[ x. i thought i had you ]

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WILLA DEVERAUX REFUSED TO go home that night, but to her relief, she was not the only one that protested doing as such. Considering that it was already dark by the time the five teenagers made it safely back inside John B. Routledge's fish shack home, no one was willing to risk walking home in the pitch black in fear of running into the two dangerous boatmen from the marsh again.

As she had settled in that night with a stomach full of salty pretzels and a cold beer, Willa had not found it within herself to care that—despite the common ground the five of them now shared—she was still considered the high kook on their otherwise pogue totem pole. She also did not care that she was forced to share a foldout couch mattress with Kiara Carrera whilst the three other boys were left to find beds elsewhere throughout the home. No, in that moment, with her heart still painfully tight in her chest from her near-death experience and her hungover body on the brink of giving out from exhaustion, the only thing Willa cared about at all was not being left alone while she finally tried to get some rest.

Unfortunately, rest would not come easy for her.

The night crept by slowly, eerily, with each gentle tap of an innocent tree branch against one of the musty windowpanes sounding more like a set of dirty, calloused fingertips searching for a way into the tightly locked Routledge home. Willa could not shake the feeling that someone was watching her, waiting for the moment she let her guard down to strike. So, despite the beer that should have lulled her to sleep in a drunken ease, Willa's sage green eyes were now open wide in blatant alarm as she stared carefully into the darkness of John B.'s messy living room. Her bottom lip was trapped between her chattering teeth and bleeding softly from where she had bitten in too hard, her taste buds fizzing faintly with the coppery taste locked within her mouth.

Willa shifted softly onto her right side, her bare left leg rubbing awkwardly against polyester material as it stuck out from beneath the light makeshift sleeping bag covers. It was too hot and humid to be completely covered, even though the tiny voice from her childhood still tried to convince her that she was safest with her entire body covered in blankets and pillows. Despite what her inner conscience tried to tell her, she fought back with the knowledge that, at least, she was not alone. Beside Willa on the foldout mattress, less than six inches away, Kiara Carrera rested quietly in the dark. Her body was practically a silhouette; the moon peeking overhead from the window was lost in the storm clouds, though Willa could reach out and touch her shadow if she dared, for it was not truly a shadow at all. Kiara was still there. No matter how many times Willa would have to remind herself in the following silent hours to come—she was still not alone.

"Can't sleep?"

So lost in her own darkened thoughts, Willa had not even noticed that Kiara, too, had suddenly shifted on the bed, her head now angled towards Willa with gentle alertness. Her auburn eyes reflected poorly in the barely-there lighting and if it were not for Kiara's abrupt change of breathing pattern, Willa would have thought she had imagined the girl speaking entirely.

"No. It's too hot," Willa grumbled quietly, letting her own gaze drift back towards the dark ceiling. "And I can't stop thinking."

"About what?" Kiara wondered. Willa could feel the girl's eyes peering into the side of her face, but she would not yet meet her inquiring stare.

"About how there's probably two murderers outside John B.'s house right now," Willa admitted bluntly, the sickening words falling from her mouth harshly and cruelly before she could even dare attempt to stop herself. The fear was simply spilling out of her now, the tension and heat of the wooden room drawing her closer to her own inevitable explosion of fiery simmering rage. "and we're just sitting ducks."

Kiara's lips parted, crackling softly in the quiet, like she was attempting to hold in a small chuckle. "That's a bit morbid," She commented.

Willa's face twisted with confusion as she finally broke her attention away from the ceiling and looked down to her side. Was she so wrong to think that there was an excellent possibility that they could still die before the morning sun rose?  "Were you not thinking it, too?" She questioned.

"No, actually," Kiara confirmed, shrugging her shoulders, and pushing the blankets further from her own warm body.  "Well, I mean, I wasn't," She added coyly, her lips turned downwards into a grimace that only the heavy shadows around the girls could see. "Now . . . it's a bit debatable. So, thanks for that."

Willa smiled grimly. "Sorry."

