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“There, perfect!”
Cady slid the friendship bracelet, woven with bright strands of orange, pink, dark red and teal across the little table to Mirren.
“Wait, I’m almost done, gimme a sec,” Mirren said, her tongue poking out of her mouth just slightly as struggled to tie the threads together. She finally won against the thin slippery thread and held it up in triumph.
Cady picked up hers, knotted in a slightly different pattern, and tied it around Mirren’s wrist.
“Now we’re friends, not just cousins,” Mirren said.
“We can’t be separated! Us against the world.” Cady chimed in, beaming. “And we can make ones for Johnny, and Gat too!”
Mirren grabbed more thread and tied it together to start another bracelet. “With orange for me, pink for you, red for Gat, and blue for Johnny!”
Cady smiled and leaned back, soaking in the late afternoon summer sunlight. Johnny and Gat were swimming in the lake, splashing each other and playing some sort of game.
Summer days like this were the best– when their moms were silent in their anger, and the four of them could steal away time together without listening to their moms sniping at each other. They were all only thirteen, but they were all quite aware of their families’ dynamic. It made their days of peace with each other even more valuable.
“Hey, what’re you thinking about?” Mirren asked, nudging her shoulder as they continued making bracelets, staring out across the water.
“Just– this is perfect, right? The four of us, the Liars. Maybe once we’re adults, do you think we could change things? Maybe we can be better than our moms, y’know.”
Mirren looked thoughtful. “I hope. Johnny would say we could do anything if we put our minds to it, and we have to be better than they are.”
“We can be great! The great heirs of the Sinclair legacy, all working together.”
Mirren flopped backwards onto the grass. “Maybe we’ll do something that the world will never forget! Not just be a few more rich kids who do nothing other than laze around and scream at each other all day.”
Cadence smiled back at her. “Liars forever, right?”
“Liars forever.”
Those summers were all golden.
Cadence would see them, in the years after. She would see a flash of blonde hair, and whip her head around, thinking she’d seen Johnny. She’d smell paint and expect to see Mirren. She’d see something funny and turn to Gat, only to find empty space. Shadows of them would follow her forever.
“I expected more of you, Johnny.”
Harris’ words ran in an infinite loop in his mind. He was never good enough. Not the heir that his grandfather demanded, nor the son his mom wanted. He had practically raised Will while his mother drank and got high and his dad screamed. But he was never gonna be good enough.
He was too volatile, too unstable. He had too much empathy for people that he was supposed to hold himself above. He liked men.
There it was, his shameful secret. The thing he would have to take to his grave, in thirty years, forty, whenever he got himself killed for being reckless, or drank himself to death. He hadn’t ever thought he’d be much of a drinker, but with his mom spiraling the way she was– well, he had to protect Will, but once he was grown and Will was free of him, Johnny didn’t know what he’d do.
He didn’t think that Mirren, Cadence, or Gat would care he was gay– but what if this was what broke them in the end? Were they doomed to fall apart the way their moms had, to carry that same hatred down through generations?
“Johnny?”
Johnny turned around, forcing a smile onto his face. He had to force down his anger and pain, stuff it into a box and cast it into the recesses of his mind. He pulled together all the love and good cheer he held in him and turned to Will.
“What’s up, buddy?”
“Mom and Dad are yelling again, Johnny.” Will looked so sad, and Johnny’s heart hurt. He tried to protect him as much as possible, but in this way, he kept failing.
“Hey, it’s okay. I’ll go talk to them, get them to stop.” Johnny steeled himself, and gave Will a tight hug. “Just wait here, I’ll be back in a minute.”
Will nodded, holding him tight. “Okay.”
Johnny was almost at the doorway when Will’s voice stopped him. “Do they hate each other? Do they– hate us?”
He felt tears pricking his eyes, and pulled his brother close again. “No, buddy, they love you. You’re the best part of this family, don’t ever forget that.”
“I love you, Johnny.”
“I love you too, buddy.” Johnny closed his eyes, holding Will tight. One day, he was gonna get out of this family, and he was gonna take Will with him. They’d be alright.
He held onto that thought when he tried to tell his dad to just back off, that they were scaring Will, and got a backhand to the face in return.
Gat had always felt lucky, with Ed as his guardian. He knew Ed loved him, and somehow, while living in a family with more wealth than he could ever dream of, he ended up with the one thing his friends had never had; a parental figure who would support and love him without any ulterior motives.
Maybe that was why he had ended up as the only semi emotionally stable one, he thought wryly.
Mirren’s mother brought her down at every opportunity, making her feel unworthy and lesser in every way. Johnny’s mom didn’t notice anything about her son, and turned a blind eye to Johnny’s many desperate calls for help. Maybe no one else really noticed how Will would turn to Johnny before their mom, but Gat saw. And Cadence, whose relationship with her mom was tumultuous in every way even with the love that was still present.
They were his family, the three of them. And he had Ed, as an adult who he could turn to when he felt like he didn’t belong. Maybe when they were grown up, when the war over their inheritance was settled, they could find a way of living and loving that would keep them all safe.
He could marry Cadence. Mirren’s art would be displayed in museums. And Johnny– well, Johnny would be content with whatever he wanted to do.
Gat had seen the resignation in Johnny’s eyes when he’d pulled him up from the water. He’d seen the way Johnny had given up the second Will was safe, the way he’d let the water wrap around him and very nearly welcome him home. They hadn’t talked more about it, but Gat had seen something in Johnny’s eyes that day that scared him.
Blue had always been Johnny’s favourite color. To die in the water that had always held him with more love than his parents might have been a relief.
They hadn’t thought it through. Turns out they didn’t really know how to do arson.
Mirren had always loved orange. When she ran into the flames, searching desperately for Johnny, that was all she could see. Could that have given her a moment of peace in the beauty of its vibrancy? Or did the soupy smoke envelop her too quickly?
No one will ever know, for she didn’t live long enough to tell anyone.
Cadence remembers everything now. The screams from above her as the flames roared, eating hungrily through the wood of their home. They had all agreed to do it, but she had set the fires first.
She had trapped Johnny upstairs, and she had heard his screams of agony as the flames began to tear apart the room he was in. Did he stumble around in pain, searching for Mirren before he eventually fell? Did he die in the explosion of the house, or had his heart already stopped? Did he die alone, in pain and scared (Johnny had always been so afraid of fire, always been the first to preach fire safety despite his lackadaisical response to most other kinds of safety) or had he managed to find one of the others? Could they have comforted each other in their last moments while she had run for the water?
It had been a year since they had died, and she was alone. She saw them still, ghosts, or hallucinations, perhaps, hovering around the edges of her vision.
She couldn’t talk directly to them anymore, not since she had learned what had happened. What had been done to them. What they had done to themselves .
It was all on her now. The last of the Liars, the only one to possibly try to make some of Gat’s, Johnny’s, and Mirren’s dreams come true.
Summer could never be the same. She could never be the same. There would be no moving on for her, not from them.
She felt for the bracelet at her wrist, the strands of pink, red, blue, and orange that intertwined together. It was the last real item she had left of them, everything else destroyed when the house exploded.
One piece of the thread was fraying, reaching out from where the rest were all knotted together. That was her now, trying to patch together a life when she’d lost all everything that made her whole.
“I don’t want to burn again. ”
“I don’t think anybody ever saw me.”
They were just kids, desperate and angry, and they had wanted so badly to change the world. To fix their family at least, and be what their moms never could’ve.
They would never get the chance.
Live your life, Cady. We’ll be waiting for you.
Any heaven of mine, would have you in it.