(no subject)

[everyone_takes]

Even now, with all her stuff prepared and the canoe pulled up onto the sand, Kate knew she wasn't exactly the camping type. It had taken her way too long to realize that she'd forgotten to pack any water, even though she'd remembered food, a sleeping bag and a flashlight. The serious lack of water was the reason she was late now, jogging along the boardwalk to where she'd left the canoe, hoping Effy hadn't been there for ages already, waiting for her. Not that she was particularly punctual most of the time, so it probably wasn't even a surprise.

And even though she knew she wasn't the camping type, she was excited for the trip. In all the time Kate had been on the island, she'd never done anything like this. Killer stuffed animals hardly counted as an adventure, since that wasn't exactly the sort of fun anyone went looking for. She hadn't been to see the dinosaurs, hadn't gone down into that underground city, hadn't changed bodies with anyone -- though she had been a dude for a few days, which had been sort of fun. This, though, was planned.

On top of that, she'd never really gone on any sort of trip with a girl friend before. She and Tara had done that weekend trip that had ended pretty okay, even if it had started off rough, but she'd never done anything like this. By eighteen, she figured it was the sort of thing everyone had done, but not Kate. Of course, by eighteen, most girls hadn't done half the shit she'd done, but that sort of wasn't the point.

"Hey!" she called as she finally made her way to the beach, breathing hard and skidding in the sand a little. She dropped her pack as she tried to catch her breath, then waved her hand absently at the canoe. "Sorry. Forgot water. Had to go all the way back."

Comments

[backward]

Effy Stonem was not the type of girl who enjoyed operating on a strict schedule. Even in school, she had managed to float in and out of classes without drawing much of anyone's attention, a soft raise of her hand and a motion of her head towards the restroom had been all that she ever needed to do. People didn't question you, she'd learned, when there were no words on your tongue to tell any lies, when every single message was encapsulated in the bright blue of one's eyes. But for those she cared deeply about, Effy was capable of holding herself to the tick of the clock, and there was no doubt in her mind that Kate Gregson was one such person worth molding for, changing for.

And even though Kate had arrived late, the time hadn't been put entirely to waste, an intricate circle of whorls drawn all around Effy's person, from where she'd stretched from her seat, drawing overlaying flowers. Glancing up, she grinned and nodded in the direction of the canoe.

For such a short trip, they hadn't needed to pack much. Yet Effy had brought along enough for a party twice their number. Including a large bottle of water.

"Very prepared, then," she smiled.

[everyone_takes]

"I'm pretty much the worst person in the world to take camping," Kate said with a laugh, looking at the designs drawn in the sand. If she'd been sitting alone on the beach waiting for someone, she never would have thought to make something so pretty and she grinned as she looked at it. "The last time I went camping was in my grandparents' RV, which isn't really camping at all."

And she'd still managed to get poison ivy and spend most of the trip complaining about it. Tara had transitioned into Buck, who'd insisted on hunting for their meals and had brought back three skinned squirrels, much to her grandmother's horror. Now that she thought about it, it had been a pretty good trip.

Kate swung her bag into the canoe, careful not to break anything, then looked at it, her hands on her hips. "I guess we get wet, don't we? Pushing this out?"

[backward]

"Wet, sore, and aching all over," Effy teased, smile still faint as she rose to her feet, twirling on the spot until her toes brushed away each spiral in the sand, bleach white grain falling back over the darker, cooler depths underneath. Walking to the other side of the canoe, Effy ran her palm over the smooth surface of the wood, then raised her free hand to block the sun from her eyes, staring off into the distance, at the lapping water which still stood between the two of them and their temporary reprieve.

"But, as always, it'll be worth it."

Turning with a grin, Effy shrugged a shoulder before she crouched down, putting more of her weight— and a surprising amount, for someone so slight— against the boat, nudging it back and forth to free it from the closely packed sand that supported it.

