CHAPTER FIVE
watch out for them snake ones

TWO BEERS IN, Briar's on her hands and knees burying a Touron to the neck in the sand. He's dark-haired, his skin a deep bronze, perfect teeth flashed in a hazy beam, his face flushed from the afternoon sun, and Briar's already forgotten his name. Opposite her, Kiara grins, sand slipping from between her cupped hands, whisking into the wind.

"It's a purity ritual," Briar teases, a smokey witchiness to her tone as she pours more sand over his toned chest, spreading it down, down, down to the waistband of his board shorts, something stirring further South, "you're being reborn. You'll be smooth as a stone, baby-soft, when you come out, trust."

"Natural exfoliation," Kiara says, barely holding back the manic laughter threatening to bubble from her chest, as if they didn't have plans to sculpt a pair of boobs and a mermaid tail on him in the sand and leave him there, his arms soldered to his body. "In here, the little crabs will pick at your dead skin, make you new again."

A horrified look crosses his expression, the smile faltering, but Briar leans over, her cleavage hanging over his face, and gently presses the rim of her plastic solo cup, ringed with glittery crescents of pink lipgloss, to his lips, hushing, hushing. His wide-eyed gaze meets hers, glazed in the way of wanting as he drinks from her cup in silent rapture, but she draws away when his arms twitch with desire to touch her, to reach out and caress her bare skin, teasing.

When she finally takes the cup away to drink from it, Kiara's buried his entire bottom half in the hole they'd made him dig, the sand packed tight over his legs.

"Holy shit," he whispers, trapped in trance, their spell cast heavy upon him. "So... can I get your Snap?"

Briar casts Kiara a mirthful look over her shoulder, spots the twitch in the corner of Kiara's lips, stained with Briar's lipgloss from a game they'd played earlier, passing Peach Schnapps between their mouths in a circle of seven, Judas kiss in pink glitter. Just a thing girls do, nothing more. It takes only a second for the dam to break. They dissolve into pealing cackles that echo across the packed beach.

Despite the Pogues' aversion to their diametrically opposed "Kook" counterparts of Kildare Island, the Boneyard is a saturated blend of the classes, comprising of the kids of the Cut, the Figure Eight folk, and the holiday-homers just passing through for the summer on their nomadic voyage. At the epicentre of it all, the singularity at which the rest of the galaxy spins around, the keg stand draws them all in like flies to the honeypot, where John B and JJ take turns pouring beers into red plastic solo cups—spreading the love, as Kiara would say. When plied with enough alcohol, they're all the same inside. Sad, desperate and hungry kids looking for something to get the blood going.

When Briar stands to appraise their masterpiece, Kiara comes up behind her, arms crossed over her chest, looking almost proud of their hard work. One of the sculpted boobs slides off, crumbling to a loose mound off-kilter. Buried up to the neck, the boy glances up at them, his eyes shining with concern.

"Hey, my arms are kinda going numb..."

"We'll get you a drink to get your blood going," Briar says, lying through her brilliant grin, flicking her fingers at him derisively.

Before his protests can reach them, Kiara takes Briar's hand and drags her through the pulsing throng, laughing like maniacs, drawing the curious gazes of the surrounding party people. A couple guys from school wave Briar over, but she only flicks them a coy smile, shrugging noncommittally, always dragged out of sight by some invisible force. They burst into the centrefold, flushed and smiling in a way that makes their cheeks ache. The Spins by Mac Miller pounds from Kiara's bluetooth speaker, dangling from a palm tree by the tether of one of JJ's shirts combined with Briar's purple towel, the bass thrumming through the sand, a sharp reverb in their bones.

"So... can I get your Snap?" Kiara mocks, dropping her voice low. She glances over her shoulder, a shadow of guilt flickering over her soft features. It's always been this way—Kiara getting caught up in the vortex of Briar's malicious compulsions to kill the boredom, to stir the air with chaos, a hypnotic crash of adrenaline through their veins that'd fade once the high was gone, and swiftly replacing it, Kiara's crushing empathy, the guilt that always turns her head back. "I feel a little bad for him, actually, he just wanted to hang."

"Someone will dig him out eventually," Briar says, dismissively. "I want a beer."

From their vantage point, they spot the boys, splintered off into their own clusters. There's JJ, standing by the keg stand, peacocking to a group of stunningly gorgeous girls with a cup of beer balanced on his head; John B perched on a fallen tree trunk with a blonde girl who's obviously never lived in Kildare for longer than a month; and Pope, engaged in a strangely intense discussion with a group of people, the sole girl among them staring at him with her mouth slack-jawed in a way that suggests that she'd rather be elsewhere than listening to him ramble on about whatever odd hyper-fixation he's got whorling in that unfathomable brain of his.

There's no one manning the hose while JJ's busy showing off his spectacular hand-eye coordination to the girls, a seal balancing a blow-up ball on its nose for treats, their faces shifting into focus now that Briar's closer. She plucks a red solo cup from the plastic bag on the floor and treats herself to a refill, offering the nozzle to Kiara, who squints at the girls, realisation slowly dawning on her as it begins to register.

"Is that—?"

It's Emily Trammel who spots her first, right over JJ's shoulder, her freckled face breaking into a million-dollar grin, green eyes glinting with unadulterated surprise.

"Oh my God! Briar?!" Emily screams, red hair flying as she hurdles over the broken branches in her way and practically flings herself into Briar, crushing her into a fierce hug, muscular arms threatening to pop Briar's collarbones out. The beer in Briar's hand sloshes over the rim of the cup, splashing down their legs, but Emily doesn't even flinch, doesn't relent in her earnestness, pressing into Briar as if they could fuse their flesh together forever. Briar can feel the hysteria through her chest, a war wife reunited with her Marine—this was Emily Trammel, main base, all melodrama and emotions too big for her strikingly compact body. "I thought you were at camp! I thought I'd never hear from you again until term started!"

By some miracle, the girls that JJ had been entertaining comprised of half of Briar's cheer squad, three of which were Briar's main stunt group. Almost immediately, they abandon JJ, whose mouth falls open in offense at the loss of his Kook crowd, now swarming around Briar, moths to a flame.

