Someone to stay || JJ Maybank

13

"Lighthearted joke, no proof, not much"

"And what now?" I ask as we stand outside the lighthouse in silence. "You're just gonna march in and demand whoever is inside to give you clues?"

"Right", John B says without the slightest hint of humor in his voice. "You're gonna post up and look out for bogies, okay?" He continues, talking to JJ.

"Wait.." JJ furrows his brows. "Why me?"

"Because you're not coming." Pope answers for him.

"Why?"

"There are independent and dependent variables", Pope explains. "And you're independent-"

"Shut up", JJ tries to interrupt Pope

"-We don't know what you'll do."

"Shut up!" He then yells, clearly hurt that his friends don't trust him to make good decisions. I mean, it's true, but it's still quite mean.

"JJ, listen to me for a second", John B gets his attention. "Just listen!" He shouts when JJ's about to object. "Kate, you stand look out with JJ, okay?"

"What- no!"

Pope throws a triumphant look at JJ. "You too, Pope", John B continues and the look is quickly wiped away from Pope's face. "If we get split up, we meet back at JJ's house."

John B's speech doesn't really leave room for objections, and even though I'm a little pissed that I didn't get to go to the lighthouse and do the exiting stuff, I'll happily let John B and Kie go on their own.

"Great", Kie agrees for all of us and starts to walk towards the tower before anyone can say anything else. To my surprise, even JJ keeps quiet and just silently nods to the plan.

Pope looks after them for a while before turning around. "I'm gonna work on my merit scholarship essay,  and I'm trying to keep felonies to a minium.."

"All right, would you just shut up already?" JJ cuts him off.

"JJ", I look reproachfully at him but he ignores me and keeps playing with one of the bigger rocks, bouncing it on his leg.

"What?" He asks without shifting his eyes off the rock. "Pope basically called me useless, I have the right to be annoyed at him." He shrugs.

"I didn't call you useless", Pope sighs frustrated.

"You basically did."

"Well now we're all basically useless", I stop their didpute. "Come on JJ, give Pope some space. We've all had a rough last couple of days." I sign him to come with me to the twinkie.

"Thank you", Pope sits down to one of the fallen tree trunks.

JJ comes to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders. "Now that I think about this, I do have some questions to you too."

So do I JJ, so do I. For example, did you kiss me back at the chinken coop or did I just imagine it? And if you did, then why do you act like nothing happened and basically avoided me for an hour afterwards?

"All right, shoot."

He opens the door for me before saying anything and I climb to the backseats with JJ following behind me. "What's going on with John B and Kie? I mean, there's definitely something, but when I ask John B, he says it's nothing. That they're just friends. Pope obviously has no idea something is going on, but I know you know something I don't, and I can't believe you won't tell me."

For a moment I consider telling him, but then I remember how Kie promised to tell no one about my little thing for JJ, so I'll keep Kie's secrets. If you can really call this a secret, because for the past few days, she has made it so obvious that I'm surprised Pope doesn't have a clue about it yet. Or then he just won't believe it.