CHAPTER FOUR
try to swim from somethin' bigger than me

IN A BASIC BASKET TOSS, there's an elastic moment right after the launch when you're rubber-banding up through the air, riding the momentum that'd started at the nadir of your bases' feet, pushing through their iron-stemmed legs and interlocked hands and exploding through you. Every muscle is squeezing tight, tight, tighter, your body cleaving through the moment. Time slows, the seconds stretching taut, the world around you rippling at the edges like a sail, suspended in stasis.

All flyers have a special relationship with gravity, every stunt an act of defiance, every basket toss a loving embrace.

Right as you reach the peak, your arms V-split over your head, hands clenched into fists grasping vice-like onto the moment, there's a second where you're weightless. This moment is pure power, Briar's All-Star Level 2 coach used to say, you don't let go until the absolute last second. It took Briar a month in her second cheer camp to understand what Coach meant, the mechanics of flying. There's a balance to it. Coming down from a basket, the flyer has to snap her arms down so her body can pitch backward into the landing position for her bases to catch. Snap down too early in the ascent, the stunt gets cut short and loses all its potential. Leave it too long, and you'll drop straight down like a stone, slipping through your bases' hands, an ankle-breaker for sure.

In the air, there isn't a single moment Briar can't feel inside-out, an awareness cultivated from years of stunting, of flying then falling. It comes to her like breathing. When she hits the high point, she seizes the moment of suspension by the throat, claws sinking into its florid flesh, clinging to stasis. She runs it down to the millisecond, pushing it as far as it would let her, reaching up, up, up. Until she can't anymore. Until gravity drags her back from the precipice. In the moment of exhale, she lets it go, arms snapped to her sides, claw marks scored into the fabric of time.

Which is to say that there should've been a moment down in the depths where Briar could feel the shift in momentum. Could recognise the moment time stopped, the gleaming Grady White and its unfinished business, a lambent pearl studded in the dirt, its siren call suspending all sense. It drew them in, all five of them, hands smoothing over the ivory shell of its hull, magnificent beast holding its jaws wide open for them to swim through. A spell had befallen them, trapping them in a trance as they swam around it, probing for secrets, holding their breaths to the very last second.

Only when they were forced to come up for air did they snap out of it. The gravity of their situation pitching them into the come-down, grounding them once more.

The moment was gone, but there was no denying it. They'd crossed over into something they couldn't take back. Only, Briar wouldn't feel the shift until much later, standing in front of the Summer Winds Motel, the motel key dangling from John B's finger flashing silver in the light. They'd found it in the Grady White, the only salvageable clue John B could find when he sank to the bottom with the HMS Pogue's anchor, diver down. No dead bodies, no weapons or drugs. Just a dull motel key. It didn't seem like much at the time, but if Briar were to look over her shoulder at something for once, if she ruminated on retrospect of the summer everything changed, it would be this moment, this seemingly lacklustre motel key and its wooden tab. How could they, these reckless gutter rats and no-good kids, all bravado and bite, have known it'd unlock the Pandora's box of this summer's misfortunes? How could they have known anything at all?

After a disastrous attempt at the Coast Guard, wherein neither of them had tried particularly hard to catch the attention of an attendant, the prospect of the Finder's Fee slipping through their grasp, John B and JJ had emerged from the packed hut, defeated by the throes of adults too busy agonising over minor problems to see what glittered in the dark.

Having refused to enter the steaming room, the AC shot to hell and the sweaty bodies of the lamenting folk producing a nauseating effluvium in the honey-thick humidity, Briar was leant against the post outside the Coast Guard station next to Kiara, who'd stopped craning her neck every five seconds to look for JJ and John B amidst the clamouring throng, and was resting her head against Briar's shoulder. Out of unabated habit, Briar checked her phone for the thousandth time. Since the hurricane essentially ripped up all the cell service in the area, for the first time in years, Briar's ever-chirping phone had been unnervingly silent. No onslaught of messages pouring in every three seconds from Emily, Sherbs, or Kennedy, her trusty stunt group for the past two years, or, blissfully, a single probing text wondering what she's thinking about from Leo (AP Chem), who's on the basketball team. That conversation, she's willing to let petter out into obsolescence. It's not serious—it never is with anyone—and she knows she's going to get bored of him in a day or two, how it always is.

