CHAPTER ONE.
SHINGLES — LIKE THE roof tiles, not the disease — are actually very interestingly textured, Piper Maybank was realizing as she laid across the ridge of an ocean-front house being constructed, her waist parallel to the ridge, so her back laid against one side and her legs against the other. One of her hands was blocking the sun from her eyes so she could watch her friend John B stand with one foot on the edge of the roof's ridge, one foot dangling off like the adrenaline junkie he was, while she allowed her fingers on her other hand to dance around the shingles beside her, tracing the edges of them.
"That's what, a three-story fall to the deck?" Pope asked John B from the balcony a few feet down, his feet on solid ground. "I give you about a one-in-three chance of survival."
John B hummed and stuck the index finger of his hand holding a can of beer into his mouth before pointing it to the sky, where the sun was preparing to set, infusing the clouds above them with hues of oranges and yellows. "Should I do it?"
Piper tilted her head back until her shoulders lifted off the side of the roof, her blonde hair piling around her face as she made eye contact with her brother who had glanced at the roof from his perch amongst the scaffolding, a car of beer in his own hand, and red baseball cap sitting on his head backward.
"Yeah, you should jump," Pope said, aiming a power drill the construction workers left on the balcony at John B and pressing the button, causing the drill bit to spin. "I'll shoot you on the way down."
"Oh, you'll shoot me?"
Piper pushed herself up onto her elbows, "Be careful, John B, I'm in the perfect position to push you." He turned his head to look at Piper with an accusatory glance over his shoulder as she squinted her eyes and pointed finger guns at him in jest.
"You're too much of a softie for murder, Peter-Piper."
"Is that a challenge, Routledge?"
Kie walked out of the house and onto the deck just then, complaining exasperatedly about rich people, "They're gonna have Japanese toilets with towel warmers."
To understand Kie, you have to understand environmental awareness. The day she learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, she called Piper from her fancy boarding school on the mainland during lunch to rant about it for an hour.
"Of course, they are," JJ said, "Why wouldn't they?"
"This used to be a turtle habitat, but who cares about the turtles, I guess?" Kie planted herself next to Pope on the deck, squinting into the sun as she stared at John B and Piper's precarious positions, "Can you please not kill yourselves?"
Piper dropped her elbows and looked upside down at Kie as she kicked her leg off the roof and sent her flip-flop sailing towards JJ and smacking him in the side of the head — "Jesus, Pipe" — as he told John B, "Don't spill that beer. I'm not giving you another one."
Piper smiled and blew air toward John B, though, as if on cue, a gust of wind shot toward them, knocking him off his balance and causing him to drop his beer. "Woah, oh shit!"
JJ tossed his hands in the air, "Of course you did. Like right when I said not to."
John B groaned and held his hands out longingly to his spilled beer that was painting the deck a darker shade of brown.
"Pst," Piper whispered, pushing her can of beer along the ridge to John B who turned around, bent down, and picked it up happily.
Pope, who wandered toward the railing of the deck, turned back suddenly and anxiously, "Hey, uh security's here," and tapping the four-by-four post said, "Let's wrap it up."
"Boys are early today," John B said, holding onto Piper's hand as she kicked her legs over her head and somersaulted down the side of the roof onto the scaffolding while he slid down beside her. Piper slid her bare foot back into her kicked sandal whilst John B drank the rest of Piper's beer in one gulp.
The two of them swung down the green scaffolding railing as JJ taunted the security guard that, over the course of June and halfway through July, they had learned was named Gary. They called him as such with only loving affection, Piper would assure you. Pope, JJ, and Kie lead the group of five through the screen door and into the heart of the unfinished and unfurnished house, chasing each other as Gary and the other ADT security guards chased them. The five teens laughed openly as air surged in their lungs, burning through their chests. They grabbed edges of walls so they could slide through doorways, and they took the stairs two, three, four steps at a time. Piper had to grab Pope's elbow twice to keep him from missing one too many and falling on his face.
On the ground floor of the house, they slipped through the empty spaces between concrete beams and into the side of the backyard, salty air and gusts of wind working against them as they ran towards the fence. Gary shouted something, but Piper's heartbeat was in her ears and in her dimpled smile; she couldn't hear a thing except her own laughter, the laughter of her brother, and the laughter of her friends.
Piper jumped towards the fence after JJ and Pope climbed over it, her feet catching one of the horizontal support beams, so she could swing her foot over and land on the ground on the other side. She lost one of her flip-flops somewhere in the climb, but she shouldn't have worn sandals to a construction site, anyway, and it had been a conscious choice she made knowing she might lose one. When she regained her balance from pitching herself over the fence, she saw Pope, stomach down on the grass, groaning.
