CHAPTER SEVEN.
PIPER WOKE UP the next morning as she did every morning—her head throbbing for a cup of coffee. She started drinking coffee when she was fourteen. She had just started her freshman year of high school and had to wake up significantly earlier for the 7:30 AM start time, but it was feeling compelled to fix up her hungover father before school that brought her to guzzling caffeine on an addictive, cyclic repeat. She supposed her drug of choice could've been worse, though.
The next year when JJ started high school, Piper did significantly less fixing-up of her father. JJ never understood why Piper felt responsible for their dad—Luke was an abusive nuisance. That was true, Piper understood where JJ was coming from, but that didn't stop Piper from feeling like she should be taking care of their father. But, because JJ was waking up at the same time as Piper again and was aware that she was the one making their hungover father look and seem as sober as possible, he made it blatantly clear that he thought Piper should stop. So, she did. She didn't stop drinking coffee, though. In fact, without having to do something in the morning before school, she needed something to wake her up more than she had before.
So, coffee was just something that became part of Piper's morning routine: wake up; push JJ off of her if necessary; make coffee; do a miscellaneous chore that wouldn't get done if she didn't do it; drink aforementioned coffee. It was just a known fact that while JJ drank stale beer in the morning against his better judgement, Piper would be nursing, possibly, the shittiest cup of coffee known to man. So, it wasn't an unbelievable lie when Piper told John B and JJ the next morning, "You have fun with that. I'm gonna drop off a practice test for Willa and squat a pot of coffee off my rich, generator-having bosses."
John B and JJ were sitting on mix-matched furniture on the front porch, and Piper was sitting on the railing, her back against one of the supporting four-by-fours. Her knees were bent, and she was using them as a table for her to highlight words in that morning's word search in the News & Observer with a more-or-less dried-out orange highlighter. John B was turning his father's compass in his hand. He hadn't let anybody else touch it since he pulled it out of the canister the night before, but he was constantly fidgeting with it like it would magically reveal answers to him. JJ wasn't drinking beer, instead he was devising a plan to snatch the compass away from John B. Piper understood it was, like, some paternal sign or whatever for John B, but the more he played with it, the more it made Piper nervous, so she supported JJ's plans of thievery.
"But—" John B said, snapping his head up from watching the compass around in his hand.
Piper cut him off, though, "Talking to Ms. Lana about that—" she gestured vaguely toward the compass— "might be one of the worse ideas you've had, John B. Her husband just drowned, and we were shot at over the very thing her husband drowned with, and you wanna wave it in her face?"
"Okay," he allowed, spreading his hands out. The compass was still, very much, cradled in his palm. "Maybe I've had sounder ideas. But, this is my dad, guys. You two've known him almost as long as I have, yeah? He would never just get lost at sea."
JJ looked straight at Piper. They had a very short discussion between themselves. Non-verbal communication in the form of raised brows, shrugging shoulders, and widening eyes. The thing with Big John was that he had been lost at sea for nine months. John B wasn't ready to sign the papers when they—the authorities—declared him dead, but everyone else had pretty much assumed he was gone by the time the sheriffs did too, JJ and Piper included. It wasn't like Piper was completely delusion free when it came to her image of her own father, but when someone's lost at sea for nine months, they're pretty damn dead. Dead as a doornail. And, it was easier to feed your own delusions than someone else's.
"Maybe there's a reason or whatever the compass came back to you, JB," Piper started tentatively, "but Ms. Lana is grieving right now. You and J can go terrorize her with your dad's compass if you really want to, but I'm not gonna join you guys, okay?"
"Piper does have a point, man," JJ added. He hurried the rest when he caught John B's expression. "But, stupid things have good outcomes all the time, right?"
Piper didn't think this particular endeavor was stupid so much as it was emotionally obtuse, but she had a feeling saying that out loud would annoy John B more than he already was about Piper refusing to join them. So, Piper forced herself an agreeing nod and picked her backpack up from where it was sitting on the railing next to her. She looked at her brother and spun her index finger once, "J, you have keys?"
"Bike's at ours," JJ said.
"Yeah, I know. I'll scope out the yard, and if it's safe, I'll ride up to the Palace."