Ideally, she should've been taking the time to respond to the backlog of all the message threads she'd let build up in the past week, but the moment she opened the app, her brain clicked to static. So she left it. Including the group chat with the entire Kildare Academy cheer squad, the most recent message from Emily plastered across the top: if cell service goes out for longer than 2 days im killing myself.

She'd turned her phone—all but useless now, without data—off and dumped it in her rucksack.

The two boys had rejoined them, then, a strange sort of determination set in their faces, John B's eyes grave-serious.

"Even if there was a reward," said JJ, "they would't give it to us."

"Fuck the Grady White," Briar snapped, hot-blooded and impatient, her voice sharp, all teeth looking for something to take a chunk out of, "John B's got that motel key—let's go see what's up ourselves instead of waiting for a handout."

"I like that plan," Kiara pointed out.

"There is no plan," Pope spat, catching onto Briar's meaning and shaking his head so vigorously she swore she heard his neck bones crackle. "That's a B&E. Thorny, we can't."

"No, she's right," John B said, holding up the motel key, flashing the wooden key-chain and the engraving on the wooden face. "we could find out who owns that boat ourselves. Solve our own mystery."

"We don't know whose room that is," Pope hissed, aggravated, as if reason and logic were a language the Pogues were well-versed in. As if caution was something they didn't drink to numb, something they threw into the water with the anchor, something they ran head-first through and only half-remembered in snatches. Theirs was a culture of action-and-consequence, fuck around and find out. Except Pope, in the initial moments before he was tided over, often kept one foot out the door, ready to run at the first sign of risk. "It could be anybody."

With a devious smile, Briar plucked the key from John B's fingers, twirled it around her finger and flicked it. and Kiara, who caught it single-handed. She pivoted on her heel and strode off toward the skiff, JJ bouncing at her heels. Her voice was an ominous echo over her shoulder, even though she wasn't looking back at him, at anyone. "That's right. Could be anybody. Anybody crazy enough to go out in a storm in a boat like that. Could be a drug smuggler, a killer, someone who's got nothing to lose."

"It'll be interesting," Kiara sang, wriggling her fingers at Pope. "C'mon, We'll be lookout."

✷

WHEN THE SKIFF carves up next to the Summer Winds Motel, Briar feels something click into place. A lurch in her stomach, like coming down from the peak, waiting for her bases' inter-woven arms to cushion her fall.

"Motel or meth lab?" Kiara murmurs, surveying the wreckage of the motel, dilapidated and falling apart at the seams, its dirty, broken sign sagging toward the ground, littered with a layer of debris and broken glass that would've been impossible to pick through in the dark. The two-story motel was a sorry affair, collapsing in on itself, its former occupants evacuated prior to the hurricane. As they look over the ravaged motel, the sparks of anticipation once crackling in the charged pit of their chests putters out into a solemn silence.

"You be the judge," says Pope, looking equally dismayed. JJ gives a sordid whistle.

"Doesn't look like a place somebody with a Grady-White would stay," John B adds, steering up close, the carcass of the motel looming bigger before them now.

"Ten bucks there's a dead body," Briar says, the ember inside her chest licked up to a flame now, staring down the hollow beast. "Place like this, there's no way something's not gone down."

"Looks like a place someone with a Grady-White would get killed," Pope deadpans, voicing Briar's exact thoughts.

Now that it's out in the open, something within them clicks back to life. Pope's careful, but not careful enough to be able to stave off that hunger for something bigger than themselves, something that could kill that restless itch in their blood. From the moment JJ hops ashore, the HMS Pogue docked and moored on the grass, Briar untwists the cap on her water bottle and thrusts it, vodka sloshing over the rim, into JJ's chest.

"Liquid courage," she says, sorority queen at initiation, her tone commanding. "Drink up."

Neither John B nor JJ deny her. They drink, tugging a mouthful each, JJ over-eager and spilling a long streak down the front of his shirt, John B shaking his head, trying to suppress the shudder wracking his body as he passes the bottle back to Briar.

"Don't let him do anything stupid," Pope warns, ever the cautionary wife, pointing an accusatory finger at JJ.

"Oh, we will," JJ promises, grinning.