Piper grabbed one of his elbows, while JJ grabbed the other, and they pulled him up, not waiting for him to catch the air that had been knocked out of his lungs as they started their run towards John B's beat-up Volkswagen van decorated with stickers that was parked on the curb.
"Come 'ere ya' little pricks!" Gary shouted from the other side of the fence as the three teens jumped into the open door of the van where Kie sat waiting and John B's foot was hovering anxiously over the gas pedal and his hand was laying on the horn.
Just as Piper climbed through the space between the seats and fell backward into the passenger's seat, John B took off, not waiting for Kie to shut the sliding door in the back.
Gary, the poor guy who was really just trying to do his job started running after the VW van which was quickly picking up its pace. Pope managed through a laugh to say, "Check out Gary, gunnin' for a raise."
John B and Piper bumped the sides of their hands together while snapping as Piper, still sitting backward in her seat watched Gary chase them through the rear windshield and John B watched through the rearview mirror.
"Come on, Gary!" JJ taunted, sticking his head out of the open sliding door. He grabbed an empty beer can and told John B to slow down as Gary rounded the van and started running to the side of them.
Kie looked at Piper pointedly, "C'mon, you're gonna give him a heart attack." To which Piper shrugged her shoulders and grinned, watching JJ grip onto the inside wall of the van, waving the beer can in front of Gary and teasing him like a dog.
"You can do it," JJ said as he tossed the beer can toward Gary who caught it with a frown. "There you go! They don't pay you enough, bro."
Pope and Piper bumped their fists, laughter creating sparkles of light in their eyes as Kie grabbed JJ's t-shirt and pulled him back into the van, "JJ, stop. Stop."
"Oh, come on. That sort of initiative is just begging to be punished."
"Yeah, it is," Piper said as she reached forward to smack JJ lightly on the head with a grin before she swiveled by her waist in the cracked leather passenger's seat. A sort of intimate, platonic silence overcame the group of five as laughter, ripe and expended, mixed with the humid air and the oranges of the setting sun saturated the clouds, casting a glow of comfort across the island. Piper could hear Pope and JJ jostle around the backseat and could feel Kie rolling her eyes and smiling fondly at the friends she had. It was a familiar feeling for Piper—rue appreciation and gratitude for her friends. She let her head fall against the headrest as her eyes trailed across Figure Eight. At peace. Until she caught sight of a large, southern-style mansion around the corner—white paneling, beams, dark green decorative shutters, a split staircase on the outside. She mumbled expletives—she thought them, but they definitely came out of her mouth as well—, tapped her knuckles on the metal door and said, "Hey, JB, drop me off at the Palace, por favor."
JJ's head popped up out of a headlock Pope had put him in. He leaned forward and stuck his face between the headrests, "You were there yesterday, though."
She had, in fact, been there yesterday to go over basic SAT math strategies with Willa Abernathy. It wasn't as exhausting and mind-numbing as Piper likes to lead people, including herself, to believe. Willa's not as bad as her older sister, Edith. Edith makes Piper's shit-giving reflex spin out of control, and all of a sudden all Piper is doing is giving Edith shit, and for some reason beyond Piper, it's her fault.
"Yeah, and I'll probably be there tomorrow. Inez wants to throw the yacht party before the storm rolls in, something about Midsummers and Chrysanthe-dendrons or—whatever," Piper waved her hand dismissively, but she smiled apologetically at her younger brother when she looked over her shoulder to see him looking down at her, disappointed.
"Don't go fallin' in love with Kook princesses, Peter-Piper," John B said as he came to a stop outside the large mansion. It was the second-largest one on the island, just after the mansion on what used to be Tannyhill Plantation. Technically, the whole island used to be Tannyhill property. Until the Abernathys came buying up land; they always had the decency to keep the mansion itself in the Tannyhill family. Until the Camerons came along. At least, that's what Harry and Inez Abernathy, owners of the second-largest mansion on the island—eloquently nicknamed the Palace by the Pogues—, Piper's employers, and the heads of the longest standing dynasty in the Outer Banks, say.
Piper gasped, feigning offense, "I would never!"
Pope's head popped up next to JJ's, "Yeah, and how does denial taste?"
Piper licked the tip of her index finger and stuck it in the air, mock-pondering for a moment as she toppled out of the van and stepped backward, "Delicious!"
Piper could hear her friends groan at her and toss back a variety of jibes. But, before John B could pull in the door and leave Piper on the driveway of the Palace, Piper said, "Y'know, when I get a sugar momma, and y'all don't, you'll wish you were nicer to me."
JJ's voice came through the open car window as John B sped off, but it was muffled with the wind, so JJ stuck his hand out the window and raised his middle finger at Piper. She casually returned the gesture as though she were waving goodbye until the van was so far down the road, it was a small, orange, and brown blip on the horizon.
