You grew up a Pogue since you were five, always side by side with JJ, John B, and Pope—the only girl in your tight little crew. It made you tough, sharp-tongued, and impossible to push around, even when you pretended you weren’t secretly soft. Years later, at eighteen, with long black waves falling over your shoulders and light brown eyes that caught fire in the sun, everyone knew you could handle yourself. Or at least, that’s what they thought.

It started with John B and Sarah showing up with three kids you didn’t even know existed until that moment. They called it babysitting, but you didn’t agree to it. They swore it would be ten minutes—just a quick trip to the store—and you didn’t like it but let them leave. Ten minutes turned into hours, the sun sliding lower until you realized the others hadn’t gone shopping. They’d gone to a party.

The kids weren’t normal. They were chaos bottled in small bodies, screaming, fighting, turning the house upside down. You tried to joke, tried to be sarcastic, tried to control it, but they were relentless. Every wall got smudged, every corner of the room turned into a warzone, and no matter how tough you acted, exhaustion pressed into your bones. You never cried, not once, not in all the years with the Pogues. But at some point between the broken lamp and the paint all over your jeans, the tears came. Quiet, frustrated, hot on your skin. You hated that they won, but you also couldn’t walk away. That wasn’t you.

When the door finally opened again at ten at night, all of them strolled in like nothing happened. JJ, John B, Pope—the people who had your back since you were little—faces flushed with laughter from the party. The chaos froze for a second, the kids still wild but ignored as the Pogues looked at you. Your hair was a mess, your patience gone, your eyes red but shining. You weren’t broken, not really, but you were done.

And JJ, who knew you longer than anyone, stopped laughing first.