Shauna Defender

Thinking about pre-crash Melissa having the biggest unobtainable (in her mind) crush on you. Running in a slightly different crowd than she did, so she never had the chance to talk to you outside of practice. 

She liked to watch you at practice or at parties when you weren't looking. Something about how you acted when you weren't putting on a show for anyone else was just so enticing to her. 

She caught herself staring for a moment too long once, and you finally noticed. Melissa wanted to die on the spot when the only thing she thought to do was wave awkwardly back at you. Gen made fun of her for weeks afterward, but you never brought it up to her. 

Melissa had grown used to watching you without being seen, and she wasn't expecting the wilderness to be any different. It was a lot harder to watch you discreetly without being noticed out here, which quickly drew your attention. 

It was a little creepy the first few times you saw her lurking just outside your vision, hovering near a tree she clearly believes is hiding her from view. It was so cartoonishly stupid it took almost everything in you not to laugh at her for it. 

You took an embarrassingly long time to put together why exactly she was staring at you all the time, but once you realized, you couldn't un-know it. In your defense, stalking isn't exactly recognized as an expression of affection. 

Melissa doesn't need much encouragement to approach you for the first time. All it takes is a few smiles when you catch her eye and a laugh at one of her dumb jokes and she's all in. 

She walks up on you when you're all alone, off in the woods foraging for one thing or another. You think Melissa must not realize quite how creepy that looks, but she's so visibly nervous as she fiddles with her hat that you can't hold it against her. She fumbles over her words so bad it's not even funny, but she got the kiss she was hoping for, so it hardly keeps her up at night. 

Queen of U-hauling. If you had asked her to move into your hut following that first kiss, she would have. It's that serious. She's walking back to camp after trying to figure out whose last name sounds better in her head. Nearly trips over a branch. 

Insists that she has to be the one to plan your first date because she asked you out. There was never any actual mention of a date, but you don't have the heart to burst her bubble like that. Most of what she comes up with is just doing your normal chores together and holding hands. It's not like she has a lot of options. 

The most awkward, maybe sort of girlfriend ever. She's so new to actually having her affection returned that the boundaries of it all are beyond her. 

She's not great with words most of the time. It's so much easier for her to show affection through actions. Sneaking you the biggest piece of meat when Shauna isn't looking. Making you something useful. Always sticking up for you in an argument even if you're the clear problem. Immediately your ride or die. 

She tries whatever the 90’s version of “Would you still love me if I was a worm?” is once when you're half asleep and blushes to the tips of her ears when you sleepily ask her to repeat herself. Won't repeat it no matter how many times you ask her what she said. That's the last time she listens to something Mari says. 

So jealous whenever she catches you getting closer to one of the other girls. Sticks so close to your side that she might as well be glued to it as she skips after you on your way to do chores. 

Absolutely delighted any time you show the slightest amount of jealousy about her. She can hardly believe it the first time it happens, but it makes her fucking month. Melissa's never been the type to get a ton of attention from anyone besides Gen, so she's over the moon whenever she catches you watching her closely when she interacts with one of the other girls. 

Melissa joking about how her lease is coming up soon and how you should probably share your hut to save on rent (she's completely serious). 

Lives to share clothes with you. Your clothes are so spread out between the other girls that it doesn't really matter this far in, but Melissa makes a point to steal the ones she remembers being yours whenever she's on laundry duty. 

Melissa tries to do any of the hard or annoying chores whenever you get assigned them, no matter how much you argue about it. She just wants to do things for you all the time. 

Almost exclusively refers to you as her girlfriend. She loves that word: girlfriend. What a perfect word. Shauna threatens to cut her if she mentions that she's dating you for the fourth time in one conversation, but Melissa hardly notices. 

All of her friends are sick to death of hearing about you. If she's not with you, she's talking about you. It's starting to become a problem for them. 

There's more than a little pushing and shoving going on as you and Jackie fight to stand in front of the other in some useless attempt at being a meat shield for the other. Jackie has some misplaced need to protect you, given the head wound you're doing your best to ignore the throbbing pain of, but you're too stubborn to let her. She was the actual target of this whole operation, if she would bother to think clearly enough to remember. 

You're not even positive that the two of them wouldn't kill you as collateral damage at this point, not even with how obsessed they clearly are with you. You suspect it has more to do with taking away Jackie's toys than actually wanting you or Shauna, but you're willing to hedge the bet that they're less likely to stab you no questions asked than Jackie. 

Jackie pushes you behind her firmly enough that you give up on fighting her, if only to preserve some energy for the real fight ahead of you. She's too smart not to be using that knowledge against you. The little half-smirk she gives you before focusing on Gen is proof enough of that.  You hope she has something up her sleeves that you don’t know about before you have to try to beat someone up.

You’ve done a lot of grappling in your time when one of your victims got a little too scrappy, but you’ve never had to actually fight someone in the process. That was the point of waving the pointy end of the knife in their direction. Most people didn’t want to get close to the woman with the knife. Only, you had no knife. That was the problem with letting yourself go into police custody: not being able to bring the large knives you’re so accustomed to.

Gen just watches from a few feet away, knife held loosely enough in her hand that you're not positive she knows how to use it. Not positive enough to rush her for it, but enough for you to feel a little more confident about your odds. Until Melissa clears her throat and reminds the both of you that she's there. 

You’re struck by the immediate and senseless urge to slap her. There’s something about her sitting there across from you and making you help her on her essay while she was secretly plotting to set up your girlfriend that really rubs you the wrong way. To the surprise of no one but Melissa and Gen, that kind of thing was frowned upon by most people.

“No Shauna?” Melissa asks, making you tense as she waves her gun around. You're half tempted to step more firmly behind Jackie but manage to resist the urge. Despite her choosing to stand in front of you, you know that you would never hear the end of it if you did. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jackie quips, turning her back on Gen to face Melissa. 

It was the better choice between the two of them, given that Gen apparently brought a knife to a gunfight. You’re not sure you want to know where Melissa even got a gun in the first place, but you hope that she doesn’t know how to use it. You can’t imagine her having the opportunity to practice with it all that much, but an hour ago you couldn’t imagine her killing cops either, so you’ll just have to hope she was too busy practicing her evil laugh.

You’re not positive that Shauna knows how to use hers either, but you trust in her resilience over anything else. If it took every bullet in the magazine, she would land at least one of them out of sheer stubbornness alone. That was a comfort, no matter how ridiculous the idea is.

“She’ll show up.” Melissa scans the room again, searching for Shauna like she was hiding just behind a pillar or beneath one of the seats. “I know she will. She wouldn’t leave you alone for long.” 

You hate how breathy her voice is. Almost like she’s excited by the thought. No one should ever be excited to see Shauna but you and Jackie. It was against the laws of nature or something. Melissa gave you a smile that made you want to shrink in place. There was a chilling similarity to the kind of smile someone ranting at themselves gives you on the bus. You wonder if that’s what she always looked like behind the mask, and if so, you were quite grateful that she stole it off you.

“It’s okay,” Melissa says, taking a step forward. Instinctively you take a step back, feeling oddly like prey. It’s been a while since you felt that so strongly. Maybe since that first night in the woods. Even as Melissa advances, you take refuge in the knowledge that you’re not nearly as frightened as you were that night, chased through the woods by an assailant you weren’t aware was Shauna. Melissa holds her palms out, but the effect is rather ruined by the grip she still has on that gun. “I won’t hurt you. You’ll see.”

If only it went both ways.

“Melissa, why do you have that?” You ask, letting some of that anxiety you feel seep into your voice. It comes out shakier than you intend, but the effect it has on both Jackie and Melissa is instantaneous. They’re both sizing each other up like they’re about to enter a cage match, and the whole thing feels rather ridiculous. How the hell has this become your life?

It’s answered some important questions, like has Melissa figured out that the rest of you are in on it, for one. That answer was a solid no, judging by the way she still acted like you were something she needed to protect. Jackie’s at least excused by what you like to think of as serial killer girlfriend instinct, the kind of thing that often leads Shauna to start bar fights that you’re left to drag her away from before she finishes.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a bottle here for Jackie to smash over Melissa’s head. Even if there was, you aren’t exactly betting on Jackie against a gun. The whole thing was pretty lame on Melissa’s part; if she was going to copy your whole thing, she might as well stick within the limits of it. Guns were boring.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Melissa demanded, crossing the stage to stand next to Gen. Honestly, you had forgotten she was even there to begin with. She always had that kind of effect on you. Now that you think about it, it’s probably what makes her such a good choice for a partner. Can’t complete your on-campus murder spree without one, apparently.

You’re almost a little embarrassed you didn’t put it together that there was more than one of them. It was the oldest trick in the book, if you considered Jackie and Shauna doing it to you a few years ago old. Whatever it counted as, the two of them still did it first. They don’t know it, but they can’t even come up with their own reveal with a bit of originality. 

Maybe that plagiarism accusation Melissa assured you was unwarranted last semester wasn’t quite as unfounded as she led you to believe.

“You don’t know what she’s done.” Gen smiles supportively every time Melissa glances her way in some strange cycle of validation that makes you want to tell them to get a room. This was the girl that was supposedly in love with you enough to steal you from your girlfriend?

“What who’s done?” You ask. If there was such a thing as an asking stupid questions competition, you’re sure to be a shoo-in, but the best thing to do when someone was pointing a gun at you was to go along with it. Melissa thought that you were stupid and naive enough not to know one of your girlfriends was running around killing ten people by herself? You would be that person.

Melissa just eats that up. You ignore how Jackie’s disgust is radiating off of her. If looks could kill, you would be six feet under right now. If the fact that your head's still attached to your body tells you anything, then Jackie has some understanding of the angle you’re trying to play here even if she clearly hates it. You can’t blame her for it. If the situation were reversed you would feel much the same way.

Luckily for all of you, Jackie reacts much more calmly than you might have if you had to sit here and watch her play dumb for Melissa.

“You don’t know?” She asks. Far too smug, like some kind of cartoon cat. “Do you want to tell her, Jackie, or should I?”

Where was she hiding this attitude the whole time? She’s always been rather boring. It was the kind of predictability that drew you toward her in the first place, a far cry from a relationship that often has you coming home to the announcement of another dead body. You’re starting to think that you’re just a magnet for lunatics.

There’s a right and wrong answer here, or at least one answer that’s more correct than the other from Melissa’s perspective. She’s nearly vibrating in place at the mere thought of getting to tell you every little dirty detail of Jackie’s sins, so of course Jackie comes in to rain on her parade.

“Tell her what?” Jackie asks, taking a generous step away from you as she stalks toward Melissa. Gen holds her knife firmly in front of her, doing little but betraying how inexperienced she is with it. Something to remember. You can already see about ten different ways that this is going to go wrong, but Jackie trusts you, so you’ll just have to return it. 

“Tell her that you’re 19 and still can’t get a girlfriend without trying to steal someone else’s? Tell her how you begged for your life?”

Jackie lunges forward at Melissa at about the same time as you realize how horrible of an idea this is. You can see it before the sound fully registers: her body hitting the ground and rolling off the stage. Then, the sound of a gunshot.

“Jackie!” You scream, rushing toward her only to be shoved back by Melissa. You hit the ground with enough force to slam the back of your head against the ground, seemingly completing the matching front and back head wound set. Melissa’s face is all twisted up as she looks down at you, running through emotions so fast you’re not even sure what she’s going to settle on. 

You don’t care, either. Not when Jackie might be lying dead on the ground in front of you, shot by some fucking loser who didn’t deserve to be the one to kill her. If Jackie has to die at all, she at least deserves to go out the right way. Being killed by Melissa is so embarrassing that you might have to lie to Shauna.

No. She can’t be dead. You refuse to believe it: Jackie was just too damn stubborn to die. It’s not like you even saw where the bullet hit, if it even did. She was probably down there laughing at you.

Right now it was your job to make sure that Jackie's fall wasn't in vain. It's a lot harder than you might expect, given the way Melissa's full attention was turned on you now. She’s never looked at you in quite the same way before, like you’re some kind of prey animal she’s trying not to spook. 

Melissa doesn’t know you nearly as well as she thinks she does if that’s the conclusion she’s drawn about you. Even Shauna and Jackie assumed you could handle what they were. It was disrespectful. Just about as disrespectful as committing attempted murder on your girlfriend right in front of you and then trying to give you that look right afterward.

Gen at least has the decency to be watching Melissa instead. She's not here for you. The one who is here for you is finally making an appearance, betrayed by the slight sway of the curtain as Shauna draws nearer. You can just barely make out her outline crouched behind the curtain just off to the right, but you can’t risk looking at her long enough to tell for sure if she has her gun drawn or not. 

Shauna was usually so trigger-happy that you can’t imagine she hasn’t now that she has an actual trigger to pull, but then why would she wait? Did Shauna know something you didn’t? Like the gun was secretly empty the whole time, the whole clip emptied in an attempt to land a shot. But then it never left his holster, so it couldn’t be that. Maybe she just wasn’t willing to risk you getting caught in the crossfire, which was much more likely.

It’s difficult to think straight knowing that Jackie might be hurt or worse, but it’s something that you have to push aside if you’re going to get out of here alive to help her. Something that becomes less and less likely with Shauna’s involvement, as much as you wanted her here before. You’re one Shauna temper tantrum away from being shot or stabbed.

“Tell me what?” You ask, hoping that Melissa hasn't noticed the same thing you have. Luckily, she seems clueless, a natural state for her in the time that you’ve known her. There has to be more there beneath the surface. No one can pull off the things she’s done lately without a lot of planning. Maybe years of it. Something that could have been avoided if Jackie had done the right thing in the first place and just killed her in her backyard, but it’s a little too late to wish for that.

Getting shot was probably enough of a punishment that you won’t rub it in too much. You can’t say the same for Shauna, who likely won’t let Jackie get over it even on her deathbed, hopefully many, many years down the road.

“Jackie’s not who you think she is. I know her whole good girl schtick makes her look all innocent, but she’s not. She killed all those people, you know? They said it was Jeff and Travis, but it wasn’t.”

“That sounds crazy, Melissa.” The words slip out before you can stop them, and you’re half expecting to be shot before you even have a chance to regret saying them.

Your worry is apparently unfounded, given how unsurprised Melissa remains. She has to have expected some level of disbelief on your part, some evidence toward the idea that she wasn’t fully gone in her pursuit of revenge on Jackie.

“I know. I do. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it. That’s why I had to shoot her. I—”

“You did what?” Shauna calls out, enough anger in her voice that even you flinch before appearing from the side of the curtain a moment later. There’s no gun in her hand, so all you can do is hope it’s still hidden somewhere. You’re not sure this is the best move to make right now, but there’s nothing you can do about it now that the two of them have already seen her.

The sight of Melissa giving Shauna heart eyes is sickening, but the way Gen starts to shift from foot to foot is far more worrying. People with weapons shouldn’t get nervous, and the fact that she is isn’t a good sign.

“Melissa,” Gen starts, but Melissa just waves her off. It’s strange to say when Melissa’s the one with the gun, but you find yourself far more worried about Gen. Even stranger considering you’ve never once even thought about Gen beyond a passing glance in the hallway.

“Don’t you see how important this is? It’s what I—what we’ve been working towards this whole time,” Melissa says imploringly. Her attention is focused on Gen enough that you feel safe taking a few steps backward, making your way toward the opposite side of the stage. 

“Sorry, did you guys want to make out first, or should we wait?” Shauna asks impatiently. Once again, here comes Shauna to save the day by saying what everyone else is thinking.

Her eyes keep darting around, but she doesn’t seem to find what she’s looking for. It only makes her more frustrated. Jackie. She’s looking for Jackie. You can’t tell her where she is, not while the two of them are watching you so closely. Mostly because you don’t want to remind them of the possibility that Jackie’s still alive.

“God, you’re so funny, Shauna.” Melissa has the audacity to smile at her. Neither of them seems to notice you aren’t in the same place as you were before. “I’ve always thought that, even when Mari used to talk about how mean you were and called you… Uh, anyway.”

“Great. Glad we’ve got that down.” Sharp and to the point. You love her efficiency. “What do you think is going to happen here?”

Melissa frowns at the question. Shauna’s not reacting the way she should. None of the fear and uncertainty you’ve tried so hard to cultivate. Jesus Christ, how long does it take for the police to respond anyway? You know Shauna called them. Was there no urgency?

You’re not sure how long you can keep them here before the situation forces someone’s hand. Likely Shauna’s, whose hands need significantly less forcing than some others.

“She killed those people,” Melissa says again, stressing the word like it meant anything different a second time around. “She tried to kill me. I’m protecting you. I know it’s hard to see right now—”

“See what? How stupid can one person possibly be? Wait, don’t answer that.” Shauna pulls the gun out for real now, and a flicker of surprise crosses Melissa’s face. You know she must have seen you pull the gun, right? Where did she think it went?

The question answers itself for you as her eyes flick over to the edge of the stage. Jackie. Melissa looks unsure now, a hesitancy she hasn’t carried with her throughout the entire confrontation. Shauna with a gun has to set off some alarm bells in her head. It might finally start to flip over those preconceived notions of hers onto their head.

“No,” Melissa says, shaking her head slowly. The panic spreads across her face as she comes to an uncomfortable realization. “Not you too. But…”

You take another few steps backward before she realizes you’re in on it too, but this time Gen keys in on the motion. She darts forward, and you take off running behind the stage. The heavy footfalls of her boots behind you let you know she’s gaining ground faster than you can create it. 