She dropped her hand back to her side and sighed as she stepped in a circle and walked up the driveway towards the Palace. The buzz of cicadas and air conditioning surrounded Piper until Inez Abernathy's voice cut through from where she was speaking with a delivery guy on the bottom step of the right staircase. She had a clipboard held in one hand against her hip and the thumb and index finger of her other hand was pinching the bridge of her nose. Her mouth was in a tight line when Piper reached them.
"Sweet mercy," Inez said in her thick, southern accent when Piper greeted them. Inez was originally from New Orleans and met Harry in college. She took her nose-pinching hand and rested it on Piper's shoulder in a matronly sort of way. Inez was particularly maternal with all children—even seventeen-year-old shit-giving ones like Piper. "Piper, you are a sight for sore eyes."
Piper thought Inez and her phrases were weird. Especially because Inez saw Piper the day before, but Piper smiled and thanked her. Inez gave Piper a once over, "Dear, you're only wearing one sandal?"
Piper looked down. Her missing flip-flop was still missing. Now that it was brought to her attention, the blacktop underneath her foot was burning hot. She looked up and nodded, "Yes. Yeah, I am, Ma'am."
"Why?"
"Decrease my carbon footprint?" Piper tried.
Inez tilted her head slightly like she was wondering if Piper was sound of mind enough to be tutoring her daughter. "Y'know, I don't think carbon footprint refers to your literal footprint, but, okay."
Piper shrugged semi-apologetically. Inez inhaled sharply and turned back to the delivery guy. She grabbed the pen tied to the clipboard with a string of yarn, signed something, and shoved it back at the delivery guy with a disgruntled huff. Inez didn't wait for the delivery guy to start the trek back down the driveway before gesturing to Piper to follow her up the staircase toward the front door of the house. Every time Piper was at the Palace she's reminded of a particular pro of being a Pogue—when she was a kid she didn't have to climb up ridiculous staircases to get candy on Halloween.
"You, my dear, are a gift from God," Inez started. (Piper was never sure how to respond whenever Inez said things like that. The Abernathys weren't all that religious in the first place, they were, as Piper's father put it, 'Holiday Christians,' but Inez loved her religiously charged compliments.) "Everything is going down the drain, it's awful. I wanted midnight, under the stars but the storm's comin' in faster than we thought. It'll be here by next nightfall, so I've sent everyone new invitations, it'll be tonight, and everything is frazzled."
Piper nodded sympathetically. She didn't really have much sympathy for the issue, but it's best to feign it when Inez got like this.
"And Edith doesn't want to come, and Willa is in a tizzy about her dress. Eck." Inez stopped herself when she got to the front door. She looked at Piper with all her undivided attention. "I'm sorry to be unloadin' all this on you, dear. I mean you show up on my step with only one shoe, and—"
"Ma'am, I was just in a rush, I do have other shoes."
Inez paused. "Well, of course, you do." She waved a thin, knobbly hand, dismissive. "Anyway, the point. The point is, could you make sure the girls are ready and get something more appropriate from Edith to wear, then go out to the dock? Harry'll have instructions for you for the night."
Piper was nodding along if only to show Inez she was paying attention. "Wait—uh, Edith?"
Inez looked at Piper sympathetically now, "I know you two don't really get along all too well, but I can't have you in sweaty denim shorts and your brother's cut-up Marina shirt. It's great advertising, dear, but this is a formal event. Edith will have something for you, don't worry."
They walked inside the large mansion and a gust of air conditioning almost knocked Piper flat on her back. Being rich is ridiculous. Inez patted Piper's back and nodded to the staircase in the foyer, "Up you go, dear."
So Piper walked—trudged—up her second flight of marble stairs. She walked through the familiar hallway—Willa insisted her tutoring sessions take place in her room, she hates the hubbub of her family's kitchen because people are always there for a drink or an argument—until she found herself leaning against the doorway of Willa's bedroom. It was easier to find than normal because the amalgam of really loud The 1975 music and exasperated groans that filled the upstairs corridor was coming from Willa's room. The normally bare laminate flooring was covered in piles of clothes. The only bare patches of floor were where Willa was standing in front of her closet and where Edith was perched in a swivel chair in plain clothes, her legs tucked underneath her, and a bowl of pasta—probably zoodles or something else obnoxiously Trader Joe's—in her hands.
"Wow," Piper said slowly. Willa spun in place and Edith glanced at Piper so she could properly glare at her.
"Does it look silly?" Willa asked worriedly, her hands smoothing out the skirt of her dress. It was black, above the knee with thick straps and a string bow tied in the front, a keyhole cutout just underneath.
