Chapter Text
JJ categorically assumed that nearly everything about his new house was better than living with his dad, because ever since Pope’s parents picked him up from a group home it had been. Yeah, he got grounded for ridiculous reasons and basically got forced to go homework at gunpoint but virtually everything else was just better .
But the heat was a dead hard exception to that. JJ didn’t know if it was because their house was further from the water than Dad’s house and the chateau. He did know that it was because his mom used the actual oven to make rice and soups, and fish when it was raining, and there was a lot wrong with his crackhead parents, but they never turned on a damn oven in June.
The first week of June, the second real week of summer, the heat index reached 112 degrees but in their house, it had to be at least 170. And his and Pope’s bedroom was on the second floor, where it was 190 degrees and their bed was 340 degrees.
He woke up to sheets so damp they could splash and Pope’s bare torso pressed against his own, and his elbow resting on JJ's back to lazily hold his phone over his face. JJ grabbed his phone and threw it across the room then shoved him away. He was hungover as shit. If he remembered right they barely made it home after an on fire party at the boneyard where Kie climbed a knocked over lifeguard stand to yell about microplastics, and JJ accidentally gave JM Martin a bloody nose and they maybe became friends after that?
JJ hazily checked his arm and found dried blood on his skin. Yep, that happened. “Bro fucking move. You’re a thousand degrees.”
Pope wiped his sweaty hand on JJ’s face and he smacked it away. “It’s gonna be 90 most of today.”
He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “What time is it?”
“I have no idea, you threw my phone. You’re paying if you broke it” JJ didn’t even sit up, he heard Pope get up and go get his phone before he even stopped talking. “Six fifteen. I bet all of Figure Eight is like, deep in REM sleep right now,” Pope said while he made getting ready sounds.
He groaned but this time like he was trying to break the space-time continuum with volume. With a three-second countdown he sat up and winced.
“Is that for real or you just hungover?” Pope asked.
“Hungover,” JJ said. “How are you not all morning zombied out?”
“I woke up a while ago because you stapled every degree of yourself to me, and whined when I tried to move away. Way too hot to sleep.”
JJ snorted. “When you working with Heyward?”
“Till he says I’m done.”
“You should get a real job.”
“Oh, please, please go downstairs and tell him it’s not real. Let me watch.”
Heyward deciding Pope was done was usually accelerated but JJ showing up and helping for an hour then being extremely annoying, so they figured they could do whatever they wanted by two. They texted Kie and made the plan to meet.
JJ showered and came back to get dressed and check on his snake. Dr. Felonious Rex poked her head out from under her log and lost interest when she figured he wasn’t holding a dead mouse. “Sorry, Dr. FR. You’re gonna eat tomorrow, get ready to look all chunky and weird,” JJ promised before turning to Pope while he buttoned up his shirt. “Todays the day man. I’m getting that $200 tip,”
“No, you’re not,” Pope said. He didn’t have to be anywhere for hours, he was already back in bed.
“I bet you $200,” JJ said. “I’ve been working on this rich-guilt Boston lady? I haven’t told her jack about myself and she feels so fucking involved in my poor, young life. I’m gonna cash in, I bet you two hundred dollars. Tell Kie we’re gonna host a kegger, on Ms. Seven-Dollar-Toast.”
Pope didn’t actually have to be awake, and was not very interested in coming to the hotel with JJ just to hang out for the drive, then walk three miles to work, so JJ left alone. The novelty of driving a car that was his still hadn’t worn off, starting their car and heading north felt awesome, even at 6:50 AM.
Their new car was a 1997 Nissan Pathfinder that was red and about thirty percent of the red was rust. JJ wanted a truck and Pope wanted an SUV so they settled on a piece of trash. It had shit mileage and the AC blew air that smelled like dead bodies, but the engine was in great shape and Kie figured out a way to connect their phones to the “cassette” player. Plus, it had an actual cigarette lighter in the front seat. You don’t get that kind of convenience in cars less than six years older than you. On the second day, they removed the left and middle backseat to optimize storage. It already smelled like the ocean, weed, and seaweed.