A long moment passed in the narrow space between the two girls who were now far from capable of getting any rest. Both of their minds were alive with the crackling of gunshots and their skins fresh with the faint smell of the drowning marsh. Even after several beers shared between the five teenagers, Willa nor Kiara had calmed down in the slightest when they finally turned in for the night. Lost in the darkness of their realities and imaginations, they were both afraid, unsure of how their days had turned so drastically dangerous and raw. How could they both have started their morning in the middle of the perfectly organized Figure Eight, sharing conversation on a cobblestone driveway, and only fourteen hours later had wound up in the heart of the dysfunctional Cut, sharing an uncomfortable pullout mattress in the middle of John B. Routledge's living room?

Suddenly, Kiara Carrera turned over on her side. "Can I ask you something?"

Meanwhile, Willa was still lying flat on her back, her chest rising and falling slowly as she attempted to force herself into a gentle lull. She would have given anything in that moment to find sleep, to close her eyes to the world and allow her dreams to take her where they may.  But such comfort was not entirely easy.  Succumbing to her nightmares was not working. "What is it?" She idly wondered.

"Why did you try to stop me today?" Kiara questioned softly, her fingers drumming against the lumpy mattress. "On the boat?"

Willa abruptly turned her head, her eyes widening in surprise as she looked towards Kiara's laying figure. The figure that could have very likely not been there at all if Willa had not attempted to stop her earlier in the violent afternoon.  Willa hastily pushed herself up onto her elbows, but Kiara did not shift in the slightest, even with the Willa now looming defensively over her. "Is that even a question?" The Deveraux daughter demanded. "Kiara, you could have gotten shot."

"Any of us could have gotten shot," She argued back, her auburn eyes brooding into darkening sage.

"Well, you were the only one going out of your way to prove that point," Willa retorted with a huff. "And if none of the guys could be man enough to step up and try to stop you, I had no problem in doing it myself."

"You could have gotten shot trying to stop me from getting shot."

"Funny how that works, isn't it?" Willa Deveraux had thought of that possibility several times throughout the night. Every time that she closed her eyes, she could see that rifle reflecting in the firelight of the burning sun. She could hear still hear the faint snaps of gunshots crying out in the open sky and in every crevice of her muddled mind every time a bottle of beer was placed on the table just a bit too loudly for her liking. In the darkness of the room, Willa's hands instinctively fell away from the blankets and went to her stomach, her fingertips ghosting across her own skin that could have just as easily been torn apart by bullets mere hours earlier. "Look, I'm used to being the protector," Willa finally murmured, her words as soft as the rippling waves in the quiet marsh beyond the backdoor of John B.'s home. "I've got siblings to look out for, you know? It's not an issue for me to get myself into sticky situations. I'm surprisingly good at getting out of them."

"Not as good as me, of course," Kiara teased, her words bringing both girls immediately back to that vivid moment on the boat where the Carrera girl had single-handedly stopped two gunmen with a mere fishing net. While it seemed funny and impressive now, it had not nearly felt as worthwhile in the moment when any of them could have died as a result.

Willa rolled her eyes. "I like to try to talk my way out of problems before I try to fight my way out of them."

Kiara snorted, a playful sound disrupting the tension that grew heavily over their small space. "Try telling that to Morgan Shoney," She snickered.

In an instant, Willa's cheeks began to burn, her heartbeat quickening uneasily as she thought back to her very brutal and angry youth.  "Are you serious?" She gasped, her jaw dropping in disbelief. "You remember that?"

"We were only eighth graders. It wasn't that long ago!" Kiara exclaimed, laughing softly. "And it was awesome. That beat down had pogue-style written all over it."

Willa Deveraux groaned and buried her face in her hands.  She was almost certain that no one—pogue or kook alike—would ever allow her to forget the moment she had gotten suspended from school for the very first time. It had been a planned event, surprisingly enough; a girl in her class had been saying for over a week that she was intending to kick her ass after lunch for a reason that was unbeknownst to Willa. Of course, word of this got to Willa fast—much faster than Morgan had ever anticipated. So, rather than Morgan waiting to ambush Willa in the schoolyard, Willa had been waiting to ambush her. It was an ugly move, sure, and more than unfair, but it was also the last time that anyone ever bothered Willa Deveraux again.

It was also the first time that the Kildare County student body began to believe that Willa truly was insane. And after witnessing that brutal fight that had left Morgan Shoney with a broken arm and a gap in her teeth, and Willa Deveraux with only a black eye, were they entirely wrong to believe as such?

