CHAPTER TWELVE ✹
Girl, So Confusing

  𝕾O much for sisterly bonding, Iris thought to herself fractiously as she slipped through swathes of Ralph Lauren clad kooks, grasping the bottle of Red Zinfandel she pinched from Tannyhill's wine cellar before sneaking out with Sarah. Sarah, her golden, sun-kissed sister, who skipped over the dewy, neat lawn to meet Topper in his Jeep in her skimpy, hot-pink bikini and gossamer sarong swishing like water around her thighs. Sarah, who excitedly told her boyfriend that Iris would be tagging along for the party, gently reproaching him went Topper made a snide remark about JJ's stunt at the boneyard the other night. Sarah, who smacked a cloying kiss to Iris's temple before slipping away with Topper as soon as they reached Marnie's condo—the tacky residue of her half-sister's dusky-pink lip gloss the only evidence that Iris came with her at all.

  In the denim pocket of her shorts, her phone had been going off for the last few hours, buzzing with an onslaught of texts from the pogues—the notifications all went unopened, and each time Iris took her phone out to act airy and apathetic, her thumb lingered over the messages with a thickness in her throat. She doctored it with mean swigs of the wine she carried around as subtle as the chip on her shoulder every time some burly-shouldered kook barged into her or clumsily spilt his Old Fashioned onto her converse.

  Still, every time her appetite for self-punishment got more overwhelming than her self-control, her eyes raked over the texts, already rotten mood souring like curdled milk in her hollow stomach.

  BEE. mission successful
  BEE. that means we secured the drone btw
  BEE. how's it going over there ??
  BEE. lmk if u need picking up and i'll be right there ur pogue in shining twinkie
  BEE. irie ????

  POPE FRANCIS. Hi Irie just checking in cause no one's heard from you since earlier? Hope you're okay

  KIE. girl where tf are you
  KIE. are they holding you ransom :(

  J. not fucking cool bro

  "No way," an obnoxious voice laughed, "is that Iris Cameron, in the fucking flesh?"

  Iris slipped her phone back into her pocket and grimaced. She should've found a better hiding spot than the portico, that was now swarmed with kooks gathering at an outdoor table, brandishing wads of cash and black cards as if that wealth belonged to anything other than their last names. Sickened, Iris indignantly dragged her gaze over to the table, and to the boy that had called out her name—Yves "Kelce" was manspreading on a wicker chair, with his girlfriend, Talulah, perched on his leg like more accessory than girl. Even worse, sat across from them was her brother, Rafe's back to her as he racked up a narrow line of coke for a spray-tanned girl in red-bottomed slingbacks. It's a houndlike pack over there, one Iris wanted to scarper from.

  Technically, she had known these people longer than she had known the pogues—especially Marnie Aachari, the very girl whose house they were all in, draped on a loveseat with Kie's unrequited antagonist, Immie Zhou. These were the girls her dad gravitated her towards with coaxing hands and sycophantic words about "connections" at garden parties. Girls she shared classes with back at the Academy. Lifelong adversaries and semi-friends—she had watched their  skin stretch taut over their bones through the tricky preteen years, as the ghosts of their overbearing parents clawed at their ribcages like feral animals.

  Nostalgia's a sucker-punch.

  "Yeah, it's me, Kelce," Iris sighed, still leaning against the pillar, "don't cream your pants."

  "You're so funny, Iris," Talulah Applebaum giggled, smacking her gum obnoxiously between her molars, "isn't she so funny, babe?" Kelce's eye twitched. "We've missed you, like, so much. Like, Marnie was saying just the other day—"

  "Tal," seethed Marnie, insulted, "shut up!"

  Talulah lifted an indifferent shoulder. "What? Like, she's here, isn't she? And, hmm—" she put a hand over her eyes, mimicking shades as she squinted around Iris, "I don't see any pogues with her."

  Rafe snorted, chin dipped hollowly to his chest. "That's a shock."

  "Drop dead, Rafe," Iris sneered.

  "Why are you even here?" he demanded, not even glancing over his shoulders. The words rolled off his forked tongue as ruthlessly as ribbons of nitric acid.

  Grief sat in the grave of Iris's stomach like a smooth pebble crested at a tidal. "I came with Sarah."

  His scoff was caustic. "Likely."