Not entirely hard when the person you're chasing is already more than a little woozy from the blood loss. What was it with head wounds and making you bleed like a stuck pig anyway? Shauna would probably know that. Or Misty, maybe. It sounds like the kind of thing she would know in case someone tripped on the sidewalk and she could step in and nurse them back to health.

Right now you wish she would step in so you could push her behind you and leave her to the wolves. Or wolf, in this case, as the sound of gunfire echoes from the direction of the stage. You just hope Shauna gets Melissa first, and hopefully somewhere that hurts. You still aren’t sure if Jackie’s okay.

Those damn boots of hers give every step away but have the unfortunate aspect of being quite the weapon of intimidation. Whichever of them you threw a shoe at in the hallway must have really taken that humiliation to heart. It’s only fair: you certainly did. It does help you when you duck behind a prop cart in the dim light, waiting for the sound of her approach to suddenly shove it in her way.

She goes down hard, catching it around the waist and nearly flipping over the thing as she hits the ground on her side. Normally this is when you would kick the shit out of her now that she’s down, but you’re not sure you can manage it as weak as you feel. You would likely just end up getting pulled to the ground, and that’s not about to help anybody. You need a weapon, or distance, or anything that doesn’t put you in close contact with somebody with a knife as long as hers.

It helps you gain enough distance that you risk taking a look over your shoulder as you round another corner of the hallway. An immediate mistake as you realize Gen isn’t in the same place where you left her. Nor is she chasing after you. You curse under your breath, grabbing onto an axe you quickly realize is a wooden prop. 

Whatever. It will still hurt if you hit her in the head hard enough, and you think you owe her at least that much after all the shit she and Melissa have put you through recently. You still aren’t sure what Gen’s motivation even is in all that. She didn’t have time to make her grand speech like Melissa did and doesn’t seem like she cares all that much to tell you. 

What she does have is a burning hatred in her eyes when she looks at you and the look of utter glee when Shauna revealed exactly how much the two of you know about Jackie. Melissa’s obsessed with the three of you, and she hates you for it. That was a motivation as old as time, and just as boring as Melissa’s when you thought about it. Not that you could do much of that as you catch sight of a glint of light reflecting off the metal of her blade as she lunges toward you.

You manage to deflect most of it with the handle of the axe, but you can’t stop it from cutting a slash down your arm near the tail end of the swing. It hurts like hell, a feeling you haven't been accustomed to in quite a while. She’s fast, though, a hell of a lot faster than you were expecting her to be. Which is why she manages to catch you in your side with the knife hard enough that you feel like your breath has been knocked out of your chest.

It couldn’t have been too deep, not with how little blood seems to actually be on the blade, but it’s enough to have you stumbling backward in something you hate to admit is fear. You’ve been cut up too many times to count, but being stabbed was an entirely different thing. It felt more like being punched than anything else, right up until you felt the blade drag itself out as quickly as it entered. 

It’s almost funny how anticlimactic the whole thing was, right up until the feeling caught up to you. That burning feeling like your insides are being twisted up and turned inside out, a pain so intense that you want to throw up. You’ve felt lightheaded all night, but that has nothing on how you’re feeling right now. Like it takes everything in you just to keep your feet under you, and one good burst of wind could take you down and out for the count.

You can’t focus on it now, pushing through the shock and that primal animal fear as you swing in turn, catching Gen’s hands hard with the end of the axe as hard as you can. Which, given the general disarray of you, isn’t all that hard. The sound of it landing is disgusting, something that sounds suspiciously like a crack before the knife clatters to the ground.

Gen’s scream is nothing short of agonized, but it doesn’t stop either of you from diving for the knife on the ground. Had you been thinking clearer, you might have just hit her a few more times with the axe, but the head was already starting to wobble on the handle from one blow, so it was best that you abandoned it.

Your fingers close around the handle just moments before Gen reaches it, but a knee to the side has you letting go of it with a scream you can’t believe left your lips. That blinding pain is back again with a vengeance as you just barely manage to catch Gen’s wrist before she can fully bring the knife down upon you again.

Your side burns and all of your muscles ache as you use every ounce of strength left in your body to hold her off, but your hands are shaking so badly already that you know it’s a futile gesture. Is this really where you’re going to die? Backstage in a theater you’ve never been to by some girl you’ve never even noticed with no idea if your girlfriends are okay? As far as ways to die go, this has to be one of the worst.

Especially as it becomes harder and harder to fight back, her knee presses cruelly into your side as you struggle to focus on anything other than the pain of it. Harder still to maintain your grip on her wrists as your arm starts to slide on something wet where it’s braced against the ground.

Blood, an unhelpful part of your mind fills in. It becomes less of an "if you lose this test" and more of a "when you lose this test" as your strength starts to flow from your body alongside your blood. If she hadn’t managed to catch you in the side, this whole thing would have been over already. Gen, with her one broken hand—judging by the swelling—against you at near full strength would have been nothing. Until you let her stab you.

It’s dumb of you, but you aren’t used to having to watch your own back. There was Jeff, stupid Jeff that you killed alone, but he wasn’t a real challenge. Not when he wasn’t expecting it to come. This you should have been more careful on, but this time the three of you were the ones caught unaware.

Then, like an angel, Misty Quigley appears from the shadows, syringe in hand.

It marks the first time in memory that you’ve been excited to see her. Something on your face must give it away, as Gen turns her head just in time to watch the needle be jabbed into her neck. Gen stumbles off you, swinging the knife in Misty’s direction. Misty, who has already jumped back a good five steps in preparation, is unfazed by the action. She watches curiously as the fight starts to leave Gen’s body.

Not willing to leave it up to chance, you drag yourself a good foot across the floor to get to Gen, grab the knife off the floor, and plant it in her chest in one smooth motion. This is of far more importance to Misty, whose attention quickly turns from clinical to interested. If only you cared about impressing Misty, because you think you might have actually managed it for once.

You slump back on the ground, half willing to just stay here until Shauna comes and finds you. Something that you’re increasingly willing to believe you’re entitled to after the day you’ve had. Shauna was a big girl; you’re sure she can take care of herself against Melissa. Besides, you doubt she would appreciate you bringing a knife and a knife wound to a gunfight.

Misty clears her throat, a soft hem hem that seems to reverberate through your skull. You grit your teeth, something that makes it all the more difficult to play dead. You’re still going to try. Misty steps over Gen’s body like it’s nothing only to nudge you in the side with the pristine toe of her white shoe. Probably not pristine for all that much longer as she steps in a puddle of your blood.

As if just noticing it, Misty gasps, kneeling by your side with a quickness that makes your head spin. “Why didn’t you say anything? Here, I can help. I took a—”

“Red Cross Babysitting Training Course,” you mutter, sitting up as quickly as you can manage while you slap her hands away weakly. “Twice.”

Misty offers you her arm, and you take it wearily, secretly embarrassed at how grateful you are for her help. You’re taking this to your grave, no matter how long it takes for you to find yourself in it. It’s looking sooner and sooner lately.

“Misty?”

She pauses, your arm braced over her shoulder as she struggles to support you back to the stage.

“Yes?”

“Thanks.” Misty beams, but you keep talking before she can say anything suitably freaky and ruin the moment. “Did you see Shauna?”

“No,” she admits. “I came in through the back.”

“Why are you here anyway?”

She pushes her glasses further up her nose, avoiding eye contact as she blushes to the tips of her ears. Of course she was following Jackie. Obviously.

“Right.” You answer your own question.

You let go of Misty just in time to reach the front of the stage again, not wanting Shauna to see you hanging off of Misty for two reasons. The obvious humiliation of it all being the first, and how ungrateful it would be for Misty to immediately be shot by your jealous girlfriend after saving your life being the second.

Even you wouldn’t be able to talk her into reacting reasonably tonight, if you ever could. Only, as you step fully onto the stage, you realize that you have bigger problems on your hands than that. Namely the fact that Shauna’s still wailing on Melissa, whose face has turned a rather curious shade of purple.

Fuck.

You have no idea how you’re going to explain that one to the cops. Misty starts to rush forward, but you stop her with a hand to her wrist. Shauna winds up to hit her again only to suddenly stop, one arm still poised in the air, as you enter her field of vision. 

She’s up on her feet like nothing ever happened, crossing the stage and tugging your shirt up as she examines the edges of your wound. When she starts to try to touch it, you have to draw a line, instead asking her where Jackie was in the hope of distracting her. Shauna’s eyes go wide, first in shock and then in guilt.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t even think…”

Shauna takes a step away before hesitating, her eyes flicking up and down your body before deciding you aren’t about to die on her before she leaves you to go get Jackie. It’s agonizing just to keep standing, hand clutched against your wound like it was the only thing keeping your insides from becoming outsides, but the sight of a dazed Jackie dragging herself up to sit on the steps with Shauna’s help is enough to make the journey worth it.

“We match,” Jackie says, reaching up to touch the wound on her forehead and whining pitifully when Shauna slaps her hand away. It looked more like a scratch than anything else, but you keep that to yourself. Her sleeve is stained in blood as it slowly drips its way down to her wrist. Out of all the places she could have been shot, the arm was one of the best.

There are far worse places to be shot. Like in the side. Your wound throbs in remembrance, as if you could begin to forget.

“Don’t touch it,” Shauna snaps, looking to you for support and sighing at the placement of your hand. “Either of you.”

“I’m applying pressure,” you defend.

Shauna grumbles something under her breath but seems to accept it. “Sit.”

You really don’t want to, unsure if you could get yourself back up again, but Shauna doesn’t phrase it like a question. Neither does Jackie, who looks more and more concerned as her head starts to clear from the fall. You take a seat next to Jackie that feels more like collapsing. Yeah, you definitely aren’t getting back up without assistance.

Shauna seems to notice Misty for the first time, watching her skeptically as her finger slides back to rest against the trigger. You grab at her elbow and shake your head. She’s so exhausted she doesn’t even question it, just slumping back into your side and breathing heavily.

Misty, for her part, doesn’t once look concerned. She rocks back and forth on her feet, looking aimlessly around the theater like she’s not standing right smack dab in the middle of a crime scene staring at a corpse and three bloodied women. You try for a moment to imagine what the state of Melissa’s body and Shauna’s knuckles must imply to a person and quickly decide that Misty really was crazy to look so calm.

“You’re welcome,” Misty says helpfully. Shauna looks half ready to shoot her anyway, but Jackie just smiles weakly at her.

“Thank you, Misty.”

“She’s losing it,” you mutter under your breath. Jackie tries to flick your shoulder but picks the wrong arm to do it, whimpering in pain as she pulls at her wound. 

Suddenly Misty screams, a sound so unlike her that you don’t realize it’s even coming from her at first. The thought of her being afraid of anything is weird. She always seemed above that kind of thing. It jerks your attention away from Jackie just in time to see Gen running full speed at Misty, bloody knife in hand.

Gens rose from the dead, or something pretty close to it. She was deader than dead. A vein full of whatever was in that syringe of Misty’s, something you’re positive was appropriately deadly, and a chest full of her own knife. A knife that she was now wielding as if it wasn’t soaked in her own blood. Pretty metal of her, honestly. If she hadn’t been trying to kill you, you would be impressed.

Shauna’s up on her feet before you can even attempt to go help Misty, a relief as you sink back onto the step and lean your head on Jackie’s good shoulder. Despite her clear exhaustion, Jackie smiles as she rests her head against yours, eyes fixed on Shauna, whose first shot catches Gen’s shoulder and second shot catches Gen’s head.

Just in time for her body to fall, catching Misty on the way down. Misty yelps, pushing at Gen’s shoulder as she frantically crawls out from under her. It takes her a while with all that dead weight on top of her, but she manages without help. Good, because Shauna definitely wasn’t going to provide it. Misty was lucky Shauna didn’t laugh, and you and Jackie aren’t exactly in the position to help someone else up.

Unthinkingly, you look toward Melissa. You swear that you can see her fingers twitch by her sides. Irrational, perhaps. It would make her one of the most dead-looking alive people you’ve ever seen, but you’re not willing to discount it after what you just saw with Gen. Shauna stalks across the stage, pointing the barrel of her gun at the center of Melissa’s forehead. Melissa lurches up just in time to get caught by a bullet, ending whatever stupid plot she had in mind. 

Just in case.

Jesus, they didn’t die easy, did they?

Shauna looks back sheepishly, rubbing her arm and looking embarrassed. “It’s harder to hit someone running,” she says, defending herself against imaginary insults. That’s your Shauna right there. You think you might be seeing two of Gen anyway at this point, both lying on their backs and staring up unseeingly at the roof. The blood loss was really starting to get to you.

“My hero,” Jackie says, sounding far too serious. Shauna’s chest puffs up in pride. She really was that easy, wasn’t she. You’ll be lucky to get Shauna’s ego to fit through the doorway after this, but you’re still glad to have her here.

“We should probably…” Shauna trails off at the sound of sirens approaching, louder and louder until they pull into what was obviously the parking lot. She shrugs, setting the gun down on the stage and kicking it away. “Well, that solves that.”

“God, did they tell you they were going to take that long when you called them?” You ask Shauna.

“What?” Shauna asks. “I didn’t call them. The phone wasn’t working. What the hell do you think was taking me so long?”

“I did,” Misty says happily, pulling out a rather large phone from her bag on the ground and waving it. She must have doubled back for wherever she left it at some point. You can’t say that you were honestly paying her that much attention. “I called the police and told them the murderer was here after I heard the gunshots.”

“Murderers,” you correct.

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“I did.” Your ensuing grin gets even more smug after Jackie presses a kiss to your cheek.

“You had insider information.” Misty sounds so frustrated that it almost makes getting stabbed worth it.

Almost.

“If insider information is being better than you in every way, then yeah.” You grin weakly in Misty’s direction, who's so mad she seems on the verge of stomping her foot and turning around. Arguing with her is taking more out of you than you really have to give, but you can't resist the urge with her being so short-tempered at being wrong. 

Shauna snickers, leaning down to kiss you. Out of all the ways to be shut up, that was easily your favorite. 

When Shauna pulls away, leaving you quiet and a little dazed as the police nearly break down the door of the theater, Misty's just staring open-mouthed at the two of you. She points a finger in your direction as she looks at Jackie, who just shrugs and pecks your cheek. 

Misty looks like she just found out that Santa wasn't real as she looks back and forth and back and forth. “What? But… no.” 

She's muttering under her breath as the four of you are escorted out of the building and toward the awaiting ambulances. You're vaguely aware of being questioned, but the effort of standing even with help is too much for you to pay them all that much attention. 

It suddenly becomes a rush as someone becomes aware of the severity of your injury, nearly ripping you away from the three of them in their haste to get you onto a stretcher. Jackie tries to hold on to you as they drag you away, but she's too busy getting dragged in a different direction herself. 

Shauna looks torn, glancing back and forth between the two of you before you finally just wave her off. Even if she did ride to the hospital with you instead, she'd probably be sitting there worried sick about Jackie the whole time. The look on her face is nothing short of grateful—for Shauna, at least—as she jogs after them. 

Plus, if Shauna came with you, it would open the seat up with Jackie for Misty. The greater of two evils. 

All you can think about as the ambulance doors slam behind you is how much you miss your bed and how Jackie and Shauna are never going to let you make another friend again. 

…

Shauna glares down at the stitched-up wound on your side, sizing it up with her fingers and then comparing it to the initials she carved into your shoulder.

“It’s bigger, isn’t it?” Jackie asks.

The distance Jackie’s placed between the three of you isn’t as subtle as she may like to think it is. It’s careful, like most things Jackie does, in that way of hers that isn’t immediately obvious. She could have chosen the seat across from you on accident, and you’re sure no one else in this room thought anything of it. That’s the beauty of Jackie Taylor.

Shauna certainly hasn’t, sitting next to you with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her denim jacket as she idly scuffs her shoe against the floor. It might have been more annoying had she been able to fully reach the ground from the chair. As it was, her feet barely brushed the floor anyway. You can tell it’s making her more than a little frustrated, but you can’t find it in yourself to pay it that much attention when compared to your current location.

The police station. Again. This time Jackie wasn’t hauled in as a suspect but rather as a potential victim. Apparently, with another murder falling so close to home while Jackie had an undeniable alibi, they’ve finally come to the conclusion that she was being targeted. Great, it only took a murder that the new Ghostface hadn’t committed for them to come to that conclusion. 

More excellent police work.

You're relieved that the police have at least come to the conclusion that Mari was killed by the same one who killed the others. That was probably more on the knife than anything else. That freak was so obsessed with the original murders that she's even using the same kind of knife that Shauna prefers. 

You just wish Jackie would come to the same conclusion. 

She was a little too knowing to fall for that. Maybe it was the lack of threatening letters afterward or just how disconnected Mari has been from her since high school. Either way, she knows something is up. You're not sure how much she suspects, but anything is too much for you right now. 

Jackie's always had a way of sniffing out a secret no matter how small, so you should've known that something as big as hiding a murder wouldn't stay secret for long. You doubt she knows about Mari, probably far more concerned that you and Shauna are both keeping secrets from her. A capital crime in Jackie's mind, and you aren't usually one to disagree with her. 

It's safer that way. 

If pressed, you couldn't say why you haven't told Jackie. It's not like this would be the thing that finally sent her over the edge if everything else hasn't. In reality, it’s only been a day since you killed Mari in the first place, which was really just 12 hours if you consider the time Jackie was either sleeping or not home, but not telling her is really starting to get to you.

Maybe it was just the delight of having a secret with one of them that the other didn't also know. There's never been something that you've kept from one and not the other before. They're so much of a pair it almost feels unnatural, but Shauna doesn’t seem like she’s even thought about the consequence of it. This was normally where you might wonder if Shauna was setting you up somehow by keeping your secret, but she was so genuine last night that you can’t believe she’s making a play for favorite by not telling Jackie.

