CHAPTER TEN
•••
It was in the early morning when Collins found herself on Heyward's boat with the rest of the Pogues. She'd crept out of bed and left the house before Charlie had even woken up, leaving him a note on the fridge informing him of her whereabouts. Except, she didn't really go into full detail on what exactly she was doing, because somehow she didn't get the sense that Charlie would appreciate the fact that she was spending her free time treasure hunting instead of nonstop studying.
She had her brother's sweatshirt on with the hoodie up to tame her unruly curls as they blew into her face in the wind while they drove further into the ocean than she'd ever been before. Her stomach felt uneasy at the thought of being so far from land- along with general motion sickness as the boat swayed side to side and crashed against the waves. Her mind raced with paranoid thoughts of all the things that could possibly go wrong and leave them stranded at sea. The only consolation was that if they did happen to sink, perhaps maybe their bodies could lie with the gold and the fishes on the ocean floor.
In the meantime, JJ manned the steering wheel, John B surveyed the waters, and Kie organized their equipment in preparation, while Collins and Pope were stationed in front of the monitor which controlled the drone.
"This is so much better than the robot we made in science club that could only move pennies." Collins murmured, observing the contraption and tinkering with it in amazement. She wasn't a huge robotics girl, but she did always think it was cool how a bunch of parts could come together to make something functional. And she liked making the robot hand little pieces of hard candy to her like her little butler, so there was that, too. This device was even better, it was going to show them the gold.
"Way better. By significant proportions." Pope nodded his head in agreement. "So, you know what you'd spend your 80 mil on yet?"
Collins tried not to choke on her own breath at Pope's abrupt and totally crazy question which he had asked so incredibly casually.
"Yeah," John B chimed in nonchalantly with a glance up from the tablet displaying the GPS. "JJ and I already declared that we're going full Kook, Kie's making a double album, and Pope's doing the responsible thing by putting his cut towards his college fund."
At the mentioning of their spending plans, JJ craned his neck to look back at them from his place in the helm, too preoccupied with steering them in the right direction to come back there and actually speak face to face. He sighed loudly in exasperation to make up for it. "Come on, guys, I didn't tell her yet!"
"Well, what were you waiting for?" Kie scoffed with a shrug. Telling someone that they were about to become a millionaire wasn't exactly the kind of news you held off on telling.
Collins was still too stunned to comment on the subject, so she was left shifting her focus back and forth between Kie and JJ as they began to bicker. Kie was attacking him for keeping her unnecessarily in the dark and JJ was attempting to defend himself. She was more concerned with the fact that they'd decided this at all.
"I was going to tell you, okay, Collins?" JJ peered over at her with utmost sincerity in his voice. "I just thought that the news would sound better after we got the gold. Like on those cheesy gameshows when the guy wins $100 but then it turns into 100k, and it's all crazy and fun because it's a surprise—"
"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Pope deadpanned from beside her. JJ just scowled at him.
"So now that we've established that," John B turned back to Collins and raised his brows, "what'll it be, CJ?"
"Wait, wait, wait." JJ blurted out before Collins could give them her answer or ask what the heck they were going on about. His yell gave rise to synchronous groans and eye rolls from his friends. "Let's get Collins's input on my security paycheck. I proposed a 5% bump for providing all of you with the protection that we are oh-so going to need if we're gonna be snatching up that Royal Merchant treasure."
"Protection?" Collins asked for clarification and with a fair amount of fear in her voice. Of course, they'd already dealt with raiders, why wouldn't safety still be a problem? But back to the gold, she was still in complete and utter disbelief that she of all people would be getting a piece of the lost riches in their merry band. This was a joke, a game that they liked to play. Seriously, this whole time, every day that she'd spent with them had to have been just a big prank. Honestly, there were crazier things for her to believe in.
"Yes, Collins, protection for when we find the Royal Merchant that men have spent decades searching for. 400 million dollars worth of moolah in gold is just waiting for the taking, which of course will be taken by us, in minutes, might I add." JJ iterated more clearly. He couldn't blame her for asking silly questions, large quantities of money would make anyone go a little stupid. "Now listen, I've got the gun and YouTube how-to videos in my back pocket just so you know, therefore, I rest my case. JJ gets his 5%."
He crossed his arms finally like that was the end of their conversation, but the annoyed and exasperated expressions on his friend's faces were refusal enough.
"So, what about you?" Kie asked, ignoring JJ's antics once again.
Still grappling with the fact that 80 millions dollars was being set aside for her, Collins tried to wrack her brain for an answer. At first, it seemed obvious; she'd always thought about school being her biggest financial obstacle so much like Pope, she figured that's where her money would go. But 80 million was a lot of money; like a lot. She could pay off their mortgage, she could buy Charlie an actual car with four doors and seatbelts, she could buy them groceries without coupons. The list was endless.
