EFF IT! ➸ jj maybank

013.

Sonny didn't even help her.

She just ran. Dove out the window and made a break for it when she had the chance to.

   Sure, Ms Lana had told her to, but she still should've gone inside and made sure she was okay. But Sonny was scared so she didn't fight instruction. She bolted.

   For the first time in a years, Sonny Penbrook was scared.

   It was weird. She had never been a scared kid. She never screamed in the night or cried about monsters in her closet, and she never asked her dad to get a spider out of her room. Since she was little, Sonny was daring and she was brave. She always had been. Maybe being a foster child did that to you after living with new families in new places, navigating grief for a mother who died before she had a chance to meet her. Perhaps, as a child, Sonny had already seen it all; life didn't scare her, anymore.

   Maybe Sonny was numb.

It was hard to tell — to know if she was numb or if feeling anything was what she was really afraid of.

   But as she ran for her life across the Cut, Sonny knew that she was scared. Terrified, even.

    "Sonny?"

   She ignored whoever had called out to her, she didn't have time to talk. Nor to comprehend the odd looks that people on the Cut sent her, probably wondering why the Penbrook's kid was running through the south side, looking like she had just stared death in the face.

   What would she tell anyone, anyway? The truth?

   Hell no! In what world?

   Ms Lana may not have been talking to Sonny when she told the boys that no one could find out about what they'd found, but she assumed that it applied to her just as well. She didn't plan on telling anyone about....

   Well, Sonny didn't even know what.

It had to be more than money or drugs. John B said that it was his father's. And besides, drug dealers weren't new to her; Sonny knew the local drugs dealers, she knew drowning some guy wasn't their style, nor trashing his home after the fact. It wasn't how Barry worked — he usually turned up in person, and it was usually alone. No duos, no pairs.

   Plus Sonny knew Barry's voice. Neither of those guys were Barry. They weren't the voices of anyone she knew. Maybe it was two randoms from the mainland?

   But coming all this way after Agatha sounded like a whole bunch of effort for drugs and money. What the heck was this thing? Why was it so valuable? What did John B's dad have?

   Sonny didn't understand.

   If it was that valuable, they wouldn't stop searching for it. They would be onto the Pogues, next. This thing was in the hands of John B, JJ, Pope and Kiara and Sonny had a really bad feeling that, if it truly belonged to John B's father, then they wouldn't just hand it over.

   Not willingly.

   And so, for that exact reason, Sonny Penbrook planned on finding those Pogues before they did.

And she had an advantage — she hoped.

Sonny didn't know the Pogues well, but it was enough for her to be a step ahead — possibly, at least. That meant that she could find them, warn them and perhaps even figure out what the fuck was going on.