"Yeah, where've you been, bitch?" Sherbs, Emily's base partner, asks, her scowl pointed, but without any heat, as Briar untangles herself from Emily, who's manifestly vibrating with excitement.

Scoffing, Briar shoves Sherbs in the shoulder and tugs her into a hug, to which Sherbs—Harriet Sherburn, officially, though anyone who ever calls her by her government name would inevitably end up with two black eyes and a bleeding crotch—begrudgingly reciprocates, her arm slung around Briar's shoulders even as they part. Over Sherbs' shoulder, she spots Emily pulling Kiara into a hug, too, much to JJ's evident shock, his brows disappearing into the hair falling over his forehead.

"We missed you, girl!" Kennedy says, raising her Evian water bottle—which Briar knows is filled with tequila—in greeting, all wishbone arms and long, tanned legs that were deceptively strong, her dark hair tumbling past her shoulders like black silk.

She hangs back as the other girls tug Briar into a ten-armed hug, limbs twisting around each other in a ferocity reminiscent of pyramid drills, their bodies extending into each other, no longer individual girls stacked atop each other, but a living, breathing Titan gazing down into the abyss. So, Kennedy's not a toucher, and neither is Briar, really, with most people except Kiara, but the bonds she's forged with these girls—these happy few, her band of bitches—have been forged in the trenches. In rigorous, stomach-churning, back-breaking, tear-harvesting, blood-and-bruises and bone-snapping times, both on and off the bandshell. You don't get much closer than that. Cheer is a sport of intimacy, even if you're out for blood somedays. That's just sisterhood, though. You've always got your girl's back even if you're talking smack behind it.

Caught in the midst of their incessant wonderings, Briar smiles, surreptitious, and doesn't answer. She hasn't told any of them that she'd been sent packing from cheer camp, that she was finally free to hang out for the summer instead of tucked into a bunk, stunting and tumbling six weeks straight, trying to get her Arabian sharp and clean, trading friendship bracelets in the dark with friends from camp.

"I think this is the first time I've seen Thorny smiling around people who aren't Kie," John B says, having wandered over to the commotion, his cup empty.

"Who even is she?" JJ says, feigning scandalised shock.

During the school semesters, if on the rare occasion that Briar wasn't with Kiara, if the latter had to pull double shifts at the Wreck and wasn't free by the time Briar got out of cheer practice, it was the four of them, stuffed into Briar's blue jeep, slinging back Peach Schnapps and stolen sugar-free candy from the corner store, blasting Kennedy's playlist with the windows rolled down. There would be Emily, claiming the passenger seat, manicured toes on the dashboard, talking a blue streak about the boy in Calculus, or dissecting the mechanics of some complex stunt. There would be sneering and sardonic Sherbs in the back, Briar's sunglasses perched atop the bridge of her dainty nose, gum smacking in the corner of her mouth as she contests Emily's brazen claims that she could easily do a double, even if her lay-out was still inconsistent. And Kennedy, their back spot, her hobo skirts sweeping the floor, thin strings of sea-glass beads twisted around her waist, gazing wistfully out the window, her dark green eyes searching the sky for something no one else could see. Emily never shut up, Sherbs had a mouth full of scorn and a tongue that liked to get mean when she had too much in her system, and Ken didn't speak much, but you could feel her there.

"Better yet, who are you to her?" Sherbs drawls, her dark eyes flicking over JJ, a slow incineration from the top of his white cap to the tips of his dirty boots.

"Good question," JJ says, blue eyes glittering, dimpled smile sling-shotted at Briar, a teasing edge to his tone. "Who are we to you, Thorny?"

Briar hums, malice curling at the corners of her lips. "They hold my beer when I need them to."

"Kook Academy cheerleaders," Kiara says, slanting Emily a sideways grin, as if they'd known each other forever. "Meet my Pogue friends."

Most importantly, they tucked Kiara under the umbrage of their wings, too.

There is no denying the soul-sucking vortex of the hierarchy in Kildare Academy. Kiara had spent her first years castaway and drifting, hiding in the bathroom during lunch, fleet around the corridors, invisible for the most part. Until Sarah Cameron. When that burned out, she was back in the bathroom, back to being shunted off to the side, discarded and forgotten. Then there was Briar, halfway through that hellish semester, their meeting in the abandoned bathroom on the second floor while skipping class by coincidence, though Kiara likens it more to fate. By then, Briar had already joined the cheer team. She'd met Sherbs at All-Star camp some five years ago, and Sherbs had immediately convinced their former captain to sign Briar on, citing all her trophies, the fact that she could out-fly the rest of the girls on the team, and had her doubles on lock. Within days, Kiara was sitting with the cheerleaders at lunch, discussing books on environmental conservation with Kennedy, surfing with Emily, and laughing at Sarah Cameron and her vapid, old money friends with Sherbs.

Even while the rest of the school had labelled Kiara as a narc, the one who snitched on Sarah Cameron's epic birthday party, Kiara was actually well-liked by the cheer team. And while she was with them, no one could've said a thing about her. Not while she was a part of their tribe.

"Dude, I thought you were a loser at school?" JJ says, floored.

Pope, having been drawn toward the puzzling swarm of gilded and glowing girls enveloping Briar and Kiara, elbowed JJ in the side.

"If God wanted me to hang out with losers, he would've made me ugly," Briar drawls.

"Nah, she's chill," Emily says, throwing out a wink. "We keyed my ex's car together."

Briar props her elbow atop Kiara's shoulder. "Friends who enact revenge together stay together."

"Them's the rules," Kiara chirps.

JJ shakes his head. "It's like we don't even know the Kook you, Kie."

Behind them, the other girls chitter amongst themselves, whispering behind hands, eyeing the boys like they could eat them whole, hungry for fresh meat. Emily gives Pope an approving once-over, this look in her eye that Briar's seen before, and Briar knows then that Pope might disappear off to some secluded corner of the beach soon, Emily making all his dreams come true. If only he could look Emily in the eye for longer than three seconds before glancing down at his cup.