Heyward took him and Pope to the mainland to buy their as of yet unnamed car from his friend, Cecil. JJ had absolutely no idea he had a friend, and Heyward barely took the time to explain they’d met on a barge and he would take no questions. Seriously, no questions, stop it JJ.
“They gay?” JJ heard Cecil ask Heyward while they were still on the porch, and he and Pope were checking out the interior of the car. JJ checked if Pope noticed, but he was focused on collapsing the backseats.
“Nah, man. Don’t even get along most of the time.”
“I don’t know H, I never bought a car to share with a buddy.”
JJ didn’t buy a car with a buddy either, he bought one with Pope. Sometimes they talked about telling their parents about the queerplatonic thing, but Pope kept coming back to, “We understand what it means, but they’re just going to hear that we like each other a lot and want to live together after high school. They’ll just congratulate themselves on raising us so well. If we even try to explain the triad, it’ll just be that you third wheel a lot which they already think is what’s happening.”
Plus DCS acted like if he and Pope were anything more than bros they’d pull JJ out and stick him in a rape-and-murder group home. No ocean, no triad, no parents, no cushy hotel job with fat tips. No way he was risking that.
Nathan switched JJ to waiting tables at brunch because he was a dick. Also because JJ barely got into it with a b-lister Kook--seriously, he didn’t even hit anyone. “Mornings are vacationers. No locals. You'll do better with out-of-towners. Be glad I’m not telling your mom,” Nathan said after explaining how saintly he was for not firing JJ who again, didn’t even hit anyone. Didn’t even yell, just said “Good to see you” to Kelce and he lost his mind, not JJ.
Typical.
Waking up fuck early in the morning sucked, but Nathan was right about one thing. It was mostly out-of-staters who loved his “accent” and wanted tips on what to do with their super fun days and had no idea he’d held a gun to the head of the heir of a prominent family. JJ would thank Nathan if he wasn’t an asshole. Most people saw him as a simple machine that brought food and that was fine by him. He hated them all. But sometimes, he saw obvious marks and went all in.
He’d waited on this white family with four greedy brats five days in a row. They were from Boston and talked about his accent like it was crazy that someone didn’t talk like their nose was broken. Anything the kids asked for they ordered. In theory, he knew how expensive the menu was before, but handing over $220 dollar checks for breakfast never felt like he wasn’t running a major con on the stupidest people in the world. But they tipped great, and he had to do was smile and act like he cared about their vacation. Each day they gave higher tips, and JJ was positive he could get them to give him a higher tip than the bill before they left.
He’d done it four times already. It was legal stealing, and the most adrenaline he could get at nine AM.
They came in right when he started his shift, the brat kids yelling about some video game even as they got walked past tables of rich fucks and got sat down. Their dad wasn’t there, and the mom ignored it. Joya, the breakfast manager, came up and said, “That lady has a crush on you, asked to be seated in your section.”
“MILFs love me,” he bragged. He switched to his work brain and walked over, smiling like he didn’t think about killing them a ton last night. “Hey, y’all. Listen, I told them to fire up the flat top so Mila and Eliza can get their mickey mouse pancakes as fast as possible.”
Mila and Eliza didn’t notice, which was fine because their mom did and just about exploded with how special it all was. She was wearing a thick smelling perfume that didn't help his hangover a bit. “JJ it’s our last day here, can you believe it?”
Of course he could, he’d known that for days and planned this whole thing. Even better was that her husband wasn’t around to accuse this poor child waiter of hitting on his wife, even if his fatass absence knocked a lot off the bill. “Oh no,” he said, “Man, I was hoping you’d make the jump and just live in this hotel forever. It’d make my life a lot more fun.”
She fucking melted. “Anything else you think we should do? We loved the rock museum.”
“Yeah, love the rock museum,” he said. Any self-respecting Pogue knew exactly what rich people did on vacation, because that’s where the jobs were. “I don’t know, the rock museum is about the best it gets. You should hit the beach one more time, that's the only thing better.”
“I’d like to see some local places. What do you do when you’re not here?” she asked.
You could come to the kegger on the south side tonight, paid for by you! You can tell your book club you sponsored dozens of poor kids’ summer recreation.
“Honestly ma’am, I mostly go home and study. I’m trying to get into the University of North Carolina. I really wanna go to college. UNC’s expensive, so I’m working as much as I can.”
