CHAPTER THREE
cool for the summer

THE PALM OF HER HAND squeaks against the bathroom mirror as she wipes off the steam fogging up the glass, muddling her reflection into one blurry silhouette. Briar pulls her lips into a manic grin.

It drops within a second.

Pale morning light tumbles through the windows. Bare feet on the cold tile, Briar stands in her bathroom scowling at her own reflection, tilting her head this way and that, examining the angles of her face, the edge of her jaw, examining the way the tendons in her long, white neck strain and stretch, how the sinewy muscle in her forearm flexes and twists with surgical scrutiny. After the hurricane killed the power, the back-up generators kicked in without a hitch, and while Briar hadn't been able to text Kiara or call her on her cell, there was something mesmerising enough about standing in the eye of destruction that dispelled all the boredom packing under her skin. Now that it's over, though, now that there is only the wreckage left, Briar can feel the emptiness creep back in, that dark star in her chest finally collapsed, a black hole with skin.

In the mirror, Briar watches her reflection touch two fingers to her cheekbones, barely feels the impression of her own gliding over her skin, feeling under her pool blue eyes, eyes that knew only to vivisect, to cut through the meaty veneer of this place and get to the ugly pulp. Upon her forehead, Briar's fingers instinctively sought out the thin line of scar tissue, the silvery laceration like a fissure running down the centre of her forehead. Topper had given her this scar when she was seven, splashing around his family's pool. That summer, their father had the grand idea of uniting the two half-siblings in a bid to make one or the other happy. While the divorce with Briar's mother was still fresh, and while Topper's mother could barely stand the sight of Briar, the one blight in her perfect, pristine life, the one flaw that indicated where the cracks in her precious foundation ran deep, like a bad organ transplant, it didn't take.

Briar can't remember what'd happened exactly, but Topper hadn't always been a monster. The first few days of her week-long stay, the marble floor might as well have been made of egg shells, but Topper had been the one to break the ice, to offer Briar the second controller of his playstation, and taught her how to manipulate the game. They played Mario Party in silence until the sun went down. The next day, Topper shoved Briar into the dive board, where the world went dark for a second, and like a shark drawn to blood in the water, she'd bit him on the arm and nearly took a pound of flesh off. She'd been packed up and sent home immediately after, the trip cut short. Something had rotted between them, since then their relationship had been defined by the blood swishing in the aquamarine. Every now and then, when Briar could feel the dark thoughts churning in her head, the scar burned with a vengeance.

God's promise, her mother had said, when she saw it, the eight stitches, the red-rimmed eyes but not a single tear shed out of weakness. Though Briar had been born and raised secular, though she worshipped no one above her own image, her own self, inoculated against all divine influence, she believed it too. The scar kept her protected. It had to. She'd earned it. She let it fortify her, steely-strung and wound tight, and not a single thing in the world could've touched her again. And when she brushed up against the sharp corners of the world, not a single thing in the world could've made her bleed.

The morning routine is sacred. Briar rises early, as she always does, headphones jammed into her ears, stretching first, then off to her morning work out. From then on, she doesn't stop. Great white sharks die if they don't keep swimming, the forward motion propelling oxygenated water through their mouths.

She showers and dresses quickly. Black Nike Pros, blue tank top. Since she'd started hanging out with Kiara, she'd begun to wear bikinis under her clothes in the fashion of a true Kildare Island local.

Then she lets the ritual take over, muscle memory guiding her hand as she takes her time getting ready for the day, not entirely certain where she's going, but the tug of her heart tics the way a compass needle pulses North, and she's thinking about Kie, standing behind the counter at the Wreck, the olivine strip of her toned stomach where her tank top always rides up, the white of her teeth and the wrinkle in her nose. Music leaks from the speakers in the corner of her room and she mouths the lyrics to the song. Briar slathers on lip gloss and mascara, runs a brush through her cherry-oak hair, spritzes some perfume—her mother's Chanel No. 5, pilfered—that diffuses into the miasma of nail polish fumes that'd soaked into the floorboards long ago.

