Song of the Chapter: Why iii Love The Moon by Phony Ppl
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The Boneyard was a one-of-a kind place on the island. When just about everywhere else was as separated as the wealth gap of the islanders, this stretch of driftwood laden beach was open to all-- Kooks and Pogues, alike. Tourists, without fail, found their way to every party that was held, drawn like moths to a flame. Beer was passed around all night long and hopefully, the party-goers could get through the night without too many drunken fights.
The sun was laying on the horizon, where heaven touched earth and gave promise to a night sky full of stars. A golden hue drenched the beach, the docile waves glimmering and reflecting the dying sun's last rays. Grasses rustled and the palm trees swayed in the summer breeze. Remi held a package of solo-cups in one hand and the bottle of Jameson for her and her friends in her other, skipping along the sand covered beach. She followed alongside Kiara, the girl's curls and the pins on her backpack bobbing as she walked, laughing at her cheerful friend.
Hopping over a sun-dried piece of driftwood that washed up on the beach ages ago, Remi walked further, stopping roughly in the center of the entire beach. A time-worn tree jutted out from a small patch of grass, it's branches lightened in the years of direct sunlight. John B and JJ dropped the keg into the sand, burying it only slightly to keep it cool. With the package of cups under her arm, Remi unscrewed the cap off the bottle of Jameson. She lifted it to her lips, taking a small gulp. The honey-colored liquid bit at the back of her throat, warming her chest as it traveled down smoothly.
"Wow, no face. Wait, I forgot, you're Irish." JJ poked fun at how unfazed the girl was at drinking straight whiskey, not scrunching her face like most do.
"Ha. Ha." She deadpanned, not bothering to explain that she was of Irish-descent and not literally from Ireland. She was always told that some ancestor had settled in the Charleston area sometime in the 1700's, so she was quite far removed from the faraway island. She passed the bottle to the blonde, JJ taking a swig before handing it off to Pope who stared down at the glass bottle like it would bite him.
As she tore the package of cups open, she watched Kie smoothly toss the beer tap to JJ. He pressed it into the keg, purposely testing the flow of the nozzle right onto John B. They laughed as beer shot at the boy's face, John B taking over with pouring beers. Kiara lifted her cup in a thanks to John B after he poured her's.
"Here you go m'lady." He pulled a terrible British accent, holding out a cup for Remi.
"Why, thank you, good sir." The girl lifted the ends of an imaginary dress, curtsying to him before plucking the cup from his hands, leaving him smiling with his eyes lingering on her.
As soon as the contents of the cup touched her tongue, she knew it would be a good night. The cheap beer swirled in her stomach, and she hid her shoes away in the brush so they wouldn't get stolen. Sitting on a driftwood log beside Kiara, the two girls carry on conversation as islanders begin showing up. The teenagers of the island looked like true children of the summer. Most had tanned or deeper-toned skin, evidence of their countless days spent under the sun. As the beach began filling up with countless teenagers littering the small expanse of the Boneyard, the girls found themselves talking to boys who sat on either side of them on the driftwood. Remi could hear Kiara talking about zodiac signs with a boy who appeared to be only half-listening. He was caught in a trance by the enchanting Kiara Carrera.
"Their third album was their peak! You had all five members and they had evolved into authenticity." Remi spoke, her hands waving as she spoke.
The sun had set beyond the horizon now, a deep orange and bright pink were cast as far as the eye could see. She was talking to a boy named Liam Sandino, a kook she hadn't crossed paths with since elementary school.
She had a crush on him back then.
When she mentioned he shared a name with Liam Payne of One Direction, the conversation snowballed into a mostly one-sided discussion about the band.
"Nah, I never listened to them, they were shit." He made a displeased face. The sunset was reflected in Liam's blonde hair, highlights appearing a pinkish-orange.
Remi scoffed, her track of mind moving a-hundred-miles-a-minute. Her face was hot from the alcohol and she absentmindedly dug her toes into the sand. Some kook had brought an expensive speaker, hooking their phone up to it and booming music throughout the now crowded beach.
"You just don't want to admit it." Remi joked playfully with the boy, loudly over the chatter of the beach. Though she was joking, she fully believed that many things were ridiculed solely for the reason that little girls enjoyed them.
