Chapter Text
Kiara Carrera has always been the piece that didn’t fit.
Her parents want her to swing full kook, want her to have opportunities and money and financial stability, and like, that’s great, that’s fine. Right. It is.
But Kiara, she just doesn’t want to be alone.
And she is, she always is, one foot in each world, pulled every direction but belonging to none of them.
She’s alone until that fateful day in third grade—her last year in the pogue school, according to her mom. Next year she'll be stuck with the rich kids.
It's a Thursday, and she’s bored, bored out of her damn mind, sitting on a playground bench, letting this girl braid her hair, this girl who isn’t really a friend.
The girl—Maggie, maybe?—has a rich mom and she’ll be going to the kook school next year, and she’s white, and her mom is always saying stuff about Kiara’s curly hair that’s just a little weird, and there’s maybe been a comment about mixed kids being the cutest, and Kiara isn’t sure how she feels about this girl or her weird white mom, but hey.
Kiara is alone.
So she lets this girl play with her hair.
And then there’s some yelling from the other side of the playground, and three boys come sprinting past, running from kids a head taller than them.
There’s a boy at the front, with wild brown hair curling over his forehead and laughter in his brown eyes, and he’s whooping with joy.
Kiara sits up a little straighter.
Maggie wrinkles her nose in disgust. “I know those boys,” she says. “My mom says they’re trash.”
Kiara pulls her hair out of Maggie’s grip. “It’s not nice to call people trash,” she says.
She’s already all fire and ferocity when people aren’t kind—to turtles, to whales, to boys on the playground who look like they are probably…kind.
The second boy has a wild mop of blond hair, a bruise ringing his eye, and a reckless smile on his face.
Kiara thinks he’s probably not scared of anything. She wonders how that feels.
And last, looking back over his shoulder with every step, is a boy with black hair and soft brown eyes and he is telling the other two to be careful, and Kiara thinks it must be so nice, to have someone who cares if you’re careful.
They pull up short in front of Kiara and Maggie, sun beating down on their heads.
The boy with the brown hair and the scraped knee grins at them. “Sup,” he says cheerfully.
“We gotta run,” the dark-haired boy says, stumbling into the blond one.
“They’ve got us,” the blond one says. He’s still grinning, even though yea, he’s probably scared.
Impulsively, Kiara stands. “Hey,” she says. “I know a way out of the playground.”
There’s a little gap in the fence at the back of the playground, and on the loneliest days Kiara sneaks out and sits back there and draws. Sits back there and thinks about becoming a turtle, or slipping right into the sea with them and swimming away because maybe then she would feel like she was somewhere she belonged.
The blond boy beams at her.
And then, for the first time but not the last, Kiara takes off running with three wild boys who run as if they would follow her anywhere.
Behind her, Maggie yells something about trash and telling on you but the wind is loud in Kiara’s ear and her feet pound the earth of the playground and the boys next to her are yelling and laughing and they are together.
Together is something new for Kiara.
She slips out of the fence and pulls the boys with her into the groundskeeper’s shed, and the four of them crouch there together as the older boys run past, looking for them in the trees.
They huddle there together, trying to catch their breath, trying not to giggle or make any noise that will get them caught.
The brown-haired boy slumps against the wall, and then turns to grin at her. “Hey,” he says. “I’m John B. These are my friends.”
Kiara waves shyly, tugging at her half-braided hair with one hand. “I’m Kiara,” she says. I’m alone.
That’s the part she doesn’t say, because she doesn’t have any friends to introduce.
“Pope.” The black-haired boy with worried eyes looks over at her, his face clearing a little.
He’s kind, she decides. She likes the way he softens when he looks at his friends. Wonders what it would be like if someone looked at her like she was someone important. He wouldn’t ever look at someone and say they were trash, like Maggie learned from her mom.
The blond-haired, wild kid with the black eye slings an arm across her shoulders like he’s known her for ages. “I’m JJ,” he says. “We’re pogues. Are you?”
“Yes,” she says.
It’s the first confident thing she’s said in third grade, she thinks. She isn’t as brave this year as she wishes she was, but hey. She just did something brave. Went running away with three boys. Broke into the groundskeeper shed to keep them safe.
It’s not the last time she’ll break the rules for them, though she doesn’t know it yet. Not the last time she’ll risk something, or everything. Not the last time she’ll do anything to keep them safe.
And not the last time JJ will sling an arm over her shoulders and make her feel like she belongs with them.
She giggles a little into her hand. “What did you do to the fifth graders?”
John B snickers and elbows JJ. “More like what didn’t we do to them?” he says, and the two boys collapse into each other, laughing.
Pope sighs heavily.
He exchanges a look with Kiara, a can you believe those two? sort of look, like they do this often. Like they’re all friends, and it’s so familiar that Kiara scoots a little closer to all of them, her knee knocking against Pope’s.
“I think this means we’re friends now,” she says. She makes her voice sound brave, firm the way she gets only when she talks about the sea turtle habitats that are being destroyed, or about the color purple.
Pope smiles, and his whole face changes. “Yea,” he says. “Friends.”
“Yo, Kie,” JJ calls. He’s crouched at the door, peeping through the crack to see if the older boys are gone. “Wanna ditch with us today?”
“I can’t ditch,” Pope says, anxiety back immediately. “We have a spelling test this afternoon!”
“That seems like a reason we should definitely ditch,” John B says brightly. “Kie, what do you think?”
Kie.
Her parents don’t like when people shorten her name. No one has ever given her a nickname before, or slung an arm over her shoulders and laughed, or looked at her like they see her. But Kie. Kie sounds right.
“We can miss one spelling test,” she says. “Right? I bet they’ll let us make it up tomorrow.”
“They definitely won’t let me make it up tomorrow,” JJ says cheerfully. “But they’ll let you and Pope. Maybe even John B, because he looks at them with those big sad brown eyes.”
John B shoves him, and then they’re rolling on the floor, laughing and thumping across the hardwood.
Pope gives Kie another one of those looks.
JJ pops up a moment later, beaming at her. He looks like sunshine. Sunshine in his hair and his skin and his eyes. There’s something in his eyes behind it that Kie knows, some kind of sadness that makes her own chest ache because she understands.
JJ was alone, too, before he had all of them. She can tell.
John B is smiling at her too, smiling with a gap because his grownup tooth has been too slow to grow in. “I like you,” he says. “You’re definitely a pogue.”
That settles it.
They take off running when the coast is clear, fast and feral and furiously happy beneath the beating sun, run until they’ve reached the beach, their feet pounding and their breath coming fast and nothing but the ocean and each other before them.
And Kie feels a little less alone.