CHAPTER SIX
nothing ever shakes me,
nothing makes me cry

SOMETIMES BRIAR indulges in the fantasy of what would happen if she got into a car with Topper driving. Perhaps he'd take her onto the highway, they would be arguing, of course, because every environment with them both in it instantly turns chemical, and when she's really got him riled up, he'd swerve a little, speed up while he's shouting at her, try to scare her into compliance with the prospect of death.

But Briar knows about death. Knows all the tricks to instil the fear of God into someone, just to watch them turn to putty, pliable, malleable, waiting to be shaped. Briar knows the power of shame. She's inoculated against it.

Maybe Topper would wind the window down, gun the engine until the road shrinks, until they're tearing down the tarmac and smoking the wheels out, the pungent stench of burnt rubber infiltrating the car. Briar imagines taking herself out of her body then, floating above her head, a voyeur of her own self, unbuckling her seatbelt. Unclipping Topper's. Then, she'd plant both hands on the wheel and jerk. Hard. Send the car careening into the barricades, or the oncoming traffic, hit the ditch and flip.

She imagines two scenarios would come out of this wreck. Either Topper dies on impact, the front of the car crumpling like a tin can, crushing him into the steering wheel before the airbags can deploy, where his chest would implode, cave in on itself. Or, Briar's head cracks against the window, dead on impact, and she doesn't wake up. Maybe, in that timeline, Topper survives, crawling out through the broken window on all fours, bleeding from the head, the ticking of the cooling engine ringing in his ears. But he's charged for manslaughter. For reckless driving. Their father could pay his way out of the cell, but the charges will still go on his record, a permanent stain on his conscience. His entire life implodes then.

In either scenario, dead or alive, Briar wins.

As collateral, she gets her father back, too, in a way. Whether it's to bleed his pockets with the extortionate hospital fees or to tarnish the gilded image of his perfect son. Briar comes out on top.

It's this thought that accompanies her as she watches JJ help Pope lay John B on his bed. They'd shuttled him from the beach to the chateau in the Twinkie, with Pope driving, the least intoxicated out of the five of them and therefore the least likely to get charged with a DUI. All the while, Briar had kept John B's head in her lap, making sure he was still breathing, pressing two fingers against the pulse point in his neck just to reassure the rest that he wasn't dying from a brain clot or something or other. A part of her wonders why she cares so much about John B all of a sudden, after weeks—a year, even, when Kie first introduced them over the previous winter break—of barely acknowledging his presence.

While she grapples with that, the inner turmoil threatening to throw all her wires out of loop, JJ shucks John B's shoes off, lips pursed and jaw tight, and Briar tucks the pillow under John B's head. Jostled by the action, John B stirs, his eyes blinking open, confusion muddling his expression. Briar smoothes his damp hair back, the motion leaden with a tenderness so foreign she withdrew her fingers instantly, recoiling as though she'd been burnt.

Kiara enters, a cup of water, a bottle of Tylenol, and an ice pack she'd dug up from somewhere inside the kitchen in her hands. She sets them down on the nightstand, casts one look at John B's prone form, a pained look crossing her expression, and exits without a single word, her footsteps thudding down the corridor, understandably upset. The front door smacks shut. Pope watches her go, then after a beat or two, he follows after her, shaking his head.

"It looks bad," JJ murmurs, standing over him. "I should've pulled the trigger. I should've shot Topper right there and then. Now we're just sitting ducks, waiting for him to rain hellfire back on us."

Thing is, Briar understands JJ. He is a body of impulses, the same as her, and in the moment, all he could think about was saving his best friend, so much so he could've killed someone for it. While the others gave him shit for it the entire drive to the chateau, Briar said nothing. If it'd been her, she might've done something much worse. And she understands JJ's fascination with the gun, wielding it without a care in the world. Anything can happen in the moment. Something interesting can finally begin.

"Knowing Topper," Briar muses, "he's not going to stop until he gets his turn. We could put him down for good, JJ. I've got a way."

