It took a full day of complete and utter panicking before Viola’s brain calmed a little. A whole day. A whole day of silently sitting in her room, then silently sitting in the living room, then crying a little, and then laughing a little, and then back to silence. She was pretty sure she’d scared the shit out of the girls. 

She scared herself a little.

But by the next day, the second full day, Viola had managed to steer herself away from a panic attack. She had managed to eat some food. And, somehow, she had managed to banish the thoughts of her impending doom, of Garland State, to the back of her brain.

It hadn’t been easy. Everywhere she turned, she saw bits of the world she left behind. Anna wore a Garland State hoodie, one that fit slim against her body. Margot called her dipshit boyfriend. And Lucy waxed poetic about how much better it was to be able to cook here, away from the dining hall and their fatty oils and the copious portions of red meat and regular soda.

She was, of course, right about how much better her cooking was. She did something with potatoes for lunch that made Viola’s stomach sing.

It was a helpful distraction.

“Where’d you learn to cook like that?” asked Viola, the remnants of a second helping almost entirely gone from her plate. 

“My mom,” said Lucy, cheerily. “Excellent cook. Dad keeps complaining that she doesn’t bother now that I’m out of the house.” 

“It’s incredible,” sad Viola. Lucy smiled.

“My pleasure,” said Lucy. It had been like that for thirty six hours; Lucy mothering her, the incessant ‘Vi’s’ continuing to roll off all three of their tongues, the kid gloves still firmly on her shoulders. And while they hadn’t talked at all about any of it, not David, not Viola, not what they were going to do when Spring Break ended, Viola could make a guess about what knowledge they had been given, what knowledge Margot had finally forced out of Viola. But none of them had mentioned the beach, and none of them had mentioned the fact that Viola’s voice had returned to the steady top bit of her register this morning.

Viola closed her eyes and shook her head.

It felt hilarious now to think of ten-year-old her, pacing in her bedroom, practicing the kinds of things that would keep her voice gentle and high. That girl had known so much, and she had known so little. 

She could get that stamped on her forehead.

And, okay, it wasn’t fair to say that she hadn’t known before; she had, in every way it was possible to know, excepting the fact that she was unwilling to stare it down. But before that, before The Night, the one where she tried on bits of clothing drunk after Lucy had worked wizardry on her face, there were still bits. Bits of Viola poking out of the fabric of Sebastian. 

“Do we have any big plans for the day?” asked Anna. The four of them had mostly stayed in the house yesterday, except for the little run Margot and Lucy had made to the grocery store. Lucy shrugged.

“I thought we could go to the boardwalk,” she offered. “It’s going to rain tomorrow, and it’s cute down there.”

“Is it all tourist-y?” asked Anna.

“You are tourists,” said Lucy, grabbing Vi’s plate and walking it towards the sink. Vi watched the scraps disappear into the garbage wistfully. “But it’s, like, half and half. Half tourist-y, half just a part of town.” 

“Bleh,” said Anna. They hadn’t left the house yet and, because of that, along with the wallowing and self pitying, Viola hadn’t managed to return to form. That was, she hadn’t managed to ask them to do her makeup, to ask to learn, to try on something other than the baggy shorts and baggier t-shirts. She knew she should. She knew it was a good thing to do, that it would be a necessity to learn how to do those things, to be what she wanted. It just always felt so… tacky wasn’t the right word, but it was close. Having to ask for it, having to request womanhood from them, it made her insides turn.

And going into town dressed as a woman made her insides turn, too. Her mind could, if it so desired, and it did, whip up a half dozen horrifying scenarios that resulted in her mortification. It had only been a few days ago that leaving the dorm room had been daring. And, okay, the boardwalk wasn’t a frat party, but it was still outside. Outside, in the sunlight, without the added benefit of alcohol, both for her own confidence and the dulling of other’s senses, made it hard to swallow. 

It felt too soon.

It felt way, way too soon. 

But there was a sort of ticking bomb. Actually, there were a lot of ticking bombs, but this one was less about David and more about New York. This week was one of the last chances she had to fall into their expert hands. It was one of the last times she’d be able to have them press her into femininity, one of the last times someone else could make sure she didn’t make a mockery of herself. 

If she couldn’t go today, when? If she couldn’t get the courage now, what made her think she was ever going to survive?

She took a sip from a Lucy-provided glass. It would be fine. It would be better than fine. Fine was what it would be if she went out like this, in all the Sebness of it. This would be good. It would get her out of her own head, just for a little bit, and it would let her spend time with them, and they wouldn’t, she hoped, be so worried about her. And she really needed them to not be worried about her.

So, it would be good.

God, she hoped it would be good. 

All she had to do was ask.

Ask for womanhood.

“If we go,” she started, “can you all… well, I want to go as Viola, I guess.” It felt funny to say that now, now that ‘go as Viola’ ought to be, in a perfect world, the default option. But that was easier than laundry listing the things she wanted their help with. Lucy beamed at her. 

“Obviously,” she said. “Obviously. I have a very, very cute sundress you could wear! Or you can look in my mom’s closet, but all her stuff is, like, a little dire.” She dampened a little. “Or just jeans or whatever.” 

“We should get shoes,” offered Anna. “Oh, god, Vi, you need shoes so bad. Like things that aren’t the ugliest sneakers I’ve ever seen.” She paused and giggled “Actually, not to totally drain you, but we need to get you some better sneakers, too.” Viola smiled into her potato. That was already on the list. And a better pair of shoes? A cute pair of shoes? Maybe something akin to Margot’s collection, although she doubted it would pair with the sundress Lucy had in mind. Maybe something strappy, then. Maybe…

Mind meet wallet, Viola. Or, um, purse?

“Shoes are definitely on the table,” said Viola. Anna clapped. Vi laughed. “Okay, but we do need to remember that I’m not made of money.” Lucy scoffed.

“God, if it gets you out of those, I’ll pay for them.” She grinned. “Besides, you’re going to need a wardrobe reset.” Viola gave her a half smile and returned to the water. 

“Only if you’re bankrolling,” she murmured. 

 

* * * * *

 

While Lucy’s mom’s closet was, in fact, a little on the older side, it did feature shoes that fit Viola, even if just. Her toes were a little crunched at the end of the little pair of relatively plain flats, something Lucy assured her would be easier to walk in, for now, than the boots she had been eying, and they had set out towards the boardwalk, Viola in a pair of linen baby blue pants and an equally breezy top, which felt a little more formal than the sundress but hid the fictional nature of her breasts better, a floppy oversized hat, and an equally oversized pair of sunglasses. She’d borrowed a little leather cross body bag to supplement the pants.