There isn’t time to tell her now. Not when you’re sitting in the police station waiting for Jackie’s new police escort to follow you around. Neither you nor Shauna thought it was a good idea to invite a police officer so close, but Jackie’s in the middle of pointedly ignoring anything the two of you say unless she can make a passive-aggressive comment on it. Not the most helpful of attitudes when you’re at the risk of either being murdered or being arrested for murder, but Jackie’s too busy staring suspiciously at you to be rational.

All in all, it’s a fairly normal day considering how your life has been going recently. It takes an elbow to Shauna’s side to snap her attention away from her shoes, a look of annoyance fading into confusion as she meets your eyes and you jerk your head in Jackie’s direction. Either Shauna still doesn’t notice or still doesn’t care, because all she does is slink back against the wall behind her and check the time on the clock.

She’s still glaring when you risk a glance in Jackie’s direction, but you’ve grown tired of the whole silent treatment thing she’s got going on. You meet her eyes as you rest your head on Shauna’s shoulder. Jackie’s jaw clenches as Shauna rests her head on top of yours, her fingers wrapping around your arm and squeezing comfortingly. You can feel just a hint of a smirk against the side of your head, telling you that at least Shauna is aware of this. She would catch on just in time to be petty.

Jackie’s foot starts tapping against the ground, barely audible in the hustle and bustle of the police station but loud enough to draw your attention. She lasts another ten seconds before she gets up with a forced sigh and almost collapses in the seat next to you. You try not to react too visibly to it—you’re already in trouble as it is—but her rolling eyes tell you that you’re not as successful as you might’ve hoped.

“You did that on purpose,” Jackie accuses, keeping her voice low as she glances around. She shimmies awkwardly in her chair to bring it closer, and it takes you a minute to find your voice without laughing. They really were just a bit too high off the ground to sit comfortably in.

“Did what?” You ask innocently, but the smile on your face betrays you. If not for that, the smugness radiating from Shauna would’ve given it away anyhow, so you don’t feel that defeated about it.

“That.” She gestures at the entirety of the two of you. “All cuddled up while you left me to sit by myself.”

“You sat by yourself,” Shauna points out, but neither of you are really listening to her. She grumbles under her breath when she puts that together.

“I know you think—”

“I don’t think,” Jackie interrupts. “I know. I know things. Just like I know you’re keeping something from me, and I don’t like it. You’re not even a good liar, so I’m not sure why you’re even trying.”

“Who said anything about lying?”

“I did. Jackie Taylor. Or have you already forgotten my name in favor of hers?”

“Her?” You ask in disbelief. Shauna pops her head up as she suddenly tunes back into the conversation. “Who’s her?”

There’s no one else. Not like that, anyway. No one even comes close. Even if you thought about cheating on them, which you never have, you wouldn’t even have the hours in the day to do so. You might point that out if you thought it would help your case any. She would probably just accuse you of hooking up with some girl in the showers or on the walk to class.

“I don’t know,” Jackie spits. “Why don’t you tell me? What’s her name? What position were you in?”

“There’s no her, Jackie. Jesus. We can’t—” you glance around anxiously. “We can’t talk about it here, okay? It’s not what you think. It’s a mess, but it’s not that. never that.”

Jackie’s breathing is heavy as a result of her fury, each breath making you anxious as you sit tensed in the seat next to her. It’s not like there was a lot she could do to interrogate you here, not with all these cops as witnesses, but you figure she must be thinking about it. So are you. You hope there might be a knife involved if she has a chance. Those nights always ended with a bang.

“Does Shauna know?” Jackie asks. 

You nod slowly, and Jackie’s jaw relaxes as she sits back in her chair. She crosses her arms over her chest, saying nothing. You’re not nearly stupid enough to think that this is over. Jackie’s cold war is just going to have to wait until you’ve lost your new friends.

You’ve assured her that you’re not cheating, at least, but that still leaves a world of possibilities. Shauna isn’t exactly regarded for her strict moral compass, and Jackie knows that better than anyone. Secretly you think that Jackie’s probably looking for a reason to be upset with you more than anything else, but you keep that to yourself. Just like Mari.

You’re sure Jackie’s going to press you again, but she doesn’t get the chance as two officers walk over. Neither of them are particularly big men, which isn’t all that reassuring. You share a glance with Shauna, who’s seemingly come to the same conclusion. She rolls her eyes, and you don’t blame her. Jackie just looks miffed to be interrupted.

“I’m Officer Riley,” the shorter one introduces himself and gestures to the man next to him. “This is Officer Weary.”

Weary seems like a correct description. He looks like he would rather be literally anywhere else, and the feeling is more than mutual. It’s very hard to turn down a protective detail without looking suspicious as hell. Jackie tried but quickly gave up as the detectives started exchanging looks. It was better to deal with dumb and dumber than end up back in a jail cell. 

Jackie was too pretty for prison. Shauna would probably run the place in a week. Either option wasn’t looking great for you. No, far better to keep them at home where they belong. If letting two grown men follow you around for a week is the price of that, you’re more than willing to pay it. Maybe you’ll luck out and they’ll catch her for you, but even that was a risk.

You’re not sure what evidence she has to make her so certain that Jackie was behind the original murders in the first place. She has to have something to be so sure about it, but obviously she doesn’t have enough of it to think that Jackie did it all by herself. Your part in the whole affair was admittedly very limited, but you’re still a little offended at being erased from the narrative that way.

The point was that it’s in your best interest that this copycat doesn’t get taken alive, and the officers make that a very difficult position to be in.

You follow them as they gesture to get up, listening to them talk at you rather than to you. They never even bother to ask you for your names, and you wonder if they even care to know them in the first place. Officer Riley is talkative, which isn’t a quality you appreciate in a bodyguard that’s been forced upon you

They’ll be taking you to a secondary location to sleep in. Something about your dorm room being hard to secure. You just hope they aren’t expecting you to sleep in separate rooms. Jackie could probably convince them that it was strategically sound for the three of you to sleep in the same room if she really put her mind to it. It would be fewer entrances to guard. Yeah, that’s it.

You’re not sure how you ended up in the middle seat in the squad car, but you silently curse the both of them as their knees dig into either side of you. Shauna, you think, is spreading her legs wider on purpose just to fuck with you. It’s really not something you would put past her for even a second. Jackie, despite still being pissed with you, looks like she’s halfway through deciding whether she wants to play footsie or not.

The answer quickly becomes no as one of the officers up front mentions something about Mari’s death again. Jackie fumes, slumping down in her seat and staring out the window. She doesn’t try to shrug your hand away when you set it down on her thigh, which you decide to take as a win.

Shauna decides to take it as an insult, actively kicking your ankle to regain your attention. Jackie smiles as she watches in the reflection of the window, and that’s all the motivation you need to nudge Shauna back.

You’re so caught up in keeping the little game between the three of you that it catches you by surprise when Officer Weary suddenly scoffs. Shauna’s jaw clenches, and you start to flush in embarrassment only to realize that he wasn’t looking back at the three of you at all. He’s looking at someone in a hoodie standing on the side of the road, a cardboard sign held loosely in hand near the stop sign.

Officer Riley stops at the sign, just like he’s stopped at every single stop sign the entire drive despite the roads being completely empty at this time of night. Which was the point of making you wait so long in the station if you listened to him. You still think they’re just being lazy. 

It’s coming to a stop that finally made them hold up the sign fully. You’re expecting some variation of asking for money, the kind of sign that your eyes skip over in favor of checking oncoming traffic, but it’s not that kind of sign at all. 

You’re going to die, reads the sign. You look up at their face only to see a familiar mask staring back at you underneath the hood of their jacket.

“Oh, fuck,” Officer Weary cries out, reaching for his service weapon just in time to take a bullet to the chest. Officer Riley hits the gas, his attention focused on his partner just long enough to hit something in the road that makes him lose control of the car entirely.

You’re holding on to the two of them for dear life as the car spins. Someone’s screaming, and you’re pretty sure it’s you. There’s barely any time to think about anything besides how fucking terrified you are before the car slams into a wall and your head slams into the grating separating the front of the squad car. 

It all gets a little hazy after that.

There’s screaming again, but this time you think it must be Jackie. You wince as the hands on your body shake and shake and shake, feeling like your head is rattling on your shoulders. It’s enough to have to blink your eyes back open, raising a hand to wipe the trails of blood away on your forehead from where they fall into your eyes.

Jackie’s staring back at you with the most relieved look you think you’ve ever seen her make, her arms wrapping around your shoulders as she pulls you into her. You’re vaguely aware of Shauna tearing at the grating, but everything is a little too much for you to manage to keep your eyes open fully.

Officer Riley is gone, his door wide open. Whether he climbed out or was pulled out, you’re not sure, but he did manage to take one of them down with him. Jackie passes you off to Shauna, who drags you out the front, helping you back up to your feet as you hit the ground on your knees.

There’s a body beneath him, and you can only hope he got her.

If you were in any other situation—not bleeding from the head and relying on your girlfriend to stay on your feet—you would’ve thought to check. As it was, you just had to believe that she would at least stay down long enough for you to get away. Shauna’s clearly thinking about it, but the worried look she shoots in your direction as she helps Jackie climb out of the front of the car and over Officer Weary.

“We need to call the police,” you say suddenly, glancing between the two downed officers.

Shauna gestures at the body. “Well, there they are.”

“Response time keeps getting quicker,” Jackie agrees. You glare weakly in Jackie’s direction, too busy hanging off of Shauna to risk letting her drop you over it. 

“I mean it,” you say, sharper this time, even though the effort of it makes your vision tilt. “We need to get to a phone. An ambulance, or something.”

“What’s calling the police going to solve? They weren’t much help here,” Shauna says.

“Uh, not going to jail, maybe?” Jackie’s reaching for you, brushing the sleeve of her jacket across your head to wipe away streaks of blood. She hums soothingly. “Not as bad as it looks.”

Shauna hesitates as she thinks about it. The street is eerily quiet now that everything’s gone down, even if you couldn’t imagine it being that calm just moments ago. It’s made even quieter by their shared silence. At least it gives you a moment to get your thoughts together enough to help stop your head from pounding.

Reluctantly, she admits defeat as she starts dragging you down the street. “There’s a phone booth right by the theater.”

“When were you at the theater?” You can’t imagine Shauna ever willingly setting foot in there. She wasn’t very artsy unless someone wrote it down three hundred years ago and she could be pretentious about liking it.

She mumbles something under her breath that you can’t make out, lost to the wind.

“What was that?” Jackie prompts smugly, immediately jumping on it.

“Van had some student film playing there, and Tai made me come.”

“Aw, aren’t you just the nicest?” Jackie reaches past your head to pinch Shauna’s cheeks. Shauna jerks out of the way, leaving you to fend for yourself as you stumble down the street. Part of you wants to point out that you’re not nearly far enough away from the corpses to be bickering like this, but then they might turn their attention onto you.

“Van needs all the help she can get to fill the seats, okay?”

“Wait,” you interrupt, stopping in the street as a thought occurs to you. 

You double back, keeping your eyes on the woman on the ground as you pull the pistol out of Officer Weary’s holster. Shauna watches impatiently, but you can see the approval in the way she doesn’t storm over and drag you away. You turn your attention back to the two of them as you walk back from the car.

“Oh shit!” You yell, catching sight of Jackie. “Behind you!”

Jackie turns just in time to see a knife coming down at her, giving her just enough time to throw herself out of the way. You fire a shot in the killer’s direction, but you’re too far away to hit her with any degree of accuracy. There was a reason the three of you used knives, okay? Beyond just the idea of Shauna with a gun being the most terrifying thing that you’ve ever heard of.

The killer manages to duck behind a building long enough for you to spare a glance back to Officer Riley on the ground. You knew she had to have gotten out from underneath him, as the picture before you indicates, but you have no idea how she could have gotten so far so fast without any of you seeing her.

You run toward the two of them, gun in hand just in case. Shauna holds her hand out expectantly for it, and you don’t give not handing it over to her even a moment’s consideration. Shauna with a gun is a terrifying concept, but right now she’ll have to be your terrifying concept. As long as she’s standing between you and a crazy woman, she can have all the guns she wants. She’s your crazy woman.

Jackie doesn’t look nearly as sure as you do, but she says nothing as Shauna tucks it into the back of her jeans. The sudden glee on Jackie’s face spells out something terrible for you.

“So, what have you been lying about, liar?” Jackie prompts.

Out of all the things she could remember right now as you practically bled out in the street from your mild head wound, she would choose to remember that.

“Why do you assume I'm the liar? What if it was Shauna?” You protest. 

“No, Shauna's definitely in on it. She's a worse liar. That's what gave you away. Never tell a secret to Shauna you want to keep from me.” 

Jackie waves off Shauna's offended “Hey!” in favor of staring at you expectantly. Exaggerating your limp from the crash doesn't even help you get out of it. Jackie just narrows her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest. She's even walking backward now. 

You spill everything just to get her to stop that. She was prone to accidents just walking the correct way. The journey her face goes on as you tell the story—leaving out a few key details on how you freaked the hell out afterwards—is nothing short of remarkable. It’s not even that scandalous of a story, all things considered, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that looking at her.

Shauna’s still quiet as you talk, which you choose to take as a silent agreement to keep the rest of it between the two of you. It’s not that you couldn’t tell Jackie. Falling apart like that is something she can understand better than most people. She’s always been so good at dealing with other people’s emotions. There’s a reason that she ended up as captain. But that was something best kept between you and Shauna for the time being.

“You killed Mari?” Jackie asks in disbelief. “How could you kill Mari? I liked Mari.”

“It’s not like I meant to, Jackie. And, actually, while we’re on the subject. Let’s talk about how many of my friends you murdered.” That wasn’t something you brought up all that often for a reason, but it feels appropriate now if only for the way Jackie’s eyes immediately fall toward something else.

“Left here,” Shauna says at the same time as Jackie says, “Let’s not.”

“Funny how that works.”

“Don’t turn this on me—on us. You killed Mari for no reason. I had a reason.”

“Yeah, being a freak,” you say under your breath. You get twin suspicious glares for it, but neither of them manages to make it out.

“You didn’t even like Mari,” Shauna accuses. “You just liked that she kissed your ass and was just the right amount of afraid of you.”

“You used to be like that.” Jackie sighs dreamily, nudging you in the side as she falls into step next to you.

“I wasn’t afraid of you. I was afraid because someone was murdering all of my friends.” You can’t help but point that out. Everything going around lately has really pushed that to the forefront of your mind.

Jackie pouts, her arms wrapping around one of your own as she hugs it to her chest.

“Why did you have a knife on you anyway?” Jackie asks, a not-too-subtle way of changing the subject.

“It’s kind of silly,” you admit. Shauna perks up at the question. You can tell by the immediate look of intrigue that she hadn’t given it that much thought when you came crying the night before. 

“I’m ready to laugh,” Shauna says dryly.

“I just… I thought it was Melissa?”

“What?” Jackie laughs hard enough that her eyes start to water, coming to a stop in the middle of the street. “Melissa?”

“It’s not that stupid.” There’s Shauna picking a fight for the sheer sake of picking it. You appreciate the support no matter how roundabout it is. That’s how most of Shauna’s support comes about if someone’s not actively bleeding or dying. You only qualify for the first one at the moment.

“I mean, it is.” Jackie wipes her eyes as her laughter trails off into more manageable spurts. “You should’ve seen her when—” She cuts off suddenly, a guilty look on her face.

“When?” You and Shauna prompt. 

“Let’s get back to Mari.”

“Let’s not,” you parrot her earlier words. “When?”

“Do you remember when we were hiding in Jeff’s closet, and I kind of left?”

“Yes?”

“Well…”

*

Jackie quietly shut the door behind her, rolling her eyes as she got one last look at Jeff through the window by the door. Maybe she should have felt bad about effectively throwing you into deep water without knowing how to swim, but that was how people learned, right? Besides, she was more than confident in your ability to take out Jeff of all people.

She thought it was one of the better plans she had come up with, if she did say so herself. And she did, often. Shauna wasn’t nearly as supportive as she could have been, but that was something she’d long grown used to. It came with the purchase, so to say. She could’ve told you, but it was funny watching you squirm around on a hook.

It was pretty lucky that Travis’s place was in walking distance from Jeff’s. Otherwise Jackie would’ve struggled to get there without a car, considering Shauna was clear across town. Driving herself would’ve removed the whole element of surprise given that nothing said, “Hey, I’m the murderer,” like parking her car down the street.

Sneaking around in the costume always made her feel a little silly, even as much as Shauna protested otherwise. Something about it being empowering and scary, but Jackie mostly thought it was hot and stifling. Though, she could admit that she liked looking at the two of you in it. It still didn’t mean that she appreciated it herself. It was practical, which Shauna appreciated. That sort of thing usually inspired Jackie to feel the same, but this was a little different. She put it on when she had to, which was what really mattered.

Those were the kind of thoughts that propelled her down the street with nothing but the light of the moon to guide her. She planned the route out beforehand for just that reason, and she was stuck paying the consequences for it now. Smart Jackie never considered future Jackie. She was a real bitch sometimes.

The door was unlocked, just like she knew it would be. Travis always left it unlocked when he snuck out, which he always did when his mother took his brother to get out of the house for a while. Luckily for Jackie, a thing she preferred to consider an act of genius on her part, it happened to coincide with a day Jackie knew Coach Martinez stayed after school to work on “drills.” Jackie suspected he just wanted to get away from home for a while. With as much as he seemed to yell in the time that Jackie spent watching the house, she didn’t think they missed him much.

