She was looking for Lisa. And she'd looked everywhere she could think of but aggravatingly she wasn't having much luck.
She had to make things right between them. She had to attempt to apologize.
Lisa was just a kid. She was innocent.
Nat couldn't let the poison that was in her destroy someone else as it had done to her and the rest of the girls they'd brought back from the Wilderness.
"You're thinking too hard on this, Nat."
Natalie stumbles to a stop at the voice in her head.
Tears are already welling in her eyes as she looks wildly around her.
"Easy, Nattie Cat." Ben jokes as if this was nothing more than a simple misstep during a scrimmage game, and at the same time, Natalie catches a familiar splash of mustard yellow in her spun whirling. "Take a breath, relax." Her coach instructs, flashing that lopsided grin she missed so much as he walks close enough to rest a reassuring hand against her shoulder.
Walked. Not limped.
More tears rolled down Nat's cheeks at the distinction as her clean-shaven hallucination drew closer. Dressed in his 'Game Day' clothes of the golden mustered shirt that he somehow pulled off and those ridiculous shorts. His hair brushed back in that Clark Kent-styled way that had Misty always swooning more than a little, and maybe she had too from time to time when she'd notice him grinning that goofy grin from the sidelines during practices or games.
That irritating whistle dangles around his neck when he steps just a little closer. His outline blurs more than a little now, thanks to the fresh guilty tears welling in her eyes.
She'd killed him.
"Hey." Ben says giving her shoulder a playful shaking. "You still with me, Scatorccio?" he laughed like this was nothing more than a friendly talk during a water break.
"I'm with you, coach," Nat promises, wishing more than anything that should she lift her hand to the phantom touch against her shoulder, she'd be able to truly grip the clapped hand resting there.
"You gotta get out of your own head, Natalie." Ben instructs, "And you know, maybe try listening once in a while."
She remembered this little talk.
Misty had been threatening to cough a lung in her mini banishment to the visitor bleachers having refused to miss practice just because she'd been sick. With a fever.
"You said yourself, I'm your lucky charm, Nat. How can I possibly go home after hearing that?" her girlfriend argued as the two went round and round in low whispers in the changing room. Natalie even hung back to try and loosen some of the build-up in Misty's lungs with a makeshift steam shower as she'd cleaned off the grime of practice.
Natalie, of course, had been more than a little distracted during the scrimmage match. She worried about the bespectacled girl who'd wormed so deeply into her heart and always attempted an encouraging cheer whenever she'd catch Nat glancing at her.
Not that, at the time, her fellow teammates bothered to notice anything other than her horrible play skill that day.
Not even Ben seemed to fully understand her worry despite throwing Misty sympathetic glances when he would catch Nat's girlfriend's strangled attempts at cheering.
"As difficult as it is, you just have to take a breath and listen every now and then," Ben repeats, echoing the words from that long-ago practice talk they'd shared. He'd passed her a freshly poured tiny cup of lukewarm water.
It was then, under the remembered advice of a dead man and a friend, that Natalie heard the soft strumming of a guitar.
Then she hears the voice singing along with the tune.
She's imperfect but she tries
She is good but she lies
Natalie approaches slowly, now following the strumming notes of the song that had clued her into the location of the girl she'd been attempting to hunt down for a good chunk of the afternoon.
She is hard on herself
She is broken and won't ask for help
She is messy but she's kind
She is lonely most of the time
Natalie knew she'd heard this song before, maybe played from one of the seemingly hundreds of musical CDs Misty had cluttered the car dash with.
The kid was talented. Too talented for the likes of Lottie and her mind-messing cult.
Lisa starts in surprise when a tearful sniff of not-so-held-back emotion pulls her out of her hummed solo.
"Sorry, I- uah—" Nat stumbles
She smiles at Natalie's attempt at bravado despite the obvious tears glazing in the older woman's eyes. "Your- you're really good."
Lisa smiles shyly at the praise. "Thanks."
Natalie fumbles again, unable to think of anything else to say.
"Yeah, it's just the community talent show is coming up next week and well I was think of signing up this time." Lisa tells her hugging her secondhand guitar a little closer to her like a kind of shield.
Natalie takes the continuation of the attempted back and forth as a good sign to step a little closer. It was good the girl had the instinct to be skittish around her. Nat was toxic; she was poison.
"Stop that." Lisa scolded as if she was able to hear the words buzzing around Nat's bowed head as the taller of the two picked nervously at a stray string dangling from the purple-dyed sweater she'd been gifted on her arrival.
"Will you play it for me again?" Natalie asked rather than risking another lecture on self-love or anything else Lisa might think of. "That song?" she prods
"She used to be mine." Lisa names as she strummed a few more notes on the guitar, still resting against her knee. "It's from the Broadway show Waitress." The young girl rattles off, earning a low scoff of amusement from Nat just because of how happy the girl seemed to be over that small allowance of information. "Isn't it pretty?"
Natalie shrugs as she folds to sit in a relatively dry spot along the boat ramp houseing shoreline. "Play it for me again, then maybe I'll give an opinion." She bargains, making a bit of a show in settling herself down for an audience of one.
Lisa was about to joke in kind at the offered teasing, only to pause, giving a small gasp in surprise. After making a quick retuning of her guitar, she looked again towards Natalie and saw not the wondering woman she'd help kidnap but a huddled young teenager sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees that she held drawn up against her chest.
Lottie had once shown her a painting she'd done once. One of Natalie she now knew.
"I call this one a kept promise of a broken soul." Her mentor had said, noticing how Lisa had been drawn to the painted image.
She'd seemed so sad. So, lost. So- broken.
A kindred spirit Lisa had thought of then.
"It's souls like hers that I've made this place for. So, they don't have to know that kind of suffering."
The stripped red mismatching in her dirty shirt peeked out from the wrapped leather of her jacket as Natalie hugged her knees closer. Her unwashed dark hair fell into her tear-wet eyes as they caught her staring.
Then, when this phantom girl lifted her chin to glance in Lisa's direction, she noticed, just like in the painting, that smudged touch of bloodied fingers splashed along her cheek.
"Play it for me?" the girl asks, her voice cracking on the asking.
Lisa nods. "Yeah. Of course." She agrees, answering the tears already welling in her eyes, and she settles the guitar back across her lap.
Then she begins to play.
It's not simple to say-