CHAPTER THREE ✹
I Dream of Getting Out.

  𝕾OMETHING about Iris: she hated showering at the Chateau.

  The Chateau was never exactly the Ritz, even with Big John still around and kicking. But now, with John B's dad gone, their place had become the rundown, comfortable lair of an unsupervised teenage boy. Beer cans everywhere, dishes in the sink, colonies of mould growing on what little food still existed there. And, of course, the shower—all it had to offer Iris, with sweat beading the nape of her neck and collarbone, was a three-in-one that smelt of spiced lime and burned a bit too much on the eyes.

  Though, having tingly skin, irritating the eczema patches on the back of her neck, and swelling up her eyes, were all far more sufferable than going home for a shower. So, Iris stomached it. She even swallowed down her pride to use one of John B's ratty, damp towels, trying her hardest not think about the last time it was washed. Her hair's too short to pull back into a ponytail without resembling a founding father—ever since she impulsively butchered it with a pair of kitchen scissors (after her dad told her how much he loved her long, brown hair). So, she let it drip rivulets of water down her clavicle, collecting there in a hollow basin as threw on a t-shirt that could've really been any of the boys'. When the scent of way-too-strong stolen cologne caught her nose, Iris put her money on it being JJ's.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, the party was in full swing. Before she split from the pogues for a shower, barely anyone was there. They were still slumming on the porch, sharing a blunt with some sunkissed tourons, all talking a mile a minute about how jealous that they didn't get to grow up on the island. Iris couldn't stomach that for much longer, and muttered something about needing to wash her hair before disappearing. She hadn't really realised how long she had been in there—scrubbing at her skin until it was blistered red, and flinching every time the water turned flinchingly cold. Presently, she almost regrets it. As she shoved her way past a couple of pogues macking against John B's bedroom door, Iris realised she hadn't given herself time to adjust to so many people at once. Now, there's music blasting from some dirty corner of the Chateau, and she could barely make her way through the place without stumbling over an empty bottle.

  "Irie!"

  A hand snatched her wrist, and yanked her through a gaggle of shrill tourons, pulling her deeper into the kitchen. Iris's tailbone hit the countertop roughly to shrink away from everyone else, but she barely winced—she's just glad to have escaped. Her eyes, still bloodshot and scathing from the spiced lime shower gel, squint up at her saviour.

  "Magda, you're here!" she exclaims.

  "In the flesh." Though, Magda looked like she'd rather be anywhere but. Still, she grinned lovingly at her favourite of all her little brother's friends—even if her eyes reminded her of the ones she fell in love with at sixteen. "Your hair's all wet. Was you seriously in the shower, with all this going on?"

  Iris's shrug was lame and halfhearted. "I hate the first hour of a party. It's awkward and no one talks." It's only half a lie. "Hey, I thought you'd be at country club—waiting on some geriatrics playing poker, or something."

  "Nah, my boss has got me on the day shift until Midsummers," Magda informs. The word Midsummers left her mouth with about the same level of resentment Iris had whenever she thought about it. "Though, something interesting did happen today."

  "Oh, yeah? Hit me."

  "Your dad came in. Yeah, I served him and your brother 'one of our finest whiskeys'," Magda quoted facetiously.

  Iris's gut wrenched. "My brother, huh?"

  "In the flesh," she says again, this time with a hint of enmity that Iris discerned rather easily. She didn't prod her on it. "He was wearing a Princeton sweater. Good for him, right?"

  "Yeah," Iris bites, "good for him."

  Then, Magda turned around, seized a half-drunk bottle of tequila ditched by a touron in the bathroom, and slanted Iris a crooked grin.

  "What do you say, Mariano? It's not no finest whiskey, but..." Magda pinched two red solo cups from the side, eyeballing a shot of tequila into each with a precision only a bartender had, "...it'll get us drunk."

  "If you're gonna twist my arm," she drawls sarcastically.

  Iris hated tequila, in truth. But, then again, nobody likes tequila. The first shot burns like her eyes did in that shower. The aftertaste lingered in her throat; oaky, spiced, and with a tang of fresh agave. The second made her retch. By the fourth, Iris genuinely thought tears might starting welling. Six was all either of them could stomach, and some of it dribbled down the corner of Iris's mouth, all sticky and with a smack of cinnamon. Her knees felt like buckling, and Magda stared back at her through glassy eyes, sniffling.

  "I'm a bad influence," she slurs. "Your brother, he'd—" she hiccoughed, grimacing at the burn in her throat, "fuck, he'd kill me if he knew."