Hopefully they wouldn’t miss him much now that his head was separated from his body. Thoughts for another time. It was almost embarrassingly easy to climb the stairs to his room with no one home. Any other time she would’ve appreciated the thrill of sneaking past all those bodies, but smart Jackie decided it wasn’t worth the risk so close to their endgame.

Which meant that there was no one to hear Jackie riffling through Travis’s things and trying not to grimace at the smell. Yep, a teenage boy definitely lived here. It wasn’t as bad as Jeff’s room, but that was a small comfort. At least it didn’t take that long when she didn’t have to mind how much noise she made.

She was out of the house a lot sooner than she planned to be because of it. There might still be time to catch the tail end of you killing Jeff if she hurried back fast enough or if you moved slow enough. Both of those things could be in the picture, if only it weren’t for the blonde girl she ran over on her way through the neighbor’s yard.

Jackie’s eyes widened beneath the mask as she watched Melissa hit the ground in front of her, grip tightening on the knife as she held it in front of her. She wasn’t sure who was more surprised: her or Melissa. She definitely knew who was more afraid. That honor belonged to the girl on the floor that looked halfway toward passing out in fear already, and Jackie hadn’t even thought to do anything yet.

Melissa was nice enough, quiet mostly, but she always had a bit of a staring problem when it came to Shauna. That was not something Jackie appreciated, no way, no how. She just carefully rode the line of being interested and not being interested enough that Jackie felt the need to intervene. It would have been genius if Jackie thought the girl was capable of doing it purposefully. This was the same girl Jackie had watched trip over air last week at practice, so she was fairly confident in that.

So, Jackie didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t mind killing her, but she didn’t feel like going out of her way to do so. She should kill Melissa, if only for the sake of maintaining the lie. What would sell Travis out more than his neighbor being found dead in her backyard in the midst of taking out the trash or whatever equally benign thing Melissa was doing?

But then Jackie wondered if Travis would, in a manner of speaking, have time to kill his father, Jeff, and then Melissa too in one night. That made the whole plan a little sketchy. Then again, there was nothing stopping Melissa from telling everyone that she saw “Travis” out here in the first place, effectively throwing a wrench into her brilliant plan.

She stared down at Melissa, cocking her head to this side like she had watched Shauna do so many times. Melissa somehow managed to shrink even more inside herself. Huh. So that’s why Shauna did that. Logically, Jackie knew it was freaky, but there was something different about seeing the reaction from this angle.

“Please,” Melissa said, more of a whimper really, but Jackie was feeling generous. “You don’t—don’t have to do this.”

Jackie raised the voice modulator to her lips through the mask, speaking as clearly as she could. “No?”

“No. No. Please.” Melissa shakes her head, dragging herself backward by her palms. Jackie rolled her eyes and took a step forward, easily clearing the distance Melissa created for herself. It was one of the most pathetic things that she had ever witnessed. 

Stand up.

“What’s your favorite scary movie?” It sounded dumb as she spoke the words, but she couldn’t think of anything better. Cliché, almost. Like she was some kind of storybook villain. It was the kind of thing that she would have mocked either of you for endlessly if she heard it leave your lips, but she hadn’t prepared anything all that threatening.

“I know what you did last summer.” The words were barely loud enough to be a whisper, but Jackie heard them as clearly as if they had been shouted. She made a face, luckily hidden from view. Out of all movies, she picked that one? Fucking Sarah Michelle Gellar. Part of Jackie wanted to pick an argument with her, but from the way she cowered on the ground, she figured she wouldn’t be a lively participant.

What was this, a survey? Jackie cursed under her breath. Whatever, she’ll run with it.

“If you say anything about this, I’m going to gut you like a fish,” Jackie said, each word clear and enunciated. The last thing she wanted was to be misunderstood by Melissa of all people. That was the movie with the hook, right? With the fish?

It clearly seemed to hit home as Melissa teared up, raising her hands up in defense like it would do anything. Jackie slowly drew the knife across her throat in warning, and Melissa just nodded rapidly.

She ran off, leaving Melissa trembling on the grass.

*

“…and that’s about it,” Jackie finishes.

You and Shauna share a look of disbelief.

“Let me get this straight—” you start.

“Melissa caught you sneaking out of Travis’s house in the mask, and you never mentioned it?” Shauna interrupts, real anger crossing her face. Jackie shrinks into your side, and you feel a little bad for her even as upset as you might be. “Actually, she saw you, and you didn’t kill her? Jesus, Jackie.”

“She just looked so sad and pathetic—”

“Then put her out of her misery!”

“I don’t get why you’re so upset about this!”

“Well, gee, Jackie, let me think about it. One, whoever's been targeting you knows that you have something to do with the murders. Two, whoever's been targeting you knows about the voice modulator that no one who heard it lived to tell about. Three, whoever's been targeting you is trying to take your place. Who do we know that fits all of that and has been sniffing around her all year?”

Shauna gestures toward you. You have to jerk away to avoid getting slapped by the end of her fingertips. It’s a near miss either way, and Shauna doesn’t even seem to notice. The whole thing makes you feel a little dizzy, but as long as Shauna doesn’t remember that she’s got a gun until you find the right person to shoot at, you’re willing to get over it.

“Well, when you put it that way…” Jackie smiles sheepishly. You quickly decide that your choosing not to kill Melissa that night is a thing best kept to yourself for the time being. Maybe forever. Shauna could really hold a grudge, and Jackie was probably already going to be annoying about the whole Mari thing anyway.

“I don’t understand why you just didn’t kill her,” you say. Shauna huffs in agreement.

“I would have felt bad, I mean—fine!” Jackie throws her hands up in defeat. “Okay! You got me. We would’ve been too many people short for nationals, okay? We already killed Allie and Coach Martinez. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to win!”

Melissa, huh? It’s not like it doesn’t make sense given what Jackie just told you, but it’s still weird to think about. Melissa, who can’t write an essay worth a damn. Melissa, who butchered Lottie Matthews in her room and left her there for Jackie to implicate herself in her death. It’s hard for the two concepts to coexist in your mind even though you were the first to suspect her of it.

You let them argue amongst themselves as you approach the theater, thinking about everything you know about Melissa and everything you know about the new Ghostface and trying to make the pieces fit. It gave her the motive to hate Jackie enough to frame her. Hell knows that people can do a lot worse over being embarrassed like that. She has the connection back to the original case to know things that might have been whispered about without making the papers.

If those notes she left really meant something, it also gave her a motive for killing Lottie beyond just hurting Jackie: she did always flirt with you and Shauna to mess with Jackie. It’s the notes you really can’t get past. Maybe you always suspected her of having a little crush on Shauna back in high school, but you thought that had ended back then. Adding you in is crazy, but Melissa would have to be crazy to try pulling something like this off.

Then the cops. Melissa was about the right height for the woman that you saw, but you’re not entirely sure she was the same height as the woman you chased down the hallway. She would have to be, but something doesn’t quite fit about it. The whole thing is a little too suspicious, but you can’t think of anything else that would make sense right now.

It’s sure a hell of a lot better than any other theory Jackie has cooked up so far, and you’re usually somewhat willing to follow her lead on that kind of thing. You hang back as Shauna approaches the building, not sure what you could even add to that phone call. It’s not like you remember most of the crash anyway. She can manage calling the police by herself; she was a big girl.

Shauna leans her palm against the wall as she fiddles with the phone. You huddle closer to Jackie as you watch, rocking back on your heels in search of warmth. It was really much colder out now that you weren’t walking anymore. There’s an uncomfortable stickiness on your face, and you think the blood might be drying by now. It was not one of your better days.

Jackie tugs you by the hand toward the theater, not giving you a choice on the matter. Shauna waves the two of you off, and with that the only hope of your escape goes with it. You’re surprised to find the building unlocked, but you aren’t willing to question it that much. At least it was warmer now that you were inside. It was entirely too far of a walk this late at night, but there wasn’t really much else that you could do. It was the closest phone, and nothing else was bound to be open that late.

You let Jackie pull you up and onto the lit stage, figuring it was probably the safest place in the otherwise dim theater. If you were thinking more clearly, you would’ve realized how suspicious the whole thing was, but that’s a head injury for you. Jackie fussing so much over you is probably why the thought doesn’t hit her till too late either.

“Hey, what are you guys doing here?” Asks an entirely too cheery voice as she walks on from backstage. You give Gen a polite smile as you turn your head. The kind of smile you reserve for running into people in public you would rather forget ever existed. Nothing personal and yet entirely too personal at the same time. “Didn’t know you were much into theater.”

Truthfully, you never realized Gen was all that much into theater anyway. You watch her absently as she walks up to the two of you, not thinking much of the whole thing. It’s the kind of place you imagine running into Misty or Crystal in. People can change since high school, but you distinctly remember her making fun of them with Mari back then.

Mari.

They were quite friendly with her back then, from what you remember. You can’t imagine Gen being this cheery right after her friend died unless she was only pretending not to. But why would she…

The phone call. The phone call in the library, the one that Melissa couldn’t have possibly made. Shit.

“Jackie, it’s her,” you whisper, but Jackie instantly goes on guard. Those calculating eyes looking back at Gen spoil any surprise you could have had. 

The next morning when you wake up, you find yourself feeling numb. A welcome relief after all the time you’ve spent feeling guilty, but you also find yourself lying alone in your bed. You’re struck by a sudden fear that they know where you went last night. A quick scan of the room as you jolt up in bed reveals that your worry is pointless in that regard.

The two of them are huddled together at Shauna’s desk, hunched over something as they whisper frantically back and forth. It makes you uneasy. Both because of the likelihood it was another gift from your stalker and from being left out of the discussion entirely. Did they not need your input on things anymore? One of them could have woken you up whenever they found it, but they didn’t. So that has to mean something. You’re just not sure what.

“What is it?” You ask, groggy from your lack of sleep. Your own fault, but you can’t help that you’re suffering the consequences of it.

“Hi, baby,” Jackie says sweetly, standing up and smoothing out invisible wrinkles in her shirt. She looks nervous, which doesn’t spell out good things. A nervous Jackie usually means a body count or a fuck-up of biblical proportions. Shauna looks grim, which is still many times better than nervous. A nervous Shauna would’ve meant a busload of bodies and maybe even a car bomb.

“What is it?” You repeat, a little more serious. 

“I think you’ll have to come see it.” Jackie’s face falls before she sags on her feet and waves you over. Shauna still hasn’t looked away from whatever it was. You aren’t sure that you even want to find out anymore, but you dutifully rise to your feet and drag yourself over.

Jackie rests a hand on your shoulder as she steps out of the way, letting you get a good look at what’s garnered so much of their attention. You almost can’t believe it as you see it, but the proof is undeniable. Photographs.

“Where was it?” You ask.

“Under the door,” Shauna says, her thumb resting against your cheek in one of the more creepy pictures. She would gravitate toward that one.

Photos. Photos of you. Asleep in your bed, in the same shirt you’re wearing now. She slipped into your dorm room while you were sleeping soundly and took photos of you, and only you. Somehow that’s worse than if it had been all three of you in the photo. The idea of her standing by the side of your bed and snapping photos makes you sick to your stomach.

Why just you? You can’t help but wonder as you stare down at them. She was in your room alone while the three of you were sleeping and was quiet enough that it didn’t wake a single one of you up. That doesn’t track well with how clumsy she was in the hallway, but she must have learned something from the most embarrassing chase you’ve ever been a part of.

And now this: pictures of you and only you. She had all the chances in the world to take pictures of all of you, but she focused just on you. Were there more photos than just the ones on the desk? The idea of her keeping some of them, doing things with them…

You try not to think too hard on the concept.

“What kind of creepy loser sneaks into our room to take pictures of you?” Jackie asks, shaking her head in disbelief.

Shauna coughs, rubbing the back of her neck as she avoids looking at anyone in particular. Jackie winces, patting Shauna on the shoulder as she sneaks a look over at you. "Whoops," she mouths.

Jackie may have forgotten about Shauna stalking you, but you certainly haven’t. You think about it sometimes, no matter how content you are with the two of them. The murders you forgave easily enough, but the memories of how you felt the first time you caught sight of those photos Shauna left lying around for you remained vivid.

It’s not that you still hold it against her, but you can’t force yourself to forget it the way you know the two of them would have preferred. Another item on a long list of ways that you’ve been failing them recently. The best you can do is squeeze Shauna’s shoulder, but she moves out of the touch as secretly as she can. Which means not very, but it's enough for Jackie not to notice. Only because she never thinks to look.

Jackie walks off toward the window, leaving you and Shauna to stare at the pictures. Which soon means just you, as Shauna pulls the chair away from your desk as she takes a seat.

Shauna won’t quite meet your eyes when you find her. She’s staring intently at you, but her eyes are focused just below your chin. You shift uncomfortably, fixing the way your shirt sits on your neck to hide the fading mark her teeth had left. Shauna’s eyes flick away, heading right toward your shoes sitting abandoned by the door.

The shoes that are caked in mud from your late-night adventure. The shoes that were clean when you went to bed last night.

“Hey,” Shauna prompts, head resting back against the wall as she turns to Jackie. “Did it rain last night?”

Jackie hums, one finger holding the blind up as she peers through it. “Looks like it. Sidewalks wet. Why?”

Your heart is pounding in your chest. Is this what dying feels like? Is it what Mrs. Loomis felt like when you sunk that knife inside her? Your very first kill, the moment you officially decided to join the two of them. That’s what cemented your place in this relationship, and that same feeling was what had you sneaking around last night.

Shauna’s caught you in a lie, though you hesitate to call it one. Not saying anything wasn’t exactly the same as lying to her about your whereabouts, no matter what she’s thinking. You could tell them right now, and it would be over with. After everything, they wouldn’t even be that mad at you, only that you went out alone and put yourself at risk.

But that would mean admitting that you have failed at something yet again. A part of you, no matter how deeply hidden, fears that this will be what makes them realize how useless you’ve been lately. If they realize that they can do it without you, if they remember that they once did, you aren’t sure what place that leaves for you.

“Oh, nothing. Just curious, is all.”

It felt like a threat, even as dismissive of the whole thing as she seems. You wonder why she’s not calling you out on it right at this very moment. You’re not naive enough to think that she doesn’t have some kind of plan rolling around in that head of hers; she’s too smart not to have an angle, but you can’t grasp why not now. Earning Shauna’s loyalty over Jackie was rare, simply based on how much on the same page they usually are.

So what gives? It’s a question you’re going to have to learn to live with for now, because Jackie’s turning her full attention back on you.

“She was in our room,” Jackie says.

“While we were asleep,” Shauna grumbles angrily. She stands up, pulling her shoes on and storming right out.

Jackie shoots toward the door, but you stop her with a hand on her chest.

“What are you doing?” She asks, trying to get around you but stopping when you hold onto both of her shoulders. “We can’t just let her go.”

“We do. Rather, you do.” You say it with your chest, knowing your confidence is what Jackie needs right now. She doesn’t need to know that you aren’t actually feeling it. “You go get ready. I know you’re meeting with her later.” Your distaste slips through despite yourself. “I’ll go find Shauna.”

Jackie hesitates, looking like she’s poring over every inch of your words to find a flaw in your reasoning.

“Okay.”

You squeeze her shoulders before following Shauna out the door, already sure of where she’s gone.

**

You rap your knuckles against the door to the study room, slipping in a moment later. The kind of knock a parent always does, more of a warning that you’re about to enter than any real search for permission. You consider yourself welcome in any room one of them was in, and you know they more than feel the same. Jackie hardly looks up when you enter, just a brief smile when you nod at her unspoken question.

Shauna wasn’t hard to find. She never really is, even as often as she tries to run away from your problems. It was almost like clockwork, really. She says something spectacularly mean and then storms off. Luckily for you, she’s skipped the former today, but her follow-through on the latter was predictable. You couldn’t convince her to come meet with Jackie and Misty, but you also didn’t try all that hard.

No reason that you both needed to suffer through the Quigley. That woman could drive you to drinking without any conscious effort. But right now, as you watch her and Jackie fill up that whiteboard with theories on Lottie’s killer, you can appreciate the things that she brings to the table.

Jackie seems content to watch Misty cycle through different theories, each as crackpot as the last. Not that Jackie’s are all that more coherent, but she’s your girlfriend, and you’re legally required to act otherwise. Misty’s are free to criticize to your heart’s content, which you do. Loudly.

“Are we still sure that it wasn’t Y/N?” Misty whispers, loud enough that you can hear it. You aren’t sure if you’re meant to hear it or if she was really just that bad at whispering. Right now you’re willing to bet on either.

“Yes, Misty,” she says firmly. Jackie’s smile is strained as she glances back at you, a silent reprimand for poking holes in all of Misty’s theories like she wasn’t hiding a smile throughout it. You hold out your hands innocently, but Jackie doesn’t buy it for even a second. You duck out of the way, already anticipating the marker she throws at your head.

It goes way wide, but you can never be too careful. Shauna never would’ve missed, but that was the difference between them. It’s comforting to know that she’s still as predictable as she’s always been, even with everything else that’s been going on in the last two weeks. As much as things have changed, Jackie herself hasn’t.

Misty hums in acceptance but can’t stop the suspicious look that she throws back at you. Misty’s already decided your guilt, but luckily for you, no one else seems to buy into it. You’re surprised that she hasn’t started tailing you around yet. You’ve been looking everywhere for that poodle hair trailing behind you. At this rate she might catch that faker Ghostface following you before you do. You might consider it a win if Misty wasn’t so likely to go to the police instead of you. 