Upon her vanity, her jewellery stand shimmers, the numerous necklaces and bracelets hanging from the silver metallic branches catching the light. Briar picks out one single necklace out of the dozens on the stand. A simple, black strip of velvet for a choker layered over a string of gold pendants that she'd said, once, when she first saw it in the store, looked like mermaid scales. Her everyday piece, as every girl should have one, her mother says. She fastens it on, and in the circular mirror on her vanity, she watches the tension in her shoulders bleed out.

Apparently, her mother had managed to seduce the neighbours into helping her clear the debris out of their backyard. By the time the afternoon sun sank like a yolk over the town, it became clear that the hurricane that'd shredded mercilessly through the Outer Banks could've killed them if it chose to. Under some mystic force, though, despite the damage done to the others, there was not a scratch on Briar's house. Maybe they were just lucky. Maybe her mother had conjured that hurricane after all.

"I wanted to name you Katrina," her mother says, as Briar takes a seat next to her on the front porch sipping sour margaritas, watching the shirtless boys sweep broken glass from someone else's broken window off the pavement, and her mother's mouth puckers like she'd just sucked on a lemon, "after that hurricane. But your father, he said he wanted you to be named something nicer, less destructive. I told him he was a coward because he wanted you to be his sweet little girl. I wanted you to be powerful. A force to be reckoned with. Seven years later, what do you know? He turned out to be just as I called him. That's what you get for fucking a man who fears powerful women. Hates them."

"It's not too late to change my name," Briar says, fiddling with the friendship bracelets stacked on her wrists, even though she likes her name. Granted, she hates the idea of being tethered to her father more.

"You don't look like a Katrina," her mother says, dismissively, taking a delicate sip of her glass. They watch the boys heave the broken branches off their lawn, muscles rippling, working up a sweat. Her mother makes a sound of approval in the back of her throat, and Briar rolls her eyes. She's had her revolving door of boys at her beck and call throughout school, always thirsting for a drop of her attention, hoping she could wet their appetites. But that's all they've ever been. Just boys. Insatiable and simple, always putting themselves on the hook. Nothing more.

Then her gaze drifts to the house across the street.

Briar wonders if her father's going to come over, even just to ask if they're okay, if anyone's hurt, but then he actually does come outside to stand on his front lawn, surveying the damage, hands akimbo, Dad-like. As he turns his face toward the pool, she catches a glimpse of the shiner on his face, and thinks it better that he stays on his side of the street. God knows what Briar would've done to him if he'd tried. Let Topper put two and two together then. In that same moment, Briar catches her father's eye. Fear flits through his eyes as he meets her icy stare from across the street. A second's hesitation, hand halfway raised to a wave, like he does sometimes, now halted by uncertainty, the fissures in his composure cracking apart as his mind races. She doesn't look away. She doesn't initiate a greeting. He hurries back inside, tail between his legs, and Briar can't erase that moment the other day, watching him flee like the coward he is, flashing the tighty-whities as he struggled to pull his pants up his legs, the bare image of shame.

Sometimes, Briar thinks she recognises the silhouette of her father's back more than his actual face. Always leaving. Always turning away from her for some reason or another. A part of her wonders if she was so unbearable to face. Then she thinks about the hurricane, about the destruction, about the forces of nature and how all natural disasters are named after women. And maybe her father—the all-powerful Paul Thornton, who's somehow kept two women on the hook for decades and fathered two too many children—is really just a coward who couldn't handle facing real power.

After a moment of silence, Briar sighs, that wayward itch blazing under her skin reaching levels of unbearable. "I'm bored."

These days, Briar gets what her mother calls restless leg syndrome. She's always up and about, on the hunt, sinking her claws into anything that can hold her attention long enough to distract from it. Lately, that's been Kiara and the boys. Lately, she's been wondering if it's going to last.

"Oh, the landline was ringing off the hook this morning," her mother says, flippant as always about the peripheral things, "your little friend was looking for you. I told her you'd call back when you woke up."

Annoyance pinches at Briar's chest. Her mother's never been a particularly attentive person, her mind fogged up by cigarette smoke and resentment, but she could've at least let Briar know earlier. Besides, Briar had been up since dawn, running conditioning circuits and practicing her jumps in their home gym, as she did every morning on the weekdays. The only thing missing from the routine was her morning run, pounding the pavement at the crack of dawn until the sky bled of colour, but she'd made up for that on the dust-caked treadmill. She'd had her music blasting through her speakers since the sun came up—apparently, that was when she'd missed Kiara's call.

