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sun. age 13ish. spin the bottle.
They’ve been to boneyard parties before. They’re not supposed to be, because they’re young, even by boneyard standards, but it’s where JJ drank his first sip of beer at age nine (and immediately spat it back out all over John B, who stank of beer so badly that even Big John couldn’t ignore it when he got home) and where John B kissed a girl for the first time and where they are sneaking in, tonight, with a few other kids from the cut who also want to try beer and kiss girls.
It’s the fall of their eighth grade year, late enough in October that the wind has a bite to it as the sun begins to set, as the driftwood casts long spindly shadows and the stories get weirder and the older kids get higher.
Pope is huddled between JJ and Kie, as usual, as they sit around a bonfire that JJ built; they’re all there with half a dozen other kids from school; kids from the cut, the kind who, like JJ, are mostly raised by wolves. The kind who should have parents to care if they go to parties with much older kids and weed and beer and maybe more intense stuff, but they don’t, they don’t have anyone who says hey slow down, there will be enough life to live later, there will be enough time for this, it’s alright—so they’re all here at thirteen or fourteen, anyway.
John B is on his feet, telling some wildly exaggerated story about his encounter with pirates, which is actually a story JJ made up and John B is passing off as his own, though JJ is just grinning and nodding along.
Pope leans into JJ’s warmth as the sun sets, because even at age thirteen-ish, when JJ is still skinny and wiry, too lean at all the edges because meals aren’t exactly something you can depend on in the Maybank household, even then—JJ seems to soak in all the warmth of the sun and radiate it out at Pope.
John B’s cinematic retelling of the pirate scuffle is interrupted by one of Kildare Middle School’s most feral (a club which JJ is a proud member of), a girl named CeCe with sun-blond hair like JJ’s and a switchblade she stole from—and then used to threaten—a local drug dealer.
“What about spin the bottle?” she asks. She has a joint in her hand, because this is the cut, and Pope shivers a little.
He hasn’t tried it, no matter how many times JJ has held a badly-rolled joint up to his lips.
John B has, because John B will do anything JJ does, because John B is obsessed with JJ.
Kie has also smoked, for basically the opposite reason as John B, which is that Kie is cool. Like, actually cool. Like, probably shouldn’t be hanging out with them cool.
The other kids around the fire immediately agree about spin the bottle, which leaves John B looking a little devastated that they all picked spin the bottle over his epic story, which is at least 5% true, or the first version of it was, the one JJ told them last summer, that has been evolving ever since.
The truth is that it wasn’t an epic struggle with pirates. It was that Luke Maybank used to run with smugglers, and that’s maybe the only bit of truth in the tussling-with-smugglers story. What is true, what Pope has deduced because he is good at deduction, even at twelve, is that JJ finds a way to wrap his own bruises up in stories that turn him back into something special and heroic and powerful.
That he takes the tragedies and turns them into something else.
JJ moves from Pope’s shoulder, untangles his arm from Pope’s, and Pope misses the warmth of him the way he misses the sun when the days get shorter and the nights get longer.
JJ is stoking the bonfire. Like most survival skills, this one comes naturally to him—he finds the right tinder, places the logs with the careless ease Pope so admires, has flames crackling in an instant.
He adds another log to the fire now, pokes in a bit of dry driftwood where he knows it will catch.
Pope is watching him carefully as he works, but Pope is known by now as a bit weird, so no one ever really says anything.
Or, well, if they do say anything, JJ immediately starts throwing punches, no matter what Pope says to talk him down.
JJ flops back down next to Pope, wrapping an arm around Pope’s neck. He turns and looks at Pope, bright-eyed and wild. There’s a bruise at the corner of his lip.
Pope thinks, for one stupid, desperate moment, about covering that bruise with his mouth.
“Pope, my boy,” JJ says, as if he is on the verge of telling Pope something that Pope has been waiting to hear all his life, portentous news, life-changing—
John B, the world’s worst wingman, flings himself onto JJ at that moment, sending both JJ and Pope sprawling off the driftwood into the sand.