Although, not everybody needed to know all that stuff. They were Pogues, and with the exception of Kie, they all sort of had money struggles of their own that they didn't care to divulge into conversation about. So there was no need for Collins to go into all that.
"I think Pope's got the right idea on this one." She finally replied, a small smile spreading across her face as the aforementioned boy raised his brows at the rest of them like she had just proved his point.
"See? She- Collins, she gets it." Pope pointed to her like she was a prime example which proved a point of his, then he held his hand up to give her a high-five and Collins returned it graciously.
"Nerds." John B groaned while throwing his head back, no doubt rolling his eyes from behind his sunglasses.
"And maybe I'd spend a summer studying abroad or just travel around the world in general with one of those international volunteer organizations. I could use the money to travel to other places on trains since everything's so close."
"That's better." JJ told her with a wink and a nod of approval.
Collins just smiled and turned back to help Pope with what he was doing, her mind still reeling with the good news. She was excited and grateful, that's as to be expected and it wasn't without reason, although there was a part of her that reminded her to not get her hopes up too high because they still hadn't actually found the gold. There was still plenty of time for things to go wrong.
After a few more minutes driving offshore, John B, who was in control of the map, signaled to JJ to stop. "We're good, JJ, pin it here."
"Roger that, X marks the spot." JJ called back in a sailor's voice. "Hear that, Collins? I can do the voices, too."
She rolled her eyes and smiled playfully, focusing back on what Pope was doing and watching intently. He took out the drone from its case with delicate care, passing it over to John B, who took it in his hands and moved over to the side of the boat.
"Alright ladies and gentlemen..." he announced in a toast, "to going full Kook."
He dropped the device directly over the water, a loud splash sounding from over the edge as it hit the surface and immediately began to sink. Collins and Pope quickly took place in front of the screen which displayed the camera feed from the drone, seeing pretty much nothing but blue for a good while.
"We should be right over it." Collins stated, waiting patiently for the drone to sink all 900 feet to the bottom.
"And to quote The Hobbit, 'Down, down, to Goblin town. Down, down, you go, my lad.'" Pope sang while they waited to see something different, but despite going down hundreds of feet deep into the ocean, the scene stayed mostly the same throughout.
The wind began to pick up a little, the weather vane on the hull of the boat spinning wildly and rattling over the waves.
"The tide's turning!" Kie informed them, as she was in charge of keeping track of the tether, prompting John B to study the GPS and begin instructing JJ and what course should be taken.
Her yell led to Collins breaking her gaze from off the screen to look up at the sky. It had darkened in contrast to its previous brightness, and clouds appeared to be rolling in over them. The wind changed, it suddenly felt stronger, more persistent, it made the waves crash more aggressively against the boat and rock it like the most nauseating amusement park ride that she had ever been on.
The crack of thunder and flashes of lightning didn't help either. Despite their attempt to wait for the perfect weather to take out the drone, Mother Nature seemed to have other plans in mind. Collins found herself having to hold onto the table to keep herself from stumbling over, trying her best to keep herself grounded while focusing on the monitor carefully.
"JJ, hold it steady, we're gonna turtle in this storm, man!" John B exclaimed, tracking their location and the coordinates his dad had given them, which told them exactly where the location of the Royal Merchant lay. JJ focused on his single task and frantically steered them through the rough waters. Once it seemed like they were sitting consistently in place, John B turned over to Collins and Pope. "What do we got, guys, come on, what do we see?"
"Nothing, a whole lot of nothing." Pope grumbled as the three of them stared at the display that felt like it'd been frozen blue. For all they knew, that's what it was. How did they know they hadn't just been looking at a glitched screen and they'd already passed over the Royal Merchant?
"We don't know that for sure." Collins protested. "Where are we at, Kie?"
"960!"
They waited in anticipation for their view to change; they still had quite a bit of depth to go before they knew anything for certain. Collins bit her lip and silently prayed for something to appear, something that would show them that they weren't wrong, that they had found what they were looking for.
After a few seconds passed, something blurry came across the screen. The three teens squinted at it to try and make out what they were looking at, before they finally came to realization.
"Sand! Bottom! We're at the bottom!" Pope declared, and they all felt like they were able to catch their breaths for a moment after holding it in anticipation.
"You should be seeing something, man." John B said, his eyes fixated on the screen as he searched for any sign of the shipwreck.
Pope controlled the drone, fiddling with the joystick on the monitor to try and move the contraption around to search its surroundings. Kie came around behind them, no rope left to hold as their tether had become fully submerged into the water. They all were waiting in suspense, nearly giving up all hope that they had any chance of finding the Royal Merchant. After all, there were a million other places that it could've been in the ocean and they were only looking at this one spot.
