[ xiii. the quiet game ]

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WILLA DEVERAUX NEVER THOUGHT she would wind up riding in the back of John B. Routledge's iconic Volkswagen hippy van, her trembling body nastily muddy and sticky against the leather seats, with her prickling skin glistening of her own sweat and tears, but—granted—before today, there were a lot things that Willa thought she might never do.

The ride out from the Chateau had initially been one spent in silence. After the five teenagers had finally been brave enough to risk climbing out of the chicken coop, none of them—especially John B.—could quite look at the marsh-side property the same. Standing aimlessly in the dying grass, none of them could dare to go back into the battered and destroyed shack, silent with terror and void of suffocated screams. The screen front door of the Routledge home had still been hanging ajar, as if purposely left open for the gunmen's imminent returns and, surely, they would return. The five teenagers, though shaken and afraid, were not going to allow themselves to fall back into the same trap.

So, they fled, knowing they needed to find their answers—or, rather that John B. did—before they would all be forced to answer to the same reaper once more.

With nothing more than the clothes on their backs, a golden compass, and a stolen handgun, the five teenagers found refuge in the tattered old Volkswagen—or as the pogues had long ago affectionately coined as the Twinkie—and set off for the coast. Redfield Lighthouse, to be exact. Now located on the far back bench of the van, adjacent to Pope Heyward, Willa found herself sitting so closely to the boy that their sweaty arms brushed with each harsh jolt of the long, bulky vehicle hitting a pothole. Neither of them spoke; their focused, lurking eyes pointed in any direction but each other, nor at any of the other three fearful individuals around them. Willa was looking down to the bottom of the stained carpeted floor of the van, her gaze locked on her dirty bare feet. She had taken her painful Birkenstocks off again, deeming it safe enough inside the vehicle to let her blistered soles breathe, but by the ways her paint-chipped toes curled at the heels of the sandals, never quite letting them sway with the Twinkie's uncontrollable and heavy turns, it was a given that Willa was still prepared to shove her sandals back on and run at a moment's notice.

Insatiable nerves twisted sharply in Willa's stomach, searing into her flesh like the bullets shot from the gunmen's weapons, and fear curled around her slim throat like invisible fingers, as if she, too, were choking as cruelly at John B.'s pet rooster had only a short while prior. The other teenagers scattered throughout the van were quiet, as well, reeling in the horrific reality that they all could have very easily not made it out of the Chateau with their lives. They were incredibly lucky, but the cruel voice in the back of Willa's mind was clearly and loudly reminding her that they might not be so lucky a second time.

"All right. I've got to ask. Is everyone okay?"

Surprisingly, Pope was the first to break the silence of the van, lifting his thoughtful stare upwards. One-by-one, Willa and the others all nodded their heads in confirmation, promising that their hearts were still beating, that their souls were still burning. Unsurprisingly, though, once more, no one spoke vocally, as if afraid that the tremble in their tones might give away their fragility. For on the outside, any of them looked as tough as nails, but on the inside, it was an entirely different story to them all. Each teenager was battling a war that went far beyond the mere sacking that was the Chateau's undoing. Each teenager's sun-kissed skin was tainted in their own painful way; through bruises, tears, sweat, blood, scars, uncertainty and guilt.

Kiara Carrera slowly lifted her head from where she sat in the passenger's seat as John B. turned the leather-peeled wheel once more, sending the Twinkie sailing north up the winding hot asphalt highway road that was growing thicker and thicker with lush oak trees on either side. "Are you sure this is right?" She wondered. "You really think the compass is telling you to go to Redfield Lighthouse?"

John B. Routledge sent his friend a pinched glance. "I mean, it's obvious, right?" He countered boldly. "A family heirloom. What better place to hide a message? He had to know it was going to get back to me, right?"

Kiara licked her lips, her big, auburn eyes holding back the truthful words she could not risk breaking John B.'s fragile heart with. "Yeah . . ." She meekly agreed, silently unconvinced otherwise. "If it helps you believe, John B. . . . It's possible."

"It could also be possible that you're concocting wild theories to help, you know," Pope trailed off gently, his fingers curling instinctively around the golden compass that had been left to his care by John B. once they had boarded the Twinkie. "deal with your sad feels."

