#thank you bookclub discord for your help to making my brain worms wiggle

[jackietaylorsversion]

You're Shauna Shipman, and you are desperate to be haunted. You're begging for it, desperate for it, crying out for it in the cold and the quiet of the place you kept your best friend's body for months longer than you should have before you and your friends not just ate her but consumed her.

You're Shauna Shipman, and, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, you will look for Jackie Taylor for the rest of your life. Death already parted you. You can only wait for it to reunite you.

Tell me: how long does it take you to see her again? Does she stare at you from the trees, hunger gnawing at your belly, the only nourishment you've had in weeks from the meat you pick off the bones of people who were once important to you? Does she sit beside you on the plane back home? Does she visit you in the hospital? Is she by your side as you marry her high school sweetheart, the one you fucked, the one whose baby died just like she did, out there in that place?

Or does she evade you for twenty-five long, terrible years, refusing to see you while you live the life you think was meant for her? Is the first time she comes back to you that moment when you're doing something explicitly, horribly stupid? How long does it take for you to see her eyes when they're not staring back from a picture frame, to hear her voice that's not tainted by the tinny sounds of a home movie?

Tell me, Shauna Shipman: What will you do to be haunted by her again?