“Oh gosh, that’s amazing,” she cooed. “Will you be a legacy?” JJ blinked and furrowed his brow. "Has your family been going to school there?"
This bitch was giving him the tip of the century.
“Oh no ma’am, my--I’m gonna be the first to graduate high school. I just wanna break the cycle.”
That went over real well. It was vital, because if she didn’t know he was a poor high school kid for sure, she did now. He brought them their pancakes and bagels and eight-dollar scrambled eggs. $196.44. That’s how much she just spent on eggs and bread, basically. Why did rich people think they had the right to control anything? When he dropped off the check, the mom obviously wanted to talk more, thank God. He could tell he hadn’t closed.
“We’re really going to miss this southern food.”
He smiled wide. “Yeah, I don’t wanna brag but we know what we’re doing.”
“I just wish I’d had the chance to learn to cook some of it.”
There was nothing at all southern about her dry toast and egg white spinach omelet, they hadn’t ordered anything remotely southern all week. Fuck it. She was so ignorant, he was going all in.
“You should go to Heyward’s Seafood, it’s down by Pelican Marina. They’ve got spice packs you won’t get anything like in Boston. My foster dad actually owns it, tell him I sent you, I could use the karma.”
Confusion and pity crossed her face. Fucking yes.
“Foster dad, is that like, is that like being adopted?”
“Uh,” JJ made a show of looking over his shoulder like his manager had a specific rule about not talking about your white trash life. He debated drawing attention to the scar above his ear, but he didn’t need to go that far. “Kind of. They just take care of me because my dad....like technically isn’t allowed to? Sorry. I shouldn’t have--it’s not really a vacation topic. Sorry. Here’s the check, unless I can get you anything else?”
She looked confused, but took the check. “Thank you. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
JJ smiled, “No hey, I mean we’re friends, right? I really like you guys, I just don’t talk about this stuff. I’m focused on getting out, not looking back. Hey, maybe I’ll get into a college in Boston and see you later?”
“That would be great,” she said.
If she did go to Heywards and mention his foster son who was serious and saving up for college, he’d laugh her out of the store, but JJ would have the money by then. He left the check and made himself scarce. When he came back the brat kids were gone and this bitch was standing by the table waiting.
“Don’t get too cold in Boston,” JJ said, reaching around her to grab the check. He could feel it was holding cash. He fucking closed. “You need change?”
“No. I hope you’re not here next year, I hope you’re at college. Good luck, JJ.”
She stepped toward him. He stepped back. “Cool, have a good trip.” JJ waved and walked off with the check.
When he was out of sight behind cash, he opened the check. He grinned and held back a giggle. There was a note, he pulled that out and dropped it in the trash, focused on the cash he could see fanned out behind it. He counted out five hundred-dollar bills, cashed it in, and walked away $305.56 richer.
Easy fucking money.
JJ drove the car home and walked to the store. The stuck, thick heat in the car zapped every comfort from the air-conditioned hotel out of him, and by the time he got home his shirt was sticking to his back and arms. JJ pulled off his tie and button-up work shirt, leaving behind Pope’s Thrasher t-shirt he’d put on in the morning, and changed into a pair of board shorts from his pile of stuff in the backseat of the car.
He grinned at the bottle of sunscreen Mom had forced on him sticking out from his pile. She’d bought him his own bottle because he could use the cheap stuff that showed up chalky because he was already chalky, or maybe because she knew he’d never use it, and the more expensive not-chalky shit they used (because even sunscreen was made racist) would be wasted on him. All it took was one good, painful burn for JJ to be immune for the rest of the summer, and that’d already happened. Pope and Kie had a ton of fun drawing smiley faces and arrows on his skin and watching their designs turn from white to red over and over.
“Too bad JJ will die young of melanoma,” Mom said when she walked past that, lighting a cigarette on her way outside, “Nothing cool about tumors, sweetheart.”
JJ didn’t have tumors, definitely wouldn’t live long enough to have them. Right now all that mattered was he was $395.23 richer after his brunch shift, and that was enough for a keg four times over. On the walk to the store he texted Pope and Kie, his cousin who could get them a keg, and the Pogues he knew and could trust not to invite bogies and started tracking time until the triad could get on the water on the HMS Pogues.