JJ looked at Piper appraisingly, "And if it's not?"
"I'll walk to the Palace," Piper shrugged.
He dug a set of keys out of his pocket, but held them tightly in his palm when Piper held her hand out for them, "Pipe, you're not gonna give 'im a fuckin' pep talk are you?"
Piper and JJ had gotten a text from their father before the hurricane that he had gotten fired from his job at the salvage yard. Which meant a myriad of things but specifically that he expected Piper or JJ or both to be around to entertain him. JJ thought Luke shouldn't hold his breath on his expectations.
"No," Piper said.
Yes, Piper thought.
"Piper. You always get all depressed when you see him."
"I got it, JJ, alright?" Piper said. "Just give me the keys."
He hesitantly handed them over, and Piper said her thanks and left, walking around the curve of the nearly-wrap-around porch so she was walking across the damp grass leading away from the back of the Chât. She was wearing jeans because she was planning on dropping in to fix up Luke's drunken mess. If he was hungover, denim was her best bet in case he started throwing things that made small shards, but she cuffed the bottoms—so she didn't die of heat stroke—which meant the stick-and-poke tattoo she couldn't even remember giving herself last summer peaked out in between the cuff and the top of her Converse. She was, like, ninety-percent sure her father didn't know about it, and she didn't want him finding out. It was a double venus symbol which she was one hundred-percent sure wouldn't go over well in her father's household.
Piper didn't remember giving herself the tattoo, hopefully she was drunk and not, like, high on something insane, but she was proud of herself for remembering to sterilize the needle.
The Maybank house was just as much of a fishing shack as the Château. It wasn't right on the marsh, but through the clearing and underneath some trees was a splintering dock, a rusting hoist, and a sign fashioned to look like a license plate with their surname on it nailed to a four-by-four. The house had peeling yellow paint on questionably looking panels and spots of stucco, but despite its stature, its residents, and the touch-and-go time she spent there, it was home enough for Piper.
Because she walked around the back way, Piper was able to walk around the length of the house beneath a mass of live oak trees. The house looked the same, it wasn't brandishing any new souvenirs of drunken aggression or tropical belligerence, and Luke wasn't passed out on the cement slab the Maybanks called a porch. The bike was in the front yard, and Luke wasn't, so, if Piper kept her word when it came to her father, she would ride off then and there.
But, she wasn't the most reliable when it came to Luke. She never really was. And it wasn't that she could justify the things he said and did, she really couldn't, but it was easier to identify John B's paternal delusions than her own.
So, she walked up to the front door, stared at it for a moment of fruitless self-reflection, and twisted the door knob. Luke never locks it, so the door swung open, and Piper stepped inside carefully, missing the creaky board. The door, though, was creaky enough to wake up an abysmally drunk Luke Maybank from his nap on the couch.
"Who's there?"
Piper's backpack, which she had swung over her shoulder, slipped down to her fingers. She cringed as she walked into his line of sight, but she quickly busied herself with picking up empty cans from the coffee table so he couldn't see her face.
Luke let his head fall back onto the arm rest, and Piper looked up cautiously through her eyelashes, not moving her head as she reflexively tidied.
"Hey, Girl," he smiled crookedly in the way he does when he's so off the wagon he knows who Piper is but can't quite place her name anymore.
"Hi, Dad," Piper walked into the kitchen—out of view from Luke—with her arms full of empty Bud Light cans and her backpack hanging from her wrist by the strap, and dumped the cans in the recycling bin that was so overflowing Piper was scared of what all was in it.
"Where ya' goin'?"
Piper readjusted her backpack on her shoulder. Maybe this had been a bad idea? Maybe.
"Right here," she said as she reappeared from around the corner, a queasy smile pulling at her mouth like a bad taste had been left in her mouth.
"Come on," Luke beckoned and waved her over, so Piper sat on the coffee table, and Luke sat up. Piper moved so she sat slanted—that way their knees didn't touch. "Where you been?"
"Y'know, work. With friends. Summer stuff."
"You work too hard, Girl. Just like your mother." He was way gone when he started bringing up Piper and JJ's mother. Piper should go; she should go now. "You at John B's?"
