"I MEAN, IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?" KIE BREATHED OUT. The four of them had not-so-subtly snuck out of the class, and they were now in the courtyard to discuss whatever the hell that picture was and what it meant. "I mean, Shoupe said that they didn't make it. He said that."
Bree responded optimistically, which was unusual for her ever since the incident. She just needed to believe that something could go right for them after everything that had happened over the past couple of months between John B getting framed for murder, losing the gold, and their friends dying. Maybe one of those things should not be true. "He couldn't have known for sure that they didn't make it. He was probably just assuming and didn't want to get our hopes up."
"Okay, but I—I think we're overreacting right now, okay? We can't rule out the possibility that this could all be some kind of weird, cruel hoax," Pope pointed out as Bree and Kie sat down on one of the tables. He was thinking rationally, and they all knew it. However, none of them wanted him to be right.
He found another place to sit, and the Maybank boy stood beside the brunette girl so that they were all facing each other. The Carrera girl informed them, "I'm just gonna ask."
"What if it's actually him, though?" JJ questioned, pacing back and forth. He took his hat off and began playing with it in his hands. The Callaway girl had noticed that he did that whenever he was nervous or scared. He leaned against the wall behind him.
"Then, I don't know, okay?" the Heyward boy replied. "I don't know."
Bree breathed out, "It's gotta be them, right? Those are the clothes they were wearing, and they probably did not take that while they were on the run. So, it's gotta be real, right?"
"Just because you suck at photoshop doesn't mean that everyone sucks at it," Pope told her, causing her to just bring her hand up and flip him off. They looked down at their phones when they felt them buzz to see that Kie had sent a message to the group chat that the picture was sent to. It read, 'WTF is this you???' Pope asked after a second, "Did he respond?"
"He's typing. He's typing," the raven-haired girl answered, her voice more excited the second time she said it. They looked at the message, and it said. 'Is JJ there?' The blonde boy typed back, saying that he was there. The unknown questioned, 'Did you pimp my short board?'
Then, they all started laughing in relief because they knew what that meant. Only one person would say that, so JJ went over to hug Pope as Kie and Bree giggled and embraced each other. "It's him."
"It's definitely him," the Heyward boy agreed with a laugh. He patted JJ's back hard, causing both of them to grunt before the Maybank boy made his way over to Kie and gave her a hug.
He pulled back and yelled up at the sky, "Yeah!" Then, he ran over to the Callaway girl and wrapped his arms around her, picking her up off the ground and spinning her as she smiled down at him, butterflies erupting in her stomach as their eyes met, lingering on each other for more than a moment. Her arms were on his shoulders to keep her from falling. Their friends were alive, and the weeks of depression and grieving were over.
"'Laying super low in Nassau,'" Kie read out, holding her phone up so that she could see the messages as she chuckled. "How the hell did they get to the Bahamas?"
As the blonde boy brought Bree's feet back to the ground, and their laughing paused for just a moment. Their faces were inches apart as he said, "You can't kill a Pogue, dude." Despite the news they just got, all she could focus on was his hands on his waist as her shirt rode up just a little bit. It was enough that his fingers were brushing against the skin of her hips. She felt like electric shocks were going all over her body at the sensation.
"Damn right," the brunette girl told him with a nod as she took a deep breath and used all of her strength to pull away, moving to sit by Kie so that she could read the messages off her phone even though she had her own that she could use. She leaned forward just a little bit so that she could give the Heyward boy a high five.
Pope added, "Especially John B." Happy tears began to roll down the Carrera girl's face as their phones dinged again. 'Can you clear my name? Wanna come home.'
"Hell yeah, we'll clear your name, boy," JJ told him, even though he could not hear him since he was all the way in Nassau.
"'Be in touch,'" the raven-haired girl said to them as the Callaway girl read the words from the message over her shoulder with a huge grin on her face. "'P4L.'"
They all just looked at each other for a second, and Bree was pretty sure that she had never been that happy to get a text from John Booker Routledge in her life. But here she was. JJ shouted, "P4L, man. That's what I'm talking about!" He climbed up onto the table and looked up at the sky. "P4L, baby!"
"Oh, my God. P4L!" the brunette girl yelled with him, laughing as tears welled up in her eyes. John B was alive. Sarah was alive. All they had to do was clear the Routledge boy's name, and everything would be back to normal.
