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[diarists]

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[haggle]

ew
fucking jersey???
you should've lied and stuck with kansas babe

( a pause. she's not qualified to treat shauna's girlhood heartache — not outside of a high school diploma that tells her, from experience, it's an incurable condition of the teenage mind. that post-puberty period where she hadn't lived long enough to have worse heartbreaks to compare it to. only solution was to grow out of it. to learn, with time and distance on her side, a first ex leaves as deep a mark as a papercut, in the end. stings impossibly sharp in the moment, but it's all just quick-clotted heartbreak and minimal blood loss. yesterday's news.

because ani knows how the healing process went for her: first step? slap a fucking flintstones bandage on that shit and call it a day. then, in a month or two or forty, someone else came along to help her forget it ever happened. someone who eventually made those papercuts feel like fucking kisses, once they were done stringing her along and bleeding her out. she'd thought high school days were the worst years to be a girl, too — a fucking laughable idea to her, now. )

we'll work you up to it
you need to stretch yourself out before you can be a size queen like moi 💋
i'll make sure yor ex eats their fucking heart out once i'm done with you

[diarists]

at least jersey has like
the shore and stuff
kansas has NOTHING

[not that shauna knows – jersey and rural canada, the only places she’s ever been, the only places she’ll probably ever go. she’d been ready to live and die and be forgotten in the wilderness, but apparently that isn’t how it’s going to go. her last attempt at power sneaking out between her fingers, like everything else she’s ever tried to hold onto.

so: why not this? why not be magnetic and careless and sharp and untouchable, like ani? shauna would prefer that to the hollowed-out, empty, unloved, unwanted shell she’s become.]

training wheels lmao
i did soccer u know
i’m good at balance and like
running, i guess
stamina
not gonna pussy out, is what i mean.

[haggle]

uh yeah and atlantic city
smells like hot dog water and some loser's broken dreams
barf

( i did soccer u know. her mouth twitches, weirdly endereared. it's cute — like watching a pomeranian try to impress a rottweiler. small and scrappy and set on reaching the same size and potential of ani's big, bad shadow. all bark and bite. )

gotta learn to walk before you can run in pleasers as badass as mine, babygirl
but it's a good start. means you don't mind getting a little dirty
and i don't gotta worry about kissing your booboos like i'm your fucking mom
see? you're in good shape already

[diarists]

you’re not wrong lmao
i hated it the first and only time we went
never went back

[talking to ani -- it feels a little like talking to jackie, the good parts of it – before the jealousy, before the all-consuming obsession and love and hate tangled into an irrevocably fucked up snarl. before jeff and the late-night car hook-ups. before shauna loved someone so much she decided to fuck up her life about it. it feels like trying to present the best of herself, trying to be smart and cool and worthy. like there's still something left in the hollow rattle of her chest, something she can offer, even though everything's over.]

yeah ur right idk about run
dance, maybe.
strut. idk.
but hell no i don’t need a mom or a babysitter or whatever
i can take care of myself, don’t worry.
been doing that for a minute.

who else works for u btw?
bizarro month made me forget.

[haggle]

( i can take care of myself, don't worry. been doing that for a minute. something itches at ani's brainstem. a ping of the lie detector that lives in her head, qualifying shauna's bullshit — and all of its bravado — for what it is. because it's ani's bullshit, too. the battle cry of someone who has faced life with an army of three — me, myself, and i.

she could call it out. could say me too, for all that it means anything, and what it means is — a whole lot of nothing, really. just membership to the my mom is a fuck-up club, or induction into the maybe it's not her, and i'm the real fuck-up sisterhood. just understanding shauna is too young to feel that way, that ani had been too young to feel that way, and now she's too old to feel that way. too grown to believe in a world where she doesn't have to go it alone. but it'd be nice, she sometimes, in those soft, gauzy hours between dreaming and waking, to be able to say: i can handle shit myself, but i don't always have to.

she stares, silently, at shauna's pixelated, throwaway confession for longer than she reasonably should. realizes, with the same exasperated sigh of a dad that said we are not keeping that to a stray you bring in from the rain, there's a stupid fucking sense of responsibility forming. the dreaded, unfortunate knowledge that shauna is just like every other newbie that pops up at hq, now and then: greener than the green they're chasing, and in need of someone like her to shadow. )

bunch of fucking bozos that's who
sam, saber, seb, armand, shadowheart, freya, roza, emmrich, danny, devon, eddie, iggy, joe
think silco got the shittier end of the stick tho
bigger clowns in his circus

you know any of 'em?
sam's good people
roza too

[diarists]

[the names tick through her mind, mostly unfamiliar with one notable exception, but – it’s not the exception shauna’s afraid of. there’s no nat, no jackie, no mel, no travis. nobody who can point and expose her for what she is, at least not before she has a chance to make herself indispensable. hard work and dedication goes a long way, and hopefully by the time anyone tries to undermine her, shauna will already be a valuable employee.]

i know saber, yeah
dunno the rest. not really a big social person.
the other girls loved a kegger or whatever, especially out by the river but i hated all that shit, even back home.

if u say they’re good i believe u.

anyone in the circus i should watch out for?