  "I did," Iris bit defensively.

  "Yeah? And where is Sarah now?"

  Iris's shame doubled. She wore her skin, dirtier than theirs, like a mycelium of humiliation. Immie's bambi, hickory eyes softened in pity, Talulah's head lolled onto Kelce's collarbone as she jabbed her tongue through her tab of gum, and, the tenderest bruise, Marnie looked away entirely.

  "I...—I lost her. When we came in, she—"

  "Yeah. Don't care," Rafe interjected. The evidence of Iris's shame kissed the flesh of her cheeks damningly with rosy blood. Kelce had to bury his own face into the crook of Talulah's sweat-beaded neck to cover up his laugh. "Fuck off back to your pogues, Iris. Unless they're sick of you, too?"

  Starved and hungry, Rafe lowered his head to the altar of his fatherly sins. The sound of his sniffing was both purifying and punishing to Iris's ears, yet she had no choice but to grit her teeth and stomach it. Rafe's springing back up like a man reborn, sniffling violently into the hollow of his wrist and laughing hysterically as the drip ribboned along the length of his throat. 

  "Fuck!" he exclaimed, the laughter cutting through him. "That's," he wagged his finger—the one with their father's signet—at Kelce, "that's some good shit, man. You've gotta try it."

  Talulah blinked owlishly. "What, like—we just do coke now? Is that, like, normal?"

  "I'm out of here," said Marnie bluntly, standing up from the loveseat. "Rafe, clean your shit up when you're done."

  He saluted absently. "Yes, ma'am."

  Marnie's in front of Iris before she could even process her coming over. The cocktail of tequila and expensive perfume wafting from her dewy skin was sobering, familiar. Iris had been speaking strictly in the language of unwanted, absent party-guest for the last hour or so, until Marnie reached her lungs. Suddenly, she didn't feel so disgusting.

  Dainty fingers latched around her wristbone, and a soft, uncalloused thumb rubbed over her skin, and Marnie's offering her this delicate smile.

  "Hey," she said quietly.

  Iris's smile was mangled and short-lived. "Hi."

  "So, you came here with Sarah, huh? That's new."

  "Yeah," she agreed breathily, "it is. And won't happen again, trust me."

  "Because she ditched you?"

  It's not said to hurt Iris, but it did anyway. She felt so unsightly here. This half of the island wasn't for her.

  "For Topper," she muttered, "of all people."

  Marnie's grin dug twin dimples into the apples of her cheeks. "Yeah, I saw them jump off my roof earlier."

  Iris blinked, thinking that surely she misheard. "Sorry?"

  "Into the pool, of course," Marnie added hastily. "I feel like I should've mentioned that part."

  "I mean, yeah. That's so not Sarah." Iris hesitated. "Or, maybe it is—I don't really know anymore, honestly."

  She rubbed self-consciously at the parched skin of her elbow, then felt Marnie's manicured nails bite sweetly into her palm.

  "Topper basically kidnapped her. She's still Sarah—I don't think they'll last," she granted, like this was meant to make everything better.

  Iris scoffed. "They never do."

  "Yeah, well, we all know she has the hots for that friend of yours—you know, the one who works on your dad's boat?"

  "John B?" Iris's head shook so aggressively she felt her skull rattle. "No. Sarah, she—that's not what—"

  "Tal was right, you know." There's a vulnerability to Marnie that was never really there before. Maybe she sensed that shame of Iris's, or else the grief. It kept manifesting into new faces, all the time—the most familiar outline of it was the twin moons of her brother's hateful eyes. But right now, it's Marnie, all sweet-toothed smiles and unruly curls back in kindergarten. "We miss you—I...I miss you, Irie."

  "Well," said Iris clumsily, her own smile mild, "I'm here now."

  Marnie's dejected as she let go of Iris's hand. "You're not. I mean, it's not like I can blame you—your life seems so exciting, and fun, and awesome—"

  "It's not—" Iris laughed hollowly, shaking her head, "Trust me, pogue life's not all it cracked up to be, Marn."

  "I still envy you. They all love you in a way I don't think the rest of us will ever be loved." Iris wasn't exactly sure where this was all coming from, but Marnie's glassy eyes were looking at her like she was this tragedy that she hungered to be. "I don't even blame you when you cancel on me. I'd rather be with them, too."