All three of you would sleep better knowing that she was dead after she went as far as to sneak into your room. The notes are enough to kill her for, but the pictures… Man, the pictures.

You watch absently as Misty puts up nearly a dozen photographs, connecting the lines between them and explaining the evidence found at each crime in detail. Both in Wiskayok and here at the college. It’s a little concerning, in all honesty. She has so much evidence for each individual case you can’t help but worry where on earth she got it all. 

With this many details, she must have gotten it from the police somehow, but you can’t imagine how. She’s making connections before your eyes that the police themselves missed. It’s making you nervous, but there’s not much you can do about it now.

Jackie’s really buying into it, even pausing to write a few things down in her notes she’s been keeping on the case. You can tell it’s putting her on edge too, but she’s better at hiding it than you are.

Misty diligently lays out the rest of the connections, connecting all the lines to a central point. She turns around to look directly at you as she slaps a photocopy of your high school yearbook photo smack dab in the middle of it all. 

You groan, burying your head in your hands. At least Misty’s just as useful as you’ve been lately. Being outplayed by Misty Quigley might have been one embarrassment too many at the moment.

…

You stare down at your feet with an absentminded focus as you walk. They’re cleaner now that you’ve had a chance to get the grime off from the night before, but you keep thinking about Shauna’s face when she saw they were dirty.

Once again you find yourself walking around after dark, but this time aimlessly around campus. Shauna’s knife is still in your pocket. Not out of any real intention to use it, but just a refusal to change into something else when the jacket was right there. You should be on your way home after finally separating from Misty and Jackie after an entirely too long day, even if you did take the chance to start studying while they plotted together, but there’s something that is keeping you out here.

If you knew what it was, maybe you could have gone home by now. You don’t have another suspect lying around. Tai didn’t pan out, and now Melissa. That left Van, which was even more unlikely. That would involve her wanting Shauna, and that was funny enough that it manages to bring a smile to your face. Lately you’ve been going head-to-head with Shauna in a brood off, so the smile feels meaningful.

Misty is always an option, but you think she’s more likely to try to steal Jackie from you than the other way around. Unless she was playing the long game by trying to trick all of you, but that was convoluted enough that it makes your head hurt. Though she does have ample access to all of Jackie’s things to slip the notes in. And she has been in your room before.

Things to think about.

Right now you’re almost willing to believe that Lottie’s the real mastermind behind it and faked her own death, but it would be hard to slip that sort of thing past Jackie with how many actual dead bodies she’s seen. That leaves you with less than nothing. It seems to be how everything has been going for you lately. You’ll be getting used to it soon at this rate.

It was something worth considering, but not anything worth focusing on. It’s somehow even more outlandish than anything Misty or Jackie have come up with, but it helps to pass the time. Any time not spent worrying about the likelihood of your impending murder was time well spent in your opinion. Shauna would consider it a waste of time, but that’s why she holed up in your dorm writing sad poetry all the time and you didn’t.

The thought of Shauna makes you smile, even if it stresses you out a little as well. She’s alone in your room right now, and you can only guess what she’s up to at the moment. You hope she’s not tearing the dorm up looking for her knife as you walk around campus, but if she did, it’s your fault. A lot of things seem to be. You want to go home to her, but you’re afraid she’s going to confront you about what she saw.

“Hey,” says a nervous voice just over your shoulder. The familiarity of it is the only thing that stops you from drawing the knife. The familiarity of it has you considering drawing it anyway.

“Mari,” you acknowledge, turning on your feet to watch her approach. 

The alley was familiar: the same one you let Shauna pull you into back when things felt so much simpler. It’s almost fitting that you would run into Mari here, a blast from the past that you’ve been doing your best to avoid like the plague. It’s not even like Mari herself was so intolerable; the sight of her just brings up things you would rather forget.

It’s the only thing you’ve done that you feel a twinge of guilt for. Setting up Travis back then, all the way at the beginning. Irrational, is what it is. Stupid. You’ve done so many worse things since then, but that’s the one that still manages to stick with you. Bouncing around in your head when you would rather it didn’t.

“Funny running into you here.”

“Why did you say it like that?” You ask bemusedly.

“Wow, you’re so good at this. You got me.” She holds her hands out placatingly. “I saw you leaving the thing for Lottie. The memorial, or whatever.”

You didn’t remember seeing Mari there, but you weren’t exactly looking for her either. Was there not a single other college in New Jersey that your teammates could go to? The whole thing was a blur, but you can’t remember doing more than following Tai and Van around until it was socially appropriate to leave.

“And you’re here for?”

“I just wanted to talk to you, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I know, okay,” Mari says, rolling her eyes. It looks like there’s more she wants to say but manages to choke it down anyway. Whatever she has to say must be important. “I just wanted to say that I was sorry back then. For doubting you, or whatever.”

“Thanks, Mari,” you say. It comes out awkwardly, but you mean it all the same. You’re surprised that she manages to say it at all, let alone with so much naked sincerity. It’s sort of touching, in a roundabout way. It’s not like she was the worst of them back then. You hardly even think about her anymore, and you rarely even did back then.

“I mean, I guess they got the wrong soccer player back then, right?”

You tense at her words, that easygoing feeling disappearing just as quickly as it came to you. Mari seems to pick up on that much, but for all the wrong reasons.

“Since Jackie was taken into the station and all,” she continues. “Even you never had to do that, and they practically found you with a knife in your hand.”

“Jackie didn’t do anything.” You stress the last word, fingers tightening around the knife in your pocket without much thought. You hardly even notice that you’ve done it, too focused on giving your best Shauna-esque glare.

“Uh, what? She so did. Jackie in Lottie’s room with a knife. The end.”

“Stop it,” you warn. The knife slips out of the pocket of your hoodie, held tightly to your side. With how dark it is out here, you aren’t the slightest bit worried of her catching sight of it. Even if there had been a light, she probably still wouldn’t have noticed with how focused she is on your face. Mari was many things, but observant she was not.

“I know she’s your roommate, or whatever, but you have to admit she’s so guilty.”

Despite the way she stresses the word, you’re not sure she’s actually aware of what she’s implying. Like you said, not all that observant. She could relate to Misty in that aspect, but she might actually kill herself if she knew you were thinking that. Honestly, it might solve a few of your problems right about now.

“Mari, Jackie’s not going around murdering people. Can you even hear yourself talk?”

“They found her in the room with the body,” Mari says exasperatedly. You hate when people talk to you like you’re stupid. You got enough of that back in Wiskayok from the cops, and you aren’t about to start letting Mari of all people do that now.

“Lottie was her friend, Mar. Would you want everyone to think you killed Akilah just because you happened to find the body?”

Mari softens just slightly, enough for you to think you’re gaining some ground before she shakes her head. It makes it all the more infuriating when she speaks next.

“I don’t believe it.”

You throw your hands up in anger, forgetting about what you’re holding. It’s a mistake, but it’s one you realize too late to do anything about it. It’s already in motion before you can stop it. Mari gasps when she catches sight of the knife, taking a quick step back that you’re helpless to do anything but follow her.

“Wait—”

But it’s too late.

The sounds she makes as the knife slides into her torso are going to stick with you for a while. That, and the feeling of the knife scraping against her ribs. 

“Why can’t you ever leave good enough alone?” You whisper.

You look away as you stab her again. And again. Until she stops moving. 

Then you turn and walk home. All you can feel is disbelief. Everything went down so fast that you can hardly even believe that anything happened at all. One second she was alive, and then she was on the ground under your knife, and what was left wasn’t Mari. Would never be Mari again.

**

Shauna’s there to greet you when you creep into the room, your bloody hoodie bunched up in your arms to hide the stain and the knife. You’re more than a little out of it after what you just did, but you’re still put together enough not to make a simple mistake like that. Or you hope you are. The whole walk back was a bit of a blur, but muscle memory has to count for something.

She looks annoyed when you walk in, eyes flickering toward the alarm clock and clearly about to start a fight. All of the fight leaves her when she gets a better look at you, rushing forward to meet you. Shauna runs her hands along your shoulders, squeezing tightly as something anxious crosses her face. Part of her must wish Jackie was here to do the emotional labor for her, but she does a good job of not making it obvious.

The second she looks down, she takes a sharp breath, shaking hands tearing the hoodie out of your hands. The bloody knife clatters to the floor, but Shauna hardly takes notice of it as she tosses the hoodie and slips her hands up your shirt. Warm fingers glide across your torso, the feeling making you shudder as a near-frantic Shauna searches you for wounds.

It’s only when she concludes that the blood isn’t yours that she kneels down to pick the knife up off the floor. You watch as she turns it in her hand, inspecting the details of it. It doesn’t take her long to recognize it for what it is. If she wasn’t so worried about you hiding a wound, she would’ve noticed immediately.

“You took my knife,” she says, but it’s more commentary than an accusation. She sets it down on a desk. “That’s okay. That’s okay.”

“Is it?” You murmur, near tears. It’s a pathetic thing to say, but it’s the only thing you can muster. 

You’re so incredibly relieved that she’s not mad at you for this thing too that it takes a concentrated effort not to sink to your knees in relief. You’re not sure how much of that Shauna picks up on, but it’s enough to have her hands cradling your face as she holds you like you’re something precious to her.

“Of course. Don’t you worry about that, okay? I can… I can always get another knife.” The words normally would’ve sounded pained, but she was so genuine that you know you must look really fucked up to garner this much sympathy.

“It’s your favorite knife.” She had straight out refused to get another one, even when Jackie bought her a new one for her birthday last year. Shauna likes the new one too, but it will never be the one she goes for when she wants one. That damn knife was like her baby, and she’s been known to get snappy with either of you for even looking in its direction for too long at a time.

“It’s just a knife,” she repeats, almost bewildered. ”I promise.”

“God, do I really look that bad?” 

Shauna’s too serious to laugh in your face, but you imagine that she must be thinking about it. All she does is lean in to press a kiss against your forehead, her soft lips lingering against your skin long enough that you can feel the waxy print her chapstick leaves behind. It was almost like a seal. Maybe brand was more appropriate given who you’re talking to. It almost burns either way.

The strawberry one, most likely. It’s been applied long enough ago that you can’t make out the scent anymore, but Shauna always loves to steal Jackie’s chapstick when she’s been gone too long. Something she used to do long before you ever met her whenever Jackie slipped out of her room to use the bathroom. Old habits die hard.

It’s so soft and gentle and so rare coming from Shauna that you wish you could live in this moment forever, wrapped up in her and free from the doubts that have been plaguing you. You and Shauna have been so wrapped up lately in Jackie that you feel like you haven’t had time with her in forever.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Everything has just gotten so out of hand, and I needed to do something. But not this something. Oh God.”

“You have been doing something,” Shauna says, confusion lacing her voice. She doesn’t ask what you did, and you’re not sure how purposeful that is. Does she not want to know, or is she just waiting for you to tell her? You wish she would just tell you one way or another. Just make the decision so that you don’t have to.

You laugh wetly, but Shauna wipes away a tear with her thumb before you can reach for it. It makes you so fond of her that you can hardly stand it. She can be so sweet when she wants to. You adore her so much.

“Have not,” you argue. “I just keep fucking everything up. You and Jackie are doing everything, and I’ve just been so useless, and I wanted to do something. But I just fucked it up again and—”

“Don’t you ever say that,” Shauna interrupts sternly. She shakes you as gently as she can manage while still getting the point across. You look back at her with wide eyes, but your lips are sealed. “Is this about that stupid chase?”

You don’t answer immediately, which is answer enough. When you start to say something, anything, she presses a finger against your lips to silence you. You’re so shocked by the whole thing that you follow along without question. Or maybe that was just a quality she brought out in you. 

Shauna scoffs, hands leaving your face just long enough to lead you back onto the bed. It’s not as rough as you’re expecting; none of the usual shoving that accompanied such a thing. She guides you toward the center of the bed, crawling up onto your lap and settling down firmly.

“Shauna, don’t,” you say, your voice coming out quieter than you meant it to. It’s not that you don’t want her like this with you, but you don’t feel like you deserve it at the moment. It’s stupid, and you know that it is, and yet here you are anyway.

“Shauna, do,” she protests, a playful little smile on her face that melts away every bit of fight left in your body. It’s all Jackie, but you love it regardless. Sometimes they blend together in the most unserious of ways.

“Shauna.” You reach for her hips as she leans down, bracing her weight on either side of your head. Her hair falls around her face, the ends brushing against your skin. It’s longer than she kept it in high school. Just enough to make you squirm with each featherlight touch. Sometimes you wonder if she does it on purpose just to torment you, but that might be giving her a little too much credit.

She matches your tone as she says your name, the bed squeaking in protest beneath you as she shifts her weight. In the next moment she’s kissing you, soft and slow and so persuasive that you nearly forget what you were upset about in the first place. It’s enough to have every thought escaping your head like everything you studied just before a test.

Shauna’s so close that you can lose yourself in her, and you do. There’s just her, her lips, and the feeling of her knees pressed into your sides. It’s not how you expected the night to end, but you can’t think of anything better. 

“You’re so infuriating, do you know that?” She murmurs, lips breaking from yours to take a much-needed breath. The words hit far too close to home, and the urge to flee from them is just too strong. But she squeezes you even tighter between her thighs to keep you there, almost as if she sensed it coming. 

You absently slide your hands further down her thighs, feeling the way the muscles flex beneath your fingertips. When you dig your thumbs in, the noise she makes is nothing short of sinful, but for once you haven’t succeeded in distracting her away from the topic at hand. 

She’s evolving, much to your misfortune.

“You’re always jumping to conclusions,” she continues. You can’t quite believe that she, of all people, has the audacity to say that to you, but she wasn’t exactly known for her talent in self-reflection. It’s so perfectly Shauna that you can’t even be that offended about it. You especially can’t be all that offended when she kisses you every time you try to protest.

“I. Do. Not.” It’s a struggle to get the words out, spoken more into her mouth than anything else, but you know that she understands them.

Shauna sits back on your lap with a groan, not shy in the slightest of making her dissatisfaction known to you. You’re halfway toward coming to the conclusion that the whole thing is over with when she grabs at the hem of her shirt and flips it upward. Almost immediately your eyes flick to watch the skin slowly revealed to you before she tosses her shirt to the floor. It’s a struggle not to touch her, so you do.

“What are you doing?” You ask, running your hands along the outside of her ribs. Shauna arches into the touch with a contented sigh.

“You’re not paying attention to me,” she complains, a light touch trailing along your arms. “So I figured this would get your attention. Is it working?” Shuana leans back down, the angle doing amazing things when it comes to highlighting how her bra hugs her chest.

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. Now, you’re going to listen to me when I say this: stop being weird.” She punctuates the demand by guiding your hands to the clasp of her bra. You’ve opened this particular bra so many times that it doesn’t take any brainpower to do so, which is something you’re struggling with as she arches her back.

“Weird?”

Shauna nods condescendingly, and it shouldn’t be as hot as it is. Her breasts in your hands are definitely a contributing factor. “I have enough to deal with right now without you whining, okay? You’re fine.”

It’s so harsh, and yet it makes you feel better anyway. The conundrum that is Shauna Shipman. She’s the only person you’ve ever met that can make you feel better in the process of insulting you. The worst part is you don’t know if she meant the words to be comforting or just to shut you up. The bottom line was that she wouldn’t lie about being upset with you when it came down to your extracurricular activities.

Murder is the only thing she doesn’t keep her feelings bottled up on.

“Look,” she says when you’re quiet for too long. Too long when it comes to Shauna standards, at least. Only slightly longer than Jackie standards. “I love you, okay? Just stop being fucking weird.”

“Shauna—”

“I love you,” she repeats, firmer this time.

“I love you too.”

“Good. I knew you weren’t as stupid as you looked.”

You crack a reluctant smile. Shauna rolls her hips down against your lap pointedly. 

Right.

…

She never asks what you did that night, holding you against her chest even as she sleeps. It felt good to turn yourself off for a while. Inexplicably, the whole thing has managed to make you feel better about the situation at hand. Now the only thing you’re worrying about is Mari. Someone’s going to find that body tonight, and you can only hope that you’ve got it cleaned up enough that it can’t be tracked to you.

It would be just your luck lately for Mari to have told her friends she was going over to see you. Those are the kind of things you don’t think about when you stab someone over a disagreement, and you can’t help but ruminate on them.

The feeling of Shauna's chest rising and falling with each breath is a comfort you're not about to take for granted. After the month you've had, those fingers of hers scratching at your scalp are enough to guarantee your loyalty if she doesn't already have it. It isn't like it's a great hardship for Shauna. 

She has a thing for hair: touching it, pulling it, and twirling it around her fingers aimlessly if you let her. It's harder to keep your hands out of your hair than just about anything else. It's why it made you and Jackie so jealous the first time Shauna tried to cut a chunk of hair off of one of your victims. Tried, being the keyword. She hadn't been dumb enough to attempt it again after being iced out for so long. 

So you have to settle for letting her mess with yours. A small price to pay, all things considered. 

You're not sure how you ended up taking Jackie's spot somewhere between her falling asleep on Shauna and you waking up on her, but Jackie doesn't seem to mind. She's lying comfortably on her side against the two of you, still managing to steal most of the blanket. 

Her apparent acceptance of the whole thing probably has more to do with the arm wrapped around you than anything else. It's like she's holding the two of you down, making sure there's no way you can slip out of bed without her knowing. 

Not that you even wanted to. You want to keep Jackie right where you can see her at all times. Safe from whoever killed Lottie, safe from the police, safe from the tree branch she walked into last night. Right now your bed is the best place to do that. 