It felt like she had been plucked from an Elin Hilderbrand novel. Not in the way that the world flowed around her - everyone was deeply touristy and a very different kind of rich compared to the people she imagined on Nantucket - but in the way that she imagined they saw her. Dressed in the clothes of Lucy, exquisite makeup and expensive sunglasses, she probably looked like the kind of girl who had trawled this boardwalk every summer for three whole months, not a thought of money or time or anything but the steady progression of her tan. 

Okay, not true. Because that version of Viola wouldn’t look pale as could be, still light from all her time tucked beneath baggy sweatshirts and jeans. 

Still, by the time they reached the boardwalk, the sun had started to warm her skin, and the whole thing had started to feel a little easier. A little easier to leave the house like this, a little easier to feel less like a freak, an invader, a little easier to feel like she belonged. All she had to do was watch the girls and copy. Watch and copy.

The boardwalk itself was small. Lucy noted that Emerald Point wasn’t exactly as big a tourist spot as Myrtle Beach, and Viola realized that, in the scramble of everything the last two days, she’d never even bothered to learn the name of the town. ‘Not Garland’ had sort of been enough, at the time.

Emerald Point.

Pretty.

“North end is going to be more, like, tourist stuff,” said Lucy, gesturing around, still walking. Vi peered into what seemed to be an arcade mixed with a bar. Then, a gift shop with uniform ‘I Heart South Carolina’ t-shirts. Then, a restaurant playing, at full volume, Jimmy Buffet’s ‘Margaritaville’.

“South side, then,” said Anna, and Margot laughed.

“Aw, I like ‘Margaritaville’,” she said. 

“They won’t serve us,” said Lucy, waving a hand. “I mean, they’ll card us, and only Vi has a fake.” Viola imagined handing over the blurry version of her I.D., the one that read ‘Sebatian’ and featured Very Much A Boy, and giggled.

“I don’t think they’re serving me either,” she said. Anna tucked an arm into Viola’s and pulled.

“Then stop lingering,” she said. “I want shoes. I want you to have shoes that aren’t old lady shoes or disgusting.” Viola giggled again and let herself be pulled forward by Anna. 

The southern half of the boardwalk was just as foreign to Viola. Actually, it was far more foreign than the tourist half. Everything was so boutique. Stores that featured soft pastels and fluttery fabrics, stores that stores that charged more than Viola could afford. They even smelled better on this side of the boardwalk, like someone walked to the doorway of each in the morning and dumped a full bottle of perfume.

Nicer. More expensive. So, so not Viola’s comfort zone.

But it didn’t stop her from looking.

Lucy had dragged them into one of the stores, proclaiming something about finding a dress here ‘a couple summers ago’, and they had set upon the racks. Well, the three of them did.

It was so different now. Even now, even dressed properly, it felt a little taboo to flick through the rack of blouses, blues and pinks and yellows slipping through her fingers. She looked like she belonged here, and she wanted to belong here, but she worried. She worried that someone might narrow their eyes, might look a little too long at the girl in the floppy hat and the sunglasses.

Okay, well, one of the girls in the floppy hat and sunglasses.

Viola sighed and let her hands slip into a rack.

When in Rome.

Except, in this case, she was supposed to actually be a Roman. 

Whatever.

All she did was look anyway. Anna and Lucy both picked out things to try; Lucy’s index finger was supporting at least half a dozen hangers, and Anna had pulled a pair of patterned skirts. Viola, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly sure what was supposed to be an acceptable thing to pull.

In the dorm, she had loved the bellbottoms, the white leather ones, the ones that looked like any drop of alcohol might slide right from them. And to her, that seemed like the perfect kind of thing to wear to a place where a drop of alcohol was damn near certain to be spilled upon them. But even she knew that wasn’t the uniform. And the uniform, it felt like, extended beyond the bounds of frat parties. ‘Colleen’s’ seemed like an upscale, nice shop, but what were the kinds of things a nineteen-year-old girl bought? What were the things that were in style? What were the things that wouldn’t immediately radiate ‘rookie girl’ to the entire planet?

It had been so easy in the dorm. Those bellbottoms, the disapproval only coming from people who knew and loved her. Lucy could scoff, but it hadn’t mattered. A poor fashion sense wasn’t a defining character flaw. Viola wanted to blend, and to blend meant not picking something Lucy’s mother would wear, and not picking something Lucy’s mother would wear meant dawdling on every single thing she liked, and then immediately questioning her own taste.

The bellbottoms. She’d liked those, and they’d been unacceptable.

“Don’t want anything?” asked Margot. Viola, thumbing past a pair of long, flowing skirts, shook her head.

“It’s all so expensive,” she said. 

“Too true,” agreed Margot.

“We always shopped at, like, Target.” 

“There’s good cheap clothes, too,” said Margot. “Especially if you’re planning to rebuild from scratch.” Viola smiled over at her.

“Gosh, you don’t like my t-shirts and shorts?” she asked. Margot let out a heavy breath.

“I like them better than you do,” she said, and Viola laughed. 

“Bulk clothes would help,” she agreed. Then, she wished she hadn’t. 

There really wasn’t any recourse to everything that wasn’t abandoning this life outright. Things were too entangled, and she’d never be able to start fresh here. The money thing wouldn’t be any better here than it was there. And the insurance wouldn’t be better here, and her parents wouldn’t be any help anywhere, and so why not go somewhere better? Dream big. 

Everything, except them. 

Everything would be better or the same except the three of them, and it killed her to think about telling them. And she knew it was cowardly not to, that it was two-faced and stupid and that she should, but they’d try to stop her, and they shouldn’t. Leaving was the only smart decision she could make, the only one that worked.

“I’m sure there’s a thrift store around here,” said Margot, thumbing through the skirts Viola had just passed. “It’ll take some arm twisting, but Lucy will show us.” Viola nodded. Anna returned, neither of the skirts she’d picked out in hand. 

“Wrong sizes,” she supplied at the arched eyebrows. “And they don’t have mine.” 

“Vi and I were just talking about checking somewhere else,” said Margot. Anna nodded. 

“Sure,” she said. “We should get drinks for tonight, too.” Vi smiled. 

“We’ll wait on that,” she said. That fake still wasn’t going to work. It hadn’t changed in the fifteen minutes since they’d passed the restaurant. 

“I bet,” said Anna, now falling in line behind Margot on the rack, giving everything a third pass, “there’s a liquor store that’ll sell pretty girls liquor without an I.D. We probably just need to go to, like, the not-tourist part of town.” 

“Aww,” said Margot, mock preening, “you think I’m pretty?” 

“I thought we were in the non-tourist part of town,” said Vi. She reached the end of the rack and stood back. Anna grinned.

“Okay, a non-tourist, non-incredibly-rich part of town,” she amended. “Like, not a store where they’re trying to sell me a $200 skirt.” Vi blinked. “Okay, it was $120. But still!”