[everyone_takes]

When Effy crouched down, Kate did as well, putting her hands against the canoe and pushing against it as hard as she could. Briefly, she wondered if they'd put oars inside and glanced over the edge to make sure, but they were there, lying along the sides of the canoe.

Slowly, as they pushed, it began to slide forward. It was heavier than Kate had expected, having never done it before and having only ever seen people do it on TV. They always pushed it forward so quickly, right into the water, laughing, splashing, but by the time the nose of the canoe was in the ocean, she was a little out of breath.

"This looks way easier when other people do it," she said, pausing to push her hair out of her eyes.

[backward]

"We put all of our shit in the canoe," Effy reminded Kate, standing straight and taking a deep breath. She wasn't the type who often gasped for air, preferring to spend those precious few seconds in a swirl of sparks and misplaced vertigo, and in spite of the work that'd left her arms sore, neither did sweat shine on her brow. There were times when Effy was a fire that threatened to burn itself out of existence in any second, but on the whole, she was quiet, invisible those months to all but the watchful.

"Which made it sink into the sand, I bet," she surmised, glancing back behind them at the deep rut that the boat left, showing their progress from only minutes ago. "And there's only two of us girls." She watched the water lap up against the side of the canoe, leaving sand clinging in its wake.

"D'you want front or back?"

[everyone_takes]

"Which one falls in first if this thing tips over?" Kate asked in return, but she was grinning as she splashed into the water, figuring they were going to get wet no matter what they did. It didn't matter where she sat and so she pulled herself into the front of the canoe and reached for one of the oars. The canoe rocked for a moment and she cringed, waiting for the thing to just tip over and spill her right out, but it steadied and she looked back at Effy.

"Can you tell how often I do this?" she asked, laughing, then used the oar to make sure the canoe wouldn't move out into the water any further, anchoring them in the sand.

But no matter how terrible she might be at all of this, she was still excited. Even if the damn thing tipped, she'd probably still be excited for the night ahead.

[backward]

"You, with the way you're panicking," Effy grinned, moving more smoothly through the water, hardly splashing any of it as she went. This was, in some respects, her natural element. There was a reason why she'd always run to the lake back in Bristol. Whenever she was upset, whenever she wasn't sure what to do, she'd run to the lake and simply lay on the dock, staring up at the endless blue of the sky while the stretch of water around her kept on lapping, predictable, unlike anything else in her life. "But I don't think it actually makes a difference. One person gets to look ahead and help steer."

Carefully, her fingers tightened around the side of the boat, making sure that the waves wouldn't turn it over entirely, knuckles turning white as they gripped.

Without waiting for Kate to decide, Effy decided it was probably a better idea to sit in front, and keep the panic from immediately hitting Kate were they to come across anything unexpected. She shot a smile, half-apologetic and half-amused, over her shoulder.

[everyone_takes]

"Hey, it's not panic. I'm totally cool in any and all situations," Kate shot back, even though she was grinning as she said it, then got herself situated in the canoe. All without tipping anything over or throwing their things overboard. Having grown up in the middle of Kansas meant she hadn't spent a lot of time in or around water before the island. She could swim well enough, but there was nothing like this anywhere near Overland Park. The scuzzy hot tub at that hotel she and Tara had gone to barely counted.

The canoe was sort of awkward, but she figured that was due to never actually having been in one before this.

"You know those life jackets you mentioned last time..." she muttered, mostly to herself as she positioned the oar in the water as best she could. "I might actually have better luck paddling my way over there."

[backward]

"Are in the big bag in the center," Effy pointed out, the small smile on her face widening as she looked over her shoulder, using her paddle to slowly ease them out further into the water, waiting for the moment when the bottom of the canoe would finally break away from the sand and hoping they hadn't packed the boat with too much to stay readily afloat. "The island's fucking magic, okay? I'm not going to head out without making sure that we can bob our way back." Although her tone was light and glib, there was truth to what Effy said— the last thing that any one of her friends and family on the island needed was for her to disappear, and not necessarily back to Bristol.