JJ frowns, opening his mouth to question her, but Briar only slants him a vicious smile, not saying anything more than that, her mind reeling to the video of Topper whaling on a defenceless John B drowning in the water locked tight in her phone. The digital smoking gun. The video's only five seconds long, and the camera work is shaky—she'd watched it back in the Twinkie, on the way here—but it's enough to decipher the aggressor. Topper Thornton's sadistic rage caught in 4K, his face lit by moonlight, John B's head struggling to lift out of the shallows under Topper's forcing grip. She's got him. But this is her secret to exploit, the last trick up her sleeve. JJ shuts his mouth with an audible click, then, shaking his head, he touches a hand to John B's shoulder, and strides out the door, hands raking frustratedly through his mussed blond hair.

Now, left alone with John B in the silence, Briar glances down at him, wondering why she can't seem to leave.

"Guys?" John B groans, his voice raspy as he struggles to sit up, clawing ineffectually at the sheets. "Where—"

He slumps back down with a quiet oof, and Briar slaps the ice pack into John B's dangling hand.

"You're not gonna nurse me back to health?" John B murmurs, agony thick in his tone, and though his eye is swollen shut, the bruising quickly darkening under the light, the skin stretched taut over his face hot to the touch, there's no denying the teasing edge, the humour not lost to Briar. "Help me hold the ice? I fought for your honour, y'know, the least you could do—"

Briar smacks him on the arm. "You are an idiot, John Bitch."

He scoffs, wincing in pain at the action.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she sighs. "I owe you now."

"That's not how friendship works, Thorny. I'm supposed to do this for you. I wanted to defend you."

Briar lets out a sharp laugh. "That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard."

"Okay, cold." John B scowls—or, tries to—and presses the ice pack to his bruised eye, hissing. "Way to kick a guy when he's down."

Briar rolls her eyes. "Get some rest. Night, JB."

Rolling over onto his side, John B makes a sound in the back of his throat, bidding her goodbye.

Then she heads back to the front door where Kiara's got her head cradled in her hands, fingers tugging at the roots of her unruly hair, tears shining in her eyes. Pope's perched on the railing, staring out into the night, with JJ draped against the doorway, the front door pulling shut behind Briar.

"He could've died," Kiara whispers. "God, why are boys always like this? So goddamn prideful, so..."

"Not me," JJ pipes, smacking his hands against the door frame. "I should've shot Topper there and then."

"No," Kiara bites, savagely, "You should've stayed out of it, JJ. You should've called the cops. You should've done anything but pull the gun out."

"If I'd done any of those things, John B would've actually drowned," JJ snaps, frustration raking across his expression. "And you know it. And you know the fucking cops wouldn't have done a single fucking thing because he's a Kook, and he's more protected than the fucking Pentagon."

"His grandfather's a judge," Briar adds, conceding with JJ's point. "But the gun's evidence, JJ. You have to get rid of it now. It's traceable."

"Yeah, well," JJ says, miserably. "He's my brother. I couldn't think about anything else."

Kiara sighs. "I get it, JJ."

"To be honest," Briar says, a morbid grin crossing her lips, a skeletal, unholy thing. "I probably would've shot Topper in the face if I'd had the gun. So, really, it was probably better that JJ had it."

Kiara rolls her eyes.

"Hell yea, my girl." JJ bumps his knuckles against Briar's. Just then, JJ's gaze catches on the bruise forming around Briar's jaw. A shadow of fury flickers through his eyes as he purses his lips, a muscle at his jaw ticking. He touches a finger to the skin just above the bruise to turn her head into the light, his voice darkening. "That looks bad, Thorny."

Briar shrugs.

Cheerleaders have a special relationship with pain, their entire lives paved with it. Pain's at the heart and soul of cheer; without it, there would be no fruit to bear. Others take the glitz and glam of cheer at face value without understanding what it means, underneath the glitter and the short skirts, the million-dollar smiles and the flirtatious flouncing, it's violent, masculine, raw athleticism and iron-tight dedication.