  "Marn, stop it. Marnie, please—"

  "I knew as soon as you met Kiara that we lost you for good. Because you chose her over the rest of us. Over—"

  "Don't say it," Iris said witheringly. "Marnie, I don't know where this is coming from, but—"

  Marnie swept a knuckle under her waterline. "It's been here, Iris. Since we were kids. It's always been there. I don't know if it's an insecurity you have or what, but everyone else can see it but you. No one matters to you in the way they do."

  Then, the humiliation devoured her. There was little left of Iris Mariano other than skin and bones, and even that was wasted, sallow, and brittle.

  "Why didn't you say something?"

  "Because you're never around, Iris! That bell goes for end of semester, and you're gone like the wind—you're a fucking ghost in the summer, none of us can get through to you. Not even your own sister. Like, hell—" Marnie ran a hand down her face, smearing her makeup, "you're so confusing, Iris, because one minute, you're letting your dumb boyfriend hold a gun to Topper's head, and the next he's giving you a lift to my house, to my party? Like, sorry, what the fuck is up with that?"

  Iris was like a fish out of water. She felt like she was the sacrificial lamb for a secret ritual that was happening right here in Marnie Aachari's condo—that Sarah had lured her to under false pretences, this slaughterhouse of new money and lime-wash walls.

  "Marnie, I don't know what the fuck—"

  "—Hey, hey, everybody—this is Top! I call him the Shred God. He goes Conan on the overheads, right?" Iris frantically looked over. Rafe's got his arm around Topper, who looked about as inverted as Iris felt, and that he might sag bonelessly into Rafe's ribs at any moment. "What were you last year? You were, like, top ten...—?"

  "Last year, uh," a faux-humble chuckle left him, "seventh in Nationals, yeah."

  "Marn, hey, look," said Iris absently, eyes barely touching the girl, "we'll continue this later. All right?"

  "Yeah," snarled Marnie, tonguing her cheek, "sure, Iris."

  Iris didn't exactly have the time to linger around and plead her innocence. She stalked right over to where Rafe was coaxing Topper in front of a freshly-cut line, and shoved herself directly into his eyeline, feverishly snapping her fingers at him.

  "Hey, asshole," Iris sneered, "where's Sarah?"

  Topper barely glanced at her as he plucked a rolled bill from Rafe's greedy fingers. "Don't know, don't care."

  "C'mon, Topper," Immie Zhou cut in, sugary and chiding, "don't be a jerk. Where is she?"

  "Like I said..." Topper bent down so he was eye-level with the white-lines, "don't know—" he paused, dragging the dollar bill along the entire length of the bump, a cough puncturing his lung, "don't fucking care, Mariano." 

  Rafe smirked wolfishly, clapping his protege hard on the back. "That's my boy!"

  "Cunt."

  Iris slammed the empty Zinfandel onto the table, scattering the cocaine debris across the glass, and stormed off.

  She made her way outside feeling like a flayed woodland animal, a torn belly, spilling viscera and guts onto the astroturf lawn, polluting the heated pool with her dirty blood. Realistically, everyone was too caught up in the drama of their own lives to care one bit about a girl with barbed wires for never-endings—but as Iris tore through that party searching for Sarah, it felt like every dilated pupil at that party was on her, dissecting her, trying to prod at the heart of this skinned rabbit. She's always felt like an open wound at parties, that was just who Iris was.

  She wished her friends were here. Kie would've defended her, back there—mean and loyal, a dog herself sometimes, but a far better one than Iris. John B would've left another bruise on Topper's ego, maybe on his jawbone too. And Pope, well, if Pope had been there, Iris wouldn't have stuck around for as long as she did—the whole thing would've made him uncomfortable, and he would've been muttering madly about this whole thing being a sick form of self-flagellation, of Iris trying to prove something to herself. He would've told her she was better than all of this—than all of them.

  As for JJ, he didn't really bear thinking about.

  Finally, Iris found Sarah tucked away in the shadows of palm trees, fern thickets, and the dainty glow of dying fairy-lights. She was perched on the edge of a sunlounger, sniffling into the inside of her wrist and collecting pearling tears with the pads of her fingertips.

