American Teenager

There is nothing fruitful about this island

I owe you a black eye and two kisses.
(Crush, Ethel Cain)

American Teenager

                       Bonnie Oak might die this summer.

Of boredom; of recklessness; of all the bad decisions she has ever made that cumulated into a giant heap that may or may not serve as a grave once September comes.

She thinks there's nothing to do in Kildare County. Her house is too small, her friends are too bland, and her car has stopped working sometime back in April. It's okay, though, her father will check it out when he's home long enough to do so. Other than that, her television doesn't work most of the time and she has been living off beer and pie filling since the summer has started. Sure, she receives free meals every now and then from the restaurant she works at, but every kind of charity makes her queasy so she has a hard time swallowing the spoonfuls.

Someone looking for an outlet will go through great lengths to find one. Something that won't make her want to claw her eyes out, preferably. She goes in search of it in the North side, amid all the lavish houses and endless golf courses, but always seems to come back to the same dirt pathways and rough spot in the marsh that graces the poorer side of the island. Not only is it home, but it has spent the last seventeen years consuming her to a point where she can't possibly pack her bags and run away like she has always dreamt of doing.

Bonnie concludes that satisfaction rests on her side of Kildare and that all she has to do is find it. She starts looking in the house of her former best friend and still feels his father walking the halls as though he never left. They haven't talked since his death, but Bonnie wants the storm to end. Her olive branch is consumed by a whirlwind of violence and unexpected events as she's introduced to a secret mission to make typical rich folk of the biggest scums on the island. Find the gold. It's a crime of passion against every value she holds, to seek a load that'll teleport her from one side of the island to the other.

But what can Bonnie do? She'd rather go down in the marsh than spend another day in that house.