“God, who can even afford that?” asked Viola. Lucy traipsed out of the dressing room, a bundle of clothes in hand and head for the counter. She gave the three of them a smile, then turned to the attendant behind the register. “Oh, right.” Margot snorted.

“We’ll find a thrift store,” she said again. 

“And, if not, we can show you the wonders of online shopping,” said Anna, still flicking through the rack. “It’s just like real life shopping, except you have to wait three days to try anything on.”

“And it fits worse,” added Margot. 

“You know,” said Viola, stepping back to let Margot, who had finished her pass, stand next to her, “you guys don’t exactly sell the experience of being a girl.” Margot grinned at her.

“Yeah, but we already got you,” she said. 

“No taksies backsies,” agreed Anna, now completing her own run of the rack. “Besides, this is just like, the worst kind of shopping. It’s fun when you can actually buy stuff.” 

“You went shopping before, though,” said Margot. Viola considered.

“Not really,” said Viola. “I mean, a little, but I mostly survived on hand-me-downs and just… well, a lot of my clothes I’ve had forever. I don’t even remember buying them.” Anna let out a breath.

“That’s so bleak,” she said. Vi shrugged. It hadn’t seemed bleak. Clothes hadn’t really mattered. They’d just been a thing she’d worn, just a thing that she had to do every morning. She put on the t-shirt, she took of the t-shirt. She put on the jeans, she took off the jeans. As long as whatever she had worn didn’t draw attention, it didn’t matter whether they were stylish or old or her brother’s. 

Standing here, surrounded by all of it, surrounded by millions of possible mistakes, possible faux pas, she sort of missed that world. Just a little. The rules of men’s fashion were so easy. It was all pants, and it was all similar cuts, and she had two nice button downs and a pair of chinos if she ever needed to look remotely presentable. T-shirts and jeans were enough for the rest of it.

This?

Different story.

It didn’t help that everything here was, like, a two hundred dollar commitment. 

“Okie,” said Lucy swinging over to the three of them, a boxy bag dangling from a hand. “Find anything?” All three of the girls shook their heads.

“What’d you get?” asked Margot.  

“I got a dress,” said Lucy, peering down into the bag, “and a pair of jeans. I took pictures.” She pulled out her phone and started scrolling, then presented it to the three of them. First up, a little green dress with a hem just above the knee. Then, a pair of jeans, high waisted and wide near the bottom. Anna gave a little gasp, and Margot nodded.

“Cute,” said Anna.

“I love the dress,” said Margot.

“The jeans fit you so well,” said Anna. Lucy looked to Viola. Viola smiled.

“I don’t think I’m qualified to make fashion decisions,” she said. Lucy put a hand on her hip.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Just tell me if you like them.” Then, she giggled and revealed the worst Valley Girl accent Viola had ever heard. “Like, oh my god, those kill.” Viola shook her head at the expectant look.

“You should never do that accent,” said Viola.

“Like, whatever,” said Lucy. The expectant look and accent remained. And Viola laughed and put on her much better accent.

“Like, you look great,” said Viola. Lucy grinned and held out a palm, as if to say thank you, then turned. 

“Okay,” she said, “there’s another place next door that-”

“Cheaper?” asked Anna. She glanced to Viola. “We’re kind of working in bulk here.” Margot snorted.

“Cheaper would be good for all of us,” she said. Lucy nodded. 

“Okay, maybe we should go back up the boardwalk,” she said. “And there’s way cheaper stuff inland, too, I think.” Viola nodded her ascent to this plan. On some level, she wasn’t sure she’d really be able to muster the courage to pick something off the rack at all, but if she was going to, it certainly wouldn’t be somewhere like ‘Colleen’s’. And the north side of the boardwalk, with the cheap tourist trap stuff, sort of seemed like a nice time. Maybe not the place blasting Jimmy Buffett, although she did think an actual margarita sounded nice, but maybe the rest of it. The arcade. The ice cream shop. Just being out by the ocean.

“Sure,” she said. Anna nodded.

“I’d love to get food,” she added. Lucy nodded, too.

“Totally,” she said. “I would love a burger.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Margot. “Vacation burger.” 

“Exactly,” said Lucy.

 

* * * * *

 

They had ended up in the ‘Margaritaville’ playing restaurant. It was, in no way, affiliated with Jimmy Buffett, and it certainly wasn’t the chain Margaritaville, but Viola was almost certain that it once had been. Or, at the very least, the owners of this restaurant had gone into a Margaritaville, taken a hundred photos, and built a replica here on the boardwalk, scaled down by half. 

And, despite her reservations, Viola liked the place. 

Ten years ago, a Margaritaville had moved in an hour from her house. And, somehow, it had become the family treat. A few times a year, they’d trek out east, out towards the actual Margaritaville, and they’d have burgers and chips and unlimited soda, and her parents would get drunk on margaritas, and the music would be so loud that no one could imagine a reason to be angry. And then, they’d head an hour back east, her father certainly far too drunk to drive, and the world would be quiet again. 

Joe’s Tropical Shack had turned the music a bit lower than the chain it imitated, which was probably for the best. Viola wasn’t sure the upper register of her voice, which she had to periodically remind herself to stay in, especially during a giggle or a cough, was ready to shout across a table for an hour. That seemed like a recipe for a strained throat and a headache, and Vi was already counting on a headache in the morning, so it seemed better to avoid one now. 

They had all gotten burgers, and they all chewed them happily, half silent, consumed by the aura of Joe’s, and then they departed, bellies full, into the tourist end of the boardwalk.

Near the north end, at the most touristy point of the whole place, the boardwalk split to a pier, jutting out into the ocean, and the four of them decided to head to the end of it after eating. Here, more than anywhere else, the wind battered Viola’s wig and her hat, and she hoped to god that she’d managed the glue correctly. She’d worried a little at the frat party, given the heat and the sweat and all of it, but the risk there had been slippage. Here, the risk was more akin to the complete flight of everything.

Maybe, when she reached New York, she could get an actual haircut, something she could wear in public. Or, perhaps, the girls could work her hair into something a little more fashionable, something plausibly androgynous. She’d have to bat them away from blonde, though.

The pier was mostly empty. There was a little snack shack in the center of it, selling slushies and fries and soda’s costing ten times the amount they should, and rows of benches around the edges. And, on the southern edge, bobbing gently in the waves, was the kind of wooden ship Viola had only ever seen in movies. The kind made to be ridden by pirates and scalleywags and, more broadly, men.

Men and Keira Knightley.

“What’s the boat?” she asked Lucy. They were near the end of the pier, salt air pressing from the ocean. Lucy shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Some tourist trap.” Viola smiled.

“You know, we are tourists,” she said. 

“Wow, where have I heard that before?” asked Anna, a finger on her chin. Lucy swatted air.

