I wanted to take him home
and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his
    like a crash test car.
              I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.
    You could drown in those eyes, I said,
                  so it's summer, so it's suicide,
so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.

Richard Siken, Little Beast

Jessica forces me to watch
every sunset even when I
am full. She puts her fingers
in my mouth and says open
your eyes. Open them.
You see the small-town girls
on big billboards? One day
that's us.

Angie Sijun Lou, Jessica gives me a chill pill

cause lately i've been thinking 'bout you and rebuilding / walking 'round like you lost feelings / i can tell he not fulfilling / you in love with me still / they say only if looks could kill, for real

A$AP Rocky, Sundress

✷

JOHN B:
"Okay, so, the downside of Pogue life is we're ignored and neglected. But the upside of Pogue life? We're ignored and neglected. Which means we do whatever we want, whenever we want.

"That's JJ, my best friend since the third grade. He's about as local as they come. Latest in a long line of fishing, drinking, smuggling, vendetta-holding salt-lifers who made their living off the water. Best surfer I know. Just don't tell him I said that. Mild kleptomaniac and a future tax cheat.

"And that's Kiara, or Kie, as we call her. When she's not saving turtles, or listening to Marley, or getting a dolphin tattoo, she hangs out with us. I'm not really sure why, though. So, she's a rich kid, actually. Foot in both worlds. Her family owns The Wreck, this Outer Banks institution. Total cash cow with the tourists. You know, I'm not really sure how her parents feel about us. She's mad cool, though.

"That's Pope, the brains of the operation. Finalist for the Lucas T. Vanderhost Merit Scholarship. And the smartest person I know. Little bit of a weirdo. Alright, so, his father's this legendary character, Heyward. Anything you wanted on the island, Heyward could get it for you. Now, I'm not sure Heyward knew what to make of his oddball son, but it didn't matter. He was a Pogue, just like the rest of us.

"That's Briar, head cheerleader of Kook Academy, comes with a warning label. Better not make her unhappy, because she's never unhappy alone. We haven't really hung out much. She's Kie's girl. Moved here a couple years ago because of some fucked up thing with her dad. If not for Kie, she wouldn't be out here slummin' with us this summer. I think she thinks we're beneath her—everything's beneath her. Honestly? No one's brave enough to ask."

✷

Briar has a forehead scar from the swimming pool, from when Topper slammed her into the dive board that one summer and she swore she saw God in the red marbling the aquamarine. Seven years old and a summer of thunderstorms and glittering heat in the Outer Banks. She covers up acne and bruises earned from stunting with the cheer team with concealer but this, she leaves out as a warning. Briar has a forehead scar from the swimming pool, God's promise, and, like Cain, she's always needed a shovel to love her brother.

Half-brother. Half, as in, they've both got their father's insidious blood, the type to bite off more than they can chew, which is to say that there is a vicious hunger feeding off that biblical rage inside her and a nasty scar in the shape of her teeth where she got him back. She always gets him back. There is no world in which Briar Thornton does not come out on top. It's in her blood. To devour, to divine, to destroy. Diabolical as her father, vindictive as her mother. A teenage monstrosity.

Which is to say that Briar understands the language of pain—it's all she knows. That father-shaped hole in her childhood home isn't just a flaw in the drywall. It's hole, as in, vacuous, as in, hungry, as in, Briar has tried to fill that space her entire life, but no matter what she feeds it, it will never be sated. The world could be stripped barren, all the rivers sucked dry, her knees bruised and her hands bloodied, she could scream and cry and beg and beg and beg, and it would still gape at her from the edge of her rotten heart, a singularity haunting by absence.

Which is to say she knows appetite, too. A year into her high school career, Briar dethrones the former top girl of the cheer squad. In three weeks, she eats the captain alive, and keeps the others in her pocket, picks her teeth clean with the bones.

Divide and conquer, as her father says.

Even so, Briar Thornton is tired of people. Tired of the pullet-pawn JV cheerleaders on her new squad. Of the nothing-nobodies constantly gawking at her in the hallways of her shiny, cushy, private school. Tired of the people of Figure Eight and their pageantry. Tired of her vengeful mother, who lives in a drug-addled haze, microdosing on opioids and hatred, who moved them from their old Victorian in San Francisco to North Carolina in the middle of the night just so Paul Thornton would not forget the woman and the child he abandoned. Tired of her fickle father, of staring at his house across the street, of his refusal to see her, of being forced to watch his other family through the glass and choking down her burning jealousy. Tired of her gilded half-brother and his inane peacocking, of the girls fawning over his All-American grin, self-anointed King of Kildare Island in his pure linens, better and brighter and more worthy than you could ever be, you sad weak girl.

At least three times in the day, Briar considers killing herself because she is so fucking bored. But there's also Kie. There is Kie, in all her feral glory, to get high with in the girl's bathroom, who'd seized her hand and sent them running through the mangroves, shrieking and splashing around with the mudskippers. In the morning, Briar meets Kie at the beach to understand surfing. In turn, Briar teaches Kie how to do a back-handspring in the sand and the first rule in the book for every cheerleader: don't take your eyes off your girl.

Come summer, like every summer since moving here, Briar is almost sad to leave the Outer Banks, because at All-Star cheer camp, there is California sun, and there is nothing but stunt and tumble, but there's no Kie.

Until Stacy M. falls from the top of the pyramid, scalps her ponytail clean off. Briar can neither confirm nor deny her involvement. But just like that, six days into cheer camp, Briar is shuttled back to Figure Eight and she feels nothing at all.

But there is Kie, this time. And Briar's never spent a summer with Kie and her weird friends before, which could be infinitesimally less boring than most outcomes. And while she can't stand any of them or spare any patience for their odd vernacular, there are the small things worth hanging onto, like torturing JJ and smoking up with Pope and breaking-and-entering with John B.

✷

Marlo Kelly as
BRIAR THORNTON

✷

SOUNDTRACK.
hurricane warnings

✷

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

don't look at me like that. 🔫

yes there's a funny little love triangle going on here between briar, kie and jj, but because they're all teenagers it's both so so so deadly but also so so so unserious. anyway. briar is crazy in love with kie, and yet... kie will always choose someone else (as far as briar knows for now) but she will always belong to briar, she will always come home to her... and jj? well he's just there, because otherwise they would never take their eyes off each other, because otherwise they'll keep destroying each other over and over. anyway their relationship is essentially 2 girls + the guy they torture, with more romantic overtones.

briar's eventual bond with the group is something so special to me. she refuses to identify as a kook or a pogue or a touron — she's not even from kildare island. she's a fourth, secret thing. untouchable and untouched. if you're wondering what she is, she's what john b calls Head-Cunt-In-Charge.

ALSO ONE VERY IMPORTANT THING!!! you'll have noticed i changed the introductions. at least for kie—where John B's lines were: "I'm not really sure how her parents feel about us. I guess we all sort of have a thing for her." I hated that, so i changed it. kie's just one of them. a bestie. and sure there's still the kissing stuff but it's all very confused, with none of the romantic overtones. just a curiosity—if there's one person in the world they trust, if they had to pick someone to marry, it could be kie. but at the end of the day, she's a good friend. WHY CAN'T SHOWS UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF PLATONIC FRIENDSHIPS. WHY. WHY CAN'T A GIRL EVER BE JUST FRIENDS WITH A GUY WITHOUT THEM MAKING IT WEIRD.

—

TRIGGER WARNINGS: suicidal ideation, self harm, graphic violence.

✷

© TARYN, 2024