On Kildare Island, everyone had a label. You were either a Kook or a Pogue, a lifer or a visitor, rich or broke. Life was all about lines. There were lines for who you were supposed to be, where you were supposed to live, and who you were supposed to be with. The Kooks lived on their glittering waterfront estates, sipping champagne on yachts, while the Pogues scraped by, fixing the boats those yachts towed.
Not that Ayla cared much about the labels. Pogue, Kook, rich, broke, it was all just noise. She moved between those roads like the wasn't the type to stay in one lane.
Her mom used to call her "a bridge," something that connected two things but never really stayed on either side. Her mom, who was Black and a whirlwind of laughter and big ideas, used to say it with pride. But now that her mom was gone, the word didn't feel quite the same. Bridges didn't get to choose where they stood.
Her skin, a warm brown kissed by the summer rays, seemed to hold the light in a way that made her impossible to ignore. Her curls, wild, and unruly, framed a face that didn't fit into anyone's mold. Her mom was Black, her dad was white, and Ayla carried pieces of both of them.
She didn't mind, though. If there was one thing Ayla understood, it was how to stand between worlds and make her own 17, Ayla was already fiercely independent, she was sharp tongued, but secretly soft-hearted. She was the kind of girl who wore cutoffs and tank tops like armor and climbed trees barefoot, just because she could. She had a look in her brown eyes that dared the world to challenge her.
She wasn't a Kook, obviously. She didn't have the money or the patience for it, and the thought of spending Friday nights at yacht parties or fundraisers made her want to gag. She lived on the Cut, the so-called "Pogue side" of the island, but her dad's job as a construction man meant they were just stable enough to stand out. "Blue collar comfortable," he called it. They had a small house with peeling paint and a porch swing that creaked like it might snap any second. Most of the furniture was secondhand, still, they had central air, a working fridge, and enough money to keep the lights on, things plenty of Pogues couldn't claim.
He worked long hours, pouring everything into making sure Ayla could have a life her mom would have been proud of. But Ayla didn't care about appearances. She wasn't trying to blend in. She liked being unpredictable.
She loved the island, but she didn't trust it. Not the way she trusted herself. Kildare had a way of chewing people up, especially if you didn't know how to play the game. She always said the island felt like a story. It was the kind of place where everything looked golden at first glance, the wide open beaches, the sunlit marshes. But Kildare had layers, and Ayla knew them well. The cracks in the roads. The way the tide swallowed things whole.
And she liked it that way.