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Van Palmer loves movies.
This is not, like, news to anyone.
She has the plots of every major release from 1990 to 1996 memorized, has seen When Harry Met Sally thirteen times, is a subscriber to the Criterion Channel… she owns a video store, for god’s sakes. (Sure, it’s not a very profitable video store, but it’s hers, and little pieces of it belong to the young kids who come in there looking for a friendly face too, and… she’s getting sidetracked.)
Anyway, Van decided a long time ago that movies were the best kind of love language. Quality time? People can flake. Gifts? Too expensive. Touch? Van gets jittery when most people, save a few, put their hands on her. Plus, going to a movie is quality time, and a DVD can be a gift, and it can touch someone. Not physically, but spiritually, you know?
So anyway, Van’s love language is movies – specifically, movie recommendations. She’s lost count of the ones she’s doled out to people, from customers at her store – young girls with short hair and piercings and nervous hands who are curious about But I’m a Cheerleader and D.E.B.S. – to friends she’s had and lost and had again. Every single surviving member of the Yellowjackets has gotten a movie recommendation from Van at some point, and they will probably continue to get them until they die.
Some of them are stupid – back before, Van told Laura Lee she should definitely go see Basic Instinct as a joke, but she did genuinely suggest sneaking into a screening with Mari, and they had a great fuckin’ time – and some of them are offhand, like knowing the guy who brings Van her paper on Sunday mornings loves horror movies and asking if he wants to borrow her Regal Unlimited pass to go see the new Blumhouse feature on opening night. (Van just… pays attention like that. Besides, the new Blumhouse is about a hike gone wrong, and Van has probably had enough of those for a lifetime.)
Sometimes, Van’s movie recommendations are meaningful. Like, meaningful meaningful.
Van Palmer has never once given a meaningful movie recommendation to Natalie Scatorccio. For two reasons:
One, it’s kind of hard to tell Nat to do anything, even if that thing is as simple as go see a movie. She’s naturally resistant to any kind of influence unless it’s the drug and alcohol kind, and she’s even kind of resistant to that, by now, too. Nat likes to make decisions for herself, and even though her and Van didn’t grow up far from each other, played soccer for almost eight years together, Nat doesn’t trust anyone to tell her what or what not to do.
Two, every single movie Van can think of to recommend to Natalie Scatorccio would probably just ruin her life. Like, she’s not gonna go for mournful family drama because that’s not gonna go over well with a girl who literally saw her dad shoot his own face off. Screwball comedy won’t work because Nat doesn’t laugh at that kind of stuff, but absurdist black humor will probably also get her a disdainful look. She did suggest a Heathers movie night to Nat once, when everyone else was hanging out at the laser tag place after practice and Van and Nat were the only two without the money to go (didn’t matter that Lottie offered to pay for them both, they weren’t gonna take charity, they were stubborn like that). Nat had asked Van to explain the plot to her, then smirked and said “if I wanted to see prissy rich girls ruin their lives and commit social suicide I’d go to Jackie Taylor’s parties.” Which was true, and also funny, but: point stands. Nat’s impossible to find a movie for.
Which makes it even better when she finds one for herself.
Nat shouldn’t even be here, wearing a pair of Van’s track pants and an old flannel, standing in borrowed socks in the middle of While You Were Streaming. Van flipped the open sign to closed a few hours early when the taxi pulled up and Nat had stumbled out, wearing clothes that looked like they hadn’t been washed in months but eyes stubbornly sober.
“Just got out of rehab,” Nat told her in a scratchy voice after Van had let her use the shower. “It wasn’t too far away from here.”
Van knows Tai pays for Nat’s rehab, and also knows Tai probably put Nat in a rehab near Van in case she ever needed someone, and just that, that little bit of team left over in them, it almost makes Van cry. (She fucking misses her team. She doesn’t say it out loud. But she does.)
Nat stares at the shelves of DVDs and VHS tapes, hands flexing by her sides but refusing to touch anything. Like she might mess up Van’s reconstructed life if she comes too close. Reminds Van of when they were kids.
“Want to watch anything?” Van has no idea how long Nat is going to be staying, but figures it will at least be for the night, and she can order a pizza, pop in a movie, that she can do for the girl she used to call friend and leader and, well, other things too.
Nat’s mouth twists uncomfortably. “What, is all you do watch movies?” She isn’t smiling, but her eyes are laughing, anyway. “Do you have any other hobbies?”
