the slums || jj maybank

one. washed up

one. washed up

Amber Byrne did not choose the Outer Banks. She didn't choose most of the things in her life, anyway.

She just sort of ended up there. 

No, she wasn't Amber. At least, she wasn't Amber anymore. That name carried a certain image. A high-caliber, per se. Amber Byrne was who she didn't want to be. It was the opposite. Her name was Skye. Skye Arturo.

And Skye Arturo was on the run. The sixteen-year-old carried herself with nothing except a few hundred dollars in her pocket. A small drawstring bag accompanied her on the journey, containing very limited belongings.

Her situation was starting to look fairly bleak.

But she would rather die than go back.

The girl known as Amber Byrne originated from Blue Point, New York. The tiny beach town was filled with people like her—children of the wealthy with perfectly manicured statuses and freshly washed reputations. With a population smaller than five thousand, the eyes of nosy neighbors were always peering in. And since there wasn't a damn thing anyone did about it, they just acclimated to life with the vultures always waiting, ready to strike. Amber was not any different than everyone else she had grown up with and known most of her life.

She had the squeaky clean reputation, the constantly curled blonde hair, the bright blue eyes that her daddy must've stolen from the sea. To maintain the look of perfection, because there was no such thing as anything less, Amber had become used to monitoring every breath she took, every move she made.

Which is why Amber Byrne had become semi-skilled in the art of acting. She lived in a society where sin was best defined as having chipped nail polish. It wasn't possible to survive without learning a few tricks of the trade, without finding a way to fend off those who looked in hopes for catching her eyeliner smudged or a hair out of place.

Skye Arturo refused to be the same. Her tan complexion and darker, short hair, were already fatal mistakes. This girl had promised that she wouldn't be the pet who smiled for cameras or sat obediently at Daddy's side. Skye would never return home.

Skye Arturo, she reminded herself. Skye Arturo. Her name was Skye Arturo.

She buried away the image of the girl she was not more than twenty-four hours ago. But if she was going to survive, the idea of the girl known as Amber Byrne had to stay in Blue Point. And god, how Skye hoped she would die there.

There was a certain allure about the Outer Banks that led to her not entirely minding this was where the train was taking her. After all, Skye just found the first bus she could that was heading away from the paper house she was forced to call home. Maybe it was the surfing, or perhaps the distance from the mainland that gave it a small, familiar feel.

Or maybe it was that the girl would feel insignificant there. For once in her life, all she wanted was to feel insignificant. She wanted to walk outside without having to save face. She wanted to breathe without worrying that her posture was off. She wanted to live.

Which is why when she ran into the eighteen-year-old girl on the train that was heading home to North Carolina, she made up her mind. The OBX was something she could settle for.

At least there, the walls wouldn't feel like they were closing in.

The barrier island of Figure Eight had a population topping out at about 40,000. This didn't include the tourists who began to flood in this time of year, the warming month of April. It was somewhere that incorporated the limited aspects that she had adored about home, including the warm weather and life on the beach. But she left behind a lot, too—her "friends and family," the constant attention and introspection into her life. God, how Skye couldn't wait.