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TWENTY-SEVEN SO MUCH WORSE
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The day so far was certainly interesting, to say the least. First, Pope made them a plan to go down and get the rest of the gold which was supposedly worth 400 million dollars which was going to be quite the heavy load for them to get out. Now, they were currently taking a blow torch to the cleaned gold bars they did have in an attempt to get the wheat symbol off so they could be pawned. Yeah, this was far different than Norman's beach days with his friends. Of course, Norman was only watching as Kie and JJ tried to melt down the gold enough to get the very obvious label off of it, leaning against a tree with John B next to him. It really was strange how quickly his life had changed for the better, he realized as he sat with the boy. That being said, he could certainly get used to this.
"Dude, why is this taking so long?" John B asked with a laugh, his question met with JJ flipping him off.
After a moment, the boy turned off the blow torch, saying, "All right, all right, that should be good enough, it's fairly unrecognizable, right, Kie?"
The girl observed the gold and nodded, "Yeah, I say let's hit the road."
They all got to work packing up their things from their spot in the trees near the beach before they all piled into John B's van once again. Norman was starting to get used to his place in the passenger seat, even if they yelled at him for playing Alt-J whenever he got the aux. It was weird to think how a couple of weeks ago they had been strangers to him and now they were friends. Sarah was still on the rocks, but he didn't mind her being there as much as he thought he would. If it made Kie happy, Norman was happy, too. Something he especially loved was the way John B would always reach to hold his hand on the center console like it was something they had always done. He often had to ignore the way JJ would fake gag, but most of the time he would just flip him off.
As they pulled up the pawnshop, JJ looked at the gold and commented, "Hell of a job melting it down, Dr. Frankenstein."
Kie scoffed, rolling her eyes as they climbed out, "Ugh, like you could have done better."
"I could have," the boy said with a shrug, "I took a welding class."
Kiara looked less than impressed with this comment, asking, "Oh, really? When?"
"Guys, guys," John B interceded with a calm tone, "Chill out, okay?"
JJ scoffed, holding the bag up as he said, "Easy for you to say. You're not the one who has to pawn this piece of shit off. How did I get this job anyway?"
"'Cause you're the best liar," Pope answered with ease, smiling at JJ's offended expression as they entered the pawnshop.
"Afternoon," JJ began cautiously, clearly letting his nerves get to him just a little bit, "I see you buy gold?"
