✯ North Star ✯

6 - What We're Looking For

"It's obvious, right? A family heirloom — what better place to hide a message? He had to know it would get back to me." John B turned the compass over in his hands like it might open again if he held it long enough, his thumb tracing the same worn groove over and over, like the repetition itself might coax something loose.

"Yeah," I said. "It's possible."

I wasn't sure I believed it. But I also knew what it felt like to need something to be true, and that knowing sat heavy behind my ribs, kept me from saying anything sharper.

"It's also possible," Pope said, "that you're concocting wild theories to help you deal with your sad feels."

"Pope. Bro. You know how I process my sad feels." JJ sat up. "Dank nugs and the stickiest of ickies. That's how it's done."

"I'm not concocting," John B said. "My dad is trying to send me a message."

"If it helps you believe—" I started.

"I don't need a therapy session. I'm not tripping out," he said, sharper than he meant it, and I felt the words land somewhere just under my sternum, a small flinch I didn't let show on my face.

"It's okay to trip, bro, but—" JJ began.

"Look." John B stopped. Something quieter moved into his voice, the anger draining out and leaving something rawer underneath. "My dad is missing. Missing. You don't know what that's like — to have the person closest to you just vanish. No explanation. Just waking up every morning and wondering."

The word missing hung in the air of the Château like it had weight, and the whole room seemed to lean away from it without moving.

"It's been almost a year," I said quietly, and felt the ache of that number in my own chest, though it wasn't mine to carry.

"He could've been kidnapped," JJ offered. "Definitely a possibility."

"Could be on a Soviet sub getting interrogated by the KGB somewhere," Pope added.

"Absolutely. Or Atlantis," JJ shrugged.

"JJ," Kie warned. Then, to John B: "What do you think the message is?"

John B looked at the compass. Then — something clicked behind his eyes, and I watched the change happen in real time, watched his whole body straighten with it.

"Redfield. Redfield Lighthouse." He said it like it had always been there. "That's my dad's favorite place."

---

The lighthouse sat at the edge of the Point like it had been there long before anything else and planned to outlast everything. Paint peeling off in long strips, rust bleeding through where the salt air had won, seagulls screaming overhead like they were specifically warning us. The wind coming off the water had a bite to it even in the heat, and it pushed my hair across my face the whole walk in.