chapter fifteen / sunsick moon

  All out island warfare bled from the edges of the Outerbanks into the paradisal confines of the Tūrei home, leaving imprints of ichor dried on the oak floorboards, staining across the lime washed walls and sinking into the grout of the glazed olive mosaic tiles. It was no longer a home of high heaven sung praises to Ilyshah, but like her last they were always mere containers for her fleeting, casually ruinous paradoxical mind.

  In preparation for escape of the newly dug out trenches, JJ Maybank stood mute, chewing on the edge of his thumb and clutching at his chest every now and again as Ilyshah scrambled to repack her tote, both of them ignoring the shattered remains crunching underfoot despite the sickly sweet aroma of juniper and vanilla wafting up into their nostrils.

  A process polished and perfected into a fine art form, within five minutes she had a dress change, a mannequin head dragged out from the depths of her closet, tucked into bed with pillows mimicking her curves, and tunes of top 40 hits softly ringing out from her old radio alarm clock before they both descended the jasmine vine threaded ladder off her balcony onto the paved driveway.

Under the spotlight of the street lights, he outstretched his hand and grazed his thumb over the nick of skin on her temple, curdled blood illuminated by the dim hue. "Hey, that doesn't look too hot, we should probably go back u—"

"Don't worry about it eoh," she drawled, skittishly brushing off his hand, "I've had worse."

"You got some double life in fighting rings I don't know about?" His line of questioning elicited a deadpanned expression he quickly disregarded. "Alright girl scout, how're we getting out of here? We don't have my bike. . . you ready to walk an hour?" he lifted an eyebrow at her as she zoned out in the direction of the garage door. "Steal Kahu's whip? That's brave."

She snapped out of her trance. "Eh? I'm not asking for a death wish—just a way off this blardy side of the island," she remarked, taking a pause to furrow her eyebrows in thought before her eyes widened as her lips did in realisation, "I thought of something, c'mon."

"Wait, what d'you mean? Where are we going?" He called out as she ran ahead.

"No time for questions!"

Rows and rows of perfectly manicured residences passed them by in their dash up the winding streets on that low bearing summer night. As JJ caught up to Ilyshah's heel, he repeatedly tapped on her shoulder, "hold up, isn't that Kelce's place?" He pointed towards to the bleach white weatherboard cladded two storey then graced her with a smirk after he swung his backpack around to meet his chest and pulled out two cans of red capped spray paint, "ready to have some real fun?"

    "Where'd you get that from oi?"

  He shrugged nonchalantly. "Y'never know when inspiration will strike."

That tracked.

     Camped out behind a tree stump out of view from the front windows, adrenaline still keeping her at a buzzing altitude as she played lookout, Ilyshah signalled a thumbs up towards JJ when the vicinity was clear of any passing figures. Nodding at her from the opposite side of the lawn, he stealthily crab walked his way into position as he tugged the faded navy bandana around his neck to sit on the bridge of his nose while he shook the rattling canister.

  Within seconds, in blood red stamped across Kelce's front lawn read a lazily traced out 'SCREW U KOOKS', a Pogue defined magnum opus that saw him brandish two sets of middle fingers at his finished piece before they fled the scene as she dragged him away with a low giggle.

  The further they traversed the streets of the Eight, the more private the residences became as thick hedges lined the alleys until they reached their destination on the right. Flowers spilled out from the top terrace; lilies, bougainvillea, and hibiscus painting the stonework in exotic hues amongst the rosewood shutters as slim, elegantly pruned cypress trees lined the front entrance where a terracotta washed sign with La Casa Dell'alba chiselled into the cracked paint peeked out from the climbing ivy it was entwined into.

   "Whoa hold up, this was your bright idea?" questioned JJ, discord laced in his voice as he shook his head, "walking it is then, yup."

She clasped her hand over his mouth, drawing out a frown as his next choice of words were muffled. "You trust me, cowboy?"

With my life—he nodded profusely into her palm composing a widened gaze before she peeled it off and spat in the crevices of her heart line laid bare to wipe her bloody knees clean then tousled her hair to conceal the brooding scar on her temple, "I'm going in, you wait here and no more vandalising."

