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SHINGLES — LIKE THE roof tiles, not the disease — are actually very interestingly textured, Piper Maybank was realizing as she laid across the ridge of an ocean-front house being constructed, her waist parallel to the ridge, so her back laid against one side and her legs against the other. One of her hands was blocking the sun from her eyes so she could watch her friend John B stand with one foot on the edge of the roof's ridge, one foot dangling off like the adrenaline junkie he was, while she allowed her fingers on her other hand to dance around the shingles beside her, tracing the edges of them.
"That's what, a three-story fall to the deck?" Pope asked John B from the balcony a few feet down, his feet on solid ground. "I give you about a one-in-three chance of survival."
John B hummed and stuck the index finger of his hand holding a can of beer into his mouth before pointing it to the sky, where the sun was preparing to set, infusing the clouds above them with hues of oranges and yellows. "Should I do it?"
Piper tilted her head back until her shoulders lifted off the side of the roof, her blonde hair piling around her face as she made eye contact with her brother who had glanced at the roof from his perch amongst the scaffolding, a car of beer in his own hand, and red baseball cap sitting on his head backward.
"Yeah, you should jump," Pope said, aiming a power drill the construction workers left on the balcony at John B and pressing the button, causing the drill bit to spin. "I'll shoot you on the way down."
"Oh, you'll shoot me?"
Piper pushed herself up onto her elbows, "Be careful, John B, I'm in the perfect position to push you." He turned his head to look at Piper with an accusatory glance over his shoulder as she squinted her eyes and pointed finger guns at him in jest.
"You're too much of a softie for murder, Peter-Piper."
"Is that a challenge, Routledge?"
Kie walked out of the house and onto the deck just then, complaining exasperatedly about rich people, "They're gonna have Japanese toilets with towel warmers."
To understand Kie, you have to understand environmental awareness. The day she learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, she called Piper from her fancy boarding school on the mainland during lunch to rant about it for an hour.
"Of course, they are," JJ said, "Why wouldn't they?"
"This used to be a turtle habitat, but who cares about the turtles, I guess?" Kie planted herself next to Pope on the deck, squinting into the sun as she stared at John B and Piper's precarious positions, "Can you please not kill yourselves?"
