THE BUCKET LIST — Rilee's Last  Laugh
rilee's last laugh, anybody?

The sun shone bright the day she was diagnosed as almost dead. Well, not almost, but she was diagnosed as eventually dead. Which may arguably be worse as her body slowly degenerates and wastes away into nothing. Her lungs will collapse, and her heart falters trying to keep up. Trying to keep her healthy.

She was doomed to die young, like all good things.

Her fingers drummed a restless beat on the table as she stared at the diagrams of the human brain. Ms. McGrady sat across from her writing on her notepad. After being diagnosed with her illness, she had been forced into mandatory therapy sessions. Something for anger management about her impending doom.

Rilee sighed and leaned back into the plush chair. She wasn't angry. She had lived with death since she was young; it had been her closest friend for years; it did not scare her.

Amounting to nothing, leaving no mark, that scared her.

"What's the verdict, doc? Insane or stupid?" She asked, impatience in her tone as she crossed and uncrossed her feet. She had things she wanted to do before the day died too; she needed to be free of the shackles of talking it out. "Or... can I go?"

Mrs. McGrady looked up at her over her thickly rimmed glasses and pinned Rilee with an unamused stare. Her pale hair was wrapped in a neat bun, and her tweed suit and pearls looked like they would strangle her. She was a kook; why the hell did they think Rilee would want to talk to someone who went home and relaxed in a multimillion-dollar home? Who had a second home in the Bahamas and sent her kids to the Kook Academy?

Some people were fucking stupid.

"I have ten more minutes of your time, Rilee Jade," she said evenly, making the curly-haired Rilee sink in her seat. Her foot tapped a beat to some old rock song that had played in the car on the way here. The busted-up radio barely caught three channels, and she only liked one of them. "Besides, you haven't talked much. How're you feeling?"

Rilee sighed. "Same as usual—slowly dying, but fine. Haven't thought of offing myself like mom; don't worry." Sarcasm dripped from her lips like poisonous venom, flowing into the woman's ears and making her frown. Rilee didn't care. She had no reason to take this seriously. She would die either way. Is that morbid? Rilee couldn't really answer her own question.

"You know, most people who are diagnosed with an illness as serious as yours tend to be more... down in the dumps." The woman set down her notepad and crossed her fingers together on the desk. "Yet here you are, cracking jokes like nothing has changed. Why is that?"

Rilee pursed her lips and looked the woman over again. Sydney McGradey's husband owned a successful franchise of hotels across the entire country; she had no reason to be doing this job. So maybe she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart. Rilee knew, though, that most kooks' hearts were made of gold and as hard as diamond. They had no time to be kind to the poor.

"I watched my mom die slowly." Rilee shrugged and put her arm across the back of her seat. "This is no biggie."

"Be that as it may, Rilee Jade—"

"Rilee," she corrected quickly, her tone terse and even. "Just Rilee."

Mrs. McGrady sighed and leaned back. "Rilee Jade bothers you?"

Rilee hated sitting in this office with this woman. It was like cotton was stuffed down her throat. Usually when she felt like that, she had to take a breathing treatment or use her tubes, a cannula, to be able to continue what she was doing. But here, it was just the irritating presence of a therapist and her unwanted questions. She swallowed and nodded. "Only my mom called me Rilee Jade."

"Do you miss her?"

Rilee rolled her eyes with a scoff. "Do you miss the sun when it's gone?" Her question was stupid, or course it was stupid, but she had no way to explain the absence of something she hadn't even realized had the ability to go missing. Her mother left a gaping hole covered in the memory of brain-covered walls. She couldn't explain that she had nightmares of walking in on her mother's corpse in the living room.

"I do." She nodded and looked at Rilee again. "Rilee, you do know it is alright to be sad and angry, right? There is no shame in anger at the unfair."

