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You hold her. You hold her you hold her you hold her you hold her you hold her—distantly someone is screaming. Distantly, you know that someone is you.
“—issa, Taissa, you need to be quiet —"
You hold her.
She is still warm.
“Tai, shut the fuck —"
Someone slaps you, hard, across the face. You swallow your sob, finally focus on Shauna’s panicked face.
“Tai. We need to get the fuck out of here. Melissa’s family will be back literally any second, and there’s a fucking body .”
You hold her.
She is still warm.
“Tai, please. Tai ,” and Shauna lifts her hand like she’s going to hit you again.
“Don’t,” you say, and you move your hand from her back to push your hair out of your eyes. Your hand is covered in blood. Your hand is covered in blood , and it takes everything in you not to scream.
“We need to go, now , Taissa.”
“She’s not a body,” you say, and Shauna looks at you with a sick kind of pity.
“Tai. She’s dead. I’m sorry, Tai, I really, really am but she’s gone. We need to leave before anyone finds us, we need to go now ,” and Shauna’s voice is getting high and panicky.
You hold her.
You held her like this before, as she bled out on your hands, and she lived. She lived , she was torn so to bits that you couldn’t understand how to put her back together, and she lived .
She could be asleep now. She could be unconscious in that hospital bed, breathing unsteady and painful. She could be seventeen, eyes rolled back in her head as a dead girl took a fish hook to her cheek.
“Fuck,” Shauna says. “Fuck, Taissa, if we don’t get out of here now, we are going to prison. Do you understand that? You will never see your son again.”
Shauna crouches on the floor. There is blood, Melissa’s blood, smeared all over her face, her eyes wild. Everyone was scared of Shauna back then, in a way that felt silly to you. You get it now though. You get it as she tries to pry your hands off of Van.
She is still warm.
“You need to let go of her, Taissa,” and she digs her nails into your skin. “There’s nothing we can do for her anymore.”
You press your lips to Van’s head. Under the hospital and the blood and the sweat she still smells like herself. You thought you had lost her forever.
“If you don’t get your hands off me, Shipman,” you say in a voice that only remotely feels like yours, “I will break your wrist. Don’t fucking test me,” and Shauna pulls back.
“Fuck,” she says. You think about breaking her wrist anyways. You think about never letting go.
“Let me make myself clear,” you say and you don’t know where this cool, calm voice is coming from. Or you do. You do and you don’t care anymore if she’s curling her fingers into your jaw and tongue and lips. “We are not leaving without Van. You take a step outside this house without her, and I will kill you, Shauna. Do you understand that?”
Shauna was never scared of you, out there. Never, not even when the other one took your body like this, not even when the others looked at you like you were someone new.
She looks scared of you now.
“Okay,” she says. “Fuck, okay. I’m going to call Misty, okay? Don’t do anything insane,” and you feel the other one drip back into whatever dark corner she haunts, feel her grief howling, reverberating.
You failed! you want to scream at her. What’s the fucking point of you if you can’t keep her safe , but you don’t. You run your hands down Van’s back, you straighten her collar, rub a smudge of blood off of her cheek.
“I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry,” you whisper into her hair, “I’m so sorry, god , I’m so sorry,” and you can hear Shauna on the phone in the next room over, can hear Taissa and won’t let go and Van , and you shut your ears to all of it.
The gaping wound in her side fits under your hand. You can cover it completely, you can hide it and hold her whole for a moment. Your hand is tacky with her blood when you pull it away, and you understand Shauna, understand Travis more than you ever wanted to; you lift your hand, sticky and metallic to your mouth, and suck your fingers clean to the first knuckle.
It is not the first time you have tasted her like this.
It will not be the last—you can feel the blood on your lips, and you kiss her forehead anyways.
You hold her.
She is still warm.