Good thing she held her tongue.
"No freaking way."
A school of fish flooded past the drone before something foreign began to appear on the screen. As Pope steered the drone forward, the picture became clearer and the algae covered mermaid shaped figurehead of the legendary Royal Merchant came into view.
"It's the Royal Merchant."
It was at that moment in which all of her nerves, all of her worries, and all of the nausea from the motion sickness that Collins had been experiencing in those last few moments that had been wracking her mind and body, finally decided to hit her all at once. And thus, Collins felt like whatever contents that had been left in her stomach from her dinner the night before, were ready to come up and make their escape.
She ducked away from the group and the top half of her body folded over the side of the boat, emptying her stomach contents between short heaves. Even when she was pretty sure there was nothing left for her to give, Collins could still feel the sick crawling up her throat, and the movement of the boat was still no help, especially when they were out on open sea where the waves were more intense.
She felt her hair carefully being pulled back and out of her face, the gentle hands belonging to Kie, holding her brunette locks with a sympathetic expression.
"Not on the gold, Collins!" John B laughed, still in disbelief that they had actually found the Royal Merchant.
"And not on the boat either, my dad just made me wash it." Pope groaned, before John B pushed him to keep exploring the shipwreck to search for the treasure.
"Sorry." Collins whimpered, hanging her head down over the boat railing in shame. She was pretty sure she was going to die of embarrassment. She'd never puked in front of anyone in her life. Charlie wasn't even an exception, because she'd locked herself in the bathroom when she had the flu and camped out in it for hours. Charlie had nearly been driven to renting a port-a-potty. Collins hoped that if Kie were really a good friend, she would drop her hair and pick her up by the feet and help toss her overboard so she could drown in her humiliation.
"Here, drink this and go sit in the helm with JJ. It's better to be in the middle of the boat, it helps a little bit." Kie handed her a bottle of water and ushered her to go, much to Collins's begrudge, because she also sent her in with an empty bucket.
JJ glanced back as Collins dragged her feet over to him, avoiding his gaze, much to his amusement, before her back hit the side of the wall and she slid down to the floor and curled herself up into a ball.
"Hello to you, too, sunshine." JJ grinned, continuing to spin the wheel to keep them on course.
"Can't talk, it makes me sick." She mumbled, nearly incoherent.
"What, you've never been deep sea fishing before? This is the usual." Collins shook her head before she felt instant regret from the motion, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath as she waited for the nausea to pass. JJ stole a couple glances her way, keeping a close eye on her out of concern. "At least give me like a grunt or something, just so I know you haven't like, choked on your vomit or some shit."
Collins released a mortified cry, burying her face in the sleeves of her sweatshirt in hopes that when she uncovered it, she wouldn't be in her body. Instead, she'd be the dead fish that had probably fallen on the floor of Heyward's boat a million times, in the same position that she currently was in. This was completely, totally, utterly not the way she wanted to be perceived. Not in front of the boy she wanted to see her as a incapable of flaw.
"Good enough for me." JJ proclaimed, listening to John B's yell for him to hold steady for the third time in a row and turning the steering wheel. When Collins was soundless for a good while, JJ looked back at her and furrowed his brows with a bit of panic. "Collins?"
"Not dead." She side eyed him before releasing a heavy sigh and mustering up the strength to push herself up to sit against the wall. She pulled her hood over her head and sat in defeat.
"Here, I got just the thing for you, Champ." JJ dug into his pockets, shuffling around the contents before his hands finally wrapped around the item he'd been searching for. Presented to her was half a roll of Mentos gum, peppermint flavor.
JJ waved it in front of her and Collins accepted the gift with chagrin, wiggling out a piece before popping it into her mouth. "Thanks." She mumbled through a mouthful of gum.
"Trust me, I've had my share of mornings with my head in the toilet." JJ reassured her. "But for the record, you're the prettiest girl I've ever seen even after spilling you're guts."
He'd said it so casually that Collins never questioned if he meant it. Usually you don't say something so quickly when you're telling a lie. Collins peered up at him and thought about what he'd just said. Did he really think that about her? Did this not totally gross him out like she would've expected it to? It seemed that JJ was making a habit out of proving her wrong. The more and more days she shared with him, the more he did that, and it was always in the best way possible. She smiled softly then glanced over at John B, Pope, and Kiara, who were still crowded over the drone searching through the rubble of the shipwreck. By the looks on their faces, no such luck.
As she turned back to look up at JJ, who at the same time, redirected his gaze from their friends to turn back to her. "This is the third time I've circled around." He told her, since he'd been keeping track, and a fourth time wouldn't have been very likely to do them any good.
It was then that John B had decided to give up, shaking his hand as he looked at the same empty screen displaying nothing but debris. No sign of the gold, once again. "It's not there. Just pull the drone up."