"Mhm," Piper hummed.
"I'm surprised you haven't jumped him yet. Or maybe you have, who knows."
"Huh?" Piper slipped her hands underneath her thighs so she didn't fidget nervously. Or sock Luke in the eye, who knows.
"Well, y'know, been with him. You're like your mother. In more ways than one."
"John B's just as much my brother as JJ is, Dad. That's disgusting."
This had definitely been a bad idea.
"Whatever you say, Girl."
"You can't just say that stuff, Dad." Piper knew she and JJ looked more like their mother than like Luke—the only thing he gave them was light blonde hair and a gene for alcoholism—and that made him say wonky shit when he was drunk, but Piper was getting really tired of it.
"Crucifyin' people for tellin' the truth, now?"
"No," Piper stood up; Luke followed suit. "I'm crucifying you for calling your daughter a whore."
"Well, aren't you?"
She threw her hands up and started walking toward the door. Whether Luke was following her or not wasn't as much of a concern of her as leaving. "It's not for you to decide!"
Piper swung the front door open and slammed it behind her; Luke grunted—it probably hit him. She skipped a few steps as she crossed the front yard. Luke was yelling at her now, but she didn't really care. She pushed the keys into the ignition of the bike and punched her foot down on the kick-starter.
"Up yours, too, Dad!" she shouted before jerking her wrist, triggering the throttle and kicking dirt up at Luke as Piper turned onto the gravel road leading away from her house.
Piper, in her slightly agitated state probably should not have been driving a motorbike, and if she really had to, she probably should have driven it straight back to the Château. She didn't, though.
She drove across the Cut to her cousin Ricky's. Normally, JJ and Piper weren't supposed to drop by unannounced, but Ricky took one look at Piper, said "Dude, you have to stop visiting Luke," and directed her towards a threadbare, green sofa in his sunroom (which was really just a large umbrella cemented into the ground and surrounding insect screens.)
"Why does everyone think my shitty moods are the result of my dad?" Piper groaned at the grey umbrella above head.
"Piper, your moods are catastrophic, like, rob-a-bank bad, after you see Luke." Ricky dug through a miscellaneous tackle box and pulled out a rusted, bronze cigarette case that had been passed down from his grandfather, but was now filled with hand rolled joints made with Ricky's own cripple. He slouched down onto the couch next to her, lit a joint and passed it over to Piper, "What'd he do?"
Piper took an extra long drag, and Ricky looked over at her with concern, "Easy there, Tiger. That's the good stuff."
She blew the smoke out her nose and closed her eyes, "Wondered how I was able to keep it in my pants 'round John B."
Ricky snorted as he took the joint between his thumb and forefinger, "Why would he think you'd jump John B—?" Piper opened her eyes to look at him pointedly. "You haven't told him?"
"Of course, I haven't told him!" Piper snatched the blunt back; Ricky made a move to interject, but thought better of it. "How d'you think that would go over?"
"You have the lesbianism symbol tattooed on your ankle?"
"He can't even remember my name half the time!"
"Okay, and how has no one else told him?" That was, in all fairness, an honest question. It's not exactly like it was a secret, but most of the adults around the Outer Banks were genuinely clueless or selectively so.
"I haven't exactly asked around, but it's not like he'd even believe it if someone told him. I dated quite a few guys between, like, the Figuring It Out period and the Getting Over The Denial period. But—whether I'm a whore or not by—like—dictionary definition is not for him to comment on."
Ricky gave Piper a once over, took the joint back once she looked sedated thoroughly enough, and said, "So, I know you think you have some, like, father-daughter bond with the prick, or whatever, but you seriously don't owe him anything. Family is family, sure, but he's never been very father-y to you, so you have no obligation to be daughter-y back."
"Aw!" Piper cupped her face with her hands, but she did it too quickly and brought a coughing fit upon herself—from which she recovered very ungracefully. "Ricky-kins!"
"I'm never smoking pot with you again," he deadpanned.
"Oh, come on," Piper rolled her eyes. "Don't act like I'm not the fun one."
"Uh-huh." Ricky stood up and looked into the house through the screen door to check the time. "I've gotta bounce. Don't do anything stupid? Chill here for a bit, whatever, but nothing stupid."
