Ignored & Neglected - Outer Banks

Chapter 1: My heart is a chapel and you're burning it to the ground.

It's hot- it's really fucking hot. John B has sweat dripping down the back of his light blue shirt, Pope's nearly melted, and JJ is attempting to cook his insides as well as out with a cigarette. It's possibly the hottest day of the school semester yet, and it's not helped by the fact they're all lying on the branding-iron-hot tin roof of the dingy school chapel.

Kiara is flopped, school shirt unbuttoned and showing a black bra and olive skin, over the side of the roof, head close to tilting off the edge.

"D'you reckon Golding knew what he was talking about?" Pope pipes up, holding a battered second-third-tenth hand version of Lord of the Flies. "I personally don't think we'd all just go feral if we were dropped on some island somewhere."

Kiara props her head up, looking at him with squinted eyes. The sun high in the sky puts a haze around everyone- the brightness too much for Kiara's eyes to attempt to compete with. "I mean- yeah. Maybe not. I'd like to think humanity has improved since the British boarding schools of 1950."

John B smiles, amused, before he gestures around, particularly to JJ, who is crouched over a fresh cigarette, attempting to light it, his back resting against the crucifix on the chapel roof. Never mind the fact it's a total fire ban day because they're living in a three-year-long drought. "I think you're both missing the fact that we're already feral."

It's a tough point to argue against, and both Kiara and Pope laugh lightly. "Guess the boarding school way of life really does change people." Pope mutters, before going back to his book.

It's close to two in the afternoon – John B knows for a fact he has missed two classes – and he'll pay for that tomorrow. He's not sure if he'll be forced to sleep in a tent for the night, or if it will be as simple as running the five kilometre track up the driveway and back before school. Either way, it doesn't really matter. They'll all be caught. They'll all suffer together.

John B tips his head back, looking up at the side of the mountain that towers over their school campus. Mount Rivers – the only mountain he knows of that has an elitist private boarding school built into the rugged valley of it. He's contemplating just how many more days of school, before they'll be free to wander the high country. It's a fucked up kind of life – this rural boarding school life. But it's also a fucking good one. Classes for only half the week, three days' worth of hiking every weekend – they are, essentially, given full reign to run feral, despite the school informing all of their parents once a term that they are all being kept on an extremely strict leash.

"Kie- who are you hiking with this weekend?" He asks, running a hand through his hair. That's it- the shirt's got to come off. He can't deal with the stickiness of it anymore. While he waits for her to answer, he strips and balls the fabric up to perch on his head- acting as the world's worst sunhat.

Kie sucks in a breath, and John B knows he's hit on a sore topic. "I'm fuming- there's never any good girl's hike groups cos they're all fucking morons. I'm stuck with that Cameron bitch, and a few of her friends. Like Lucy- I think Bella's in the group too. It's gonna be an absolute riot." Her voice is heavy with sarcasm, and John B laughs lightly.

He sympathises with Kiara. She doesn't get as much joy out of this school as the boys do. The boys; JJ, Pope and himself, are never separated- they live in the same dorm; they hike in the same group – they sleep in the same tent on hikes. John B has barely had a second to himself since the school term started. He's not complaining.

But Kie – Kie isn't allowed within a metre of them, theoretically. That sounds like a joke- it's not. At Rivers College, theoretically, being within a metre of the opposite sex gets you a driveway run- at six in the morning, before the suns even up. And that's just for a less than a metre's proximity. Kie risks everything in every minute she spends with them.