"I say," Briar says, seizing the nozzle from John B's hands, blue eyes flashing with a dangerous gleam. "We get this fucking kegger started."

Sherbs immediately latches onto the wicked edge in her tone. "Longest to survival?"

Briar nods. "Winner takes all."

The boys glance toward each other, lost.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" says John B, lifting a brow.

"Handstand competition," Emily says, perking up. "You in, Kiara?"

"Hell no. Not against you guys," Kiara chuckles, fishing out her phone from her back pocket. "But I'll time it."

"Five bucks on the table, each," Briar commands, snatching the cap off JJ's head and tossing it upside-down on the ground. She untucks a wad of cash from under her bikini strap, slips a fiver into the bowl of the cap. The girls hang back, skeptical. Impatient, Briar snaps her fingers, glaring. "C'mon, pay up. Don't be a JV coward."

In a flourish of hands, coins and dollar bills are tossed into the cap.

"Fuck it," JJ says, grinning, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it at Pope, who shakes his head as if he knows that JJ might get torpedoed despite his eagerness. "I'll get in on the action. Yo, Kie—"

"Oh my God, JJ," Kiara groans, "I'm not spotting you."

"No pay, no play, boy," Sherbs says, flatly.

"I'm feeling generous today," Briar muses, adding another fiver to the cap. "On me, Maybank. You win this, I'll be nice to you for the rest of the week."

JJ flicks Briar on the forehead. "Nah. I like you mean."

One by one, they kick up into a handstand. Emily goes first, Briar holding the nozzle to her mouth and cackling when she folds in under a minute. Then Ashley, another flyer on the team, then Kennedy, who pushes the time to nearly two and a half minutes, then Sherbs, who shatters that record by a solid half minute, their screams of disappointment when Sherbs falls forward into a front-walkover, coughing up foam as she straightens, drawing more and more people from the surrounding party toward the keg stand. Every girl on the team has a turn. When JJ goes, the cheerleaders scream instructions at him to keep his handstand steady—locked knees, tight core, use your shoulders, push into the ground, work that ass, JJ!—and when he topples over, coughing up beer foam, they groan and clap him on the shoulder, tugging him into a consolatory group hug. One or two stragglers from the crowd shove a tenner into the cap and jump in for a spontaneous turn, flipping into shaky handstands as Diane, another back spotter, holds the hose and the chanting begins. By the time Briar gets a turn, the crowd they'd amassed is swallowing, their cheers startling the birds from the palm trees and drowning out the pounding music.

"You got this, B!" Kiara cries as Briar kicks up into a handstand, lengthening her spine and locking her knees tight, toes pointed, perfect form. Kennedy points the nozzle into her mouth and counts her down before spraying beer down her throat. Out of sheer determination, Briar drinks, suppressing the urge to choke on the surge of cold beer trickling from the corners of her mouth. Even as it streams up her nose, Briar only blows it out and keeps going, tightening her muscles and digging her fingers into the sand. Her legs sway ever-so-slightly, but she doesn't falter, doesn't pitch backward, off-balance. She won't break, refuses to. She's never lost anything in her life. All she can hear are the screams of the crowd, her name chanted over and over: Bri-ar! Bri-ar! Bri-ar!

Eventually, the beer begins sloshing in her swelling belly, her blood turning to magma in her veins and her head going light as the blood rushes from her body to her brain. When she comes down, cheeks high in colour, Briar wipes her wet mouth with the back of her hand, and grins up at the heaving crowd. John B makes a show of shaking her hand, lifting it high, their fingers intertwined, and it makes sense when Emily lurches forward, the phone shoved in her face. Five minutes on the dot. Longest to survival.

Briar rises to her tip-toes, laughing, laughing, and meets Kiara's shining gaze among the spectating Tourons, star of the show. Hand over her heart, Kiara blows Briar a kiss, to which Briar throws her a wink.

"Winner takes all," JJ grunts, slapping the cash into Briar's hands. She licks her thumb and counts it, racking up to nearly a hundred bucks. Smug, Briar stuffs it into the back pocket of her denim shorts, slung low on her waist.

Naturally, the cheerleaders start tumbling when they get drunk—"Tuck check!" Sherbs barks, her scornful finger, ringed with silver, sweeping toward the JV squad, who's turned up out of the blue, shakily making their way toward the water's edge—and the light's just starting to fade into the horizon. It's a thing they just do at parties, making the Boneyard their stage, the eyes of the crowd on them. They've tasted excitement before, the blood-pounding, star-birth-in-your-chest, teeth-shattering thrill making a home of their veins. Something possesses them when the music's shaking the ground, when the lights are low, when the air grows restless and itching for something to fill it. Parties aren't fun if there isn't enough attention pouring over them. And no better way to grab someone's attention than to show-off-and show-out.

"It's that time of the night," says Briar, sybil-like, when Pope asks what they're all doing, throwing tumbles across the sand, egging each other on, growing bolder and bolder each second, "when the alcohol's starting to taste like we do cheer and everybody in this shithole needs to know we're the fucking shit."

"God, look at Kennedy," Kiara swoons, watching the aforementioned girl snap into a round-off back-handspring series, three in a row, her long legs arcing through the air, bounding far. "Wish I could do that."

"I'll spot you," Briar muses, staking her beer into the sand. "Come. See if you learned anything from last time."

"I am way too tipsy for this," Kiara says, laughing, but she shoves her cup into Pope's chest until he takes it from her anyway. "Alright, just don't let me break my neck."

"Oh, you're absolutely going to eat shit," JJ scoffs.

Kiara flips JJ off with both hands as she gets into position, her skin warm to the touch but her body tight as a spring, just the way Briar taught her those months ago when they'd made the trade: surfing for tumbling, a simple carve for a back-walkover. Pope and JJ holler their encouragement at Kiara, who purses her lips in determination, her resolve starting to falter.

Before Briar can let the nerves take her, Briar plants a hand on Kiara's lower back and another on her thigh. Kiara sets, arms straight up.

"Swing your arms down when you lean back," Briar says, "then spring up—not back. Hear me? The momentum will take you. Legs straight after launch. Keep your core tight. Don't think."