Her split lip, where Topper's ring had caught her in the mouth, throbs in accordance, but it stings much less than the fact that he'd slapped her. Somehow, a slap felt much more humiliating than a punch. It's that very fact that stirs the rage within her, her anger a knife pinwheeling at her core, slashing up her insides.

"It's fine," Briar says, smacking away JJ's hand. "I'll get him back for that, someday."

"We'll crash at mine," Kiara says, nodding, finality stamped in her tone as she takes Briar's hand in hers, her palm warm, singing. "I'll take care of it."

✷

HERE THEY ARE, two girls in the pharmaceutical light of Kiara's ensuite bathroom, Briar perched on the lip of the bath tub, the first aid kit cracked open on the porcelain sink, a familiar scene run a thousand times before. Each time Briar took a hard fall during cheer practice, she'd bike over to Kiara's to show her the war wounds she'd sustained, each knee-scrape, each bruise blemishing her peach-skin, grinning on her doorstep, bloody-mouthed and wild heroic. Each time she turned up outside Kiara's front door on her twelve-speed, Kiara would always drag her into the house by the wrist, pull her up the stairs past her parents discussing bills over the dining table, and she would always be the one to hold the ice, would always be the one to clean up the blood and bandage up her wounds, pressing a playful kiss to her aching knee.

Now, the ice pack burns against her freshly showered skin, the jaw on her bruise striving starkly against her complexion. Now, Kiara dabs antiseptic ointment onto the cut over Briar's bottom lip with a q-tip, her brown eyes glimmering with anguish, her own bottom lip caught between her teeth, as if each time she pressed the q-tip against the wound, she, too, could feel the sting.

As much as it hurts, Briar doesn't make a sound.

Now, neither of them say anything, the disastrous calamity of the night still simmering in the air between them.

In her mind's eye, Briar replays the moment in her head. Topper's eyes blown wide, flashing with murderous intent, his knuckles catching her in the mouth as he swung without restraint, pain exploding in her face, her ears ringing with fury and shame. Topper towering over her, his fists clenched at his sides as if he might swing on her again, that silver signet ring stained red glinting in the moonlight. As if he could kill her right there and then, rage ripping the moment open to the bone.

"Your Dad's really been sleeping with your Mom again?" Kiara murmurs, laying a couple thin strips of butterfly bandages to Briar's bottom lip, holding the cut closed, her touch soft as kisses.

Meanwhile, Briar can't stop thinking about the lack of air in the bathroom, the proximity of Kiara standing between her legs, one hand on her jaw to tilt her head upward, her eyes so focused on her mouth, her touch tender on the wound.

"Caught him with his hand in the cookie jar." A beat. "And he's not my Dad."

"Right, right. Hold still."

Silence lapses over them once more, the air stretching between them with unspoken heat. She can feel the thoughts in Kiara's head turning, the tidal current swirling her mind to places darker than the bottom of the marsh.

Briar blinks, slow, staring up at Kiara through her lashes. "He had to know."

A muscle in Kiara's jaw ticks. "I just wish you hadn't said all that. Like, you could've died, B. I saw him. If John B hadn't butted in, it looked like you were the one who could've been face down in the water."

"That's the difference between you and me, Kiara," Briar says, something dark coming down on her then, the cobwebs of a shadow veil thrown over her expression. "I'd rather die bringing it all crashing down with me than play it safe and live letting him think he's won."

Her mind reels to the silvery scar on Topper's arm, visible when he wore short-sleeved shirts in the summer heat, the memory of her teeth locked around his flesh. Sure, he could've killed her, but she'd always take something from him. She wasn't going down alone. And though he'd thrown the first punch, Briar had landed the killing blow, had seen his perfect life blasted into smithereens.

Kiara purses her lips. "Not everything's a game."