"I'm not making promises," John B says, sporting a twinning smile, and Briar can see the long years of growing up together from childhood twining between the two boys, so much like brothers if not for the blood.

Pope sighs, resigned to his fate of constant worrying.

"Be careful" Kiara says, her gaze heavy on John B, as she hands him the key, a shadow of some unspoken emotion passing between them, fleeting but present. "I mean it."

Briar meets JJ's gaze behind Kiara's head, his brow cocked in puzzlement. John B's expression is dazed, struck with something that pinches at Briar's gut, a burning like no other searing up the walls of her chest. When he laughs, soft, almost entranced by Kiara's palpable concern, as if he was the only one venturing into the gaping maw of the motel to slay some unknown beast. As if JJ wasn't there, also. As if this motel wouldn't be another dead end, the thrill of breaking and entering surpassing the pay-off of actually finding something. She turns away from him, trying to untwist the horrid, dark feeling knotting up her innards, bitter taste in the back of her mouth.

JJ drags John B off before the tension can grow further, before Briar can do something irreversible, as her hands are itching for John B's eye sockets. Briar flops down on the bow, toned legs dangling off the edge, her toes skimming the grass. Kiara takes a seat beside her, but while her body's here, Briar can feel Kiara's mind wandering through the motel, the bill of John B's red cap burning into her vision. Be careful. As if they would heed it anyway. Pathetic.

"What do you think they're gonna find?" Kiara wonders, aloud.

"Nothing good." Briar shrugs, itchy all over again, with no means to scratch, drumming her fingers against the side of the skiff in agitation, tick-tick-tick, a metronome counting down the seconds till her head explodes from how utterly torturous waiting can be. "This is boring."

"They've been gone ten seconds," Pope muses, shaking his head. "Unless you're thinking of going ahead with them—"

Kiara nudges Pope. "Don't egg her on. She'll actually do it. You don't know her."

"Would I?" Briar grins, wolf-eyed, teeth bared. "And that whole thing with John B—be careful—God, Kiara, I've never seen you like that before. You be careful, girl, or he's going to get the wrong idea."

Pursing her lips, Kiara lets out a sigh. "Can we talk about something else? Pope, how's your scholarship essay going?"

Deny, deny, deny, Briar wants to crow, feeling cruel all of a sudden, that's all you ever do, isn't it?

Instead, she pushes her sunglasses down over her eyes and stares up at the sky. "You're a scholarship kid, Heyward?"

Pope looks almost scandalised by the scathing accusation in her tone. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

"Not surprised. Just didn't know you wanted to go to college." Briar's sitting up now, staring at Pope over the tops of her sunglasses. "Thought hanging out with Thing One and Thing Two would've rotted your brains."

"I guess I just have enough brains to go around," Pope says, in good humour, and it all makes sense now, Briar supposes. How reluctant he was to endorse their little venture into the plot, so unwilling to pull on this thread and stick to the sidelines where it's safe. Nothing that would become a blemish on his impossibly bright future, that kind of promise to a kid who came from nothing, a kid who's known only the Cut his entire life—he wanted it, Briar could see it, so badly he'd do anything to safeguard it. The kind of wanting that turned you into something you didn't recognise. "Anyway, back to my essay—it's, like, going, I guess?"

"That's good," Kiara says, "I think my Mom's still pushing for me to go to NYU. Business school. It's, like, practical, or something."

"And you don't want to do that because...?"

"Because she wants bigger things," Briar interjects, casting Kiara a sidelong glance, a deep knowing transmitting between them, a glittering blip in some unknowable machine. "Bigger than business school and us common folk. There's billboards in LA that need filling."

"One day," Kiara says, glowing now, at the prospect of the future somewhere other than the set path her parents want for her, which isn't terrible, and may even be sensible, far more stable than the life she imagined for herself all those nights at Briar's, her dreams whispered into the tuft of pillow between them, mashed together under Briar's covers. "I'm going to be the next Bob Marley. I want to reach out into the world and connect people, make things matter to someone."

"And you, Thorny?" Pope asks, curiosity glimmering in his dark-eyed stare. "What do you want?"