It's best practice to let Jackie think that she came up with the idea herself lest she try to actually leave the room by herself. You think she needs a chaperone for the next few days. Or a bodyguard, maybe. Whatever you call the two of you not letting her out of your sight at all. Obsessive? Perhaps. Out of line? Not in your relationship. 

If you thought that Jackie wouldn't manage to gnaw her way out of the ropes, you might just tie her up to keep her here. That was more a Shauna plan than your own—whispered in your ear in the dead of night only to be offended at the sound of your muffled laughter. Shauna might still go for it, and you aren't entirely sure that you would try and stop her. Beyond the obvious benefits of Jackie looking good tied up, it would be a fairly simple solution to a broad problem. 

But then it would bring Misty Quigley to your dorm, who comes knocking if Jackie so much as misses a single class. If you weren't so sure she was obsessed with Jackie, you might think she was the one writing those damn notes, but you can't imagine her threatening Jackie. You? Sure. But not Jackie. 

Plus, Jackie informed you that Misty has excellent handwriting. Probably practiced in the long hours she spends sitting in her room waiting for her next daily allotted Jackie time. At least, that's how you picture it. She doesn't really seem to have other friends, even this far into college. You feel a little bad for her at times. If she wasn't so obsessed with your girlfriend, you think you might like her more. 

As it was, she's a threat. Frankly, she was lucky the three of you promised not to kill so close to home anymore, or she would've been dealt with already by you or Shauna. Maybe even both. 

The thought brings a pain to your chest as it reminds you of Lottie. Poor Lottie, whose funeral was tomorrow. Not her real one, but they were already bringing her body back to Wiskayok, and none of you are able to leave. So you decided to throw one yourself. Or Tai did, and the rest of you just agreed over a fairly tense phone call. You assume the rest agreed, of course; you don't know for sure. She called you first. 

Tai was unsure how Jackie was going to react to it. The news of who exactly had found Lottie’s body has already spread around campus, as that kind of thing was known to do. You wish that those losers had better things to do than to gossip about something that horrible. It’s not like you would’ve cared had it been anyone else, likely even joining in, but you’re known to be hypocritical from time to time. Murder usually does that to a person.

Truthfully, you aren’t sure how Jackie’s going to react to it either. It’s why you haven’t told her yet. She was asleep when you answered the phone call this morning and still asleep when you had slipped back into bed.

The whole thing was likely more of an excuse to get drunk and commiserate together, but you feel like you have to go. Jackie could skip it if she really wants to. You aren’t about to tell her how she should grieve her friend.

What else can you do when you've failed Lottie so totally? 

You can't help but wonder if you were grilling Tai for information while Lottie was walking back to her death. Maybe if you'd found something to implicate Lottie instead, then she would still be alive. You try not to focus too hard on that line of reasoning before you start to obsess over it. 

That wouldn't be any help to anyone. What you need to do is find whatever sick fuck killed her, but it's so hard to motivate yourself to get out of bed. Grief, guilt, fear. Nothing like the fear you thought you knew back home. It was more real when it wasn't directed at you. More crushing that way. 

The thought of something happening to either Jackie or Shauna was terrifying, and it makes you angrier than you think you’ve ever been just trying to imagine it.

Jackie’s watching you now, eyes open just enough to stare back at you as you turn your head toward her. Shauna makes a low noise of protest at the movement, shifting her hand just enough to allow it before she goes right back to what she was doing. Jackie smiles, shifting closer to the two of you.

You want to reach for her, but your arm is crushed between the two of them. She only smiles wider when you try to squirm your way out of it, shaking her head with the slightest movement as she holds on tighter.

“Jackie,” you complain, voice barely above a whisper.

“Nope,” Jackie says, popping the p. She kisses Shauna’s shoulder through her shirt when she huffs out a laugh. That’s fine with you. She can keep you trapped as long as she likes as long as it keeps that look on her face last night from ever appearing again. If you ever see her looking like that again, it would be too soon.

“You’re going to try to hold me down with your noodle arms?” Jackie scoffs, pinching your hip through your shorts.

“She’s not wrong,” Shauna adds, always eager to jump in and pick sides in a conflict. You’re just lucky that she seems to prefer taking your side if it allows her to poke fun at Jackie. She never has quite gotten over that jealousy of hers when it comes to Jackie, even if she lets it out in healthier—for Shauna—ways.

“You’re ganging up on me?” Jackie gasps in betrayal. She likes it, you know she does. A girl as playful as Jackie always is enjoys having it turned on her from time to time, even as she pouts over at you. Shauna doesn’t bother to turn her head to check Jackie’s expression, already knowing what she would find. You, however, are unlucky enough to already be looking in her direction.

Closing your eyes and burying your face into Shauna’s chest doesn’t help to erase the sight of it. That face of hers has to be illegal in several states. If it wasn’t, you would have to get Tai to work on the legislation whenever she got around to finishing law school. At this rate, you might all be dead by then.

Except for Shauna. You’re sure she’s going to outlive the rest of you by miles. Only the good die young, right? You and Jackie aren’t exactly good either, but you still think you have miles to go before catching up with Shauna. She’s so dreamy.

Shauna grumbles as she shifts beneath you, complaining about how hot the two of you are making her. You try to push up on your elbows, willing to allow Shauna breathing room if not Jackie, but no sooner do you start to move than Shauna’s hooking her knee over the back of your leg. You collapse back with a huff of laughter, propping your chin up on her chest. Her cheeks are beautifully flushed, avoiding eye contact with you that only leads to catching Jackie’s attention.

Jackie coos, pinching Shauna’s cheeks between her thumb and index finger. Still smiling even as Shauna swats her hand away, leaning closer to pepper kisses along her jaw in apology. As if sensing your impending complaint, Jackie squeezes your hip before slipping her hand beneath the hem of your shirt. Not to entice, not today, but just to touch. Just to feel your skin beneath her fingertips.

You’re about to join in on Jackie’s fun, edging your way up toward reaching Shauna’s neck, when there’s a knock on the door. You hesitate to even call it a knock when it was more like a slam, like someone pounding their fist on the door, but you can’t think of another word to describe it.

Jackie’s out of the bed before you can stop her, too close to the edge for you or Shauna to react fast enough to grab her before she can. You stumble after her, hitting the floor with a rush of air from your lungs on account of Shauna’s leg still wrapped around you. Even then you manage to reach the door only seconds after Jackie in your rush to catch her.

But she’s not opening the door. She’s staring at something on the floor with wide eyes. Jackie glances back at you before leaning down to pick it up. It’s a piece of paper, obviously slipped beneath the crack in the door. You’re not liking this already. The color drains from Jackie’s face as she reads it, but you’re too concerned to care about being right.

She flips the paper over so that you can read it.

Tell them what you did, or I’ll have to show them.

You barely read the words before you’re pushing past her and out the door, running down the hall after the sound of retreating footsteps. Whoever it is wasn’t quick enough to get far enough down the hall to lose you, so you follow after. 

The benefit of all those years of conditioning for soccer is finally catching up to you. Running down the hallways after them is almost a breeze at this point, even though you haven’t done much running that wasn’t chasing in the last few years.

Whoever it is is clearly a practiced runner, but not one who was practiced at running away from someone else. They make stupid mistakes as you charge after them down the hall, losing precious ground but taking the corners too wide. They obviously didn't know the layout of the building that well, a rookie mistake as far as you're concerned. Their mistakes are your gain right now. 

Unfortunately, it also serves to make them desperate. It shows itself as you round a corner only to meet a fist swinging itself at your face. You barely manage to duck out of the way, staying low as you charge forward and wrap your arms around their waist. Her center of gravity is lower than you're expecting it to be, but you still manage to take her down hard. 

It was definitely a her. You can feel that much. The two of you scramble to get on top of one another, rolling around on the floor as you fight for purchase. If you weren't so mad you would probably be embarrassed at the whole thing, knowing how ridiculous the two of you must look on the floor. As much as you would like for Jackie or Shauna to be here to help you, you're sort of glad they aren't here to witness you flailing around like this.

You manage to get a good few hits in before a foot catches you squarely in the stomach. For a moment you forget how to breathe, wheezing as you let go of her cloak to hold yourself up as you struggle to catch your breath. Whoever it was has a strong right foot. It gives her time to get herself back to her feet, but not enough time to avoid falling flat on her face again when you grab at her ankle.

You crawl after her, but she drags herself away fast enough that you find yourself holding nothing but her shoe. It’s nondescript. Some cheap sneakers that she probably got from a discount store. You’re so angry that you throw the shoe after her, hitting her squarely in the back. 

There’s barely a second to bask in managing to land a hit on her before she’s falling down the stairs. She must have hit every single stair on the way down, but you can hear footsteps pounding down the hallway on the floor below before you manage to get back onto your feet.

You don’t bother to follow her down the stairs, knowing you’ve already lost her. There’s one plus to the situation: you managed to make it out with nothing more than bruised pride. Probably also a bruise. You stumble back toward your dorm room, waving briefly at someone who’s sticking their head out the door.

Where were all those nosy girls when you needed them?

**

Jackie looks up hopefully when you walk in the room, teary-eyed and all. You jerk your head side to side, and she just nods, slumping back against the wall as she crumples the note in her hands. You can’t help but feel like you’re disappointing them, even though Jackie clearly doesn’t seem to blame you for it.

You blame yourself, though. Something Shauna seems to get as she looks up from sharpening her knife to pin you with a stare. It’s not the accusatory glare you’re expecting, the kind you’re always on the receiving end of when you fuck up enough to upset Jackie. It’s commiserating. An understanding you aren’t expecting from her given how clearly pissed she is.

The whole situation is upsetting. Stressful. So you try not to be too affected by the vision that is Shauna staring you down while actively sharpening her knife. A knife that hasn’t seen the light of day in months. Not out of a lack of desire to do so, but just out of circumstances. But circumstances have changed now. Not only indicating Jackie in the killings but also coming back to send that note. Practically bragging about it all.

You can’t blame her for turning back to what she knows. It’s necessary now, if it hasn’t been the whole time. Killing this close to home was a risk, but that woman wasn’t giving you another option. 

Tell them what you did. 

What you did, singular.

You almost can’t believe that someone thinks that Jackie could have singlehandedly pulled off all of those murders. Not that Jackie wasn’t capable of it—the things that woman can do with a knife are second only to Shauna—but it just wasn’t possible if you really thought about it. Several of the murders would have been impossible to do at the same time. That was the whole point of setting up both Travis and Jeff in the first place.

More evidence that Tai was innocent in the whole thing. Whoever’s doing this clearly didn’t think it through. What you still can’t understand is why. They’re not reporting her to the police or even threatening to, so it couldn’t be some bleeding-heart morality issue. Especially given her own murders. It wasn’t even pride, acting like she was somehow better than you. That you’re glad for. Those murders are sloppy. 

It was all about Jackie. The whole thing seems like some kind of fucked-up revenge plan, but you can’t think of anything Jackie could have done to someone to deserve it. Except murder their loved ones, but even then they would go to the police, right? Not threaten to steal her girlfriends? That didn’t even make sense.

It reeked of impulsivity.

Are you and Shuana just supposed to skip into her arms afterward? She doesn’t even know you well enough to know that you’re involved with the murders she’s pinned on Jackie. How well could she really know Shauna to not think she was involved somehow? Even after you get past the obvious personality flaws that practically scream serial killer, there’s still the simple fact that Jackie does not do anything without Shauna. And vice versa. You’re a prime example of that.

Still, the familiarity of the handwriting haunted you. You’ve seen it before, even if you’re having trouble placing exactly where. Jackie’s counting on you to know, and all you can do is draw blanks. It’s frustrating, more so with your earlier failure. It feels like that’s all you’ve managed to do lately. Fail Lottie. Fail Jackie. At the rate you’re going Shauna’s probably next, and isn’t that just terrifying?

“Come here,” you say, holding your arms out. 

Jackie’s arms are still curled protectively around her, but she seems to consider it. There are still remnants of tears running down her face, leaving little tracks that you want to wipe away. Jackie should never cry. It just wasn’t right.

Her steps are silent as she collapses into your chest, burying her head into your neck and just breathing in the scent of you. She slips a hand up the back of your shirt, fingers splayed across your back as she holds you close. You rub her hip through her panties, your thumb tracing across the initials lying just beneath. The motion works its magic as she fully slumps into you with a soft huff of air.

Shuana’s knife clatters against the desk as she sets it down, backing the chair out with a squeal of protest from the floor as she joins the two of you. She presses up against Jackie’s back, who’s suddenly very interested in being pinned between the two of you. You notice the second she makes that realization, the corners of her lips quirking up into something smug.

She deserves to be smug after the last few days she’s had.

You just wish that it could last.

…

You’re just going out to think. Or, at least, that’s what you tell yourself as you slip out of bed after they’ve fallen asleep. 

It was a long day. That’s the kind of thing you have to deal with when someone slips a threatening note under your door at 8 AM after you were out all night waiting for your girlfriend to get back from being questioned by the police for murder. It was sort of hard to relax and do normal college student things after that, but somehow you managed. Mostly due to Jackie’s maniacal need to pretend that everything was normal and just how it should be. Even Shauna was hesitant to break that facade, probably sensing how close to an impending nervous breakdown Jackie is.

So you let her have the day, knowing that what you need has to wait for the night. You feel guilty as you silently grab the knife off of Shauna’s desk, slipping it into your jacket pocket. You slip the door shut behind you, taking a moment to slip on your shoes. It gets you a few weird looks from other girls in the hallway, but you’re more than used to it. Most of these girls have filed noise complaints about the three of you at least once, so it’s not anything that you’re not used to.

You just didn’t want to risk one of them waking up while you were putting your shoes on. Stupid, maybe, but your girlfriends are killers. The only reason you’ve managed to sneak past them is that they trust you so much they’d never think of it. And here you are, breaking that trust. It’s not that serious. Everyone takes a walk near midnight a few times to help clear their heads.

The knife in the pocket of your hoodie and the destination already set in your mind undermine that sentiment, but you can feel that itch under your skin. It’s undeniable as you walk down the hallways, tracing the same path you ran earlier that day. It might have been yesterday by now, but the point was the same.

That itch never existed before you met them. Maybe it never would have if they hadn’t intervened, brutalizing their way into your life in the most violent way possible. You don’t like that line of thought. It means never having met them, so it isn’t worth considering. Regardless, it exists now. That desire to hurt people, even to kill.

The high of it is like nothing you’ve ever known. The comedown is just as thrilling. Blood-soaked hands touching you, slipping beneath clothing like it never even provided an obstacle. Better than even the killing was reveling in the aftermath with the two of them. Basking in the destruction you caused. In the fear.

You’ve limited yourself to petty murders since then in the interest of safety. There was always a threat of getting caught back then, a prevalent and all-consuming risk that something could come between you. Something that could separate you by force. It was safer to frame it as a home invasion gone wrong. Kill some random guy you never met and take a few of his things on the way out only to dump them in a dumpster a town over on your way home.

Things that couldn’t be tied back to you.

As much as you tell yourself that you’re okay with it, as much as you try to force it, at the end of the day it feels disappointing. It doesn’t take the edge off. It barely even scratches the itch. It’s like slapping at it: it’s soothing for a moment, but it comes right back with a vengeance, and you’re a little sorer because of it.

You’re deep in this line of thought when you realize where you are. Or, rather, who you’re following. Melissa hardly seems to notice you walking behind her in the dark, just far back enough that she wouldn’t be able to make out your silhouette in this light. The campus was far too dark, a result of the budget cuts that went to funding the football stadium instead. You guess that was the lamp money.

It provides a perfect cover to watch her as she strolls through campus at night unafraid. You’re not sure if it’s bravery or if she’s really just that naive. You think it might be both. Melissa was always braver than people give her credit for, if only they bothered to dig slightly beneath the surface. Jackie and Shauna never have, and they certainly wouldn’t now that you’ve befriended her. Too jealous for their own good, those two.

They laughed it off when you suggested it could be her. Even Jackie hadn’t taken you seriously, and she still had Sarah Michelle Gellar in her top five suspects. 

Melissa’s spot on the suspect list was never all that serious, according to Jackie, and Shauna just laughed in your face. But they don’t know her like you did. They’ve never even bothered to try and see beneath the surface. You do think it’s something she may be capable of, but what you can’t figure out is how Jackie plays into it.

Threatening Shauna, you might have understood. Not accepted. No, you would’ve come down just as hard, but at least that would’ve made sense. Shauna was abrasive and in your face. You didn’t want to say that she was asking for this kind of thing, but between the two of them, she was definitely the one more likely to invite this sort of thing.

Judging simply on a surface level, Jackie was nice to everyone. She never has a bad word to say to someone’s face and usually played good cop to Shuana’s perpetual bad cop.

You don’t deserve them. That’s what that first note read. The more you think about it, the more you start to wonder if it was actually about Jackie at all. Deserve was an interesting choice of words. Deserve was the kind of word you used to cover up jealousy. They didn’t deserve what they had because it should be mine.

If she just wanted to hurt Jackie, she could have just killed her by now. You hate to even think it, but she’s had plenty of opportunities to do so. She managed to get close enough to Jackie to slip a note into her textbook. If it was about revenge, that was her golden opportunity. So her motivation must be something else.

Them. You and Shauna? Who would want the two of you badly enough to kill for it besides Jackie? It’s not like Shauna was a social butterfly, so you aren’t even sure how this mystery woman would have met her in the first place to want her so badly. You’re barely let out of your room as it is, fighting with Jackie for every inch of space you’ve had to forcefully carve for yourself through the years.