“It’s the bad kind of tourist trap,” she said. “It’s like, pay twenty dollars to go stand on a boat and pretend you don’t want to leave the second you get on it.” Viola pouted.

“I’ve never stood on an old boat before,” she said. She sounded like a twelve year old begging for cash, and it almost made her laugh. “It’ll be an experience! An authentic…” She forgot the name of the town again, wheels spinning to complete her very poor, very silly argument. Lucy laughed.

“An authentic what?” she asked, grinning at her. 

“A very Spring Break experience,” supplied Anna. Viola pointed to her, and Lucy rolled her eyes. 

“Listen, if you want to burn cash standing on a stupid old ship, I won’t stop you! But I think it’s dumb.” 

Anna tucked her arm into Viola’s, her head held high, and Viola stood straighter. Then, without thinking, Viola curtsied at Lucy, and the pair started off to the ship, giggling. Viola dug around in the bag Lucy had loaned her, one of Lucy’s mother’s, for a bit of cash. They reached the little gangplank, manned by an attendant. He couldn’t be older than sixteen or seventeen.

“Forty dollars,” he said, barely looking at them. Viola blinked, then fished around further. 

“Forty each?” asked Anna.

“Yeah,” said the kid. Anna traded a glance with Viola. 

“That’s a lot,” she argued. The kid didn’t even look at her.

“It’s forty dollars,” he repeated. Anna put a hand on one hip and stared at the boy. 

“Twenty,” she countered. The boy blew air out of his nose, then looked up at Anna, clearly ready to tell her to get lost. It’s what Viola would have done, if she had been him. Negotiating the price on something like this, something he had no control over? Uh uh. That’s how you got chewed out. That’s how you got fired. But when the boy finally looked at pair of them, he just blinked, then swallowed. Viola glanced to Anna. Anna’s hand had remained on her hip, but she was very, very auspiciously batting her eyelashes. It made Viola want to laugh, because there was no way something like that would work. That didn’t actually work. Boys weren’t-

“Right,” said the boy, clearly flustered, and Viola covered her giggle with a cough. “Right, listen, right.” 

“No one’s going to know,” said Anna, now soothing, and Viola had the wild realization that she was going to try to get this for free. 

“We’ll pay,” she said, if for no other reason than to save the kid from panicking further, forcing him to choose between displeasing the pretty girl and displeasing his boss. Anna gave her heavy side eye. The boy shook his head.

“Um, twenty is fine,” he said, quickly. “Just… just…” 

“We won’t tell a soul,” said Anna, in the same unnaturally soothing voice. Viola bit back another giggle. She should practice that one next. Maybe it only worked on teenage boys, but it seemed like the kind of thing that might help when she arrived in New York. The boy glanced at the pair of them, and Vi nodded. 

“Right,” said the boy. “Um, thanks.” Viola did her best to swallow the laugh from him thanking them. God, Anna. 

Viola passed over the cash, and the boy stamped each of their hands, and they tiptoed down the gangplank onto the ship. 

“You’re so mean,” said Viola, quietly. Anna giggled. 

“It’s not going to hurt him,” she said. “It’s going to hurt whatever psycho set the price at forty dollars. C’mon, I want to stand behind the wheel.” 

The ship was nowhere near worth twenty dollars, just as predicted by Lucy. Small, nothing to do but walk around on the deck, and no view on account of it being slightly below the edge of the pier. And Viola, who had sort of imagined herself as Keira Knightley for a moment, remembered all the dreams that she had once had of being her, watching the movies again and again and again, felt a little let down that this deck didn’t come with any sort of swashbuckling, and it certainly wasn’t equipped with a strapping Orlando Bloom.

That, and she was still dressed like a girl summering on Nantucket. 

Truthfully, that girl had always been fantasy. Keira, boat, pretty boy. And Viola, fresh as she was, didn’t know what she was supposed to be. Girl, sure, but which kind? The answer to that, the forward momentum of that, the driving power of Anna, Lucy, and Margot had a direction, but Vi felt lost in that store. They had known the skirts, and they knew the makeup, and maybe she wasn’t supposed to be that girl. In New York, she wouldn’t have that push anymore, and she knew the answer wasn’t being a fucking pirate, but ‘pirate’ had been a kind of girl she had dreamed of being. And there’d been jealousy towards the sorority girls on campus, but it had been learned jealousy. She hadn’t…

Well, so was Keira, if she thought about it. She hadn’t dreamt up Keira on her own. She’d seen the movie. She’d seen them all, and she’d picked her from that.

Still, a bit of Vi had hoped it would spark something new. Here, the only type of girl to be was the sorority type. It was the only type anyone could teach her. But once no one was teaching her, she… well, she wanted a path to follow. She wanted guidelines. ‘Girl’ had once felt like a dream on its own. Now, it felt like a vast, outstretching expanse, all of it impossible to capture and perfectly within reach. She didn’t know how to do any of it, and she could, probably, maybe, if she poured as much effort into being that as she had being unnoticeable, but she just didn’t know which. 

Seb had never had much of a dream. He’d never been one for anything but sitting in his dorm room and staring at the walls.

Okay, she was being mean to herself. But there had never been any possibility before. And there still wasn’t, not in the way that she wished it, but there was an open ended world now. She still felt the pull to go, but ‘going’ had destination. There were girls at the end of it. There were Violas out there, somewhere. 

‘Course, she didn’t hate the little Nantucket outfit Lucy had set her up in. Really, she liked most of this stuff. It just wouldn’t be something New York Viola could be. 

“Well at least pretend you’re having fun,” said Anna, and Vi started. Stuck in her own head, staring at the back — aft? — of the boat. “Lucy’ll get too insufferable if she thinks we got tourist trapped.” Viola laughed.

“I was hoping it’d be a little more pirate-y than this,” she admitted. Anna glanced around and grinned.

“I don’t think this thing’s big enough to even get out to sea,” she said. True. From the pier, it had impressed; tall masts, wide deck, the kind of worn wood Viola expected had persevered for hundreds of years. Now, she doubted it had ever been used for more than fishing.

“God, I can’t believe they charge forty dollars for this,” said Viola, spinning to take in the whole deck. 

“I was sort of imagining it as a ‘Master and Commander’ type thing,” admitted Anna. Viola raised an eyebrow, and Anna shrugged. “I like Paul Bettany.” Vi raised her eyebrow further. “I’ll show you later.” Vi turned back to the wheel.

“I thought ‘Pirates’,” she murmured. “Keira was…” It felt almost bombastically stupid to say ‘idol’. Here, dressed like a woman, a real life, true woman, not a stupid pirate, it felt insane to say, ‘gosh, I wished I was a pirate girl’. But they were both equally foreign. This, what she was wearing, was not something she knew. It might as well be Elizabeth Swann. And she wanted a tinge of that, of a different kind of girl. 