For a long, drawn out moment, Briar doesn't answer. She uncaps her lipgloss and slathers on a thick layer, the smell of artificial grape perfuming the air now. If she were to be honest with herself, the answer would be much more complicated. Truth is, this self-imposed inoculation against wanting, against vulnerability, was protective, a veneer glossed over her shiny, flippant self. Deep inside, the wanting was an ache, a mouth that grew teeth and hungered for something more than blood. Of course she thought about the future, imagined her own life like a long road spreading through the valley, running into the sunset. There were the obvious cornerstones—college, cheer, a job, a nice apartment away from the suburbs—but the details were blurry. What Briar wanted was SoCal sun, temperate weather, a place untouched by her father. A place with Kiara in a big city where she could watch her play her music. Where she'd never have to go a single day thinking about the hole inside her chest that wouldn't ebb.

What she wanted was what everyone else wanted, but she wouldn't let them know that. To lower yourself into the want was a confession, to want was to be human. And Briar—Briar cannot be perceived as human.

To be human is to be weak.

"To win state championships, duh," Briar says, nonchalant, dodging the unspoken question, the probing into her idea of the future, of which she knew nothing about its design. Of which she didn't let herself think about. It was hers, this wanting. No one could know about it. "I'm going to break those girls like Barbies. Watch out world."

"Is that what you're gunning for?" Pope asks, a dog with a bone. "Win state, impress scouts—do scouts go to cheer competitions?—get a full-ride cheer scholarship somewhere on the West Coast?"

"USC, baby," Kiara says, grinning. She turns to Pope. "That's what our guidance counsellor told her. He's really selling Sport Psych or Physio to Briar like he's on commission."

Briar lets out a sharp bark of laughter. "That's his Alma Mater. Imagine that. Moving out of SoCal just to end up here, in America's anal canyon. Sad."

Pope snorts. "Yeah, well, thank God that's not going to be us."

"It better not be," Kiara says, mouthing around her vape, a habit she hardly indulges around Briar, who'd called it ugly, desperate. She sighs. "I just hope JJ and John B can make it out of here, too."

"Why?" Briar asks, sarcasm laid thick in her tone. "You think they'll be stuck here forever?"

"Well," Pope says, diplomatically, "neither of them have the greatest prospects. I mean, you've got cheer, you're obviously going somewhere with that, Kie's got money and motivation, I have the scholarship. John B and JJ... they're not the greatest academically. And they don't try."

"I think they're resigned," Kiara says, sotto voce. "They're not exactly that keen on the future, and I don't think it's that they don't care, per se, but it's that it's much less heartbreaking believing that they're fated to stay in the Cut while everyone else moves on."

Briar smacks her glossed lips together, the rasp of the glitter chaffing against her skin. "That's depressing."

"It's complicated," Pope says, brows creasing. "They have nothing. They're true Pogues. They have no money, no means of escape. They can't go anywhere."

"We're privileged enough to have a safety net," Kiara elaborates, a cloud of vapour whispering around the corners of her mouth. "They're in free fall."

"Lucky us," Briar drawls.

"Fact is," Pope says, aggravated now, heat blazing behind his tone, "the three of us—in some capacity—we've got people rallying behind us. Our parents have enough to give us, or are willing to give us everything—" Don't be so sure about me, Briar thinks— "but JJ's Dad's deadbeat, and John B? Well... his Dad's not here anymore to care. It's not luck. It's just how life is."

"Damn, Pope," Briar muses, "hit a real nerve there, didn't I? That a pet peeve of yours?"

"I like things to be exact," Pope says, settling down a bit. "I don't believe in luck. There's always a reason for everything. What about you?"

Briar hums.

"Loaded question," Kiara snorts. "Most people piss her off."

Pope laughs.

"Incompetence, I guess," Briar says, simply, thinking of the JV squad, the wannabes and the girls who can't differentiate between their lefts and rights when they're in the air, struggling to lock up, to extend their arms, the stench of their fear thick in the air. "And cowards. If you can't full send it, might as well kill yourself."

"Brutal," Pope notes, nodding, as if class is in session, lapping up every drop of information Briar's willing to share about herself. "Guess I expected something like that. What about you, Kie?"

"Easy," Kiara says, "Giving one percent to the environment."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Is recycling not enough?" Briar muses, "does that mean I have to come with you to volunteer beach-cleans now?"

"We only have one Earth, guys." Kiara wags her vape in emphasis. "We should be giving it a hundred percent, bare minimum."

