𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚗 𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝 {𝚓𝚓 𝚖𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚔}

𝚜.𝟷 𝚎𝚙.𝟽 -𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚝𝚠𝚘-

"there is no distraction that can make me disappear / no, there's nothing that won't remind you / I will always be right here."

~

"He said it looked something like this," Sarah said, handing a carefully drawn picture of the well in Mrs. Crane's house with Pope's neat handwriting all over it to Kiara, sitting next to her by the open door of the van. Tate blew smoke in the opposite direction and then leaned over to look over Kiara's shoulder, careful to hold her cigarette away from the other girls. Now that she and JJ weren't talking, Tate was being extra careful to stay on everybody else's good side. "That's fifty feet down, and they're using one hundred feet rope..."

Tate lost interest and went back to smoking in silence. It hadn't even been a day since the breakup, but all she wanted was for JJ to be there with her. He'd been avoiding her all day and she didn't know what to do about it. She couldn't just ask for him back- right? The things she'd said were too hard to come back from. Tate could faintly hear Kiara and Sarah laughing about something, and then she saw JJ walking towards them and immediately straightened up. "Kie!" he said, sounding stormy. "This better work." He tossed a handful of little gold pieces onto the floor of the van and leaned against the the door on the opposite side from Tate, careful not to look at her. "We can't pawn this if there's a giant wheat symbol on it."

Kiara reached down under a seat and came up with a large blowtorch. "It's gonna work."

Ten minutes later, they were all standing around while Kiara melted down the gold in a pot over the stove. Tate stood across from JJ but avoided his eyes at all costs. He was being unusually quiet too and Tate felt guilty every time she heard him force a laugh or felt his gaze rest on her. She knew this was her fault, but she didn't know how to fix it.

The drive to the pawn shop was one of the most unbearable experiences Tate had had with the Pogues. Neither she nor JJ spoke the entire time, and everyone else seemed shifty and uncomfortable around them. Tate felt guilty the entire time. "Hell of a job melting it down, Dr. Frankenstein," JJ said moodily as they climbed out of the van, a misshapen hunk of gold in his hand. Tate was just relieved the drive was over.

"Like you could've done better," said Kiara.

"I could've done much better," said JJ. "I took a welding class."

"When-"

John B stepped between the two like a stern father figure. "Hey- sh, sh- shut up," he said seriously. "Chill out, okay?"

JJ instinctively looked to Tate to exchange an irritated, knowing glance, but then remembered that she wouldn't look back and gritted his teeth. "Easy for you to say. You're not the one that has to pawn this piece of shit off." He adjusted his backpack and turned to walk towards the door. "How did I get this job anyway?"