There's no service across the island, the cell towers shot to hell by Agatha, but the landlines still worked. In the first instance, the first indication that they could be more than just acquaintances who'd met in the girls' bathroom while skipping Econ to smoke up together and exchange laments about the rest of the school population, Kie had gotten Briar's landline number, because she'd lived on Kildare Island her entire life, and she knew the hurricanes loved the Outer Banks like misfortune loved its orphans.

Briar dials Kiara's number by heart, mouthing the numbers like it'd take her closer to her best friend, heart racing. When Kiara picks up, Briar feels the world go still, serene as the eye.

"I'm bored, Kiara," Briar laments, sighing loudly, coiling the phone cord around her finger. "This house is fucking boring. Figure Eight is fucking boring. What are you doing?"

"Everything's boring to you, B."

Not you, Briar wants to say. Never you. Instead, she tells Kiara, "that's because everything is."

"I knew you'd say that." Kiara laughs, mirth tinging her tone. "You're in luck today, B, the boys are coming by the Wreck later to pick us up. We're taking the HMS Pogue out through the marshes. You coming? Please say yes. We're not going fishing, I promise."

"Why couldn't it just be two of us today?" Briar smacks her lips against her teeth, and for a brief moment, she fiercely misses the academic year, cheer season, sweaty bodies in the clanging locker room, all the girls close and packed tight together, whipping each other with the towels, trading tampons for sugar-free cherry suckers, pointing out the new lines in their toned bodies. She misses riding the cheer team hard, pushing the girls to the brink just because she's feeling particularly capricious that day, or because she can't stand their buck teeth or their loose limbs or the way they roll their words in their mouths. Mostly Briar misses skipping classes to meet Kiara in the abandoned girl's bathroom on the third floor, sitting on the sink smoking cigarettes or joints, reading out loud the writing on the bathroom stall walls and fantasising where these people are now, their small lives and their small problems. Then she takes all of that, the ballooning nostalgia, and puts a pin in it. To miss something was to submit yourself to wanting. And you must never want anything for any reason. Lest it exposes you.

"Because," and Briar can hear Kiara's pout through the phone there, "it'll be fun. Look, I'm bringing beers for us, and JJ's definitely got weed. Strong stuff."

"Atta girl." Briar's lip twists. "I'll see what my Mom's got lying around, too. See you at the Wreck?"

Kiara assents, and then Briar hangs up. She's out the door in minutes, purple rucksack hanging loose from her shoulder, heavy with all the supplies she's learnt to stash on herself since hanging out with the boys and Kiara. A spare towel, a change of clothes, plastic bags, a zip-lock to waterproof her phone, her water bottle, a pack of sugar-free bubblegum and the same glittery lip gloss that tastes like artificial grape she's kept in her back pocket forever. Not to mention the bottle of wine she'd stolen from her mother's bedside table. Unopened. Pushing her Lolita red heart-shaped sunglasses atop her head, Briar puts her earphones in, ignores the clean-up crew of bare-chested neighbourhood boys and her mother's half-hearted query as to where she's headed, and turns the corner, away from the two warring houses and the blacktop street like a sad, permanent line drawn in the dirt.

By the time she reaches the Wreck, throwing a cool wave to Kiara's dad standing by the counter, cleaning out the cash register, a thin film of sweat has slicked the nape of her neck, and her skin is flushed hot, the humidity in the air like drinking the ocean. The shortcut to the Wreck from her house was choked up by debris and trash, forcing Briar to take the longer route, which hadn't fared much better under the wrath of Agatha, but the roads were cleared out by now, and she wasn't going to shred the bottoms of her purple platform flip flops on broken glass and the like. When she bends over the counter to find Kiara loading snacks and beers into a cooler box, Briar grins. She slams her palms against the counter, startling a yelp out of Kiara.

"It's fucking boiling in this bitch!" She exclaims, drawing side-long glances from patrons and a disapproving glare from Kiara's father, who's never liked any of Kie's friends, and tolerates Briar because she's not from the Cut. "I need a diet coke, stat!"