《✵》
"I NEVER DOUBTED THEM," JJ SAID AS THEY WALKED OUT OF THE WRECK. He was talking about how he had always been the one to tell the others that their friends were alive and to not give up, which was different from his usual pessimistic behavior.
Kie laughed out, "I owe you five bucks." Yes, they betted on whether or not John B and Sarah were alive, and yes, they only bet five dollars.
"Kiara, I do need those setups done by five!" Anna Carrera informed her daughter, yelling from the porch of the restaurant. Bree knew that she was going to need to help too. She had not been the best employee lately, and she was surprised that she had not been fired yet.
The raven-haired girl shouted back, "You know, there are other people that work here."
"You're taking one of them," the woman told her, gesturing to the Callaway girl that was walking with them. "That's, like, half our employees, and ain't none of them my children."
"I feel that. On a deep, emotional level, I understand that," Pope informed them as they found a spot in the marina to sit down and work on a plan without the prying ears of parents spying on them. Kie's parents would not be too happy if they figured out that their daughter and her friends were working on a way to bring a supposed murderer back to the island.
JJ raised his eyebrows as he threw his bag down on the bench next to Kie. "So, we going to the Bahamas or what?"
"How do you expect us to get to the Bahamas?" Bree asked with a confused expression. They did not have access to a plane or enough money to buy tickets, and despite the fact that JJ and Bree had no one to care if they were gone, the other two did have parents that would not be fans of their kids going to the freaking Bahamas by themselves.
Pope nodded in agreement. "Yeah, there's no way we're getting to the Bahamas."
"John B's gonna get nabbed sooner or later," Kie pointed out to them. Since actually going to Nassau to get their friends was definitely not happening, they needed to focus on something else. "So, if we're gonna clear his name, we need to have done it, like, yesterday."
"I'll tell y'all how we do it," the blonde boy said, standing up from where he was leaning over the railing and looking out at all of the boats passing by as he thought.
Pope raised his eyebrows at him in question, his eyes following him as he made his way to the spot next to the brunette girl. "Oh, so you have it all planned out?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," the Maybank boy answered, putting his foot next to Bree and leaning on his knee with a somewhat proud expression, and they all knew that this was going to be an awful idea. "We kidnap Rafe."
"I'm sorry, what?" Pope questioned.
The Callaway girl ran a hand through her hair as she rolled her eyes, leaning back so that her back hit the railing. She knew that the plan would be bad, but she thought that maybe they could work from it and form a better one. There was no molding this. "Oh, my God."
"We kidnap Rafe, tie him up, and stick the gun in his mouth," he explained to them, making hand gestures that showed his works as he spoke. "And just wait till he starts squawking."
"You know, torture's a war crime," the Carrera girl informed him, swiftly shutting down his idea.
He frowned. "I though it was a good idea."
"That might be one of your worst ideas yet," the brunette girl told him as she turned to look him in the eye to let him know that she meant it. Sometimes she said stuff like that, and he just did it anyway.
He waved her off and shook his head, telling her, "You say that every time."
"That's because it's true every time," she responded, and the other Pogues just nodded along to what she was saying. "Like, I swear your ideas just get worse and worse and worse."
"Yeah, so how exactly do you plan on clearing John B's name from a prison cell? Because that's a felony," Pope said to the boy. Even if they could successfully kidnap Rafe, how were they going to keep him quiet when they let him go? They couldn't kill him because that would make them actual murderers, and that would not help John B and Sarah at all.
"All right, well, what do you got, Pope?" JJ sighed, letting go of his plan as he sat down next to Bree on the bench and looked up at the Heyward boy that was sitting on the railing. He put his arm behind the brunette girl next to him as he informed them, "I was just trying to keep it simple. You know, one stop, and we're done."
Pope explained to them, "Guys, all we need is a material witness. We saw Ward's plane fly right over our heads with the gold inside of it. He didn't fly it. If somebody else flew, they were there on the tarmac. They saw Peterkin get murdered. We just have to find whoever that was and get them to confess on record."
"How do we do that?" Kie quizzed as the rest of them realized that he was right. There had to be someone else that saw Rafe kill Peterkin.
Pope shrugged. "A little light espionage."
"A little ghost recon," the Maybank boy added, a small smile forming on his face as he flipped his hat that he had taken off back onto his head.
The Heyward boy reached his hand out to the two next to him, wiggling his fingers with theirs as he said, "Woogity-woogity."
"Woogity, baby," JJ responded, doing the same after Pope was done with the girls. They were going to clear John B's name and get their friends back.