"But it could be." Briar taps the tip of Kiara's nose, to which the latter bats her hand away, scoffing.

Just over Kiara's shoulder, Briar catches her own reflection in the mirror. In the glass, she sees only parts, the features losing coherence, never coming together to form a whole face. Sees, in snatches, the mascara running down her eyes like Harlequin daggers, skin burning anaemic, her watery blue eyes stirring with a profound melancholia—but why? High cheekbones dabbled with a light sheen of freckles, tousled roan hair stringy and flat from the saltwater, mouth blossoming red, the straps of Kiara's orange tank top askew. None of the dimensions form a congruent plane, the lines don't make any sense, a faded water colour painting dissolving in plain sight.

Briar touches a hand to the bruise on her jaw, pokes at it. Even the pain comes a beat late, delayed, as if it weren't even her own, just an echo, half-remembered as her own body.

When she's done, Kiara's gaze flicks up to Briar's. For a moment, something electric flickers through Kiara's eyes as her breath catches, as she hovers there, breath skating over Briar's jaw, their lips barely inches apart. Kiara swallows.

"Briar—" Kiara whispers, cutting herself off before she's ever had a chance to finish the thought, the sound of her name on Kiara's tongue striking euphoria through Briar's heart.

"Would you have done anything different?" Briar murmurs, her voice feverish, her gaze hypnotic as a death spiral, holding Kiara in a trance, two of them thrown off the scented path, locked in eternal orbit until one of them drops dead from exhaustion. "You wouldn't have let him walk away thinking he's got everything. You couldn't stomach it. I know you."

The point between Kiara's brows scrunch. She doesn't have to say anything to confirm Briar's hypothesis, dangling between them on a fraying rope, the weight of it threatening to crush her to a pulp. Kiara's eyes flicker down to Briar's mouth, and Briar feels her heart plummet to her stomach, this wanting pulsing inside her, thick as an organ, a live coal burning through her flesh. Too soon, it'd lay her bare, expose her down to the soft, white underbelly. She can't have that.

Briar's the first to look away, the tension a glass dashed against the wall, broken forever, her gaze landing on the pile of dirty clothes in the corner of the bathroom.

"I'm tired," she says, not quite knowing what from.

Levelling Briar with an intense stare, Kiara nods, the moment transient between them like water slipping through their fingers. Knowing Kiara, they'd never speak of it again. Wordlessly, Kiara shoves all the rubbish into the bin next to the toilet bowl and packs the first-aid kit back up, shoving it back into the cabinet under the sink with jerky movements.

Within minutes, they're settled under the covers, legs twined together and static against the sheets, Briar facing the window, where the moonlight spills into the room and caresses her cheek, and Kiara breathing against her back, a slender arm ringed with friendship bracelets thrown over Briar's waist. Briar laces her fingers with Kiara's, and feels them squeeze together.

That night Briar's dreams slow-drip through her head like pitch-black tar. Topper's ring flashing in the light, his eyes wild and shot through with blood, the scar on her forehead curling into her skin, blood marbling the aquamarine, John B plunging into the shallows, Briar's hand clamped over his head, Kiara's mouth hovering over hers, so close yet always slipping too far out of reach, and the Grady White gleaming at the bottom of the marsh, its ivory shell lucent in the dark, calling out to her.

✷

WHEN BRIAR GETS HOME THE NEXT MORNING, her mother's at the built-in bar in their kitchen, pouring herself a whiskey on the rocks, humming to herself. The house, otherwise, is eerily silent. Briar stops at the bottom of the stairs, and glances toward the entrance of the kitchen, her mother's slender frame swaying to her own imaginary music, the straps of her negligee slipping down her graceful shoulders.

"Mom?" Briar calls, hating how her voice echoes through the house, glancing off the marble tiles and white walls.

Her mother turns, blinking, her face florid, the serene bliss on her features melting away into shock. "Oh! You're awake. Morning, baby. What happened to your face?"