“Yeah, not really.” Van comes around the counter to stand beside Nat, following the line of her gaze: Nat is fascinated by the 90s Grunge shelf. Typical.
Van takes in the highlights, trying to figure out what she can suggest that won’t have Nat crawling into a corner, or worse, running out the door like a scared cat, which Nat has an irritating habit of doing when anything resembling feelings enters the chat. Trainspotting? Probably not. Reality Bites? Could do worse, could do better. Van’s fingers hesitate, and then –
Girl, Interrupted.
She grabs the DVD before she can think better of it and gestures with it in her hand. “Come on. Upstairs. Do you still like mushrooms on your pizza?” Nat grumbles, but she follows Van up the stairs, feet dragging.
“Yeah.” A beat. “No pepperoni, though.”
Nat sinks into Van’s ratty old leather couch and accepts the bowl of popcorn she distributes in her lap, and they sit back to watch Winona Ryder single-handedly take over the 90s.
The movie came out a full year plus after they were rescued, but Van would figure Nat has still never seen it, given that a) Nat never really cared about movies much in the first place and b) she’s been in and out of rehab centers for the past 20 years. And when she isn’t, she’s on a bender, so.
But damn, there’s never been a better film title for Natalie Scatorccio than Girl, Interrupted.
Nat watches the whole movie with rapt eyes, barely even removing them from the screen when the pizza comes. She eats mechanically and watches. Van sees her face harden during the scene in Daisy’s apartment, jaw setting in that way Nat has always had that means she’s trying to stop herself from crying. For a second, Van thinks maybe this wasn’t the right movie after all – too close to home, maybe, too much, maybe – but the second the credits start to roll, Nat’s fists are unclenching, she sniffs, and she says “fuck, Van.”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t tell,” Nat says after a long beat of silence, “whether you’re trying to say I’m a heartless bitch or a codependent loser?”
“How about neither?” Van has dealt with too many girls like Nat, then and now, to fall prey to the petty argument. “How about… you’re just kind of alone, and dealing with a lot, and-”
“So is everyone else, and we’re not making each other better.” The face Nat gives Van is inscrutable. Why the fuck did I come here, it would be saying, if Van’s interpreting correctly. But it’s Nat, so she’s never sure.
“The point is, getting better is worth it,” Van says, keeping her face and voice light so maybe Nat will think she’s joking, but maybe she’ll take her seriously too. “Also, maybe don’t keep clandestine diaries about everything everyone you know is doing cause it might be a little offensive.”
Nat scoffs. “Should tell Shauna that.” But she draws the blanket Van keeps on the back of her couch over herself, tucking herself in to the chin, and adds, “wanna… indoctrinate me with something else before I get out of your hair?”
Van grins. Reality Bites is still downstairs. “How would you feel about a Winona Ryder marathon?”
“I’d feel pretty damn good about it, Palmer.”
---
If Van had her druthers, she would not be sitting here recommending movies to Misty Quigley. Actually, if she had her druthers, she wouldn’t be talking to Misty fucking Quigley at all. But here she is. Talking. To Misty Quigley.
She has the landline pressed between her shoulder and cheek, ringing up a regular – high schooler Rachel, so far in the closet she probably doesn’t even realize there’s a light switch, but she borrows Desert Hearts every weekend. Misty has been babbling in her ear for at least six minutes.
“-so anyway, it turned out to be a whole thing with him and feet. Who would have known?”
“Uh-huh,” Van murmurs, waving Rachel, her popcorn packets, and Desert Hearts goodbye (seriously, honey, some self-reflection might be nice). “Misty-”
“So what I’m trying to say is, since you gave Nat some movies she might like, I was wondering if you could do the same for me, you know, give me a list of movies that might go down well on a date.” How does Misty fucking Quigley know what Van talked to Nat about, like, two years ago? Van’s confusion is evident in her silence, so Misty says “oh, and Nat says hi. Say hi, Nat!”
A violent, vulgar grumbling erupts from the background of the phone call. Van makes a face. Why in any of the seven hells would Misty Quigley and Nat be in a car together? Actually, there are some questions Van probably doesn’t want answers to.
“So?” Misty asks impatiently. “Do you have any recommendations for me, Van? I like musicals, and comedies, and things that are lighthearted and nice, mostly.”