        "Aye, aye. . ." He anxiously mumbled as they parted ways, shuffling out of sight into the shadows of a nearby alleyway.

Presenting a polite, demure smile for the two security intercoms at each entrance as she passed, she spotted Lucia Fishers sashaying towards the front door through the glass pane, a black silk night slip draped off her curvaceous frame with lace detailed at the bust that she hastily covered with a matching gown, an air of decorum followed her melding with the spiced notes of her perfume as the bronze of days under the Sicilian sun sunk into her prominent cheek bones.

"Ciao bella, what a surprise," Lucia welcomed her in with an airy kiss on both cheeks, her husky melodic voice laced with her native tongue. "I didn't think I'd see you until Midsummers. . . your zia has kept your dress such a secret from everyone I can't get a word out of her."

  A careless sweep of her hair and a nervous chuckle had Lucia pulled into a concerned glower as she explained her presence away, "I'm sorry for coming over so late ma, I just need to get something off Spence. . . is he here?"

   "He's up in his room," whispered Lucia with a subtle wink as she untangled their hands, "and come around anytime bella, we miss you."

    "I promise."

    Just like the lemon quenched caverns of Tanneyhill, she felt the need for a map here even if it were her umpteenth visit under high arches and chalky, intentionally unfinished walls. Passing the steinway grand, a subdued glissando echoed off the keys as she danced her fingers across, reminding her of it's better, less dust-filled days when Spencer played renditions of o sole mio and clair de lune on rainy afternoons as she glided on polished tiles balancing as many books on her head as she could handle while spinning into a failing pirouette, dropping titles onto their spines as the ring of laughter foreign to the residence joined the sequences of arpeggios.

She didn't know whether it was best idea to be there given all that happened only two hours ago but desperation led her to worse places. Following the murmured voices and faint music at the end of the hall, she quickly located his room past the master bath and rhythmically knocked on the door. An abrupt scratch of a vinyl followed a 'coming ma!' and within seconds she was met with a dishevelled Spencer Fishers on the other side, cheeks and bare chest florid as he leaned against the door frame, keeping himself wedged in at a closed angle to hold her prying eyes at bay.

     "Are you with someone right now?" She gasped theatrically, attempting to push past him to no avail as his towering frame caged her out, "you're with someone."

"I'm not with anyone—what. . . what're you doing here?" asked Spencer, a cold snap tied into his edged whisper.

She stomped her right foot on the floor like a soldier, "I'm here to commandeer a vehicle, sir."

"What? Why?"

"Don't you wanna know," she folded her arms across her chest, "what's that look for?"

    He unclenched his jaw and softly knocked a balled fist on the door hinge above his head. "Seriously?" He hissed, closing the door behind him. "The fuck were you thinking pulling that gun, Lysh? I told you to stay out of it."

    "Save the lecture, if I was after one I would've stayed at undools," she countered, shrugging as she avoided his gaze, "you helping me or not?"

     JJ nervously tugged on the straps of his backpack as the hedges shielded him from view of the cars that passed every now and then. He didn't know what schemes Ilyshah had up her sleeve at the Fishers' residence, his only hope was that Spencer wouldn't be involved in their clandestine evening affair because by Christ this is the most alone time he's gotten with her and he's not just letting some pompous ass—

     The on and off screech of brakes beckoned him to peer out from the bushes, spotting a glasslike veneer of red scored across the street with Ilyshah Tūrei at the wheel miserably failing to ride the clutch. Four halting yawps across the bitumen later and the 1967 Jaguar E pulled up beside him as she whisked her hair to the side.

"Pretty sweet ride, eh?" prompted Ilyshah brightly, gripping onto the wood rimmed steering wheel.

"You don't know how to drive stick, do you?"

"I do not know how to drive stick, I was hoping you did."

He joined her in the vintage sports car, throwing his backpack at her feet beside her tote as she scooted over the middle console into the passenger seat, "you're in luck Miss Lyshah," he took in a deep breath with a pronounced exhale as he caressed the steering wheel, "how in Gods good name did you convince fabio to hand over the keys?"