Kiara sent Pope a stern from the corner of her eye, warning him to shut it. Meanwhile, sitting on the short leather bench behind the driver's seat and directly in front of Willa, JJ Maybank was snapping his small, silver lighter open and closed, the tiny flame dancing delicately in the open air for a mere second before being snuffed out by darkness once more. "Bro, you know how I process my sad feels," He scoffed. "Dank nugs and the stickiest of ickies, that's how I do it."

Willa Deveraux rolled her eyes at JJ's blunt and informative comment, but nevertheless found her own voice next, pushing the conversation where it needed to go, even if no one wanted to say it. "Look, guys," She finally spoke, sliding her feet back into her sandals as she sat up straighter. "In the past twenty-four hours, we've been shot at by the same people twice. The same people who are looking for that death compass you're currently holding, Pope." Her concentrated sage gaze slowly shifted back from JJ's peculiar stare and over to Pope's own frown of vague interest. "After all that, do you really think that this is still just a wild theory?" She prompted carefully. "Because shit like this doesn't happen here—"

"This isn't the Goonies, okay?" Pope argued, interrupting Willa's forced blanket of calmed inquisition with his own blatant buried panic. "There has to be a reasonable explanation for this."

"Pope, take a look around. We're not living in a children's movie! We're not in Oregon, and we're definitely not going into some underground cavern to find treasure. This is happening," Willa huffed back, never missing a beat as she waved a hand around to their fast-moving surroundings. "You want to find out what's going on with those gunmen and why they want the compass so bad, right? Right?" To no one's surprise, Pope did eventually nod in agreement. In the long term of things, the Heyward boy was no different than the other four teenagers in the vehicle. They all wanted to know what the hell was going on, even if it might not truly be as big a reveal as they might hope it to be in the end. Either way, they needed to do something fast. Those gunmen were not going anywhere unless the five of them did something about it. "Then maybe the Lighthouse is the reasonable explanation," Willa suggested firmly. "There's nothing wrong with checking it out, just so we know for sure . . . And besides . . . where else can we go, really? I mean, we're being . . ."

"Hunted," JJ finished grimly, his icy stare forever enticed by the power of the burning flame in his muddy, calloused grasp.

"Hunted," Willa struggled to repeat, her throat growing tighter as her stomach twisted uncertainly again, weighing heavily against her fragile ribs, pushing her body closer to an inevitable break. "The least we can do is make the chase worth their while," She concluded timidly.

From the front of the van, John B.'s eyes locked with Willa's in the rearview mirror for a split moment, his hickory gaze silently thanking the younger girl for her unwavering support, and then he returned his attention back down to the twisting road. "This can't be for nothing. My dad's trying to give me a message," He insisted determinedly, his jaw tightening as Kiara and Pope peered carefully at him out of the corners of their eyes. "I'm not concocting, okay, Pope? And I don't need a therapy session. Look, I'm not tripping out."

JJ abruptly lowered the lighter and looked over his shoulder to his best friend sincerely. "It's okay to trip, bro, but—"

"My dad is missing, okay?! Missing!" John B. Routledge cried loudly, cutting JJ off coldly. John B.'s stiff fingers curled tighter around the wheel as Willa, JJ, Kiara, and Pope all sunk back, growing smaller in their own seats. Willa was the only one who dared to look in the rearview mirror again, hopeful to draw John B.'s pained expression back to her, but he could not be reached. His freckled, tan face was twisted with newfound grief as his hickory gaze remained locked on the road ahead, winding closer and closer to the Redfield Lighthouse. "You don't know what it's like to have the person closest to you vanish, and then have no idea what happened," John B. whispered tightly, his heavy words choked in his closing throat. "You just wake up every morning . . . wondering."

Kiara Carrera gently reached across the narrow divide at the front of the van and laid a tender hand on John B.'s shoulder. "It's been almost a year," She reminded him softly.

Willa Deveraux bit down on her tongue to keep from throwing her two cents into an argument that was much bigger than her own presence. At the bottom of the pogue totem pole, Willa knew she had no right to defend John B. against his own best friends. After all, they did know him better than she did—even if all five of them had all grown up on the same island together, bouncing in and out of the same classrooms and lunchrooms together. JJ, Kiara, and Pope knew John B. inside and out; they knew his preferred likes and bitter dislikes, and they knew his highest dreams and lowest fears. But beneath all that certainty of the Routledge boy, did any of the three pogue friends know of John B.'s secret pain—a pain so profoundly invisible and impossible to describe that it could hardly be called pain alone? Did the three pogue friends already understand the same horrific, gut-wrenching feeling that Willa herself already knew too well? Did they understand that agony that came with the refusal to part with a memory or a hope seared so deeply into one's body it felt as if it had become a true part of them? A new organ, a second heart, all of its own making?

