saltburnt groupchat.

[doped]

YELLOWJACKETS

SHAUNA, MELISSA, MISTY, NATALIE, LOTTIE, VAN, JACKIE the wilderness, it hears us

Guys

Cute!!!

did you catch that??

dinner

shauna gross

You know, rabbits are very social creatures that live in groups!

what's up doc? 🥕

CODING

Comments

[katharma]

[ there’s things that jackie knows she isn’t being told and a weird tension she’s noticed in the times where they’ve been together. part of her wants to ask, but she worries that asking might make things worse.

there’s another part of her that wonders if it’s better for her not to know. ]

Thank you Shipman. I couldn’t pull it off without your help :)

[diarists]

[there is. shauna knows it, feels it between them, heavy and weighty, like a scent in the air she can't quite shake.]

remember the party you threw for the end of junior year? i blew up so many balloons my hands smelled like latex for DAYS.
i could big-bash-plan in my SLEEP by now.

maybe we could take over one of the suites? ours is probably cleaner than nat and travis's. do cake and stuff there, then go wherever?

[katharma]

[ there’s a nagging worry that it might come to a head in a dangerous way eventually, like it had with her. they’re somewhere that’s both safer and more dangerous than the wilderness and they don’t know who’s brought them here or who they’re with yet. but for the time being they’ve decided to stick together and jackie wants to hold onto that.

it can be brought up later, if it needs to be, but right now they have a party to plan. ]

Oh my GOD trying to keep my parents out of the guest room was a nightmare. I still don’t know how we got all of them cleaned up afterward

And yeah sounds good! Travis said there’s an arcade, should we try to see what other rooms we can go to throughout the night?

[diarists]

[the memories take a moment to come back, glimpses of whispering and giggling and staying up all night in the sweetly girlish surrounds of jackie's bedroom, things that had always been the core of who shauna shipman was. but they have to struggle now, to be realer than the woods, the lake, the snowy expanse of winter, the blistering ache of spring.

but they do come back, and shauna laughs aloud, slouched in a chair in the library, thumbs tapping away at her reply.]

it was a MIRACLE we didn't get caught!! especially after randy left a whole bottle of vodka and we had to hide it in your underwear drawer.

like a house bar crawl! there've gotta be other cool places. i'll look around, see if anyone's got a map or something.

[katharma]

[ it had involved a lot of planning, making sure she had her parent's schedule down to a T, and shauna's careful decision of music and movies that would cover the noises of their preparation. not to mention her driving to the grocery story to make the snack run (because the taylors definitely didn't keep snacks in the house, at least not anything that anyone in their right mind would want to eat at a high school party) after they'd left for the weekend. she's pretty sure the cleaning lady had been suspicious, but if she'd known anything she hadn't told jackie's parents. (jackie had made sure to tip her especially well.) ]

OMG seriously he left it right in the freaking game room!!! Fortunately the vodka came in handy throughout the summer.

OK sounds perfect! We should figure out portable stuff too. Snacks and drinks, stuff like that.

[diarists]

[shauna remembers every second of it like a story she's once heard. once upon a time two girls in a beautiful white house threw a party for all their friends and everyone came and it was messy and noisy and riotous and wild, and shauna didn't think to be jealous or choke on her longing once during the entire night. she just watched her best friend glitter and laugh in her pastel dress and snuggle into jeff's arms and cajole nat and lottie into dancing and laura lee into playing beer pong if she didn't actually have to drink it and pretend not to notice when anyone snuck off together (that girl from jv and the transfer student, tai and van, who were always sneaking off, how had they not noticed all this time?).

it's like a fairy tale. it's like a ghost story.]

right??? like how dumb can you BE, i thought conseula was going to find it and i had to pretend i lost an earring in there and she wasn't allowed to vacuum. and then i shoved it up under my sweater and RAN out of there. she definitely knew SOMETHING was up.

oh yeah, can't have a party without that. i dunno if we could get stuff from breakfast...maybe from one of the restaurants?