"God . . ." Willa sighed regretfully, pinching her temples painfully as she shook her head.  She swore that her disfigured knuckles were already beginning to tighten up again, the aches reawakening in her bones as the ever familiar urge to fight pulled deep within her heart.  Do not get her wrong; Willa did not like to fight, but she was never opposed to staying away from one, either.  "Morgan hasn't talked to me once since that day."

"What were you guys even fighting about, anyways?" Kiara inquired.

"That is a very good question that I do not know the answer to," Willa confessed lightly with a shrug. "I was just an angry kid, always looking for a fight where I shouldn't have." The Deveraux daughter's eighth-grade year surely had been her most disastrous year; Maren was still trying to let go some of the shit that Willa had tried to get away with. Not that Willa cared that much about it, anyways. She had found a piece of herself that year, learned that her undesirable rage could be used as a weapon to protect herself, rather than something she should be taught to fear and neglect within her own person. There was absolutely nothing wrong with getting angry every now and then—even if in Willa's case it was almost always now and never then. "I probably got brain damage from that black eye and that's why I can't remember shit from that day."

Kiara chuckled at Willa's sharp remark, her own voice soft, airy, and cheerful; all of the things that John B.'s ominous living room was currently not. "I bet she remembers," She teased.

"Oh, I have no doubt."

"And now she's plotting her revenge against you."

"Whatever!"

Soft laughter filled the quiet living room as the two girls reminisced on the chaos of their own middle school years. While Willa and Kiara had not been the closest of peers their eighth-grade year, there was a time before that that Kiara would have been joining Willa in on her schoolyard fights and vice versa. In the quiet of her own memory, Willa found herself thinking gravely of that time now—of how much of her middle school years could have been different if she had not been so entirely alone, left with no choice but to batter and bruise anyone that dared show her any attention, malice or otherwise, in the schoolyard. "Can I ask you a question now?" Willa suddenly found herself asking, long after they had stopped laughing and allowed the silence to resume control.

Kiara nodded welcomingly. "Shoot."

Willa swallowed tightly and allowed her attention to fall back towards the opposite side of the living room. The kitchen was eerily dark and untouched, scattered bottles of beer reflecting dully in the poor moonlight.  So much of the house was in ruins, but there was never any difficulty in finding alcohol.  After this, Willa was certain she was going to need another drink.  Maybe Kiara, too.  "Why did you stop being my friend once you moved away?" She questioned.

By how quiet the world of the Outer Banks suddenly became following Willa Deveraux's unsuspecting question, a sharp, metal pin could have been dropped and would have certainly been heard by all within the Routledge household. At only twelve-years-old, Willa and Kiara had been torn apart, and neither had done anything to fix it. For a long moment, Kiara was unsure of how to respond to that conclusion, though Willa did not exactly blame her. The Deveraux girl's question was harsher and deeper than the one she had been forced to answer herself, but even if it took all night, she still expected an answer from the girl beside her now all the same. "I didn't stop being your friend," Kiara murmured softly. "I just stopped talking to you."

"Why?"

"Because . . ." Kiara swallowed tightly, unafraid of the brutal honesty in her own answer. Neither girl was afraid of the tension between each other. The unknown had been hanging over them both since they had stood face-to-face on Willa's front porch, and both were more than eager to move past it now. "I thought you didn't need me.  I thought you only ever liked me because we were neighbors . . ." She explained. ". . . that you didn't have anyone else."

Kiara Carrera's words burned into Willa's soul like salt to a wound, and her jaw clenched tightly. "That's not the reason I wanted to be your friend," She insisted surely, her voice tightening and loosening all at once.  Tearing a wound open only to ultimately be the one to make it better.  "I liked you because you were cool. And because you were different." Never once had Willa used Kiara's friendship out of spite. Never once did Willa ever notice that Kiara had originated from the Cut, whereas she had been born and raised in the Figure Eight. As twelve-year-olds, that did not matter to either of them. Even now, at sixteen, the people they had been forced to become by their parents were not who they currently were now, lying on that lumpy mattress side-by-side in the darkness of the John B. Routledge's tiny home. "You were the only other girl I knew that had more fun dropping their dolls out the windows into mud puddles than actually taking the time to dress them up and make them pretty."

Despite herself, at the newfound memory of their untouched youth, Kiara could not help but smile. "I can't believe you still remember that," She chuckled.