"Hey, he could have been kidnapped," JJ Maybank suggested, ripping Willa from her darkening thoughts as her attention drifted back to the blonde boy in front of her. His head was dipped just the slightest, an alluring curiosity pulling at his tanned features. "That's definitely a possibility."

"Yeah," Pope Heyward agreed bitterly, sarcasm vaguely hidden in his tone. He nodded his head along as he returned the golden compass back to his pocket. "He could be in a Soviet sub getting interrogated by the KGB somewhere."

Willa frowned. "Really, Pope?"

Pope shrugged his shoulders innocently as he looked over at the shorter Deveraux girl beside him. "What? JJ thinks he's kidnapped, so I'm just being realistic about those odds," He defended. "You'd understand. Weren't you just arguing yesterday that you were a realist, too?

"Yeah, I'm a realist," Willa bit back, her sage orbs narrowing in irritation. "Not an asshole."

"There's a difference?" JJ snickered under his breath.

"Shut up, JJ," Kiara scoffed, rolling her eyes as she looked away from the back of the van where the three grumbling teenagers were now bickering with one another through their stern eyes and rude hand gestures. After a brief moment of silence in the tense space of the stuffy van, Kiara's auburn attention slowly went back to John B. and she tilted her head to the side, leaning back against the crackling, leather seat. "Why do you think the message is telling you to go to Redfield Lighthouse?" She wondered.

John B. shrugged in response, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. "It's my dad's favorite place." Without another word, that tiny declaration sealed the deal for Willa, JJ, Kiara, and Pope.

That, and the fact that John B. Routledge was the driver, steering all five of the young teenagers closer and closer to the rocky cliffs of the unknown that would only ever be seen for their deadly entirety when it was finally too late.

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LESS THAN TEN MILES later, John B. had drifted from the main highway road and was now bringing the Twinkie to a screeching, rusty stop on the grassy and wooden outskirts of the Redfield Lighthouse region that stretched along the sharp western coast of Kildare County.

Willa Deveraux had only ever been up in the lighthouse three times in her entire sixteen years of life. Once, during a school field trip during the sixth grade where they had inevitably been sent back to school early because of JJ defiantly leaping into the ocean during their lunch break. Another time, during a Deveraux family event for Lex's tenth birthday, where everyone but the birthday girl herself had been silently counting the minutes before they could finally go back home. And lastly, on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Willa had snuck out with a boy and they had spent the entire night on the round, grated balcony, their legs dangling over the edge into the endless black ocean as they innocently brushed against one another, using any excuse to get closer. Under the midnight stars, the young kids had had the times of their lives, shotgunning cans of Twisted Tea and sharing drunken kisses that Willa now desperately wished that she could take back more than a year later.

"Sure is tall, isn't it?" Willa commented softly, looking out the windshield. Even after all these years, her awe for the mysterious lighthouse never faded. Sooner or later, she always found her way back to the coppery white, towering structure; through the fog of her own uncertainty, it was a burning beacon of light for herself just as much as it ever was for the lost sailors of forgotten time.

"One day I'm going to climb up there and jump from the top."

Speaking of the defiant daredevil himself, JJ Maybank was the first to eagerly climb from the Volkswagen van, his naturally inquiring icy eyes bright and alert as he stepped closer to a lone, short picket-white fence that guarded the Redfield land. Willa and the three other teenagers followed close behind JJ, stepping carefully in his wake, as if the grass were planted with unsuspecting landmines. In Willa's opinion, the white fence that hardly stood higher than her waist was a pitiful excuse of defense, but it held people back, nonetheless—well, most people. Pogues were a bit more lenient to the challenge of a barricade keeping them from what they wanted, as they were quite used to obstacles in their paths and had learned long ago shortcuts to get over them.

"Right," John B. exhaled carefully, turning around to face JJ. "You're going to post up and look out for bogeys, okay?"

JJ frowned darkly, looking back at John B. as if he had been slapped in the face by him. "Wait. Why me?" He demanded.

"Because you're not coming," Pope Heyward explained bluntly.

"Why?"