A lot of their stuff got misappropriated last year. Lots of good things happened and lots was fucked.
John B’s house got turned into a crime scene, then Billy Bud, the asshole parasite that John B and his dad were renting from, put it up for rent the second he could, just fucking cleared it out. It was always baffling to JJ that someone else owned that shack and they paid rent. Kind of evidence Big John wasn’t as with it as John B wanted to think, not that he would ever say that. It was no surprise that whoever rented it now just used it as storage. Nothing worth stealing, but of course, JJ had to check now and then.
It was pure dumb luck that JJ, Pope, and Kie spent one eventful day stripping JJ’s house and John B’s house of important shit, and that happened to be four days before Billy Bud just cleared out two human being’s history. That’s when they thought John B was dead, and even after it still felt as painful as old bruises to think of the chateau being stolen from them.
On that day they got John B’s guitar, and his stupid shirts, his notebooks with poems that only JJ knew about, and his surfboard. Most important was that they loaded that shit in Kie’s car, JJ drove it to her house while Pope and Kie brought the HMS Pogues to her family’s property where it stayed until they got it back in the water that spring.
Getting JJ’s stuff was another story that was kind of worth going into now. He’d already been to his house when he was still in the group home. It was kind of hazy, a lot of the group home stuff was, because it was a long time ago, and maybe memories got broken up because his head was still fucked then. He remembered coming in the house with a social worker and a cop to get his stuff, and immediately recognizing the turned over drawers and emptied closet as familiar signs of a dealer settling debts. At least they hadn’t set the house on fire.
“Is this normal?” the cop asked.
JJ knew Dad was facing charges for drugs, and maybe for being a shitty father, and he couldn’t figure out a way to explain the house that didn’t add to either of those, so he didn’t answer. He took his clothes, but he left everything important behind until he got home. He knew he'd get home, even if he didn't know how right then
When he rolled back a few weeks later with Pope and Kie, the house was clean, cleaner than it ever had been. Someone in his family must have come by and pulled it together. Or maybe to look for more valuable shit, took it, but neatly put it all away after because Luke and JJ were going through a hard time. Either way, the money he taped on the side of the floor grate in his room was still there, but his vape and weed weren’t and neither was his bike.
His bike was one of those unaccountably big apology gifts from Dad, and JJ pointedly did not ask where it came from because he really fucking wanted it. If he was a chill person, when he realized it was gone he would say “easy come easy go” but JJ had come to learn that he was not actually a chill person and what he did after finding out his bike was gone was not chill but that was like a year ago, definitely a different story.
Almost a year later the story was that they'd rescued the HMS Pogues, JJ had a car that was good for a lot more than just getting away, and he had his new life down to a series of perfect equations. Show up at the store, be genuinely helpful for a little while, then abruptly start talking long, loud and fast until Heyward said, “Okay, okay, we’re fine, you boys get lost,” and they walked out to Kie already at the dock, because JJ’d guessed what time they’d get kicked out to the minute.
Kie spotted them coming out of the store and started doing a crazy dance, waving her arms in the air and rocking the boat. Pope returned it, shimming all the way to the dock until he stepped into the boat and kissed her like they’d been separated for weeks. Kie kissed back until she wrinkled her nose and shoved him away.
“I smell like grease, you smell like cleaning shrimp. The classic Pogues scents. Hold on,” she waited until JJ came into the boat and hugged him, unsubtly inhaling his shoulder. “Grease, cleaning shrimp, and rich people’s pheromones. Yep, the Poguey-ist of Pogue triads.”
They rode out to the southern marshes, not too far off from where they found Scooter Grubbs boat but not the same place. The sun baked the metal of the boat, and they dropped anchor and jumped in the water. It didn’t matter if JJ’d woken up five minutes ago or eight hours ago, the moment his body hit the ocean was always the first moment of his day. They treaded the nearly still water and he was almost sure that Pope and Kie were starting their days too.
“I have almost $400 in our car,” he told them.
“What?” Kie cried. “JJ who did you rob, oh my god. Oh my god just when we’re having a nice week.”
