CHAPTER TWO ✹
Sun, Swallow Me.

  𝕵OHN B's got this sweet old Volkswagen, and if you were to ask Iris, it was at the very heart of the pogues.

  Affectionately named The Twinkie, it was smothered in all these stickers and carvings—the stickers were usually from either Kiara or Iris, and the scrawled etchings into the already cracked brown paint were almost always left by the butterfly knife tucked into JJ's left sock. Inside the van, above the drivers' door, Iris plastered a 'The Clash' sticker that Alex got for free with his Combat Rock vinyl; another, on the passenger side, was for the 'Red Hot Chilli Peppers': it had similar origins. The slightly more political ones—such as a tongue-in-cheek "Semper Fidelis" testament to the Marine Corps, and a kitsch Eat the Rich souvenir from a rundown gift-shop on the Southside—were all Kiara's doing. Then, you've got some of JJ's artwork; such as a jagged print of his favourite quote, "—Out of the water, I am nothing." He chiseled it into the back of the passenger seat one night after Iris recited it to him. The words of Duke Kahanamoku, JJ's self-proclaimed hero—he put surfing on the map.

  There's plenty more, of course. The hula girl figurines on the dashboard, with their hibiscus halter-tops and fresh-ti leafed skirts—a tradition credited to soldiers stationed in Hawaii during the war, Big John once told them. In the rearview mirror, a feathered necklace dangles and catches the sunlight at certain times of the day—a gift from Phoebe's nimble, caring hands for John B's sixteenth. Beaded seat-covers; plush cushions pinched from Kie's house; JJ's "beaches be crazy" scrawl on the bench-seat; a Princeton sticker (from Alex)—so many years of love, hoarding, and gift-giving, scattered around this one van.

  Iris can breathe again when she steps up into the back, hand slipping through JJ's fingers as she slumped onto the bench-seat next to Pope and draped her legs over his lap with a mulish sigh. John B set off again before JJ got the chance to slide the door shut, and the blonde staggers back with a comical yell, almost falling right into Kiara's lap until she pushed him right down onto the van's bud-dusted floor.

  "Tough morning?" muses Pope, his working hands right away finding their place on her ankles. He fondly toyed with the seashell anklet there, and rolled his head to the side to give her a friendly grin.

  "Same old, Benedict, same old."

  Iris gently raked her nails against the nape of his neck as she utters one of her rotation of nicknames for him. It's a habit she picked up a few years ago when Pope first started slumming it with her, JJ, and John B. She'd affectionately call him the name of any pope she could remember—Pius, Francis, Clement, Sixtus, Benedict. Her grandmother, Carmen's mum, would've had her neck for it if she was still around. A devout Catholic til her death rattle, Ms. Beatrice Mariano. A hallowed irony, perhaps, that her body could never be committed to consecrated ground in the end—they say all that was left of her was brittle, fractured bones and ash.

  Still, Iris commits the blasphemy of rechristening her dear friend with popish nicknames. What Beatrice didn't know wouldn't hurt her, and Pope found it endearing. Iris likes to endear.

  "Mother M troubles?" John B asks sympathetically from the driver's seat.

  "Ain't it always?" she returns disgruntledly. Iris readjusted herself so one of Kie's buckwheat cushions was supporting her back. "Whatever! Pheebs has got a ballet recital this afternoon, and Alex is at the club with Ward, so she'll have the rest of the day to meditate or whatever."

  Kiara nodded in collusion. "That's good. Meditation's good. Your mom's chakras are all misaligned, Irie."

  "Tell me about it."

  JJ, who had clumsily wormed his way into the front of the van, tossed a wolfish smirk over his shoulder to the other three. "I could help her realign them, if she wanted. If you get me."

  "Bite me, Maybank," Iris sneers.

  "Is this before or after—"

  "Hey, Bree, JJ's crashing at yours tonight!" she calls to him, eyes narrowed. "Hope that's all right."

  John B belly-laughed at her. "Naw, shit, can't tonight. I gotta work your dad's boat. Sorry, JJ, you're all on your own."

  Ah, yes. My Druthers. Out of all Ward's kids, Iris swore that the boat—his 1996 82' Hatteras Skybridge; pride, and joy—was his favourite. She always thought it was a bit on the nose. Druthers, "would rathers;" the idea of a free choice, if one had the will. It was practically her mom in boat-form. The Druthers represented everything he couldn't have; a low-hanging fruit, intangible, sweet, and ripe. Sure, he could have the boat, he had Tannyhill, and rabid pack of feral children at his feet, but he couldn't have Carmen. It's visceral, if Iris thinks about it for too long.

