𝙄 𝙆𝙉𝙊𝙒 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙒𝙀𝙍𝙀 𝙒𝘼𝙔 𝙏𝙊𝙊 𝘽𝙍𝙄𝙂𝙃𝙏 𝙁𝙊𝙍 𝙈𝙀.
If Stella and her friends knew what they were getting into when they stumbled upon a sunken shipwreck, they probably would've brushed up on their treasure hunting skills.
season 1...
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LOVE YOURZ — J. COLE For what's money without happiness? Or hard times without the people you love?
THE SILENCE THAT existed between the five teenagers was suffocating. The tension from the night before was carried over into the next morning, hanging over their heads like a suspended piece of glass, and none of them wanted to be the person who cut the rope causing it to shatter like droplets of rain.
Stella's thoughts swirled around her head as she absentmindedly picked at the hem of her frayed denim shorts. Their near encounter with the cops at the motel was too much of a close call, and if they were going to find a way into the Grady-White, attention wasn't something they needed. What they needed was to lay low and the events that took place the night before were anything but that.
Stella's gaze lifted at the sound of a rock hitting the bark of a nearby tree. She watched as JJ repeated the action over and over again, no doubt a way of coping with the silence they found themselves in. He never liked the quiet. The quiet meant that his mind was free from distraction and even from her seat ten feet away, she could tell that he was overthinking.
Despite JJ's attempts to calm down (both last night at Stella's and today before heading to the Chateau), the blond boy still harboured a fair amount of aggression. All morning he had been fidgeting with Stella's bracelets or shaking his leg, just itching to release his frustration. To put it simply, he was pissed off. At Topper Thornton. At the Kooks. At the world.
And Stella understood where he was coming from.
She had a unique perspective. She had a foot in both worlds, having experienced both struggle and luxury. But perhaps it was this perspective that allowed her to see the island rivalry without bias.
The Kooks did as they pleased with little to no consequence, refusing to recognize their privilege until it benefited them. They walked all over the Pogues, picking fights because they could or because they were bored. And when the Pogues fought back, they were the ones punished.
Stella hated the turf war. She found it primitive and childish, and she couldn't quite understand how it came to be in the first place. Her mother tried explaining it to her when they first moved onto the island many years ago and she could remember her mother saying, "Stel, there'll always be people who judge others for where they live, or how they dress, or who they love, or what they do, but you will not be one of them. There is no such thing as a life that's better than yours."
As a ten year old, Stella had no idea what that meant, but as a sixteen year old, she understood perfectly. Everyone's life is different and everyone has their struggles. Each side of the turf war had something the other didn't. The Kooks had money and resources, opportunities that gave them an advantage, things that Pogues could only dream of. The Pogues, on the other hand, had a genuine sense of community unknown to the members of the upper class who wore fake smiles like pearl necklaces, friends that would always have your back and do anything for you without a hidden agenda, a type of love and loyalty that was foreign to the Kooks.