  Iris blinked at her hazily. "My brother? How...Why would you even...Do you..." Then, giggles bubbled in her, like a soapy bath overflowing. She swayed forward until her chin perched clumsily on Magda's trembling shoulder. "I'm so drunk right now. I d'know what I'm saying."

  "Let's go find my brother," Magda laughs.

  They found Pope outside, where the music's louder, and the party was thicker. Through the mistiness of her eyes, Iris could just about make out a crackling fire underneath the mossy oak tree, and a circle of kids sharing a blunt around it. Around her, tourons and pogues perch on the warm shingles of the roof; smoking, vaping, sticking tongues down in each other's throat. She wondered if parties ever get less overwhelming, or if she was just miserable.

  Pope's draped on the banister of the porch, flirting with a pretty touron in sandals and a summer dress.

  "...All my friends tell me I give great advice," she was enthusing, "I think I'm going to be a life coach."

  "Really? I want to be a coroner."

  Dead silence.

  Iris exchanged a look with Magda. "He's blown it."

  "No game at all," Magda says mournfully. "You should just date him, put him out his misery."

  "What?" Iris asks sharply.

  "Y'know, don't want our Pope dying alone. Plus, he adores you."

  Iris blinked. "Yeah, well—I adore him."

  "Ain't that enough?" teases Magda, good-naturedly poking her cheek.

  The conversation was teetering to a very dangerous place that Iris didn't want to go to with six shots of tequila in her system, so blurted some excuse about hearing someone call her name—nobody did—and made a hasty exit. Behind her, Magda's tearing Pope a new one for blowing it with the touron, who's suddenly nowhere to be seen. Iris didn't have enough of a working mind to think about it too much, she instead staggered her way through masses of pogues, cheering abrupt, "hey!"s and "so good to see you!"s whenever someone recognised her.

  It's John B she stumbled across first, and she had to slap a hand over her mouth to cover up her grin as he tucked a lock of a girl's hair behind her ear.

  "I've never seen so many stars," the touron gasps, her thumb stroking over his freckled cheekbone.

  "You can see even more over here."

  John B laced his fingers with hers, and started to lead her over to the HMS Pogue, beached in the shade of sweet-grass and the oak. When he caught Iris watched, he sent her a cheeky wink, and stuck his tongue out when she mockingly retched at him and the touron.

  Kiara, as expected, was in the middle of a social commentary about plastic waste and the environment, talking the head off some pogue with dilated pupils, and the stoned, apathetic look of a guy who realised he picked the wrong girl to try and mack on tonight. Iris didn't really have it in her to talk about the inevitable end of the world, but she was sure to bruise a quick peck to the crown of Kie's head when she walks by the fire. Kie clumsily squeezed her hand in return, and her lips swept drunkenly over each of Iris's knuckles before she was gone.

  The last place she checked was the dock.

  The lights were all faded here, barely reaching the shallow, marshy depths surrounding the Chateau. Iris was pretty sure she was navigating her way along on muscle memory only, fingers tracing the wooden railing softly enough that she won't wake up to a splinter in the morning.

  When she reached the edge of the dock, JJ was just about to lift a girl's camisole over her head when Iris shrilled, "JJ? Is that—what the fuck, seriously?"

  Like a deer in headlights, JJ's neck snapped to her so quickly he swore he got whiplash, and blinks at her all doleful and fawnlike. "Sunshine?"

  The girl he was macking on looked between JJ and Iris with blown eyes and smeared lipstick. "Sunshine?"

  "Shit," JJ swore, yanking at his dishevelled hair. "No, baby—not like—that's not—Iris, tell her."

  "Tell her what, J?" Iris grits out, fighting the urge to laugh by jabbing her tongue violently into her cheek. "That you're cheating on me, after I told you I loved you? What about the baby, huh?"

  "The baby?" the girl demands, rounding back on JJ indignantly. "You're a dad?"

  He startled, frantically shaking his head and surrendering his hands to her. "What? No, no—that's just, that's Iris, she's a bitch. She does shit like this all the time, ignore her!"

  "She's the mother of your child!" the girl screams. "God, you're sick!" Ashamed, the touron hurriedly collects her belongings, scattered along the decking. She cradled her purse and flip-flops to her chest as she ran up the dock to where Iris stood, feigning hysterics and pretending to dry her ears. "I'm so, so sorry—I had no idea."

  "It's...it's not your fault," Iris hiccoughs, pressing her hand to her chest as if she couldn't breathe. She caught JJ's eye, and he's shaking his head at her in disbelief, singling out a brow. "Just—let me talk to him, please?"