“She kicks ass in those,” agreed Anna, glancing back towards the pier. “Okay, I think we give it five more minutes. Five seems like a plausible amount of time to say we enjoyed this.” Viola nodded.

“And we can pretend you really got that kid to give it for free,” she said. Anna let out a sigh and smiled.

“Yes, don’t remind me,” she said. 

 

* * * * *

 

They’d walked back to the house not long after Vi and Anna had disembarked, climbed into Lucy’s car, and set off deeper into Emerald Point, away from the shore and towards what Viola would describe as ‘familiar’. That was, houses of a rational size, lawns that didn’t look like they’d been plucked from a catalog, and cars that had faded into a matte shade. 

More ‘Joe’s’, less ‘Colleen’s’. 

And there, Lucy had pulled into a strip mall parking lot, car settled right in front of a liquor store illuminated by neon signs reading ‘Budwiser’ and ‘Miller: The Champagne of Beers’, each scrawled out in pretty cursive that, in the few instances Vi had been granted the misfortune of tasting the products they advertised, did not reflect the quality of the beers. And next door, there was a Dollar Tree. 

The Dollar Tree was exactly what she needed.

The entire time at the boardwalk, Viola had wondered if she’d get the chance to grab a phone; just a cheap one, whatever they had, something she could load minutes onto. But the boardwalk had been the exact wrong place to find that. Too many tourists, too much money. But here, at a Dollar Tree, Viola thought there were pretty good odds she could pull some kind of flip phone off the rack, along with, if remembered correctly, a little gift card looking thing with a sim attached.

All she needed was a month for now. Just enough to get started, enough to put something else down for jobs in New York, enough that, when her parents cut her plan, she wouldn’t miss the call from whatever waiting job or delivery job or fucking whatever job when she got to the city. 

“I could get mixers,” she offered, the other three striding towards the liquor store. They stopped.

“Ooh,” said Anna. “And snacks!” Margot nodded.

“I’ll go with you,” she offered. For a split second, Viola thought to say no. But she couldn’t imagine an excuse for why it would make sense to not want Margot to come. So she nodded.

“What drinks are you getting?” she asked Lucy and Anna. Lucy shrugged.

“Rum, maybe?” she said, glancing to Anna. “We’ve got like four more nights. Just get a bunch of stuff.” 

“Diet Coke,” said Anna. 

“Done,” said Margot. She nodded towards the Dollar Tree, and Viola followed her in, trying to imagine a sufficient excuse to peel away for a second. 

Not a problem, as it turned out. Margot split off towards the rear of the store, mentioning the bathroom, and Viola took the opportunity to sweep through the little aisles, searching for electronics.

Beauty of a Dollar Tree? They had everything. Sort of like a mini Wal-Mart, only less selection and odd pricing. Downside? They had fucking everything. She spent almost a full minute peering down the aisles, trying to suss out exactly where the electronics would be. With the… batteries? Apparently not, because that moved straight into toys. Chips and snacks and coke, and she’d be back for those, and then… toiletries? No, not that way. Maybe if she-

“Need help, miss?” Viola jumped. The woman behind her was leaning on a mop, a bemused look on her face. Viola frowned. Bemusement. Bemusement was the expression she was most nervous to see people viewing her with. 

“Sorry?” she asked. The woman rubbed an ear with a single finger, as if it had been her hearing that had interfered with Viola’s ability to answer the question.

“You look lost,” she offered. And, well, yes, but that didn’t…

Oh. She had forgotten that she was dressed like a girl who hot airballooned on a regular basis.

Was hot airballooning a verb? 

Whatever. 

“Yes,” said Viola. “Um, sorry, but do you sell phones?” The woman studied her, just for a second, then nodded.

“Near the registers,” she said. Then, after another quick look over, she added, “Are you alright, sweetheart?” 

“Yes,” said Viola, maybe a bit too quickly, and she felt, for the first time in a while, her voice slip slightly. The woman, however, seemed content not to press. She nodded, her eyes doing one final look over of Viola, and then turned.

“Don’t get yourself into any trouble,” she said. Viola, ignoring the obvious warning in her voice, hurried back towards the front of the shop. Soon, at some point, Margot would come out of the bathroom, and she was hoping to have the phone settled in her bag by then. 

She could wait. She could wait on getting the phone, on getting the lifeline, but it felt… well, it just felt like that lifeline. New York Viola’s phone. Maybe she didn’t know what New York Viola dressed like yet, or what New York Viola talked like, or where she lived or who she was friends with, but she could buy her a freaking phone. New York Viola could have a phone number. Something that, with some level of permanence, belonged to her.

And there they were, on a spinning display. Well, no, she had to pick a cardboard cut out of a phone off the rack and bring it to the cashier, and she opted for the cheapest option that came with a touch screen; really, 39.99 was a lot, but if she was committing to things, then, well, might as well. Her phone. And, if she ever became wildly rich or something, earned the right to wear these clothes rather than borrowed it, she could just pop out the sim and get a better one.

The cashier didn’t seem nearly as interested in her as his coworker had been. Viola hadn’t even let him get through the options for prepaid minutes before forking over the chunk of cash. And then, with just seconds to spare, she tucked the phone into her borrowed bag. Margot came around the corner, and Viola arranged herself to look lost again. Easy enough. 

“We cannot go back to that burger place,” said Margot, shaking her head. “That, or my body can’t handle fake cheese like it used to.” 

 

* * * * *

 

There was something about drinking as a girl. Okay, there was always something about being a girl, but there was really something about drinking as a girl. Once, the old version of her, the one who had been afraid of everything, of allowing a crack in the armor, had clammed up when she drank. Things slipped closer to the surface when she drank. Everything bobbed up. And, when she had built her whole life around not coming up for air, it had been the most dangerous time.

But now? Her feet were back in the sand, and the fire Lucy had built was starting to tower up, and she had a plastic cup topped with the strongest margarita she’d ever had in her life. It was only the third margarita she’d ever had, mind you, and the other two had come forty-five minutes and an hour before this one respectively, but it still was the strongest. Had to be. Her mind was swimming, and her feet were planted on the ground and, just for now, everything seemed wildly okay.

Gosh. She wished she could live drunk.

Inside thought. Margot was already worried about her wandering off into the sea. Best to keep the temptation of alcoholism firmly in the ‘no vocalization’ part of her brain. 

She’d acquired a pretty big vacancy there anyway. 

“We should have bought s’mores stuff,” said Margot.

“Yes,” agreed Viola. They’d built little mounds of sand, dug out holes in front of them, like they were children playing on the beach, just enough so that they could sit and stare at the fire and rest their backs. And, sure, walking up and down the boardwalk hadn’t needed to be lots of work — they were really just walking, and it wasn’t all that large — but it had exhausted Vi. 