"Look, JJ, there are independent and dependent variables. You're an independent variable and—"

"Shut up, Pope."

"—we don't know what you'll do!"

"Shut up!"

"Stop it! Stop it!" John B. shouted sternly, hurriedly pushing himself into the small space between JJ and Pope as they began to dangerously advance on one another. Planting a firm hand on either of the boys' chests, he quickly broke them apart, but had curled his fingers tightly into both of their shirts, showing them both who was in control of this situation. "Pope, you stand look out with JJ, okay?" He then spared a glance over his shoulder to the two girls waiting anxiously behind their huddled, testosterone trio. "Willa, you stay with them," He added quickly. "Kiara and I will go for the lighthouse. If we get split up, we meet back at JJ's house."

"Great," Kiara complied earnestly. "Sounds good to me."

With little room for argument—aside from JJ's constant mumbles of disappointment—the five teenagers eventually began to part ways to their own specific positions of the greater operation. Willa Deveraux kicked off her sandals once more and tucked them beneath her right arm as she shifted on the dead grass, looking about for a comfortable place to sit. Suddenly, to her surprise, rather than hop the white-picket fence and take off for the lighthouse like Willa had expected, John B. Routledge came to an abrupt stop right in front of her, dropping his voice so lowly that only she could hear it.

"You're okay with this, right?" He questioned. "Staying with them?"

Willa's sage gaze glinted lively in the burning sunlight that burst through the gray clouds above, and her knotted locks whipped haphazardly around her throat as the coast's sharp winds gusted over them, seemingly pushing their bodies closer together. "Leaving me alone with an independent and dependent variable, John B.?" Willa reiterated. "Do you know what this means?" For a short moment, she feigned disappointment, as if John B. had sold her to Satan for nothing, but in her reality, Willa could not care less with who she had been put with. She had no problem with Pope, and she could tolerate JJ for the most part—but in the end, her inner thoughts on the pogues did not matter towards the greater good of them all. The quicker they figured out what the hell the compass meant in the long run, the better off she would be. Hell, Willa Deveraux would now gladly go skipping hand-in-hand with JJ Maybank to distract a couple of bogeys if it brought her any closer to a promised safety that lasted beyond this day alone.

Because any day had to be better than the one Willa was currently living.

At John B.'s growing contorted expression of confusion, loudly declaring he did not understand where Willa's bitter frown had come from, finally, the Deveraux daughter broke her facade and let out a quiet chuckle as she stared teasingly up at John B. "I'm kidding. I don't even fucking know what that means," She insisted truthfully. "Of course, I'm okay staying with them."

The corner of John B.'s lip tilted upwards into a smirk at Willa's own tender smile, daring to break through the heavy walls of fear that still pulled dangerously in the storm that was her sage green gaze. If John B.'s own eye was not currently swollen shut, Willa would surely be able to see the same replicated fear in his own expression. "More added dramatics?" The Routledge boy assumed playfully.

Willa shrugged innocently. "You know me," She replied with a soft hum. "Got to cope with all of this somehow, right?"

John B.'s smile dipped the slightest at Willa's truthful words, but he chose not to push them. He, too, was taking the weight of living day-by-day, and some days were certainly easier to cope with than others. Suddenly, at Kiara's calling from the opposite side of the fence, John B. cleared his throat and stepped away from the girl in front of him. "Make sure they don't kill each other," He told Willa, his hickory gaze casting uneasily towards the Heyward and Maybank boys. "And please don't team up on JJ."

"I'm not usually a peacekeeper, John B."

"What better time to try it out then, yeah?"

Willa rolled her eyes at John B.'s snarky retort and held her tongue from snipping back another sly response as the Routledge boy finally turned away from her and started in Kiara's waiting direction. Over his shoulder, Willa then rose a gentle hand in the Carrera girl's direction. "Be careful," She called sincerely.

Kiara nodded her head in reassurance. "We will," She promised.

Several long minutes passed in silence upon their departure, and Willa Deveraux stood alone on her patch of dead grass, watching until John B. and Kiara's running forms soon vanished beneath the looming lighthouse in the far-off distance. And just when Willa was beginning to believe that the three teenagers left behind to stand guard would leave each other alone as they patiently waited, from over her shoulder, Willa loudly heard Pope Heyward exhale a tight breath of annoyance. "Well, I guess in the meantime I'm going to work on my essay," He decided firmly. "and I'm trying to keep felonies down to a minimum."