He splashed her and played at being offended. “Kiara Carrera, when would I ever take anything that wasn't mine? I earned that money with my charisma and excellent serving skills.”
She splashed him back, “My god, I can’t believe you’ve become so damn bougie.”
“Take that back!”
“No, I’m an expert. Will you invite us to your debutante ball John Jacob?”
He pushed her underwater and dodged her nails coming at her face. She popped back up and spat water over her shoulder. “That wasn’t at all ladylike,” she said in a very serious voice.
When they were younger they had a very competitive game of timing who could hold their breath underwater the longest. They used a stopwatch from the middle school that JJ stole during the beeper test, and they spent an entire summer with all four of them training up to see who could hold their breath the longest. John B won that summer, and he held onto that victory even when Pope started beating him most of the time.
Pope always went the longest, was the last one to come in after surfing, stayed in the water even after Kie and JJ climbed into the boat, and compared their pruney palms. If the world fell to an apocalypse, JJ would complain a lot less but Pope would be the one to save them all.
On the boat, Kie opened her cooler and handed him a beer. “I invited Opal to the boneyard tonight.”
“Opal’s the nerdy one right?” JJ asked.
“No, Opal is the one who takes school seriously and is trying to get out there more,” Kie corrected then paused, “Yes. Opal is the nerdy one.”
“I love that you’re a corrupting influence,” JJ said. The side of the boat rocked as Pope grabbed it to pull up. JJ got up to help him over the side. “Honestly, you both were nerds when we met you, it’s just a matter of time.”
Pope hadn’t heard the first part of the conversation but jumped right in, “Uh, not having felonies at the age of twelve didn’t make us nerds.”
There was a stop time to how long they could stay out, because they had the responsibility of starting a party before the sun went down. Sometimes they had less vital responsibilities like getting Pope back to the island for his Kildare Youth Council meetings, but they treated each as equally important. They sat on the water until time ran out, drinking and talking. Kie had picked up an interest in drawing again, something she took and left a couple times a year. She drew a sun on the inside of JJ’s arm, and it dimly occurred to him that the black sharpie would show up through his uniform but that didn’t matter. When she finished she drew a triskele on Pope’s chest.
“Do you want to be a tattoo artist?” Pope asked her.
“No,” Kie said, “I just want to do this.”
They started fighting about who got to shower first well before they got home, only to arrive and find Heyward singing like nobody's business in the bathroom. Pope went outside to piss and came back in looking disappointed all over again, like he didn't know full well Heyward was only halfway through his favorite shower song rotation.
“Kooks all have their own bathrooms,” JJ said, “That’s why you gotta get rich for us Pope,”
“We’ll have three bathrooms,” Kie decided, collapsing at the kitchen table. She didn’t take part in a lot of the fantasy future, it was like she thought that if she just talked about being in their field of vision further than three weeks in the future they’d tie her down and never let her leave. He and Pope didn’t really know what to do about that except not make a bit deal when she said things like, “No. Four bathrooms, three on the second floor for each of us, and one downstairs. Wait, no. Three, because what if we all have to take a shit at the same time?”
“JJ’s gonna cook a lot?” Pope joked.
Heyward wasn’t real excited about coming out with a towel to three teenagers, but he was the one who bought a house with the only bathroom in the middle of the kitchen, not them. While JJ was scrolling through insta with Kie, Mom came home.
“Hey Mom,” he said.
“Hello, hello. Where’s the other one?”
“Shower.”
Calling her “Mom” was still new, and even though she seemed happy about it every time, JJ was still waiting for her to snap “I’m Ms. Heyward to you,” and give up on the whole thing. She didn’t though. She opened the fridge, closed it, then opened it again. “I need one of you to get groceries no later than tomorrow,” she said.
“Pope will do it,” JJ decided.
“I bet he will. Did you tell Nathan you need to change your schedule for next week?” She pulled a glass container of rice out of the fridge and some other container of leftovers and started working putting them together.
“No?”
Mom glanced over her shoulder at Kie and gestured vaguely. “You have to be on the mainland on Tuesday morning.”
“Oh, for the highlight of my summer, seeing a therapist? Yeah, I got off work.”
