It was a normal weekend evening in the Bennett castle. Attina and Triton had been off all day doing God knows what, Very Important Business no doubt. Ariel hadn’t been seen since the day before. Andrina was locked in her room playing video games- Adella knew this because every now and then she’d hear her older sister yelling at her TV from down the hall. And assumedly the remaining Bennett sisters were all getting ready for an evening of some kind of mischief.

Adella was no exception to that assumption. It was her first Friday night off in what felt like forever, even though she had really only been working at the Catfish Club for about a month and a half, and she was planning on making her way over to a bonfire on the beach with her best friend Rikki. She had spent the past hour or so in her bedroom getting ready, every few minutes stopping to move towards her window to stare at the full moon’s reflection on the ocean. How could anyone possibly stand living away from the water? she had wondered, captivated,  as she always was, by the grace and power of the ocean.

It was just past eleven when she heard her door creak open. Rikki bounded into her room wearing a slinky red dress and far too much black jewelry, her curly blonde hair pinned back from her face. She bounced around impatiently as she waited for Adella to finish the things that she had put off to last minute.  The dark-haired girl suspected that Rikki had already done a bit of partying before heading to the castle. “Are you ready?!” Adella shot Rikki a look as she ripped tiny holes in her tights and fastened on a necklace. Grabbing her lip gloss she nodded towards her friend, “now I am. Let’s go.”

Rikki ran out of the room, Adella in tow, but Adella doubled back figuring that it was September and a jacket could be useful. She pulled one off of a hook by her door, her eyes lingering for a moment on what lay beneath: a beautiful red pirate hat. It had been so many months since Adella had last needed a jacket that she had forgotten that she had been using it to cover the hat up. She bit down on her lip and turned to leave her room, finding Rikki still there waiting in the hall, confusion clear on her face. “Needed a jacket,” Adella shrugged and they headed off into the night, to another part of the island where the princess would be free for a few hours.

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Adella’s thoughts kept coming back to the hat, her insides churning in discomfort as she sat in the backseat of a friend’s car with Rikki waiting to get to the either side of the island. It was an item of clothing that she desperately wanted to throw away, but she couldn’t, it was special. Even if it hurt her to look at it, it was special. So instead it stayed on its hook with a coat thrown over it so she didn’t have to relieve painful memories. No; memories so beautiful that they caused her pain.

It had been two and a half years since James Hook saved her life. Captain James Hook as he had said. Two and a half years since he had sailed away with the promise that they would see each other again. And in those two and a half years that promise was never fulfilled.  For a year Adella did nothing but hope. She would run down to the beach every morning and sit in the sand and wait to see if her dark-haired pirate came along and found her, but he never did. For a year after that she took to staring out her window. No longer full of hope but left with a single string of it, a string that refused to break even though now she was mostly filled with doubt that her time with him had been as special in his eyes as they were in hers. After that year passed she gave up entirely, she knew that the boy would never come back to Atlantica. She knew that she had wasted her time waiting for him to. She knew that it wasn’t anything that she could dwell on any longer. So she covered up his stupid hat and every day she thought of him less and less until he was just a passing visitor in her dreams, still lingering for a few moments when she woke up.

Until tonight. Now that she had rediscovered her hat James Hook was all that she could think about and that simply would not do. She practically jumped out of the car when they finally reached the right beach, the fire obscured by a rocky hill etched into the shoreline. It felt like she had been suffocating in there, like there just wasn’t enough air for both her and the ghost of her past. Adella clambered over the rocks, trying to get to the other side, aware of Rikki’s raised eyebrows and judgmental eyes boring into her back. She didn’t care. As soon as she got to the other side she was calmed by the fire and slowed her pace to wait for her best friend and the rest of their group.

“What was that about?” Rikki asked, unsure of whether to laugh or be concerned.

“I just… really need a drink,” Adella said with a laugh, pushing the problem to the back of her mind. That’s where it would stay until it had disappeared from her thoughts completely.

“Alright!” Rikki breathed a sigh of relief smiling up at her friend. “Okay! I’ll get you one, just a sec.”

Adella rolled her eyes as Rikki scampered off. Her best friend always wanted to do stuff for her, as if that made Adella keep her around or something. Though she had assured Rikki many times that wasn’t the case she still just kept doing. Though, Adella had to admit, it was pretty nice not to have to do any hard work herself. As she waited for the other girl to return she eyed up the beach. There was already a pretty good fire going, the party clearly underway. A good fifty people milled around, some chilling by the flames others moving together on an imaginary dance floor near some speakers. That’s where she needed to be. She said her thanks to Rikki as she brought her back a cup of her favorite drink- SoCo and Mellow Yellow- and hurried to get it down so that she could get another and move towards the dance floor.