𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐋'𝐒 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 || 𝐣. 𝐦𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞

"I MEAN, IT'S OBVIOUS. RIGHT?" JOHN B QUESTIONED. They were all packed in the van, Bree beside JJ as Pope examined the compass. "A family heirloom. What better place to hide a message? He had to know it was gonna get back to me, right?"

Glancing at her friends in the back nervously before giving the Routledge boy a pitying look, Kie answered, "Yeah. It's possible."

"It could also be possible that you're concocting wild theories to help, you know, deal with you sad feels," Pope offered, and the two girls in the car shot him a glare.

"Bro, you know how I deal with my sad feels," JJ spoke up, oblivious to everything going on as always. "Dank nugs and the stickiest of ickies, that's how I do it."

As Bree just rolled her eyes and shot the blonde boy a smile, John B exclaimed, "I'm not concocting, okay? My dad's trying to give me a message."

"If it helps you believe, John B," the Carrera girl told him.

"Look, I-I don't need a therapy session, okay?" the brunette boy informed them with an upset voice. "Look, I'm not tripping out."

JJ shrugged, "It's okay to trip, bro, but—"

"Look, my — my dad is missing, okay?" John B yelled, cutting JJ off along with a smack on the shoulder from the Callaway girl. "Missing. You don't know what it's like to have the person closest to you vanish and then have no idea what happened. Just wake up every morning wondering."

"It's almost been a year," Kie sighed as if he didn't already know that. After her father disappeared, Bree remembered counting the days since he had left until she gave up hope that he was ever coming back. She was sure John B was doing the same thing.

Trying to cheer his best friend up while lightening the mood, the Maybank boy suggested, "Hey, he could have been kidnapped. That's definitely a possibility."

"Yeah, he could be in a Soviet sub getting interrogated by the KGB somewhere," Pope agreed.

JJ added, "Absolutely...Uh, or Atlantis."

"Pope, can I see the compass?" the brunette girl questioned, talking over them as the Heyward boy nodded and passed the chain over to her so that she could examine it.