"And lastly, that's Madison, or Mads, my little sister who is also trying to climb up the broken lifeguard tower. We're only a year apart. When she's not doing some odd job for extra cash she is on the HMS Pogue with the rest of us. Most loyal perso...
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She had to be dreaming, right? John B and Sarah were laying low in the Bahamas so how did they end up in Charleston. There wasn't much Madison truly believed in, no real higher power or divine intervention, but could it really have been Fate? What would have happened if Pope never got the invitation, if Heyward's truck never broke down making them a day late, if they weren't running away from a man that they didn't even know his name?
And now she was sitting in the Cameron's boat, the Pogues all cheering, overly excited, filling each other in on what had happened during their time apart. Kiara and Sarah had full smiles, laughter spilling from their mouths at every word because it was just so comforting to be in each other's presence again. JJ, Pope, and John B were in such an animated conversation that if she was one hundred percent sure she wasn't dreaming she might have actually been worried that JJ was going to fall out of the boat by the way he couldn't sit still, his hands moving a mile a minute as he retold some story, and Pope and John B were eating up every single word of it.
Madison had dreamed about this moment from the second they got the text message that he was alive. She had literally gone off the deep end doing anything she possibly could to make sure that this very moment happened. That she would be able to see her brother again. And she wasn't even sure if it was real. How could it be? What was that saying that Pope liked to use... something about fantasy versus reality...and she was pretty sure that it was said by some guy who was a psychologist so maybe she had finally snapped. Maybe this was her brain's way of protecting itself because how much could one person take before they broke forever.
Her eyes fell on the bandage on her arm, pulling it away carefully and dropping it to the floor. If this was some dream then the cut wouldn't be there, right? But it was there, scabbed over, and staring her in the face. She lightly picked away at it, not enough to make it bleed, but enough to try and convince herself that she wasn't dreaming, that she hadn't had a psychotic break, or that even the man had caught up with them and she was dead. She wasn't sure she even believed in heaven or really thought about what would happen after she died but if she had to imagine it it would be this. Her friends who had become family all happy for the first time in years.
The second she pulled the bandage off her arm JJ's eyes were glued on her. He wanted to go talk to her, make sure she was okay because the image of her completely shutting down on the sidewalk was still too fresh in his mind, but he wasn't sure this was something he would be able to fix. And not that he minded, he actually loved that she relied on him and needed him, but for the first time in weeks it wasn't all on him. He nudged John B with his elbow to get his attention and then nodded in Madison's direction.
John B wasn't exactly sure what he was expecting when they were reunited, she was actually quite unpredictable like that, because it could have ranged from her beating the crap out of him for scaring her or to her hugging him so tight he would have had to beg her to let go. Yet, she hadn't said two words to him. She didn't necessarily look angry but she definitely didn't look happy either, she just looked vacant. It was an expression he had never seen before and wasn't able to place but it was like she was somehow a shell of the sister he had left behind.