"Right," Pope says, unconvinced. "That's... not fiscally sound."

"Neither is destroying the planet we have to live on."

"Kiara, we're all just trying to exist," Briar says. "Now, mega-corporations, though... if you had to blame someone for ecological destruction—"

Pope perks up, a deer on the verge of fleeing at the sound of a twig snapping. His eyes widen at something in the distance. He taps Briar's knee urgently, hissing, "hey, hey, cops."

"Shit," Kiara spits.

At the same time, Pope turns to Briar as he rises, bent low enough so he's concealed below the shrubbery. "Call them."

"She can't," Kiara says, hush, scrambling over the side of the skiff and landing softly in the grass, "towers are down."

"If I lose my merit scholarship, I'm going to kill someone," Pope snarls, crouching low.

Briar slips her flip flops back on and follows Kiara off the skiff. "I'll mercy kill you if you want."

They huddle behind the sign, peering over the tops of the iron-wrought gate as the cops exit their cruiser, heading toward the stairs leading up to the second story of the motel. Pope's hopeful speculation that they're probably just here to check out the damage, community engagement—that sort of thing—nothing to do with the Grady-White and the mystery owner in the motel, immediately shrivels up.

"They're so fucked," Briar says, darkly. "I say we get outta here before Pope actually loses his scholarship."

"No!" Kiara hisses. "We can't leave them. Cops here have a vendetta against the Pogues. You don't know what they'd do to JJ or John B. We have to warn them!"

Briar sighs, peering around the corner. "They're not looking. Let's go."

She darts out from behind the sign, feet pumping, fleet as she turns the corner to the wall of the motel, the windows facing the water, where they were shielded from the cops. Behind her, she hears Kiara follow, her footfalls light on the grass, Pope coming up at the rear, breathing hard, go, go, go. Briar searches the ground for something to throw. Pope finds a rock small and light enough to strike the window with, but not enough to break it and cause a scene.

"Stand back," he says, and they do, and he hurls the rock at the window.

When he lets it fly, it falls catastrophically short, arcing low and landing ineffectually in the grass. Kiara sends Pope an incredulous scowl. Pope can't even bring himself to look at Briar.

"Didn't you used to play baseball?" Kiara says, dismayed. "Dude!"

"I was on the math team," Pope mutters, trying to buy sympathy out of the humiliation.

"I swear to God," Briar snarls, snatching up another small stone she'd found nestled amongst a pile of cigarettes and overturned dirt. She goes to stand a good distance away from the window, shoving Pope out of the way. "Move, Heyward."

Without aiming, Briar punts the stone at the window. This time, it strikes glass, bouncing off the pane and clattering against the overhang. They wait with baited breath. Kiara presses a second stone into Briar's open palm, but as she's winding up to throw, the blinds lift, and John B's face fills the bottom corner of the window.

"Cops!" They mouth, gesticulating fervently toward the door. Briar makes the motion for them to leave about a hundred times before John B seems to get the message. The blinds drop, and Briar grabs Kiara's hand, the stone still hot in her palm, and drags her back toward the skiff. Pope follows without question, and they leap back into the skiff, panting.

"Should we peel?" Kiara asks, forgetting her earlier insistence on saving the boys, never leave your crew behind.

"We never leave a Pogue behind," Pope says, nobly.

"What are those idiots doing?" Briar mutters, squinting up against the glare of the sun as she spies JJ and John B clambering over the window sill onto the overhang, clinging to the pipes running down the side of the motel for stability. They plaster themselves to the wall on either side of the window, ducking out of view each time the beam of a flashlight sweeps toward the window.

"Oh my God," Kiara says, putting her face in her hands, unable to watch. Pope, absolutely losing his shit, presses his hands to his temples, trying to fathom what his two friends were attempting. Briar doesn't feel even a bit of the anxiety that either Kiara or Pope seem to be wrapped up in. Instead, she smirks up at JJ, who presses a finger to his lips in a hush motion. Now, this is interesting. Cops combing for the owner of the Grady White. Wrong place, wrong time. Something was beginning to unravel. She wasn't going to let them screw it all up, kill the fun before it even began.

"Pope, sit down," Briar snaps, knotting a fist into the back of his shirt and forcing him into the seat next to her. "Be cool."