"Send it, Kiara!" Emily shouts, leaning against Pope now, her flame red hair whipping up into his face.

Then Briar counts Kiara in, and Kiara goes—"OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod!"—springing back, arms smacking against the sand. Briar shoves her hips over to keep her momentum going, and Kiara snaps back down into the sand on both feet, winded, hyperventilating from the shock of adrenaline. Her honey brown eyes are blown wide, her lips parted, and she looks wild, beautiful. Briar smiles, her own heart thudding in her ears.

"How'd that feel?" Sherbs asks, a rare smile crossing her lips, cherry sucker lodged between her teeth. "You ready to sign on with the Kildare Panthers?"

Struck through with awe, Kiara glances down at her trembling hands, the rush still icing her veins, surging through her body seeking outward for some unknown release. Briar wraps Kiara into a hug and presses a kiss to her temple.

"Look, B, I think you owe us a flip," John B crows, to which JJ starts chanting, like an actual toddler: "Flip! Flip! Flip! Flip—!"

Until Briar pushes his face and lets Kiara take the cup out of her hands while Pope clears a wide berth down the shore. Emily's phone light goes on.

Breathing out a slow exhale, Briar shakes out her limbs, shuts her eyes briefly and runs through the sequence she'd perfected last cheer season, a round-off back-handspring sequence with a whip-tuck to a double-full. Briefly, Briar touches a hand to the left side of her chest where her heart lays, hammering against her ribcage like a rabid ram desperate to break free of its enclosure. What if this didn't work? What if, what if, what if. The moment her eyes snap open, she the world tunnels, and every sound falls away to the blood roaring in her ears. Just herself and the path to the perfect running sequence.

Then she takes the run-up, swinging her arms out to set, and her mind shuts off and her body clicks on as she explodes off the mark.

It's like riding a bike. If you've done it enough times, you never forget. Cutting across the sand, a powerful force leaping and bounding through the air as she rounds off into the first hand-spring, then the whip-tuck, then the series of aggressive back-handsprings. With every rebound, she feels the reverb in my bones, the world around her flashing by in a blur, until she pulls the double-full, twisting through the air and rebounding off the balls of her feet like she could've kept flipping forever. Head spinning, the crushing surge of adrenaline through her veins roaring in her ears, Briar snaps her arms clean to her thighs and flicks her head up, baring her teeth in a savage grin, chest heaving, her purple bikini top suddenly ten times too tight for her ribcage, positively glowing. She's never felt more alive.

The standing ovation rips her right back into the present, JJ's war-cry shredding the calm air as he rushes at her, throwing her over his shoulder and racing down the beach. "Let's gooooo!"

"That's my girl!" Kiara screams, and the sound is a canned echo in Briar's chest, pinging around her ribs for eternity.

John B turns to Sherbs. "Now you have to show us a stunt."

They lever Briar up into an extension-liberty, and her arms go v-split over her head. From her vantage point, she can see more people pouring onto the beach, gasping and pointing up at her, at the other cheerleaders rising up into place behind her, can see the whole of Kildare Island spread out before her, an oil-spill of lights going inland. Briar looks down, seeking Kiara's gaze out from the crowd below her. Kiara winks up at her from the ground. Eyes on your girl, always. Later, much later, it's this moment Briar would dissect in her head while she lays beside Kiara in her bed, their legs tangling with the covers.

For now, Briar comes down, slapping John B's hand in a fierce high-five. Then the cheerleaders start to teach the Tourons and the Pogues, they throw the ones with gymnastics experience in the air, screaming at them to get tight, tight, tighter as they wobble on one foot, fear blanching their features.

They launch Briar into a twisting basket toss, the crowd holding their breath as she flips into the air, spinning into the come-down. Jess from the JV squad takes the video.

Now JJ wants a go.

"Dude, you're going to kill yourself," Pope warns, earning himself a thumbs-down from Emily, who blows a raspberry at him. Downer.

They have to use Mindy and Sienna this time, the two strongest bases of the team, their thighs like tree trunks and their grins wide, shark-like, JJ has no idea what he's getting himself into. Kennedy back-spots. Just a prep, Briar says, knowing their limits, watching JJ's expression as they fold him into the gut-prep for launch. The former bravado on his face has been wiped off, replaced by hesitance—the real danger to himself—and his eyes flicker with worry as he stutters, "wait, don't let me fall guys."

Before he can finish, the girls dip and push his feet up to eye-level, arms working hard, shaking under his weight, but standing strong, steady.

Evil grin blasted over her face, Briar barks, captain of the ship, "elbows in, feet together, keep your chest up. Tighten up, Maybank. You're going to eat shit if you keep shaking like that."

"That inspires real confidence, Thorny, thank you," JJ says through gritted teeth, arms splayed out to maintain his questionable balance. Sharp breaths hiss out of Mindy and Sienna's gritted teeth as they hold him up, refusing to buckle. Emily gets the pictures in.

"Alright, pop him out girls," Briar commands.

Before they can cradle JJ out, JJ loses his balance and tips over. Mindy snags him upside-down, her grip choking around his torso, but they don't let him touch the ground. She dumps him on the sand, and JJ's still reeling, hissing, holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit, clutching his heart. Briar can feel it, the pulsing thrum, the thrill of falling. JJ wants to go again, but Kennedy, coy smile and eyes siren-like, takes his hand, leads him somewhere secluded, the other girls wolf-whistling as they disappear behind the dunes.

"Hey, is that Sarah Cameron?" Sherbs mutters, squinting at something in the distance, her pretty features twisted into a scowl.

"Oh, fuck," Emily groans.

Briar follows Sherbs' line of vision to the blonde girl in a blue dress rippling in the wind, hand-in-hand with none other than Topper Thornton. As they come down the beach, the dark seed in Briar's chest unfurls. There's a moment in there were Briar feels her blood flash hot with the same wayward itch she felt when she flung that snow globe at her father, wishing to crack his skull open. Briar knows Sarah Cameron, knows what went down between Kie and Sarah. How Sarah ditched Kie like she was nothing. And there Briar and Kiara forged their bond, picking up the pieces of Kiara's broken heart.

