Letters She Wrote | Outer Banks

𝐱𝐢𝐢𝐢. 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐞𝐭 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞

[ xiii. the quiet game ]

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WILLA DEVERAUX NEVER THOUGHT she would wind up riding in the back of John B. Routledge's iconic Volkswagen hippy van, her trembling body nastily muddy and sticky against the leather seats, with her prickling skin glistening of her own sweat and tears, but—granted—before today, there were a lot things that Willa thought she might never do.

The ride out from the Chateau had initially been one spent in silence. After the five teenagers had finally been brave enough to risk climbing out of the chicken coop, none of them—especially John B.—could quite look at the marsh-side property the same. Standing aimlessly in the dying grass, none of them could dare to go back into the battered and destroyed shack, silent with terror and void of suffocated screams. The screen front door of the Routledge home had still been hanging ajar, as if purposely left open for the gunmen's imminent returns and, surely, they would return. The five teenagers, though shaken and afraid, were not going to allow themselves to fall back into the same trap.

So, they fled, knowing they needed to find their answers—or, rather that John B. did—before they would all be forced to answer to the same reaper once more.

With nothing more than the clothes on their backs, a golden compass, and a stolen handgun, the five teenagers found refuge in the tattered old Volkswagen—or as the pogues had long ago affectionately coined as the Twinkie—and set off for the coast. Redfield Lighthouse, to be exact. Now located on the far back bench of the van, adjacent to Pope Heyward, Willa found herself sitting so closely to the boy that their sweaty arms brushed with each harsh jolt of the long, bulky vehicle hitting a pothole. Neither of them spoke; their focused, lurking eyes pointed in any direction but each other, nor at any of the other three fearful individuals around them. Willa was looking down to the bottom of the stained carpeted floor of the van, her gaze locked on her dirty bare feet. She had taken her painful Birkenstocks off again, deeming it safe enough inside the vehicle to let her blistered soles breathe, but by the ways her paint-chipped toes curled at the heels of the sandals, never quite letting them sway with the Twinkie's uncontrollable and heavy turns, it was a given that Willa was still prepared to shove her sandals back on and run at a moment's notice.

Insatiable nerves twisted sharply in Willa's stomach, searing into her flesh like the bullets shot from the gunmen's weapons, and fear curled around her slim throat like invisible fingers, as if she, too, were choking as cruelly at John B.'s pet rooster had only a short while prior. The other teenagers scattered throughout the van were quiet, as well, reeling in the horrific reality that they all could have very easily not made it out of the Chateau with their lives. They were incredibly lucky, but the cruel voice in the back of Willa's mind was clearly and loudly reminding her that they might not be so lucky a second time.

"All right. I've got to ask. Is everyone okay?"

Surprisingly, Pope was the first to break the silence of the van, lifting his thoughtful stare upwards. One-by-one, Willa and the others all nodded their heads in confirmation, promising that their hearts were still beating, that their souls were still burning. Unsurprisingly, though, once more, no one spoke vocally, as if afraid that the tremble in their tones might give away their fragility. For on the outside, any of them looked as tough as nails, but on the inside, it was an entirely different story to them all. Each teenager was battling a war that went far beyond the mere sacking that was the Chateau's undoing. Each teenager's sun-kissed skin was tainted in their own painful way; through bruises, tears, sweat, blood, scars, uncertainty and guilt.