3
It's a Cedar thing

                                       Three days and a hurricane have passed in the Outer Banks since the latest party.

Gracie, John B and JJ—the dream team—with the help of Cody, barricaded both the Chateau and the Cedar house with old sandbags and sat in John B's kitchen praying neither blew down or withered away with the angry storm. Hurricanes are not uncommon on Kildare, so they know how to deal with it. Giselle and Maxim were held up on the mainland anyway, too busy loving each other more than they did their own children.

In the Chateau, the sound of rain on the window was deafening. Jo and Cody, by some miracle, had fallen asleep in the guest room and didn't even wake up to John B slipping out of the house to go on an impulsive and dangerous surf with Pope in the evening. JJ was sprawled out across from Gracie on the sofa bed, and they passed a joint with her legs over his.

   "You think they're scared?" he had asked her, blowing out the smoke. When she shot him a confused look, he pointed to the corridor with his head. "The kids."

   "Nah," Gracie shook her head. "It's louder in the house."

She means what she says in the moment and she's glad to be alone with the boy. Like she does for everyone else, she holds him accountable of fucking shit up over and over again but she never manages to feel any resentment towards JJ like she does for the others.

Maybe it's because she sees herself when she looks at him. She always has, ever since they were kids.

But in the morning, when she wakes and he has half his weight on her legs, she sure as hell wants to slap him upside the head. John B's back, he probably has been home for a while, and he startles her with his rummaging and the anger he expresses when he flips the light switch and receives no sign of life. He aids her in pushing JJ off her, who mumbles relentless that he has polio or something so they don't force him up. Gracie's first instinct is to go check on the kids, and she feels the worry bubble in her throat when the door is closed instead of slightly cracked open.

The guest room lost that title years ago; it belongs to the Cedars now. She recons she still calls it that to not feel bad about it. To not feel kind of homeless. Inside, Jo is still sleeping peacefully, looking so delicate and peaceful with her cheek pressed against the cover. She's dressed in Gracie's clothes and the older girl almost can't breathe at how small she seems. Like, if Gracie's too rough with her for almost a second, she'd shatter. Except she knows it's not the case: Josephine's tougher than the rest of them though she doesn't look like it.

   Cody sleeps like Gracie, all angry and tense. But he wakes up at the sound of the old door creaking and doesn't ignore her like he always does. "Hurricane's over?" he asks with a groggy voice, running his hand over his face.

He looks older than thirteen in the same way she looks older than seventeen. It has to be a maturity thing; it has to be a Cedar thing.

   Gracie hums. Instinctively, she grabs the clothes at the foot of the bed, the ones he changed out of after securing both houses, and tosses them inside the bin for her to take down to the laundromat sometimes after they regain electricity. "Still standing so far. Power's out though, and I'm pretty sure cell survive, too. So if you're going somewhere, let me know exactly. All right, kid?"

Cody hates when she calls him that. It makes him feel powerless, like when he's watching his older sister argue with his parents in the garage or come back home with tear stains on her cheeks for the endless time.

   Suddenly, he jerks up from the bed and tosses on a cleaner shirt, not even bothering to fix his hair. But, again, he never really does. He rushes to the kitchen and shoves a piece of toast in his mouth, and tells his sister: "Goin' to Rafe's. See you tonight?"

   "What?" Now, she's scandalized. Her mouth falls open like he just told her he was going to shove a kitchen knife into a collarbone. Thank God JJ wasn't still in the living room. "What do you mean, to Rafe's, like the van full of drugs and junkies?" she follows him to the door, grabbing him by the shoulder when he goes to toss his boots on. "Are you insane?"

   "Must run in the family," he shrugs with the hint of a smile.

   "Cody fucking Cedar."

He freezes halfway. Drops his other shoes. Gracie's pupils blow and darken when she gets mad, even sober. Especially sober. He suddenly feels like the worst brother on Earth for making her that angry and knows nothing about how badly she wants to hit him with his sneaker, get in a car, and drive off that God-forsaken, snake-belly of an island.

