golden wings melt like blue slushies // JJ Maybank

-Meet me at our spot, They can't find us there-

"I mean, its obvious, right? A family heirloom. What better place to hide a message? He had to know it was gonna get back to me, right?"

Pope sighed, and Icarus watched as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. The van hit a bump in the road as he finally answered John B's ranting as he scrambled to stop the sand that was his father's life falling through his fingers. "Yeah. It's possible. It could also be possible that you're concocting wild theories to deal with your sad feels."

JJ's leg bumped into Icarus's, the van taking a swerve to the side of the island they were being dragged to on a wild goose chase. Icarus leant her forehead on the cold glass, watching as the palm trees and scrub blurred in her vision, becoming streaks of green and brown.

"Bro, you know how I deal with my sad feels." JJ said with a sly smirk, "dank nugs and the stickiest of ickies, that's how I do it."

Icarus raised an eyebrow at him, "you just come over to my boat and mope around until I let you eat microwave croissants and make fun of Youtube conspiracy theorists."

JJ turned to her with a fake hurt look on his face, then elbowed her lightly in the side, which she squirmed away from. "Do not!"

"Look, I'm not concocting, okay?" John B argued back, ignoring the elbow fight happening in the back seat, that Icarus was definitely winning until she was tickled. He took his hands of the wheel to wave them around, and Kiara reached over with a sigh, pulling them all back onto the gravel road. "My dad's trying to give me a message."

"If it helps you believe, John B."

"I don't need a therapy session- okay? I'm not trippin out, my dad is missing, okay?" John B snapped, taking back control of the vehicle. "You don't know what it's like to have the person closest to you vanish, okay? And then have no idea what happened. Just wake up every morning wondering..."

"If they're ever going to come back?" Icarus asked faintly, turning back to the window, a sliver of sparkling blue only just visible over the bushed lining the gravel road leading to gods know where. She gulped, "yeah. No idea what it's like."

She could see John B's tanned face drop in the rearview mirror instantly. He looked pale, and then Icarus had to turn away again because she felt guilty for causing the panic. "Oh shit- Iggy, I'm sorry I swear- I just forgot and-"

"He could have been kidnapped," Pope said loudly, signaling not very subtly for John B to stop talking before he made the situation worse. "That's definitely a possibility."

"Yeah, could be in a Soviet sub getting interrogated by the KGB somewhere."

"Absolutely, or uh...Atlantis?"

"Area fifty-one," Icarus muttered, tapping her fingers on her knee, the blue skirt pushed up her thigh.

"Okay, that guy was on to something though," JJ started, "with the photo, it was not an oddly shaped cactus. The rest of the cactuses looked fine, that was an alien."

"It's cacti," Pope interrupted.

"Did you see the guy's hair, Jay? He was crazy, no one looks like that and has all the braincells they need to function. The cactus, was a cactus. Aliens don't look like cactus, okay? They look like..." Icarus trailed off. "...alien's and shit."

"I think you guys should probably stop watching conspiracy videos, you're about to go crazy as well. We've already got John B, we don't need more loonies."

"So where are we going?" She hummed, popping the grape gum in her mouth. It had lost its flavor now, and was just a lump, much like the one in her throat. Both made it hard to talk.