You just can’t decide where you met her. Unless you didn’t meet her. It was entirely possible it was some random stalker that got obsessed with you after seeing you on the news back then and again now. But you didn’t think so. They know just a little too much to not be entrenched in your life somehow, some way.

Where, where, where? The question of the hour.

Luckily, it doesn’t really matter anymore. You’ve got your mind set on what’s coming next. You’re not sure what it is about Melissa that has you so set on her guilt, but you can’t let the thought go. You should let it go. It’s not the first time you’ve accused one of your friends of being a killer, and you’re already going zero for one. You should wait, you know you should, but you can’t.

If you don’t take a chance and you’re wrong, you’re not sure what could happen. It’s not like you’ve never killed innocent people before. Anything that allows you to protect the two of them. And lately, just for fun. It’s something that you can live with if everything went wrong. You like Melissa, but not that much.

You were useless in that chase and even more useless in that police station the night before. Someone’s been threatening your girlfriend, and you’ve been doing jack shit about it. It’s time for that to change. You can’t just keep sitting around and feeling powerless. That’s not who you are. You aren’t that scared girl who ran away from them in the woods anymore.

This is how you take your power back: you take out the threat all by yourself. Afterward you can slip back into bed and treat yourself by cuddling up to your girlfriends, knowing that everything will be just fine after. 

You steel yourself for what you have to do, gripping the knife tight enough that your knuckles start to go white. You speed up behind her, starting to cut through some of that careful distance you’ve been maintaining all this time. Exactly what you’re going to do when you catch up to her you aren’t sure, but you know that knife in your pocket is going to come into play.

Without the mask, you almost feel naked doing this so publicly, but you just have to wait for the drunken witnesses stumbling down the street back to their sorority house to get far enough away that you can strike, and it’ll all be over.

The worst part is you don’t even know where she’s going. Why would you? You never really pay all that much attention to Melissa beyond the occasional lunch and the study sessions she drags you along to. Begs for your help was more accurate, but you’re trying to be generous. No need to degrade her memory now that you’re about to kill her. You could give her that.

You carry a childish hope that you’ll watch her do something suspicious enough that you can justify what you’re about to do to her. You’ve killed a lot of people in your life, but you’ve never killed a friend before. There’s a first time for everything, but it’s a line you never thought you would have to cross. Willingly or otherwise.

Then your question is finally answered as she walks up the steps to a familiar building. It’s another set of dorms across campus from yours, but you know exactly where she’s going. You silently come to a stop, hand still gripping the handle of the knife hard enough that you can feel every individual groove beneath your fingers. 

You got so deep into your own head that you managed to miss your chance tonight. You could have cursed yourself if it wouldn’t have been a colossal waste of time on top of your already wasted night. That’s all you’ve been doing lately. Wasting time.

You watch her throw her arms around Gen as she walks out to greet her, hugging her hard enough to take her off her feet as she twirls her in a circle. The two of them laugh, too caught up in one another to notice you as you step out of the shadows to get a closer look. She walks into Gen’s dorm building before you turn on your feet and head back home.

Melissa was dating Gen.

Her big secret was the most obvious fucking thing on the planet. Truthfully, you hadn’t even realized it was a secret. It’s something you ruminate on the entire way back to your dorm, grateful to have something to finally overpower that intense dread and hopelessness that’s been plaguing you lately.

You wince as the balled-up straw wrapper strikes you right between the eyes, falling down your nose and to the table to be swept away by an errant hand. Van’s grinning when you reach up to wipe a speck of her spit off your face, the straw, her weapon of choice this afternoon, falling from her lips guiltily.

Or at least that’s what she wants you to think. You’re surprised she’s ending up behind the camera when she’d be quite talented in front of it. Maybe that guilty look of hers would fool you if it weren’t for her eyes, bright and full of mirth. You roll yours, glancing over at Tai in warning. Van’s jaw drops in offense at the barely concealed threat, shaking her head ruefully before dropping her straw back into her drink.

Zoning out in the middle of the first lunch all of you had managed to attend in the last few months wasn’t your best look, for sure, but you didn’t think it meant you deserved to be pelted by spitballs. Then again, Van would turn on you for lesser offenses.

She always manages to be on your side when it counts. Which is why the thoughts running through your head are so disheartening. You don’t want to believe the things you’re starting to suspect, but you also can’t deny that the evidence existed for it in the first place. 

Not now.

You’re sort of shocked Van managed to make it in the first place. She and Tai had been the main holdups in getting the group of you together in the first place, with the whole refusing to show up at the same place at the same time thing they’ve been doing lately. You aren’t sure what all that is about, too afraid to ask either of them, knowing how they always band together when questioned.

It was a trait you appreciate and one you employ more often than most.

You nudge Jackie with your knee, who responds in kind, biting at the end of her straw as she gives you a cheeky little smile. It almost makes you blush, as stupid as that feels to admit. She’s been so distant lately—as distant as someone like Jackie could even be—so any moment of levity with her has to be treated with the reverence it deserves.

It’s not even like Jackie was physically distant. In that regard she was closer than ever, practically living on top of the two of you. 

Shauna was close to her breaking point with that, and it was only your repeated reminders of your apparent stalker that could calm her down. Usually Shauna enjoys having all of your attention, but you think the stress is getting to her too. An overstimulated Shauna was never a good thing for anyone.

But emotionally, it was a different tale altogether. Jackie’s been quieter, almost stuck in her head without your prompting. Today was a good day with all of your friends—yes, even Misty Quigley, who slipped her way into the table without a single invitation to lunch. 

You’re sure Jackie probably invited her behind your back, but that’s none of your business. As long as it keeps the smile on her face.

Shauna was even having a good time, a smile on her face that’s been a rarity outside the safety of your dorm room. She’s let Tai grow on her. That fucking loser.

“I’m just saying,” Van says, joining the conversation and interrupting Melissa mid-sentence. “That I Know What You Did Last Summer was the lamest comparison you could have made.”

Lottie watches the exchange fondly, bringing another fry to her lips as she slowly eats her meal. Not nearly as fondly as Tai is as she watches, head braced on her palm with an expression as close to adoration as she can manage.

“It is not,” Melissa protests, leaning back in the booth and folding her arms across her chest. She’s aiming for defiant but mostly lands on sulky.

It has the unfortunate side effect of pushing her hat off as the brim catches the wall behind her. Shauna snickers under her breath, which quickly turns into a cough as your elbow finds its way into her stomach. 

Melissa’s cheeks are flushed as she continues. “The murders are obviously connected to what happened back home. Just like the movie.”

“The murders that all happened during the school year?” Tai asks, earning a high five from Van.

That’s what they’re talking about? You were right to zone it all out.

“It’s summer somewhere.”

“Still,” Van says, shaking her head in disappointment. “In a world full of slasher movies, and you go for that one? It’s not just boring, but it’s uncreative.”

Melissa shrinks back in her seat, barely noticeable if you didn’t come to know her as well as you have. You try to seem reassuring as you meet her eyes. It works better than you thought it would. She sits right up, regaining whatever confidence she lost.

“What would you pick, then?” Lottie asks, taking a moment to steal one of Shauna’s chips when she looks over at Van in interest.

Jackie’s eyes narrow at the action, her lips pursing in consideration. Deep in thought, maybe, about where exactly Lottie was moving up on her little suspect list. Her crime? Being in Shauna’s general vicinity.

“Easy. Slaughter high, Final Exam, Stab, Graduation Day, Pieces, House—

“We get it,” Tai interrupts. Van looks around the table as if to say, You see what I deal with?

You’re just happy to see them having fun. Everyone seems to be, which is a first lately. With everything going on, the whole atmosphere of the campus has been glum. More so than it was back then, with far fewer murders. There was just so many more people here feeding into the fear and making it worse. That constant negative feedback loop is stressing everybody out.

It was harder for the group of you. It’s not like everyone knows you, but they’ve put your faces on the news enough lately due to your connections to Wiskayok that you’ve become pretty recognizable around campus. The worst part is when people act like it’s your fault. Like you somehow brought it with you. That wasn’t entirely off base with what you now know, but it’s not like they knew it.

“Melissa didn’t.”

“You sound just like my uncle Randy,” Tai says fondly.

You met that guy once. It was a little strange to consider that guy being anyone’s uncle, considering that he was barely older than Tai herself was. The dynamic always made you a little curious, but you were never nosy enough to ask about it. It didn’t feel like your place. It could be Shauna’s place, but trying to get her to ask Tai personal questions was like pulling teeth. As far as Shauna was concerned, those icebreakers about your major at the beginning of the semester was too personal.

“Your uncle Randy? That guy? I’m nothing like that guy.”

“Those just happen to take place at a school,” Melissa argues. “Not even a college.”

“Still fits better than yours,” Van says.

“Who do you think would be next?” Misty pipes up. 

Everyone stops what they’re doing to look at her. The silence that takes over the table is almost deafening. No one really knows how to answer that question, and those who do are hesitant to express an opinion. 

Shauna, for example, likely already has a list for how your whole friend group would go down one by one. It might even be a destressing activity. Her version of sudoku. You’ll have to ask her later to find out exactly how she would take them out. It could be fun.

Tai and Van share a look, snickering quietly to one another about whatever Tai says under her breath. Something mean, you’re sure. It’s what the two of them did best. Van presses her face into Tai’s shoulder, shaking with silent laughter as Tai herself struggles to keep a straight face. It must be that pre-law attitude that saves her, because she’s riding the edge.

Lottie looks interested at the question, nodding along thoughtfully as she waits for an answer. She’s treating it like a legitimate question, because of course she is. At this point you can expect nothing less.

Melissa full-on laughs, quickly stopping when no one else joins her.

“What?” Misty prompts as the silence continues. “It’s a legitimate question. How else can we prepare for the future when none of you want to prepare for the inevitable?”

“Melissa,” Van answers immediately.

Melissa shoots up in her seat with an offended gasp. “Unbelievable. I would not die first.”

“You so would,” Shauna agrees.

“Be-liev-able,” Van says, shrugging. She points her fork at Melissa. “Sometimes the truth hurts to hear, but it doesn’t make it any less true. You would so skip towards the killer because you heard a suspicious noise in the dark. Probably with a Who’s there? so that everyone knows you’re about to be next.”

“No offense,” Tai offers, clearly full of offense. Shauna laughs, the sound making Melissa throw her hands up in frustration before glaring weakly around the table.

“Jackie’s probably the final girl,” Van decides, eyeing her critically. Jackie tenses in her seat, spoon halfway up to her lips. Usually an enjoyer of attention of all kinds—a firm believer that there’s no such thing as bad press—but it seems she’s finally met her match.

Lottie blinks slowly, still chewing. She swallows and asks, “Do you think?”

Van doesn’t even hesitate. “Absolutely. Look at her. Just needs to darken her hair up a bit, and she’s golden.”

You grin, unable to resist the urge to ask, “Don’t you have to be a virgin—”

“Okay, enough,” Jackie interrupts, elbows on the table as she leans forward to talk. “We’re not actually in a horror movie, guys. No one’s getting picked off one by one.”

If only that was true. None of those murders has breached the happy sanctuary that college has provided you, but surely it was only a matter of time at this point. Things have a tendency of going south eventually, just by nature. Karma, maybe, for the life you’ve been living. 

Shauna squeezes your thigh beneath the table, rubbing her thumb back and forth against the seam of your jeans. A little flirty, but you take comfort in it anyhow. She has a way of surprising you, always managing to know when you’re starting to feel a little glum. 

“Says the one with a murder board,” Shauna mutters, taking a sip of her drink to disguise the verbal slip. It works on no one. You know a cheer-up attempt when you see it. Too bad she has to throw Jackie under the bus to achieve it.

“A murder board, Jackie?” Van asks, utterly delighted by the whole idea. Her face is lit up like a child on Christmas morning. “Did you go and buy out Joann’s?”

“Actually, now that you mention it, I did hear about someone running down the hall with armfuls of red yarn,” Tai says. Van grabs her arm, squeezing affectionately.

Your eyes narrow in on the motion. It was oddly lovey-dovey considering how much they’ve been fighting lately. Maybe they are just making the most of lost time, but you aren’t sure. Is this really what it’s come to? Eyeing your friends up like they could turn on you at any moment? You don’t like the things that note is making you feel.

Jackie scoffs, a flush rising to her cheeks as she looks away. Defensive and more than a little irritated at Shauna for putting her in the position of explaining herself. “Someone has to do something.”

“Don’t worry, everybody,” Van declares. “Inspector Faggot is on the case. We’ll get this freak in no time.”

That sends a burst of laughter around the table. Jackie manages to crack a smile at it, even as annoyed as she seems with the lot of you. When you look up, you find Misty staring at you, looking disappointed in you.

What? You mouth, but Misty just shakes her head. You don’t want to ask.

“Jackie’s doing what she thinks is right,” Lottie says, but even she’s barely holding back from more laughter. That was probably the least helpful thing she could have said, but you have a feeling she already knows that.

Lottie always toes the line between knowing a little too much and being utterly clueless. It was a balancing act that you aren’t entirely sure how she manages. There’s more to her than meets the eye, and there was certainly a lot of that.

“You need to stay out of Jackie’s business,” Shauna says. 

You want to remind her that she’s the one who outed Jackie’s business to the table in the first place, but Jackie looks so smitten at her interruption that you have to keep it to yourself. For now. It’s always fun to poke at Shauna when there are no witnesses to receive the brunt of her ire. When you can shape it any way you want it.

And you want it.

Van boos, tossing a fry in Shauna’s direction that you snap out of the air. You catch her eye as you eat it. What’s looking back at you is exactly what you would expect, down to the quirk of her lips and the impressed amusement as she tosses another. 

But you wonder.

**

Shauna catches your arm on the way out, a question on her lips that she doesn’t verbalize. Can’t verbalize, not with the rest of your friends in various stages of leaving. All you can do is tip your chin in acknowledgement, leaning down to press your lips against the side of her head. It earns you a suspicious look from Misty, whose eyes land inquisitively on Jackie, who just smiles at you.

You walk at a casual pace until you’re sure you’re out of eyesight of Misty and Lottie, who are still meandering around the table demanding Jackie’s attention, before breaking into a run. It’s an embarrassing fact of life around campus that eventually you’ll be the one running around instead of making fun of the other guy.

It’s not like you’re late. Really, there was no time limit on this kind of thing, but you feel the pressure of a clock regardless. You slow down into a stroll as you catch sight of the two of them again. Tai and Van walking down the sidewalk together, their arms brushing but not daring to get much closer. 

You look away as they say their goodbyes at a crossroad in the sidewalk, Tai heading back to the library to cozy up with whatever musty textbook she felt most at home with while Van went back to their room to pass out. It’s not like you actually know. It wasn’t something that you had thought to ask at lunch, but knowing them the way you did, it felt right. Van was almost a certainty, given the way she was up all night filming.

You’re just glad they separated. It’s easier that way without having to juggle talking to both of them. Taking away their power to talk circles around you by way of subtly making fun of you back and forth. Confronting Tai like this wasn’t something you wanted to do, but it was something you needed to do. Anything you say to her will probably make its way back to Van, but the thought of dragging her into it felt unnecessary.

Jackie hadn’t thought much of it when she found Tai’s name in her TA’s appointment book. That was just like her. Refusing to believe that one of your friends could be a part of something like that. Despite the fact that the three of you were heavily involved in the murders yourselves. But you weren’t as convinced of Tai’s innocence as she was.

It’s not like you thought Tai was involved in the note Jackie received. You can’t imagine Tai’s attention going to anyone but Van. It’s been that way since you all joined the team freshman year. There was Jackie-and-Shauna, and later there was Tai and Van. That wasn’t a connection that got broken for something as simple as wanting you or Shauna.

She has to know something. Tai was, after all, the last person to see him alive before he died.

That was a hard fact to swallow. One that Jackie refuses to see the implication of. You can only guess how Shauna will react to the news—that’s why you still haven’t told her. Jackie didn’t like it, but she agreed, albeit reluctantly. Your argument on Shauna’s temper had finally made her give up and give in.

She still doesn’t like it, but neither do you. You don’t relish the idea of keeping secrets from her, especially knowing how it has a tendency of blowing up in your face. 

Exhibit Tatum.

Shauna just flies off the handle all the time. Usually you can view it with a much fonder eye, but this sort of thing involves a tact that she’s not aware exists. Jackie would be a better choice; there’s no doubt about that. 

Her hesitance to have people not like her is working against you in that avenue. So here you are, the last one left to ask the questions no one else wants to.

“Did I forget something, or did you finally snap under the pressure of dating Jackie and Shauna and decide to actually commit those murders?” Tai asks, waiting on the sidewalk for you to catch up to her.

You smile sheepishly at her as she falls into step beside you, but she just shrugs, shoving her hands into the pockets of her too-large jeans. You think they might be Van’s, but that rarely mattered to either of them. To Tai mostly, who lives to possess half of Van’s wardrobe at any given time.

“There’s no pressure,” you argue absently, more to an instinctual need to defend them than any actual belief in the words. Maybe you didn’t snap under the pressure, but they sure as hell talked you into this whole mess in the first place.

“They’re not here to hear you.” Tai drops her voice to a whisper, nudging you with her elbow. “Personally, I think you’re a candidate for sainthood any day now.”

“Tai.”

“What? Shauna’s my friend, but even I wouldn’t want to date her. Add Jackie’s general air of neurosis, and it’s got to be a ticking time bomb.”

That… wasn’t entirely untrue. Sometimes you really have to take a breather and remind yourself how much you love your girlfriends to get through the day. It was none of her business, though. Even if you’re about to insert yourself heavily into hers.