  It was a small victory to her when she managed to convince Ward to give John B a maintenance job on it; like she got her foot into a room that she didn't belong in, and probably never would. Those pomegranate seeds this morning from Carmen tasted like blood and love, but whenever Iris got her way with Ward, it was cold triumph. She likes to imagine Rafe's face whenever he sees John B on the Druthers—a part of her would always haunt him, and all that is Ward's; as will her mother.

  "She's only playing," JJ scoffs, incredibly sure of himself as he kicked his feet up onto the dashboard. "Irie can't sleep unless I'm next to her. She's all—JJ, I'm so cold...I'm so glad you're here, JJ...we should probably get closer...—"

  The look Iris gives him was withering. "Sorry, whose arm was around whose waist this morning?"

  "Huh...'could've swore that was Ellie..."

  "Kie, slap him."

  Kiara sighs dreamily. "Oh, if only."

  "Where is it we're actually going, Kie?" John B chimes, taking an aimless left.

  "This fancy, kook-as-shit construction site on the inlet. It's disgusting, seriously—"

  Iris tuned out the social commentary, tilting her head back until it hit the chipped inner wall of their sacred van. The ticklish, warm feeling of the calluses on Pope's careworn hands tracing patterns along the tan-line on her ankle might've been the only thing that kept her grounded the entire drive to the north side of the island. Kie spent it ranting about the environment, as per, and Iris envies the passion she still had for the world—all of that left for her years ago, exchanged for cool apathy, and a weight of passive guilt that gets a tiny bit easier to stomach the more indifferent she becomes. John B was too focused on driving to give Kiara meaty enough remarks to sink her teeth into, but Kie could debate with a brick wall if she tried, so she pursues. As for JJ, Iris couldn't see him from the back of the van, but she was pretty sure he spent the rest of the journey skinning up in the passenger seat—it was really the only time he was ever quiet, when he was rolling a spliff. It might've been one of the main reasons Iris never really bothered to learn how to do it herself (but that also could've been down to the warm feeling she gets when he so naturally does it for, without question every time).

  They split up when they get there, branching off into different corners of the unfinished house's infrastructure. As Iris's fingers trace the bare plaster of the upstairs walls, she wondered if this was another one of her dad's projects. Ward always had a nasty habit of wanting more. Her mother liked to call him infectious; a cancer. Cameron Development was all over the island, and sometimes Iris felt like she might never escape him, so she couldn't really blame her mother for always going back. No matter what, he'd always be there: in some lifeless, skeleton of a house on the north-side, or as a ghost in the Cut, haunting all of Carmen's favourite places and memories.

  She finds her way out onto the scaffolding around the second story, and didn't even flinch when saw John B balancing on the edge of the rooftop with his tongue poked out in concentration and a can of beer in the hand that wasn't outstretched for equilibrium. Instead, Iris rolls her eyes and strolled over to where JJ's nested himself up on a few planks of reasonably sturdy wood, ducking under the steel framework and using it as leverage to heave herself up.

  "Saved you a beer," he says, offering her a can.

  Iris didn't really like beer; especially the cheap shit that JJ pilfers from his cousin's stash. To her, it tasted malty, like gone-off bread. Still, she takes it. He'd already opened it for her and a bit of it dribbled had over the side, making her hand all sticky. She smiles anyway in thanks, and JJ grins back.

  "The state of this place, huh," he muses, nudging her with his shoulder.

  "Too small for me, I think," Iris drawls, knocking back a big gulp of the stale-tasting beer. "Like, where's the indoor pool...my walk-in wardrobe..."

  JJ feigns a groan. "I was thinking the same thing!"

  "Also, the garage space? That's not gonna be enough for all my cars."

  "It's like you read my mind, Miss Mariano. Real estate guys these days," JJ sighs, shaking his head, "they just don't get it."

  Pope then emerged from the open doorway onto the wraparound deck and shook his head at John B, still up on the roof. "That's, what, a three-story fall to the deck? I give you about a one-in-three chance of survival."

  "Hm," John B ruminates thoughtfully. He wet his fingertip and held it to the salty breeze. "Should I do it?"

  "Yeah, jump," Pope says laconically. He'd swiped a power-drill from a nearby tool table and was now pointing it at John B like it was a sniper rifle. "I'll shoot you on the way down."

  "You'll shoot me?" he remarks, wryly finger-gunning him with a little "pew."

  "How about," Iris sings, kicking her feet, "I shoot you both?"

