The Sinful Five

I get out of my car with my heels in one hand, my keys in the other, and my graduation robe snapping against the backs of my legs like it has personal issues with me.

The cold hits my bare toes first.

Then Maya’s house.

Which, honestly, is not a house. It’s a glass-and-cedar rich people situation dropped on the cliff like somebody’s dad needed tax problems and ocean views. Long windows. Gold light. Stone steps. A deck big enough to host a wedding or a murder mystery dinner, depending on how dramatic your friends are.

Below it, the Pacific throws itself at the rocks.

Loud.

Rude.

Very on brand for tonight.

A horn blasts behind me.

I turn, and Romy is already halfway out Sienna’s passenger window, cap crooked, lipstick wrecked, yelling, “If you stand there judging rich people architecture for one more second, I’m leaving your ass in the driveway, Jules.”

I laugh before I can stop myself.

Sienna swings in beside me too fast, music still pounding through her speakers, bass rattling through the open door. Chloe tumbles out first with a champagne bottle hooked by the neck, her robe sliding off one shoulder, hair everywhere, grin bright enough to be illegal.

Bria climbs out after her, slower, smoothing her dress like wrinkles are the real emergency. “She’s gonna eat gravel before we even get inside.”

Chloe straightens and lifts the bottle. “Not tonight. Tonight I’m bulletproof.”

“That feels medically false,” I say.

She points at me. “That is why nobody asked you to do the toast.”

Maya stands in the doorway with one hand on the frame, porch light cutting over her dark hair and black dress. She looks perfect because Maya always looks perfect, even when she’s pretending she didn’t plan every inch of it.

“Hurry up,” she calls. “The neighbors can hear you.”

Romy slams her door. “Good. Let them know we’re educated now.”

“We graduated high school,” Bria mutters. “We did not join Mensa.”

Sienna already has her phone out. “Nobody move. This is cute.”

“It’s windy as shit,” Bria says.

“It’s cinematic,” Sienna corrects.

“No,” I tell her.

“Yes,” she says, like I’m new here.

Chloe hooks her arm through mine and drags me under the porch light. She smells like vanilla perfume, cheap champagne, and the strawberry gum she’s been chewing since fifth period, probably. “Don’t ruin the memory before we even take it.”

“I ruin memories as a public service.”

“You’re so generous.”

We line up in a messy row, robes over dresses, hair whipping into lip gloss, everyone laughing and complaining and smelling like perfume, salt, and alcohol we absolutely started drinking before we got here.

“Closer,” Sienna orders. “And Romy, stop looking like you’re being booked.”

Romy deadpans at the camera. “That is just my face.”

“Jules,” Sienna says. “At least pretend you like us.”

“I do like you.”

“Your face is filing an appeal.”

“My face has range.”

Chloe leans into my shoulder. “Your face needs tequila.”

The flash goes off.

Then again.

In the second picture, Romy flips off the camera, Bria laughs too late, Maya looks annoyingly flawless, and Chloe turns at the exact wrong second because she’s laughing at something only she heard.

Sienna checks the screen and makes a pleased little noise. “Okay. We look insane.”

“We are insane,” Romy says.

Maya steps back into the house. “Get inside before the wind destroys my hair.”

“Your parents’ wind,” Romy says.

Maya smiles without smiling. “And yet you still need me to unlock the door.”

That gets everybody laughing except Bria, who’s looking toward the stairs that cut down along the side of the cliff.

“It’s already dark down there,” she says.

Romy groans. “We just graduated. Please don’t start aunt-ing us before the first drink.”

“I’m serious. Those lower steps get slick at night.”

Maya glances that way once. “Then don’t fall.”

Chloe throws an arm around Bria’s shoulders and steers her inside. “Look at you trying to keep us alive. Adorable.”

I follow them in and pull the door shut behind me.

The house is warm in that clean, expensive way that makes you immediately aware of your own fingerprints. Cedar. Stone. Lemon cleaner. Nothing on the counters except a bowl of green apples nobody is going to eat because they look decorative and mean. No shoes by the door. No mail pile. No half-dead houseplant begging for mercy.

The kind of place that makes you lower your voice even when you hate that it works.

Romy heads straight for the kitchen island like it insulted her family.

Sienna films the room until Maya plucks the phone from her hand and drops it faceup on the counter.

“No phones tonight,” Maya says.