"Look, we can do another pass. Recharge the battery, we can go back down." Pope insisted, trying to remain optimistic.
"The gold could be buried, we don't know!" Kie exclaimed in added protest to help Pope maintain what little hope all of them had left.
"If it was there, it would've been found on the metal detector." John B reasoned. "Somebody beat us to it."
"Or it was never there." JJ chimed in with a deflated look, keeping his eyes trained in front of him.
Collins kept quiet, unsure of what more she could say that hadn't already been said. She didn't feel as confident in their odds of finding the gold, though she wasn't completely at a loss. They'd done what they'd sought out to do, they'd found the Royal Merchant. That was more than what they thought they'd actually find for a couple of teenagers following a single lead from a missing man. Only now, since they'd found the shipwreck and come up empty handed, they had found themselves back to where they started; no resources, no leads, no money.
Perhaps that was how it was always supposed to be. Who were they if not Pogues who were always set up to fail? They really should've been used to it by now.
•••
Collins hadn't felt like doing much later that day. When they'd docked Heyward's boat at the fishing docks in front of his shack, Collins could barely stomach the walk past the former days' haul of fish being iced by the door. Pope had spotted her some anti-nausea medication that they kept in stock, which she had taken hurriedly in hopes that it would help soothe her sooner.
She hoped that maybe the walk home would help, too. Her feet on the ground moving at her own speed and orientation might help her get over feeling like the world was spinning, which it sort of did for a while.
She'd spent the better of the day in bed, falling into a quick nap after an early morning on the boat and rejuvenating herself for the rest of her free time spent flipping through her ACT prep book and trying to jam as much information from it as she could into her brain.
It hadn't been on her agenda to go see a movie that night, but when Kie showed up at her house with Pope and JJ riding along in her car, Collins couldn't refuse. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a movie. She supposed it was when they still had a TV in their house which they'd sold when money was tight and they realized that neither she nor Charlie really watched it anyways. But even so, Collins had never been to the Outer Banks Movies Under the Moon summer special which allowed the townspeople (particularly Kooks) to sit and gather for a waterfront movie.
"I'm so glad that they're still doing this. Keep calm, carry on. Back to the OBX life." Kie sighed in content as they found an open spot and began laying down blankets and propping up chairs. "Aren't you guys glad that I made you come?"
"Ecstatic." Pope sarcastically remarked.
"My couch was pretty comfy, to be honest." JJ mumbled, before he and Pope began to whisper back and forth to each other in hushed voices that seemed to be discussing something pressing, due to the nature of their murmurs.
"Wanna help me grab some snacks?" Kie asked Collins, to which the girl furiously nodded, eager to escape from whatever tension JJ and Pope had going on between them that they weren't bothering to discuss with the two girls.
Once they were out of earshot, Collins pointed her thumb back at the boys and raised her brow in question to Kie. "Are they acting weird to you? Like abnormally weird for two ordinarily weird guys?"
The other girl just frowned and tried to wave it off. "At this point, I don't even want to know. They're probably just still in a mood about not finding the you-know-what." It had become an unspoken rule that they were not to acknowledge their lost riches too blatantly anymore, given that all of their hopes and dreams had been seemingly crushed in one fell swoop. The wound was still pretty fresh. She stepped up in front of the concessions stand and said, "Can I get four Pepsis, please?"
As Kie began fishing in her back pocket from some bills to pay the vendor, Collins glanced back at the two boys who appeared to be on edge; and JJ was quite literally on the edge of his fold out chair, as his back was far from even touching the back rest because he was too busy looking around like he was searching for something. She released a slow breath and decided it was better for her to just follow Kie's lead on this one, she knew them better anyways, so she was better equipped to deal with it.
"Hey, Kie." A voice called over. The two girls turned to see Rafe Cameron approaching, neither were too thrilled by his arrival and it was clear from the indifference displayed on each of their expressions. "How are you?" He asked, completely ignoring Collins's existence as he asked the question, which she was actually quite content with.
Meanwhile, Kie had an uncomfortable smile on her face as it was obviously forced for the sake of pleasantries. "I'm fine." She said politely, hoping that Rafe would just leave her alone or get straight to the point of what it was that he wanted instead of engaging in fruitless small talk.
"Good, good." He nodded, looking down at her as he gathered his thoughts before leaning in close to say lowly, "Tell your boy, that we know what he did."
Furrowing her brows as she processed his words, Kie shrugged her shoulders. "Um, sorry, what 'boy'are you talking about? I'm not sure what you're referring to, right, Collins?"
The two girls exchanged oblivious glances with one another, Collins backing up Kie with what little she actually knew, but at least now, it had been confirmed that there was something up with the boys that they weren't telling them.
