[ v. talk or walk ]

➸➸➸

WILLA DEVERAUX STOOD SKEPTICALLY on the edge of her front porch, but it now felt more like she was standing on the edge of the world, its abyss calling up to her from the depths of a Hell she had never quite reached, and now it was daring her to jump.  She felt so small, her flannel-covered arms crossed tightly over her chest as her suspicious sage eyes narrowed in on Kiara Carrera's stiffly sitting figure on the swing.  The two classmates both appeared so naturally uncomfortable in their opulent setting, each unsure of where they belonged in this confusing equation, neither acting like the kooks they so certainly were. 

Willa's pounding brain was now spinning haphazardly, almost dizzily, by how frantically she racked her darkened, post-drunken thoughts for any reason as to why her former neighbor now sat on her porch swing.  Flipping quickly through the mental photographs of her horrendous state, Willa remembered—vaguely—talking to Kiara while in the company of John B., but had anything actually become of that tiny interaction?  Willa hoped not, for if anything had happened it was surely only to be something negative; that was what Willa did, after all—she fucked things up.

But had Willa truly and accidentally said something to Kiara while at the Boneyeard that had been crossing a line?  Was Kiara here now to beat her into the dirt and let the sea turtles bury her body in the sand?  Such a brutal image made the hungover girl shudder.  And why—why!—could she not remember anything worth remembering for the life of her?

Oh, God, Willa was never going to drink again.

"Hi, Kiara," Willa greeted timidly.

Kiara did not smile, nor did she frown in response to the Deveraux daughter, and Willa swallowed uneasily, entirely hating how well Kiara had always been able to conceal her emotions.  Even in the debate club when she was practically screaming her head off against her opponent, her round cheeks burning red with rage, Willa could never tell what Kiara was going to say next.  For in one moment she could be an absolute whirlwind of aggression and in the next she could be speaking as gently as a soft breeze when the dawn broke on an approaching warm, sunny day.

Through and through, Kiara Carrera was a closed book, never allowing her chapters to be read aloud until she was ready for them to be.  And so, finally, as she shifted on the porch swing and turned so that her bare knees were pointed in Willa's direction, the corner of Kiara's lip curled upwards; concealing her smile and yet, revealing it all the same, too.  "You don't look too good," She commented dryly.

At such an unexpected and casual statement, Willa could almost laugh, but instead she only released the breath she had been holding for so exceptionally long.  Her arms automatically uncrossed and fell lazily down at her sides, her fingers bunching into the fabric of her jersey shorts.  Then Willa shrugged her shoulders, sending Kiara a sickly grimace.  She did not bother trying to hide how disgusting she felt; she could only imagine what she looked to those around her, forced to see the angles she never could see herself.  "I don't feel too good," She admitted, taking a cautious step closer to the porch swing.  "But," Willa continued, never missing a beat, her eyes still narrowed carefully.  "I highly doubt my well-being is the reason that you're here."  Because while Kiara may have been a closed book, she was still recognizable to Willa Deveraux's underlying senses all the same.  This was a book whose type of deceiving cover she could judge.  "What do you want, Kiara?" She questioned.

Kiara immediately pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, her dark eyes locked on Willa's pale figure.  Kiara could not lie to herself when she said that she was impressed by Willa Deveraux.  For a girl who currently did not look like she had much bite in her, she still held a quiet ferocity; the same ferocity that she had once been so intrigued by when they were so young, so innocent to the world of the Outer Banks.  Maybe some things never did change, even when miles upon miles of distance and class segregation threatened to tear them apart.

"I want to talk about last night," Kiara finally confessed.

At the mere mention of the Boneyard party, Willa's face dropped and the knots that now twisted tightly in the pit of her stomach had nothing to do with the lingering drops of cinnamon whiskey that clung to her system.  Still sitting on the porch swing, Kiara's own soft expression had twisted nervously, her hands clenching into fists in her lap.  Neither of them had ever anticipated for a night of so much joy to turn into a nightmare of so much terror, and neither had ever wanted to start talking about it again so soon, but they had to.  Kiara had to.