  "Sarah? Sarah, whoa—hey, look at me." Iris rounded the sunlounger, and knelt right at Sarah's feet. Her sister was worrying her swollen bottom lip between her teeth, enough to make it bleed. Frantic, Iris flattened her palms onto her sister's shoulders and pressed herself higher up to get a better look at her eyes. It was a physical ache that split through her chest, like a thousand tiny little thorns—Sarah's hickory eyes, so honeyed and good, were now glassed by welling tears and insecurities that did not belong there. Her butterfly lashes swept damply against her blistery cheekbones, and the laugh that left her was hollow, splintery, and too forlorn for a girl as infallible as Iris's sister. Softly, she asked her, just for the two of them, "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing." Her voice cracked, wobbling over her lie like a distraught hiccough forcing its way through her ribcage. "Nothing's wrong, it's fine. I'm fine."

  Iris felt her brows furrow and she pressed her fingertips into her tender sinews in her sister's shoulders. "No, you're not fine. You're crying. Why are you...—was this Topper?" she demanded furiously. "Sarah, did he do something to you?" Her eyes raked over her dishevelled hair—never out of place, always perfect, always shiny, now frizzy from the desperate fingers of a boy who didn't deserve her one bit. Next, to the twisted, limp spaghetti straps of her bikini, the unravelling bow, haphazardly tied by trembling hands. It was all enough to turn Iris's stomach. "He didn't...Sarah, did he...—"

  "No!" she insisted, wretched as she shook her head and cried harder, "No, he wouldn't. I just—I didn't want to—"

  "And that's completely okay," said Iris quickly, adamantly. "Did he try to make you feel guilty, for not wanting to? I'll rip his prepubescent face off, Sarah, I mean it—"

  Sarah laughed thickly through a fresh set of tears, desperately sullying her knuckles against her puffy cheeks. "He didn't even have to try. I mean, he's always been such a good boyfriend, I should want to sleep with him. Shouldn't I?"

  Her sister sounded so childlike, so innocent, so unfamiliarly uncertain with herself. Iris's heart ached in a way she didn't think it ever would for Sarah again. Blood remained, she supposed. It persisted. Always would. Blessed be the daughters of Ward Cameron—even the infallible ones, with their sun-bleached hair and sun-kissed skin.

  "Not if you don't want to," Iris murmured, "not if it doesn't feel right."

  "How will I know?"

  She hesitated, hands slowly falling away until they settled in her own lap, toying with a hangnail and fragmented nail-polish. "I don't know," she answered honestly, slanting her a nervous smile, "but, as soon as I do, I'll let you know."

  "Wait," gasped Sarah, reaching out to snatch both of Iris's wrists, "you haven't...—?"

  "Neither have you!" Iris giggled shrilly, poking her in the rib. "I mean, like—I've done stuff, but...Never—no. And I think that's okay."

  "I mean, yeah. Definitely. Totally okay!" Sarah seemed like she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "I mean, I always thought that you and JJ were hooking up, if I'm being honest."

  Years ago, Iris would've made some guttural, childlike sound of revulsion, sticking out her tongue and protesting insolently at the very suggestion of it—she'd object about "cooties," about JJ being her best friend, nothing else. This time, Sarah's pointed words spur no such reaction from her. Because, honestly, Iris could see why her sister would think that—she understood why the rest of the fucking island thought that she and JJ Maybank might be a thing. She was just terrified of staying this way forever—the girl who people thought JJ Maybank will one day end up with, the one he might just calm down for. Ill-fated and yearning and patient, they'd pity her for it. But they'd remember her mother and hum in sudden understanding of it all. She was born to it, they'd whisper sullenly, poor girl—they'll rip her open and see all the worst bits.

  They'll see JJ, as Saras was right now. A boy with rage so unlike anything a kook would ever understand, and his twin fists—red and tender and swollen. The gold of his hair. In Iris's ribs, they'll find a part of him there that he stashed away for safe-keeping until he was ready to come back for it. Until then, it would sit next to the grapes of her lungs like a spare set.

  The part of her that she sewed into him in return was not treated as kindly.

  "No," Iris mumbled, looking at the knots of her knuckles, her chunky rings, "we're not."

  Sarah mulled on this with a warm hum. "And...does that—well, are you sad about that?"

  "I..."

  "Pope then, maybe?"

  Iris narrowed her eyes at her sternly, nudging her knee. "Enough."