JJ already knew that DCS didn’t like it when your dad bashed your head in, and he couldn’t really blame them, that obviously sucked but it meant he got his new family so, fine. But it turned out your dad showing up at your kind of uncle's house in the middle of the night after scaring everyone and being a goddamn asshole was just over the line . Any play-acting like Dad and JJ were going to turn into a freaking Lifetime movie was permanently canceled.
If you asked DCS, now it was just a matter of running out the clock until JJ turned eighteen and ideally wasn’t beaten to death. If you asked his family, it was a matter of beating the clock and JJ officially being adopted. He liked that one a lot better.
Both were needlessly complicated.
His caseworker Corrine came to their house twice in two weeks. She brought her bright blue binder with daisies drawn on it, like making life and death decisions about his life was just a day in sixth grade. “Luke is legally your father,” she explained, “but no judge would ever send you back. The only real issue is your foster parents need to consult him for things like your education, your medical treatment, even when you get your haircut until you age out.”
JJ looked at his parents incredulously. “What? Were you calling my dad in prison every time I got my hair cut?”
They did not look like they thought it was funny. Mom said, “Honestly--take us to court if you need to Corrine--but no, not hair cuts. We tried to talk to him when he got out because we’ve got nothing about your medical history, he got out right before an appointment with your neurologist.”
“Seriously? You had to consult my dad about me seeing the brain doctor? That’s messed up. I’m only seeing one because of what he did.”
Corrine looked uncomfortable. She always looked uncomfortable. “You really do need to be giving Luke the chance to consult about JJ’s medical care.”
“He’s the reason I need medical care,” JJ snapped. “I can’t even be in a room with him and he gets to decide how to fix what he did? Why do you people make this so complicated?”
“Easy,” Heyward said, putting a warning hand on his shoulder. JJ fought not to shove it off.
Corrine nodded, like she wasn’t the one making it complicated. “There’s nothing that can change that except terminating his rights, and I really don’t know a lot about that, but it takes years. JJ’s going to age out in less than a year.”
“What does that mean?” Heyward asked. “You said we need to do that first before we adopt JJ.”
“If Luke doesn’t voluntarily surrender his rights,” Corrine paused, “this really isn’t what I do. JJ has a lawyer, she can help more but I think that unless Luke cooperates, it’s not likely it’ll happen by the time JJ turns eighteen. That’s not to mention they couldn’t find his mom, she hasn’t lost any rights. If we started when he was younger it’d be different, but--”
JJ faded out after that.
He was supposed to have killed his dad.
JJ knew that.
He had a gun. He had a wrench. He could have let him choke on his own vomit, or suffocated him when he was too down and weak to fight. JJ was supposed to be in juvie, or maybe getting the needle. He was supposed to be the one on the run, in the Yucatan living off lobsters he caught with his bare hands, not John B and definitely not Sarah . He wasn’t supposed to be sitting at a kitchen table surrounded by adults, shutting down every part of his brain that knew how to cry, choking on DCS legalese that amounted to being shackled to his dad, and his real family not being able to adopt him, even if they fucking wanted to.
And they wanted to.
“You suck,” JJ told Corrine, coming back into reality while she was in the middle of a sentence. He cut her off. “You all suck. This whole rig is fucked. I don’t even fucking remember telling you shit. I was eight years old when I started outsmarting you, and I sure as shit am not better off for your getting in my business. You’re idiots.”
His parents just about tore his head off for talking that way, and Corrine got all stressed out and came back with the really fucking helpful follow up that DCS wanted to get more up his ass and force him to see a therapist. Because of all the stress and trauma. His parents said they’d make that happen, like it was them it'd happen to, not JJ. He wanted to set everything on fire.
After Corrine left, Heyward turned right at him and started yelling, “You think you’re grown now?”
“Yeah I do,” JJ yelled back, “ain’t that the problem? I’m too grown to get adopted, why we even pretending I’m still a kid?”
It was a real fun night. Sometimes JJ didn't explode, even when he thought he would. Sometimes some deep old pain came to shore, and it hurt as much as headaches and bruises and hunger. The whole night ebbed and flowed between fighting with Heyward and sitting on the stairs crying with Pope’s arm around him, and Mom sitting nearby on a chair pulled up from the kitchen.