Kiara opened her mouth once more to continue speaking, but Willa instantly held up a jeweled hand, silencing her before she could rightfully exhale a breath.  "Wait a second," Willa ordered quietly, daring to allow her eyes to flicker towards the nearby windows that lined the front of the beachfront mansion.  The rust-colored curtains were pulled over each stretch of windowpanes, concealing Kiara and Willa's movements, but their voices and their secrets were still not their own.  There was no promising that Maren or Lex Deveraux were not lingering on the other side of the glass desperately, eagerly, looking to eavesdrop.  "Follow me."

Willa did not turn to see if Kiara would follow, but she knew that the kook-turned-pogue girl would inevitably do as such, considering Willa had very obviously seen the discomfort on Kiara's features as the mere idea of being left alone on the Deveraux family porch.  The Figure Eight was no longer Kiara's natural habitat, and it had not been for a long, long time.  Granted, Kiara still lived on the far north side of the island—still lived the luxurious life of a kook—only a few neighborhoods west from the Deveraux household, but still an entirely different world all the same.  The mere miles that now separated Willa and Kiara's own homes now felt like their own individual seas.

The two girls did not stop walking until they were near the end of the driveway, far enough from the peeping eyes of Willa's mother and sister, and yet still safe enough to also avoid being discovered by the passing kook townspeople, who were always ever so eager to lend a helping hand to the Deveraux family, in hopes of finally getting under their radar.  It was pathetic, watching the idiotic kooks throw themselves at her mother and father so carelessly, as if they were the Outer Banks own President and First Lady, and it made Willa hate her own home even more.

"All right," Willa said, coming to an abrupt halt in the middle of the cobblestone path.  She slowly turned back to Kiara and lifted a gentle hand, declaring that she had the floor; that she had the ball in her court.  "Talk."

For a long moment Kiara only stared at Willa; their bodies mirroring each other's from when they had been standing on the porch.  Now, Kiara's arms were crossed tightly over her flowy, yellow, midrise t-shirt and Willa was quiet, her lips pursed as she braced for any disaster that might reveal itself to her next.  "Okay, I'm just going to say it," Kiara finally huffed, never letting her dark eyes fall away from Willa's light ones; with a single stare, Kiara was holding Willa's body to the solid ground, keeping the contact that was ever so desperate for this next point to be reached.  "Whatever you saw last night," She addressed carefully.  "it isn't what you think."

Willa merely blinked, her lips twisting in a frown.  "Excuse me?" She demanded in disbelief.  No.  No, there was absolutely no way that this was the approach that Kiara was going to take with her.  There was no brushing last night under the rug, especially from the group that had started it.  "You're telling me that JJ putting a gun to the back of Topper's head was a figment of my drunken imagination?" She snipped coldly.

Kiara let a sharp breath escape from between her clenched teeth. "Okay, maybe it was what you think," She admitted with a cringe.  She could only hope that she was not digging herself and her friends deeper into a hole by doing this—by speaking to the Deveraux princess—behind their backs.  "But, honestly," She tried sincerely.  "there is still a lot that you don't know.  JJ was never going to pull that trigger."

"It sure looked like he was," Willa scoffed.  "I mean, were we at the same party?"

"Willa, please, you need to try and understand—"

"I don't need to understand shit," Willa interrupted sternly, causing Kiara to take a sudden step back.  Almost immediately, Willa's face softened, but only just the slightest.  Because like JJ's once own feral reaction, Willa was not sorry for her own rage, either.  She had every right to be angry, to be frightened, to be confused from last night.  Last night she had been face-to-face with a storm of a boy and he had had all the power to strike her or Topper, or anyone else down if he had wanted.  And that power both feared and enticed her, so much so that it made her all the more furious, both at herself and the universe.  But to Kiara's misfortune, that same fury—even if truly misguided—was now only capable of forming itself into the harsh words now being sent in her direction.  And now, no matter how desperately the soft-spoken voice within Willa's own storm wanted her to stop in her angry chaos, her pandemonium would not dare lose control; would not dare take back the words that spewed only the truth, no matter how ugly it was.  "You can't just expect me to pretend that last night didn't happen!" She exclaimed.  "You don't get to tell me how I feel.  Someone could have died last night.  And for what?"

"It's complicated!" Kiara cautioned sternly, her own tone darkening, her own voice challenging.  For Willa was not the first person she had ever encountered with a rage so uncontrollable, so undefinable.  After all, she dealt with JJ every day.

