Chapter Text
Kiara wakes up with sun cascading into the living room over her head. She’s tucked up in the pullout, John B on her right, the wall and windowsill protecting her eyes from the most direct sunlight. Her teeth feel hairy. There’s a film of sweat on her skin from yesterday, last night, this morning. No one ever really stops sweating during Outer Banks summers.
The oven clock says it’s almost 11, but the boys aren’t awake yet so she slumps back into her pillow and enjoys the sleepy feeling in her muscles for a little while longer. She needs the extra rest. For the first time in their eleven or twelve odd years, they had stayed up past two in the morning last night.
Yesterday Big John had taken a day trip down to Charleston. Just before the sun set over the Chateau, he called the landline to let John B know he would be staying overnight. Big John took a lot of trips, but this was the first time he had left John B alone for more than 24 hours.
The house felt a little too empty that night, so John B had invited JJ, Pope, and Kiara over. With no supervision and no school the next day, they had a full blowout, or at least the 12-year-old equivalent: swimming, Xbox, and whatever food they could scrounge up that didn’t require cooking. At around midnight, JJ convinced everyone to break into the box of Baby Ruths that John B always kept stocked. The sugar high carried them into the early hours of the morning. They finally crashed, teeth unbrushed, at around 2:10.
Kiara only manages another twenty minutes of peace before pain trickles into her abdomen. At first she thinks it was all the junk they ate last night. She’s woken up with indigestion before, and a trip to the bathroom usually takes care of it.
But the pain grows. It starts radiating down her thighs and across her lower back. That wakes her up. She’s never felt that before.
She crawls over the edge of the mattress, careful to avoid JJ’s big head which is propped against the foot of the pullout, and tip toes over Pope who is on the floor blocking her way to the bathroom. The Chateau is always crowded — with Pogues, knickknacks, trash. It’s a wonder there’s any floor space left. John B stirs.
“Kie,” he croaks, eyes mostly closed. “You good?”
“Yeah. Just, bathroom,” she whispers back. JJ comes to and takes the opportunity to steal her spot on the pullout and the good pillow she always calls dibs on. His neck is aching from falling asleep sitting up.
In the bathroom, Kiara sits down on the toilet, prepared to endure either the grossest runs or a straight up solid brick, but what she finds instead is blood.
“Uhhhh,” she calls out for someone instinctively, but immediately regrets it. This is her period. There’s nothing else it can be, unless she’s dying. But if she’s right and it is her period, she doesn’t want them to know.
Last year, their fifth grade gym teacher separated the boys and girls and told them about puberty. Kiara didn’t know what they taught the boys, but the girls’ hour was occupied with breasts, hair, and periods.
Their teacher, gruff and withholding, approached the subject like it was the girls’ fault that he had to sit there and explain it to them. When he asked if anyone had any questions, no one raised their hands.
In fifth, fourth, and even once in third grade, an occasional girl would get her first period and go home early. They were gossiped about like they were disgusting, or worse, scary.
Kiara remembers the pit in her stomach when a girl in the neighboring bathroom stall said, for everyone to hear, “Ewww, somebody put a pad in the toilet.” By fifth grade, boys had started exchanging PMS horror stories.
Even her own mother never talked about her period. Her menstrual products were discreetly tucked away in a cupboard that Kiara never went into and her disposed tampons were neatly wrapped in the trashcan so no one could see the blood.
But JJ’s already seen it. It’s right on the pullout where Kiara was laying, dark red and still wet in places. He almost sat right on it.
“Kie???” He backs away from the bed and kicks Pope awake on his way to the bathroom. “Why is there blood on the sheets?”
“Whoa, what?” John B bolts up and scrambles off the bed. Pope darts between the pullout and the bathroom a few times, before seeming to put the pieces together and settling by the bathroom door.
“Are you ok??” Pope hollers, even though she could have heard him perfectly fine at a normal speaking volume.
Kiara scrunches her face in mortification. Her underwear is a mess — some of the blood is coagulated and the edges are turning brown. She prays the sheets don’t look like this. Why doesn’t it come out normal, like a paper cut?
All she had retained from the menstruation unit of sex ed was something about blood, mood swings, and not being pregnant. And that it happened once a month. No one told her about what the blood looked like, how much she should be bleeding, how much it was supposed to hurt, how to use a pad or tampon.
She hadn’t considered the prospect of her mother not being there to guide her through it, give her a change of clothes and a hug. She definitely hadn’t considered the prospect of ruining someone else’s sheets.