JJ mouths something at John B, his body swinging outward just a fraction. A dark, oblong object tumbles out of his pocket, striking the overhang and bouncing off something metallic, the sound spearing right through Briar's chest, her heartbeat thrumming against her teeth. Panic slashes across their faces, and the boys tighten up, pressing themselves into the wall as if to phase right through the brick.

In that moment, the blinds snap up, exposing the male cop, arms akimbo, gazing out the window where he's got a good eyeful of the HMS Pogue loitering by the water's edge. Kiara leans back, trying to posture herself casually as quickly as possible. Briar throws her legs across Pope's lap, winding her arms around his shoulders. She feels him go rigid beneath her and nearly rolls her eyes out of her head.

"Will you relax?" Briar mutters into the crook of his neck.

For what feels like minutes, hours, he surveys the view of the marsh, his eyes glossing over the HMS Pogue, lingering just barely. Kiara starts to talk, Pope nodding even though her words aren't making much sense. Briar lets out a laugh that makes Pope tense up. They don't look at the motel once, fearing what that might imply.

"Is he leaving?" Pope whispers, trembling slightly. "Kie. Is he leaving?"

Kiara shakes her head. She's the one facing the motel, has it within her sights.

Finally, finally, the cop must've left because all the tension drains from Kiara's shoulders immediately, and she flashes a brief thumbs-up over her head.

Briar shoves Pope away from her, retracting her legs and leaning over to retrieve her rucksack. She pulls out her water bottle and takes a pull from it.

As soon as the boys are back on the skiff, John B starts the engine and they're off, chugging away from the motel and its darkness, the maimed land growing smaller and smaller in the distance. JJ gladly takes a sip from Briar's bottle, the smell of vodka thick on his teeth. Briar claps him on the shoulder. John B shakes his head, refusing when JJ offers the bottle to him.

"So did you guys find anything?" Pope asks, the skiff bobbing in the water.

"Did we find anything... No, I don't think so..." JJ ponders, playfully, reaching into his pockets and drawing out a thick wad of cash and a gun, grinning like he's holding up prize tuna rather than items pilfered from a crime scene. "Oh, yeah, we did."

"Holy shit," Briar says, straightening up, a jolt of excitement running down her spine as he mouth goes slack. She reaches for the gun. Kiara grabs her hands before she can grasp the barrel and shoots JJ a maternal glare.

"Dude, what the hell?"

"Why would you take that from a crime scene?" Pope hisses, exasperated, fingers jammed into his temples, massaging the budding headache that JJ seemed to be the common aetiology of.

JJ only shrugs, flippant as always. "Better than the cops having it."

"Why? Because you know how to use a gun?" Briar drawls, her tone sardonic. "Twelve bullets in a mag, JJ. Gotta make each one count."

"It's not about using it—unless forced, of course—it's just good to keep as a deterrent," says JJ, with his whole chest, waving the gun emphatically, eyes blown wide, manic, until Pope knocks his hand away.

"Stop it," Pope snaps, his voice fierce now, some deeply suppressed anger rising to the surface.

Cocking her head, Briar watches him carefully, standing toe-to-toe with JJ, levelling him with an incendiary glare. Tension crackles through the air, the wind tugging at the edge of Pope's unbuttoned shirt, but unable to soothe its wearer, and Briar thinks Pope might actually do it. Might actually throw the first punch.

But as soon as she lets the thought fly, Pope steps back, hand on JJ's wrist, the gun pointed elsewhere, it's gone. The flame doused, retreated back into himself, the ever-diplomatic merit scholar Pope Heyward, who's never been anything else but good.

✷

THEY DO FIGURE OUT WHO OWNED THAT BOAT, anyway, when they stop at the marina for a bite, their nerves too rattled to eat anything. Between them, the fish tacos and the chips JJ ordered on Briar's debit card, sits heavy with grease, the smell unbearable. Briar doesn't touch any of it, except to nibble at her chicken salad, the soggy sliced tomatoes finally turning her away from the meal. It's a good thing, too, because the moment Scooter Grubbs' bloated and bruised body is wheeled out across the concrete walk, Briar feels her stomach tug.