Under his breath, he apologizes and slowly puts his boot on. It's John B's, scratched but still wearable, like most of his clothes. Uselessly, he tries to convince her that he'll go to Oli's house instead, just down the street, and help him and his sisters and aunt clean up after the hurricane. He promises he won't step foot near that trailer, but Gracie's right not to believe him. She lets him go after a minute, not sure why.

She realizes he's grown to have an attachement to that man, maybe because he's never had a stable father figure in his life. He had Big John, but he's long gone now. Gracie doesn't want to relive it for a minute. She's afraid that whatever's brewing in his guts regarding to Rafe is a dead end.

In truth, she's afraid the same feelings will start pressing against her resentment and bury it for a little while, too.

Thinking like that is stupid, she tells herself. It won't happen. It can't. She settles all her focus on the boys in the yard instead, leaning against the doorframe, not wanting to fully disappear in case her sister wakes up. "What's going on?" she asks them, and both their heads whip to her as though they've been talking about her secretly.

"Planning a fishing evenin'," JJ replies with a grin. He's still nursing the same beer as yesterday night and, Gracie guesses, the same headache.

"Thought you couldn't move," Gracie raises a brow.

He shrugs, amused. "Cleared up."

The boys' behaviour makes her laugh. Long gone is the bitterness she felt inside the house. The air smells of air and salt, and it's so overpowering she feels like she's drowning.

John B is trying to convince them to go fishing, mumbling shit about how DCS won't come to the island in the aftermath of possibly the greatest storm of the summer (yet). The Maybank was already in the moment John B got on the boat, didn't think twice about it, so they're both staring at her with puppy-eyes, round and pleading, mouths pulled in a pout. Evidently, Gracie gives up and tosses her hands in surrender. She tells them she'll wake Jo up and tell her, then vanishes inside the house.

The smell of salt doesn't quite reach inside the Chateau, so she assumes it's her hair that soaked it up. She twists the door to the room again, peering in quietly.

"Jo?"

Her little sister groans, shoving her head under the rugged covers. It's a wonder where John B's grandmother found them. It makes Gracie laugh, and she sits on the side of the bed, hand on her sister's ankle.

"I'm going out with the boys, honey. Do you wanna stay here alone? We can drop you off somewhere," Gracie proposes.

Jo has bad hearing, and her parents stopped treating it when she reached seven years old. She sometimes has a hard time distinguishing words from one another, especially in the morning, so everyone knows to speak slow to her and enunciate like she's a little kid. It never fails to make her angry. The worst part is trying to explain it to a new friend.

It doesn't really matter anyway; Jo doesn't have many friends.

   She nods and sits up, and wonders whether she'll be okay sitting alone in that small, unsteady house. It makes her nauseous. "Can you guys drive me to Cindy? Her and her mother are going shopping on the mainland," she settles. "She said I could come if I wanted."

   "Of course," Gracie smiles. She waits until her sister crawls to the foot of the bed to hug her and press a kiss to her temple. "Get dressed," she adds, "we're taking the boat."

Outside, John B waits by the door. Gracie grabs the hem of his shirt, clearly bothered. She tells him that Jo's going shopping, and he immediately knows who she's going with. Cindy's an only child and living quite comfortably. Jo has always been embarrassed to let her in on their troubles, so she's been circling the drain ever since they met in the second grade.

He vanishes inside the house, then comes out with Jo under his arm. She's sporting a wide grin and tucking a fifty in the pocket of her jean shorts. Gracie sends John B a thankful smile, and all he does is mess up her hair and urge them to get on the boat so he could push it onto the water.

Cindy and her mom, Lauren, are packing a picnic basket in the car when John B gets the boat close to the dock and Jo breaks off in a sprint towards them. She hugs her friend and receives a squeeze of her shoulder from the woman, which makes Gracie's teeth grit secretly.