As much as part of her wanted to, there was no way she could call her mother now. If Anna caught wind that Big John had left them alone overnight, Kiara would never be allowed back at the Chateau again. As it was, Anna was hesitant to let her sleep over.
“Those boys are going to change, Kiara. Be careful around them,” Anna had said at the beginning of the summer. “If they start having boy-girl parties or acting inappropriately, tell me right away.”
Kiara thought she was being ridiculous. No one said things like “boy-girl parties.” Besides, the boys had shown some level of interest in girls for years, and it never amounted to more than some light ribbing between them. They had settled into an unspoken agreement that girls were girls, and Kie was Kie.
That is to say, she isn’t embarrassed about her period because she’s a girl, she’s embarrassed because she feels like she practically took a dump on the pullout.
She stretched the crotch of her stained underwear around in her hands, trying to come to terms with it, then looked between her legs at the blood in the toilet water. It was more blood than she’d ever seen in her life. And there was even more on the sheets. She felt a little like crying.
“Kie?” John B knocks on the bathroom door hesitantly, breaking her out of her reverie. JJ and Pope shuffle next to him uncomfortably. “Did you—is it—”
“I think so, yeah,” she says, voice high.
“Think what?” JJ demands, not getting it and hating being out of the loop. Kiara hears a flurry of smacks, JJ’s indignant protests, some pointed whispering. A chastised “oh.”
“Should we call your mom?” John B asks.
“No! No.”
“ … Ok, well, what do we … ?”
Pope clears his throat like he’s about to give a presentation. “Ok. Menstruation—”
“Oh my god, please just say period—” Kiara whines.
“—is the process of discharging blood and other materials from the lining of the uterus at intervals—"
Kiara clutches her face in her hands. “Pope, what are you talking about?”
“He looked it up,” John B says.
“He’s reading off his phone,” JJ clarifies.
“I know what a period is!” Kiara groans. She knows enough what it is, at least. Then, face burning, she adds, “I… I need a change of clothes. And pads. Or something.”
The boys exchanged lost glances. The Chateau didn’t have pads, let alone the or something. They didn’t have the money to go buy anything, not that any of them— Kie included— particularly wanted to show their face in the feminine hygiene aisle of the drugstore that their neighbors and extended families frequented.
“Pope—” John B points at him in realization. “Maybe your house has some?”
Pope’s eyes light up and he nods. “I’ll go sneak some from our bathroom. I think I’ve seen them there before. Be right back.”
It doesn’t occur to any of them to ask Mrs. Heyward for help. After Kie shoots down the idea of calling her mother so vehemently, they all take to the situation like it’s a secret mission, just between the four of them. Suddenly she thinks it might be okay that the boys are here instead of her mother. If Anna were there, it would be a woman thing, a puberty thing. With them, it’s just another Pogue thing.
In Pope’s absence, JJ takes over the job of reading off Mayo Clinic’s period page like it holds clues.
“— menstruation often involves abomin—abdominal or pelvic cramping. Kie, are you pelvic cramping?”
“Um. My stomach hurts pretty bad.” The pain has spread so far across her middle that she’s not sure if it’s pelvic or not.
“Uhhh, ok, treatment, it says: pain relievers, birth control, heating pad, hot bath. Also surgery.”
“Don’t say that,” John B mutters. “You’re gonna freak her out.”
But Kiara’s stuck on the idea of the bath. If it’s anything like the toilet water, she can’t fathom how anyone could take a bath on their period. How do they even shower?
“My old man has some Advil somewhere,” John B offers.
“Yes, please,” Kiara calls through the door.
“Uh,” John B starts. “It’s probably in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, though.”
Kiara grits her teeth. “Ok, I’ll find it. Thanks.”
“Go get her a glass of water,” she faintly hears JJ say. John B’s quick footsteps fade into the kitchen. She stuffs some toilet paper in her underwear and waddles to the medicine cabinet. Takes a quick detour to wash her hands. At home, her mother would have a fit if Kiara had touched any medicine with unwashed hands. And blood might be even dirtier than the usual stuff, she doesn’t know.
“Got your water, Kie. I’ll, uh—“ John B cracks the door open and his thin, disembodied hand enters the room with the glass. “Here.”
She thanks him and downs the pill. Her stomach feels the same. “How long does it take to work again?”