    "A girl has her ways," she hummed, leaning in closer to his face to mockingly bat her eyelashes then snorted as he wavered her away.

"Now listen here, you better strap yourself in little lady because I am a speed demon."

"Wait, wait! We need some beats first," she opened the glove box and shuffled around the contents, instructing him to close his eyes as she pulled out two cassette tapes and gasped at his blind selection, "Queen's greatest hits—hu-hu-hu, that's primo."

    He frowned, watching her push the cassette into the slot above the radio. "What kind of Kook can't afford to upgrade?"

     "Ever heard of an old soul? That's what Spence thinks he is," she kicked up her billabong jandal covered feet on the dash, "we ready to go, speed demon?"

   It was a symphony of analog acoustics when JJ pressed the ignition, flicked around with the dials on the dash and shifted into first gear. He didn't know what moment he dreamt about at night more; the car or her, nonetheless it added to his violent head rush as the in-line six engine took them at full throttle down Ocean Drive to the guitar riff of I WANT TO BREAK FREE blasting from the speakers as Ilyshah cranked the volume with an exhilarating shriek.

   With the wind whipping through their hair, they belted the first verse together until their lungs almost gave out, tuning out by the second verse as he caught a glimpse of her fleeting stare when Freddie Mercury's voice sung out I've fallen in love, I've fallen in love for the first time and this time I know it's for real—fading into submission when he near ran a stop sign from raking his eyes over her twirling a lock of hair around her finger and picking at the loose threads of her sun imprinted crotchet shorts as she continued singing along.

    "Watch this!" She shouted over the pre-chorus of RADIO GAGA, alerting JJ when she unclasped the belt buckle and lifted herself up, her hip bones digging into the windshield.

    His pupils blew wide as he took his right hand off the steering wheel to rest on the small of her back, "yo, hey—be careful!"

"Relax, I've done this heaps!"

     Her hair ribboned in the wind as she exposed her crooked pearly cuspids with her arms spread in flight, letting the atmosphere carry her to new heights as she clapped to the chorus—gifting him a sight he wished he could capture in a supercut to replay over and over at will that way he wouldn't have to endanger their lives by staring behind the wheel.

On the border of the Southside, they danced under fluorescent lights down the aisles of the STOP N SHOP, procuring enough snacks in their arms to feed half the island and mango jarritos to wash down the coconut spiced rum JJ convinced her to purchase under her fake ID, his crushed up single notes and the pretty Kook girl discount he knew Gibbo at the register would give for a mere ten seconds of her attention.

  Before long, the cherry jag was parked by the deserted sand dunes with a vista of unrelenting waves crashing at a distance. The radio hummed with COOL CAT playing at a dulcet tone as they harmonised the chorus in a signature freddie mercurial four octave range, giggles capsuled in between them as he rolled a gram of weed and loose tobacco fresh from the grinder in the raw brown papers, sticking out his tongue to seal the tightly packed blunt and twisting the tip before offering it up to her with a curt bow.

Delicate in her grip, she swelled her lungs in smoke as he held up the zippo lighter engraved with his initials and cupped it close to her face to prevent the flame being snuffed out. Her eyes fluttered shut to take in the heavy hit, falling into a vortex after she passed the spliff so he could join her as she relaxed back into the seat, her fingernails tracing the cracks formed in the weathered, tanned leather underneath. Soon, the smoke alleviated the unsung pain of her clipped cheekbone and temple which until then she was merely distracting herself from the ache with the company of JJ Maybank.

   They simultaneously raised their bottles of jarritos spiked with malibu, legs splayed across the dashboard with minds weighed down by the substances sinking into their bloodstream and wreaking all kinds of havoc.

   "Yo, Ho, Ho," said JJ, baiting her with flaking curiosity.

"And a bottle of rum."

   She gleamed proudly as she finished the sentence, earning an eyebrow raise from JJ as she clinked her bottle lip against his and tilted her head back. The sweet coconutty liquid slicking down into her system weakened the defences corrugated around her mind that grew fuzzier and heavier on her shoulders, floating over with the scent of old spice, weed, salty air and rum sending her further into a spiral.