It ought to be easy. Being a girl. Looking like a girl. The hard part ought to be over. Now that she’d said the word, when they painted her feminine, she ought to really, genuinely, feel like one all the time. God, it wasn’t like anyone had been treating her like they did Seb. Not the store clerk, not the boy at the pier, not anyone, at least not as far as she could tell. 

She wanted it to have been like a switch. One day boy, now, girl. Her brain flowing straight to where she wanted it to be, to the girlhood she was desiring, the one she had, at moments, managed to grasp. But she had to remind herself. In the store, everywhere. Even with appearance, there was so much that separated her from them. There was so much that they were that she could never be. It fogged against her brain when she was out in the world with everyone else. 

But it was okay here, on the beach. And maybe that was the booze, but she thought it was also them. The three of them. The three of them who had never, ever questioned this. Teased, maybe, just a little at the beginning. But… 

Her brain almost jumped to the bus again. To her on it. To them, stuck behind. But she banished it, because she was here now, and that was a consequence for the future. She wanted to love them now. She wanted to love them now before they got back to Garland, before it came with attached strings and a price tag, before it became untenable. She wanted to love them now. 

Lucy returned from the fire, flames spitting behind her, and settled in front of her own lump of sand. 

“Now it’s Spring Break,” she said, happily. More than anyone, Lucy had indulged on the margaritas. No unwitting girls and their even less witting suitors to manage, apparently, lent itself to more drinking.

“See, I always imagined Spring Break as those things you see on like, clips of MTV from YouTube,” said Anna. “You know, like the ones from like 2000?” She took a sip of her own margarita. “This is so much different.” 

“I think we’re on the wrong beach for that,” said Margot. 

“I think we’re in the wrong decade for that,” said Viola. 

“This is better,” declared Lucy. “This way, when we wake up tomorrow, we won’t be stuck to the floor of some motel.” 

“Stuck to the floor?” asked Margot, half laughing. 

“We’d be all sweaty!” Lucy flipped her hair out over the mound, letting it fall onto the sand. Vi watched it. She really, really was going to need to figure out a haircut. She’d removed the wig after they’d returned, and her own hair was now tucked up against the sand. The thing she had, a sort of uncut, shaggy thing, would never do in New York. Really, it didn’t matter where she was; this haircut wouldn’t do for a girl. 

“How much did it cost to get your hair done?” she asked, a question she only understood the implications of after she posed it. Lucy smiled widely.

“The blonde?” she asked, teasingly. “Gosh, Viola, you’re-”

“Not the blonde,” interjected Viola. 

“You’d look so pretty blonde,” said Lucy. Viola dug her feet into the sand.

“Not the blonde,” she repeated. Lucy pulled her hair off the sand and flipped it, as if that would demonstrate the merits of blonde. As if being blonde was the only thing that permitted moving your hair like that. 

“It’s so freeing,” she said.

“I wasn’t asking about the color,” said Viola. Anna giggled.

“Blonde is cute,” said Anna. Margot nodded.

“Blonde is fun,” said Margot.

“Stop,” said Viola, laughing.

“Wow,” said Anna, shaking her head. “So you hate blondes.” Viola grinned at her.

“Yes,” she said. “You got me. My best friends in the world are all blondes, and yet I hate them. I hate them so much.” Anna kicked out towards her, but couldn’t get her. The angle was all wrong. Knee’s couldn’t bend sideways. 

Only idiots forgot that.

“Haircuts aren’t cheap,” said Margot, much more helpfully. “Dyeing it is the expensive part, though. Probably like fifty or sixty without?” Right. Well, between that and the phone and the still promised shoes, and the stupid ship today, well…

“Yes, sure,” said Lucy, waving a hand through the air, “but what’s the point if you’re not going to dye it, Vi? I mean, what’s life if you’re not blonde?” 

“You dyed your hair six months ago,” said Anna, giggling. 

“And I had never lived before then,” she said, melodramatically.

“No blonde,” said Viola. She still wasn’t sure that was the kind of girl she was. New York Viola, at least, had that whole slate of possibilities. “Just like, something better.”

“Highlights,” said Anna, nodding, and Viola laughed. 

“You’re all so unhelpful,” she said. Lucy grinned.

“You might want to give it some time,” she said. “Not like, a lot of time, but just get some more length before you go get something.” She shrugged. “Plus, um, if you’re not coming out at school yet…” 

Right. Right. Viola, this Viola, the one they didn’t know was about to disappear, the one who was never going back to school, couldn’t exactly walk around with any sort of feminine haircut. They thought she was heading back to school. They thought Seb was going back to school and, sure, if she wasn’t gone, that was the path, but she was gone. 

“Right,” said Viola. There was too much going on all at once. Part of the day, she’d spent being nervous about being Viola. About being bad at being Viola. Other parts, she’d spent wondering what that even meant. Other parts, she’d worried about New York. About her parents. About her friends. 

And it had squeezed out the driving force behind all of it. It had squeezed out the David of it all. 

Sort of a miracle that anything could do that. 

She wondered absently what he was doing back at Garland. It was, what, a Monday? And he’d had practice this week, so he probably wasn’t drinking. Maybe just, like, hanging out in his dorm?

Did David live in the dorms? She’d never really asked. She supposed that, given that he was literally a star football player, and not in the way that Cam was a football star, he was probably able to live off campus. 

Hey, had she ever figured out why he had been at the party that night? He had said that he was practicing or… or, or something, at least. She could exactly remember. Whenever he started talking about football, her mind sort of melted into the recesses of her skull, and not in the fun way it did when he had talked to her at the party. Not the fun way it did when he had wrapped his arms around her waist, or when he had leaned down towards her lips, or when she caught a bit of the smell of him…

Vi swallowed. Oops. 

God, just the thought of him when she was drunk…

The power of three margaritas and a full day of being Viola, apparently, was making her mouth extremely dry. He hadn’t texted since he’d asked for her number, and Vi, or Seb, or whatever, hadn’t texted him back. 

And she couldn’t have him, because, well, gosh, this was the whole thing that had put her in this mess in the first place. But David was just so David, and her mind had affixed itself to the lawn of Sigma Pi again, and his hands had affixed themselves to her waist, and she had to swallow again to pull herself away. 

Such. A. Cliche.

New York Viola was going to be much better at this. 

“Maybe in the summer,” offered Margot. “You know, maybe you can try something different then.” Vi jolted back, her mind still stuck on the bredth of David Oliver. 

“Maybe,” she said. They kept implying things that were complete impossibilities. Worlds where Viola could be Viola without trouble.

She took a drink. 

“Can we watch a movie later?” asked Anna, to no one in particular. Viola nodded.

“Pirates of the Caribbean?” she offered. Anna rolled her eyes at her.