JJ Maybank moaned and was quick to sharply bite back. "All right, would you just shut up already?" He snapped.

"I'll kill you."

"Oh, yeah? With what? You'll paper cut me to death?"

Willa abruptly turned around as their threats grew sterner and her eyes narrowed strictly on the two boys. Thankfully, they were nowhere near each other, nowhere near pummeling each other in the dirt, because they were each distracted by their own devices. JJ with a pretty-patterned, bean hacky sack, and Pope with a half-charged cell phone that detailed the notes of his essay. "How about we play the quiet game?" She suggested dryly.

At Willa's meaningless suggestion, JJ immediately broke his impishly hot gaze away from Pope and then looked to the heated girl in question with a devilish glint burning in his icy stare. "Careful, sunshine," He taunted, turning his lean-labored body so that he was facing Willa directly. "You're challenging the best player of the game."

Pope only snorted. "You couldn't be quiet even if you lost your voice," He scoffed.

Rather than spit back a defiant protest that was very much in JJ's chaotic, fighting nature to do so, the headstrong blonde silenced his impulsive behavior with a mocking snap of his jaws. With two fingers, JJ seemingly zipped his lips shut and tossed the invisible key over his shoulder, letting it be lost to the breeze. Pope rolled his eyes at the sight as he then turned his attention down to his phone and Willa sarcastically applauded the Maybank boy, her full lips twisting in a snickering playful pout of her own.

As JJ then settled in to play a silent game of hacky by himself near the Twinkie, Willa found herself drifting carefully in Pope's lonely direction. She let her arms cross gently over her chest as she approached and stared carefully up at the taller boy. Pope's chapped lips were moving in careful focus as he silently conveyed his thoughts onto the now dimmed screen of the cellphone, doing whatever he could to save its battery. "How's the essay coming, Pope?" She questioned genuinely, her brows furrowed in interest.

Pope's eyes flickered away from the screen and over to Willa, but it was a long stretch of quiet before he ultimately responded to her. "It's going okay. Still needs a lot of work, though," He confessed, returning the cellphone to his pocket. "Look, I'm sorry for snapping in the van earlier," He apologized.

Willa smiled softly and let her hands drop, her jeweled thumbs hooking into the pockets of her jean shorts. "I'm sorry, too," She agreed gingerly. "We were all just frustrated and scared, and taking it out on each other. You're definitely not an asshole."

"Hey! I thought we agreed to play the quiet game!"

At JJ's sharp, accusing tone from over her shoulder, Willa briefly glanced back to see that the Maybank boy was frowning at her, the hacky sack now locked frustratingly in his closed fist. "We did. Against you," Willa clarified, hotly teasing as she placed her hands delicately on her muddy hips. "And now you've already lost. Real challenge you were, JJ."

"Oh, you want a real challenge?" JJ countered, tossing the small bean bag up into the air before quickly catching it once more. "Come play a round of hacky sack. We'll see whose boss, then."

"I'll pass."

"Yeah . . . I bet you will. Hacky sack too much of a roughhouse sport for your prissy scuba-diving lessons?"

"No," Willa huffed, matter-of-fact. Of course, JJ had already forgotten about her insistence that she did not know how to scuba dive like what was stereotypical of all kooks. Or maybe he had not forgotten and was simply trying to get a rise out of her now. Either way, it would not work. "I just don't want to deal with your whining when I beat you."

JJ meticulously tilted his head to the side. "You know," He drawled childishly. "I thought John B. said you couldn't team up on me."

Willa's eyes narrowed at the familiar accusation. "Eavesdropping much?"

"Please," JJ scoffed back as Willa abruptly turned a cold shoulder in his direction. "You both talked so loud I didn't even have to try."

At Willa's growing glowering expression of annoyance, Pope rose a gentle hand to regain her attention. He had to do something. It was only a matter of seconds before the competitive fighting streak of Willa's own hot-headed nature burst free and she would then be mopping the floor with JJ over a violent game of hacky sack. That was a fight between a kook and a pogue that Pope could not dare risk handling on his own. "Ignore him, Willa," The Heyward son advised of the Deveraux daughter. Do something, do something. Change the subject. "Hey," He added lightly. "I'm sorry that I pretty much crushed you yesterday . . ." He insisted, referring embarrassingly back to the moment when he had practically steam-rolled Willa to get out of Kiara's way while on the under-fire HMS Pogue. " . . . though, I suppose I'm not entirely sorry for that, either."