It wasn't enough to stop taking risks, but it was enough to encourage her to be smarter about which risks she chose.

"You can thank me later," she added, tone smug.

[everyone_takes]

"When we're bobbing back home?" Kate asked, laughing as she helped push the canoe further from the shore. With a glance back over her shoulder, she watched the island slowly get further away and while she knew they were still close enough to swim back easily, even without the life jackets, she still liked watching it slip away. It wasn't the same as hopping a plane to some remote location, but it wasn't bad either.

"I looked at a map in the Council office," she said, dipping the oar in and out of the water slowly, getting a feel for it. "Asked some questions. There are ruins over there and a village and apparently a bunch of shipwrecked boats."

She wanted to know what has caused them to wreck, if it was an accident or a storm or something else. Given the way the island worked most of the time, she wouldn't be surprised to discover it had been something she thought was fictional or impossible.

[backward]

Blinking her eyes lazily, Effy kept an eye on the smaller island in the distance, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her skin. For now, the bobbing of the boat in the water was nothing but comforting, and she wished for nothing more than to find time later to lay on the surface, turned onto her back, the scent of salt heavy in the air and a steady gust passing over her face. As long as she kept her eyes forward, she thought, they'd get there. They'd be free, for however long they needed to be.

Some people lamented being unable to leave the island, but to Effy, the problem was never the place so much as the lack of people. If Panda could make it... Katie, Emily, Naomi, J.J., everyone in the gang. It would be perfect. A world all their own.

(But even if they never arrived, Effy knew that leaving still wasn't without consequence. Kate didn't live in Bristol.)

"Makes it the perfect place to tell ghost stories," she concluded with a smug smile. "As long as we don't piss off the ghosts."

[everyone_takes]

"Someone said there was stuff left behind in the village," Kate told her as they slowly made their way closer to the second island. From here, she couldn't see much of anything. Sand, green, no sign of the ruins or the boats she'd heard about. There was a lagoon, apparently a good place to dock, quiet and peaceful, but she couldn't see that from this angle either.

"Belongings, I mean, from the people who lived there." She knew the story of the second island, knew it hadn't been found until years after the first people showed up on the first island. The Compound had always been there, too, deserted, but somehow the second island seemed creepier. Like the people there had all just disappeared at the same time.

It was the perfect place to tell ghost stories. And some of them might not even be that far off the truth.

[backward]

"Makes you wonder why people didn't collect all that shit already," Effy mused, letting her head tilt back for a second, hair cascading down her back. It'd grown longer since her arrival, Effy never bothering to cut the chaotic mess of waves; it never seemed much different for all of her efforts, aside from when the length was suddenly so clear to her eye, the passage of time settling as subtly as running directly into a wall. "Take it for themselves, or... burn it, if they're afraid of being followed and haunted. Leaving it there seems dangerous, yeah?"

Because people, foolish people like Kate and herself, would inevitably end up stepping in that direction. And if there was anything unsafe that people left there without warning— Effy had the feeling that the two of them would come across it.

Hopefully escape in time.

[everyone_takes]

"I guess it depends on what it is. If it's just some clothes or something, I don't know..." She didn't think she'd want clothes or anything from the abandoned village, mostly because of what Effy had said. It wasn't that she thought she'd end up being haunted or that there was some kind of ghost that would follow her back, but she would always know. This shirt belonged to someone who disappeared. And no one on the island would know who that person was. At least the others had memorials, their names on the wall, people who had loved them.

Whoever had been on the second island was completely lost. For good.

"But, fuck, maybe there's stuff there and no one has any idea," she continued, her excitement growing again. "I don't even know how much they've explored this place. Maybe they just mapped it and left." Maybe, for all they knew, there was another underground city.

[backward]

"I don't know if 'just some clothes' is something I'd ever say," Effy admitted, careful to try and match her pulls of the oar to Kate's, which were slightly uneven whenever the girl grew excited about the topic of conversation. She wondered, though, how much she'd be allowed to tamper with whatever they found. Clothes were never just clothes, in her mind. They'd belonged to someone. They smelled of someone. They were worn as part of that person's identity, and even on the island, it was one of the best ways to identify people, even just dividing them out to how long they typically spent by the side of the clothes box. Those who were there longer cared about the surface-level appearance.