Huh. Maybe you should be more lenient.

“I didn’t come here to talk shit about my girlfriends, Tai.”

“No?” Tai feigns shock, her easygoing attitude turning into something much more serious. “You don’t say?”

“I’m sorry,” you say.

She nods, readying herself for your line of questioning. Her body closes itself off, shoulders up and braced for an attack. You hate seeing her like that. Hate making her feel like that. If you could sleep at night without asking, without knowing for sure, you would. But you need to know. For Jackie’s sake if nothing else.

“What Shauna said earlier, about Jackie investigating the murders?” Tai smiles as you speak, probably remembering Van’s earlier comment. You can work with that. “It’s just, Jackie stole her TA’s appointment book. He kept it all on paper, see?”

You can see the moment the implication lands. Her hands leave her pockets to brace across her chest like armor, and her smile becomes strained and defensive. Worst of all is the air of betrayal as she comes to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Suddenly there are hands on the collar of your shirt, pushing you back into a cropping of trees near the edge of two buildings.

Tai looks around fervently, assuring herself that no one else was close enough to overhear before she lets go. She smooths the edge of your shirt back down before pulling away, crossing her arms again, and tapping her foot against the ground.

“So?” Tai asks. 

She gives herself away with the question, with the significance of her reaction. You’ve always believed that Tai would make an excellent lawyer, and not even in that she was an argumentative kid in a way that always hides a thinly veiled insult. She’s passionate, smart, and a damn good leader. What she’s not is a good liar. Something she needs to work on before she ends up in law school.

“You’re the last person he met before he died.” You don’t say the words with the significance they deserve. It’s a failed attempt to soften what could be a relationship-ending accusation. You want her to know that you don’t think she did it, but the look on her face tells you it falls short. Way short.

“So it must have meant I killed him, then?” Tai stalks forward, making you take an involuntary step backwards.

You may be a killer, but Tai was her own brand of imposing. She’s using every inch of her height in an attempt to make you feel small. You’re embarrassed to admit that it’s working.

“Just like you killed Tatum, right? You were the last one to see her alive, after all,” Tai continues. You flinch at the accusation, and Tai jumps on it with a level of self-righteousness that you’ve come to expect from her. “I believed you. I believed in you. When no one else did. I defended you when Allie called you a murderer, at great personal risk.”

The worst hurt. They make you feel smaller, somehow. That was one thing Tai excelled in. She didn’t often let things come to verbal blows, but she always won them. You saw a lot of Jackie in her in that way. The thought makes you soften even as you want to harden up and shoot something equally hurtful back.

“I’m not saying you killed him, Taissa. I really don’t believe that.”

At least, you didn’t want to. The undeniable truth was that Tai was the last one to see him alive and that her relationship with Van had improved almost overnight. They’ve been arguing for months, and now, poof. Like it never happened. 

Could she have killed him and not the other? There wasn’t proof the two murders are connected beyond the fact that they were both stabbed and knew Jackie. The phone call and the note could be from someone else. That wasn’t Tai. You’d be the last person to judge if she had killed him; if only there was some way to let her know that.

“Then what’s the point of asking?” Tai asks harshly, "Despite the way she asks, she still seems to have relaxed compared to how she was before. Was that progress?

“Someone sent Jackie a threatening note,” you admit. That feels safe enough to share. Tai’s eyes widen, her arms dropping to her side as her brows furrow in concern. “About the murders. Probably just because of the whole Wiskayok thing, but it’s really freaked her out.”

“That’s why she’s been investigating the murders.” It’s not a question, but you nod anyway. Tai seems more thoughtful than angry now, but the hurt doesn’t completely go away. Finally, she sighs. “Yeah, I would ask too if someone sent a note like that to Van. Ask your questions, damn you.”

“Why were you there so late? Seems like an odd time for office hours.”

Tai scoffs, the sound far more bitter than you’re expecting. Did you touch a nerve somehow, or was it just the general state of being questioned that has her so sensitive? You’ve seen her get called actual slurs without looking this upset. It put you on edge.

“He said I failed my exam,” Tai says stiffly, hugging her arms tighter around her body. She looks up, finally meeting your eyes. You almost can’t believe how upset she looks, but when you reach forward to squeeze her shoulder, she steps out of your reach.

“Did you?” You ask softly, letting your hand fall back to your side. You rock back and forth on the balls of your feet, dreading the rest of this conversation. If only that freak left Jackie out of this so that you could be at home right now, sludging your way through an essay that you really should have finished the day before.

“Of course not.” She scoffs. “Have you ever known me to fail at anything?”

You shake your head immediately. “No.” She and Shauna had gone toe-to-toe for valedictorian, and Tai only barely scraped by for the win. Tai failing an exam wasn’t a thing you could see happening. 

That was something that happened to the lesser folks. Like Melissa, who stayed up all night at a party Gen dragged her to and then complained to you about how it tanked her grade. Tai partied, sure, but you’ve experienced firsthand just how intensely she worked at anything involving a grade.

“I don’t—I don’t know how it happened. He must have changed the answers, or something. I really don’t know. They were just wrong when he handed it back.” Tai’s voice takes on a hint of desperation at the end, an unsure tone you’ve never heard from her before. She’s always seemed self-assured, so confident. You almost don’t know what to do in the face of her reaction.

So you do the only thing you can do.

“I believe you.”

Tai sighs, briefly inclining her chin in acknowledgement. “The point is that it wasn’t the first time it had happened. All semester it was one question or two. It started out on homework assignments. I didn’t even notice at first, too concerned with just fixing my mistakes to see that they weren’t.”

All of that studying she’s been doing lately. Van, in the rare times you’ve been able to catch her lately, has complained that she barely sees Tai anymore. It was playful at first but became more serious as the semester progressed. You had secretly believed it was why they’d been so distant lately in the first place. You never could have imagined this.

“Why would he do that?”

“The big question. The same reason a man does anything. He came on to me that night. Said that he could fix my grades. Fix,” she stresses, “like he wasn’t the one messing them up. Like it was a favor.”

“What did you do?” You feel like you’re running an interview, but you’re so shocked it’s all you can do to keep the questions going.

“Nothing. I just went home. I wanted Van,” she admits. “Look, I didn’t kill him. But I’m not going to sit around and act like I’m sad that he’s gone. Sometimes people get what they deserve. He certainly did.”

“I understand.”

“I know.” It seems that Tai remembers Steven just as much as you do.

“I’m sorry for asking.”

“I know you are.” Tai finally uncrosses her arms, punching you hard enough in the shoulder that you have to clench your jaw to pretend it doesn’t hurt as much as it does. “Doesn’t mean you don’t royally suck right now.”

“Fair enough.” You take a step back, feeling like you’ve done something irreparable to your relationship.

Tai never quite gets over slights, even if she pretends to. You know this will linger in the back of her mind forever, even if she never says it to your face. You just hope it was worth it. More than anything, you hope that her story is as true as you want it to be. Please let her have just gone home with Van that night. 

“Wait,” she calls out as you retreat. You come to a stop. “This is between you and me, got it?”

“Got it.”

And Jackie. 

And Shauna.

What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

…

It’s what you think about as you sit in the waiting room in the police station, staring down at the tiled flooring as Shauna angrily paces back and forth in front of you. Jackie was off somewhere getting interrogated, and the thought of it was driving you insane. 

So you mentally go over her notes on the murders, scrawled in her perfect little handwriting that could’ve won her best penmanship awards. It makes you feel close to her, even when she’s across a building alone in a room with detectives and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

It makes you feel helpless. It makes Shauna boil with a helpless rage you haven’t seen in a long time. You want to comfort her, but anything you say to her right now will just be seen as an excuse for her to snap at you. It might help her calm down in the meantime, but the guilt of it always caught up to Shauna in the long run. Right now, you’re better off just watching quietly as she seethes.

Helpless. Useless. Pathetic.

All things that you’ve been feeling a lot of lately. You couldn’t do anything when someone planted that mask at a crime scene. You couldn’t do anything when you received that phone call in the library. And you sure as hell couldn’t do anything when Jackie got that note. That terrifying note that’s put everyone on edge. 

Now this. Another thing you are less than useless at helping with. Lottie was dead. Murdered. And somehow, some way, Jackie’s ended up being the prime suspect. It’s not like she wasn’t capable of it. You’re intimately familiar with exactly the type of violence that Jackie Taylor is capable of, but this wasn’t her.

There was no chance. Hell, she even has an alibi. It wasn’t even with you or Shauna, which was probably the best possible circumstance you could’ve asked for. You couldn’t have set it up better yourself, considering she would normally be in your dorm alone at this time of day. Her group project meeting has really saved her ass, all things considered.

Yet the police still wouldn’t let her go.

You really hope she isn't made to stay overnight. Not because you don't think she would make it in jail—she and those eyes of hers would have her running the place in a week—but for Shauna's sake. Shauna wouldn't make it a night without Jackie, not knowing she was all alone in jail. 

Shauna pretends she doesn't need either of you, but she, more than anyone, would crack under the pressure of being away from one of you for too long. She was a sensitive soul deep down. Deep, deep down. Beneath her murderous rage currently wreaking havoc on your nervous system was the anxiety she refused to acknowledge. 

You’re not actually sure they’ve spent more than a few hours apart since high school, and they barely even managed it then. Those long phone calls when they couldn’t be together for some reason.

The thought of being Jackie-less and having to deal with Shauna’s attachment issues at the same time was enough to have you considering confessing to the crime yourself.

“Shauna,” you say, and she barely even flinches at the sound of your voice. You repeat it again, louder this time, and that finally gets Shauna to stop pacing. Her foot halts in mid-air, halfway through her stride, like she might still bolt off.

Where she thinks she’s going is a mystery, but anywhere feels better than being right here in this waiting room while Jackie’s getting grilled. She’s glaring at you, arms crossed over her chest like you’re in her way, but it’s better than that endless pacing she’s been doing. That animal energy of hers that makes you feel like you’ve fallen in a cage at the zoo.

“What?” Shauna asks sharply. Her whole body is tense, muscles vibrating beneath her skin with the urge to do something. What that something was is probably bordering on a war crime. You appreciate her creativity with a knife, but right now you really need to see some creativity regarding whoever is targeting Jackie.

Her eyes drop to the floor at the equally sharp look you give her back. Shauna shuffles from foot to foot before forcing herself still. Forcing herself to meet your eyes again like it doesn’t cost her some of her waning control she’s using to hold herself together to do so. Her jaw clenches

Always so brave, your Shauna. Even when she doesn’t have to be. Especially when she doesn’t have to be. She just doesn’t know how not to be. You wish Jackie was here. She was always better at dealing with Shauna when she was like this. All that fury boiling up beneath the surface and just waiting for a target.

“Don’t do this.” Not a command. Shauna wouldn’t respond to one, and you aren’t generally the type to make one. Especially not right now when you’re barely holding on yourself. It was a plea, and that’s what makes it all the more effective.

Shauna doesn’t like it. You can tell from the look on her face, the immediate sharp change that follows the words. The softness, the vulnerability. The trust you’re placing in her.

She wants a fight, something that she would know what to do with. You’re sure that’s how that was playing out in her mind this whole time. The fight, each retort already ready and practiced in her head.

That’s what she does best. The thrill of the fight, the feeling of blood on her skin. She wants it so badly right now, but you won’t give it to her as much as you wish you could.

“Why? Because you said so?” Shauna uncrosses her arms, stalking across the room toward you. She leans down, bracing her hands on either side of the chair you're in. So close that you can feel her breath against your face and the lingering smell of her mint toothpaste. “Should I be acting like your little lapdog like you want? Is that who I am?”

The things you would say to her right now if there wasn’t so obviously a camera pointed in your direction. Perhaps you should be reminding her of that little fact right about now, because she looks half a second away from climbing into your lap and doing something stupid. Or, maybe that was just wishful thinking.

There’s something more threatening than sexual about it, but are you even capable of separating the two anymore? Shauna certainly wasn’t, if she ever had been before. She and Jackie have been wrapped up in each other far longer than you’ve been around. That endless echo chamber of violence and pleasure.

“Why? Is that how you see yourself?” You ask. It only seems to make Shauna angrier, but you aren’t in the mood for it at the moment. You grab the collar of Shauna’s t-shirt, balling it up in your hand as you sit up straighter in your chair. What would Jackie Taylor do? “Enough, Shauna. This isn’t the time.”

“It’s the time if I—”

“Jackie needs you to keep it together.”

That’s what gets through to her, more than anything else. Jackie needs her. You need her. She needs to be needed. It’s a perfect storm that ends with her reluctantly collapsing into the chair next to you, her head resting against your shoulder.

“Does she?”

“Of course she does, Shauna. Fuck, she’s being interrogated.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I just keep thinking of her alone in that room being yelled at and questioned and it… It should be me.”

“It shouldn’t be anyone,” you correct, reaching for her hand and squeezing it tightly.

“You know what I meant.”

“I know you’re being stupid.”

“Shut up,” she mutters, but at least she’s calmer.

Now there was only the lingering threat of Jackie being questioned in the murder of Lottie Matthews.

You still can’t believe it. Both that Lottie, of all people, was murdered and that Jackie’s somehow been implicated in it. Everything has gone down so suddenly that you’ve barely had time to come to terms with Lottie’s death.

It’s not like you were ever all that close, but you’ve known her so long that the feeling of loss is undeniable. She wasn’t someone like Allie or Steven, whose deaths barely affected you. Hell, you were happy about both of them after you got over the initial shock.

This isn’t something you think you’ll ever manage to be happy about. There wasn’t a bright side to Lottie going out the way she did. What happened in that room was brutal, and you’ve seen Shauna at work many times.

Every time you close your eyes, you see it again. Jackie, covered in blood and looking so small and so hurt. How sad she sounded on the phone when she called you over, late enough that Shauna had to throw clothes on first as you bolted out of your dorm. That frantic look in her eyes as she waited in the hallway while the EMTs worked on Lottie. 

All to no avail. 

She was dead before Jackie even set foot in that room.

The sheer brutality of it all would’ve read like a love letter to Shauna to anyone who knows her like you and Jackie do. The blood covering the walls, Lottie’s insides on the outside. The artistry of the way Lottie was torn apart and left to die like trash. 

The anger behind it was pure Shauna, and yet even she wouldn’t have stooped so low as to kill Jackie’s friend without at least tacit permission. Which left only one option.

Someone was out there setting Jackie up for murders she didn’t commit. Even the thought of it sounds insane, but it wasn’t unlikely anymore. Not after that note. Lottie’s death meant that you could at least be sure that whoever sent you the note was the one who had been killing everyone around campus.

It also guarantees Tai’s innocence, which is so relieving in this moment it almost brings tears to your eyes. The last thing you need right now is to have to kill Tai in revenge for upsetting Jackie. Then you would have to comfort Shauna in some way too, which you’re sure would’ve involved copious amounts of murder.

Usually you’re game for it, but with everything going on around campus, none of you have really felt all that up for it. That was something you never thought would be possible considering how much Shauna usually fiends for it.

The weight of Shauna’s head on your shoulder is comforting, a soothing balm that helps to calm your racing thoughts. There’s nothing you can do for Jackie right now but wait. 

Wait and think.

Jackie’s essay was found littered among Lottie’s things, covered in corrections and red ink. It was one of her worst, an assignment she forgot about only to remember just in time to jot something down an hour before class started with a hangover to boot. Not her best work, but no one expected it to be.

But the essay hadn’t been handed back yet on account of her professor being brutally murdered. For it to be found in Lottie’s dorm room of all places wasn’t good. Even for someone as unassuming as Jackie looks, with an alibi to boot. Logically, you can understand why they would question her, but you don’t have to like it.

It was a taunt from whoever the mystery note writer is.

You’re going to get Jackie back, and then you’re going to kill them. You say as much to Shauna, who smirks back at you.

“You mean I’m going to kill them?” She asks smugly, keeping her voice low.

“Like you killed Jeff?” You taunt, voice barely above a whisper.

Shauna frowns, rolling her eyes. She never likes being reminded of that little fact. Her killing Coach Martinez was a necessary part of the ruse that allowed Jackie to set up Travis and Jeff for the murders, but Shauna felt that she deserved to kill Jeff the most and still hadn’t let it go all these years later.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Jackie says from the doorway. She’s trying to be strong, but you can see the cracks peeking out from the foundation.

The poor thing is exhausted, and you can’t blame her for it. Finding Lottie like that, no matter how many little spats they got in over her flirting with you and Shauna, has to be rough. You weren’t ever attached enough to anyone they killed to be all that upset about it, but you know that Jackie will be. She’s strangely sensitive considering the number of crimes she commits on a weekly basis. Then to be questioned by the police for hours on top of it into the late hours of the night? You’re surprised she’s as steady on her feet as she looks.

Shauna’s across the room before you even finish the thought, her arms wrapped around Jackie’s shoulders as she hugs her tight enough to her chest to take Jackie off her feet. Jackie squeaks like a chew toy in surprise as she leaves the ground, likely just how Shauna likes her. You don’t mind it either.

Jackie’s expecting you before you even make it over to her, but Shauna won’t let go enough for her to meet you as you settle for wrapping your arms around the both of them.

“This is nice,” Jackie mutters, her fingers tapping at Shauna’s shoulders. “But I think I want to go home now.”

“Sounds nice,” you say.

Shauna doesn’t seem to agree. It’s not like you want to let go of Jackie right now either, but there are better places to go about holding Jackie. Like your dorm room, with a bed and a door to keep out prying eyes. You still haven’t forgotten about the camera.