Briar shakes her head, knowing her mother wouldn't push further if the truth begot resistance. "It's nine in the morning. Why are you drinking?"

"Well, why not?"

"It's sad."

Her mother laughs, then, as if it's a joke, as if it's the funniest thing in the world—what a thing to say! Such humour on a girl who's always so scornful all the time. Then she downs her drink and pours herself another, muttering something under her breath. There's a lightness to her that Briar can't quite pinpoint the origin of, even as she watches her mother drift around the kitchen, resuming her humming, and slicing a lemon straight onto the counter, the knife sliding against the marble countertop.

It's in this moment Briar realises that her mother probably hadn't realised she never came home last night—of, if she had, she doesn't care. For some reason, that fact pierces through her chest with such vehemence Briar simply rolls her eyes at her mother's flippancy, turns sharply on her heel and heads up to her room.

Earlier, Briar had left Kiara's house while Kiara was still dead asleep, the events of last night catching up to her. Usually, Briar would stay longer, the both of them invited to breakfast with Kiara's parents, but this morning, despite the hangover threatening to crack her skull open, something inside her had clicked into place, and the energy surging through her body might've been akin to purpose—for the first time in her life, she had something on her hands. Something that could be destructive enough to make sure she would never have to lift a finger ever again.

This morning, Briar skips half her ritual. Inside her body, her blood courses restless through her veins, itching for life to kick into full gear once more. She forgoes the work-out, promising to make up for it later tonight on the treadmill. She's in and out of the shower in minutes, fire on her heels, still careful to keep the bandages as dry as possible while she washes her face in the sink, then changes into a fresh bikini set and throws a purple sundress over it.

Sitting cross-legged on the edge of her bed, Briar opens her laptop and plugs her phone in, loading up the video in her photo library. She taps her fingers to her mouth, the mouse hovering over the clip, the moment inflating in her chest, and presses play.

On her screen, the video explodes into motion. In portrait mode, the camera light flashes bright, illuminating the beach, panning up from the sand to the water rushing up to the shore, and there in the shallows, coming into focus right in the middle of the frame, Topper in his wet dress shirt clinging to his body, both hands clamped over the back of John B's neck, forcing him face-down into the water, over and over. John B comes up for air, gasping violently for a fraction of a second before Topper slams him under again, his teeth pulled back in a vicious snarl. Foam swirls around John B's body, but it's undeniably him. The hysterical shouting of the heaving crowd around her drowns out the words Topper mouthed to John B in the video, but a single, clear, holler cuts through all the noise, sounding too close to the camera for comfort.

"Drown his Pogue ass, Topper!"

It cuts off right before JJ enters the frame.

Briar grins to herself, scheming villain in her dark lair glittering with fairy lights. How should she leverage this? That's the question, now. She'd already played the card her father had unwittingly placed into the shiny palm of her hand, wasted it on impulse, hungering to see Topper hurting. Now this, she'd exercise more self-control on. First, she has to keep this video under lock and key.

Hooking a finger under the velvet strip of her choker absently, Briar boots up her old blackmail folder, a seedy storage app one of the guys on the football team had told her about once, exposing the locker room talk, the nudes he'd collected like medals of honour from girls he'd hooked up with and circulated like prison contraband. Point is, she can duplicate the video and store it under a passcode with two-factor authentication. No one would get their hands on it, even if they had her phone. The next order of business is to cut the clip to just before Topper's face is visible—a quick snatch of his clothes, but no features identifiable to anyone who wasn't at the scene of the crime—and delete the original off her phone.

Right outside, someone lays hard on their car horn, and her mother's shouting her name from the foyer, her smokey voice crackling from the cigarettes she chain smoked too regularly for comfort. Briar sighs and shuts her laptop.

Just as she's about to climb off her bed to see what's up, JJ bursts into her bedroom, the door smacking against the wall and shuddering on its hinges, his blue eyes glittering with excitement, grinning like a little kid.