"Oh, he'll know." Rafe simply responded, a smirk tugging at his lips.
Collins took that as their cue to leave, taking their sodas and nudging two into Kie's hands, briefly making eye contact with Rafe and feeling timid beneath his gaze. They quickly turned and began walking back to their spot, Kie all the while, shaking her head in annoyance at Rafe Cameron, and the two boys that they were making their way back to.
Once they'd reached JJ and Pope, the two girls each handed a can of soda to a boy, equally interested to deliver Rafe's cryptic message and see their reaction to it. "Just saw Rafe, and he said, and I quote, 'tell your boy that we know what he did'. What is that?"
The two boys looked speechless, although Pope's eyes had a little more panic to them than JJ's cool blues, who maintained their composure throughout. "Where is he?" He questioned nonchalantly.
They twisted in their chairs to nod their heads in the direction behind them where Rafe, Topper, and Kelce all stood together, their watchful eyes gleaming and their taunting smiles glinting. Pope spun around in his seat with wide eyes, clearly more agitated than JJ at the moment, making him their prime suspect.
"Great, the whole death squad." He huffed, his mouth agape in fear.
JJ grabbed him by the head and faced him forward, before muttering, "Don't stare. I'm just warning you, bro, that if they corner me, I'm coming out swinging, okay? Slice and dicin'. I'm on edge right now."
"What are you guys talking about?" Collins hissed peering at them in bewilderment. So now they were ready to fight? What on earth could they have possibly done to make three little rich boys target them? She was under the impression that Rafe and Topper had attacked Pope unprovoked and gotten away with it? Was there a part of the story that they had mindfully avoided informing her about?
However, they were too riled up to even answer her. "If that doesn't work, I got this, right here." JJ picked up his backpack and waved it at Pope for further emphasis, offering the boy somewhat of a sense of reassurance. But somehow, Collins got the sense that JJ's backpack alone wasn't the solution to their problems, it was whatever was inside.
"Yeah, so we just gotta stay in the group. They can't get us if we're in a group." Pope repeated it himself like a mantra.
"Like a school of fish."
"Stay in the school. Can't leave the school."
Blinking as she slowly began to put two and two together, Kie turned to the blond haired boy with an angered glare in her eyes. "I'm sorry, JJ, please tell me that you did not bring a gun here. There are kids."
"No, Kie, I did not bring a gun here," JJ scoffed, "everything's fine, okay?"
"Wow, thank you, that was very convincing. I love that, JJ." She shot back sardonically.
Shaking her head at the whole thing, Collins had flashbacks to that night at the Boneyard and recalled how she'd felt in those moments. It wasn't a night that she'd ever imagined wanting to happen again, so there was no chance that she was going to sit around and even attempt to try and enjoy a movie while anticipating it. "I'm not doing this again, I'm going home."
JJ caught her wrist while she was in the middle of pushing herself up from her chair, and he held her in place with a serious look. "You can't go. You gotta stay in the school, remember?"
"Oh, so now whatever it is that you two are being hunted for, applies to me as well? Great, awesome, thanks for that." She slumped back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She hadn't anticipated that she'd be arrested to this movie either. She thought she was there by her own will, but somehow it had become involuntary.
"Hey, don't be mad, I've never seen you mad before but if Charlie's scared of you when you are, then I don't want to know." Collins narrowed her eyes at him, and JJ quickly turned away to shield himself from her cold gaze.
"Founding principle, you guys. No secrets amongst Pogues." Kie stated more pressingly. It always worked to pull up the rulebook, it was Pogue law. They couldn't dodge it. And if they were going to involve them in their whole mess, then they deserved to know. "What is Rafe talking about?"
"Kie," Pope placed a hand on her shoulder and leaned in close with a grave expression on his face, "it might do down tonight."
Her gaze flickered over to Collins who shared the same exasperated look on her face. "What does that mean? 'Might go down tonight.' What did you guys do?"
Pope and JJ just exchanged wary glances, Pope was clearly close to breaking, but under JJ's advice like a devil on his shoulder, the words, 'Deny, deny, deny' were uttered and kept him quiet.
Collins just shook her head, taking a sip of her drink and facing forward, too distraught to even pursue the whole thing any further. The movie began to start anyhow, leaving the four of them to fall into a tense silence as they focused their attention on the old film beginning to play on the screen.
The movie was about an alien invasion and included all of the cheesy quirks that an old time film entailed. For a while, Collins managed to forget how irritated she was that JJ was ready to even attempt the same actions that he did the night when he first spoke to her, and was able to maintain her focus on the army base that was deliberating over what they were to do about the mysterious flying saucer that had landed on U.S. soil.