Sienna blinks. “You cannot ban evidence after I gave us a whole entrance.”

“No evidence is the point.”

Chloe barks a laugh. “That sounds healthy and not suspicious at all.”

“It sounds smart,” Maya says.

Romy finds the liquor cabinet and whistles low. “Oh, we are among blessed people.”

Maya opens it like she’s presenting a museum exhibit. Tequila. Vodka. Gin in a bottle too pretty to trust. Wine lined up like soldiers with trust funds.

“My parents stocked up before they left,” she says.

“Napa?” Chloe asks.

“Napa,” Maya says.

Romy presses a hand to her chest. “Thoughts and prayers.”

Chloe sets the champagne down too hard, and foam spills over the bottle neck onto the stone counter. My hand moves before my brain does.

Chloe catches my wrist.

“Don’t.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“You were about to clean at a party.”

Romy twists around. “Was she?”

Bria nods. “She was.”

Heat crawls up my neck. “You all need hobbies.”

Chloe grins. “We have hobbies. You’re one of them.”

“Speak for yourself,” Maya says, lining up shot glasses.

That gets us moving.

Robes off. Caps tossed onto chairs. Shoes kicked under stools. Music low from the kitchen speaker, some moody pop song Sienna claims is iconic even though none of us know the name. The room gets louder by inches. Less parents-and-pictures. More bare shoulders, cold hands around glasses, girls laughing too hard because tonight has that weird edge where everything is over and nothing has started.

Maya pours tequila like she’s measuring medication.

Sienna lifts her glass. “To getting out.”

“To never doing gym class again,” Romy says.

“To not hearing the word rubric until college ruins us,” Bria adds.

Chloe raises hers. “To us before life gets ugly.”

It lands heavier than she means.

I know she didn’t mean to do that because her face changes right after. Tiny wince. Quick recovery. Chloe is good at recovery. Too good, maybe, but that is not something I’m unpacking on graduation night with tequila in my hand and Romy already looking for emotional blood in the water.

Romy points at her. “Jesus, Chlo. Give it one hour before the trauma toast.”

Chloe grins. “No promises.”

Everyone looks at me because apparently I’m the designated closer for awkward air.

I lift my glass. “To surviving each other.”

That breaks it.

Romy laughs first. Bria rolls her eyes. Sienna clinks my shot hard enough to splash tequila over my thumb.

We drink.

It burns straight down my throat and into my chest. Chloe coughs once, then laughs at herself. Bria shudders so violently Sienna almost drops her glass. Maya doesn’t react at all because Maya would rather die than let alcohol win in public.

Romy slams hers down. “Again.”

“We are pacing ourselves,” Bria says.

“We are absolutely not.”

“We should be,” Bria fires back. “Especially if anyone thinks going down by the water is a good idea later.”

Romy leans both elbows on the island. “Why are you acting like the sea is waiting to collect on a loan?”

“Because the tide’s up, it’s dark, and those stairs are gross when they’re wet.”

I look through the wall of windows. The ocean is almost black now, just movement and white breaks where the waves hit rock. I catch a quick flicker near the lower path, but when I blink, it’s gone. Probably glass reflecting the kitchen light. Probably the water doing water things. I’m not giving Bria more ammunition.

Chloe follows my gaze. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Maya tops off her drink. “We’re doing the fire pit, not midnight swimming. Relax.”

“Tell that to Romy in twenty minutes,” Sienna says.

Romy grins. “I’ve made worse choices in worse shoes.”

“That is not comforting,” Bria says.

We drift into the living room because the kitchen is too bright and too clean and too much like we’re one spill away from a family lawsuit. The sectional is massive, pale, and terrifying. Maya drops into the middle like the couch was waiting for her. Sienna curls into one corner. Bria takes the other. Romy sprawls on the rug. Chloe sits cross-legged on the floor and pats the space beside her.

I take the armchair.

She points at me. “You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Put one whole piece of furniture between you and human connection.”

“That’s not true.”

Romy snorts. “It is aggressively true.”

I flip her off and take another drink.

A deck of cards appears because Romy travels with chaos and small props. We don’t even make it through half a game before everyone starts talking over everyone else anyway.

Sienna tells a story from senior beach week and exaggerates every detail until even the lies need their own seating chart. Romy interrupts to make it worse. Bria corrects facts nobody cares about. Maya watches over the rim of her glass, one leg tucked under her, expression calm in a way that makes you wonder what she’s saving for later.