Quick on his heels, Kiara follows him through the doorway, grumbling, "dude, if she hits you, it's entirely your fault." She glances over JJ's shoulder at Briar apologetically, throwing both hands up in exasperation. "I tried to warn him."

Briar presses Kiara with a flat look. Beyond that, her own heart stutters like a pin-ball machine in her chest as she meets Kiara's honey-warm stare, purses her lips. Even if they were alone, Briar would be waiting an eternity for Kiara to bring up what'd transpired last night, but even though she knows this, that they never talk about the accidental slips, the moments of wanting that caught in their chest like a blocked airway, the moments that ran away from them before anything could even begin, she waits, still, her gaze razor-sharp, threatening to slice down to the bone, expose it before Kiara has the chance to. She waits, wanting to see if Kiara would say anything.

Instead, Kiara only looks away, shuttering the blinds. Briar's jaw ticks.

"So this is your room," JJ muses, shattering a moment of tension he wasn't even aware of, turning in a full circle, soaking it all up with eyes wide open, his mouth parted in curiosity. "It's so much pinker than I thought."

He's never been allowed up here before—mostly because they've never had reason to hang out properly, nor does Briar care to invite anyone else but Kiara over if she can help it—and it's obvious as he takes in every single detail, hands folded behind his back, bent over her vanity to inspect the jewellery stand, drifting around the room, studying the pictures pasted up on her wall of previous summers at cheer camp and memories long gone.

Briar's room is a mess, a mosaic of girlhood. There's the tin tub in the corner of her vanity filled with half-used chapsticks and lip products, an overturned penny board she sometimes sits on and scoots around her room with, there's clothes and shoes strewn across the floor, a trail of tiny scraps of fabric swimming downstream from the cracked door of her white closet, where half the hangers are empty because half the wardrobe is on the floor. Her bed is a pink cake, topped with silk pillows and obscured by a canopy made of gossamer-like tulle. In the corner of her room, her cheer duffel bag sags under a pile of last year's textbooks she's yet to throw out.

Only her cheer shoes are kept in a neat row along the wall, aging in ascending order. The newest ones were from the beginning of the summer, a present from her father, when they'd thought cheer camp would fill her summer, but now it's sitting there, polished white and still laced up, not a single scuff mark on its pure shell. Briar doesn't know why she can't bear to throw her old cheer shoes out. They're broken to bits, the soles worn through and the laces snapped, and they smell if you get too close, but they're all hers. They're all symbols of her hard work, all those countless hours spent pounding bleachers and stunting and tumbling piling onto the mesh.

Briar rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. "What are you doing here?"

"Thought we'd come pick you up on the way to Pope's, then to the Chateau." JJ squints at a picture pinned next to the window, of Briar and a girl from All-Star camp at ten years old, pulling their legs up to their ears, an arm threaded behind their thighs, twin bow-and-arrows. "Man, you were a sweet kid. What happened?"

Kiara tugs on his earlobe as she runs over to Briar's closet. "Don't be fucking rude."

"I'm just saying!" JJ exclaims, lifting his hands in mock surrender. "Also, Thorny, your Mom is such a MILF—"

Without thinking, Briar snatches up a single shoe that'd been lying around her room and hocks it right at JJ. The shoe catches him in the arm as he tries to dodge it. "Finish that sentence, Jimothy, I dare you."

"Can we go?" Kiara says, irritation blazing in her tone as she stuffs a fresh towel into Briar's rucksack and draws the strings shut. "Pope's waiting."

"M'lady," JJ drawls, sweeping into a dramatic bow, arms gesturing toward the doorway with a flourish. "Your carriage awaits."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
kie and briar kiss will not be happening anytime soon but hey we love a gooood slowburn dont we.

✷

SUNDRESS ── jj maybank / kiara carrera
Chapter Six,   NOTHING EVER SHAKES ME, NOTHING MAKES ME CRY.
⚓️          S1.01: PILOT