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[diarists]

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[diarists]

ok sure just your fave non-travis person. gotcha.
i'll leave him be, untwist your panties.

no.
i mean not yet.
i need to figure out how to say it ok?
i'm not ready to lose her again yet, nat.


please?

[doped]

great. thanks.

( really, natalie doesn't want to be a stern leader — it doesn't suit her. she's uncontroversial, non-confrontational, and inherently believes in the equality of everyone, equal work for equal shares, an almost naive belief that things will run smoothly because everyone should want it to. it lances her, her empathy. because, because. because jackie freezing was an accident, a mistake — eating her was necessary, some kind of blood drenched boon. because shauna was her best friend, and the reason she got left out in the cold. because nat understands that guilt, that grief, intimately. javi froze for her, too.

so, it's not hard to give her this. she gets it. if javi was here and didn't remember what she'd done, she'd grip his tiny shoulders and hold him so tightly, he'd bruise with her love for him. she'd apologize, and he wouldn't know why. )

ok. it won't come from me.

[diarists]

yeah. great.

[it’d be easier if she weren’t. shauna would have an outlet for the pulsing, throbbing rage that lives beneath her ribs if natalie were stern and sharp, if natalie snapped back when shauna went after her throat. it’d be simpler to just straightforwardly hate her, uncomplicated, black-and-white schoolgirl loathing, vented out in journal entries and long nighttime gossip sessions.

and yet: she can’t. because nat doesn’t bare her teeth and sink them into shauna’s jugular and because nat was there, holding her hand on the worst day of shauna’s life, because nat witnessed the last good things inside shauna bleed out into the snow the day her baby died. because nat understands shauna’s grief, her rage, and gives tiny concessions every which way, allows shauna to snarl and bite, when if their positions were swapped, if shauna was in charge – well.

anyone who’d seen her that vulnerable, that flayed-raw and weeping and bleeding with the weight of death in her arms (twice) would either be always within her reach or dead. they’d take every breath with her, lie within the range of her outstretched, bloodied arms, understand that there is no division between her and them, or they’d be meat for the feast.

after a long, weighty pause:] thanks.
i’ll figure out how to say it, soon. to her, not
anyone else.