"Oh my God, you scared me." Hand flown to her chest, right over her fluttering heart, Kiara glares at Briar, her cheeks flushed and her dark eyes glimmering. Lips twisting playfully, she tosses a dry rag at Briar, who catches it with a cackle and whips it right back. "I hate when you sneak up on me like that."

Throwing Kiara a wink, Briar fishes a stick of gum out of her bag, shucks off the pink wrapper, and folds it carefully on her tongue. She offers another to Kiara. "How else am I supposed to get your attention?"

How else can I keep you looking at me?

"Like a normal fucking person, you psycho," Kiara scoffs, making to snatch the gum out of Briar's hands, but Briar evades her, teasing, dangling it in front of Kiara's face like a carrot, watching as Kiara swipes for it ineffectually, missing each time as Briar pulls it just out of her grasp, pulling laughter from Kiara like cotton candy. Until, finally, Kiara flicks Briar on the cheek out of frustration, and Briar unwraps the gum and lovingly pushes it between Kiara's teeth.

"Yeah, but that's so boring, Kiara," Briar drawls, tapping two fingers to her temple, miming a gun to blow her brains out. "And we must never, ever get boring."

Then Kiara pitches forward, over the counter and grasps Briar by the jaw, gentle, cupping her face with such a brutal tenderness. She brings her face close, their noses touching, lips just a whisper of a breath away. Kiara's eyes are a storm, lightning lashing in the honey brown pools of her eyes. Like a stuck bee, Briar can only flash her brightest, top-girl grin to hide the hitch in her breath, the falter in her heart, the flutter of her eyelids, heart beating like the last dry wing struggling to catch air.

"You couldn't even if you tried, B," Kiara says, her voice locust-dark. "Now let's get outta here before my Dad notices the beers are missing from the stock room."

The cooler box swings from Kiara's grip, the ice and beer bottles sloshing around inside. Briar laces her fingers through Kiara's as they run out onto the deck, anticipation buzzing under their skin, blood-hot and wound tight around each other, the stack of friendship bracelets braided around both their wrists jostling against each other.

JJ's sun-bright grin and equally radiant greeting reaches them before the HMS Pogue actually pulls up close enough for them to board. As always, John B's steering, and Pope's sitting on the bow, his long, toned legs dangling over the water.

"Oh, top of the mornin' to ya, ladies!" JJ chirps, his thin muscle tank flapping in the breeze.

"Morning, boys," Kiara muses, earning herself a whistle as the boys finally spot the cooler box dangling from her hand as they come down the ramp.

"Whatcha got?" Pope pipes, teasingly. "You got some juice boxes?"

With a small smile, Kiara shrugs, a dainty action. "Oh, y'know, just some yoghurts, some carrot sticks..."

JJ offers Kiara a stabilising hand onto the boat, while Pope takes Briar's hand in his and helps her aboard. A corner of her lips curl into a cool smirk and Briar flicks her eyes at him, doesn't pull her hand from his callused fingers even though both her feet are steady on the rocking boat. Pope throws her a lopsided grin, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand in the corny fashion of a true Prince Charming. As John B guns the chugging engine again, the HMS Pogue cutting through the glimmering water, Briar kicks off her flip flops and joins Pope on the bow.

Meanwhile, JJ looks down at the cooler box and speculates. "How 'bout my kind of juicebox?"

"Yeah," Kiara says, ingenue-like, and meets Briar's gaze over her shoulder as she settles on the bench. "Briar's got the big girl juice, though."

"Courtesy of my dearest mother," Briar says, flatly, brandishing the Rosé. "It's French, I think. Something to spruce up the chateau a little later tonight."

"Yo," JJ says, snatching the bottle from Briar. John B peers over his shoulder at the label and whistles, impressed. "Looks fancy as hell."

"Oh, for sure, girl," Briar purrs, her tone light.

"Alrighty, girl," JJ mocks, drawing a scoff out of her.

Beside her, Pope cuts her an odd look, as if she's grown two heads, or as if he's never heard her laugh in his life. Briar sends Pope a flat look over the rim. Flustered, Pope averts his gaze instantaneously.