"If it's so complicated, why did you bother coming over here to try and explain it to me?" Willa questioned.  Kiara did not immediately respond, instead allowing Willa to let out as much steam as she could.  It surely could not last long.  She was hungover—she had to crash sooner or later, and then, finally Kiara could speak truthfully, completely, without any interruption from a girl who—in all absolute honesty—had every right to be scared.  Kiara could not dare to understand how Willa must have felt seeing that gun reflect in the moonlight for the first time, when Kiara was already slowly, undesirably, becoming used to such a dangerous weapon in her own life.  "What?  Not possible?" Willa prodded of the girl in front of her.  Again, Kiara did not speak, did not move, and Willa finally took a step back, moving closer in the direction of the sea, breathing in the air that was not so stormy, not so haunting.  "Okay.  Okay.  Here.  Answer this, then," She tried again.  "Where did he get the gun?"

Kiara hastily shook her head.  "It doesn't matter," She insisted.

Willa rolled her eyes.  "He stole it, didn't he?" She assumed crudely. When Kiara did not bother to deny it, she pushed on.  "From who?"

A long pause passed in the void between the two young girls and in that silence, Kiara was suddenly lost.  She was afraid.  The Carrera girl was caught between two worlds once more, like she had always been, ever since her parents made the fateful move from the south side to the north side of the island when she was just a young girl.  Now, standing at the end of the Deveraux driveway, she was torn between her pogue friends and her could-have-been kook friend.  And in that moment, if Kiara wanted the best bet at keeping her boys safe, then she needed to sacrifice the innocence of Willa. She had to pull her into the dark waters that she and her friends had been so carefully wading through since before the dawn of yesterday.

And, so, like tearing a bandage harshly from her bare skin, Kiara finally answered, "From Summer Winds."

"Summer Winds Motel?" Willa gasped, her lips forming in a soft 'o' shape.  "What on earth was he doing there?  That place is practically a meth lab!"

"That's unimportant." Kiara waved a hand.  "And before you get any ideas, no," She then quickly added, coming to her friend's defense.  "JJ is not a meth dealer."

"I never said he was," Willa retorted, matter-of-fact.  Not once did she even consider the idea of JJ Maybank as a meth dealer; he was a partier sure, and more than certainly a troublemaker, too, but a drug dealer?  He would never be so stupid as to put his own life in danger like that when he was only sixteen years old.  Granted, JJ still was out and about, waving a gun around, but that was vastly different from waving meth around.  Willa did not have time to weight the differences, still very much trying to wrap her head around Kiara's poor attempt at developing a full explanation of the night prior.

"Look," Kiara sighed softly.  She suddenly sounded so exhausted, so tired of carrying such a heavy weight that she nearly felt sick at the thought that she was about to pull Willa down into the depths with her.  "I didn't come here to talk about how JJ found the gun," She informed.  "I came here because I wanted to talk to you.  About what you saw and—"

Willa frowned, confused.  "What's it matter if I saw the gun or not?" She cut off.  "A ton of other kids saw it, too."

"You didn't let me finish," Kiara rebuked, all the while remaining a calm approach, always the voice of reason.  Elsewhere Willa was quite a bit surprised that she was not screaming at her as if they were in the middle of a debate. "The other kids did see the gun, that's not a question.  But not a single one of them did what you did—going up to JJ like that . . . I don't even think JJ realized what was happening . . ." She insisted softly.  "And I just wanted to make sure that you were okay."

Willa licked her lips and let her gaze fall to her sandaled feet.  What should have been her signature green flip flops looking back at her was now a painful pair of expensive, blister-causing Birkenstocks.  And no matter how hard she tried her frazzled mind could not move past that reality just yet.  Not so soon.  It had been less than twenty-four hours since she had wrestled a gun—a gun—out of someone's hands.  Out of her classmate's hands.

Willa Deveraux could not just pretend that she had not shared a glimpse with Death and that terrified her.  It now haunted her knowing that she had managed to walk away so entirely unscathed.  It was not normal.