"Blood in the water," Briar says, her voice low, a growl of thunder, as her storming eyes lock onto them, their hands interlaced, swinging between them. Sarah leans into Topper, throws her head back laughing at something he says, her fair hair catching the setting sun, the horizon casting her in a resplendent glow, angel on fire, poison on the inside. Granted, Briar doesn't understand what anyone sees in Topper. When she looks at him in his white linens and boat shoes, classic American old money, his All-American smile and his pale skin and his fair hair, she feels like she can look right past him, and she sees nothing at all.

"Who the hell invited her?" Kiara snarls, livid, her dark eyes glowing with hatred.

"The audacity of these people," Briar says, something dark brewing under the cap of her skull. Rage swirls in her body as they near the keg stand. She straightens up, ice blue eyes flicking over the interlopers. "Who brought the fucking snake in?"

Topper overhears, and scowls. "Don't be a fucking bitch, Briar."

Sarah only blinks at her, and gives a tight smile, clearly uncomfortable being stared down by Briar's battalion of cheerleaders, flanking their fearless platoon leader. It's not uncommon knowledge that they'd do anything for each other, that if Briar wanted, they could tear into Sarah like a pack of wolves.

Briar grins, more a baring of teeth than a show of mirth. His neck is exposed, and he doesn't even see it. All she can see is the after-image of their father, turning down the corridor with his belt and shirt in hand, that rotten moment tucked away into her war-chest. The quiet moments before disaster. She can imagine his face when she drops the bomb, the crushing blow landing square in the chest. You could lose everything, Briar thinks, and you don't even know it.

"C'mon, let's just go," Sarah says, the smart thing, barely able to look Briar in the eye. "Amy's over there."

Someone presses a beer into Briar's hand, and when she looks up, JJ's staring down at her and Kiara, lips twisted into a wry grin, his face flushed and Kennedy nowhere to be seen. He claps them both on the shoulder. Kiara's got one, too. "Looks like you two need it."

Briar shrugs. Then, looping her arm around Kiara's they down their beers under JJ's watch, and Briar's tumultuous head falls quiet once more, the circus tiger returning to its cage and flexing its claws against the metal bars.

Sapphire sky, hours later, the bright face of the moon hanging over the horizon, illuminating the waves in a silver luminescence. By now, the party's dwindled down to the threadbare, the milling crowd slowly peeling off toward the mainland, piling into Ubers and cars, back to Figure Eight and the resorts further out from the Boneyard. Even the guy they'd buried in the sand earlier this afternoon is gone now. Now the alcohol hums in Briar's veins as she hugs her cheer team goodbye, nodding along with their threats to meet up over the rest of the summer, but making no promises. When she sits by the shoddy bonfire that John B's got going, the world is quiet, the music turned to softer tunes, Frank Ocean and Bob Marley—Kiara's doing, most likely—and Glass Animals. Waves rush up the shore, the tide climbing higher and higher, chasing the bumbling teens up the beach, the water roaring into the night. Out there, the sea is dark, glittering with some unknown and unknowable secret buried beneath it, kept hush. Kiara, tired, still drunk, leans against Briar's shoulder.

"Weirdly enough, I actually missed them," Kiara says, smiling contentedly, "the girls. They're so funny. There's this coral conservation event next month, Kennedy invited me to go. Come with me?"

Hand to heart, Briar doesn't give a shit about marine conservation, but she'd go anywhere with Kiara if she asked. "Yeah, I'll see."

Kiara hums, satisfied with her answer. "Why didn't you tell them about cheer camp?"

Teeth snagging on her bottom lip, Briar considers the question. In truth, she doesn't know. There's no rational reason that Briar can give anyone except this: Briar is sick of cheerleaders. Her entire life can been measured in cheer seasons, everything else, test and grades, meaningless parties, falling away into pieces of confetti. There is no self where there is no cheer, the one driving life force in her veins since she can remember, and maybe Briar wants to find something else for a change. And there is Kiara, and all this open space and ocean, and she can finally breathe when she's not stuck in her house at night conducting post-mortems of the previous cheer season or debating the All-Star teams' routines on the phone with Emily. This summer's for Kiara, and, by proxy, the boys. This summer's for the sea, and for breathing, before she has to put her head back under.

"It wasn't important," Briar says, "and I figured it's too late to break the news in a way that won't be weird, anyway. Why?"

Kiara shrugs. "Do you think you'll hang out with them after you graduate?"

In truth, Briar knows how most friendships like the one she has with Emily, Kennedy and Sherbs go. At graduation, they'll trade friendship bracelets and promise to call, to visit each others' college campuses, but when the time comes to splinter off to their different corners of the world, they'll get swept up in new scenes, new people, and the fragile thread between them would fray until there's nothing but a wisp of memory to hang onto. There will always be a fondness, footprints in the sand that she'll look back on and think, oh, this was where we stunted together at that party, once. So, no, Briar will not hang out with these girls past graduation, and there's no way she's coming back to Kildare once she's out, all tethers severed on the blade of her shoulder. Briar glances at Kiara, who's got her lip caught in her teeth, tearing thin strips of skin from the flesh. Briar smooths her thumb over Kiara's lip, and Kiara releases it, brown eyes flicking up to meet hers.

"Don't know," Briar says, her smile tight. "What time do you have to get back to yours?"

Kiara scoffs. "Like, three hours ago. My Dad's been on my ass about hanging out with the guys, and my Mom is just..."

"I can't imagine they like their only daughter running around with these idiots."

"They don't get it. They really don't." She purses her lips. They'd lost track of the boys since the sky darkened into midnight, but Briar can feel Kiara thinking about them, her mind tracing their footsteps through the crowd. "What about you? Is your mom waiting up for you?"

Briar has no idea what time it is, but she knows that her mother's not expecting her, probably face-down in a bottle of Chardonnay or chain smoking and glowering out the window, wondering whether her ex-husband gives his current wife anything but grief. Kiara knows this, too, but she's always asked, anyway, the question digging into the one bruise that's blemished Briar's heart since childhood.