JJ scrambles with the phone. “Uh, thirty minutes.”
“Oh my god.”
“Lemme go get some spare clothes,” John B says. He returns with some shorts, a t-shirt, and some bikini bottoms from a bathing suit she forgot behind the couch last week. He tosses them in, keeping his head craned away from her even though the door was still blocking her from view.
“Uhh, I don’t need the shirt, John B,” Kie says, shoving it back through the door before John B closes it. “It doesn’t, like, bleed up. How do you think this works?”
John B blushes and takes the shirt back. “We never got the class on periods!”
At that moment, Pope bursts through door, out of breath, brandishing two packages of pads and one box of tampons. “I didn’t know what you wanted. Mom has wing—wingless? No idea what that means. Kie?”
“Just give it here,” Kie says, not willing to admit that she doesn’t know what it means either.
While Kie’s unwrapping pads and figuring out the best course of action, JJ wordlessly goes off on his own errand. One hand on his hip and the other scratching his neck, he assesses the bloodstain on the pullout sheet. Then he decisively strips the bed. John B and JJ give him a wide berth when he approaches the door carrying the bloody sheets.
“Hey, uh,” JJ says to the door. “We should probably get wash the sheets soon. And your clothes. The longer we wait, the worse it stains.”
“How do you know that?” Pope asks incredulously.
“Mayo Clinic?” John B guesses.
“That’s not clinical enough for Mayo Clinic, John B. That’s, like, serial killer stuff,” Kie says, holding a wingless pad up to her underwear to figure out which way is right-side up.
JJ shrugs. “No, you know, I get scraped up a lot. We can’t exactly go out and buy new clothes every month so Dad just taught me to wash the blood out.”
Kiara purses her lips as she puts on John B’s shorts. The first time she met JJ the winter of fourth grade, they had been paired up to do a history project together, and he showed up late with a split lip and skinned elbows. Said he had tripped on the sidewalk. When she saw the fresh blood on his shirt where his elbows brushed the fabric, she demanded a hall pass and escorted him to the nurses for some first aid. On the walk back to class, she asked him what founding father they should make their about. Abe Lincoln, he had said, for the cool hat.
Since then, they had gotten used to his mystery bruises and cuts in various stages of healing. Sometimes they knew where they came from — like the time he fell out of a tree while pretending to be lookout on a pirate ship last summer— and sometimes they didn’t. That was just how it was with JJ.
“Ok,” she cracks her head through the door. She’s fully dressed, but she keeps the door mostly closed to hide the grosss clothes she dumped in the sink. “How do I wash out the blood, then?”
“Well, uh, you just—” JJ attempts to mime it out with the sheet in his hands. Gives up pretty quick. “Here, lemme—"
He barges into the bathroom. Kiara squawks. JJ spots the full sink, avoids his gaze, and makes a beeline for the tub. Submerges the sheet under the cold tap.
“So,” he says matter-of-factually. “It has to be cold water. Hot water makes it worse. And then you grab some good soap and—” he applies soap to the stain and starts scrubbing the fabric against itself. “—Like this.”
He holds up the sheet to Kiara. “Your turn.”
She’s stunned. She doesn’t understand why he’s not disgusted. The suds on his hands are terracotta with her blood. Warily, she accepts the sheet from him, lets him rinse his hands off in the cold tap, and picks off scrubbing where he left off. Sure enough, it’s coming out.
“Just do that as many times as you need, and if that doesn’t work, hit it with a little baking soda,” JJ says.
John B and Pope are crowded in the door frame with morbid curiosity. When Kiara sees them, her stupefaction condenses back into embarrassment.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got it, get out!” she pushes all three of them out the door and slams it shut. After a beat, they meander into the kitchen.
“It has to be cold water,” John B imitates JJ. “And you—whoop—get some good ol’ soap—a real insider secret in the cleaning business—”
“You absolutely did not have to demonstrate. You literally could have just explained.”
“Shut up, it’s easier that way.”
“Hey, do we have breakfast? I’m getting hungry.”
“Yeah, we got Wonder Bread, hot cocoa—hey, hot things are good for cramps, right? And don’t girls on their periods have a thing with chocolate?”
“It’s 90 degrees out—"
By the time everything is clean and hung over the porch railing to sundry, the Advil starts to kick in. It doesn’t ease the pain entirely, though. Months later, Kiara will figure out that only a heat pad can grant her that, and she’ll store one permanently at the Chateau.