Because of this, because of this broken uncertainty, Willa could not take Kiara's genuine words as truly as they were.  She could not see the safety, nor the trust held so openly before her from the young Carrera girl.  No, all that Willa saw was a trap and she was not going to fall so easily, even if there was truly nothing there at all beyond her mind's tearful, distorted eye.  "You just wanted to make sure that I was okay and that I'd keep my mouth shut?" She finally spoke, her words cold as ice. Her tone was filled with so much distrust. 

And little did Willa know that it broke Kiara to see such similar stormy eyes in two very, very differently shattered people. 

"Come on, Kiara," Willa urged.  "Just say it for how it is.  You don't want me to snitch on JJ, do you?"

Kiara swallowed stiffly, struggling in her approach.  "I don't want you to be a snitch," She finally admitted, and it was true—in a way. 

When Kiara had first started up the Deveraux drive, she had truly only been concerned about Willa's unpredictable loyalty to the kooks, for even though Willa was a kook, Kiara knew that she rarely acted like one.  It was only in the times that one least expected Willa to show her kook colors that she truly did, and there was only pain and broken friendships in the crashing of her broken personality.  But upon seeing Willa again, on the same front porch where they had once played, Kiara's world had changed all over again.  Willa Deveraux's friendship was one that Kiara had once desired so desperately to hold, to build and grow; two kook girls who would have dared to go beyond the chokeholds of the otherwise torn Outer Banks together. 

"And . . . And I don't want you to get the wrong idea of my friends," Kiara added quietly, taking a soft step forward to the taller girl.  "Do you think you can do that, Willa?"

"Sure."

Spoken much too carelessly, spoken much too easily.  Kiara's eyes suddenly narrowed suspiciously, and Willa merely stared back, the anger vanishing from her expression as easily as a recessing tide.  But there was no tranquility to be found in the closing space between the two girls; no ease and no safety, for in the disappearance of a tide a tsunami was bound for the shore next.

"If?" Kiara prodded.

"If I get an apology," Willa decided swiftly.

Kiara's brows pulled together in mild confusion and she had to fight from visibly shaking her head in disbelief.  Now, standing there in silence of the cobblestone driveway full of cracks otherwise unseen to the public, Kiara was beginning to contemplate that she might have been better off staying away from the Deveraux family altogether.  Maybe they were all as crazy as the south-siders spoke so nastily of. 

But if an apology was all it took to keep Willa's nose where it did not belong, Kiara was willing to swallow her pride.  "I'm sorry?" She forced from between clenched teeth.

Willa Deveraux planted her feet defiantly on the cobblestone and placed her hands firmly on her hips as she looked across at Kiara Carrera.  "Not from you." 

Ironically, long before this conversation had ever come to be and long before the dawn had fully risen, Willa and Cruz had previously made a promise to never speak of the horrifying night, and as far as Willa was concerned, she still had no intentions of ratting on the pogues.  But Kiara did not need to know that.  And, in the cruelest part of her own heart, deep down in the blackest depths of her own ocean, Willa wanted the pogues to feel as fearful as she had standing alone on the Boneyard beach.  Now that the opportunity was finally being presented to her, there was no backing out of this one.  Willa would be damned if she let such an awful experience slip by without any consequences.  Willa Deveraux wanted to hear an apology from the boy who had started it all.

"You're not serious," Kiara sputtered out, her eyes widening in alarm.  "From JJ?"

"The one and only."

"That's not a good idea."

"Either I get a 'sorry' right now," Willa maintained, her voice strong and steady in her terms. "or in about two hours, JJ's going to be wishing that I did."

Kiara was frowning now, her own anger beginning to form as she allowed Willa's options to spin haphazardly in her head.  In the darkest corners of the island girl's cold, auburn eyes, Willa could see the dangerous debater fighting to claw her way to the surface.  "You're being ridiculous," Kiara warned.

"Am I?" Willa challenged, unaware that the weakening boulders of her once fortified facade were becoming loose and unstable.  "I'm sorry—were you the one that pulled the gun out of JJ's hands? Or—or did you have any brothers out there that you needed to protect?  T-That you thought might end up with a bullet in their own head?"  Suddenly, one-by-one, as the trembling, much-too real sentences slipped from her lips, Willa began to crack more and more.  And unbeknownst to even herself, tears had started to trickle from Willa's widened sage orbs and her bottom lip began to wobble uncontrollably.  "That—that you thought might die?" Her voice cracked.  "That you thought might never get the chance to escape the Outer Banks?!"