  "Mood-killer," taunts JJ in her ear.

  She smacked the arm that was holding his can, laughing when the beer sloshes over and spills onto his wrist.

  "Yeah, I'll shove you off this thing—"

  "And Pope will catch me," she says confidently. "Ain't that right, Sixtus?"

  Pope nods. "She's right, dude. Then you'll look like a jackass."

  "Jackass," Iris echoes, flicking under JJ's chin.

  He swatted her away and started to say something about taking the beer back off her when Kiara joined them outside with a disconcerted frown.

  "They're going to have Japanese toilets," she informs them heatedly, "with towel warmers."

  "Of course. Why wouldn't they?" JJ retorts wryly.

  Kiara, indignant, ignored him. "This used to be turtle habitat, but who cares about the turtles, I guess?"

  "I can't have cold towels," continues JJ, turning to Iris in collusion. "Can you have cold towels, sunshine?"

  "I can't have cold towels," she agrees drolly. "It's my worst nightmare, actually."

  "We can't have cold towels, Kie."

  Bemused, Kiara carried on ignoring them, and looked up at John B with a grimaced, squinty smile. "Can you please not kill yourself?"

  "Don't spill that beer," JJ shouts up at him in warning, "I'm not giving you another one."

  "That's literally the worst thing you could've said," Iris reprimands.

  "Don't start with all that 'jinxing' bullshit, Mariano. Kie's got into your head with all this superstitious, hippie sh—"

  The beer splashed all over the decking and Pope's shins.

  "Oh, shit," says John B, staring at it mournfully.

  "You were saying, JJ?" Kiara challenges.

  He was all ruddy-cheeked. "Total coincidence. I predicted it, actually. I'm Claire Voyeurs."

  "Clairvoyant," Pope corrects.

  "What the fuck does that mean?"

  Fondly, Pope rolled his eyes and raked them over the edge of the balcony, down onto freshly-tarmacked road bellow. Alert, he suddenly craned his body over the scaffolding and looked back at them all with a grin.

  "Hey, uh, security's here. Let's wrap it up," he tells them, tapping along the banister as he made his quick escape back into the house.

  "All right, the boys are early today," John B muses, crouching down to start his slippery descent from the roof.

  JJ made the uncoordinated climb back down to the balcony first, but not before leaning his body over the scaffolding to get a good look at the security guard leaving his car. "Gary, is that you? Good to see you, man!"

  "It's Gary?" Iris asks, reaching out a hand for John B to steady his landing. "Shit, we don't even have to rush."

  "Naw, don't say that, Mariano. Maybe our friend's been working out just for us," teases JJ. He was lingering around at the bottom of the ledge they were both on, covering his eyes from the sun with his hand and squinting up at Iris as she started to make her way down. "Need any—"

  She landed unceremoniously on her feet right next to him, jaw hardening against the brief sting she felt in her ankles. "Nope, all good."

  "Let's roll, jackasses," says John B, his landing somehow less graceful than Iris's.

  And they peel off into a sprint.

  Iris hated running from cops. She knew that slumming with the pogues—JJ and John B specifically—meant that she was practically signing herself up for a life of it, until their recklessness mellowed out (which, in all seriousness, might be never). The five of them all but launched themselves down the rickety staircase, and the security were waiting for them downstairs.

  JJ being JJ ran right into them; maybe as a decoy, maybe for the adrenaline thrill of almost getting caught. Either way, Iris was thankful for it, and made her beeline right for the backyard. Sunlight surrounds her again, and it's warm on her back as her feet crunch over the artificial grass and over to a fence that she barely managed to jump. There's this whole camaraderie rule about leave no pogue behind, so when the Twinkie pulled up on the road in front of her with only John B and Kiara inside of it, she restlessly waited right by the gate for her other two.

  Pope pitched right onto the floor in an ungainly tangle of limbs at Iris's feet.

  "Ow," he groans, spitting astroturf out of his mouth.

  JJ's nailed down the routine of jumping fences with far more skill and experience, and knelt down next to the crumpled heap of Pope's body to affectionately pat his back. "Get up, Pope, fatso's coming."

  He scrambled right for the Twinkie, where John B's obnoxiously honking the horn and Kiara's keeping the sliding back door open for their getaway exit. Iris, impatient, crouched down to Pope and grabbed both of his hands to yank him up. They staggered along, sweaty fingers interlocked, and piled into the back of the van just as John B put his foot on the gas.

  "Come here, ya little pricks!" Gary shouts after them.