“You’re really into Orlando Bloom, huh?” she said. “I mean, sure, fine, whatever, he’s just so not Paul Bettany.” Vi giggled.

“It’s more the Keira of it,” she admitted. 

“How very bisexual of you,” said Margot, and Viola laughed again. 

“It wasn’t really that,” she said. “I mean, I guess… I guess no one knows what closets they’re in, but that wasn’t why I liked her.” Margot raised an eyebrow.

And Viola explained her fascination with the Pirates movies. She explained how she’d managed the voice, all the voices, really, and how, before everything else, before anything was possible, the dream had been her. And by the end, Lucy was on her feet, smiling like an idiot, dumping sand onto the fire. 

“I didn’t mean we needed to watch it right now,” said Viola, grinning at her.

“As if,” said Lucy, spinning away from the smothered embers, beaming. “As if. We are so not watching a movie, because I have an infinitely better idea.”

 

* * * * * 

 

Lucy had told them nothing on their march back to the house. She’d told them to wait outside, disappeared, then reemerged with an oversized beach bag, the bottle of margarita mix, now clearly topped with actual liquor, and an unflinching smile. 

That, and Viola’s wig.

And then they’d set off back down towards the boardwalk. There had been enough drinks to this point that Vi was happy to follow in her wake without question, bobbing off Anna’s shoulder. Who was Viola, Viola, to question the machinations of Lucy? Oh, sure, it had destroyed her life, was currently destroying her life, but what was another one? Why not unflinchingly trust the girls who had flipped everything inside out? 

Viola giggled into the air, warm and dewy, at the ludicrousness of everything. 

“Three drinks, and you’re a mess,” said Anna, bumping against her.

“You’re one to talk,” said Viola. “I seem to distinctly remember you doing something on the side of the road a few nights ago. Oh, gosh, I just can’t remember what that thing was. Something… something very unseemly.”

“Neither of you have legs to stand on,” pitched in Lucy. “You’re both terrible, terrible drunks.” 

“I never threw up,” said Viola, defensively. Lucy waved a hand in the air, as if to say ‘you know what you did’, which, yeah, true, except she’d consumed an extra margarita’s worth of the mix, and now that stupid decision felt distinctly less stupid than it had a couple of hours ago.

“Where are we going?” asked Anna. 

“You all need to have a little faith,” said Lucy.

“I have a little faith,” said Viola.

“You all need to have a little more faith,” said Lucy. She turned up onto the boardwalk, stepping off the street and onto the wood paneling. It had emptied entirely; no more tourists ambling up and down it, the lights shining down on the worn wood and almost nothing else. The music was no longer playing at Joe’s.

“It’s not that late, is it?” asked Margot. Viola reached into the little leather cross bag, fumbled with her phone, and blinked.

“1 am,” she said, incredulous. It had gone so fast. 

“Better for us,” said Lucy, happily. 

“You worry me sometimes,” said Margot. 

“When have I ever mislead any of you?” asked Lucy with a huff.

“Well,” started Viola, and Lucy spun and glared at her. Vi giggled, and Anna pulled her closer, as if for protection. “You’re scary when you’re drunk.”

“Never,” she said. “I’ve never mislead you.” Vi giggled again, then nodded. Lucy returned to her full, upright posture, and marched forward. “Good.”

“I still want to know where we’re going,” said Margot. “I mean, if it’s some hideously expensive-”

“It’s free,” said Lucy. “Okay, well, it is actually hideously expensive, but it’ll be free for us. There’ll be no one there.” And then, Lucy turned them up the pier, and Viola put it together. She snorted. 

“Oh my god,” she said. “I do not need to be Elizabeth Swann this bad.” The ship, lame and sad and tiny, was bobbing in the waves just fifty feet away. Lucy spun back and pouted. 

“When have I ever-”

“It’s totally closed!” The gangplank, narrow and wobbly earlier in the day, was now standing straight up in the air. Lucy rolled her eyes. 

“Some pirate you are,” she said, and Anna laughed.

“Oh, but it’s such a sad ship,” she said. 

“That’s because you weren’t properly equipped last time,” said Lucy, proudly. 

“What, did you bring swords?” 

“Better!” Lucy entered the oversized bag, fumbled around briefly, and then revealed a full, surprisingly realistic, pirate’s hat. Viola laughed so hard her knees started to wobble.

“Oh my god,” she repeated. “I really, really do not need to be Keira Knightley this bad.” Lucy narrowed her eyes.

“What if you do a British accent?” she said. Vi slumped her shoulders.

“No,” she said. 

“Isn’t this literally what you practiced for?” asked Lucy. “Repeat after me: Walk the plank!” Margot covered her mouth, and Anna snorted. Vi’s knees shook from laughter again. 

“That is the worst British-”

“Repeat it!” 

“She doesn’t even say something like that!” Lucy crossed her arms and glared.

“Viola Collins, if you don’t think I can get you to stand on a stupid wooden ship and pretend to be the girl you wanted to be for your whole fricken’ life, you have learned nothing.” She took the hat, twisted it so the front was arranged correctly and held it in front of Viola. 

“You’re such a theatre kid,” said Viola. “I don’t think I really realized-”

“Okay, first of all? Rude. And second of all, I’ve literally been a theatre major for like, the entire time you’ve known me.” Lucy straightened and wiggled the hat in from of Viola. “And third of all, I will not be resisted.” A step forward. “You will put on the hat and you will put on the accent and you will enjoy pretending to be a pirate.”

“It’s dumb,” said Viola. 

“You know what’s dumb?” asked Lucy, stepping forward again. “Coming all the way here, having the hat, having the perfect excuse to be really dumb,” she gestured to the maragritas in her hand, then to the ship, “and not doing it.” She wiggled the hat again. “Give me an accent, Viola Collins.” Vi giggled.

“It’s so dumb,” she said again, and it was, but it felt a tiny bit less dumb than it had a minute ago. 

“Accent, missy,” said Lucy. And Vi closed her eyes, shook her head, and found the accent she’d worked so hard to keep.

“It’s so, so, so dumb,” she said. And Lucy, beaming, dropped the hat lazily on Viola’s head.

 

* * * * *

 

It wasn’t hard to sneak onto the ship. Shockingly easy, really, considering how close it sat to a set of bars. Someone at Joe’s had surely tried to sneak on before. Except, maybe, that the ship was still the saddest floating hunk of wood Viola had ever seen, hardly more interesting than the pier itself.  They’d only needed to unhook the gangplank, lower it, and then stumble across, Margot reaching back to steady Vi. And now, now they were sitting cross legged on the deck of the ship, swapping the two pirates hats they had between the four of them.

And Viola was still in her stupid, offensively British accent.

And it was silly. Silly, and at least a little relieving.