  "Of course, I—I'm so sorry again. He's a jackass, I swear he didn't—"

  The girl, stunned, just shook her head and stalked off back to the party, muttering about the gall of men.

  As soon as she's out of earshot, Iris was doubling over in laughter, and JJ's slowly clapping.

  "Happy with yourself?" he challenges when she came to sit next to him, still trembling with giggles.

  "Oh, thrilled."

  "You're a dick, you know that? She was a sure thing."

  "Pay back, from that cute touron last week," Iris remarks, nudging his shoulder with hers.

  JJ scoffs, taking a blunt from the chest-pocket of his unbuttoned shirt that definitely belongs to John B. "He was lame. No way was I letting you mack on him."

  "He wants to study marine biology!" she says defensively.

  "Okay, so he's lame and a nerd. If you wanted that, you could just go for Pope," he taunts, retrieving his zippo as well, and lighting up his joint.

  As tradition, he took the first hit, and handed it right to Iris.

  "Why does everybody keep saying that tonight?" she mutters darkly, before taking a prolonged, thoughtful drag from the blunt.

  JJ turns to her, all frowning and confused. "Who else said you should mack on Pope?"

  "Magda."

  "Mag's here?"

  "Mhm. Peer-pressured me into tequila shots."

  "Yowza," he snorts, pinching the joint back off of her. "And you're still alive?"

  "Barely. That's why I had to come find you," she punctuates by tapping his nose.

  "Oh, yeah? Why's that?"

  "Well, I tried the others first. But Pope's working on his game, John B's taking some girl onto the HMS to 'show her the stars'—no, that's not a euphemism—and Kiara is solving world peace. So," Iris sighs, lying back until she was flush against the decking, "I had to cockblock you."

  JJ scoffs. "So, I'm your fourth choice."

  "No, I just found you last."

  He only hummed. "So...why's Magda think you should get with our Pope?"

  "She thinks it's either that or he'll die alone."

  "I personally think Pope's a catch."

  Iris smiles fondly. "I don't disagree."

  "Well," JJ drawls, moving until he was lying on his stomach adjacent to her, "there's two options he has."

  "I'll duel you for his hand at sunrise."

  "Oh, it's on, sunshine."

  "Give me a drag," she requests, not making a single attempt to sit up.

  JJ looked her in the eye, and saw nothing but earnest and love. He rolled his own at her affectionately and tucked his arm underneath her neck, gently raising her head and moving the joint to her lips. His hand cradled the base of her throat, watching her closely as she shut her lids against the earthy, heady taste of the weed. When she blew the smoke back out, JJ finds himself not wanting to let go of her at all. He got like this a lot. He rationalised it in his head with Iris being warm, Iris being Iris—they all love her. They're all a bit in love with her. Honestly, they're all in love with each other, and JJ—who's spent his life starved of everything sweet like soft touches, and meaningful embraces, and being told nice, maudlin things—wouldn't have it any other way.

  His thumb swept gently over the bare bit of skin where her neck connected to her shoulders, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy the way she shivered—all hesitant and trembly, like a bathing animal. Her eyes fluttered open again, and she smiled up at him all happy and buzzed. JJ drew his hand away, stubbed out the joint, and rolled over until he was on his back too. The sound of the party could barely reach them here—nothing could. Only stars and moonlight, and it softened all the harsh edges of them both into an opaline glow that made them look their age for once.

  Their pinkies touched at their sides; that was enough for them both.

  "That house today on Figure Eight was pretty sweet," JJ murmurs.

  There were crickets in the tall reeds, and it's a soft, welcoming reminder that they're alive.

  "Yeah," Iris agrees airily, "it was."

  "I wouldn't want it, though. Even if I had the money."

  "No?"

  "Nah."

  Iris's head lols to the side, and she looks at him all curious and tender. "And why's that?"

  "I dunno. Just—just hasn't been lived in, has it?"

  "That's kinda the point of new-builds, J."

  "No, I mean—" JJ falters, like he's not really sure what he means. "I dunno, man. I just want a house that's been lived in. Like, the Chateau, you know? It's been lived in."

  "You'd wanna live here forever?" Iris jokes, laughing.

  "Yeah," he says seriously, and the giggles die right in her chest, "yeah, I would." There's a long silence between them: time suspended. "You wouldn't?"