No longer was Willa only talking in regard to her baby brother.  Because he was never the one to believe in a dream of escaping the Outer Banks; no, he had no reason to.  The island had become his home.  But never to Willa.  Willa was lost in the void of land and sea, of reality and fantasy, of her own life and death.  Because if she would have died that night, she would have never been able to say she escaped the Outer Banks all on her own.

Kiara's own expression had softened significantly, and her hands lifted lightly, hovering above Willa's cover arms, as if she wanted to reach out and touch the crumbling girl but did not know how.  "Willa . . ." She whispered.

Willa Deveraux was more traumatized than she had been letting on, her heart cracking and concaving as her spinning mind was immediately brought back to the heartbreaking image of Cruz Deveraux's own horrified expression at the sight of a loaded gun.  In that moment, none of them had known how the night would ultimately end.  Surely in the aftermath they all knew that JJ had only been using the gun as a ruse, as a means for his friend's protection, but it certainly had not felt like it when experiencing in the moment.  Cruz could have gotten shot.  Willa could have gotten shot wrestling the gun from JJ's hands.  And then where would she be?  The victim that made the title of the once playful Boneyard beach become a tragic reality?

"Do you know where he is?" Willa finally asked, long after she had regained her composure.  She batted at her rosy cheeks; her skin inflamed not only by the lingering touches of a hangover, but now also from a broken heart that only a sister's fear of ever living without her siblings could create.

"Yes," Kiara admitted quietly.  Because who was she to try and stop Willa now?  "But he's not going to apologize to you."

For a long moment, Willa was frozen, her eyes locked in a faraway place beyond Kiara's shoulder.  She swallowed a large lump in her throat, and clenched her hands into fists, feeling her rings curl against her skin, reminding her that she was there, that she was still alive, that it was okay.

Willa had never meant to cry in front of Kiara.  It was not within Willa to cry so uncontrollably and so unexpectedly.  She was a girl of madness and rage, but never one of heartache and grief.  Why was it now, amid what should have only been a soft, quiet conversation between two lost friends, that Willa found the world so loud and suffocating in her presence?  Willa needed to remind herself to breathe.  Just breathe.

Suddenly, Willa straightened up and pushed her shoulders back, ready to take on the weight of the world all over again. Now forcing herself to stand tall against the growing light of the long day ahead, Willa looked to Kiara, the two lost kook girls finding each other in the madness of their own heads once more.  This was not over.  It was only just beginning.

Willa Deveraux needed her closure and Kiara Carrera was going to bring her right to it.

"Guess we'll find out, won't we?"

~~~~~~~~~~

please don't be mad at willa for being mean/standoffish to kiara. a girl is just scared and traumatized and obviously just needs some help. willa doesn't hate kiara. she doesn't even hate jj. she's just scared, rattled and doesn't feel good.

but on another note—

aka, this chapter was me giving kiara more of a storyline than the show chose to gave her. in which, she can go against the boys because she, too, has a mind of her own and can choose to protect them in her own ways, even if it turns into a disaster because now she's unintentionally pulled willa into a whirlwind of madness that's about to ensue and ruin all of their lives. buttttt it'll all be worth it in the end because kiara by reaching out to willa, she has just taken the first step into a beautiful new friendship with her that was otherwise practically extinct, and i cannot wait for these girls' bond to grow..

but for right now, these two girls are still very much on each other's nerves, even though they both also understand where the other is coming from? if that makes any sense? they've both just got too much pride, too much teenager angst... but anyways, what did you think of their interactions? did they seem to flow? was it realistic for willa to demand an apology from jj?

​​​​​​​and now that we've possibly got an apology coming... do you think it will happen?

soooooo what're y'all thinking?! how're we feeling about willa?? we're finally gonna start rolling into the show's real chaos in the next chapter or two, so get ready for that!! what do you think's gonna happen to willa in the aftermath?? what would y'all like to see next?? i'd love to hear your thoughts and what you'd like to see next! so please, leave some votes and comments because your girl would really appreciate it! thanks for reading! and i hope y'all are having a lovely day or night.

stay safe and stay well.

—B.