PETRICHOR ━ pope heyward

- TEN -

As soon as the alarm sounded from his bedside table, Frankie grabbed his phone and turned it off. He'd barely slept, his mind buzzing from the events of last night and the subsequent argument with his parents. Luckily, he'd had the forethought to shower before getting in bed, so all he had to do to get ready was change his clothes, brush his teeth, and try to tame the mess that was his hair.

He'd learned his lesson regarding not having a spare change of clothes last night with being stuck in a suit, so he dumped all the school supplies sitting at the bottom of his backpack onto his bed and replaced it with an extra t-shirt and a pair of board shorts. Adding in his favorite pair of flip flops, Frankie grabbed a pair of SeaVees in his hand and his cell phone before slipping out of his bedroom door, trying his best to remain quiet.

In times like this, when having another person in the house would make it harder to sneak around, Frankie was glad he was an only child. Other times, when the silence of the two story house was deafening and suffocating, he wasn't. But being an only child meant he didn't have a younger sibling to look after or an older sibling breathing down his neck, so for right now, it was the best situation.

Being that the Castillo house was still a fairly new construction, Frankie nearly jumped out of his skin when the bottom step of the staircase creaked with his weight. His head whipped around to look back up the steps, expecting his mother or father to come tearing down the hall and catch him red handed, but there was nothing. One glance at the clock on the kitchen wall told him that there was only 5 minutes before his parents' alarm was due to go off, so he turned back around and continued his way out of the house.

He was in the home stretch, so close to successfully sneaking out, when he finally reached the golf cart. It was parked in its usual spot in the driveway, but Frankie blanched when he realized the keys were missing. In all his last minute planning, he'd forgotten that his dad had to retrieve the cart from the Heyward's parking lot the night following his arrest.

"Fuck," Frankie swore silently. He knew his parents were going to be up any second now and it was only a matter of time before they realized he'd left. Giving up on whatever semblance of a plan he had left, he put on his shoes and began his trek out of the neighborhood.

Not having the golf cart was really throwing a wrench in his plans. If he was driving out of the neighborhood at 7am, no one would have spared him a second glance, but the fact he was walking with a backpack and everyone had saw the scene at Midsummers was earning him some odd looks from neighbors. He tried to brush it off, sending friendly smiles and waves when he accidentally caught their eyes, but he knew it wasn't working.

Not only that, but having to walk from place to place wasn't a feasible option. Sure, Kildare Island wasn't the biggest island on the Outer Banks and Figure Eight was less than half that, but what would've been a 15 minute drive just to get to the bridge to the Cut was going to take upwards of an hour, not to mention however long it took to get to Heyward's after that.

Frankie was just walking past the entrance to the Island Inn when he pulled out his phone to check the time. It was 7:40am, meaning he'd been walking for over half an hour. He knew the cell phone towers were still down, but part of him was sad to not see any missed call notifications. With a sigh, he slipped the device back into his pocket and looked up, his eyes landing on a brown van making its way down the road toward him.

Brakes squealed as the van slowed to a stop beside him, the passenger window rolling down and Pope's head popping out.

"What are you doing?" The Pogue asked in amused confusion. The door behind him slid open and JJ scooted over for Frankie to climb inside.