  She wavers, and thinks on it—like, really thinks. "I mean...if John B bought some actual shampoo and conditioner, and a few new towels—"

  "I'd sort all that. I'd even get you one of them round sponges things and shit."

  "A loofah, you mean."

  "Whatever you want, sunshine."

  "Mmm. Maybe, then."

  "Maybe."

♰

  Against all odds, JJ still managed to find a girl to hook up with that night who hadn't run into the last one and caught wind of him being a "cheating, egomaniacal deadbeat." Iris might've been stung at him ditching her if she wasn't so impressed about the quick work he made of winning the leggy, honey-blonde touron over, and leading her to the Chateau's spare room.

  She woke up on the porch, top-and-tailing with Pope on the derelict couch. He was already half-awake, weathering what looked like a nasty hangover as he shielded his eyes from the adversarial sunlight. As soon as Iris's head moved the slightest inch, an ensuing throb travelled right down the middle of her skull, and a feeling similar to her face being splintered down the middle made her groan into a cushion supporting her neck.

  "M'never drinking again," she bellyaches.

  "Liar," Pope drawls, voice rasped with a tired, dry hoarseness.

  "No, no—I mean it. I'm sober."

  He poked an eye open, peering at her through the gaps in his fingers. "Do you feel sick?"

  "No." A cramping ache taunted her just then, and Iris curled into herself almost embryonically; her knees slot themselves right against Pope's ribs. "Ugh. Sort of."

  "Do you wanna—"

  "No, no, no. Nope."

  Iris hated throwing up. The hollowness afterwards, the vile aftertaste, the humiliation ritual of it all. She knew that Pope would be chivalrous and hold her hair back for her, all encouraging and sweet in her ear as he told her to get it all up—he'd even try and convince her that it was natural, that she had nothing at all to be ashamed of. But it's her worst nightmare to go through another a hangover like the one she suffered last spring-break, where the pogues were in and out of the Chateau's bathroom on a grimacing rotation of whose turn it was next to nurse the invalid. Her stomach emptied itself of its entire contents until all there was left was resentment, her grudge against her father, and bile. 

  "Rise and shine," John B teases as he walked out onto the porch.

  "Not in the mood, Bee," complains Iris, burying the heels of her palms into her eyes.

  John B laughed as he shook Pope's hand in passing. "Kie said something about liver detox tea, if you want one."

  "She's a saint. Seriously." Iris poked at Pope's thigh. "You should canonise her, Pontifex."

  "Pretty sure she has to die first," he mumbles into his arm.

  "Oh...Maybe not, then." Suddenly, Iris was forcing herself to sit up—everything moving so quickly, she almost hurled then and there. "Wait, isn't it the DCS today?"

  John B, who had lowered himself onto a deck chair and was sunbathing with a hair-of-the-dog Budweiser, nodded indifferently. "Yup."

  "Bee, why didn't you—you need to get ready. You need to get dressed—or eat, or—"

  "Irie, relax," he laughs easily, "it's gonna be fine. I'll tell Cheryl that Uncle T has been here this whole time and that right now, he's just off on a job or some shit. It's not like she actually cares enough to come knocking around asking to talk him."

  "I mean," Iris exchanged a frown with Pope, who just raised his hands in defeat, "that's sort of her job, John B."

  "And it's my job to hold down fort here 'til my dad gets back. So, I'm not going anywhere." 

  She knew it was probably irresponsible of her to keep encouraging John B on holding out faith that his dad might one day emerge from the murky depths of the ocean that swallowed him whole, but Iris had spent her whole life being ignorant to her own dad's misgivings and shortcomings, so she figured she'd at least let John B have this year. But it was starting to worry her—ever since Big John went missing, his troubled son had existed singularly on the mangled axis of the first stage of grief: denial. Doglike, almost: he was an injured, rejected animal in a pound, waiting for his owner to come back for him.

  Iris understood it; really, she did. It's part of the reason why she let him wade in all this doubt and desperate suspense. Although now, it's starting to feel like if one of the pogues didn't speak up soon and tell him that, chances are, Big John was never returning, John B might stay right here—dangling on a leash: hungry, and obsessive, and watching his life go by. She didn't want to leave him behind, but she didn't want him to outgrow the boyhood bones that were more brittle than when his old man was still here. 

  For now, she just smiles at him: feeble but heartening. "All right, Bee. Hey, if you wanna borrow one of Alex's old suits—"

  "Are you even talking to Alex right now?" Pope interjects, a tad bit thoughtlessly.

  "Well," Iris frowns, "no, but..."

  And that's all the defence she had.