  "Or," Sarah smiled nervously, "John B, even?"

  It's then Iris realised it for the first time. Marnie planted that tiny seed of doubt, but the subtle shine in her sister's big, brown eyes—that was enough. It's gentle in a way that Iris's own eyes couldn't have possibly been when they were still talking about JJ. Timid longing. Ripe and endearing.

  "No," Iris said meaningfully, her thumb swiping over her sister's kneecap, "definitely not. He's like my brother. Only—" a grin twitched at the corner of her mouth, "better than our brothers."

  Sarah laughed. "Well, I was going to suggest that you call Alex for a lift home, 'cause I'm pretty sure that Topper is way out of question right now."

  "Alex?"

  "I mean, unless," she faltered, "you don't want to? We could call someone else. Or walk...—"

  "No. No, it's fine." Iris sunk from her squat until she was flush against the grass, slipping her phone from her pocket and ignoring the long mass of texts from the pogues to get up Alex's contact. Grasshoppers chirp in the thickets of honeysuckle around them as her thumb drifted over the call button. Something as infinitesimal as calling her brother, but it was like swallowing blunt nails. When was the last time she even called her big brother?

  "Irie," pressed Sarah, quiet, unsure, "what even happened with you two? I mean—I used to get so jealous of how close you were, and now," she sighed unsteadily, "you don't even talk?"

  "I don't know, Sare," she lied thickly. "We just don't." Biting the bullet, Iris pressed "call," and braced herself, holding the phone to her ear as if it was a grenade. After the first four rings, she started to grumble, "He's not even going to—"

  "Iris?" It was hoarse. Panicked. Thready with something old. "Iris, are you all right?" Iris, startled at him even picking up the phone, couldn't reply. "Iris, for fuck's—where are you? Did something happen?"

  "No," Iris rasped, before he could spiral further. A sigh of relief crackled from the other sigh, and then, a second—not-Alex. Iris didn't think about their for too long. "No, erm, everything's fine. I was just—we were just—"

  "Iris, just talk to me," he said impatiently.

  "Can you pick us up, please?"

  He stalled. "Us?"

  "Me, and Sarah."

  "Sarah?" The surprise in his voice suffocated her with ribbons of guilt. "Well, erm—" There was some movement, almost as if he was tucking the phone into his chest, "hey, are you okay if we—yeah?—I can drop you off after—okay, yeah...Yeah, thanks—" Iris exchanged a droll look with Sarah, who smothered a giggle behind her hand, "Sorry, I'm back. Uh, yeah. I can pick you up. Where are you both?"

  "Erm, do you remember Marnie Aachari? From the Academy?"

  "You're there? Have you had a personality transplant in the last 24 hours, or...—but yeah, I remember. We'll—I'll be right over, bug."

  The line disconnected.

  Iris stared at her phone in her palm like it was a disembodied limb.

  "Is he coming?" urged Sarah.

  "Yeah, erm—he's coming. Let's go wait at the front."

  They skirted along the hedges of the Aachari estate, tucking their chins to their sternums to avoid unwanted run-ins with people from school, and any incessant questions about Sarah's bloodshot eyes or Iris's life on the Cut. At the sprawling driveway, Sarah clung to Iris's arm like she might fade away. A part of Iris thought she might.

  Alex had called her "bug."

  Suddenly, all Iris longed for was to be something worthy of her siblings' collective, delicate love. To be called the sweet nicknames her big brother now only reserved for Phoebe.

  They piled into the back of his car as soon as his tyres crunched over the gravelled approach. Sarah's more talkative, because that's who Sarah was—showering their big brother in gratitude and tousling his hair with a willowy arm snaked over the back of his headrest. Iris was too transfixed on the passenger seat, and the girl shrinking into it as if she was trying to immolate herself inwards.

  "Magda?" Iris demanded, lurching forward and white-knuckling Magda's own headrest. "I knew it! I fucking knew it—"

  "You know nothing," Alex said sardonically, though the cartilage of his ears were a blistery red as he reversed out of Marnie's driveway. "Sit back—and put your belt on—both of you," he said sternly, brotherly.

  Sarah slanted a mischievous grin at Iris as they both buckled themselves in.

  "I won't lie," said Iris dryly, letting Sarah bury her head in the crook of her neck, "this is kind of like being stabbed in the back, Mags."