“Uh, uh,” Van is still stuck on Misty, in a car with Nat, and nobody is giving her any context for any of this and she honestly doesn’t think she’ll get any? so she says the first musical that comes to mind. “Um, The Greatest Showman.”
“Oh, see, that works great, because I haven’t even seen that yet! So that will be new for the both of us.” Misty’s fake-ass smile is practically audible through the phone. “Thanks so much, Van!”
“Yeah, uh-huh, have a good day, now.” Van hesitates, adds a shaky “bye, Nat,” and hears Nat yell something in the background before she frantically stabs the end call button.
Jesus H. Christ. Hopefully she never has to encounter Misty goddamn Quigley in the flesh ever again. (Famous last words.)
---
At some point while they’re at Lottie’s compound-cult-whatever-thing, Van ends up alone with Shauna Shipman, which is weird because Van has probably never been alone with Shauna Shipman. But they’re all getting wasted (even Misty’s pretty drunk by now) and Van is comfortably warm, relaxing in front of the fire against a log, and trying so hard not to look at Tai that she’s sure it’s obvious exactly how much she wants to look at Tai, and then Shauna is there, beside her.
“Hi,” Shauna says simply, and Van nods in her direction, and there they sit, two women without much to say to each other but far too much left unsaid.
“How’re things?” Van asks finally, her tipsy mind unable to bear the silence. She’s hoping Shauna might make light conversation about her husband, or her kid, but she forgets Shauna is, and always has been, a woman of few words.
“Fine,” Shauna says, taking a long swig of wine straight from the bottle, and Van nods, pursing her lips. Conversation topics cycle through her head – family, well, that’s boring, job, Shauna doesn’t have one of those she’s pretty sure, movies? Yeah, Van can talk about movies.
“So…” she starts, and Shauna turns to look at her lazily. “Seen anything good lately?”
Shauna’s face is blank for so long that Van is starting to think she made a terrible mistake; then she finally says, slowly, “no, I don’t think so.” A beat. “Wait, like movies?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I… don’t think so.” Shauna repeats. The wine is starting to go to her cheeks, painting them with splotches of red. “Um, I’m not much of a film person.”
“Bullshit,” Van says, her automatic response whenever anyone tells her anything of the sort. “You just haven’t seen the right movie.”
“Okay, that’s not fair,” Shauna points out. “If I said I wasn’t into girls, you wouldn’t tell me I just hadn’t met the right girl yet, right?”
“You’re into girls?” The joke is right there. What is Van supposed to do, really?
Shauna frowns deeply. “That’s… not what I…”
“Relax, Shipman.” Van nudges her, and Shauna lets her swipe the wine out of her hand for her own healthy swallow. “All I’m saying is, there’s a movie for everybody out there. Just depends on what kind of stories you like best.”
Shauna thinks for a second. “I like tragic stories,” she says finally. “I like… romantic dramas and mythology and things about… ghosts.” She looks somewhere past the fire, past where Lottie and Nat are draped over each other and Tai is sitting by herself (trying not to look at Van, that’s nice, that’s good, that’s not giving her a heart attack at all), into some invisible spot in the distance.
Van ignores this lack of focus, which is the one gift they can all give each other safely: ignorance of the others’ issues. “You like horror movies?”
Most people Van knows have very solid answers to this question. If they’re a no, they’re a vehement no. If they’re a yes, they’re automatically excited. Shauna Shipman thinks on the question for longer than most people do.
“I… think so,” she says finally. “Sometimes. I guess I can stomach more gore than most.” What she doesn’t say: I spent more than a year carving meat to feed us, and some of that meat used to have a name, so what else is there for me to be scared of? “I find stories about bad people interesting, so, yeah, I guess I do like horror movies.”
Van thinks for a second – about Shauna Shipman, quiet on the surface and raging under the skin. About the way she battered and bruised Lottie for listening to the trees, and the way she so neatly sliced the meat for their dinners, and the way she hides, now, under a shroud of domesticity that Van can tell is stifling her. Or maybe she wants to be stifled. Or maybe no one has ever asked.
“You ever seen American Psycho?” Van asks after a moment of silence.
Shauna hums. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Check it out.” Van smirks. “If you really can stomach gore, that is.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Shauna steals the wine bottle back, and Van remembers why she liked Shauna Shipman in the first place.