Rilee wanted to laugh. Anger at the unfair. What a load of crap. "Look, Mrs. McGrady, I have no time to be angry anymore. I either live now or I die hopeless; it's easy to remember that. I'm not going to die like my mom did because I want to live. So save me the unfair speech. I don't want to hear it, especially not from you." She had to keep herself from sneering in the woman's direction.

What could she do? Make her accept she was going to die? Rilee had already accepted it. She felt it in the decay of her lungs. The rot and death that would crush them whole one day. The way her heart stuttered and skipped beats when she was exhausted or excited. She had accepted her inevitable demise like she had accepted her hair was curly—easily.

"I'm only trying to help, Rilee." Mrs. McGready said with almost a sad frown. Rilee wondered how often her patients dismissed her because of their illness.

"When you go home to a father who works doubles in the E.R. and a house that's hardly holding it together, then you can try to help." She shook her head and grabbed her bag on the floor, using the armrest to stand. "Go to the Bahamas, feel the sun, enjoy it. Have a good day."

"Rilee—" She didn't hear the rest of what the woman was saying. Her time was up and she was released from prison; she was ready to get going and do what she had planned. No more pit stops in the unseen purgatory that was a hospital.

She was quick to make her way through the base floor of the hospital. She knew the layout like the back of her hand now; it was more second home than hospital. Her father worked as an RN in the emergency room, and she was always here sick. Tests and therapy kept her always coming back. She hated the sterile smell, trying to scrub away the scent of decay that clung to everything. Cleanliness and lifelessness instead of sickness and decay.

She walked towards the E.R. check-in, looking around for the brown tufts of her father's scruffy beard. He kept it just barely within hospital guidelines, and he hardly took care of it enough for it to be neat. She had picked out his scrubs today too, his funky-colored blue ones that she had accidentally got pink in and now looked a slight shade of purple. She finally spotted his purpleness. He stood off to the side of the hallway with a doctor as they went over a patient's chart.

"Hey, pop, I'm heading out." Despite it being a rule that she wasn't supposed to leave, he hadn't ever strictly enforced it. The hospital was boring, and she was restless, moreso now that she had so little time to do anything. "Gonna walk, smell the roses, breathe the fresh OBX air." She crossed her arms and leaned back on her left leg, pinning her dad with an easy smile. He looked at her again, reminded of her mother no doubt, and sighed.

His lips quirked in a way she was too familiar with. "You mean the smoke-filled cut? Are you sure you want to walk? It's hot outside."

His worry wasn't unwarranted. He had lost his wife almost a year ago and would eventually lose his daughter. He clung to the fact that Rilee was still here and that maybe he could keep her here longer than his wife. Despite his desperate and unthinking desire to suffocate her into a longer life, she was ready to live what she had left. She just had to be sneaky about it until she was confident in breaking the rules her father imposed. "I'll be okay; I've got my tubes if I need them."

She hated calling them what they really were. It gave them life like snakes meant to slowly strangle her. Tubes would do despite it making her look slightly dumb.

He sighed, leaning his head back and rubbing his eyes. "Okay, I'll be here all night if you need me."

She grinned and gave a two-finger salute. "I'll call if I need a hand to hold." Then she was turning on her beat-up converse and making her way out of the hospital. She grabbed the small tubes off the holder on her little breathing contraption and wrapped the tubes around her ears and stuffed the smaller up her nose. She could instantly breathe easier, the pure air filling her lungs easier to hold than the polluted air of the cut.

With a deep breath from her tubes, she began her walk. From the hospital to the part of the cut she was intending to get to, it would take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes, depending on what route she took. If she cut through a shallow part of the marsh, she could make it in twenty.

It would be hard on her lungs, and she'd waterlogged her shoes, but it was worth the cut time. She would live
—hopefully. So she set off, cutting through yards, saying hi to people she grew up with, and lots and lots of walking.

Her lungs aches with the strain of keeping pace. She remembered when she could walk like this and it only felt like a light pressure. Eventually, it would feel like her lungs would collapse at the slightest hint of exercise. Her heart would eventually go with it.