"Yeah, sure, Ricky-kins."
━━━━━━━
JJ AND JOHN B were back by the time Piper arrived—more than slightly dazed forty-five minutes later, but she had operated heavier machinery under more impaired conditions—and Kie and Pope were on the porch, too. JJ was pacing anxiously, but knowing JJ, he would probably enlighten Piper on the reasons why he was so anxious before she had time to ask, but Piper's brain was like a pocket with a hole in it: everything that went in, fell out and found itself wedged in the dirt.
Piper was not in denial about what Luke had said, and it wasn't really the words that came out of his mouth and their connotations that bugged her. It was the fact that he said them that pissed her off. She was not exactly saving herself for marriage, but the fact that her dad of all people, drunken or sober, thought it was appropriate to dress Piper up as whorish and provocative made Piper squirm inside her own skin.
So maybe it was Ricky's hydroponic weed; a willingness to truly own up to what, clearly, everyone else thought about her; maybe it was to spite her father for thinking the boys Piper messed around with during, probably, the worst year of her entire life had absolutely any effect at all on who she does and does not choose to be whorish around; or maybe it was, simply, Piper's moderately poor coping mechanisms that did it. But, as she stomped up the porch steps to the Château, she made eye contact with John B, so she steadfastly turned her head, "Hey, Kie?"
"Yeah?"
She twisted her hands around, massaging her palms and bending her fingers anxiously, "Can I kiss you?"
Kie looked at Piper like she had grown a second head which, granted, Piper understood she probably deserved. It wasn't like Piper hadn't kissed them all before—JJ and Piper both had a tendency to show their affection physically, though, the latter usually had a teasing routine she liked to get through first—but she wasn't usually angry and faded when she did it, and she normally didn't, like, ask. "Like on the mouth?"
Piper fanned herself with her hands then flipped the ends of her hair off her neck anxiously. JJ joined the rest of the Pogues in staring at Piper as he puffed on a vape. At least Piper wasn't alone in needing a vice this early in the morning. "Yeah, like platonically can I kiss you on the mouth?"
"Uh, sure, I guess," Kie said, glancing at Pope—who shrugged—and standing up.
"Cool, cool," Piper rolled her shoulders back like she was preparing to run. She was full of bad ideas this morning. She was also, like, maybe, pretty, sure she had kissed Kie on the mouth before. She wasn't sure. But, anyways, they did kiss then. It wasn't anything spectacular or groundbreaking—Piper couldn't very well tell left from right at that moment, and the guys were staring at them confused and a bit concerned for Piper—but it was better than anytime Piper had kissed a guy, and Piper really didn't mean it in a romantic way, so she didn't think too much about it specifically. Truly, the weirdest thing about the whole affair was that Piper thanked Kie before pushing herself up onto the railing and taking her place from that morning again. She took a moment to think, Fuck you, Dad, before glancing around, still very much stoned off her ass, but slightly less combative. "Oh, shit, sorry. No Pogue-on-Pogue macking, sorry about that."
JJ puffed on his vape again before gripping it in his hand with his thumb and gesturing around with his other four fingers, "Okay, we don't have time to unpack what just happened because the guys that shot at us were at Ms. Lana's!"
He had a tendency to run his words together when agitated, and Piper's comprehension capabilities were more than slightly impaired, so a belated second later, Piper looked at JJ like he was out of his mind, "I am so glad I didn't go."
"Piper, please, shut up. You're makin' me think really hard right now," JJ said.
"What the fuck does that even mean—?"
"—We were right outside like this," JJ steered himself the other way, maneuvering in a circle so he was sort of in a squat-meets-duck position against a brick part of the Château's wall. The rooster in the coop in John B's yard crowed, but the rooster was always clucking once in a while, and JJ had a flair for theatrics, so everyone's eyes were on him. "And all we hear is just, 'Bam! Bam! Bam!'" He jerked his arm with each word, and Piper vaguely realized that JJ was shaking, but he kept talking, "Knocking paint off the wall, G! From the inside. All right? And I'm just looking at him, like—" JJ points to John B who ducks and avoids eye contact—
"Wait, first off, look at this shit," JJ stepped away from the wall and toward Piper, ducking his head and raking his hands through his hair over Piper's lap. A bunch of flakes fell onto Piper's legs, like flour was sprayed across her jeans. "Look at it. The house."
