Love, Blood and Wilderness | YELLOWJACKETS

Chapter 37

"Knock knock!" Misty cracked open the door to the attic. I was finally aware enough of my surroundings to realize where I was.

I looked to Nat, who squeezed my hand assuring me that she wouldn't leave my side.

Misty knelt next to me, inspecting the burnt injury.

"Well, I won't touch it yet, but tomorrow we should probably clean it. Lottie was very smart doing this to you," Misty noted, as she bandaged me up.

"Is she okay?" I asked.

"She's not too thrilled. She's getting a lot of blame for what happened," Nat stated, her eyes shifting to Misty.

"What?" I wondered, nervously, "Why?"

"That's not... That's not true. If anything, she's getting praise," Misty replied.

"I think you should go downstairs and check on the others," Nat insisted, edge creeping up in her voice.

Misty propped herself up and left hurriedly, in a blur of blonde curls. I raised an eyebrow quizzically to Nat.

"Everyone is literally bowing to her to thank her for telling the Wilderness to sacrifice one of us for food. When Lottie tried saying that it wasn't her intentions, people got annoyed and claimed that she started this, that she's the leader and that she should've known the consequences of our actions," she explained.

"Are you getting any backlash for it?"

"No, I guess people feel bad about trying to kill me," Nat smirked, darkly.

"Fuck, what do we do?"

"We? I don't like how they're treating Lottie but I don't disagree either. Lottie's been the ringleader this whole time, she should own up to the fact that she was apart of this plan and that she's the one that's been chatting it up with the Wilderness this whole time," Nat defended.

"I thought you and Lottie were, like, fine now?"

"I don't hate her. We're friends. Even if we're competing for the same girl, I respect her. But she's not a good leader here. If you're going to lead us, own up to your shit," Nat elucidated.

"She didn't... No one elected her to be captain of this sinking fucking ship," I retorted. But I had to admit, what Nat was saying made sense. Lottie was the one who told us to make sacrifices to the Wilderness in order to survive. She was the one who's been communicating with It this whole time.

"We didn't, but I guess the Wilderness did," Nat responded, and I felt her giving into the Wilderness, giving into the idea that maybe it wasn't a result of Lottie's delusions after all, that Lottie was right.

I wouldn't argue anymore, against the Wilderness, against Lottie, against any of it. Uncertainty still crept in the back of my mind, but how could I ignore what had happened? The Wilderness saved Nat, maybe for me, maybe as a result of me begging Lottie to save her. Maybe this was her way of doing that.

Fear lingered in the pit of stomach. I worried that I would receive blame as well for what happened, since I was the reason the whole "death lottery" idea was pitched in the first place. I'm sure that amongst his grieving, Travis resented me right now.

"Fuck Nat, what the fuck are we doing?" I muttered, rubbing my hands over my face, "How did we get to this point? Eating our friends, talking to the trees?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"I'm really glad you're alive."

"Me too," Nat leaned over and kissed my forehead, running her hand through the top of my hair.