Lauren is a nice woman, overly so even. She claims Jo whenever their primary school has a career day since Giselle has never showed once and Gracie doesn't exactly have a job to flaunt, and she buys her little trinkets when she goes on her trips to the mainland. And, Gracie is certain, she had double the amount of food prepared for their picnic basket so that Jo could eat well. Gracie should be grateful that her little sister has a mother figure, but it's hard to be happy for someone when they've got all you've ever wished for, she finds. Cody's a lot calmer about it because he's always cared more about having a father around, but Gracie wishes that, just once, someone would sit her on the kitchen table and tell her that they're proud of her. She's never heard it from anyone's mouth, not without coaxing it.

Sure, she's got Rita, the lead chef at the restaurant she's been working at religiously since she hit puberty, who pampers her with compliments sometimes and adores her manners. Rita always says that, when she grows up, Gracie would make a great chef if only she practiced the art a little more. But neither the Chateau nor the Cedar house contained enough ingredients and clean pots and pan which would allow her to get better at it. So she sticks with the basics and approaches it in a primitive way, and Rita still says she's got potential.

But Rita's also got four kids and addresses all the other waiters and waitresses with the same motherly attitude. So Gracie isn't fucking special.

If John B noticed Gracie's discontent, he didn't mention it. Instead, he steered them through the debris in the water and greeted a couple of fellow fishermen on his way to Heyward's Shop, where Pope is filling tin buckets with water to clean up.

"Well, look who we have here," he exclaims at the sight, manoeuvring his way through the wood floating at the surface of the cool water. He cups a hand over his shoulder and speaks into it: "We have a safety meeting. Attendance mandatory."

Pope shrugs. "Can't. My pop's got me on lockdown."

"Come on, man," JJ insists and whistles through his teeth for static. "Your dad's a pussy. Over."

Gracie scrunches her nose at that, and she's trying to hold in a laugh when Heyward comes out of the store and curses at him. She could swear he actually believes JJ's name is bastard, or something of the sort.

To say that he didn't like his son's friends would be an understatement. War would erupt between them whenever Pope would slack off on his chores or homework to take part in yet another lowlife escapade, as he so affectionately describes them.

"Promise we'll bring him back in one piece," Gracie drawls.

She's got her fingers clasped together, toying with the ring she wears on her index. It's from Big John who made it for her for her fourteenth birthday and it makes John B jealous every time he stares at it. Her skin is tan and the neckline of her shirt is stretched out and falls over her shoulders in a way that showcase the straps of the pearly white bikini she stole a week ago from Kie's closet.

   Heyward looks at her like he's a little kid and contemplates letting his son go. He likes Gracie more than most, mostly because she's the only one who actually cares for Pope's academic success. But JJ ruins it...again. "Island rules: Day after a hurricane's a free day."

   "Who made that up?"

   "Pentagon, I think. I got security clearance," JJ rambles. He has a hard time getting his point across.

   Pope's father doesn't budge. "You think I'm stupid?"

Gracie shoves an elbow in JJ's rib and pointedly tells him not to answer that question, knowing he'd say something stupid again and they'd lose any chance of Pope joining them for the evening, for good.

Instead, they all look to Pope who seems like he's weighting his options. Within a second, he drops the bucket in his hand and, all while continuously telling his dad that he'll get through all his chores tomorrow, makes a beeline for the boat and reaches out to grab Gracie's extended hand as she tries to hide her smile and pull him on the boat.

   "Hell no," Heyward interrupts himself. "You doin' it right now. Boy, if you get on that boat"—

Pope gets on the fucking boat.

John B whoops and steers them away, and Pope is still apologizing to his father. Gracie's got an arm wrapped around him, despite the good couple of inches he's got over her, and while they're running away from the man's threats she feels like she's on top of the world. Heyward tops it off by saying he doesn't like his son's friends, and neither of them will ever admit that it stings.