For a whole decade, all she’d ever wanted to do was something as silly as this. On television, she had watched commercials for Disney World, girls bouncing around in costumes, in princess dresses, their hair twisted into curls. And on Halloween, they had dressed, too; they had been witches and vampires and princesses and, god, pirates. And she had been relegated to pretending in her room, putting it all into her voice, because she could not change her body, her birth, but she had figured out how she could change her voice, and if she avoided the mirrors long enough, if she closed her eyes…

And, well, this wasn’t that. She was nineteen, and her body was still… it was still Seb’s, even with the wig, which she’d thrown back on haphazardly before they set off, and the breasts and all of it. And this was just a hat and a very-much-not-a-pirate-ship and an increasingly slurring accent. But she wasn’t going to be picky. Not right now.

“I can’t believe you guys paid to get onto this,” said Margot, looking around.

“Okay,” said Anna, holding up a hand, “I was about to talk our way in for free, but Vi got all guilty and paid the kid.”

“He still gave us a discount,” argued Viola. 

“He was going to give it to us for free,” said Anna. “For free. God, I’ve seen you flirt with boys, Vi, I know you could do it.” Vi rolled her eyes.

“He wa-”

“Accent,” reminded Lucy. Viola glared at her, then returned to her British accent.

“He was a highschooler,” said Viola.  

“I wasn’t going to kiss him,” said Anna. “God, I barely flirted with him. I just wanted to get on the boat.” She leaned back against the deck. 

“It was mean,” argued Viola.

“You’re such a girl scout,” said Anna. Viola stuck out her tongue, appreciation flooding her at the word. 

She wasn’t a pirate, and she wasn’t a girl scout, but she was something. Some kind of a girl. Some kind of girl, probably, and that wasn’t exactly the most stable foundation, wasn’t one at all, if she thought about it, but ‘girl’ could be affixed to any other descriptor. Punk girl. Sporty girl. Sorority girl, although she would be hard pressed to imagine a sorority boy. If there was one, it had been her, all of two weeks ago, minus the sorority part and, she supposed, the boy part. She was a girl, and that kept getting lost in the moments of sober horror, the ones where she had to think about money and her family and where she was going to live and who the fuck she was supposed to be, but right now… right now, and always…

She flopped back onto the deck of the ship, landing with a thud, and laughed. 

The ship rocked beneath her, and the stars twisted above her, and all she could feel was drunk. She kept forgetting. It all felt so overwhelming and scary all the time, so crushing, so impossible. And then, sometimes, some nights, like the night she sprawled out into Margot’s lap, or even the one where she had sprawled into David’s, it became easy. It felt easy. Not in the way that the world was easy; the world was impossible, and it was impossible for her to be in it, but she had untangled that one bit, that one bit that had hung over her head, and there were all the attached strings but it was really just so, so, so fucking easy. 

It was easy to lie on the deck of a ship and look at the stars.

It was easy to decide to be something, even if you didn’t know what. 

It was easy to decide to live. 

And the hard parts? Consequences, fine, they existed. But the world had always looked steady, always seemed solid, and she had been the one who was spinning. Not tonight. Not tonight. Tonight, she was solid, and it was the stars that were spinning, spinning, spinning…

Oh, too many margaritas. 

She pushed back off the deck blinking, trying to steady her stomach. 

“Whoa,” she murmured, mostly to herself. The whole deck was spinning now. Anna grabbed her arm, steadying her, and Viola blinked. “Whoa.” 

“Maybe stay in the middle of the boat,” said Lucy, giggling. 

“I’m fine,” said Vi. She considered, waited for the spinning to slow, which did not happen, then nodded. “I’m fine.” 

“Man overboard,” said Anna, just to herself. All three looked to her. She shook her head. “Sorry, just practicing.” Viola rolled her eyes and let herself fall back onto the deck again, flopping right against the little cross body bag she’d carried all day. 

Gosh, it seemed cute. She liked it. She hoped that, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t totally out of style. Lucy dressed so different out here; a different kind of chic, out of the world of Garland State. She liked the bag. She hoped it worked in Garland. 

They must have treated the wood. It was too smooth. Maybe there had been risk of splinters, and that made it unsuitable for trapping tourists. Or, god, maybe they’d never managed to take it out of the harbor, so it had stayed in perfect, tiptop shape for like, fifty years or whatever. 

This whole thing was so monumentally dumb. 

Gosh, she loved it. 

No rules, just something lovely. Not the social rules, which dictated that, at nineteen, pretending to be a pirate on what was probably a fishing boat with a gallon of margaritas was distinctly not cool, nor the rules of whatever fucking world she was being beckoned into. It was okay to just… like it. She just liked it. 

She just liked it. 

She should do more things she just liked. 

She rolled her head on the bag. A little bit of plastic crunched beneath her. 

Viola blinked. New York Viola’s phone. 

Well, really, it was just Viola’s phone. The other one, the one she’d inherited when her father had upgraded to a new one, the one with the number everyone knew, the one still paid for by her parents, was Seb’s phone. His phone. The people who texted that expected to talk to Seb. Her mother, those friends from high school, David. They’d all wanted Seb. 

The one beneath her head was Viola’s. Viola’s, and a fresh start, and no one in the world was texting Viola. And when they went back to Garland, Viola would have to transfer the girls’ numbers over, because she would kill herself if she lost them. And she should transfer her parents; better to have and not need. And… well, she could transfer whoever she wanted. 

A thought rang at the back of Viola’s head. 

She was never going to see David again if she followed through with this plan. That had been the literal point, but it hadn’t actually gone through her head that she was never, ever going to see David Oliver ever again, because she was going to be gone before there was ever a chance. 

She would never talk to David Oliver ever again. He’d never tell her another stupid joke, or sidle down a row ten minutes late towards her, or recite a 500 year old line of poetry to her. This was it. That night, the night David Oliver had wrapped his arms around her waist and she had tipped her chin and they had just missed each other, had been the last one. It had been the last chance for anything to happen. 

He should have kissed her. God, he should have kissed her. After everything, she was going to leave anyway, and David fucking Oliver had almost kissed her, and now she was, frankly, a little bit mad that it never happened. Because, god, if she’d learned anything over the last month, it was better to jump all the way in. Half measures? Same consequences, half the benefits. 

She should have kissed David Oliver. 

And she wanted to tell him so. 

She flipped onto her stomach, legs curling over her back, and dug her phone and Seb’s phone out. The girls were still chattering away, and Viola quickly copied David’s number into her new phone. Then, she slid the old one into the recesses of the bag.

She paused. Considered. Just for a second. 

Full throated honesty?

Well, not full throated honesty. Not all of it. Just… just the bit she need to tell him.

 

Viola: hi david

Viola: it’s viola

Viola: i wish you should have kissed me