    Side effects of a sesh with JJ Maybank include:
Dry mouth, increased heart rate, bloodshot eyes, colours appearing more vibrant, increased appetite for eccentric food combinations, distortion in ones sense of time, heightened senses, incessant laughter, feeding each other's minds with existential conversations of life and death and dipping into daydreams.

    "I know you pimped me out back there by the way," said Ilyshah, incredulously pointing at him with the joint between her fingers, "fah, that guy though . . . he looked like Jesus, you know Jesus?"

"Totally. I met him at a party once—y'know he's a wizard?"

"A wizard?"

"Yeah," whispered JJ, bloodshot eyes blown wide, "they straight up drew him with a wand," he nodded, using wild gestures to paint the sky with the joint he stole off her then winced as it burnt his fingers, dropping it into the ashtray filled to the brim with cigarette butts.

   She narrowed her eyes, vacantly staring straight ahead. "D'you ever feel like. . . D'you ever feel like you understand everything in the universe, then it slowly slips away and all you're left with. . . is the feeling that you knew it all for a moment?"

   "You are so fucking high right now," he let out a raspy laugh at her airier than normal disposition.

          "—or I'm low, you will never know."

                         "—you just can't hold your smoke, lady."

    She giggled lowly, hanging onto his words as if they left his lips hours apart, "lady," luring in his incessant chuckles to mingle with hers.

Laughter that seemingly stretched on for hours and hours gave way to a game of SCOUTS HONOUR, a cross breed of In Vino Veritas and Truth that Ilyshah Tūrei would wholeheartedly reject, if she were sober.

"I'll start you off easy now," said JJ, cracking open another bottle of jarritos and swilling back half the liquid to pour in the malibu, spilling some on the leather seat absentmindedly, "first impressions of moi."

Ilyshah grinned into the bottle lip he passed over after taking a sip. "Hu-hu, first time I remember seeing you, we were at work—you were teaching Mama L the cha cha slide in the kitchen. And all I could think of was. . . what an egg," her chest rumbled with rasped chuckles as he gasped in faux offence then loosely imitated the dance in the confined space. "Yep, still an egg!"

"Okay, now me. First impressions."

"Besides being the most beautiful girl on the island?" He asked rhetorically, finding her lazily rolling her eyes to distract from the flush he noticed across her cheeks, "I thought you seemed. . . cool."

She cackled, grabbing his liquorlip bottle and tapping it against his chest. "You're a crack up eoh. Let's try that again. Scouts honour, go."

    He took a quick swig and swiped his tongue over his scarred bottom lip, "I thought you seemed out of place, kinda like you didn't belong," he blurted carelessly then silently cursed himself as an uncomfortable silence set in and her eyes sank, "shit, uh. . . I'm sorry—I didn't mean it like tha—"

"Nah," said Ilyshah, calmly, "nah, you're right—I really don't. It's hard to when you're a Māori girl whose joint back home looks more like ones on The Cut."

    He shrugged off his own self loathing inducing statements. "You definitely belong with us Pogues then . . . and we're no strangers from taking on a straggler or two."

    She dolefully smiled to herself. "They're like your whanau, eh? Your family?" his slight nod cued the next, "and I met your dad, but your mum—she still around?"

"That's a negative ma'am," he bumped his knee up as he cleared his throat, "bounced on me and m'old man before I could remember her face," he swiped a thumb over his chapped bottom lip, then reached for his wallet and slotted out a timeworn photograph.

   Ilyshah delicately held it between her fingers running across the groove of a fold crease down the middle and smiled at the blonde woman in the photo. "Aw, she's pretty. She must have had you when she was a teenager. Look, you even have her eyes."

   "Calling me pretty too, girl scout?"

    "Only the prettiest boy on the island," she cheekily slurred as a retort to his previous comment, though his slightly stunned reaction at the rare compliment sobered her up by a shot glass full.

    "You ever try to find her?" She recovered the awkwardness, kissing her teeth when he silently shook his head and gave back the photo, "naw, you don't have to—she should come back to you."