  Magda's head was hanging between her wilted shoulders in shame. "Irie, this isn't—"

  "No," she interjected, pitchy, insolent, "that's fine. Girl Code isn't even a real thing, right? Not like we're not best friends or anything, Heyward."

  "Iris—"

  "Backstabber."

  "Iris, nothing happened, all right?" Alex weighed in, rattled. "I'm just—I was at the club, all right, and Magda was finishing up her shift, so I'm giving her a lift home. Cut it with the third degree."

  Iris sulkily tongued at the flesh inside of her cheek. "Mhm. Okay. Sure."

  Through the rearview, she caught her big brother rolling his eyes. It was almost affectionate. She bit on that same flesh of her cheek to butcher a smile.

  Sarah had fallen asleep on the drive back to Tannyhill. The soft lull of the engine and Magda's favourite album on the aux had left her drooling into the gauzy material of Iris's babydoll top on her shoulder. When Alex parked up, he glanced to the back expectantly, and his eyes rolled again—in the very same manner as before; in fond, brotherly reproach. It warmed something in Iris that she didn't really think existed anymore, and she watched with cautionary weakness as he got out of the car and walked round to Sarah's door, opening it somehow without a single creak.

  "Sare," he murmured, tugging a honey-gold lock of her hair, "c'mon. You're home."

  "Too tired," she bellyached.

  Alex glanced wryly at Iris. "I'll walk her in. 'Won't be long."

  "All right." Iris blinked at their half-asleep sister. She's cradling Iris's arm like a childhood teddy. "Night-night, Sare."

  Alex shouldered Sarah gracelessly into Tannyhill, leaving Iris and Magda to ache in a marinating silence. It chiselled away at Iris until there was nothing but marrow and love left in her.

  Defeated, "I don't actually think you're a backstabber."

  "And I didn't fuck your brother." A lull. "...Tonight."

  "I knew it," said Iris, vindicated. "I knew you're sleeping together—"

  "Were," Magda corrected, not having the stomach to turn around and face her, "we were sleeping together—past tense. Like, before Princeton."

  Iris blinked, owllike. "Mags. Alex went to Princeton two years ago."

  "I know."

  "But, you never—"

  "And I'm sorry. I'll explain it to you," she said earnestly, "eventually." Iris could only imagine how this must've felt. The canines of justifying yourself against the hollow base of your throat. "But, he really is just dropping me off home, and—...And, that, us—it's long over. But, Iris, please, please don't—"

  Don't tell Pope. "I won't," Iris promised. "Well," she wet her lips, grimacing, "I kind of told him that I figured—"

  Magda slammed her face into her hands, muffling a scream.

  Iris carried on through peals of laughter, "He didn't believe me! So, it's fine! Right?"

  "He's gonna tell our pops."

  "He's not gonna tell your pops—"

  "And he's gonna send me to that commune in Arizona."

  "Mags, your old man is not gonna—"

  "I'm done trying to sow my oats. I'm packing up my vagina and I'm getting sent to an all-women commune in Arizona."

  Just then, Alex was sliding back into the driver's seat, staring peculiarly between her and Iris, whose shoulders were wracking with laughter, "Why the fuck are you going to Arizona?"

  "Just drive," Magda dry-wept.

  "Sure." Perturbed, Alex turned to Iris, and there was so much there—so many years of blinded loyalty and double-edged envy and animalistic rage. But, right now, he's just looking at her like her big brother. His lip twitched vaguely. It could've been a smile. "The Chateau, I'm guessing?"

  "Erm, actually—" Iris conferred with backlog of notifications, and her eyes swept over the latest from Kiara.

  KIE. hey we're heading back to the wreck for something to eat if u see this

  KIE. I miss u :(

  "The Wreck, please."

  "Gotcha." He turned the keys in his ignition, and they were salting the earth of Tannyhill behind them. "So," Alex mused, "are either of you gonna tell me why Heyward's 'sewing up her vagina'?"

  Iris snorted. "Wouldn't you like to know? Slut."

  The Wreck was lit with this warm, homely, marmalade glow from the dotting around of gas-lamps sputtering at the tables and booths. The smell that hit Iris as soon as she slipped through the door was enough to make her stomach growl. Only a small scatter of customers were still being served—mostly touron couples, feeding each other with maudlin eyes and tender smiles. Her friends were at the back of the restaurant, Kie and John B swaying to Audiodub as JJ tossed sweet-potato fries up into the air and caught them in his mouth like a performing seal.

