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THIRTY TRUST HIM
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The day without John B was weird, but not unbearable. After the previous night, he definitely felt more like part of the group than he had before. Even then, he never minded hanging out with just them. He mainly felt bad for the other boy because he would probably shoot himself if he had to spend a whole day with his dad.
"How's it feeling?" Pope asked as Kiara sat in the contraption they had made to lower them into the well to get the rest of the gold. Norman was honestly impressed with how quickly they had been able to figure out a safer way to get down there considering how dangerous and unreliable it had been the first time. It didn't help that they were being shot at by some psycho old lady, but Norman was just glad they made it out of there alive.
Kie shrugged from her position, "Yeah, yeah, it's good."
"All right, taking you down," Pope nodded as he got to work on getting Kie back to ground level. Norman admired how smart the boy was, knowing his brain was never quite wired like that. He had good grades, sure, but he could never think of stuff like this. It just wasn't his thing.
"John B pullin' a Houdini," JJ sighed and Norman frowned as he looked at the time on his phone. He hadn't even realized it was past the time the boy was supposed to meet them. "Rocky, shouldn't you know where he is?"
"I'm his boyfriend, not his keeper," Norman scoffed, trying to mask the worry that was starting to form in the pit of his stomach. "If he had said something to me, I would have said something to y'all."
Pope shrugged, "Yeah, he should definitely be here by now. I got my scholarship interview tomorrow, we gotta get this done!"
As if on cue, the boy came around to where they were, but he looked a little worse for wear.
"Speak of the devil, hey!" JJ exclaimed, "Dude, I set up an entire winch to pull up the gold and everything!"
"No, he did not," Pope argued since JJ had, in fact, done absolutely nothing. "I did that!"
"Hey," Kie called out, noticing that John B hadn't said one word to them and was walking right past them, "Hey!"
He went into the house without a word, all of them looking at each other in confusion. They all looked to Norman, but he wasn't paying attention considering he was already jogging inside to find out what was wrong. Entering the home, he saw John B rifling around his household items frantically as if he was looking for something.
"John B, what's wrong?" Norman asked gently, but nothing seemed to deter him.
"What's up man?" asked Pope, who had filed in after him with the others as well. Norman had never seen John B like this, the last time he remembered him being upset like this about something it had been after he heard the voice recording of his dad. That, however, had been non-stop tears, but this was something different. John B almost looked... numb.