As the HMS Pogue cruises past the residential parts all the way through to the more rural side of the marshes, the water deepening, the horizon dissolving between the open expanse of ocean and the sun-bleached sky, Kie hands out the beers from the cooler and passes around the bottle opener. The sound of tabs popping and liquid foam hissing perforates the white noise of the engine. The cool beer slides down her throat, warming her skin and bringing the blood in her veins to a gentle buzz. She's no lightweight, but Briar hasn't eaten yet, hence the low-calorie quinoa chips stowed in her bag for later.

Naturally, JJ is the first to take his shirt off, tossing it at Kiara's face like a strip-tease. Kiara flips him off, but there's no heat behind the gesture, no animosity as one-by-one, the rest of them follow JJ's lead, shucking off their tops to let the wind caress their skin, the heat and the alcohol getting to them now. Sitting beside Kiara now, facing the guys, Briar peels off her tank top, and John B makes a gesture like he's flicking ones at her. Returning the gesture in kind, Briar punts the warped cap of her beer at John B's head. It goes wide, its trajectory severely miscalculated, and plunges into the water.

Kiara gasps and smacks Briar on the arm in reproach. "Briar, the turtles!"

"Sorry, sweetheart," Briar says, saccharine, not an iota of apology detected in her tone. She snaps Kiara's bikini strap. "I think we need more juice."

From her rucksack, Briar fishes out her pink Nalgene water bottle, studded over with faded stickers from her old cheer squad—an exchange that'd happened right before she'd left her old school in the middle of the semester—and though it hurt to look at sometimes, the life she could've had among people she used to breathe in, the pain was good practice. Toughen up, her mother would say, the world's one giant bear trap, and you can't afford to go screaming when it snaps shut around your shins. But she's with Kiara now. She's with the boys. And these are the only people in this sinkhole of a place that could kill the itch in her blood that only cheer could've kept at bay.

"Oh-ho! What do we have here!" John B appraises the bottle as Briar uncaps it and lets them take a whiff. Pope winces, gagging slightly. Adventurous as always, JJ takes a gulp before he realises what it actually is, and nearly spills the entire thing as he bursts into a coughing fit.

Kiara pats JJ on the back sympathetically. "Is that... straight vodka?"

"Where the fuck are the mixers?" JJ, hunched over and breathing loud through his mouth as if he could excavate the taste, scowls up at Briar.

"Only the finest in the house," Briar says, grinning, leonine and lounging across the bow, leaning back on her elbows to let her front soak up more sun. Though there's a bottle of diet coke in her bag for the exact purpose of taming the overwhelming smell of alcohol, first and foremost, she enjoys lighting fires under people just to see them jump. "Mixers are for pussies."

"Fuck you, man. That shit is dog-water."

Briar rolls her eyes, shifts round so she's got her head on Kiara's lap, her feet kicked up across Pope's, Cleopatra-like. "Oh, my God, you're being so dramatic. Get over it."

"Bro, JJ, you're cussing her out like your average shot capacity isn't, like, eight per kegger," Pope points out, his tone deadpan. An impish look crosses his expression as he gets a turn at the bottle and takes a sip from it gingerly. "Now, me? I'm sophisticated, so I know Briar got that rich girl money to buy Grey Goose. Goes down smooth. You just gotta sip it."

"That's only 'cause, by the time JJ gets to the shots, he's already wasted," John B says, chuckling, accepting the bottle from Pope. He takes a sip, spilling some of it down the front of his shirt as the boat rocks. It doesn't faze him in the slightest. "Anything tastes like water to him at that point."

"Y'all are talking like Pope wasn't face-down in the sand last time. Three shots like a goddamn weakling, too."

"Yo, why the drive-by?!" Pope exclaims, throwing his hands up, disbelief pinching his features. "If we're talking misdemeanours while intoxicated, let's take a look at yours, JJ."

Eyes rolled to the back of his head, JJ makes a jacking off gesture to mock Pope. Briar glances up at Kiara, lips coiled tight, trying to hold back a laugh. When she meets Kiara's gaze, she sees she's trying to do the same. The dam breaks and the laughter spills out anyway.

"Or how about the time Thorny literally let all those Tourons do body shots off her. Can't say I wasn't jealous though."

"Of who?" Kiara cackles. "Them or her?"

"Her, duh. Why the hell would I want my mouth anywhere near her? But the actually hot Tourons, though..."