"How could I forget?" Willa questioned tenderly, exhaling a quiet breath. "You're right, though . . ." She slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, her back now pressed against the back of the couch. "When you moved next door, I didn't have anyone else," She confessed, looking down to her jeweled hands, her fingers glistening softly as she twisted them back and forth. "but that didn't matter because I thought I had you."

But then she lost her.

Willa Deveraux did not expect their conversation to continue beyond that statement. After all, how could it? Usually whenever Willa dared to take a conversation too far, even if it was without intention, she lost the connection she had been trying so desperately to hold onto. But as she was sitting there beside Kiara, unable to see her expression in its entirety, she was merely reminded of the twelve-year-old girl who had gone over to Willa's house, first. The girl who had invited her to come outside and terrorize their barbies together, first. Kiara, who had dared to choose Willa. It had always been Kiara to push the boundaries where Willa ceased to pull.

So, knowing that, Willa Deveraux should not have been surprised when Kiara Carrera spoke back to her once more, daring to break that wall of weakened defense first, but she was still shocked, nonetheless.

"Who do you think we'd be if we were still neighbors?" Kiara wondered gently.

Willa frowned. "Do you really think we'd be that much different?" She countered.

Kiara nodded, her words incredibly loud against the beating of their pounding hearts even when her tone was still deathly quiet. "I do."

"How?"

"I just . . . I don't know . . . I don't want to think about it. I don't like to think about it."

Willa slowly lifted her gaze from her hands and back to the island girl beside her. "Why?"

"Because it's not who we are now."

Willa Deveraux had learned long ago that there was no worse feeling that she may experience in her life than the realization that she had met someone at the wrong time. She had learned that harsh conclusion for the first time with none other than Kiara Carrera. Long ago, they could have been best friends. They could have learned how to drive together, how to surf together, how to sneak out of the house and party together. They also could have had a much uglier fallout, too, torn apart by the realities of being a teenager in a town ravaged by class struggles. In the long run, maybe it had been better that the two young girls had not been neighbors. Long ago, at only twelve-years-old, they had met at the wrong time. But now, amidst drunken Boneyard battlefields, illegal contraband searches, and violent shootouts in the marshes of the Cut, maybe this was Willa and Kiara's chance to finally meet right.

"Don't hate me for saying this," Kiara Carrera whispered to her, a smile returning to her careful features once more. "But I'm glad we weren't neighbors, Wills."

Wills. A silly childhood nickname so long ago left behind; a nickname once lost in the forgotten friendship of Willa and Kiara. But now, perhaps, the lost had finally been found all over again, and it was finally here to stay.

Willa Deveraux could not help but smile as the familiar name rang so gently in her ears, and in the darkness of the warm Routledge home, she found herself softly nodding her head in agreement to her friend's words.

"Me, too, Kie."

~~~~~~~~~~

just a classic survivalist sleepover for willa and kiara.

this was a bit of a shorter chapter which i apologize for.. i was going to add pope making a random appearance, but then ultimately decided that it didn't fit with the mood that kiara and willa were making, so this chapter was entirely dedicated to them.  but don't worry! pope moments are coming soon, i promise! also, i'm kind of taking my time with them? in fact, i'm pretty much taking my time with all of them? i'm really not trying to pair willa up with anyone at any given time, i'm just going with the vibe that her character gives in the current moment.  because it's not realistic for willa to immediately find attractions with all of these characters and to have so many bonding moments right off the bat.  life doesn't work like that.  i'm sorry if that makes updates ever boring, but it's the truth. it's literally like willa is pulling the string's y'all.  i'm just typing it out.

and also, obviously willa and kiara are not going to be immediate bffs after this chapter cause that's not realistic, either.  the point of this chapter was to dive deeper into their history just the tiniest bit and show that they both regret (and also not regret?) how things turned out for each other.  because if they couldn't be best friends then, maybe they can be best friends now... but only time will tell...

so, how are we feeling about willa and kiara? tell me what y'all are thinking!

aaaaannnddd on another note!! things are about to get crazy real fast. and i hope y'all are ready for it.  what're you all thinking of willa so far?? i hope you all like her.. and i hope you all enjoyed the chapter! so, what are y'all thinking?? what do you hope to see from willa and her people 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.

and lastly, since this chapter was dedicated entirely to kiara, here's a meme dedicated entirely to her, too...