"No, they just sucked." The boy disregarded what Remi said, looking around as if what he was about to say next would be shared between just them. "Hey look, I can tell where this thing is going to go. My parents are out of town for the weekend, we can go back to my place and get to it." Liam said, no emotion in his voice, just a vain attempt at appearing attractive.
"No?" She posed it as more of a question.
"Sure, yeah. I mean I spend the past half hour of my life-, but sure. I mean if we're constantly rejected, no wonder we get so angry when it happens, yet again." He shrugs.
Perhaps its because of the alcohol, but Remi's unable to help the way her face twists into a confused type of amusement, feeling like she's been hit with verbal whiplash. Her eyes squint and her brows lift slightly in annoyance as she watches the boy take a sip of his drink as if he didn't just speak something so offensive. Did he believe that he was entitled to something in return for basic human decency?
Red flags raised and waved wildly in her mind.
Not wanting to sour her night with shouting at someone like him, she decided to not let her anger get the best of her. It wasn't her job to spend her time educating others out of their ignorance.
"And this is why I don't date." She patted his back, letting her hand clap against him with force, lips pursed. Her eyes drifted to the empty cup in her hand. "I'm gonna get a refill." She muttered before standing up and hurrying away.
Remi weaved through the crowd, ignoring the few elbows that jabbed her. Some party-goers sway with their friends to the song that she didn't recognize, while others walked along the sandy beach as if it were the deck of a boat caught in a storm. It was as if they didn't quite anticipate their foot meeting the ground, the alcohol hitting them harder than others. Expensive cologne invaded her sense of smell as she passed a group of kooks. The redhead's mood lightened as soon as her eyes landed on friends.
John B leaned on a tree branch, a pretty tourist girl perched atop it as they seemingly flirted. Her friend, Lilah, stood next to JJ, the two carrying on friendly conversation as the boy manned the keg, filling her cup. A smile reached Remi's face when she noticed the braid she had weaved the girl's blonde hair into earlier that day.
It was the little things that brightened up her spirits.
Well-- that and alcohol.
While she was always one who appreciated the beauty around her, having alcohol in her system heightened that tendency. She took notice of the way the wind caught JJ's tousled blonde hair and the dimple that popped onto his cheek as he smiled at something Lilah said. He looked so strong as his backpack hung from his broad shoulders. He looked like he was right in his element, the calm ocean rolling in small waves behind him and beer in his cup. She had always wondered how he turned out the way he did, despite how cold his father, Luke, seemed.
Lilah smiled at Remi as she stopped beside the boy, holding her cup out.
"What is this, your sixth refill?" He spoke up first, taking her cup nonetheless. She'd always be safe if he was there-- not a soul would even think about touching her. At the voice of her friend, the stress and anger instantly lifted from her shoulder, carried away in the light breeze that danced on the island.
Lilah bent down, grabbing the half-empty bottle of Jameson and handing it to Remi. The little bottle was like a secret amongst her and her friends, an inside joke that the rest of the party was oblivious to.
"Oh, I've had practice, don't worry." She jokes, not nearly as inebriated as others are. She takes a generous sip from the whiskey, JJ watching in quiet awe the whole time. Her eyes skip over to some kooks stumbling over washed up driftwood, getting sand in their fancy boat shoes. She, JJ and Lilah all snicker at the sight.
"I saw you talking to Sandino." JJ blurts, spraying beer from the keg into her cup, letting the foam drip out onto the sand. His voice is accusatory, confusing Remi for just a moment but she assumes she heard something that wasn't there.
"Yeah, how'd that go?" Lilah was eager to hear about the boy, almost bouncing in place. She was a hopeless romantic, always the type to enjoy rom-coms and ask older couples how they met.
From behind Remi, Kiara squeezed quickly through the crowd, having noticed how her friend bailed from her conversation. She squeezed her way past the drunken crowd of teenagers, finally coming out the other end, right at her friends who surrounded the keg and she let out a breath. JJ glanced up at the new arrival, handing Remi's cup over to her.
"Hey, why'd you leave?" She asked concerned for her friend, stepping into the group.