She hated that thought, but there was no use being angry over it.

With aching lungs and soggy feet, she stepped onto a porch she hadn't been allowed to even look at in four years. It smelled dingy and dusty; there were beer cans littered on the floor and something that looked like a bikini top on one of the sofas.

She wondered if he had cleaned at all since his father went missing. If he hadn't, she was a little concerned for him. She stuffed her tubes higher in her nose to try and avoid sniffing the dust. She'd prefer not sending herself into early lung combustion right as she was enacting her master plan.

She rapped her knuckles on the door quickly and waited. It was almost ten in the morning on a weekend; she was working on the small chance he might still be asleep and not running around out on his boat. She prayed he wasn't with his friends, especially not-

She stiffened when the door opened. Instead of being met with the brown eyes, eyes that mirrored her own, of her cousin, she was met with striking blue. Blue eyes she always found herself drawn too during fifth period biology. The only time she ever had a chance to speak with him without seeming weird.

And now she was showing up at his friend's house. Did he even know if they were cousins? She seemed so weird now.

"Rilee?" JJ asked, his brow shooting up in surprise. "What're you doing here?"

She was trying to keep looking at his eyes. Her mouth parted in surprise and a bit of nerves, but he was standing in front of her with no shirt. His shorts hung loosely off his hips, and she could see the band of his boxers. Everything was so defined and—shit, she looked down. "Uhm—" She looked away, clearing her throat and praying to god that her cheeks didn't look as red as they felt. "John B? My cousin?"

His eyes trailed to her tubes, something flashing in his eyes. She refused to use them at school. She wanted to portray that she was still fine. Her heart wasn't going to eventually fail, her lungs wouldn't collapse, and her body wasn't slowly killing itself. This must've been a slap in the face for him. "Yeah, come in."

He turned around and made his way back into the house. She followed quietly and tried to wish away the uncomfortable nerves that settled into her stomach like lead. Her eyes dropped to the muscles of his back. She admired the smooth planes of skin—up until she saw a yellowing bruise just above his hip.

"JJ, how'd you get that?" she asked, stepping forward and reaching out as if to touch it. She retracted her hand right before he looked back at her. "The bruise," she corrected, tucking her hands nervously in her pockets.

He turned subtly to look down at it after raising his arm. "Oh, uh, slipped off the boat," he said quickly, dismissing it like it was nothing. She frowned and looked back down at it. Doesn't look like it could be from a boat. She kept that observation to herself and instead nodded.

"Where's Johnny?" she asked, slipping back to a nickname she had used when they were kids. Her mother had always spent Saturdays with her brother, letting Rilee run around with John B and get dirty, much to her father's dislike. As far as she was aware, she had been the only one allowed to call him that.

She wasn't so sure if that still stood.

"John B!" JJ shouted, banging on a door in the back. She recognized the beat-up poster on it as something they had salvaged from the water and dried when they were ten. She was both surprised and happy he had kept it, even if it was just because he had forgotten to take it down.

She heard a groan and a light shuffle from the other side of the door, then it was swinging open. He looked groggy and annoyed, pinning JJ with an unamused stare. "Is there a reason you ruined my precious sleep?" His voice was exactly how it sounded in the hallways at school. It reminded her of Uncle John. She missed that old fool.

JJ dramatically motioned to Rilee as if he were presenting a princess. "Miss cousin, humbly entering and requesting John B," he said, then bowed as if he had just given the greatest performance of his life. Rilee laughed behind her hand. It was cute.

"From a land a mile that way." She pointed out one of the windows, towards where her house sat on the cut. "Here to talk with my very tall cousin." Her voice mimicked JJ's; he grinned and crossed his arms.

"Rilee?" John B's tone brought her fully back to her cousin. She had followed her father's rules and only talked to him when they had a class together at school. She looked him over. "What are you—"

"You look like shit, Johnny," she said quietly, stepping forward and grabbing his face to twist from side to side. "Are you eating? Are you drinking water?" She asked it all in rapid fire so he wouldn't stop her. She was so afraid he'd stop her.