"Oh, it's on, Jimothy—"

"Jimothy?" JJ echoes, incredulous.

"Oh, Christ, the government name came out," John B howls. "You're dead, JJ."

"So close, Thorny," Pope says, grinning.

"Swing and a miss, babes," Kiara sighs, patting Briar on the cheek, and her touch burns, leaves a tingling in the shape of a perfectly small palm.

"Don't tell me it's John," Briar drawls. For the past couple weeks, Briar has been trying to extract the truth about JJ's real name. His full name. But each time she tries to needle it out of him, he only laughs, and tells her that he'd exchange it for a kiss, which was never going to happen, obviously, and the rest of the group simply shrugged, either sworn to secrecy from some blood pact made a decade ago, or simply because they, themselves had forgotten, too. Known him as JJ for a solid decade and his real name had gotten washed away by the tide of time.

JJ smiles, secret and devious. "I dunno. Lost my ID sometime back. Anyone else got any guesses? Help me find my true name?"

The resonant chorus of 'no' and 'no clue' made Briar roll her eyes. "Alright, Jimothy."

Kiara's bubbling laughter rings through Briar's head for the rest of the day.

"I'll tell you if you tell me how you got that scar on your head."

Briar only smiles and says. "God-given. You touch me, it comes back on you seven-fold. So don't fuck with me."

""The Lord set a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him,"" recited Pope, lowering his voice for effect. "I'd say that's pretty fitting."

"Never knew you were religious, Thorny," John B muses.

"Yeah, what the fuck." JJ looks at her like she's grown a second head. "You believe in God?"

Briar lets out a sharp laugh. "Fuck no."

"I mean I'd totally believe that Mark of Cain shit though," says Pope.

"Remember when you got Kelce back for calling you a slut?" Kiara snickers, and Briar brought a finger up to her lips, the secret glittering behind the ocean blue of her eyes, glare on the water's surface. You could be drowning and no one would know.

"Oh, I haven't heard this story, actually," John B says, eyes flitting between Kiara and Briar.

"Neither have we," JJ says, gesturing to Pope. "Damn, Kie, you holding out on us?"

Of course Briar remembers that day. Remembers the rumour that'd spread like wildfire, that she'd sucked him off in the janitor's closet, that she'd wanted it bad, so bad she begged for it, would beg for anything from him. Really, they'd only made out in the dark and Kelce had been a horrific kisser, anyway, and Briar had gotten bored halfway, so she'd left him there, hard-on poking through his pants, fuming as he watched her flounce out, the back of her short, dress-coded skirt flipping. It'd been Emily Trammel, one of her bases on the cheer squad, who'd told her about it, that the entire school was talking about her like she was front-page news. The entire locker room buzzing. Half the girls were on her side. The other half despised her, but were too afraid to do anything with that hatred toiling in them. Briar had known for awhile that the world only turned for you if you knew how to position yourself. Simultaneously, Briar has known for awhile that when a girl is wronged, it's not unusual for the ostracism to reach deep into the other girls, twist something ugly in them, turn them against people they once swore were their sisters, the divide gaping wider and wider. When the same thing happens to a guy, he's got his boys rallied together at his back, shutting down everything and hitting back twice as hard. But Briar also knows her squad needs her, that Kiara has her back, no matter what.

Which is why she does not fall for the trap. The girls do not crack apart on the warfront.

Instead of reacting, Briar leant into it. She told the truth—just what she'd heard from some other girls.

After that, the tides turned in her favour. Now Kelce had a micro-penis, and he'd come in twenty seconds, the load so small Briar hadn't even realised he'd ejaculated until he started to cry, begging for her to stop because it got too sensitive. Tears and snot and everything. Emily told Beth, who told Harriet, who told the JV girls, who spilled the news to everyone else. Kie had her own part to play, too, stuffing Kelce's locker with XS condoms to drive the stake home, fleeing with Briar before they could get caught, their giggles echoing down the corridor. Quickly enough, the entire school had shifted their attention to Kelce and his performance issues, news that got pulverised and twisted through the grapevine, and like a disastrous game of broken telephone, the rumour warped into something uglier, that he'd contracted an STD from a hooker over the summer and he couldn't get it up anymore. Erectile Dysfunction, something or other. They still called him Micro-Kelce behind his back, months later.