  "No way is he still chasing us," scoffs Iris, budging up next to JJ right in the open doorway to watch Gary frantically chased after the van.

  Pope's hand squeezed her shoulder as he doubled over with laughter. "Check him out, gunning for a raise."

  "You're gonna give him a heart attack!" Kie protests kindheartedly, but her tugs on JJ's shirt were weak at best.

  "C'mon, Gaz, you're so close! You can do it," JJ encourages, half of his body now hanging out of the van. Iris watched, tonguing her cheek to fight off a smirk, as Gary's shirt dampened three shades darker with all the sweat coming off of him. To taunt him further, JJ tosses him the last of his beers, which Gary awkwardly fumbled to catch against his heaving chest. "There you go! They don't pay you enough, bro."

  "JJ, stop. Stop," chastised Kiara, finally managing to drag him back inside of the van.

  "Oh, c'mon," he says, bubbling with laughter, "that sort of initiative is just begging to be punished."

  Iris glanced back over her shoulder at John B, still driving with his foot barely on the gas at all, and then to Pope, who just shook his head mirthfully and grabbed her hand again, this time to lead them over to the backbench of the Twinkie. The laughter didn't die down, even after Gary finally gave up chasing them and Kiara slammed the door shut. The warm sound of it crescendoed around her, heightening as JJ lumbered into the passenger seat and hit his knee against the dashboard, softening as Kie fell into an uncanny impression of the couple she thinks will inevitably move into the house they just trespassed. She made her voice all snooty and supercilious, and it was so unerring that Iris felt as though she was back at school in Kildare Academy—where she was practically surrounded by haughty, toffee-nosed kooks with silver spoon appetites.

  "Where's your head, Irie?" Pope asks tenderly, and it's just for them.

  Kiara and JJ were in the middle of a skit impersonating a married kook couple, and John B's focused on driving. Pope's asking her, and Iris thought he was the best out of all of them.

  "I think I left it with the Japanese toilets and towel warmers," she sighs farcically.

  Pope cracks a smile. "If only, if only."

  "It'll all be ours one day, Pius," Iris swears, patting him firmly on the shoulder, "Japanese toilets, towel warmers. The whole fucking world."

  Pope looked at her like he already has that, and the sun beats down on all five of them through the water-spotted windows of the Twinkie like it might swallow them all up whole.

✹

  𝕬lexander Cameron had always been their dad's blunt little instrument.

  He realised, at about fourteen, that a "father" is a fabrication. The mythology of Ward Cameron was that he was a lot of different things to a lot of different people—he didn't singularly belong to anybody; not his children, not even Carmen. 

  Alex was a lot of different things too, but it was never in the same way. Boy soldier, boy prodigy, father's executioner and iron fist: the first Cameron to go to an Ivy—even if Alex spent the first eighteen years of his life as a Mariano, not a Cameron. He gingerly walked around his own life as if he didn't belong in it, afraid that he'll do something wrong, or say the wrong thing. By the age of twenty, his tongue was covered in tiny little holes from digging his teeth into it. He existed in his father's image, knowing deep down that he wouldn't matter this much if Rafe was a bit more like Ward. 

  "—tell me, son: truthfully," Ward adds severely, lining his club up with the gutty. "How's your sister?"

  Alex blinked. "Which one?" 

  "Right." Chuckling, Ward brought his club down in the perfect drive. A birdie. Of course. "Sonny, I mean. Phoebe, well, I saw the other day. Iris, erm—not so much."

  Their dad called Iris "Sonny." It came from her middle name: Iris Soleil. His eldest daughter (by Carmen), was of the sun, and he'll always remind her of that. Even with red-soaked skin under her fingernails, or knee-deep wading through all the dirt of the Cut. Iris Soleil, his favourite daughter.

  Alex ran his tongue along his teeth and lifted his shoulder in a shrug. "I haven't really seen her either, Dad, honestly."

  "No?" Ward says, trying to keep his tone indifferent, if only mildly curious.

  Alex dug deeper; reaches marrow. 

  Ward's worried about her, in a way he never really has to worry about the others.

  "We don't really, uh..." Alex scratched at the nape of his neck, "talk...anymore, I guess."

  "Well, that's too bad, son. She's your little sister."

  Resentment curdled in him like sour milk. His little sister. Phoebe's his little sister. Wheezie, too. Iris—she's just some nihilist shadow in his house that he couldn't reach anymore. In all the dark, spotty parts of him, there's a young boy who yearned to teach his sister all of his favourite things—guitar chords, how to survive in this mangled mess their parents have made, tree-climbing, trigonometry, the right way to care. But Iris wasn't his little sister anymore. He didn't really recognise her. The girl he often credited himself in raising was belligerent and ungrateful. She called the pogues her family, and looked at Alex the day he returned from Princeton like he was a stranger. They exist separately now, and so be it.

