with complete honesty, you were happy and excited for shauna and the girls making it to the championship, especially shauna and jackie, your best friends in the whole entire world.

you'd miss them, but knew they'd be back before you knew it, not that you had anything to ever be worried about.

until they never made it to the championship.

until they were presumed to be dead.

until you finally stopped ignoring the big pit in your stomach that was just telling you that something was wrong.

no. instead, they crashed and were forced to adapt quickly, despite some of the friends they'd lost while there, even succumbing to cannibalism to survive — feasting on human flesh to stay alive.

you'd had no idea that jackie was dead — that she and shauna got into a fight, which left jackie to sleep outside and freeze to death, and then, to be feasted on — or that shauna had been incredibly traumatized down there in the wilderness.

especially with whatever type of entity that they were stuck with for months, which had mainly been what tempted them to eat jackie first to survive.

until it'd corrupted them to enjoy it and make a hunting game out of it.

you didn't know any of that — you just knew that something was wrong, and it was worrisome.

you just hoped that they were okay, wherever they were.

and when they're finally found and brought back home, it's worse than you'd ever expected.

she's completely different when you see her, after you'd gotten the call that she was back and safe — her hair has grown and has become a red color, and those puppy brown doe eyes of hers were full of guilt and something else that you couldn't exactly name.

but, what you see in her now, it's enough to know that something went wrong out there. especially since you don't see jackie around.

the second you'd heard they were back, the first thing you did was drive to her house, pounding on the door anxiously until she opened the door.

and now, you can tell that she's different now — you notice it, but you don't vocalize it.

"you heard, i'm guessing?" she asks almost quietly, when you're both inside, eyes almost blank with a numbness, but you see the guilt and sadness.

and the flicker of the old shauna.

i swear, it's the puppy dog brown eyes that always gets to you.

she's always leaned on you for support before everything happened, but with what happened, she doesn't think she can open up.

not that she doesn't trust you, but she knows just like jackie, you'd never be able to understand the things they did out there.

so needless to say, she's not saying much.

and you notice. seeing how different and distant she is.