They were in the middle of constructing a bomb to missile towards the alien spaceship, when JJ tried to steal a couple glances at Collins. She had the arm that was closest to him propped up on her armrest and resting under her chin, blocking the majority of his view in his peripheral vision. He had the arm that was closest to her laying flat on his armrest, cupping his can of Pepsi in his right palm comfortably.
He switched the hands that were holding his drink, freeing his right hand and bringing it back to his armrest and positioning it casually, knuckles down. Leaning over slightly closer to Collins, he whispered, "If you're gonna decide to ignore me all night, need I remind you that while Kie gave you a puke bucket this morning, I gave you a piece of gum. I think it's pretty obvious which offering was better."
"Who said I hadn't already decided on ignoring you?" She whispered without taking her eyes off the screen.
"What are you mad about? Everything is fine, nothing's happened. I'm not going to do anything unless the Three Stooges over there start shit."
"JJ, just because I told you that I wasn't afraid of you that night at the Boneyard, that doesn't mean I'm okay with what happened. I don't like it and I don't want to go through it again." She didn't know how to say it any more clearer. And to say that she was mad would be an inaccurate statement, because she wasn't completely. It had more to do with the fact that she didn't think she would be able to feel safe until the night was over, and that was enough to put her in an off mood.
"Okay, well, I'm sorry. But it's just for protection. You saw what they did to Pope, you think I'm gonna let them do something like that again?"
"Of course not." Collins pursed her lips, recalling how bad Pope's face had looked on that first day after getting jumped, and how furious she had been that Topper had gone on such a rampant like he had something to prove. She knew Rafe was bad, too, her brother had mentioned a couple of things and she'd never cared to be on the receiving end of it. That's what made her so unsettled by the whole thing. The two worst Kooks in the OBX were targeting them, as if their day hadn't been crappy enough.
"At some point, we can't just keep letting them walk all over us." JJ told her firmly. "All we have to do is get through this night. They won't do anything with all of these people around, but if they try, we gotta fight back."
Collins grimaced uncomfortably over the situation. She hated the thought of having to stand up to those guys. Well-- she loved it, they were long overdue for a wakeup call, but the thought of it being her doing the waking? That's where things got a little questionable. She wasn't the type of girl who raised her voice let alone reach the point of physicality. It made her nervous just thinking about it.
"I still don't feel good about this." She admitted with uncertainty. It was the gun that was getting to her now. Just it's mere presence made it an available option, a potential easy way out with detrimental consequences that she didn't want to be a possibility. As long as they had it in their possession, there was always going to be the risk of danger.
JJ gathered all the courage he had to perform the single most simple action that he'd been working up to for a while. He took Collins by the hand and encased her palm in his, offering her a reassuring squeeze to help ease her mind. "Everything'll be fine. Promise."
Collins tried her best to contain her nerves that were skyrocketing out of her entire body. JJ's hand in hers offered for a new focus on her mind which distracted her from everything that had been worrying her all night. It made every ill feeling that she'd been experiencing, slowly dissipate and bubble into a wispy fog that clouded her mind into a sort of dream-like state. How was it possible that JJ Maybank could make her feel like she was floating on air, yet grounded to the earth at the same time?
They both finally were able to turn back to the movie. JJ was content with where he'd been able to get things with Collins and Collins wasn't as tense anymore. She was more relaxed just from JJ's grasp on her hand and the little brushes of contact he made with the pad of his thumb, which moved back and forth over her skin in comforting circular sweeps. When he was present, she felt safe, she just didn't want his way of maintaining that to involve firearms.
Things were nice between them, until it was rudely interrupted by Pope's nudge on JJ's leg. JJ turned his head and glanced over at the boy, who whispered lowly to him, "I gotta take a piss." What a fucking mood killer...
"Hold it." JJ ordered. There was no way in hell they were getting up and making themselves vulnerable to Kook attack and there was no chance in hell that JJ wanted to let go of Collins's hand.
"I can't hold it. I drank too much soda." Pope protested.
"It's too exposed, they'll totally see us." JJ said, shaking his head.
"I gotta go." Pope turned in his seat to look back for the restrooms, and spotted the terrorizing triage sitting in their chairs with boredom written all over their faces. "They're blocking the bathrooms."
JJ sighed before he began to scan the area, an idea quickly popping up into his head. "All right. Come on, I know where." He turned to Collins with a tight-lipped smile in apology, untangling their hands gently as he got up from his seat. "We'll be right back."
"Hey, where y'all going?" Kie questioned curiously as the two boys began to crouch walk away.
"We gotta wring it out." JJ replied blankly, Pope nodding in agreeance.
Kie scrunched her face up in disgust. "You gonna hold it for each other?" Collins stifled a chuckle while the two boys rolled their eyes and proceeded to make their way out. Once they were gone, Kie pushed herself up and moved to where JJ had been sitting just moments before, a mischievous grin on her face. "I saw that."