"I used to have a shirt of Tone's that I'd wear after he went to university," Effy mused. "Meant nothing to him, but."

But it made her feel like he was closer, she thought, the words going unsaid.

[everyone_takes]

"But it was familiar to you," Kate said, trying to imagine what it would have been like for her when Marshall went off to college. He would have, there was no doubting that, but she knew she wasn't exactly college material and he deserved to get out of Overland Park, even if he didn't actually leave Kansas. Kate had always figured he would, though, go off to New York and make movies and never come home.

And he deserved to be able to do that. Even if she would have been totally lonely without him there. There was a lot of stuff Kate would do, but try to convince Marshall to stay home for her sake wasn't one of them.

"I would have had to keep a sweater vest if Marshall took off," she said, then laughed. "Or a tie." She loved her brother, loved him dearly, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to take the chance to tease him. Even if he wasn't there to hear it. "Or his monogramed pyjamas."

[backward]

"Yeah," she grinned, glad that Kate understood, in whatever capacity that she was able. Effy had yet to come across anyone who shared the type of relationship with their sibling that she had with her own— although twins seemed to come close, she thought, and so Tyler and Cameron were fascinating in their own way— but it was still always a comfort to see that other people relied on their families. It made her feel a little less weak for needing her own.

Her chin raised, Effy closed her eyes briefly as a breeze passed the both of them by, lips curved in a grin. "Think you'd rock the sweater vest and tie more than Marsh, though," she pondered. While she'd never spoken to the boy, Effy had a tendency of watching everyone close to her friends at the various parties that were held on the island, and Marshall hadn't exactly been hard to spot. "Maybe I'm biased."

[everyone_takes]

"I would rock most things better than Marshall," Kate answered with a laugh, although she figured no one could look quite so pulled together as her brother did. Even if she tried to dress like him, even if she cleaned up, put on a nice dress, there was always something just a little bit out of place and Kate was fine with that. She didn't necessarily want to look so completely put together, but it had probably benefited him in the real world. People cared about shit like that when a person went to job interviews or college application meetings.

"You and Tony were always close?" she asked, then glanced back over her shoulder. The second island was closer now, the one they'd come from dropping further and further away. They'd come more than halfway and when she looked, she was beginning to see distinguishing features. Rocks and a little inlet that probably lead to the cove she'd been told about.

"Is he much older than you? I guess not," she continued, answering her own question. In that way, at least, her relationship with Marshall was similar. It was hard not to be close, she thought, when they'd only been born a year apart. They went through all the same sort of stuff around the same time.

[backward]

Effy grinned at Kate's burst of confidence— not that Marshall was placing the bar too high. As much as Effy liked the boy from what she saw of him, she certainly felt that Kate had the upper hand in that overall level of comfort that she displayed, and in many areas of life, that made all the difference. The only reason why Effy had gotten half as far as she did with people was because she learned that too from Tony, how to smile, how to affect others without hardly raising a finger. She didn't need that confidence to be honest. People just had to believe it.

Sometimes, she wondered if part of that strength on Kate's side was also tugged about with grit teeth. For the most part, Effy would have named Kate as the stronger between the two of them, no question. But she wondered if that was ever not true.

"Two years," she replied, leaning forward slightly to squint at the second island, paddling a little faster on her side to turn them towards the alcove. "He was like... the one who practically raised me, though. Started chasing after him as soon as I could walk. Held my hand lots."

[everyone_takes]

"Same with me and Marshall," she said. "I mean, we're close in age. I was only a year old when he was born, because apparently my parents had to get busy all the time right after having an infant at a young age." They'd been older than her, but not by a hell of a lot and Kate couldn't imagine herself with a baby at this point. It wasn't something she was even remotely interested in, something she wasn't sure she could ever see herself doing.

