LORRAINE HAD NEVER BEEN PARTICULARLY SENTIMENTAL. She didn't have much growing up, and the stuff that she did have - like the bracelet Lottie had given her - could be taken from her any second. She had few belongings that she cared a lot about, her No Need To Argue record, her soccer trophies, her copy of Beetlejuice on VHS. None of those were there with her, though, so when Laura Lee handed her her bag, old and ragged and grey where it once was blue, she didn't feel the relief that the other girls were verbalising. She'd gotten by with nothing before, everything she owned, she'd paid for. Or, very rarely, Mike had. Was still paying for, in those cases. 

The only thing of real value in her bag was folded into her front pocket with a Connecticut stamp in the corner, and the idea of looking at that made her want to barf. They'd been there maybe twelve hours now, and the sun had well and truly set. 

As it got dark, they'd made a campfire and gathered around it, staying beside the plane carcass so that when the rescue team got there they'd know where to find them. 

The silence was morose, and it had been since the thud of Coach's body hitting the ground. Once somebody broke it, then it wouldn't be the most recent thing they'd experience it. Once they started talking again, it meant they had to move on from the way he'd been completely limp as they carried him away. 

The last time she saw her brother, she'd gotten home, day-old clothes stuck to her skin from the downpour she'd walked home in. The door had clicked shut and she'd stayed there, that click echoing in her mind for hours.

Shauna was the first one to speak. "I'm sure the plane has an emergency transmitter sending out a distress signal. They'll be here to rescue us by morning."

Jackie sighed. "Still... maybe we should conserve some food? In case they don't get here 'till later in the day. "

Lorraine didn't have to worry about that. She hadn't eaten all day. She hadn't even thought about it. 

Van looked at her scornfully. "You want to save the CornNuts?" Jackie looked down at the ground. 

Mari had left from her spot beside Lorraine a little while ago, wrapping her arms around herself and walking off into the woods. Lorraine hadn't gone after her. 

She loved Mari, perhaps more than anyone in the world - in every sense of the phrase. Nobody loved Mari like Lorraine did, and Lorraine loved nobody like she did Mari. But she was tired, and Mari required searching for. Lorraine's head hurt. 

She'd lost a lot over her life. She was tired of having to search for things. Just once she wanted something to seek her out. She wanted to be the one chased after. Just once.

Laura Lee was shaking hard, despite her proximity to the fire. She looked so haunted that Taissa had placed a hand on her arm. "You okay, Laura Lee?"

Laura Lee was sitting across from Lorraine. It was hard to see her behind the fire, sometimes a strand of her hair would shift and eclipse the flames, burning bright and golden. Like she emitted her own warmth. 

Then, Laura Lee opened her mouth and uttered a horrifying sentence. "This is all my fault."

Lorraine's head was pounding. She got migraines often, had for years. Yet another thing her body pushed on her, forced, shoved. The headaches, the insomnia, the permanent feeling of cold. All ways that she was being punished. She knew why, she knew exactly which of her indiscretions - which of her sins - this was penance for. The Tillman family curse, so it seemed. Each one of them was paying for something, and each one of them was guilty in one way or another. 

And so, as it seemed, was Laura Lee. 

Her voice was quivering. "I did something really bad." The rest of the girls were silent. None of them really believed that Laura Lee Hanson was capable of anything that deserved a cosmic punishment. 

Lorraine had quite literally gone to her for advice on how to repent, to escape the one she was suffering in. Sometimes, she'd become so accustomed to it, she almost felt it was a good thing. That it was helping. The physical symptoms notwithstanding. 

Laura Lee took a big breath in. "I kept screwing up in my piano lesson last week." Her breath frosted as it came out. "Mrs Brophy kept yelling at me. Sharp. F sharp. F sharp. I just - I couldn't take it anymore." Her words were floating out in whisps, joining the smoke above the fire. Twirling and spiralling and cracking out into the ether. "So I called her a bad word. Just in my head, but... God heard me. Now we're all being punished."

Taissa looked at her seriously. Van was holding back laughter. "What did you call her?"

Laura Lee looked up at her, tear stricken face and lips shaking. When she spoke up again, her voice was pure air. "Cunt."

Van snorted, and Taissa, not looking away from Laura Lee, reached back and punched her. The damage had been done though, and soft scattered laughter circled the fire. 

Lorraine was giggling, her chest aching with the motion. Lottie looked over at her and blurted out "I steal shitty clothes from TJ Maxx."

Van was beaming. "What?"

Lottie kept going. "I return them, and I get store credit that I never use, and I have," she stopped at how ridiculous it was, "thousands of dollars in TJbucks."

They were all laughing now, as the side of Lorraine's sneaker pressed flush against Lottie's. It was almost kind of... nice. It was the longest civil conversation she'd had with the rest of her team. It felt like a good thing, like it was helping. Life-endangering circumstances notwithstanding. 