  Marnie was right. No one matters to Iris the way they do—but it's just in a different way. The language of her love had many tongues and translations. She loved her siblings just as much, but it's not with this easiness, or warmth, nor hunger.

  Here, she did not feel like filth. The humiliation beaded off her like pearls of water after emerging from the marsh. Here, Iris was not dirty, or wrong, or unwanted.

  She toed over to them, a frightened animal in her simplest form. She belonged here, but the guilt's amorphous in her guts, sitting right next to the longing and all of her grudges. She still hadn't replied to a single one of them, and not one bit of Iris could explain why. All of this rots in her, but she still smiled when Pope straightened up so quickly in his chair upon noticing her that she worried that he might fracture the rosary of his spine.  

  "Hi."

  "Iris," breathed Pope, standing up so quickly that his hipbone hit the side of the table. "You're back."

  John B and Kie stalled dancing, Kie midway twirling under his arm—the ministration innocent enough, but they both lingered in that standstill of blinking at their doe-in-a-headlights friend and it left Iris with the sensation of something crawling up her throat.

  "Yeah, erm..." Iris's eyes raked over to JJ, but he was feigning disinterest—he didn't even look at her, and kept his eyes adamantly on the twitchy hands in his lap. Iris felt fraudulent and wrong, remembering the thoughts that swept over her as soon as Sarah confessed to thinking that they were hooking up. "I got caught up, uh—I'm really sorry for—"

  Kie flung herself at her. Pistachios, salt-water, vanilla bean. It's all there. Her arms squished Iris's ribs until they cringed together. Iris was scared she might shatter in her hands and cut her loving hands into pieces.

  "Ten hours without you and I almost killed them," Kie breathed into the bare skin of her neck. "Never leave me again."

  "I'm beginning to fear this relationship of ours is too codependent, Carrera."

  "Don't care," she mumbled.

  John B wrapped his entire wingspan around the both of them, and Iris angled her head awkwardly into his chest. "I texted you, like, a million times."

  "I know. Just, you know," she exhaled wobbly, "existential crisis and Cameron family drama." Iris untangled herself, smiling as brightly as she could. "But, I'm here now, and I'm starving—did you save any food?"

  Pope slid his bowl across the table to her as she sat down. "Here, have mine."

  A scoff tore through JJ and they all turned to him.

  "What?" he said imprudently, rolling his shoulders as if brushing off their curious expressions. "Are we going to act like she didn't totally bail on us? I mean, shit, Mariano—that's kooky as fuck, even for you."

  Iris's mouth curled unabashedly. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

  "JJ," said Pope reproachfully. "Leave her alone. We don't know what she's been doing—"

  "That's kind of the point, Pope."

  "Okay," said Iris, dropping the spoon she was holding back into Pope's bowl, "what's your problem, J?"

  "My problem? You're my problem, sunshine—"

  "All right," John B swooped in, snatching a nearby chair and swinging it around so he could sit on it backwards, "this is getting ridiculous. Iris, you don't have to explain where you've been—but," he added, when she petulantly stuck her tongue out at JJ's insulted face, "you should've text us, and let us know that you were okay. And JJ—don't be a dick. Yeah?"

  "Whatever, dude," he mumbled, glaring contemptuously at his thighs. "If you wanna kiss her ass, fine by me. Someone's gotta hold Little Miss Ward Cameron accountable for her shit."

  It's funny, really. How JJ Maybank and Iris Mariano worked.

  They spend the rest of their slumming at the Wreck cutting each other the most scathing of glares, and sneering ugly remarks under their breaths. Still, at the end of the night, when it's all bruised, indigo skies, star filaments, and the faint smell of the joint they shared as soon as they all returned to the Chateau, they were lying next to each other in the spare bed. A pair of stubborn, horizontal lines, and JJ's fingers traced spirals along the length of her nearest arm as her own toyed with his lighter, committing the etching of his name to memory like it's something sacred and irreverent.

  Tormentingly, Iris spoke out into the peaceful quiet of their room, "Sarah thinks we're sleeping together."