Then Chloe tells the story about almost getting fired from her summer job because she flirted with a customer’s older brother and accidentally made the customer’s actual boyfriend jealous, and suddenly we’re all gone. Sienna has tears in her mascara. Bria keeps saying, “No, stop,” while clearly wanting more. Romy is laughing so hard she looks offended by it.

That’s what Chloe does.

She walks into a room and decides the air should be lighter.

And for a while, it is.

Sienna wipes under one eye. “If you leave for college and become one of those girls who says networking unironically, I’ll kill you.”

“Never,” Chloe says. “That requires discipline.”

“Or a frontal lobe,” Romy adds.

“Rude.”

Bria smiles into her drink. “You better stay exactly like this.”

Chloe looks at her, then at all of us.

For one second, the grin slips into something softer.

Not sad.

Not exactly.

Just real.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

Maya’s phone buzzes against the coffee table.

Once.

Then again.

She grabs it too fast.

Romy’s eyes sharpen. “Oho. Secret boyfriend?”

“Shut up.”

“Secret hookup?”

“Still shut up.”

Maya flips the phone facedown, which is funny, considering her no-phones decree, but nobody says that because Maya’s mouth has gone flat.

Chloe notices.

Of course she notices.

She doesn’t say anything, just twists the ring on her finger once, twice, three times, and smiles without showing teeth.

Maybe I’m the only one watching closely enough to catch it.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

A minute later, Chloe gets up. “I need air.”

“I thought this whole place was air,” Romy says.

Chloe ignores her and heads down the hall.

I wait ten seconds before I stand.

Romy points at me. “See? This is why nobody believes either of you when you say nothing’s wrong.”

“Maybe I also want air.”

Sienna looks me over. “You’re wearing your about-to-leave-a-party face.”

“I have many faces.”

“Most of them rude,” Chloe calls from somewhere ahead.

I follow her before anyone can say anything else.

The bathroom is empty. The side porch door by the mudroom is cracked, curtain lifting in the wind like the house is breathing through it.

I push outside and find Chloe with one heel kicked off, leaning on the railing, looking down at the water.

She glances back. “Knew it’d be you.”

“I came to make sure you weren’t crying over a rich girl with bad boundaries.”

That gets a real laugh out of her.

“There she is,” she says. “Mean Jules. I missed you.”

I lean beside her. The air is colder out here, sharp enough to make my skin pull tight. The ocean sounds bigger without glass between us and it.

For a second, neither of us talks.

Then Chloe nods toward the cliff stairs. “Bria’s right, by the way. Those steps are evil.”

“You say that like it’ll stop anyone.”

“It will not stop Romy. Nothing stops Romy.”

“Natural disasters might.”

“Maybe. If they ask nicely.”

We look down toward the fire pit area. I can barely see it from here, just dark shapes and pale stone. The dock sits farther out, black against black, only visible when the water throws white around it.

Chloe rubs her arms. “Tonight feels weird.”

“Good weird or bad weird?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether we’re doing fake answers or real ones.”

“The real one.”

She exhales and tucks hair behind her ear. “It’s just all of us here. Graduation done. Everybody pretending tonight can freeze us exactly like this if we drink enough and take enough pictures.”

“It won’t.”

She looks at me. “See? That’s why I like talking to you.”

“Because I’m gloomy?”

“Because you don’t lie to make stuff prettier.”

I stare out at the water. “I think we’ll say we’ll stay the same.”

“Yeah.”

“And then life will do what life does.”

“Rude of it.”

“Extremely.”

Inside, somebody yells. Romy, obviously. Probably at an object.

Chloe smiles at the sound. “I’m gonna miss this.”

The way she says it gets under my ribs. Not dramatic. Not movie sad. Just honest.

“You make it sound like you’re dying,” I tell her.

She laughs softly. “Relax. I’m not planning to.”

The wind throws her hair across her mouth. She pushes it back and looks down at the ocean again.

“When I was little,” she says, “I used to think the ocean only looked pretty in the daytime because it was lying.”

I turn my head. “That is such a weird thing to say.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean deeply weird.”

She grins. “There you are.”

I smile even though I try not to.

Then she goes quiet. “Still true, though.”