Jackie brushed hair out of her face. "I used to sneak downstairs after everybody had gone to bed and watch the Color of Night, so..." she looked sheepish. "So I could pause it on Bruce Willis's wang."

Taissa threw her head back. "That is definitely why we crashed."

"I mean," Jackie kept going, "Jeff's not bad, but damn. Right?"

Lorraine had never had that experience. Needing to hide anything like that, sneaking downstairs to turn on a channel her mom had said she wasn't allowed to watch, making sure everyone was in bed. 

When she was a kid, she would fuck up at school, or at soccer, or something, and the principal would send a letter home for her dad to sign (she'd been forging his signature longer than she could write her own name. Even young, Lorraine knew that was the only way her life was going to move), and she'd carry it in her backpack on the way home.

It felt like a weight. She'd bite her lip so much she could taste blood, the piece of paper dragging her backpack down, wanting to send her sprawling on the grass. Her chest would cave and expand, and she'd be filled with dread at the moment she had to walk home. 

She'd get there, and she'd set herself up at the kitchen bench. Sometimes the lights would be on. Sometimes they'd be shut off. Lorraine never did it when the lights were off. 

She'd wait for a moment, the perfect moment, and she'd try to bring it up as casually as possible. "I got a detention today for being late to my algebra class" or "There's a bake sale on tomorrow and I forgot to mention I need cupcakes." Something like that. 

And then it would hang in the air, and the feeling would dissipate. No one was there to give a shit about her detentions, or her bake sales. No one would care if she arrived home the next day with a tattoo. No one would even notice. 

It felt like something she had to do, though. Even though she had no mom to ground her, no home to be grounded at, and no social events to be banned from going to. A ritual, a little piece of routine so that when someone would say  "fuck, my mom can't find out" she'd be able to say something back.

In a way, her mom couldn't find out. She wouldn't even know how to begin the process of her mom finding things out. 

Sometimes Mike would act like a parent, but they both hated that, so it didn't happen often. She appreciated how he tried, though. 

Jackie giggled. "What about you, Shipman? Any secrets big enough to crash a goddamn plane?"

Lorraine had several. But, in a way, they all felt like one. She couldn't explain it. They were.. intertwined. Like steam and smoke. One and the same and different and all currently occuring in that exact moment. 

Shauna, however, just smiled. She looked almost awkward, and opened her mouth to say something. She was saved, though, but a cry from about ten feet into the trees. Coach Ben. 

Misty was gone. 

When they reached her, Misty was clutching the axe she'd used to cut Coach's leg off, and it was sizzling. So was his thigh.

"What the fuck, Misty?"

Misty looked firm. "I had to stop the bleeding for good."

Lorraine didn't want to look at Coach Ben's white hot leg wound (was it a leg wound if the wound was the absence of a leg?) for any longer than she had today, so she spun around and went right back to the fire. Coach Ben had seemingly passed out from the pain, and if she was being honest Lorraine was almost jealous he didn't have to be awake in the moment.

She knew she wasn't getting to sleep. Not out there, in the woods. Not at home, in her own bed. This was something that simply happened to her, she knew it. 

It was ridiculous, she knew, but the conversation had led her mind there. What if she was the one being punished? For one of her many transgressions. 

The other girls all fell asleep over the course of the next few hours, but Lorraine stayed awake, looking up at the patch of sky visible through the trees. What had once been blue, was now inky and seeping. Seeping down, perhaps swallowing her. She'd have to wait and see. 

Her vision was slowly going white as her migraine thrummed along, maintaining the intensity. Even as she clamped her eyes shut. 

As she finally fell asleep, hours later, Lorraine had a fleeting moment of gratitude that Lottie had been so busy worrying about the wreck that she hadn't noticed any of the things about her she usually would have. 

Just like how Lorraine, caught in her sunken pit of her migraine  feeling like her head was so heavy she was pushing the dirt downwards, didn't notice Misty find the emergency transmitter where it had fallen off in the trees. Nor did she notice the way the blonde girl smashed it to pieces. 

────────── ⋆˚✿˖° author's note
hiii <3 how are we doing?? that's the end of episode two!! happy new year!!! i hope everyone is doing well, that the new year is treating you right, and that you enjoyed the chapter!!!

it's about 9pm here, and this is the third part of what somehow ended up being a sort of cannibalism triple feature i guess?? (is it a triple feature if one of them is a tv show? idk) but this morning i watched luca guadagnino's bones and all - which, wonderful, beautiful, luca never misses - and i just got finished watching mimi cave's fresh, which i also really enjoyed, just not as much (it was anti-cannibalism so less metaphorical but i also can't be pro cannibalism so it gets points there). 

another movie i've seen is color of night and let me just tell you. jackie was NOT watching that movie for bruce willis, she was watching it for jane march and lesley ann warren. trust me, game recognise game.