Picking up Kie would undoubtedly be a lot quieter, especially since she's only a couple of minutes down the marina and already waiting for them with a cooler pressed against her hip, sunglasses at the bridge of her nose and a wide, radiant smile that matched the brand new jewelry she wore around her neck. A ping of jealously strikes Gracie in the chest, but she doesn't let it show and instead sits on the bow with her legs pulled up to her chest.

   "Top o' the mornin' to ya." JJ makes them all cringe with his horrible attempt at an Irish accent. He holds a hand out for Kie, who gladly takes it as she makes her way on the boat and sets the cooler down in the middle.

   "Good morning."

   "Morning."

   "Whatcha got, you got some juice boxes?" Pope asked with a timid smile, which swelled in size as Kie laughed at his joke and took a seat close by.

   "You know, just some yogurts and carrot sticks," she replies. Kie nudges Gracie's knee, pulling her out of her trance. She feels the cold metal of her new bracelet on her skin and wants to jump out of the boat and swim back to shore. Almost.

Gracie really had to work on those sudden impulses or else she believed she wouldn't make it through the summer.

The juice boxes stopped being actual juice when they turned fifteen, maybe even earlier. Beers are passed and opened, and they fizzle as the bottles transfer the condensation from the cold glass to their warm hands.

They all cheer and clink their glasses in the middle of the circle, then John B goes back behind the dashboard and Gracie follows. She perches herself atop of it, peeling the label off the bottle with ease. She takes her time, scratches the glass and the paper, and pays no mind to Pope, Kie and JJ's lively conversation.

John B wants to nudge her and ask her what's wrong, but he knows she won't give him a sincere answer. So he touches her knee amicably then rests his beer there to get a gasp out of her as the cold bottle leaves a circle of condensation on her skin. She laughs, presses the outside of hers to his shoulder, and he accidentally makes a sharp turn as he flinches with his hands on the wheel and a wide laugh.

   "Gimme that. You're gonna end up throwing us in the water," Pope groans and decides to take the wheel, so Gracie and John B hurry off and sit down next to each other instead.

JJ's grabbing another beer and popping it open with his teeth. A million times Gracie has told him he'll mess them up forever, but he doesn't seem to mind. He tells her they're already crooked and they leave it at that.

   "...I'll show you," he says, "a party trick!"

Gracie doesn't know what Kie said to rile him up that way, but he's standing on the bow of the boat, the very edge of it, and he's urging Pope to go faster. He takes one long swing of the beer then flexes his arm and holds the one holding the bottle further away from his face. He doesn't pour it out yet.

   "Doesn't work. We've tried it like 6000 times," John B insists with a roll of his hazel eyes. His lashes are wet and his tone makes the girls laugh.

Insisting that it's going to work, JJ tilts the beer and lets the liquid wash over him and fly everywhere except into his open mouth. Kie immediately recoils away from him and tries to shield her curly hair from it, but the attempt is fruitless. She's going to smell like beer until her next wash.

JJ probably would've kept going until the bottle was empty but the boat coming to a harsh stop cut his party trick short and he's harshly catapulted into the marsh. He flips and breaks the surface, and everyone on the boat is thrown every which way. Pope nearly knocks his head on the headboard and Kie's got her shoulder flat on the floor. Gracie and John B both fly off different sides of the padded seat, but the beer she was holding in her hand collides with the floor of the boat before her and shatters in tiny pieces. The result is a couple bouncing off and imbedding themselves in her skin; so she's got glass in her hairline and blood on her temple but, hey! JJ's heels touched the back of his head.

   "Gracie, shit!" John B exclaims as he rounds the boat to her to her, and he's groaning as he takes a good look at the fresh wound.

   "Just my luck," she mumbles, gathering the glass on the floor and tossing whatever she could gather in the bin under the dashboard. "It's okay," she adds, "it doesn't even hurt."