“It's not fair,” he cut out between stifling sobs, “I don’t want to be stuck to him. I want to cut it off. I want to be yours and they won’t let us.”
In the morning Mom found him while he was waiting for his waffle to toast and he couldn't exactly walk away. He was embarrassed and definitely some kind of grounded but she didn’t look like she was mad. "You're going to the therapy.”
JJ knew he was still in hot water, but everything that happened yesterday still stung too much not to be real about it. “No, I’m not. I’m not playing along with DCS anymore.”
“Yes you are,” she said, “we are going to cooperate with everything DCS wants us to do. I am going to call your father every single time you get a haircut or stub your toe, and I am going to tell them that he doesn’t answer a single call. If DCS drags their feet finding your mom, we’ll do it. You are going to see a therapist and you are going to tell them how much we love you, how good you’re doing in school, and that you have all the PTSD things, and when we get to a courtroom he will tell them that you belong here. We are going to adopt you, and you don’t get to blow up our chances to do it. You don’t get to stop me from making you my son.”
And Jesus Christ, who was he to stop her from doing that?
So he was on track to be the first Maybank in history to see a therapist for any reason except for a bogus insanity plea. He knew his parents and maybe Corrine was looking for one, but he lost track that it was happening so soon.
“Who’s the therapist?” he asked.
Mom sat down next to Kie with her dish. "George Wilcox. He specializes in treating trauma with play...something.”
“Play? Sounds molestery.”
“Oh stop. He takes Medicaid and he isn’t two hours off the coast. It’ll be fine. There are forms, do you want my help with them? Dad and I already sent some, you have to do the rest. I emailed them to you.”
JJ glanced at Kie and she nodded. She’d help if he needed it. “Nah. Don’t you know I read as well as a ten-year-old now?”
“Yes, I do. And you’re as responsible as one, so I’m not even going to make sure you go, I’m just going to trust you ” Mom said.
JJ kind of preferred that she wouldn’t trust that, and she’d just come with to make sure he walked through the door and was there waiting until he got out. He noticed the amount their parents trusted them was directly proportional to how busy they were. This summer Mom was working crazy hours managing housekeeping at the hotel, and now she was involved in the front desk somehow too. Heyward was gone just about every hour, working the store, deliveries, and definitely some shady stuff. The result: JJ and Pope got trusted to be upstanding citizens and when Mom said, “You going to keep curfew?” JJ said “Of course we are,” she didn’t ask anything else before going outside to smoke then probably go back to work.
Heyward noticed them heading out at the same time he was and asked, “Where will the police call us from tonight?” and JJ said “Nowhere,” and Pope said, “Boneyard,” and Heyward said, “Uh-huh” because he didn’t have the energy or time for a lecture.
It was awesome.
Pope drove further south to pick up the keg from JJ’s cousin Matt, who crawled with it into the open trunk space to come along. As they were pulling away, Matt’s sister Lizzie ran out of the house and climbed in back too. Like some sonar radar got sent out over the Cut, their phones started blowing up with other Pogues needing rides and the as of yet unnamed car filled up with Pogues sitting on the floor, and buzzing about a second party at the boneyard in two days.
Kooks didn’t come to their parties anymore. It was fucked up that they had in the first place. Like honestly, maybe he tipped off a chain of events that wasn't great, but JJ and his gun had done one thing right. The party unwound quickly between friends and people who felt like family just by virtue of finding their way to the beach that night.
JJ got high first and fast, but it wore off long before the party did. He found Kie and Pope holding hands and talking, sitting where the water hit the shore. He sat down and kissed Kie on the cheek before crashing back on the sand. He pulled his boots off and let the water come over his bare feet.
“I think this is going to go all night,” Pope said. He looked back over his shoulder at where a smaller, but still breathing crowd was settled over branches and around the bonfire.
“We’re providing so well for our community,” Kie said, “you guys wanna break light here?”
JJ had work in the morning, but the Tourons didn’t have to get the best, well-rested version of him. They could get the version of him that stayed up until first light with his best people, showing up with sand still in his hair and the ocean still on his skin. That was the actual best version of him.
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah let’s stay here as long as we can.”