"Except it always sort of felt like he was the one taking care of me instead of the other way around," she admitted, following Effy's lead toward the inlet. It wasn't always that way, there had been plenty of times when she felt like the older sister she was supposed to be, but Marshall had always been something of a caretaker. He'd held their family together plenty of times, which had to have sucked for him, but Kate could never find the energy for something like that. And it wasn't that she'd wanted her family to fall apart, but at fifteen, she hadn't ever been sure how to prevent it.

That was something it seemed like Marshall had always just known.

[backward]

"I took care of Tony for a year," Effy remembered with a slow nod, hands coming to a rest in her lap, working away the tension in her palm. She never wanted Tony to be in such a state again. A part of her realized that going through the experience was very likely one of the reasons why he was capable of holding himself together with such aplomb afterwards, but Effy wasn't the type who wished on adversity on others just for the sake of having them understand. Particularly not those she loved most.

"He was in an accident," she went on to explain. "He only had one more year of college left before he'd be off to university, and then... he was hit by a bus. Couldn't take care of himself after that, and our parents were shit at trying. Mum tried her best, but our parents were never good caretakers, yeah? Tony held all his own before the accident, I followed Tone. So I tried to take care of him after the accident."

She paused, almost as though she'd said too much, swallowing thickly.

"You can learn to take care of them, even if it isn't what you usually do."

[everyone_takes]

"Holy shit, Effy," Kate said, her voice hushed. What she knew about Tony was pretty limited, mostly things she'd been told by Effy or heard in passing through other people, but she still felt sort of sick at the thought. That wasn't the sort of thing that happened all the time and it wasn't the sort of thing you often heard about people recovering from.

"He was okay?" she asked slowly, watching the curve of Effy's shoulders just in front of her in the canoe. "I mean... you took care of him and he was okay?"

Briefly, she tried to imagine herself in the same situation, taking care of Marshall like that and she had to shake it away almost as soon as she began. The bee sting had been bad enough. Even that had sent her to pieces -- though the bout of island honesty hadn't helped much -- and she didn't ever want to think of anything worse happening to him.

[backward]

"Don't tell others, yeah?" Effy said first. It was a foregone conclusion, that Kate wouldn't have a reason to tell anyone just for kicks, but Effy knew full well how easily secrets could pass between any of their lips. She only trusted Kate with this because of all that they'd been for one another, and all that Kate still saw in her, regardless of the previous girl who'd been on the island. Kate was willing to accept the new one for who she was, too.

It was a crucial difference.

"But yeah, he... he got better," nodded Effy, taking up the oar again and paddling with more strength, even as her fingers felt like they were shaking against the surface of the oar. "Just happened one day. He was ready to get better. And it happened."

[everyone_takes]

"I won't," Kate answered, though she wasn't sure she even needed to say it. If it was something Effy didn't want anyone else to know, then she sure as hell wasn't going to be the one to spill. All her life, Kate had been keeping secrets and most of them were in a different ballpark than this one, but that hadn't made them any more or less difficult to keep. For a girl who talked as much as she did, she was pretty good about not saying anything.

"That's good," she said after a moment. "That he got better, I mean, not... you know." It made her think, just for a second, what it would be like to lose Marshall. It was possible, kids died all the time. Lionel had died. Something like that could have just as easily happened to her brother or it could have been something as small as that stupid bee.

[backward]

"Yeah," Effy agreed quietly, pressing her lips together in thought. She held onto that memory, strangely, and more so when the times grew rough. To have it serve as that ever-present reminder that things could get worse, could've been worse, and that sometimes it was okay to count the blessings one by one. To dwell in the good, rather than to try and fix everything where it continuously peeled at the seams.

"I thought he was gone," she admitted, pushing harder with the paddle as they started to follow the line of the shore, keeping a distance to keep from brushing the canoe against the reeds below. "Couldn't wake him up. But he's alright now. After you survive that, you can survive anything, yeah?"