  "Seriously, Irie," John B says then, reaching out his hand as far it would go without standing up—Iris did the same, all but pinching his fingers, "I love ya, but you worry too much."

  "That's me," she laughs nervously, "the worrier."

  Often, she'd have a nightmare about some government workers in pantsuits turning up at the door of the Chateau, ready to take John B away from them.

  It would be the end of the pogues as she knew it. The end of everything, for Iris. Sure, she had a few friends back at the Kook Academy who didn't treat her like she had the plague. But they weren't the same. Sometimes, she worries that she was too possessive over the pogues—too clingy at times and overbearing; that her mother's punishment for all her sins might one day catch up with Iris, and take away all that she holds dear.

  In a way, she's doglike too, she supposed. Iris just didn't want to admit it. She read her friends to filth and tried to protect them from all their own transgressions, without ever really thinking about her own. Her backyard's filled with the buried bones of everything good that she's ever ravaged and sucked dry. Iris couldn't do that with them. And they couldn't survive without John B. 

  Ghostly, Magda then came shuffling out of the Chateau, queasy-looking and exhausted. "Oh, Irie, you're alive."

  "Barely."

  "'Want a lift home? I gotta get this one—" she flicked Pope on the temple, making him grunt and bury his forehead against Iris's shins, "home before I head to work."

  "I'll stay here," he insists disgruntledly.

  "No," Magda rejects, "you'll go home and study for your scholarship interview. Unless you want to end up a bartender for the rest of your life like me."

  He groaned miserably. "I can't move, Mag."

  "Iris, you coming?"

  "Yeah, lemme just...Pope, move your fucking feet..." 

  It took both of them and John B to lift Pope's dead weight from off the couch, and then buckle him into the backseat of Magda's car. Iris's goodbye to John B and Kiara was brief, knowing she'll most likely see them later in the day. And, assuming he was still macking on his touron, she didn't even bother looking for JJ.

  The drive to her house was peaceful, almost sobering. Magda kept all the windows downand the fresh air softened the heaviness in Iris's lungs from smoking, even assuaged the nausea. It might've also been the silence the Heyward siblings granted her—Pope drifting off back to sleep, and Magda focusing on the road ahead, leaving Iris mulishly in her own head the entire journey through the Cut. She thought about everything and nothing all at once, as her gaze longingly drinks up the same streets she's always known. At one point, it all drifts to JJ out on the docks, telling her he would gladly stay here forever if meant being with them. In the moment, she had told him she felt the same—but, doggedly, she yearns for more. All her desires were incompatible, she knew that. Iris wants the pogues with her forever, but she also wants to escape the place they all call home. 

  Iris lived with a fist clenched around the doorway of everything she's ever known. She was always ready to leave. It's the people that she'd mourn. Not the place. 

  She knew JJ would find it harder—he had saltwater in his veins, this sun-blooded boy of summertime, bronze skin, catching waves, falling in love with everything he touched. But there's plenty of beaches in the world, Iris rationalised. They could live the lives they live almost anywhere. It didn't have to be the Outer Banks. Other than each other, what else did it have to offer them but hurt?

  Magda dropped her off at home, and if she lingered on the curb to watch Iris in, she was oblivious to it.

  Her brother's in the kitchen when she walked in. Iris ignored him entirely as she poured herself a glass of fresh orange juice from the iced jug on the counter.

  "Was that Magda Heyward who just dropped you off?" Alex asks suddenly.

  Iris startled, turning back to blink at him. "Erm, yeah. How do you...?"

  "Thought I recognised her car," he excuses briefly, and glanced back down at his phone.

  "How do you know what her car looks like?" Iris demands.

  Her brother stilled. Iris observed his features closely—the gradual pinch of his brows, a pregnant pause, and an eventual, absent lift of his shoulder. 

  "Y'know," mumbles Alex lamely, "she works at the club."

  "Right. The club."

  With that, Iris grabbed her orange juice and stalked her way upstairs to her bedroom, leaving her brother all alone.

  Before Alex moved away for college, Iris had been in despair—wondering who she would eat lunch with when Phoebe was off on the playground with her friends, or who would be there to stick up for her in arguments with their parents: Who would protect her? When he came back, it was as if the brother she had never really existed at all. Last summer, she stopped grieving that boy altogether. He was gone and never coming back. 

  He's inherited the mythology of Ward Cameron—he exists in plenty different forms: belligerent boy, Princeton prodigy, father's fist. Just not brother. 

  Yeah.

  Iris wants the fuck out of Outer Banks.