Early Bird | ✓

44 | flamingo

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Note: this is a very important, very long chapter.
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           FOR the first time in a long time JJ slept soundlessly without any nightmares or traces of insomnia. He wasn't sure what this meant: Was he giving up on Lizzy and resigning to the fact that she'd never be found and, if she was, she'd be dead? Were the police getting closer to the answer of her disappearance, her kidnapper soon to be in their custody, and somehow he knew of that deep in his bones? He traded in his thoughts of his sleep's meanings and instead slept some more.

           JJ was shaken awake by his brother Asher. "What do you want?" he moaned, folding his pillow in half to hide his face.

           "Let's go play some ball," Asher said while bouncing on JJ's bed.

           "It's, like, 8 a.m."

           "Actually, it's 1 in the afternoon."

           JJ sat up groggily. "What?"

           Asher rolled his eyes. "You missed breakfast and lunch, but Mom wasn't worried because she knows that you haven't slept well lately."

           JJ's stomach rumbled at Asher's comment. "Well, shit."

           "You probably need to do that too."

           JJ leaned his head on his headboard, his brain aching to return to its slumber. "Any news on Lizzy?"

           Asher shook his head.

           "Dammit," JJ grumbled. He rested his eyes and slowly fell into a daze.

           "So, we gonna ball or nah?" Asher asked. JJ had forgotten his brother was there and his head shot up.

           "Sure, why not." Lazily, JJ grabbed a stray T-shirt from the floor and smelled it. It seemed relatively clean. He ushered his brother out the door.

           After he changed, he jogged outside to the basketball hoop. Asher was already there, waiting for him. Water vapor clung to his skin and condensed, the sun shining brightly in his eyes. The heat was almost unbearable, a sly cat rubbing its warm fur all over JJ's body; it felt like it was closing in and JJ couldn't move or push it away, no matter how hard he tried. He wondered why Asher wanted to play in this awful weather.

           "I think I'm gonna go inside," JJ told his brother.

           As he turned around, Asher chucked the basketball at his head with JJ narrowly dodging it. "What the hell, man?" JJ asked. He could still feel the ball's wind as it whizzed past his head.

           "C'mon, JJ," Asher whined, sweat poring from his forehead and leaking into his eyes. "You need to do something. You haven't touched a basketball in forever."

           "It's only been two weeks."

           "So forever."

           JJ crossed his arms and glared. "I've been going through a crisis, if you haven't noticed."

           "Trust me, I know. It's all you ever think about and talk about."

           JJ stomped over to the basketball, which lay in the grass like a rock. "You don't understand."

           "Maybe I don't. But I don't think it's healthy. We learned all about obsession and crap like that in health class."

           JJ passed the ball to Asher who dribbled around the perimeter and shot it. The basketball fell through the netting with a satisfying swish. "So. Are you playin' or what?" Asher wondered.