Below us, a wave hits hard enough to send spray up pale in the dark.

Chloe shivers. “Come on. If I stay out here too long, Bria’s gonna wrap me in a blanket and start a prayer circle.”

“Could be worse.”

“She’d mean it.”

“Exactly. Terrifying.”

That gets another laugh, and we go back inside.

The living room is loud and warm and already fully stupid. Sienna has markers out. Romy is trying to sign the front of Maya’s robe while Maya tells her to die in the calmest voice I’ve ever heard. Bria has gathered everyone’s robes into a pile like sentimental vandalism requires organization.

Sienna points at us. “Perfect. Robe signing. No one leaves without being immortalized badly.”

“That sounds threatening,” Chloe says.

“It is,” Romy says.

We end up on the floor in a loose mess, robes over laps, caps kicked aside, drinks forgotten on tables. It’s dumb. It’s sentimental. It’s exactly the kind of thing we’d mock if anyone else posted it.

So obviously, we do it like it matters.

Romy draws something obscene on the inside hem of Maya’s robe.

Maya looks down. “Are those balls?”

“They are art.”

Bria gasps so hard Chloe almost tips over laughing.

Sienna writes a whole speech on Bria’s sleeve and has to be physically stopped.

I’m uncapping a marker when Chloe leans over and takes it from me.

“Nope.”

“What do you mean, nope?”

“I’m writing yours.”

“I can write my own.”

“That’s sad.”

“That is not sad.”

“It’s a little sad,” Bria says.

“Traitors,” I mutter.

Chloe smooths my robe over her knees, bends forward, and blocks the fabric with her hair so I can’t see.

“What are you putting?”

“If I tell you, you’ll roll your eyes and ruin my moment.”

“That depends.”

“On whether it’s sincere?”

“Yes.”

“Then definitely.”

Across from us, Romy is reading what Sienna wrote on her collar and laughing so hard she can’t breathe. Maya pretends to hate this, but she hasn’t moved, which means she doesn’t. Bria is smiling down at her sleeve like she’s trying to memorize ink.

Chloe caps the marker and hands my robe back.

I look down.

Inside the lining, in quick slanted black letters, she wrote:

don’t let them make you small

For a second, everything gets quieter.

Not actually. Romy is still yelling. Music is still playing. Maya is still telling someone not to get marker on her mother’s imported whatever.

But inside me, something goes still.

I rub my thumb under the words without touching them.

“Chloe.”

She shrugs like she didn’t just reach inside my chest and move furniture around. “What? It’s true.”

Before I can answer, Romy climbs to her feet. “Okay, enough feelings. We’re going down.”

Bria looks up fast. “To the fire pit. Not the dock.”

“The dock is right there,” Romy says.

“The dock is wet.”

“The dock is iconic,” Sienna says, grabbing the speaker.

Maya stands and starts collecting bottles. “Fire pit first.”

Romy spreads her arms. “You’re not my mother.”

“No,” Maya says. “I’m the one with the house.”

“That is such a gross sentence.”

“Then stop earning it.”

Bria stacks cups. Sienna hunts for a lighter. Maya pulls blankets from the mudroom closet and tosses one at Chloe, who wraps it around herself like a cape.

I stay on the floor one second longer, looking at the inside of my robe.

don’t let them make you small

The room moves around me. Laughter. Glass clinking. Romy swearing because she almost drops the tequila. Bria reminding everyone, again, to watch the steps. Maya telling us not to drag sand back into the house like she already knows we will. Sienna yelling that this needs a soundtrack.

Chloe catches me still sitting there.

She points at the flashlight on the kitchen counter. “Take that.”

I grab it automatically.

“Bossy,” I tell her.

“Useful,” she shoots back.

Then she smiles at me. Easy. Warm. Familiar.

Just Chloe.

“Come on, Jules,” she says. “Last night of being idiots.”

I fold my robe over the arm of the chair and leave it there.

The back door opens.

Cold air rushes in.

We spill through the mudroom in a tangle of blankets, bottles, bare legs, bad decisions, and Romy yelling at Sienna to pick a better song. My flashlight is cool in my hand. Chloe is already ahead of me, laughing as her blanket slips off one shoulder.

Bria steps onto the first damp board and grabs the railing.

“Watch your step,” she says.

Nobody listens.

I click the flashlight on and follow them down.