SUNBURN | JOHN B ROUTLEDGE

055

Sarah's laughter echoed across the dark skies and the inky black water, the sound almost eerie in the stillness of the night.

It was clear that she wasn't a regular smoker, and the blunt had hit her harder than expected. She lay on her back, still feeling the buzz in her system, and gazed up at the sky with wide, glassy eyes. "Wow," she breathed out, marveling at the stars that seemed to swirl above her. She was in that space between reality and some strange dreamlike state, where everything felt a little too big, too funny, too intense.

"Would you rather... have," Sarah started, her voice slurred with a mix of amusement and confusion. She cleared her throat, trying to focus. "I was imagining you like this just now. It was pretty funny. Would you ima—would you rather..."

Gabriella, feeling a similar haze but growing impatient with Sarah's rambling, cut in with a loud, joking shout. "Oh my God, just spit it out already!" She giggled at the end, unable to help herself, still feeling the buzz as well.

Sarah tried to gather her thoughts, though they were slipping through her mind like sand. "Would you rather have nipples for eyes or eyes for nipples? Imagine if you get really old and your boobs get saggy, and your nipples, if they were your eyes, you could see if your shoes were untied."

As soon as the ridiculous question left her mouth, both Sarah and Gabriella burst into laughter, their giggles bouncing off the sides of the boat and mingling with the night air. The absurdity of the question, combined with their hazy state, made it impossible to stop.

Gabriella, struggling to catch her breath between laughs, managed to gasp out, "What the fuck is that question?"

Kiara, who had been sitting quietly, her mood visibly darker than the others, rolled her eyes. The laughter grated on her nerves, especially coming from Sarah. "Is this like your first time smoking or something?" she asked, her tone sharp.

Sarah, her cheeks flushing red with embarrassment, whispered, "No," before she tried to shift the mood. She looked at Kiara with an almost desperate need to bridge the gap between them, to pull them back to the days when they were inseparable. "Hey, Kiara..." she started again, her voice soft and pleading.

But Kiara wasn't having it. The anger and hurt she had buried for so long boiled over. "Oh, my God. Enough of the 'Hey, Kiara!' bullshit!" Her voice dropped, becoming more controlled but filled with emotion. "Why'd you do it?"

Sarah shook her head, genuinely confused and a little scared by the intensity in Kiara's voice. "Why did I do what?" she asked, trying to recall what exactly Kiara was talking about, though deep down, she knew.

Gabriella, sensing the tension but unsure how to intervene, pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with a practiced flick. She decided it was better to stay quiet, letting the two girls have their moment, even if it was about to get ugly.

Kiara's voice trembled, the weight of their shared history pressing down on her. "We were best friends. We— we stole beers from your dad's fridge, we watched movies together, we cried about boys. And the next thing I know, I'm watching your birthday party happen from Instagram."

Sarah flinched, not from the words, but from the pain she could hear in Kiara's voice. She wanted to explain, to make it right, but it all felt too complicated, too tangled up in everything that had gone wrong. "It was one party," she whispered weakly, as if that would make it better, but it only seemed to make Kiara more upset.

"One party?" Kiara's voice cracked, her sadness deepening. "You invited everybody except me. And then you told everybody I was the reason that the party got busted."

Sarah, her defenses kicking in, shot back, "Okay, well, who else would've called the cops?"

Gabriella, half-listening as she took a drag from her cigarette, muttered under her breath, "True that," finding some logic in Sarah's accusation, and also finding it was quite difficult to smoke using her casted hand.