   Pope kneels beside her with a grimace. "Sorry, the channel changed. This is gonna mess this whole place up," he explains the sudden stop. He brushes a thumb over her head and the glass falls out with ease. "There. No more glass. But you should disinfect it when you get home."

   "We should have a first aid kit in there," Kie chastised.

   "I'll get one later," John B brushes her off. "G, you're good?"

JJ asks what's happened, still in the water. Gracie assures them she's good and wipes the blood away with a pink towel. She immediately regrets it.

Meanwhile, Pope's entranced by a figure under the water and he can't seem to shake off the odd feeling that there's something there. He rounds the boat again, crushing the piece of glass between his fingertips and squinting his eyes to try and make out the dark shape a little better.

   Then, when he thinks he's got it figured out, his mouth falls open like a fish out of water and he's struggling to find the words. "Guys? Guys...I think there's a boat down there."

   "No fucking way," Gracie insists as John automatically tells him to shut up. The possibility is minimal and the idea itself is absurd. A boat? Impossible.

   "I'm serious," the boy pushes, pointing at it. Gracie pushes herself to her feet and tries to distinguish the same silhouette, and the lack of sleep must have hit her because she can't exactly distinguish it like he can. "There's a boat down there," he insists. "For real."

   "Is this..."

It takes a nod and a half for them to peel their clothes off their bodies in a hurry and jump into the water one after the other. Pope, still stressing on the details, takes his sweet time taking off his shorts and wondering if there were dead bodies on the floor of the marsh. Gracie tells him it is highly unlikely since they'd float up. The answer seems to satisfy him because he jumps in to join them and they all lower themselves into the water simultaneously.

Gracie's an athlete, so she's got good lungs and strong legs. She's also accustomed to feeling suffocated with all the work she's done in small kitchens where the smoke is all you could see in the room, despite the new ventilators. She's the first to touch the boat, and she grabs into it as she examines the stillness and newness of everything, almost like it's only been used once before and it never will again. She concludes that a boat like that, if sold, would support her family—John B, Cody and Jo—until they're off that island. But instead it rots on the floor of the marsh. A Grady-White, brand new, and undoubtedly the worst boat to take out during a hurricane.

Evidently, she's also the last one to break the surface. Gracie isn't nearly as bothered as the rest of them, who are heaving and trying to cough out the water that had slipped past their gritted teeth. But she pretends for their sake that she's having a hard time catching her breath, mostly because she's always had to dilute herself for others to love her.

   "That's a Grady-White," JJ speaks what they all had noticed. "A new one of those is 500Gs. Easy. That's a primo rig."

The amount of money it's worth makes her queasy. They swim to the boat and, one by one, pull themselves up and try to dry off with the limited amount of towels as best as they can.

Gracie's new cut burns and the two fingers she's using for pressure are useless. She gives up on trying to dull the pain after a little while, and focuses on drying her hair instead. Or, at least, patting it down.

   "This is the boat I saw when I surfed the surge," John B recalled that moment on his surfboard and suddenly feels the ache of his limbs again. "Maybe it hit the jetty or something."

   "You surfed the surge?" Kie chastises, brows furrowed.

   JJ wraps an arm around him and shakes him up, and he gets water on everyone. "That's my boy. Pogue style!"

   Kie's eyes narrow on Gracie, who she knows was at the Chateau with them that night. "How could you let him do that, Gracie?"

   "Let him?" she repeats with a scoff. "I'm not his fucking mom. If he wants to kill himself, he's free to do so."

Kie's been a little on edge since she saw her best—and only girl—friend hanging out with Rafe Cameron at Pope's congratulatory party. She's got a bone to pick with that family and didn't expect Gracie to be playing house with the one she believes is the worst of all.

When Pope asks if anyone knows whose boat that is to try and defuse the situation, an idea sparks in John B's head. Lately, he seems to be getting stupider and stupider with every waking moment. He must be going insane, because he volunteers himself to go down and get a closer look. 