Briar shakes her head. Sometimes, she thinks her Mom forgets that she has a daughter, and this thought sits leaden in Briar's gut, the dread radiating outward, poisoning her blood. I am my mother's haunting, Briar wants to tell Kiara, but that's weak, so she says, instead, "do you ever think our parents hate us sometimes?"

Kiara hums. "Probably. I mean, they're people, too, right? They must hate us, the way we hate them, in the sense that it's just a reaction but it's never really actualised. Sometimes I think I hate my Dad when he yells at me for hanging out with the boys, but it's like, I get it. And I feel the guilt that comes after. They hate me when I hurt them, I think, but it's always smoothed over by how much we love each other. What do you think?"

"I'm not too sure," Briar murmurs. "It's weird. I don't think my Mom hates me, but I definitely think she wouldn't mind starting over and choosing a different path. Not meeting my Dad, for one. She was a model, y'know? Before all this. She could've been in New York, could've made it big with her face plastered all over magazines. Instead, she's here, wasting her fucking life thinking about my useless Dad, and I think she's going to die here. I just don't understand why."

"I can't say I see the logic in it, either, but..." Kiara nudges Briar's arm. "I'm glad you're here anyway. And this might sound selfish, but I'm glad your Mom didn't take that alternative path. I'm really, really glad I met you."

Briar lets out a sharp laugh, heart thudding in her chest. "Well, I'm glad your Mom fucked a Pogue."

"Two households, both alike in dignity," Kiara says, affecting a foreign accent and lowering her voice as she gazes up at Briar with an impish grin. "In fair Kildare Island, where we lay our scene."

"From ancient grudge break to new mutiny," Briar finishes, pressing her forehead to Kiara's, noses touching, lips a breath apart. "Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

Kiara snorts, and Briar's composure cracks immediately after, their peals of laughter whipped into the wind swirling through the Boneyard. Kiara hooks her arm around Briar's and leans her head against her shoulder.

"I hope it's always like this," Kiara says, letting out a sigh. "I don't want us to change. Everything always changes so quickly, and I can't stop feeling like something's going to happen. Something we can't come back from."

"Me too," Briar says, pressing a kiss to the crown of Kiara's head. And she gets it, she really does. One thing Kiara and the Pogues understand is that when it gets good, there's always something waiting for them on the other side. When the tide recedes, that means there's a wave coming, and they're always going to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Briar knows this feeling well. "You're my girl, Kiara. We're sworn in. Whatever happens, it's you and me."

"For lifers?"

"Fuck yeah."

Briar laces her pinky with Kiara's, brings her fist up to her face and kisses her thumb. Kiara does the same on her end. Sworn-in. Briar can't stop thinking about what Kiara's mouth would feel like against hers, can almost feel the phantom brush of Kiara's lips against her own thumb, the feeling traversing through their interlinked pinkies.

"Did you have fun?" Kiara asks, her voice soft, child-like, watching the hypnotic rocking of the waves, the flotsam bobbing in the tide.

Briar hums. "I always do with you. You?"

Kiara nods, her smile a soft, sunset glow.

Somewhere further down the beach, where the keg was buried in the sand, the crowd began to stir, voices cutting through the white noise. Briar nearly blocks it out, but the sound of JJ yelling, "You're so funny, man!" in a tone that suggested the opposite, a tone that Briar's too familiar with, jerks Kiara out of their joint trance.

"Is that...?" Kiara squints into the crowd, craning her neck over their heads.

Until Topper's acrid voice, spitting, "Dirty Pogues!"

Briar stands, brushing the sand off the back of her shorts, and cuts through the surrounding crowd toward the source, shouldering her way through without ceremony, elbows crashing against ribs, shoving with murderous intent. Behind her, Kiara follows, and they make it through to the commotion, just in time to see Topper's fist swinging into John B's face.

Anger flaring, without thinking much of it, Briar plants herself in front of Topper before he can advance on John B's prone form, lying dazed in the shallows, the water rushing up to her ankles now. There's an estranged roaring in her ears now, drowning out Sarah's cries for Topper to stop, Pope's pleas for Briar to back away before she's next. As she stands her ground, the scar on her forehead throbs with a familiar heat, the memory of Topper's violence singing through her body.

"You think you're so fucking tough, don't you, Topper?" Briar snaps, pressing a finger to Topper's puffed chest, sneering up at him, venom and vitriol dripping from her bared teeth, an animal signal.

Topper only scoffs. "What can I say? Trash hangs with trash, after all."

"Hey, man, get the fuck away from her," JJ seethes, stepping toward them. A hand on his chest stops him in his tracks, Kiara shaking her head, holding him back. JJ doesn't argue, only clenches his teeth, jaw flexing.

There's a dangerous glint in her eyes then, knife-bright and dazzling, like staring into the jaws of a Great White, the same glint she gets when she's about to do something wicked and borderline psychotic—which were sometimes mutually exclusive, sometimes not—the same glint she got before she stuck a penknife in Emily's ex's car tire, slashing three, then puncturing the fourth with a nail so he couldn't claim insurance. A glint that says, fucking watch me. Kiara had seen it just this morning, when they found the Grady-White, when she suggested they pull on that thread.

"No, no, it's okay, JJ," Briar says, her grin growing malicious, the finger on Topper's chest digging in deeper, as if to tear his heart out of its cavity. "It's perfect that he's here actually. hey, Topper, you ever take your head out of your ass once in awhile to notice things? Like... how's your father been? Did he ever tell you how he got that black eye?"

Topper blinks, scowling. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You should ask him," Briar says, her tone light as a razor, a viper poised to strike. Inside her chest, the dark seed festers, the insidious feeling germinating within her, roots seeking outward, coiling its black tendrils around her heart, snaking between her ribs, choking out her lungs. Her vision goes black, and all she can see is Topper, dead in the water. "Ask Daddy dearest where he got that bruise on his ugly fucking face from."

"How do you know about that?" Topper's voice is a whisper now, breathless, the world and all its fragility suddenly shifting into focus around him. "He fell. He slipped on the driveway."