"That's dandruff, disgusting," Kie grimaced as Piper shoved JJ shoulder backward, but, nonetheless, giggled about 'snow' and 'Christmas in July.'
"Look at all that," JJ turned to look at Kie and Pope, pointing jaggedly toward Piper. "All right? That's paint. At that point, I was just, like... I'm waiting for death."
"Okay," Pope was keeled over—which, fair enough—with his forehead propped up against his hands, but at the same time his hands were kind of pointing about, trying to formulate his question to get any useful information out of JJ. "So, you saw the guys that shot at us, right?"
"Yeah," JJ was out of breath and rocking slightly on the balls of his feet, looking at Piper because she was supposed to fix things, but it was a bad morning for Piper's competence.
"Did you get a good description of them?" Pope asked. "What did they look like? Anything we can bring to, like, a police report, maybe?"
"Anything," Kie supplied. "Anything's helpful."
JJ stood next to Piper, but he was facing the opposite direction, looking out over the yard, across the marsh. He turned back around to Pope, gesturing absently with a great sudden epiphany but the only word that came out of his mouth was, "Burly."
Pope stilled, "Burly?"
"Yeah," JJ confirmed. The rooster concurred. "You know, like—"
"That's not very helpful," Kie muttered to herself.
JJ was pacing in a circle, spinning a bit wildly like a top. He pointed at Piper for her to jump in and say something useful. Piper was completely deadweight. JJ seemed to have realized this, so he continued, "Okay, well, no, like the type of guy at our dad's garage."
"Fucking twat," Piper picked up a pebble that had been on the railing next to her and hurled it at the side of the house. Her friends stared at her for a moment, but there were bigger things happening, so JJ took back control of the conversation.
"You guys know he made cargo hides for drug smugglers," JJ said, and Kie confirmed, urging him to get to the point. "So, I can tell you with full confidence, that these boys, these killers..." JJ paused to lean back against the brick and suspensefully puff on his vape, "they're square groupers."
There was a moment of silence long enough for the cicadas to attack at the pause. Pope turned his head in his hands to look at JJ, "They're square groupers, like narco square grouper? Like Pablo Escobar square grouper?"
JJ pulled the vape down from his lips and vapor billowed from his nose, "Yeah, man."
"You guys," Kie said, "not everything is a kingpin movie."
"But," Piper cut in, sweeping her hand out in front of her, "imagine if everything was? Like, that would be kind of cool."
Pope stood up abruptly, asking JJ, "What does this square grouper look like? Specifically?"
Meanwhile Kie and John B looked at Piper, not like she was missing some screws, but like she had lost the whole damn toolbox.
"You weren't there, bro—!"
"Because apparently, you don't know what to look for!"
"Dude!" JJ jerked his pointer finger around like he was taking snapshots. "I wasn't taking little mental Polaroids the entire time, man. I was under duress! Okay? But I can tell you... " He paused dramatically and Kie looked around, reasonably gobsmacked, as JJ collected himself. "I can tell you by the way that Ms. Lana was screaming that these guys are serious, serious hombres, man."
Piper let out a soft groan, "It's a heavy energy, right now—like Mercury in retrograde. We need, like, breathing exercises."
She hopped off the railing and moved her hands up and down as she inhaled and exhaled, "Inez is really big on yoga—or pilates? Whatever, expensive stretching—she loves that shit. Taught me four-by-fours: Inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four—"
"Why would they even want the compass?" Kie asked, interrupting Piper, who dejectedly pushed herself back up onto the railing. John B was beginning to pace now, too, and Piper unsuccessfully lightened the atmosphere.
"That thing's a piece of shit," Pope said. "You couldn't pawn it off for five bucks if you wanted to."
"I was saying this yesterday—Home Goods has really nice nautical decor this time of year," Piper pointed at the ceiling.
Pope looked at John B nervously, "No offense. I know it's in your family—"
"The office," John B spoke for the first time, and Piper studied him for a moment. She had forgotten he was there.
