and he said that she’s out there on her own and she’s really fucked up, and I just- I have to go find her, okay?”
If anything, Jackie’s explanation of what’s going on only serves to confuse Shauna even more.
First of all, since when were her and Nat so close? Actually, fuck close, since when could they even tolerate each other? Her lasting memories of their relationship pretty much all consist of the two of them either screaming at each other, or talking shit about the other behind their back for being either a virgin or a slut. In fact, she’s pretty sure Jackie hated Nat, hated her because she was the only person that she couldn’t control, couldn’t make bend to what she wanted, and she couldn’t deal with that, the idea that there was even one person out there she had no power over.
Secondly, she knows it’s been a while since she last saw Nat -- Christmas break, she thinks, or maybe it was Thanksgiving -- but she hadn’t seemed so different that Shauna can understand why it’s so alarming that she’s taken off by herself like this. If anything, Shauna’s most surprised at the fact Nat stuck around here so long in the first place. She’d had her bets on Nat dropping out of high school altogether -- not because she was dumb, or because she couldn’t have finished right along with the rest of them, but because she always seemed among one of the most desperate to claw her way out of Wiskayok and get literally anywhere else.
She doesn’t say any of this, of course. Instead, she just says, “Nat’s a big girl, Jackie, I’m sure she can figure it out on her own. If she wanted to be found, she would have called you herself.”
Jackie pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and lets out a small, humourless laugh. “Of course. Of fucking course. You know, I don’t know what I expected. You’re so fucking selfish it’s unbelievable sometimes.”
“I’m selfish?” Shauna splutters. She can’t believe what she’s hearing -- she can’t believe Jackie Taylor, of all people, is accusing her of only thinking about herself. “That’s fucking rich, coming from you.”
“Jesus, I’m so fucking stupid.” She shakes her head in disbelief, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes like she might be able to erase the entire encounter if she tries hard enough. “I can’t believe I seriously thought that you might actually still have a functioning heart in there. That’s on me, I should have known better.”
Shauna knows what she’s doing.
Jackie’s always been the best at knowing exactly which buttons to push to hit her where it hurts, to convince Shauna to do exactly what she wants. She’s never been afraid to hit below the belt, to go as low as possible in the name of her own best interests, no matter what the consequences to those around her may be.
Jackie likes to pretend she’s so innocent, like when she says scathing things she never meant for them to come out like that, like she was just speaking without thinking and didn’t realise how it was going to sound outside of her own head. She’s got it down to almost an exact science, and Shauna thinks the worst part about it is that it always works. She’s never had to change up her tactics because she’s never not gotten what she’s wanted.
The worst part is, Shauna thinks a lot of it is probably her fault. She’d always been the worst for it, rolling over and acquiescing to whatever Jackie wanted, just because it was easier than the alternative. Jackie probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it anymore, doesn’t realise that manipulation is always her go-to to reach her end goal, because nobody, including Shauna, has ever had the guts to call her out on it.
“Don’t try and turn this around on me,” she says. “Don’t try and- and make me look like the bitch, just because I finally managed to get off of whatever fucked up ride you dragged me on for fifteen years and I refuse to let you drag me back.”
She can feel herself starting to unravel, anger rising and rising inside of her, threatening to spiral out of control. Her hands are itching to grab at something, at Jackie, to clutch at her and yell and yell until she finally gets it, until she finally takes a real look and sees herself for what she is, what she always has been.
Jackie’s pacing the kitchen now, looking just about as ready as Shauna is to explode. It’s always been like this between them, just two ticking time bombs carefully dancing around the other, pretending not to see the clock running its way down. They were always bound to implode.
“You seriously don’t hear yourself when you speak, do you?” Jackie spits. “Like, somehow in all of this, you’re the victim here, even after you fucked my boyfriend.” Her voice raises precariously at the end, like she’s trying to sound sharp but might break down the middle any second.
Shauna scoffs. “Oh come on, Jackie. Don’t act like you cared about Jeff, you didn’t even like him. Everyone could tell.”
“What, and that makes it okay for you to- to just fuck him, like that means it doesn’t matter anymore? Like that makes it okay?”
“You’re not angry I slept with Jeff, you’re angry I did something without asking your permission first. You’re angry that for the first time in my life, I actually thought for myself, and did something that I wanted, instead of just going along with what you told me to do.”
For the first time since she opened the door, Jackie looks actually stricken by that. She thinks someone else, a stranger, wouldn’t be able to tell, but Shauna’s spent so much of her life cataloguing every single Jackie Taylor expression and reaction that she immediately sees the shift in her, the way that her face crumples ever so slightly. Shauna wishes that she wasn’t so finely tuned to her, wishes that she couldn’t tell exactly what she was thinking even after all this time.
“Is that really how you see me?” Her voice comes out quieter, like she’s trying her hardest to keep it level. “You were my best friend, Shauna. You could have done anything you wanted, and I wouldn’t have given a shit. I just wanted you to be you.”
Shauna thinks about telling her that she never really knew who Shauna was at all, that the idea that she’d had of her had always been warped. That the Shauna who had went behind her back and fucked her boyfriend just because she could, just because she’d wanted to know what it would be like to have something Jackie didn’t, was the real her all along. Jackie just hadn’t wanted to see it, hadn’t wanted to face the fact that the person she’d spent so long trying to mould into her idea of the perfect best friend was completely different from who she pretended to be.
She doesn’t, though. Partly because she thinks it wouldn’t really matter anyway, because Jackie wouldn’t understand or probably even care to try and grasp the difference, but also because even after a year, she’s not even sure that she fully gets where the two end and begin, which parts were really her and which were just there to appease Jackie.
And then, she doesn’t know what comes over her, but something inside of her softens for just a second. Maybe it’s the fact that for the first time in years, Jackie looks like she’s genuinely confused, like she doesn’t understand what’s going on or why Shauna thinks of her the way she does. Maybe it’s because Shauna’s starting to wonder whether or not Jackie even realised how unbalanced their friendship was, if she even understood how much of a say she had in everything, or if she truly just thought that that was the way things were, and she had no part in it.
Maybe it’s because something in Jackie looks genuinely broken, for a second, with her brow furrowed like that and her eyes misted over. Because she looks like she’s going over her entire life in her own head, trying to reckon with what she had once known, trying and failing to grasp the fact that her own perception of history is completely off-kilter to Shauna’s.
Maybe it’s because she’s standing in front of Jackie for the first time in fourteen months, and as much as she feels sick at the sight of her, as strongly as she feels like she could have gone her whole life content with never digging this up again, there’s still that aching, thirteen year old girl in her whose natural instincts are always to try and smooth things over with her, to reach out and make everything okay.
Whatever it is, be it some sick sense of misplaced loyalty or guilt, Shauna finds herself letting out a sigh, and saying, “Go home and pack a bag. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”