LACY AND THE GRUDGE

Part 2

Jackie doesn't get the luxury of the full story. The survivors of Flight 2525 were whisked away into individual rooms at the rescue center before stories could be pinned down with matching details, leaving Jackie nothing but white walls and a plain ceiling for companionship.

She knows, though, basic elements. And elements to some were like keys in a lock. An unknown amount of time had passed that she missed and Jackie had been the one to dig herself up out of the ground.

She was dead and now she was alive again. That math sat bitterly against her tongue and made her heart race thinking about it. The other girls had bristled in their silence in the helicopter, sketching out an invisible line between them and her. Jackie knew that she stood somewhere opposite from the others, that each girl was looking into the eyes of a monster. But no one could point a finger and say anything without sounding crazy, so they opted for the bliss of syrupy silence, shuddering beneath rescue blankets, grimy and ruined from their time spent in the wild.

The only person who mattered wasn't there. That detail, that element, was a knife lodged between ribs. She felt that pain every time she breathed, lungs scraping against an unseen blade.

Their bodies were propped up onto wheelchairs and fed into the rescue center, Canadian flag snapping against the wind, each girl vanishing down the rabbit hole of medical chaos. Lotte's tranquil stare met Jackie's before she was hurried into a room, door slamming shut loud enough that it echoed inside her ears.

"Can't believe any of them made it," a woman practically cooed as she dropped a bundle of folded fabric down onto the hospital bed. Jackie's little cousin -who, truthfully, might not be so little anymore- had a fondness for bugs and collected them inside wooden display boxes with their wings pinned wide. She felt like one of his moths, something transparent and colourless, stretched out for somebody else to view. "Strong little girls, right? I don't think I'd last a minute without my espresso maker."

Everyone was moving. Some man was plucking at pages on a clipboard and monitors were being wheeled around. A redhaired nurse dropped down to tug at the blanket guarding Jackie's body with a pitiful smile and Jackie started screaming murder in response, refusing to stop until someone negotiated her down to a pair of basic scrubs instead of the hospital gown. She didn't know where her favorite converse shoes were or what happened to the few things she had after the crash, but the flimsy fabric designed to make her body accessible sent ice water racing through her veins, a fear so bitter it tasted like grave dirt against her tongue.

Scrubs gave her an illusion of control.

Needles pricked her skin and she tumbled into cycles of sleep, dreamless and full of dreams, unaware of the people cycling through to check hourly on vitals, Jackie's heart ticking away on the monitor like any other living, breathing girl's.

Time slowly eased through. The tubes and wires began to vanish, carefully, and she spent more time awake with coherence. Trees waved at her from beyond a narrow window, the wind toying against the pines.

Her craving for sweetness left her crying against the stiff hospital pillow. She could think of nothing else, stuck dreaming about vending machines lining the walls. She remembered the forbidden French fries dipped in vanilla milkshakes post winning games, the little bag of sour gummy worms Lotte kept in her locker. Natalie sometimes had to be bribed into rallying for the cause with a package of licorice, the red kind that peeled apart into tiny strings. Jackie remembered dropping an armful of discounted chocolate boxes on Shauna's bed the day after Valentines because her best friend in the entire world loved chocolate, loved the kind that came wrapped in separate foils and were positioned in neat rows. Jackie's desire consumed her. She thought about it every hour she was awake, every hour that she was aware of being awake.