---
After the hunt – after. The hospital keeps Lottie just long enough to proclaim she’s not a threat to anybody, least of all herself, and for some godforsaken reason releases her into Van’s care.
Well, the reason’s not so godforsaken when you realize Shauna has better things to do, and Misty fucked smartly off after the cops left, and Tai has her own shit to deal with, and Nat is, well, dead. So really, where else is Lottie going to go?
She shows up at Van’s store in the same clothes she’d been wearing before it happened, that velvet ochre gown that reminds Van of crushed leaves. It gives her a sense of de ja vu to see a former teammate, fellow survivor, standing on her front step with desperate eyes. Lottie is wracked with shivers; it’s winter and she has no coat. So logically, Van gets her inside.
(She gets Lottie inside to warm her up, and calm her down, and tell her it isn’t her fault, and a lot of other things too.)
Lottie stays with Van for a little over a week, gaining the mental capacity back to return to Middle of Nowhere, New York, Center of Cult-ville. No matter how many times Lottie reminds her it’s an “intentional community,” Van keeps hearing cult, and besides – wouldn’t an “intentional community” want to welcome back its grieving leader with open arms as soon as she was free?
“I don’t want them to see me like this,” is all Lottie says on the matter.
Van’s not a fantastic cook, but neither is Lottie, and there’s only so many nights they can order pizza or Chinese in a row before the grease starts to leak out of Van’s pores, so she’s suffering her way through trying to prepare pasta. A relatively simple dish, if Van’s kitchen wasn’t the least used room in her house.
“I just…” Apropos of nothing, Lottie chimes up from the counter, where she’s sitting nursing a glass of wine. Van has her back to her, is stirring the pasta sauce and keeping an eye on the pot lest it boils over. “I just feel so hopeless, these days.”
Damn, does Van know the feeling, but she half-turns anyway and asks, “why?”
“After- Natalie,” Lottie’s voice cracks, “after she came to me, she made so much progress. She was so full of… life, for the first time in such a long time. And I know, realistically, that I didn’t do that-” Lottie takes a healthy drag of wine, “-or at least not me alone. But I felt responsible for her. And I failed.” Lottie shrugs. “We’re all meant to fail. I know that; we can’t always succeed. Except it feels like I failed at something especially important. Not just for her, but for me.”
Satisfied that the stove will not light on fire anytime soon, Van turns around to face Lottie, who is making eye contact with Van’s apparently fascinating formica countertop. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, Lot, but you’d make a fantastic therapist.”
Lottie cracks a smile, at that. “Maybe once or twice.”
“Listen.” Van leans forward on her arms, getting as close to Lottie as she dares without touching her, because Van figures Lottie doesn’t like to be touched when she’s like this. She’s close enough, though, that she can still smell hospital soap on Lottie, and feels bad – for about the millionth time – for not listening to her back on the compound. For not believing. “Listen.”
“I’m listening,” Lottie murmurs, and that gets Van to laugh.
“Okay. I mean… you loved her, Lottie.” Lottie’s eyes go wide, but she makes no moves to refute the statement. “We all loved her, and we all- miss her. And we all failed her. Because maybe Tai paid for her rehab and you stopped her from killing herself – in the weirdest fucking way, by the way-” Lottie shrugs, accepting that – “but we were all responsible for taking care of her. Just like we’re all responsible for taking care of all of us, cause, like, it’s the least we can fucking do.” Van sucks in air through her nose. “Besides, Misty killed her. So Misty’s the one who failed her.”
Lottie sets her jaw. “I don’t know if I can-”
“Neither can I.” An ominous bubbling sound starts up behind Van, and she turns back to the pasta. Lottie’s words are still bouncing around her mind. She’s plating the pasta, handing Lottie a steaming dish, when she says, “have you seen Frozen?”
Lottie makes a face of abject confusion. “The… Disney movie? About the girl with ice powers?”
“That’s the one.” Van stabs pieces of penne with her fork, making a little tower. “Have you seen it?”
Lottie thinks for a second. “You know, I don’t think so.”
“Elsa reminds me of you,” Van says around her mouthful of pasta. Okay, the sauce turned out all right, actually. “All burdened with glorious purpose. Just needs to be loved.”