"What?" Pope asked.
"My dad—my dad's office," John B said, walking in quick strides for the door. Piper hopped down from the railing with a theatrical sigh, and the four of them followed John B inside the Château. "He always kept the office locked because he was worried about his competitors stealing his Royal Merchant research."
Piper swung her arms over Pope and Kie's shoulders, and they let her even though she wasn't really walking in a straight line and their knees collided every other step. Everyone knew that Piper's coping mechanism was too much weed, and weed makes Piper, well, more physically affectionate than she is sober.
"We used to laugh at him like he was gonna find it. But now that he's gone, I've just kinda..." John B continued, coming to a halt in front of the door to his dad's old office. Piper thought it had been sealed shut at some point, but one afternoon, she and JJ came over, and Big John yelled a greeting through the closed door, so it obviously could still open. It was a shock for Piper when she found out. "I just left it as he kept it."
"Yeah, for when he gets back," Kie said, and she looked at Piper, Pope, and JJ with a bit of a sarcastic look on her face, but John B concurred seriously with Kie's statement. John B unlocked the padlock over the door handle and pushed the door open. It swung noisily on its hinges and the five of them crowded into the room.
They looked around the room, absorbing Big John's life work, but John B had seen it about a million times, and he was less interested in its novelty.
"I've slept over here like six hundred times, and I've never seen this door opened," Pope said. Kie hummed in agreement as John B plucked a corkboard from where it leant on some shelves against the wall and placed it on a central table. The five of them circled the table as John B pointed at photographs pinned to the corkboard, outlining a family tree.
"Here, look," he pointed, "this is the original owner, right here."
"Okay," Kie shrugged, pointing to someone dressed in his World War I best, "Robert Q. Routledge. 1880 to 1920. There's the lucky compass, right there."
"Actually, um..." John B cleared his throat, "he was shot right after he bought it."
The rooster clucked, distressed as though it could sense and understand their conversation.
"Then the compass was shipped back to Henry," Henry's photo was with his wife in the doorway of their house. "He was killed in a crop-dusting accident when he had the compass."
"Y'know," Piper said, "If I was a boy, I would've been named Henry."
"That's great, Pipe," JJ patted Piper's shoulder and let her prop her elbow up onto his shoulder.
"After," John B cut in, "Henry died, the compass was given to Stephen. Stephen had the compass with him when he died in Vietnam."
"Let me guess, he died in action, right?" JJ asked.
"Sort of," John B shrugged. "Uh, actually, he was killed by a banana truck. In—in country. Anyways, after that, Stephen passed the compass down to him, my dad."
The picture of Big John had John B in it, maybe three or four, sitting on the rocks by the water. Now, considering Big John was dead—whether John B believed that or not—, it seemed to Piper that they were now going to die.
"So, like, I know I'm a bit—" Piper began, on hand gesturing in a circle toward her head.
"Faded?" Pope supplied, and Piper snapped her fingers at him gratefully.
"Exactly, but it seems to me like this compass..."
"Has a bit of a recurring theme," JJ said.
"Yeah, you have a death compass," Pope nodded.
"I do not," John B said, but Pope repeated his statement, and John B turned around, away from his friends.
Piper looked at Kie and tilted her head, "Did we not, literally, get shot at yesterday?"
"Dude," JJ said, "get rid of it. It's cursed, and it's made its way back to you."
The rooster clucked and crowed and Piper noticed its distress, "Bro, even the rooster agrees!"
"Look," John B sat in his dad's desk chair and started fiddling with the back of the compass. "My dad used to talk about this compartment in here. Soldiers used to hide secret notes."
"Like if gay lovers were in different platoons?" Piper supplied.
John B nodded and started spinning the back of the compass off as though it were the lid of a jar, "Yeah, probably."
John B shook the compass, to see if anything would come flying out—presumably revealing his father's whereabouts—but it was empty. Well, almost. Kie pointed at the underside of the lid where an etching had been made in the bronze, "What's that?"
"That wasn't there before," John B muttered quietly, but they were all in pretty close quarters. He looked at Kie then spun to look at Pope, JJ, and Piper. "This is my dad's handwriting."