"Saw what?" Collins asked, sipping her drink absentmindedly.
Bumping her shoulder with her own, Kie scoffed. "I'm not dumb and I've got eyes. You and JJ were holding hands." She wiggled her brows.
Collins fought the smile on her face and was grateful that it was probably too dark for Kie to see that she was blushing madly. "So?"
"So..." Kie looked at her for more clarification. "What does that mean? Are you guys like a thing, or what?"
"It means that we just held hands." Collins said with a shrug.
"Just held hands?" Kie was clearly disappointed that she wasn't getting more out of the girl, but what could she do? "Have you guys kissed? JJ's usually quick with that so I'd imagine that he would've already at least tried."
At the mentioning of a kiss, especially one between her and JJ, Collins felt the growing discomfort once again. "We aren't there, yet." She shook her head and quickly took back her words. It felt presumptuous of her to add in 'yet' like she expected it to happen, when she really didn't. "I mean, we've never done that, and he's never tried, so we probably won't. He was just holding my hand to be nice. I was freaking out a little bit, so he did it to calm me down. That's all."
"Oh." Kie's mouth seemed to be frozen into the shape of an 'O' for the longest time. "Well, do you want him to?"
Collins felt like she was feeling anxious all over again in this conversation with Kiara. She didn't know how she felt and she didn't know how to articulate what she was feeling into words. The fact that Kie had said that JJ would've already tried kissing her when he hadn't in reality, changed her perspective immensely. She had to rethink every thought that she'd had about JJ completely now, and at the moment, she wasn't sure where her feelings lie.
One thing was for sure, she wasn't going to be able to give Kie an answer; at least, not until she figured it out for herself.
"I-I have to use the bathroom." She stuttered, moving to pick herself up from her chair and looking around for the restrooms to escape to for the time being. She spotted the portable restrooms towards the back of the viewing area, and realized that it was right next to where Topper, Rafe, and Kelce had been sitting, except none of the three were there anymore. "Oh, shoot." She said as the realization struck her and Collins immediately reached down to grab Kie by the arm and pull her up with her.
She pointed in the direction of the empty seats they had observed earlier and Kie was quickly brought up to speed, each girl agreeing that they needed to find their friends as soon as possible.
"Those freaking idiots." Kie growled between grit teeth.
She picked up JJ's backpack and they scrambled up to follow in the direction that they'd seen the two boys retreat to, moving to the outer edge of the movie crowd in search of them. It wasn't until they moved up close to the screen did they hear the sound of commotion from behind, yells that were just below the volume of the movie's speakers so that no one in the audience could actually hear.
As the two girls peered behind the screen, they were horrified to see JJ and Pope caught in a brawl, two versus three. Pope and Topper were wrestling with each other, each getting their fair share of swings in. Meanwhile, JJ had his arms pinned behind his back by Kelce, while Rafe was sending gut-wrenching punches into his abdomen.
Kie immediately sprung into action, sprinting over to Pope with JJ's backpack in hand as she yelled, "Let him go, Topper! Fascist asshole!"
She began swinging the backpack at Topper, hitting the back of his head with as much power as she could while he was too busy going after Pope. Collins watched frantically as Topper snatched the backpack away from her, and Kie just continued to keep on doing whatever she could to stop him from hitting Pope, jumping onto his back and wrapping her arm around his neck to try and keep him away.
Her eyes flickered back to JJ at the same time Rafe had struck a direct hit, his fist landing on JJ's face in the most painful blow that Collins had ever witness firsthand. She let out a shriek and her hand flew to her mouth, fear coursing through her veins and taking over every inch of her body.
She was just standing there, why wasn't she doing anything? She had to do something. But what?
This was another moment where Collins was just going to have to take another page out of Kie's handbook and follow her lead. With nothing to defend herself or JJ with except her bare hands, Collins felt her feet start moving like an out of body experience, and she advanced towards Rafe without any clear idea as to what her next move was.
"Stop it!" She cried, coming up from behind Rafe and grabbing him by the arm before he could thrust it at JJ, pulling as hard as she could no matter how far it twisted despite his resistance.
"Get off me, bitch." Rafe snapped, fighting against her opposing tugs, but Collins was persistent. She had a near death grip on Rafe's arm, so tight that her finger nails were digging into his skin and she didn't even realize how strong she actually was from all the adrenaline pumping in her blood.
"Don't you fucking touch her, Rafe." JJ threatened while Kelce had him in a chokehold and held him in place. He had a firm hold on him that made it impossible for him to fight back or escape, though JJ was sure to start seeing red if anything happened to Collins.
