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"CAN WE GET OUT OF here, please?" Atticus asked his friends as his hand ran up and down Renna's back, the girl's face buried in his shoulder whilst her hair fanned across the visible sides of her flushed cheeks. Atticus had his head tilted towards the roof of the chicken coop, desperately trying to look at anything but the dead animal dangling from JJ's bloody hands.
"Yeah, yeah. Let's go," John B nodded as he clambered out of the coop, holding a hand out for Kiara and later Renna before moving towards the van.
"Wait! What am I supposed to do with the rooster?" JJ exasperated, eyes wide with strained emotion as the damp feathers tickled the skin of his palms.
"Leave it, go wash your hands," Pope mumbled as he escaped the wooden den, Atticus following not long behind him after he'd patted JJ firmly on the back. The Pogues waited in the van for their friend to come back before beginning their journey towards the lighthouse, JJ fiddling with his fingers in the back as he tried to erase the perfect picture swarming his mind of the lifeless bird held within his tight clasp.
After holding a heated discussion regarding John B's missing father, they made it to his supposed favourite place, the Redfield Lighthouse. They decided that Pope and JJ would stick together at the bottom, whilst John B, Kiara, Renna and Atticus climbed the looming tower.
"Remind me what we're looking for, again?" Kiara questioned as they walked through the open door.
"We'll know when we see it," John B answered before beginning his ascent up the stairs. Kiara and Renna shared a look behind his back, Atticus too busy staring up the centre of the lighthouse to notice the two girls' prolonged, questioning stares.
"Okay."
"I was not built for this," Renna mumbled as she looked up the never-ending stairwell.
"You're a Pogue," Atticus grinned. "Of course you were."
She groaned but followed after the boy, dragging her feet against the rim of the metal stairs as the group gradually trailed up to the top of the tower.
"If this breaks, Booker, I'm suing you," Atticus mumbled as he, too, dragged himself up the steps. Renna stifled a laugh behind him as Kiara rolled her eyes, letting out a dramatic breath that echoed both up and down the empty stairwell.
"You'll be dead. You can't sue me if-"
"I'll find a way. Don't test a dead pogue, I'm telling ya."
When they finally made it to the top, John B knocked. And he knocked. And he knocked again.
It was seemingly empty.
"Nobody home," he shrugged, until the door opened. It was an old man with glasses, a beard laying against his chest as he heaved a deep breath. His squinted eyes were examining the teens as they squirmed in the open doorway, underneath his strong and tense gaze.