And just like that, with only a few delicately selected words, Willa's rebellious fire was snuffed out once more as she looked back over to Pope in utter confusion. "What?" She demanded.

Pope shrugged. "You congratulated my competition."

Willa frowned, her brows knitting together over a swirly sage storm. "Your competition?" She repeated.

"For the Lucas T. Vanderhelt Scholarship," Pope emphasized. "You congratulated Plumb's son."

Willa's jaw dropped in surprise as she was immediately taken back to the marsh, the familiar kind words searing into her mind as she spoke falsely with the unsuspecting deputy, Rochelle Plumb. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Pope!" She insisted genuinely. "I had no idea."

Once more Pope was smirking at her, just like he had when he had caught her outside of Big John's office. "Don't worry about it," He soothed kindly, his eyes softening on the girl before him as he thought to his drastically changing future ahead. If he got this scholarship, he was one step closer to freedom, too. "I'm going to crush the guy, anyways," He assured proudly.

Willa Deveraux found herself smiling fondly at Pope Heyward as he lowered himself down to sit at the base of a nearby tree trunk. Little by little, Willa was growing to know more of the brains behind the pogue's entire operation, and she was entirely intrigued by how he ran so effortlessly with the rest of the group. She respected Pope's quiet confidence—a confidence that might not have been so obvious when put against John B. or JJ. After all, Pope Heyward was not necessarily known for his juvenile behavior nor for the fact that his father was presumed dead at sea. No, Pope was more ordinary than the rest of his pogue friends, but still a pogue all the same. When he was not being pulled into illegal activities with his best friends or helping his father at his own slightly suspicious—but immensely popular—market shop, he was just an ordinary student at Kildare County High. For as long as Willa had known him, growing up in the same classrooms together—yet always seated at different tables—Pope had always been more concerned with grades and finals than he ever had been with alcohol and drugs. So very much unlike her own current way of life—unlike much of the entire Outer Banks' life, actually—Willa found that she respected Pope's innocent drive to scholarly succeed, too. Perhaps, even more so than the confidence he fought so hard to hold onto in the shadows of his best friends.

A long moment passed between them before Willa finally spoke again, her full attention down to Pope as she hovered lightly above him. "So," She addressed gently. "Do you really think that this whole goose chase is all in John B.'s head?"

Pope carefully glanced back up at Willa with a frown. "Are you asking if I think his dad is lost at sea—or dead at sea?" He questioned bluntly. Willa merely shrugged in response as she moved to lean against the tree herself, declaring that she wanted to hear what Pope had to say without her own two cents thrown into the mix. "I mean," Pope began uncertainly, licking his lips as he rubbed his hands together. "He could have gotten kidnapped, sure. I'll give him that. But do I still think there's a greater chance that he's dead?" He countered. "Yeah, definitely."

"Why?" Willa wondered.

"It's just . . . it's not possible to survive that. One month, maybe. I've read stories about it . . . But nine months?" Pope merely shook his head in disbelief. "There's no way.  Starvation and exposure . . . the human body cannot handle that type of trauma.  John B. would have heard something by now if his dad were actually alive."

"Well, that's what he thinks the compass is for."

"A compass can't speak for the dead."

Willa let her sage gaze wander towards the Redfield Lighthouse, tall and alone against the rocks and the waves that battered aimlessly around it. The weather always seemed to be its most chaotic near the lighthouse structure, waiting for the perfect moment to bring it down forever, lost to ruin like the Royal Merchant had been. The deep blue sea was completely relentless in its beautiful fury. Willa Deveraux could never imagine finding herself trapped in the waves of a roaring ocean; its cold, icy water pulling at her from all sides, desperate to drown her in a black blanket of death. She could not imagine how Big John must have felt out there, how even if the waves had been calm around him, they had still been entirely unforgiving in the end. "Maybe he's lost on an island somewhere," She murmured hesitantly.

"Maybe. It doesn't hurt to think that . . . but it doesn't heal, either," Pope comforted, following Willa's gaze out to the sea, out to where his best friends currently were, looking for answers that could drastically alter their lives forever. "I just think it's crueler to give John B. false hope than it is to just tell him the truth."