"How can you know that?" Pope asked.
"Because he does these weird R's with the—" he cut himself off to show Pope the inscription. "See it?"
"Can I see it?" JJ asked, leaning forward to look at whatever was engraved.
He tried reading it but to no avail, so Kie butted in, "It says Redfield."
"Right," JJ said, standing back up.
"Okay, well, what's Redfield?" Kie asked.
"Besides the most common name in the county?" Pope asked, and Piper snapped with some off topic revelation.
"I took the SAT for Jess Redfield last summer. Got her a thirteen-thirty and now she's running track for, like, UCLA or something."
"Maybe it's a clue," John B. "Because in no way is it related to Piper's academic dishonesty and fraud—"
"Excuse me, she paid me good money for that score."
"—Maybe it's a clue to where he's hiding."
Pope shook his head, "A clue? Come on, that's—" Kie glared at Pope, so he quickly changed his mind. "But if it is a clue, maybe it's an anagram?"
John B pointed excitedly and started grabbing things behind him, "Yes. Perfect. Anagram. You need paper."
He spread out a paper on the table and handed Pope a pen. Pope looked down at the lid of the compass and started writing the letters out on the paper, but the rooster clucked loudly, almost wolf-like, and Pope said, "How can you concentrate with that thing crowing at you?"
"JJ loves the rooster," John B said as JJ walked up behind Pope and looked over his shoulder at the paper.
"I love the rooster," Kie said. "And Piper named it Alfonso once when she was drunk."
"I did?" Piper asked.
Everyone started scribbling on papers, brainstorming aloud. Except Piper who was spinning the globe that was in the corner of the office near the windows, "Guys, this globe still has Burma and Yugoslavia on it."
"That just means it was made before '89," Pope called out, and Piper shrugged, losing interest in the globe and spreading the blinds apart to look out the window. A black truck with wheels too big for it pulled into John B's gravel driveway next to the Volkswagen van and the motorbike. Piper slowly turned to look at John B who was standing in front of the window next to her, but he was already glancing between her and the truck outside.
"Guys," Piper said, looking over her shoulder, but the bickering between JJ, Pope, and Kie only got louder.
"Guys!" John B repeated, and their heads all shot up to look at John B and Piper. "Somebody's here."
The three of them walked quickly and quietly toward the window, slotting themselves in between Piper and John B as two men, in all black and, as JJ aptly described, burly, walked up toward the house.
"Is that them?" Kie asked, her voice tightening around the words. Piper wasn't nearly nervous enough about imminent danger as she normally would be.
"No," JJ said and took a step back, but his face did not put anyone at ease.
"Is that them?!" Kie voice started quivering.
"This is suboptimal," Pope said
JJ spun around and started pacing again, "John B, I told you. Why is it always—"
"JJ!" John B grabbed JJ's shoulders and pushed him against the wall so he would stop moving. "Hey, look at me. Where's the gun?"
"The gun?" Piper asked. "Man, why is it always guns? Peace and love, y'all."
John B shot a desperate look to Kie and Pope, telling them to fix Piper as soon as humanly possible. High Piper was probably the least helpful facet of her personality in this situation.
"Piper, did you go to Ricky's?" Pope asked. She shrugged. "Jesus Christ. You always come back nuked when you go to his house."
"I had a bad fuckin' morning, Pope. And—how was I supposed to know a pair of armed linebackers were gonna come after us for something they could buy for cheap at an army surplus store?"
Kie put a hand on Piper's shoulder, "We can talk about this later, but, seriously, try to sober the fuck up."
Piper nodded like a petulant child and the three of them turned back around to see JJ bolt for the door, and Piper nearly shouted, "What the fuck are you do—?"
But Pope slammed his hand over Piper's mouth to shut her up.
"John Routledge!" Someone shouted, and on instinct Piper put her hands over her head and dropped to the floor. Kie whimpered like a wounded dog, and JJ slid back into the office and closed the door. "Come out now!"
JJ pushed all his body weight onto the door, and whispered, "Where's the compass?"
"Where's the gun?" John B countered.
"They're on the front porch, guys," JJ said. Piper picked herself back up and nodded to herself. The gun was on the front porch then, too.