"Pretty sure he's an incel or something." Remi only half-joked to the group, a hint of an uncomfortable smile as she brought the cup up to her lips. Her eyes met JJ's for a moment as she glanced above her cup.
"Oh, well, yeah. That's fair." Kie glances back in the direction of Liam Sandino and the boy she left behind. Both girls shared a look, coming to the shared conclusion that they weren't planning on sitting back down with the boys.
"Probably good you left then." Lilah agreed, a look of disgust on her kind face.
"Yeah, I thought he was normal. It went downhill when he shit-talked One Direction." She spoke with dejection, let down. Why did almost every sweet boy from her childhood have to grow up into an awful version of themselves?
"I love One Direction." JJ admitted, gazing out into the crowd, unphased.
At his admittance, all three girls snapped their heads to him in unison. "What?" Lilah blurted in confusion, speaking what was on the girls' minds.
"Oh yeah, I liked Niall the best. I have a thing for the Irish." He said, shrugging as if were no big deal. Little did he know that all three of the girls had followed the band closely. Did he not remember the entire week where nothing Kie and Remi talked about was nothing but Zayn leaving the group?
"Dude! Why have we not talked about this?" Kie exclaimed.
"Wait, I'm Irish!" Remi blurted.
"Why do you think I like the Irish then." JJ joked, wiggling his brows at the girl suggestively, not mentioning that they had a nearly exact conversation at the start of the party.
Her mind moving so fast, Remi didn't even clock what the boy said to her-- even if Kiara and Lilah did, the girls sharing a glance with John B. "Diasporas are so cool. We're like- exiled from our-our countries and keep culture, even on pirate ships and shit-" Remi blurted out, the effects of the whiskey and beer finally hitting her system. She recalled the odd documents and records she had found stored away in her father's office growing up. He had some weird fascination with Anne Bonny and various other pirates, which turned out to aid her in a school project at the time.
The friends knew that Remi's vocabulary grew ten-fold whenever she drank. "Maybe I'll take that back." Lilah giggled, taking hold of the Jameson bottle only to take a small sip herself.
Kiara stepped towards John B, who smiled up at the tourist girl. She looked past the tree he and the girl leaned against, and at a figure on the shoreline. "What is she doing here?" Kie spoke.
Remi followed her friend's line of sight, her eyes landing on none other than Sarah Cameron, kook princess. She had climbed a washed up navigational buoy, sitting at the top and gazing out at the beach. The breeze danced through her hair and caught the skirt of her floral dress as it passed. All at once, memories of staying up at sleepovers and talking until the morning, endless summer days playing tag, sneaking into R rated movies, dancing in each other's rooms, watching the stars, confiding in one another-- all the memories hit her at once like a freight train coming at full speed.
She wondered if Sarah Cameron ever missed the friendship like she did.
A longing feeling hit Remi right in her heart, despite the years that have passed. She watched as Sarah's arm extended, the girl pointing at something in the distance with a smile on her plump lips, lighting up the world around her. Remi had always admired just how free and observant Sarah was, always finding something beautiful in her surroundings to get her through the day-- it was something she had then learned to love about herself by recognizing the trait in her old friend.
Sarah Cameron had always been so blissfully unaware of her own beauty, causing other kooks and pogues alike to be jealous and spiteful towards the girl, but Remi knew better. She knew that Sarah Cameron's true beauty was her kind and caring heart, it was an inner ray of sunshine that made her look as if she were glowing. She wanted to believe that Sarah still had that inner beauty, even after all these years apart-- that she had guarded it as a defense mechanism against the harsh world around her. That her kindness was still within her and wasn't snuffed out by the likes of Topper Thorton.
She watched as the kook boy coaxed Sarah off of the buoy, spinning her in his arms as he set her down. Kiara stormed off, wanting as far away from the girl as possible. Spinning back to JJ and Lilah, Remi brought her cups to her lips, downing the contents. She didn't want to think about her lost friendship any longer.
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A/N: I'm going back and editing this chapter and I've switched around some dialogue and added a few details that will come into play in the future, such as PIRATE QUEEN ANNE BONNY!! Seriously she's the coolest ever so if you wanna fall down a research rabbit hole, look her up.