  Alex Cameron was getting a bit sick of fighting for things that simply wouldn't ever be his.

  Maybe he'll try harder with Sarah this summer, to fill that brotherly ache of responsibility. If she'd sever herself from her frosted-tipped boyfriend long enough for him to get a good word in with her.

  "Yeah, I know, Dad," he mumbles disgruntledly.

  Ward's stare was hard, indiscernible. His knuckles whiten around the club, and he looked around at the barren course. "Well, I think we should finish this all off with a drink. Don't you?"

  There's little room for protest, so Alex didn't.

  The Island Club was full of the kind of people Alex had to try assimilate with back at college. It took everything in him not to have a physical reaction at the grating sound of haughty laughter from around a poker table on the way to the bar. 

  "Two of your finest whiskey, please, sweetheart," Ward requests.

  Again, Alex had to shove a mass of rotten feeling back down to his stomach and bite his tongue. He knew their bartender—she's a stranger whom he knows the press of her kiss. Magda Heyward's this sprightly breath of fresh air from a time that's no longer tangible, and she was dwarfed by the clinical lights and the wall of expensive bottles behind her. 

  "Coming right up," she replies, and didn't even spare Alex a single look before busying herself with two old-fashioned glasses.

  In his ear, Ward was like a stinging wasp, going on about the importance of family and earnestness. Alex was wrestling the terrifying idea that he may spend his entire life yearning for things that no longer exist—Iris, the way she used to be; and Magda, looking at him the way she did three years ago. Longing ribboned itself around his neck like an impossible noose, and he didn't even have it in himself to act as though he cared about whatever Ward was lecturing him on this time.

  "There you go."

  "Thank you...Magda..." Ward clumsily reads her name tag, and hands her his card for the bill. 

  She flashed him a bright smile, and as soon as his back turns to face Alex again, it darkened into a hateful glare. Alex choked on his whiskey.

  "What?" his dad demands. "What's funny?"

  Magda met Alex's eye, and hers were almost hickory in this light. Her head tilted innocently, as if daring him to do something. His thumb smeared over the edge of his mouth, gaze lingering on her as he spoke to his dad: "Nothing. Nothing at all, sorry."

  Ward hummed, unconvinced, but continued his sermon.

  A smirk twitched at the edges of her lips, and it had Alex fighting back a grin all the same. As her eyes roll at him and she went back to cleaning glasses, Alex found himself filled with this unexplainable ache that he couldn't simply brush away with nostalgia or maudlin sentimentality at being in the same room as her for the first time in almost a year. 

  He was pretty sure that he could smell her perfume from even here, separated by the bar and Ward's lengthy monologue. It hadn't changed—that sweetness of vanilla and jasmine sambac, spritzed onto the insides of her wrists and the sensitive spot under her ear, kept still and palpable by a smudge of vaseline every morning. He found himself wondering what else about her had stayed the same—if she still had that Channel Orange vinyl he got her on display in her room, and if, tucked under her sleeve, he might find the freshwater pearl bracelet he brought her back from a tacky gift-shop in Sicily. 

  It's right on his tongue; dormant, heavy, and fatherlike—Alex wanted her to ask her when she gets off work. It played out in his head so easily that it could be real. Reconciliation: he'd make it all up to her, they'll spend summer in love, and he'd finish off his last year at Princeton. He returns to her. She'd never have to work a shift at the Island Club again. Instead, she'd be the kind of girl who could afford to come here for brunch or afternoon tea, but she wouldn't, because his Magda's above all of that. He saw it vividly, coming into the kitchen of a house that's not as grave-like as his mother's, or as hallowed as Tannyhill, and Magda's at the sink—sunlight swallows her like she belonged to it; because if anyone's of the sun, it's her. Alex comes behind her, hugs her, and breathes her in. Magda would turn around and kiss him, hands in hair even with the soapy duds of dishwater still dripping onto the floor. 

  He didn't ask her.

  But, when Magda tilted onto her tiptoes to reach a top shelf for some businessman's refill, her sleeve raised just enough for Alex to catch the scintillation of that very bracelet on her wrist. For now, that's enough. 

a/n: yeahhhh I don't like this. but we're laying a groundwork here, friends. heywards love the mariano-cameron siblings.