As the girl was struggling to fight against Rafe, she managed to at least keep him from hitting JJ, which was all she could've hoped to do. Only now, the problem was figuring out how she was going to keep him from going after the blond boy because she couldn't (nor did she want to) keep holding onto his arm.
Rafe tried to whip around to face her but she kept her body behind him, knowing that her best bet was to keep him in front of her unless she wanted even more difficulty holding him. With his free hand, Rafe tried prying Collins's hands away from him. "Who the fuck do you think you are?" He spat.
Collins winced in pain as he forcefully uncurled her fingers from around his bicep, shoving her back once it was free, before moving to walk away. Collins fell back onto the grass, an involuntarily grunt escaping her lips at the impact, before she was watching Rafe walking back to JJ with his back to her.
JJ was still fighting, kicking his feet out at Rafe as he approached and began to wind up for another punch. Collins clambered back onto her feet and stumbled forward to get to Rafe, just as he knocked the wind out of JJ. It pained Collins just to watch.
"JJ!" She balled her hands into fists and just started beating them against whatever part of Rafe that she could catch contact with, her vision too blurry to even see where she was hitting him. "You asshole!"
In that moment, every time that a person like Rafe ever made her feel like she was smaller than they were, like she was nothing, came rushing over her. It flooded her body in a wave of emotions that manifested into physical energy that she could use as weapons to release all of the pent up frustration that she had been holding onto for years. But it wasn't just anger that Collins was expressing, it was also fear, sadness, pain. Even when she was hitting Rafe, she still felt powerless, like her blows had no impact and no resolution. And she was overcome with the fear that JJ would suffer because she wasn't strong enough to defend him, she didn't want it to be her fault.
"What, is this your little girlfriend, Maybank?" Rafe laughed cynically. "Maybe you should tell her to stay out of this before she gets hurt."
"Leave him alone!" Collins exclaimed, unrelenting on the pummels she was sending towards Rafe.
Rafe's annoyance was through the roof and he'd had enough of her pathetic attempts to stop him. With the arm he'd been holding up to block his face from her hits, he jerked his elbow back, aiming for shoulder, but Collins had moved into the exactly right position at the wrong time, and she was at the perfect height for Rafe's elbow to strike her face instead.
She fell on her side on the ground, the world suddenly gone quiet with white noise ringing in her ears as a searing pain ignited around her cheek bone, and Collins felt the warm trickle of blood sliding down her face. She felt disoriented all of a sudden, trying her best to blink away the feeling.
"You're dead!" JJ shouted, thrashing harder to wriggle out of Kelce's hold. He'd managed to get his arms free and was swinging them with every fiber of his being to try and clip Rafe. The Cameron boy just laughed in amusement, enjoying the fire that he had sparked in JJ and watching his fruitless attempts to get back at him.
While Collins and JJ had been busy, Kie had come up with a solution on how to end the whole thing. She'd realized that she couldn't stop Topper and Collins couldn't stop Rafe, so they needed another solution on how to fight back. She'd crawled over to JJ's backpack which Topper had thrown haphazardly to the side, and her hand wrapped around the gun for a split second as she considered the idea in her mind.
However, she knew deep down that she could never actually hold it up and point it at anyone, so she quickly ruled it out as an option. That was when she found the lighter at the bottom of the bag, and finally figured out what to do.
A blazing fire suddenly erupted across the movie screen, eating up the projected images with its flames and creating a panicked chaos from the audience's side, while disrupting the fight from continuing on the other.
Topper and Kelce quickly released Pope and JJ from their chokeholds, leaving the boys coughing and gasping for air. They hadn't expected Kie to pull a move like that, but that was exactly what she'd been counting on.
"We gotta get out of here." The Kooks agreed before they quickly fled the scene.
Collins rushed to JJ's side and leaned down to look at him. "Breathe, JJ." She told him with a hand on his back.
"We've gotta split, too, guys." Kie said, helping Pope up onto his feet and wrapping his arm around her shoulders. People were already running towards them to try and put out the fire.
Collins and JJ followed behind them as they stumbled away from the fire. Once the color slowly went back to normal on his face and JJ felt like he'd gotten enough oxygen, he looked up at Collins and began to straighten up, wincing at the pain in his ribs. "Jesus, Colls." He cupped her face in his hand and turned it a bit to get a better view of the cut on her cheek.
"Doesn't even hurt." She feigned a chuckle, smiling meekly up at him. She took his hand that was holding her face and held it in hers for a moment before bringing it down and releasing it, much to his disappointment and much to her own, because she did like his hand where it was before, but couldn't stand to keep in contact with what she and Kie had talked about floating in her mind. "Come on, I have stuff to get everyone fixed up at my house."
•••
this update is in honor of OBX3 coming out today, I will not shut up about it
also you guys are gonna like what I have planned in the next chapter... hint hint