The last time they had spoken was when her mom had died, and she cried in his arms at the funeral. She had missed him so much. She missed her Johnny boy.

"I—" He blinked and looked back down at her. "No?"

She sighed. "Johnny, take it from a sick person; food helps." She was trudging towards his kitchen, setting her small bag down and taking out her tubes. She set her contraption on the counter. "Do you like mashed potatoes?" She stopped and thought, then turned to JJ with a raised brow. "Are you eating?"

He paused. She knew how this must look. Some sick girl just gung-ho barged into his friend's house with no explanation and demanded to make them food. She, who had already left her stomach at the door, just waved her hands as if to motion today. The blonde and her cousin just stared at her with open mouths. She snapped her fingers. "Uh- sorta?" He seemed almost unsure when giving his answer, so she assumed he also barely ate.

"Alright, so I'll make you mashed potatoes since they're the only thing not rotten." She hummed to herself, grabbing and washing one of the pans that had been set to the side. She had gotten to be a very good cook with little to nothing to work with, pogue perk. "Then, I'll go and get you some food that you'll be able to eat." She was already making a mental list of things he would need.

"RJ." John B stopped her, holding a hand just above her shoulder. His lips were quirked into his usual why are you so dumb smile; she faltered. "I missed you." He said it easily, like there was no barrier of time between them that had felt impenetrable for so long. "But what are you doing here? Uncle Jasper will kill you."

She swallowed the tense nerves that had begun to feel like an 8-ball in her throat. "I'm dying." Her voice was quiet, almost croaky, as his hand finally settled on her shoulder. His eyes widened, surprised, as if he hadn't heard this news all around school. Rilee Jade is a dead girl. "And I want to live while I've got time." She wrung her hands together anxiously, nerves eating away at her once sturdy resolve. "You are the best chance I have at doing anything normally."

Something in his eyes softened as the words left her lips. Soft as silk and sweet as honey, with claws digging just where she wanted them. "So... what about your dad?" He asked, shifting back and leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. "He hates me, remember?" He tapped his temple.

"He doesn't know," she shrugged, mimicking his stance. "He won't until breaking all his rules catches his attention. He only pays attention when I'm having an attack or he's home—which isn't often." Her tone slipped into a sigh, missing the days when she would spend time with him for something other than doctors' appointments.

"You want to break rules?" John B asked with a laugh, like she had never been much of a rulebreaker. "Who are you, and what have you done with my little RJ?"

She scoffed. "I want to live; how am I supposed to do that without being a normal teenager? And I'm a pogue, JB. What else is there to do?" Her question was met with silence, then a low whistle from JJ as he jumped to sit on the counter. Her eyes shifted over to him.

"She's got a point, bro." JJ casually crossed his arms and his legs, leaning his head back against the cabinets. He was a vision to Rilee. Despite sitting with him almost every day in class, he looked so much better not surrounded by school air. "Live while we're young, as One Direction would say."

Rilee raised a brow as her lips curved into a sly smile. "Did you just..."

"Yes, ma'am, I did." He grinned, winking at her.

"Dude!" John B shot a deadpan stare at JJ. "That's my cousin."

"I didn't say anything!"

Rilee laughed—fully belly, in a way she hadn't since before her mom died. The way it felt to laugh with dying lungs made her remember why she had come over in the first place. To live like this, with friends and jokes and happiness. She would live in happiness until it killed her.

She refused to bury her head in the sand like her dad.

So she smiled, shook her head, and began to speak again. "I'm not leaving until we figure something out. I have nothing to do at home but sit and stew in emotional depravity."

John B heaved a dramatic sigh. The muscles of his shoulders lifted like he held the weight of the world—maybe he did; he held the weight of Rilee's world now. She tilted her head to the side and smiled, the way she did when they were thirteen and she was trying to get her way. It always worked on him.