Piper's eyes widened, "No! You look great. It's just... this room is the size of my house, and you've managed to cover it all in clothes."
"Oh," Willa nodded softly, her eyebrows furrowed a little bit. She turned back around to look in the mirror propped up in the corner next to her.
"Why would you think it looks silly?" Piper asked.
"Because Edith said it did," Willa muttered offhandedly. Piper had to force her eyes to look at Edith. She had exchanged her bowl of pasta for the can of lime-flavored La Croix that had been sitting on Willa's desk. It was ridiculous, Edith couldn't even drink commoner water.
"Edith's just an ass."
Edith opened her mouth to say something but Willa beat her to the punch, "Yeah, but it does look weird on me. It'll look better on you, hold on." Willa bent her knees and leaped toward her bed. She made it, stepped across it, and jumped down on the other side onto a pile of what Piper thinks are bikini tops. Willa ran through the heaps of clothes into the bathroom connecting to her bedroom, and through to Edith's bedroom on the other side.
The moment she was gone Edith said, "Good god." If there's one compliment Piper could give Edith, it's that her voice is ridiculously melodic. Piper hates it. "You know, I am exhaustively civil every time we speak, but is it just too hard for you to keep your own mouth in check?"
"I dunno, princess. Maybe if you didn't eat, like, zucchini noodles and drank regular peasant water instead of literal battery acid, my asshole reflex wouldn't spiral."
Edith's jaw tightened, and Piper smirked. She might hate Edith from her curly brown hair to the fucking cheese patterned crew socks on her feet, but Piper loved pissing her off. Thankfully for Edith, Willa came back just then in boy shorts and a white cropped tank top, the black dress she was just wearing in one hand and a lavender one in the other.
Willa tossed the black one at Piper who held it up in front of her for a second until Willa said, "Mom told us you would need something to wear."
Piper nodded silently and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her when Willa started changing into the lavender dress. Edith said, her voice more even than it had been before, "You can change in the bathroom if you want."
Piper looked at Edith. It was a gallant offer though she didn't really understand it. It wasn't like Edith and Willa had never seen Piper in a bikini before, but there was something about Edith's face that made Piper want to give her shit, so she said, "What? You don't want to see me half naked?"
"Jesus Christ," Edith looked tense. "It was just an offer."
"Y'all are weird," Willa said from her position as Queen of the Hill of clothes, looking at them through her mirror. Piper ducked her head and stepped through the piles of clothes to the bathroom to change. She put on the dress—it wasn't like Piper disliked dresses, she was just never really presented with the occasion to wear one, nor did she own any to wear—, and she felt out of place. Inez threw lots of parties, specifically lots of yacht parties, but Piper was never expected to show up at any of them. She usually just prepped the boat then left. Piper Maybank didn't get self-conscious, but there she was. Self-conscious.
She put her shorts and the Pelican Marina t-shirt she had been wearing in a ball in the corner of the bathroom—she would change back into them after the party. She looked in the mirror. Did her hair look weird now? It was kind of messy from running, but it always looked kind of messy. Whatever. She stepped back out into Willa's bedroom where Edith had changed positions in her swivel chair, so she was sitting sideways, her legs bent over one arm of the chair, and her back against the other. Willa was fully zipped up in her dress and was now digging through her pile of shoes until she found black sandals with a block heel and threw them behind her for Piper.
"Uh," Piper said, "Can I just wear, like, Chucks?"
"Yup," Willa said, popping the 'p,' and tossing a pair of white socks and white Chuck-Taylors toward Piper. She bent her left knee up and put a sock on and laced up one Chuck, then she did the same on her right. She straightened her back and smoothed out the skirt of the black dress.
"How do I look?" Piper asked.
Willa turned around and tilted her head, "Definitely not silly."
"Yeah," Edith said, her voice tense again, "You look, um, gice. I mean—good. Nice."
Piper grinned at Edith, "Good. Don't try to outshine me, Edith Abernathy. You'll fail miserably, and I will be terribly embarrassed for you."
Edith rolled her eyes impressively. Piper thought about making a joke, but she decided against it and slid out the door to find Harry like Inez said. But, before she made it all the way into the hall and back to the chaos of the Abernathys' pre-party, she remembered what else Inez had said, "Edith, your mom really wants you there, so get dressed. Outshine me only if you must."
Edith studied Piper for a moment, deciding whether or not she should prepare herself for Piper's regularly scheduled shit-giving, but Piper just smiled tightly and left. So, against Edith's better judgment, she dropped her vendetta against the stupid yacht party and got ready with Willa.
✧.*ೃ༄ [ 𝘅. author note ]
are y'all rockin with piper & edith 🥶⁉️
also here are their dresses just because
Willa Edith Piper
vote and comment if you want i just
really like attention
yours,
lindsey