"Oh, yeah, he fell alright," she scoffs. "Right into my mom's fucking pussy, you mean."

Topper goes rigid, frozen in place. From the shock blasting across his expression, Briar knows she's got him. Swung that ammunition right through the glass, the bomb imploding his entire world. Around them, the crowd falls silent. Over Topper's shoulder, Briar catches Kiara, Pope and JJ share an alarmed glance. Sarah's mouth parted, stunned. John B, staggering to his feet, hand over his eye, watches them warily.

"That's right. I gave him that bruise. I thought we were finally moving past all this, you know? Until I caught him fucking my Mom again."

"You're lying," Topper breathes, clearing his throat, though there is little conviction in his tone. Deep down, he'd always known how pathetic their father was, how spineless, how given to the flesh he was. Deep down, he knew Briar was telling the truth. "You're so full of shit."

"Why would I lie about this?" Briar laughs, as though she's taking chunks out of the air. Under the moonlight, Briar's eyes shine wolf-keen, predatory, a creature on the hunt. Under the moonlight, Topper was white as a ghost. "Just thought you should know what our father's really up to. Y'know, before you fool yourself into thinking that maybe he cares about your family as much as you think he does."

Topper's nostrils flare, his lips pull back into a vicious sneer, and she knows she's struck a raw nerve. "Watch it, Briar."

"You are pathetic, Topper," Briar says, her voice savage, serpentine, her eyes flashing, hungering for pain. "I may have been the one he abandoned, but at least I'm not delusional. Better keep a leash on your girl, too, or she might be fucking someone else while she's with you. That seems to be the pattern here, right? You, becoming the joke. You, getting left behind by everyone you have ever loved."

In a flash, Topper lunges, a growl starting in the back of his throat. His hand blasts across her face, a flash of heat, a reckoning. Briar's head snaps to the side, and she feels her body toppling, weightless for a moment, then plunging into the water. The ringing in her ears mounts to a high-pitched scream, Kiara's frantic shriek—BRIAR!—cutting through the red flooding her vision. From the sand, Briar glances up at her brother, her mouth bloodied, red dripping from her teeth like rubies. She grins, her armour shining in the moonlight. Blood dots the front of her bikini top, dripping into the waves that rush ashore. Towering over her, Topper's expression is iron-hot, murderous, his hands curled tight into fists, white-knuckled and ready to swing. All Briar can see now is the blood marbling the water from the bottom of the swimming pool, the dark lines of the aquamarine tiles blurring in her periphery.

This is her brother, Briar thinks, seeing the gaping wound in his arm now, where she'd taken a chunk of his flash out of his arm, the marks of her teeth branded upon his skin forever. And she will always need a shovel to love him.

Just as Topper takes a step towards her, a flicker of motion in Briar's periphery draws their attention as John B barrels toward him, tackling him out of the way, a furious cry ripping from his chest. They go crashing into the foaming water, and just as Briar's about to scramble toward him, to pull Topper away from John B as he's flipped him over, fist raised and swinging with reckless abandon, rough, calloused hands envelope Briar's shoulders, dragging her away from the heat, restraining her before she can jump in to wrest Topper off John B.

When she glances up, Briar meets Pope's warning stare, the desperation in his eyes. Briar wrenches out of his grasp and stands. Horror unfurls in her gut as she watches Topper slam his fist into John B's face over and over again, the crowd around them heaving with a wretched hunger, their bloodthirsty cries amplified by the crashing waves—FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Disgust coils in her gut and Briar backs up far enough that her back crashes into Kiara's front, Kiara's arms instinctively winding around hers.

"Somebody do something!" Kiara screams, fear shining in her eyes, but the power lines were down, and calling the cops was a far cry from feasible at the moment.

"Topper, stop!" Sarah yells, exasperation clawing at her throat.

Like watching a car crash, Briar can't tear her eyes away from the sight of John B and Topper trading blows, circling around each other and closing in for the kill. John B lets out an enraged roar, and lunges at Topper like a bull, ready to gore him to death. Topper thrashes in John B's grip, his elbow coming down hard on John B's back while John B lands punch after punch against Topper's ribs. The air hums with something furious, a live wire crackling through the crowd, stampeding their feet, the water charged with a ravenous lust for blood. The crunch of Topper's knuckles against John B's face makes Kiara flinch violently into Briar, and Briar's own mouth tingles as the adrenaline drains from her body, leaving behind a searing pain in her bottom lip. A coppery taste floods her senses, and Briar spits out the mouthful of blood welling in her teeth onto the sand. Her bottom lip sings with agony, a burning that crackles her body to life.

One moment they're squaring up against each other, the next, Topper's got John B face-down in the water, a hand planted on the back of John B's neck, pushing him into the sand.

"He's drowning him!" Pope cries, hands fisted in his hair.

"Hell, yeah, Topper! Drown his ass!" Kelce hollers from the crowd, his voice startlingly close.

In a flash, Briar tears out of Kiara's grip and whips round. In three quick strides, she tosses a fistful of sand in his face and kicks him hard between the legs, rage ripping through her veins, white-hot and searing. With a shriek, Kelce goes down, clutching his balls, writhing in the sand. Briar turns to JJ, and it hits her then. She seizes his arm and tugs him down to eye-level.

"You have it," Briar says, her voice an incandescent whisper, the darkness inside spreading, blacking out every single star in the night sky, smothering the light of the moon. "The gun. You have it with you?"

Realisation registers almost immediately, and JJ nods, stiffly.

"Give it to me."

"No," JJ snaps. "I know that look, Thorny, you're going to kill Topper. You can't use the gun."

"So what?" Briar snarls, savagely, cutting JJ an icy glower, not an inch of remorse behind her flinty eyes. Shock flickers through his eyes, and she ignores the way his jaw flexes as he stares her down, his own blue eyes, twin scythes gleaming with primal instinct. She tightens her grip on his arm, his skin warm, his pulse fluttering beneath her touch. "Who is he to me, anyway?"