Kie avoids the damage by unlinking her arm from Pope’s at just the right moment (because, again, she is cooler than them, and more coordinated, and she can predict John B’s general dumbassery better than them even though she hasn’t known him as long). She stares down at them, one eyebrow raised. She has a beer in her hand, which she sips judgmentally as she watches them scuffle.
“Hey,” one of the other kids yells. “It’s John B’s turn to spin the bottle.”
Privately, Pope reflects, as he unhooks John B’s long, lanky arm from around his leg and dusts sand off himself, the kid just said that to keep their wrestling match from roping anyone else into it. Or spilling the beer. Or getting the older kids—especially the kooks—to notice them from down the beach.
“Get off,” Pope says, with as much dignity as he can manage. He kicks a little sand at John B, for good measure, who beams and gives him a thumbs up over a can of beer he has just stolen from Kie.
John B caves to Kie’s glare within seconds, and shuffles over to the bottle amicably.
It points at CeCe, the knife girl, and Pope leans into Kie involuntarily.
Because CeCe scares him, and Kie has always been the courage in their little group of four.
She doesn’t even look at him, but squeezes her free hand around his forearm gently. “She doesn’t bite, Pope,” Kie says, eyes still on the flames, though there’s a mischievous glint there. “Much.”
JJ leans across Pope, his tangled blond hair brushing Pope’s jaw as he tries to reach Kie. “How would you know, Kie?” JJ asks.
Kie just grins.
John B has the good sense to look terrified, but CeCe just sighs, grabs him by his stupid half-buttoned shirt, and kisses him on the mouth, a little bit roughly.
When she lets him go, John B has a look of glassy-eyed delight. He will continue, Pope thinks, to be as scared of girls as he is delighted by them.
“Simp,” JJ yells at him, and John B salutes him with a raised middle finger.
“JJ’s turn next,” John B says.
“Hell yeah it is.” JJ is on his feet, his absence cold on Pope’s left side.
He has bragged all summer that he is good at spin the bottle, that he can spin it at whoever he chooses, which is probably bullshit.
Except that if anyone could control the way the bottle spun, it would be JJ, already so nimble with those long lean fingers, already as quick with a con as he is with a bright smile.
He spins the bottle, the last rays of sun reflecting in the glass, and when it settles—
It points straight at Pope.
Something changes in JJ’s bright blue eyes, just for a moment, clouds eclipsing the sun, stormy and sharp and dangerous and intoxicating.
And then he grins again, but when he approaches Pope there’s a question in his eyes, like he’ll let Pope out of this, if Pope gives him a nod or a head shake or a panicked look.
“Ew,” John B says.
“That’s homophobic,” CeCe tells him coldly.
“It’s not gross because they’re gay,” John B says. “It’s gross because they’re my friends.”
Pope wants to take issue with the fact that John B just accidentally said they’re gay to a group of middle schoolers, but he has forgotten how words work.
JJ is close now, so close to him.
He takes Pope’s button down and lean in, places a kiss on Pope’s cheek.
The group boos.
“That,” Kie says. “Is not a real kiss.”
She is still sitting far too close to them, and Pope thinks JJ probably was trying to spin it at her to see if she would kiss him, because JJ has been flirting with Kiara Carrera their whole lives. And Pope was just the accident that got in the way.
“Yea,” says John B, who was just denouncing their friend kiss a moment ago but now has decided to fall on the side of make-my-two-best-friends-uncomfortable-in-public. “That wasn’t a real kiss, bro.”
JJ looks again at Pope, his eyes unexpectedly soft.
“Well.” Pope finds his voice again as the sun dips below the horizon. He is warm despite it, and he leans forward, just slightly, finds comfort in the calloused bad of JJ’s thumb resting on his bare shoulder. “Rules are rules.”
And then, before he can lose his nerve, he surges forward and pushes his mouth against JJ’s.
The other kids are whooping and laughing, but Pope can’t hear them. Can’t hear anything but JJ’s soft intake of breath, can’t feel anything but the warmth of the sun in JJ’s fingers as they tighten over Pope’s shoulder, firm enough to leave a mark.