"Some things just aren't meant to be known," Briar hums, throwing JJ a wink. She snatches his cap off his head by the bill and puts it on hers, tucking her hair neatly under it, much to his chagrin. "Right, Kiara?"

"Cross my heart, hope to die, secret," Kiara says, pouting unapologetically, fingers whisking over Briar's friendship bracelets, specifically, the one she'd made for her last year, a purple-and-pink-patterned Love-Me-Knot, braided together by hand, the gleaming secret like something scale-bodied and slippery, sliding deep into the dark water. "You know how it is."

✷

FURTHER OUT INTO THE MARSHES and much more buzzed now, Briar feels the tension drain from her limbs, though the steel in her spine, branching out through to her ribs, doesn't slip still. Earlier, she'd taken off her shorts so she'd catch a more even tan, not missing the way JJ openly ogled her chest, or the way John B smacked JJ in the back of the head in reproach, like, bro, don't be a dog, or how Pope froze up and stopped touching her shining shins. Eyes closed, Briar lets the vibrating hum of the boat beneath her pass through her body. Kiara's fingers comb through her hair, a rhythmic lull like the waves washing up over the sand in a soothing hush. Pope's still got Briar's legs stretched across his knees.

Two beers in, JJ stands up on the bow, arms outstretched, albatross about to take flight. Briar imagines his muscles pulling tight, keeping him tall, his organs all stacked up over one another. This is what she feels when she's flying top girl, holding her liberty in place, chin popped up, barely appraising the world below. The others crow at him and laugh, Kiara and Briar take turns shooting their spare hair ties at his back. But standing there, King of Nothing, King of the Backwater Trash, JJ doesn't notice any of it. It all bounces off his golden skin, straw arrows against armour. Briar knows something about that. She suppresses the urge to kick the back of his knees to watch him fold. In the spirit of showmanship, JJ brings his beer up to his face, letting the liquid slosh backward into his face, the foam flying back in the wind, the sticky beer spraying across them.

"Oh my God, you're getting beer in my hair!" Kiara shrieks and burrows into Briar's shoulder, as if that would protect her from JJ's stupidity.

"Alright— Alright!" Pope groans, ever the spitting image of his disgruntled and dismayed father, at the same time, John B makes an X motion with his arms. "You're done! You're done!"

"Maybank, you son of a bitch," Briar groans, sitting up and throwing the bottle opener at JJ's back, the cold liquid sliding down her neck. Good thing they were surrounded by water they could swim in, otherwise she'd be sitting in her clothes all day, sticky all over. The bottle opener bounces off his lower back, and JJ only twists round to flick the remaining dregs of his beer over Briar.

Just as Briar screams bloody murder, the HMS Pogue screeches to a halt, lurching violently forward and pitching JJ into the water like an acrobat. Against the grating of the motor against some unknowable object in the depths, their panicked cries stir the air with flash and adrenaline, and when the waters finally settle, when the boat stops rocking hard enough to threaten capsize, Briar realises that her glasses had gotten knocked off her head, dangling dangerously close to the edge of the boat.

Pope fetches them for her, then goes to help Kiara stand. He lets out a pained groan, teeth bared in a grimace as he hunches over and surveys their situation.

Briar peers over the edge as JJ surfaces with an agonised groan, his expression dazed, blinking rapidly to clear his vision.

"You okay, JJ?" John B calls, craning his neck, searching for his best friend in the water, worry flitting across his face. "Kie? Thorny?"

Briar waves him off, while Kiara, brushing her hair out of her face, nods and answers, "yeah."

"I think my heels touched the back of my head," JJ rasps, spitting water from his mouth, chest-up in the murky water, trying to collect himself. "Thorny, how do you do this so casually?"

He's referring to the time she showed him her scorpion, standing tall on the roof of the Twinkie, arching back to pull her leg high, high, higher, behind her head.

"Pope, what did you do?"

"Sandbar," Pope sighs, wincing as he strode round to look over the other side of the boat. "The channel changed."

"No shit," JJ spat, swimming back to the boat in quick, deft strokes.

"This is probably gonna mess this whole place up," John B sighs, face pinched.