    He scratched the bridge of his nose and avoided eye contact by staring at the laces of his work boots. "Why she would, I don't really see why."

        "I do."

  Her eyes pooled with sincerity bore into his and he had sworn he was paralysed in the moment until his fingers twitched at the tip indicating he was no longer frozen. He spun his trucker backwards and drew his eyebrows together as he asked. "Alright, scouts honour Miss Lyshah. What was Lani talking about before?" She tried to play it off but he saw the light behind her eyes darkening and added. "Y'know, about why you got sent here, and all."

     "It's a . . . long story," she blew a shaft of air towards the sky as she hunched her shoulders over then read his deadpanned expression of 'we're landlocked now, if there's ever time for one it's now' and rolled her eyes in habitual avoidance.

   It rose into her throat like the bile of a suppressed prehistoric memory, bubbling up as she began, "there's a word in te reo, kaitiaki," cracking a small smile at JJ's attempt to pronounce it after her, "it means to act as a guardian, a protector of the land," she paused and traced the rim of the bottle lip with her thumb, "and that was my destiny in my iwi, or so I thought."

   "Then we find out some palangi lady approaching deaths doorstep who lives an ocean away with a crown and enough flash jewels in her palace to probably—I dunno—solve world hunger, has this old law that requires us to amalgamate our lands with another hapu to keep it. Well, y'know—not we, none of my whanau told me," she dryly huffed in amusement, "not until I was facing this fulla my age that I'd seen around. We never talked but I knew his kaumātua were important."

  He frowned puzzlingly, "wait, amalgamate— you mean to tell me they were going to marry you off or something?" his lips parted slightly as she wordlessly communicated in the affirmative, "Jesus. . . what'd you do?"

   "What else? I gapped it," she shrugged defeatedly, "I mean, what sixteen year old do you know gets married off these days? It sounds so. . . medieval," her eyes widened ironically, "and now I'm stuck in purgatory because undool was the only one willing to take me in, hoping to get me into law school so I can fight for my whenua without having to. . . well, that."

"And your cousin doesn't know about this—"

She alarmingly shot her head up. "Look, JJ when I say take this to the grave—"

   "Oh, my lips are sealed, muchacho," he gestured a zipping motion to his lips then wavered his hands as she huffed a breath of appreciation and casted her eyes downward. "I'm real sorry that happened to you, Lysh."

"Me too, cowboy," she plopped closer towards him with a weighted sigh, fluttering her eyes shut, "me too."

Somewhere in between their barely wakeful sentiments of how empty the sky looked without the moon and what water tasted like, they fell asleep. Nestled into his side with her head cushioned by his shoulder, and his arm naturally floating above her waist, an unspeakable comfort was found in the shared warmth and blurred lines of boundaries and smoke signals where no guilt existed for pushing her to peel back the layers of a burdened truth.

Hours later JJ stirred awake to whispers of his name, instinctively grappling the waist of Ilyshah in an alarmed stagger after she lightly shook him. "What? What's wrong?" He rasped, dry mouth taking hold of his throat.

"The sun, JJ . . . it's rising," she murmured, tilting his chin up to face the pale golden light appearing on the horizon engulfed by a burnt haze with veins of purple and pink flushed across the sky, "isn't it the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

   He stared at her under heavily weighed down eyelids, his gut twisting as she continued to gaze at the sunrise as if it were the first time she ever saw one. "Yeah, it is."

This would be the moment of impact. The moment he would ghost his hand along the side of her neck and bring her lips to his. Soft, gentle, languid. A kiss procured straight from a movie script or song that people referred to as the fireworks before the smouldering or the chemistry until it faded.

He didn't care if their story had a fated end so long as he had her in the prologue. And yet he could not take his eyes off her and make the move. Not because he was scared of her pulling away, but as the shadows across the island retreated revealing the dawn of a new day—

He completely lost himself in her.

Whale Rider ━━ JJ Maybank
Chapter Fifteen, Sunsick Moon
Outerbanks S1 ━━ Ep. 4 Spy Games.