"Get out here!" The other man's voice echoed through the house, but it didn't have to echo that far. They were shouting and their boots pounded into the wooden flooring as the two square groupers bounded through the house. The rooster, Alfonso apparently, squawked and bleated and made just about every animal noise under the sun, and Piper could empathize with it. Things were cluttering on the opposite side of the door, metal on metal, heavy objects hitting the ground.
Kie backed away from the boys and waved her hands, "We gotta leave!"
Glass smashed, and Kie pointed at the window facing the coop, "Guys, window. Window."
JJ and Pope bolted to the opposite side of the office and tried to pull up the window, but it didn't budge.
"It's painted shut," JJ said tightly. Kie spun around and started looking for something sharp, while Piper curled herself into the corner next to John B and shoved herself against the door, putting all her weight into keeping it closed. The men shouted John B's name and something about the compass as Kie picked up a letter opener and tossed it to JJ.
With both John B and Piper pushed against the door, Piper nudged her foot out so it was touching John B's. They were all in danger, but it was John B the men were yelling for, and even high off her rocker, Piper could tell that John B wasn't half living in his own body at that moment. John B looked down at Piper, and she nodded her head. She knew she wasn't as comforting when her pupils were wide from marijuana, but she could try her best.
Kie was urging JJ to hurry up, and he was bickering back, and John B and Piper could hear one of the guys shout something about the back room, and John B shakily shushed JJ and Kie as Pope crossed the room again to help put pressure against the door.
The door knob jiggled once, then the weight of a body was thrown against it on the opposite side and the knob started moving like crazy. Piper curled her head onto her shoulder and looked at Pope to try and keep her breathing under control. The door lurched inward behind Piper; the knob rattled. The door splintered, and John B, Pope, and Piper ran toward the window. As a gunshot sounded, a bullet shattering the lock on the door, JJ was able to pull the window up. There was a beat of silence outside the office, as the five of them threw themselves out of the window.
Hands were stepped on, someone's bum definitely ended up on Piper's head for a time, but it was fine because she was eighty-percent positive she elbowed someone in the crotch.
John B nearly slammed the window shut as Pope bolted toward the coop. Piper linked her elbow with John B's and yanked him so aggressively across the yard, he almost fell on top of her. Pope ushered Kie into the coop, ignoring the rooster's wild crowing, then John B and Piper piled in behind JJ and Pope. They all crouched, sitting criss-cross in a mess of hay and chicken shit. John B looked out the small window, but no one else could really see what was happening. In all honesty, Piper only saw red as the rooster squawked about and pecked her ankle.
"After all we've been through, Alfonso—," JJ clamped his hand over his sister's mouth.
"Do something, Pope," JJ gestured with his other hand, talking through his teeth. "Shut him up."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Pet it, or talk to it," Kie said. "I don't know, just do something."
The rooster went ballistic and Piper crouched in on herself. JJ let her squeeze his wrist. They were both shaking.
John B quickly jerked to the side, his back against the wall of the coop, out of sight from the window. Piper inhaled sharply and JJ lunged forward, well, lunged as much as he could in a chicken coop with four other full-sized people, and grabbed the rooster by the neck. But it wouldn't shut up, and JJ strained against himself. Something snapped, and Piper shut her eyes because the clucking stopped and she had a feeling that JJ just snapped Alfonso's neck.
Piper grabbed a hold of the back of JJ's shirt and pulled him back against the wall. She squeezed his hand because she knew that JJ loved the stupid rooster, and apparently being under intese distress and imminent danger was good for sobering up.
"Ratter! What the hell are you doin'? Let's go," one of the men shouted from outside.
The engine in the truck turned over and Kie's whimpers turned into sobs. John B turned back around to watch the truck reverse out of the gravel drive.
✧.*ೃ༄ [ x. author note ]
sorry this took like forever and a day my brother got sick and got me sick and i convinced myself i was literally on my death bed lol but it gave me a sexy chain smoker voice so like u win some u lose some
i might edit the scene after piper comes back from ricky's because it's very important for my long haul plans but im on the fence about how i wrote it. and y'all cannot hate piper i swear on my life i will defend her to my death if y'all come at her 🤗