  "Does she now?" JJ hummed thoughtfully. He was lying on his side, looking at her—looking at her arm, and his invisible patterns, and the traces of his touch, the only evidence of it being the goosebumps it summoned in his jagged path to the joint of her shoulder. In this position, his voice was raspier, more stuck in his chest.

  "Yep." Iris swallowed thickly. "'Thinks I lost my virginity to you."

  "She's not far off. I've offered, like, a gazillion times."

  "Begged."

  "All right," he said wryly. The callouses of his working hands grazed along her collarbone where it poked through the neckline of a Heyward's Seafood sweatshirt. It's overwhelming—JJ's touch on her, but the distinct smell of Pope. "Well," JJ mumbled, "what did you tell her?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Sarah. When she asked you if we were fucking." Fucking. He said it so crudely. "What did you tell her?"

  "I said no," Iris whispered. She had the acute feeling of a pigtailed girl in Mary Janes and tulle socks, tucked away in a confessional on Sabbath day. Only, it's not stigma fumes that tangled in the air, but the menthol of a Swan filter stubbed out into the ashtray on the bedside table next to her. "Then, she asked if I was sad about that—about us not hooking up."

  JJ's hand found its way back to her arm, the coolness of his rings akin to silver instruments dissecting her. "Yeah?"

  "Yep."

  "And?"

  "And nothing. It was a weird fucking question to ask."

  "Buzzkill." JJ rolled over onto his back, and didn't waste a second before hurling her into the curve of his side, all but wrenching her ragdoll head into the dip of his breastbone. "I was having fun then."

  "Oh, I bet." Iris shut her eyes against the hummingbird of his heart under his skin and tendons. It's quiet again. She could just about hear the rumbling of crickets in the lemongrass outside of the window, and John B's faint snores from the next room. She prayed that Kiara and Pope couldn't hear from the pull-out. The shame's back, just not in the same form as before. "I'm not sad," she told him then. JJ waits. JJ listens. JJ yearns. "About us not...I don't know." It was Iris's turn to wait—for an ill-timed joke, maybe; she hoped for it, at least then she had a reason to pry out that part of him herself for her ribs and hand it back to him, bloodied and raw. But JJ didn't say anything. His finger traced the staircase of her spine now, up and down, up and down—it bred contempt and hunger, all at once. "What do you think?"

  "I'm gonna be honest, sunshine," JJ started, "I have no fucking clue what you're talking about right now." Iris thought she might be sick. "I'm here," he said then, "you know that. I—well—yeah. I'm here."

  Iris reeled.

  "Yeah," she said softly, "I know."

  "And you can do whatever you want with that." Unspoken, but translated easily by Iris: "with me."

  "All right, J."

  "All right."

a/n: i hated writing this chapter so fucking bad omg. it was the kook party bit, i just couldn't get into that kind of environment (i hate rich people house parties, i hate rich people). as soon as it got back to the pogues, i was back on track. but, the kooks, the girls from the academy, are all a big part of iris's life - even if she denies it, and pushes them (marnie) away.

also, sibling progression! with sarah and (kind of) alex. i don't want you all to think she's done a complete 180 on how she feels about either of them - it's quite the opposite. the feelings she has about them both aren't the kind that will probably ever go - as a sister myself, those envies and grudges never really leave. i just don't think it's realistic for her to always act like she wants to rip alex's head off, especially when he obviously would never refuse her if she called asking for a lift. they're not all better - they haven't forgiven each other - sarah and iris aren't magically bffs - sibling relationships are fluid and they are complicated and they are dynamic. she loves them to bits but this chapter wasn't a sudden resolve to all that conflict that's between them all!

and, idk why i feel like i need to do this longwinded a/n justifying myself, but it's refreshing and good for both me and hopefully u as a reader - u may think jj and iris are aggressively fast burn but keep in mind, this has been there for years. they've been best friends since they were kids. jj's probs wanted iris ever since he knew what wanting was and iris sinks her teeth into anyone damaging enough to fulfil this preordained fate she has in her head about ending up like her mother. jj is that man - but he's also this golden-haired boy she adores, who is nothing like his father, or better, hers, at all. pope, though. she loves him for herself - he's proof that she won't be carmen. carmen wouldn't have ever gone for someone as good as pope.

anyways. hope u enjoyed :)