   Usually the instigator, JJ seems to be repulsed by the risk. "Dude, it's too deep," he assesses.

   "Oh, for the weak and feeble, JJ," John B grins at him.

   "Well, I'm not resuscitating you. I'm just making that clear up front." JJ surrenders and throws his hands up in the air as John B rummages for the anchor.

Gracie's angry at his decision, but she believe that saying it will only make it worse. Because John B will brush her off again and she'll feel like an inconvenience and fear exploding on that unsteady boat.

So, when JJ pushes him in the water, she settles on standing by the dashboard and trying to smoothen her hair by raking her fingers through it. If she's panicked by the time John B is spending under the water, she definitely doesn't show it.

Ever since they were kids, it's always been Gracie trying to talk him out of things: out of running away from home at seven years old out of anger, out of punching that Kook at a party when they were thirteen, out of stealing one of his boss' boats and going to look for his missing father nine months ago. Always, it's Gracie trying to bottle up his impulses and throw it in the sea, hoping it'll never wash up on the sand. Miraculously, it seems her brother—who is in no way related to John B by blood—inherited of that exact same self-destructive impulsiveness which, mixed with Gracie's constant resentment, can't possibly be good for a little kid.

The longer John B took under the water, the worse Gracie's thoughts spiralled. She imagines him stuck to the wheel, anchor hooked somewhere steep, with his lips blue and eyes wide and glossy. She pictures him floating up to the surface back first, arms sprawled out at his side. Immobile. She reckons he might be dead. Her fingers itch at the hem of the shorts she'd just thrown back on and resists the urge to peel them off her body and jump in after the boy.

But, suddenly, he breaks the surface with his head and he's trying to dry his hair off like a dog when Gracie gasps in relief and crouches beside him.

   "Oh, my God, that took forever!" Kie exclaims. She watches as the boy swims towards their boat and hands the anchor to the boys, who rush to carry the weight.

John B stares at Gracie and understands that he scared her just like his father scared the both of them. It takes her a moment to recover from the initial shock of picturing his body stuck under the anchor on the ocean floor, but no one else notices her distress as she tugs at her hair.

   "Any dead bodies?" Pope inquires.

   "Looting potential?"

Swiftly, John B hoists his upper body onto the boat and holds up something to Gracie's face. It's a metal key with an orange tag, and it reads the name of a motel on their side of the island. Pope names it in disbelief, staring at John B like he's insane for picking that out amongst all he could've saved from the shipwreck.

   "A motel key," JJ repeats bitterly. "We salvaged a motel key." He's kind of pissed, but goes to steer the boat away from the wreck anyway. It seems useless to stick around.

   Kie shakes her head, irritated by the day's outcome. It turns out John B risked his life for nothing, and they all felt the impeding disappointment. "Guys, we should report the wreck to the coast guard. Maybe we'll get a finder's fee," she proposes.

   "Yeah, and not work all summer," JJ concludes.  "Thanks, Agatha. Ya batch."

Gracie rolls her eyes, then leans back against the dashboard. Her hair is drenched and her skin is wet, yet she feels warmer than she had in the morning. John B's sitting by the bow with a towel over his hair when she pushes his shoulder, and he looks up confused through his hair.

   "If you're gonna tell me I'm a reckless asshole"—

   "Bitch is the word I was gonna use," Gracie interrupts him, but the ghost of a smile on her face tells him she's not really as angry as she was a minute ago. "It wasn't that deep anyways. I could've found something better than a stupid key."

   John B raises a brow, amused. "I didn't see you volunteer," he counters. He tosses the towel aside, and she sprawls her legs out across from him. "Hopefully we'll get something good for it."

She shakes her head, knowing they'll be disappointed yet again. The coast guard won't even look at them amongst the crowd of people trying to report their lost belongings due to the rough hurricane that had just hit them, and the Pogues will end up walking back to the boat with their shoulders slumped.

But Gracie being Gracie should be used to that kind of letdown, shouldn't she?