Storm Chaser // JJ Maybank

11

There's a moment in every kid's life when you feel like anything's possible. When you feel like you've got the total mojo. You could, I don't know, free-climb El Capitan, land on Mars, or, uh... get elected president. The whole world's there for the taking if you've got the sack to go for it. And then, when you least expect it, some Kook shows up and tells you there's no eternal mystery. And then all that talk about free-climbing and Mars and the president... bullshit. Magic gets cancer and dies.

Right now, is that moment.

What looked like the wreck of the Merchant is just the bare bones of the ship. There's no gold. There's not anything worth salvaging.

John B sighs. "It's not there. Look, just... just pull the drone up." Thunders keeps rumbling. "Shit."

"Look, we can do another pass. recharge the battery. We can... we can go back down," Pope offers.

"We've done it three times. There's nothing there," JJ says.

Kie yells at him, "Shut up!

"What? It's true!" JJ shouts back.

"The gold could be buried. We don't know," Kie offers.

"If it was there, it would've been found on the metal detector, okay? Somebody beat us to it," John B states.

JJ mutters under his breath, "Or it was never there."

I sit in JJ's backyard as he practices shooting the gun. He's using a teddy bear as the target. I'm honestly just happy he hasn't accidentally shot himself yet. JJ is about the last person I trust with a gun.

"JJ!" Pope shouts as he comes running towards us.

"What was that?" JJ asks as he fires the gun again.

"JJ!" Pope shouts again.

JJ fires the gun again. "That's what I thought, man."

"JJ! They know," Pope tells him.

"What?" JJ asks.

"They know," Pope repeats.

I walk over towards him. "All right, chill, bro. All right?"

"They don't know shit," JJ insists.

"Topper knows I sunk his boat," Pope says.

"How do you know they know?" I ask.

"Because Rafe and Topper posted outside of Heyward's and mad dogged me," Pope tells us.

"Will you calm down and get a grip, man? They don't know shit," JJ insists.

"They have cameras. They could've seen me," Pope argues.

"There was no power. How could they have seen you?" JJ asks.

"It's Figure Eight. They got generators." Pope continues to pace back and forth. "They don't give scholarships to kids who vengefully sink boats. It's not a good look on my transcript."

"Enough with the regret, bro!" JJ shouts. JJ stands up in front of Pope. "They caved your face in."

"They hit us, we hit them. It's the law of the jungle," I remind him.

I'm sick and tired of people thinking they can walk all over us just because we're Pogues.

"Now, if any Kooks come up to you and ask if you had anything to do with it, you walk up to 'em," JJ puts his hand on Pope's shoulder. "Look 'em right in the eye, and..."

"Deny the living shit out of it," Pope finishes.

"That's right. Deny, deny, deny. But just for safety, we don't go anywhere without protection." JJ points to the gun. "Right?"