The reluctance on his face was adorable—but she knew he was going to say yes from the moment she tilted her head. He was a softie for her, always willing to move heaven and earth—even when he wasn't allowed near her. "Okay, how do you want to do this?"

Excitement ran over her like a freight train. She dramatically pumped her fist with a "yes!" before turning in a circle.

"Ooh, I've always wanted to help someone with a bucket list!" JJ added in, hopping down from the counter with a small grin. His eyes hardly left Rilee as she did her happy dance. Her wild curls everywhere and her big smile were a sight to behold—and now she was a full-blown pogie. "Rilee's Last Laugh, anybody?"

Rilee laughed and turned to him, a little winded and breathing harder. There was a feeling of acid in the bottom of her lungs. She didn't care. "I love it!" She grinned, and JJ lifted his hand for a high five.

"That's so morbid." John B deadpanned.

"It is so true!" She grinned, moving to shift through his house and grab a notebook with some loose paper. "Are you guys doing anything today?" She was too excited to wait, especially now that she felt like she had friends.

"Kie and Pope are gonna be here any minute—we mainly just go on the boat when we're bored." John B answered from his spot, his face in his hands. He looked like he now realized what he was agreeing too. Rilee and JJ in one room on more than one occasion—it would either end in disaster or... other things he would prefer not to think about. "They can help us make the bucket list."

(So maybe I lied about the bucket list being my idea—it was JJ's. Though I won't ever admit that aloud until I'm much older.)

Rilee was excited—actually excited! There was nothing more exciting than finally doing something she had been thinking about for a year! "Thank you, Johnny Boy. I'm so excited—it'll be so fun." The wide smile never left her face; it reminded John B of his aunt Cindy.

It reminded JJ of John B.

"Okay—but we pogues have rules." John B pointed his finger at her, his mouth morphing into a smile that matched hers. They looked identical for only a moment. "Firstly! Zero fraternizing with the enemy—no kooks, unless voted since Kiara is technically an exception."

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Only Kook I talk to is my therapist, easy peasie." The loose paper in her hand was tugged away by JJ, who scribbled Rilee's Last Laugh on one side in sloppy handwriting.

John B tapped her nose. "Perfect—second is no pogue left behind."

"So I can't abandon you to go kiss someone?"

"RJ, you've never kissed anybody."

JJ turned around, eyes bugging out of his head as he looked at her. "You haven't?" He leaned his elbows on the table and slotted his head in his hands. "Ri-Ri, I can change that." JJ gave a cheeky grin, and Rilee flushed a bright right.

Could he?

"Ah! Third rule is no pogue on pogue macking! That is my cousin, JJ." John B shoved JJ's head, causing the blonde to go tumbling to the floor in a heap of laughter. Rilee laughed too. Though a new sense of disappointment curled in her gut like rot. She didn't like this rule.

"Okay, no kissing Kie." She nodded, pretending to sigh like it was the worst fate in the world. JJ shouted from the floor—offended.

"Who's kissing me?"

Rilee turned; she had forgotten how beautiful Kiara Carrera was. Long curly hair, skin that seemed to be constantly glazed with caramel, beautiful eyes. Rilee used to have a massive crush on Kie—until she met JJ. "Me?" Rilee spoke it like a question.

"Rilee?" Pope asked, looking between the three already in the house. He and Kie both stepped further into the house, closing the door and looking at Rilee like she grew a second head. "What're you doing here?"

Rilee looked between John B and JJ as they stood on either side of her, easy smiles on their faces. She glanced back at the other two with a mischievous grin.

"There's this thing—Operation Bucket List."

Massive thank you to -ella for both making the title gifs and editing the prologue!

I'm so excited to write for Rilee and JJ (And Iveline and Rhiannon, when they're introduced!) and tell you how they fall in loooooove. And don't worry, s4 will be changed!

Huehuehue

love indi <3