A girl leans over to show them the picture she took of it, the dead body, Scooter Grubbs floating face-up in the dark water, pale as a ghost, his glassy eyes gleaming under the sky. Briar couldn't tear her eyes from it, death in the flesh. Kiara closes her eyes, visibly upset.

"Somehow that dirtbag copped a brand new Grady White," she'd said, "Everyone's looking for it."

Back at the Chateau, Briar uncorks the Rosé with John B's house keys and takes a long swig straight form the bottle as she perches on the wooden beam. JJ goes next, always eager to try Briar's mother's expensive goods. They're lounging around on the porch, Briar tracing circles in the wire mesh, gathering dust under her finger. Silence settles over them, perforated by the harsh clicking of JJ's flip-top lighter flicking open and shut, open and shut, the weight of what they'd just been unknowingly implicated in setting in now.

After a moment of frantic pacing, Pope crashes through the screen door, his face fraught with stress. "We need to have total and complete amnesia."

"Pope's right, for once," JJ says. "See? I agree with you sometimes. Deny, deny, deny."

"Your prints are all over the motel, moron," Briar points out. "If the plan is to have your word against literal forensic evidence, you're screwed. Just saying."

"Guys, we can't keep that money," Kiara says, legs folded under her on the couch.

"Not all of us can afford unlimited data plans, Kiara," JJ drawls, frustrated.

"We have to pass that money off to Lana Grubbs," Kiara insists, "otherwise it's bad karma."

"Bad karma to be implicated in a felony, too," Pope says, his tone severe, eyeing JJ and John B, hoping they'd understand, that they'd see sense. "We gotta go dark."

"Or," Briar says, "we stop acting like we murdered Scooter Grubbs and just carry on as normal. The cops already saw us on the skiff. If we go dark, they'll know something's up."

Just as Pope's about to argue, John B cuts him off.

"How does a dirtbag marina rat who's never had more than forty dollars in his life suddenly get a brand new Grady White?" John B says, looking out at his friends, gauging range of expressions, pacing up and down the porch now, his thoughts gaining momentum. "Think about it. We know Scooter Grubbs. We've seen him begging for change at the gas station. So answer me this—how does a marina rat like Scooter get a Grady White?"

"Someone loaned it to him," Briar says, sitting up now. "Someone with Grady-White money."

"Square groupers," John B says, heading into the house, leaving the front door wide open for the others to follow, scrambling after John B, his tail end lit by the new hypothesis. Pope shuts the front door behind him and throws the lock. They're in John B's bedroom, now, crammed onto the bed. "Flying under the radar, no aerial surveillance. They don't do that stuff during a hurricane."

"So he's a runner," JJ pipes. "Straight smugglin'."

"Which means contraband, a serious amount in that wreck," John B says, feverish now, his eyes dark, devouring, the Grady-White's siren call still pulsing under his skin, snaring him in its dark hold.

"They could come looking for it," Kiara says, "whoever that boat belongs to."

"Taking it would be catastrophically stupid."

"What's stupid is leaving it sitting there," Briar points out. "You're telling me you don't want to know what we're sitting on? What kind of gold's at the end of that rainbow? Don't be a bore, Pope."

"We need to figure out a way tot get into the cargo hold of that wreck," JJ says. "Until then, we just lay low. Just act normal, like Thorny said."

"Right," Pope says, flatly, "and how exactly do we do that?"

Briar stares down at the bottle of Rosé in her hands. She taps the bottom of it. The same idea seems to strike Kiara, too.

"Kegger?" Kiara suggests, and it's just like normal, again, all the weight from the Grady-White and Scooter Grubbs' body evaporating in the space of one word.

They glance at each other, the general consensus tipping toward agreement.

Briar stands, picking her way over John B's bed to head for the door.

"Where are you going?" JJ asks, squinting at her, confused.

"To get ready, duh." Briar flicks him a surreptitious smile over her shoulder. "You think I'm going to a party smelling like marsh water?"

JJ shares a knowing look with John B and Kiara, wide grins blasted across their faces, and says, to Briar's retreating back. "Guess the Tourons are doing body shots on Thorny again tonight."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
the spins by mac miller is such a jj song.

✷

SUNDRESS ── jj maybank / kiara carrera
Chapter Four,   TRYNA SWIM FROM SOMETHIN' BIGGER THAN ME
⚓️          S1.01: PILOT