“I don’t need-”
“Lottie, do yourself a favor and don’t lie.” Lottie’s mouth snaps shut around a forkful of pasta, and she eats quietly, with a hunger Van recognizes in herself, that she sees in the mirror every so often. You never really recover from starvation. Not really. “My point is, she’s… scared, of herself and the parts of herself that she can’t control. And by the end of the movie, she learns to love herself, but it’s also that- that she’s not responsible for those things, that she can’t control. Her powers. Her brain.” Van reaches forward with her fork to tap the side of Lottie’s head. Lottie frowns and wipes away the sauce it leaves there. “She deserves people to love her for who she is, and forgive her, and not look to her for leadership just because she’s special. At least, that’s the plot of the sequel, anyway.”
At first, Van thinks she’s morbidly offended Lottie by comparing her to a Disney princess, but then she hears the sniffle and sees Lottie’s eyes squint up. “You think… that’s like me?”
“Yeah,” Van says softly. “Reminds me exactly of you.”
A few days after Lottie has returned to the compound, she calls Van. “I watched Frozen today,” she informs her, “and I cried.”
“Good for you.” Van assumes that will be the whole phone call – it wouldn’t be the first time Lottie was needlessly random about something – but Lottie doesn’t hang up.
“I may be a good therapist, Van, but you have your own way with people too, you know.” Lottie sounds different, now, not like the broken woman Van had in her home but the gorgeous goddess she had turned into in their great separation. A part of her has returned – or been buried, or something. “You should take a little bit of your own advice, you know.”
“Uh, I’ve seen Frozen, thanks.”
“Not what I’m talking about.” Lottie’s voice softens imperceptibly, becomes almost hypnotic. “Look at those DVD shelves of yours, and think on it for a bit. There’s someone else you need to talk to.”
Van hangs up, thoroughly confused (with Lottie, what else is new), but when she’s sorting through Rachel-the-repressed-lesbian’s returns, she comes across one that makes her do a double take. Fuck.
Why does Lottie Matthews always have to be infuriatingly right about everything?
---
“Van?” the voice on the other end of the phone says immediately. What ifs stab Van directly through the heart, because goddamn it, Taissa Turner has her damn phone number saved. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Van says, weirdly breathless. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I wanted to… check in. How are things? How’s Sammy? And, uh, Simone?”
There’s silence for a beat while Tai probably tries to process Van randomly calling her, in the middle of the day, for no reason. “They’re- good. Yeah. Simone’s healing up well. We’ve been… talking.”
“Good.” And yes, Van initiated this call, but she actually kind of has no idea what to say right now. How to go about this. “Can I tell you something? It’s a movie recommendation.”
“O-kay.” Van can’t tell if Tai’s startled laugh is just in surprise or if she’s making fun of her, but honestly, maybe she deserves it. Local lesbian can’t get over her trauma-bonded high school sweetheart? This would make a fantastic Lifetime movie, if any of them were willing to take the mondo check the station had offered them like thirty times. “What is it?” Tai asks when Van is silent for too long.
“Disobedience.” A beat. “2017. Directed by Sebastián Lelio. Starring… Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams?”
“Uh, what’s it about?” Tai asks.
“Rachel and Rachel – uh, Esti and Ronit – they were best friends when they were kids, in this Orthodox Jewish community in London, and they… fell in love. And then they’re discovered, and Ronit goes away and becomes this famous photographer and leaves behind all the strict religion of her childhood, but her dad dies, so she comes back…” Van is fully aware that she is rambling, but she’s picturing Tai’s face on the other end of the phone, her look of concentration, and she isn’t sure how to stop. “She comes back for her dad’s funeral and her and Esti kind of fall in love again. But- spoilers?”
“I- yeah, sure,” Tai concedes.
“They’re found out, and Ronit decides to leave cause she can’t be in the community anymore. But Esti leaves, too, she leaves her husband – but she doesn’t go with Ronit, because- they make each other better but they’re the past, right? And Esti needs the future.”
“Right.” Tai’s turn to sound breathless. “That sounds… good.”
“Give it a watch,” Van says weakly. “It-” No. No, she shouldn’t say that.
“It what?”
“It makes me think of you.” Damn it, Palmer, the exact thing you shouldn’t have said.
“Oh.” Neither of them know what to say to that. “Thanks for calling, Van. I’ll… I’ll watch the movie.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Tai whispers a soft goodbye, and hangs up the phone, and Van stands there in her empty video store and tries to remember what endings feel like, and if they’ve always been this much like beginnings.