"Hey, I saved the beer though."

"Congrats, JJ," John B deadpans.

"You're probably drinking silt and fish pee now," Briar drawls, lip curling in disgust as JJ took an experimental sip anyway, the mixture of beer and whatever else is floating around this marsh water swishing around the bottle. "I know a girl who drank river water once. Got a brain infection, and the fever ate up all her motor functions."

"Probably wouldn't make a difference," Kiara says, arms crossed over her chest, coming to stand beside Briar, evil captain and bad lieutenant. "He's so spastic already, maybe the combined negatives will make a positive."

"Oh, yeah?" JJ challenges, beaming up at Briar, devilish gleam in his eye. "Your turn."

JJ flicks the marsh water up at them. Bent over the side of the boat, Briar grins and splashes a wave of water back at him. JJ lets out an irritated roar, but there's no real heat behind it, and he's smiling, and he's swimming closer, and just as he's about to reach for Briar's hand to pull her down with him, Briar leaps over JJ's head and plunges into the water, spraying him without ceremony. At her beckoning, Kiara shucks off her shorts and dives in, too, laughing as they converge on either side of JJ, splashing at each other relentlessly.

"Oh, God, I'm getting waterboarded by two hot chicks?" JJ groans, spitting and breathing hard through his mouth. "This is literally my dream."

"Ew, JJ!" Kiara groans, cuffing him lightly in the back of his head.

Cheeks flushed and warm all over, Briar swims up to Kiara, and wraps her arms over her shoulders, clinging to her as she treads water, bobbing up and down with the eddying current. Kiara fiddles idly with the friendship bracelets on Briar's arms.

"Guys," Pope calls, his voice far away, barely carried over by the wind. "I think there's a boat down there."

"Shut up," says John B, though he perks up, following Pope's line of vision.

"What?" Kiara mouths to Briar, who shrugs, and catches JJ's flummoxed look.

"No, no, guys, I'm serious. There's a boat down there."

One by one, they swim toward the area Pope's pointing to, murmuring in disbelief. Briar squints against the glare of the sun on the water's surface, and, true enough, like a mirage assembling before her, the white roof of a boat materialises in the midst of the murky darkness. John B makes a sound of realisation and essentially tears his shirt off, joining them in the water with a loud splash. Pope comes next, eager to do some reality testing.

"You think there's a dead body down there?"

"Guys," JJ calls, half-delirious with excitement, "come on!"

Something stirs deep in Briar's gut. A premonition, perhaps, or just a feeling. Whatever it is, it perforates the numbness that'd taken over her body like a possession since she'd turned thirteen, that teenage sickness, restless leg syndrome. She sucks in a deep breath and dives in with the others, Kiara following her into the depths without hesitation. Breaststroking downward, Briar feels the pressure blocking up her ears, the popping inside her eardrums a pleasant agony. Like a siren call, the dark water swirls with silt and debris, but when it all clears, Briar sees what's drawing them all in.

A white boat, a yacht, maybe—she's not too familiar with nautical vehicles—sits at the bottom of the marsh, half-sunken into the mud.

When they kick up off the shell of the boat to the surface, the world comes back to her sharp as a camera lens shifting into focus. Briar meets Pope's bewildered stare, the white of his teeth the only thing she can see now.

"That's a Grady White!" JJ spits, shaking his head like a dog, spraying water across Briar and John B's faces. She doesn't even mind. "A new one of those is, like, five hundred Gs, easy."

For the first time in years summer, her blood is a quiet hum in her body, everything around her shimmering.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
🫶 the glow of youth. lorde was so right. teenagers have something special and when you leave that moment, you can't ever get it back. nothing is new anymore.

okok so i talk about briar's friendship bracelets, right? yall caught that earlier in the chapter? i'm thinking briar ends up giving the boys bracelets each in symbolic moments, signifying a tether. that she cares, in her own way, and she's ready to be their friend. whatever that means. and i think that's cute.

also s2 briar is gonna hit so hard. girlie is in her element back at school, running her cheer squad like her own tribe.

✷

SUNDRESS ── jj maybank / kiara carrera
Chapter Three,   COOL FOR THE SUMMER.
⚓️          S1.01: PILOT