"But you don't know it's the truth," Willa defended gently, earnestly trying to prove that John B.'s own inner belief and refusal to let go was not as drastically insane as the rest of his friends believed it to be. "So, telling him your truth . . . isn't that still giving him false hope—or at least false information—too, in a way?"

Pope Heyward thought for a long moment, his dark gaze returning to the dead grass below his feet. "I guess. If you want to look at it that way," He finally agreed, wavering defeat evident in his quiet tone. Pope did not like having answers to questions that were asked of him. "I just . . . That's why I never tried to bring it up. I didn't want to face it."

"Well, it doesn't seem like you have a choice in that anymore," Willa sighed discontentedly, letting her dimming eyes fall down to her gaudy, bruised and dirty fingers. She was still missing one ring; a metallic curled magnolia leaf now lost forever to the shifting sands of the Boneyard beach. "Not after today."

Pope Heyward slowly nodded his head in agreement.

Suddenly, the uneasy silence that had settled over the three sparsely spread-out teenagers was broken by the harsh wailing of a police siren off in the distance. In an instant, Willa was hastily helping Pope back up to his feet as JJ immediately crossed over to their side, his bright blue eyes wide with alarm as he stared over their shoulders. Flickering dangerously through the trees were the familiar and blaring, vivid red and blue colors of an approaching cop car.

Pope's jaw dropped as he looked angrily towards the lighthouse. "What the hell did they do?!" He demanded worriedly.

Willa swallowed tightly, her hands curling together nervously as her heart began to beat dangerously fast in her chest. "Think we can talk our way out of this one?" She questioned meekly, looking carefully between the frazzled and alert boys that stood on either of her sides.

"Nope," JJ Maybank decided briskly. His strong hands were already on Willa's timid shoulders, aimlessly pushing her back towards the Twinkie as Pope went to collect JJ's discarded backpack. "Time to go!"

And without another word, the three teenagers hurriedly shot for the idly sitting van, Willa wildly throwing herself into the empty backseat as JJ and Pope quickly went to the respective driver and passenger seats. Over their shoulders, the wailing of the siren was growing louder, growing closer, but JJ was faster, throwing the gear into drive and hastily slamming a leather boot down on the gas, sending them lurching forward. Willa Deveraux rocked back on her aching knees and held tightly to JJ Maybank and Pope Heyward's leather seats as she unsteadily turned around, peering carefully through the tinted windows at the back of the Volkswagen. Her queasy stomach twisted with regret at the sight now left behind her.

Mile by mile, the Redfield Lighthouse grew smaller in the distance as Willa, JJ, and Pope were unwillingly forced to leave John B. and Kiara behind to the unknown of the western coast, a lone cloud of scattered dirty dust briefly left to declare that the three remaining friends had ever even been there, waiting for them, in the first place.

~~~~~~~~~~

tensions are a wee-bit high with this scared group of angsty teenagers today.

but i hope you enjoyed it? again, i feel like a struggled with this chapter, but that may just be me? i don't know. how'd y'all feel about this chapter?

and for anyone who even dare tries to suggest that willa is "ohhh relating too closely to john b., she doesn't even know him--" well, she does know him, okay? they've lived on the same island their whole lives. these kids aren't strangers to willa. they are CLASSMATES. oh, AND she CAN relate closely to john b. (even when they're not obviously bffs) because she knows what it's like to try and hold onto images of people that are no longer there anymore. willa thinks about her own biological parents EVERY FREAKING DAY. so, yeah, john b. and willa have a connection. she can be there for him when no one else can because SHE UNDERSTANDS HIS REFUSAL TO LET GO. because she hasn't let go either. NOW LET WILLA LIVE DAMMIT. sorry, rant over. i just needed to defend my girl before anyone tried to attack her or my writing.

on a second note, will i ever write a short chapter? it's highly unlikely, so i hope you're enjoying all these long updates of absolute madness.

so, how're we feeling about willa and pope's growing bond??

anywayssss, i hope you enjoyed this chapter!! we had our girl interacting with pretty much the whole squad, and there's only more to come!! sooo, what're we thinking?? i don't really know what to say, so what did you enjoy about the chapter?! is there anything you'd like to see in the future?? i'd love to hear your thoughts and what you'd like to see next! so please, leave some votes and comments because your girl would really appreciate it! thanks for reading! and i hope y'all are having a lovely day or night.

stay safe and stay well.

--B.

and now, today's meme is in honor of our baby pope--how many people can relate??