"You can't use the gun," JJ repeats, slowly, his voice ragged, his breath skating across her cheek, "but I can. Don't let Kie or Pope see me."

Briar purses her lips. There's no time to waste, and JJ was right. What was she going to do with the gun, if he'd actually given it to her? Would she have pointed it right at him and trusted herself enough not to pull the trigger? No viable answer comes to her, but Briar shakes it off, and heads straight for Kiara and Pope.

"Kie, you got my phone?" Briar asks, knowing full well her phone was in her back pocket.

"No," Kiara says, bewildered at the question, half-distracted by John B drowning under Topper's arm, though her attention was now decidedly on Briar rather than Topper or JJ sneaking up behind him. "Why—"

"We need evidence to take to court if Topper actually gives John B brain damage," Briar hisses, making a show of patting her pockets. She fishes her phone out of her back pocket. In the corner of her eye, she spots JJ stalking through the shallows, his arm pinned to his thigh, concealing what must've been the gun, hidden from view. "Nevermind, I found it."

Without hesitation, Briar opens the camera app, and presses record, just in time to get a small snippet of Topper forcing a thrashing John B into the sand, his face illuminated by the flashlight. She could ruin Topper with this video if she wanted to. Another piece to keep in her war chest. Just as Briar stops recording, the sound of the safety clicking off a gun cuts through the night. JJ jams the gun against the back of Topper's head.

Kiara goes rigid beside Briar.

JJ hisses something unintelligible to Topper, his voice drowned out by the roaring waves, a mounting static in their ears. By now, most of the crowd's begun to realise what was at stake. Briar's blood turns to slush, and she feels her body lifted on her tiptoes, and she watches, silently hoping JJ's finger might slip. She can picture it—the gun going off, Topper's head jerking to the side, bits of bone and brains splattering across John B and JJ's faces, Topper's body toppling into the water, the ocean lapping up the gaping wound, gushing into the foam, carmine froth glittering under the moonlight. Briar bites back a morbid grin.

"He's got a gun!" Someone in the crowd shrieks, fear driven through their chests.

"Kie!" Sarah screams, advancing inch by inch, but still not daring to get too close to JJ, ever the loose canon. "Can you check your psycho friend, please?!"

Briar rounds in on Sarah then, a psychotic gleam in her eye. Her grin is wide, manic, and the blood on her teeth and her split lip could've been something torn from a slasher film. Final girl, taking up the axe for the final showdown. Sarah blinks, fear crossing her pretty features as Briar advances, chasing her away from the others.

"Scared?" Briar drawls, the pain in her bottom lip screaming, jolting her body to life. "You should've thought about that before you crashed our fucking party."

"Okay, everyone listen up!" JJ roars, his voice tearing through the darkness, turning away from Topper now that he's backed off on John B, still laying deliriously in the shallows. JJ waves the gun in the air, gunslinger of the town square. "Get the hell off our side of the island!"

Two gunshots ring through the air. JJ glowers into the crowd, finger still tight on the trigger, an unhinged gleam in his gaze. Screams puncture the night as the crowd disperses, the bloodlust dissolving into pure pandemonium, sprinting up the beach and scattering into the main roads. Briar watches them run, her body going numb, her heart pulsing against every inch of her skin.

"Are you crazy?" Pope snaps, vexed, as a livid Kiara shoves JJ back into reality. Pope's glare is incendiary, his voice cracked through with vehement anger. "You idiot! Why would you do that?!"

"I'm saving his life, okay!" JJ argues.

"You're going to jeopardise everything!"

While they fight, a wound ripped open between them, Briar turns to John B, kneeling in the water, swaying on his haunches. Thankfully, Sarah and Topper had cleared out with the crowd, and Briar finds herself already moving before she can even think too much about what she's doing. Just before John B loses consciousness and pitches back into the water, Briar catches him as he blacks out, cradling his head in her arms, keeping him above the water.

Around her knees, the tide swells, and John B's pulse is a weak flutter against the hollow of her chest. Briar glances up at the fish-eyed moon, glowering down upon them.

The scar upon her forehead burns.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
sorry sorry this is a VERY long one. I promise the chapters after this won't be as hefty!!!

someone needs to hold jj back by the scruff of his neck like restraining an agitated cat and that person is not briar. someone also needs to hold her by the scruff of her neck too. so i guess that person is kie. kie is 70% of their collective impulse control.

anyway this is how i envision jj, briar and kie. jj and briar will be SOOOOOO jade and beck coded. (ofc kie isn't boring or annoying as tori.) like. briar scares everyone. but not jj. jj's the mirror held up to her face. he's everything she is, externalised. they're tethered by self-destruction, like a ten-car pile-up of all their misgivings, except briar hurts people on purpose while jj does it by accident. but they're not afraid of each other. and jj sees her. and it's refreshing for briar to have someone so fearless around her like that.

but the exact nature of their relationship - jj, kie and briar - is undefined, shapeless. what are we? we just are. and they won't let anyone else tell them what they should be. no one will ever get a straight answer. because the three of them are teenagers and when you're young like that everything is new and impulse and violent crush and you're allowed to be messy. it'll be messy. they're not boyfriend or girlfriend or anything - that's soooo boring and done - they're a secret third thing, kie the generous glow of the moon, pulling back the tide, jj the blinding sun personified, and briar, the devouring eclipse, shielding them both, and no one can ever figure out what she wants, and she won't ever let them. it's briar and her tribe. it's jj and his girls. it's kie and the two great loves of her life. and it's all three of them locked in orbit, doomed to spinning around each other until heat death.

they'll all go out together or not at all. (we don't think about what may happen after high school - bc none of them think about the future really - and it's likely they don't last bc who tf is still dating their high school bf/gf past y1 of uni anymore.)

ALSO!!!!!!! should i do the thing where i fit songs to the chapter??? like we stopped doing that some time back in 2016 but it's so fun and cunty like i wanna score this fic so bad.

all the songs come from this playlist:

✷

SUNDRESS ── jj maybank / kiara carrera
Chapter Five, WATCH OUT FOR THEM SNAKE ONES.
⚓️ S1.01: PILOT