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Growing up was never in JJ’s plans anyway.
It’s a fucked up thought, and John B is not even sure it’s true. They never really talked about the future – apart from Pogues For Life and treasure hunts and what they would do when they became rich as hell. But even if he had tried, he never could have pictured JJ as an old man, getting a traditional family and a boring job and then becoming grey with wrinkles and a beard.
Not him – not bright-eyed, feisty JJ, who threw punches at life and laughed in the face of death.
He likes to think of him as Peter Pan, forever young in his own personal Poguelandia. Even now, he’s probably laughing at them, at how the other Pogues will be forced to become adults while he will stay there, in his corner of paradise, young and free until the end of time.
It’s a picture that makes him feel better, a little bit.
Just enough to prevent him from grabbing a bat and channeling his inner JJ, running off in the middle of the night to break windows and kick lampposts in the streets and just destroy everything he can reach. Just enough to put on a good face for Sarah; she doesn’t need any more stress on top of grief and pregnancy. He must become an adult. Be strong for his family.
That’s why he doesn’t tell Sarah, when Rafe finds out where Groff is hiding.
“I’ll speak to the others,” he tells him. “We’re dealing with this on our own.”
“You’re gonna need my help.”
“Why?”
“Because your friends are out of control. Especially Kiara,” Rafe answers. “She’s gonna get herself killed. You all are.”
He’s not wrong. Kiara has been spiraling, so consumed by her need for revenge that he doubts she’s getting any sleep at night. Pope is not doing any better; but at least Cleo’s there, at his side, grounding him as much as she is taking comfort in return. None of them is fine; no one is thinking with a clear head.
Still, he’s not going to agree with Rafe. “What do you care?”
“I don’t. I’m looking out for my sister,” he says. “She’s too young to be a mum, let alone a fucking widow.”
*
Surprisingly, Rafe doesn’t pull any tricks.
He leads them to Groff, then stands by their side as the police sirens sing their last hurrah and JJ’s murderer is taken to prison.
John B wanted to kill him – more than anything in the world, he wanted to. He held him at gunpoint. How good it would have felt to just shoot him in the head and watch the life leave his eyes – the eyes of the best friend he’s ever had, the brother that was taken from him.
The metal cold under his fingers, he could hear Kiara’s words echoing in his mind.
“If killing him could take JJ back, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” she said, her voice so empty it didn't sound like hers, “but it won’t. It’s not worth it.”
So he thought of Sarah, of the future family waiting for him at home.
He didn’t pull the trigger.
“Alea iacta est,” Pope says.
It’s all over. They’re just six shadows on the pavement. The sirens are like a ghostly howl now, the blue lights so far that it feels like the streets have fallen into a starless night.
John B furrows his brow. “What did you just call me?”
“It’s Latin. The die is cast,” he explains gloomily. “It means there’s no turning back.”
*
Rafe doesn’t know why he’s bothering with Kie at this point.
He promised Sarah that he would protect her friends as a sort of token of their renewed family bond. The fact that Kiara needs help is clear as day – as much as the fact that she doesn’t want it, especially not from him; and now Sarah is busy with her newborn, so he’s running out of excuses to keep an eye on the Pogues. He does it anyway.
One night he finds Kie in a bar on the Cut, drinking so much he’s worried she’s gonna pass out.
He grabs the glass from her hand. “That’s enough.”
“You’re not my dad.” She takes it back. “What do you care?”
What does he care, they keep asking.
Nothing, is the answer.
Rafe didn’t know JJ Maybank. Didn’t care for him. Quite the opposite - he disliked the guy and his blonde tuft with every fiber of his body. And honestly, if he had given any sort of thought to him at all (which he hadn’t), he could have bet his inheritance and the whole estate that he was gonna die young.
He was one of those fucked up Pogue kids that have no use in society – if anything, they are its intended victims. They live and die like flies.
So there’s no reason why Rafe should be here, trying to prevent the late JJ Maybank’s grieving girlfriend from killing herself.
Maybe, deep inside, he thinks that if he manages to help these guys (after everything he’s done to them), then he will somehow right his wrongs. Quid pro quo. The balance of the universe will be restored and he will be able to hold his head high again, without feeling like there’s a bounty on it and the world is out to get him.
Maybe, after all, he just feels sorry for the misery of this girl who clearly didn’t deserve all the shit that came her way. Or rather, he sees in her a loneliness he recognizes.
“Alright.”
Rafe slides his hand across the counter, knocking over the glass.
As it breaks in a million pieces, shattered on the floor, he loads Kiara over his shoulder before she has time to realize what’s going on.
“DUDE, what the hell?”, she screams then.
She kicks and punches his back all the way out of the bar, until she eventually gives up and remains silent. Rafe feels the slow rhythm of her breath tickling his ear, and figures she must have fallen asleep.
He takes her home, throws her on her bed like a sack of potatoes.
She’s a mess. Black hair spread unevenly on the pillow, and even deep in sleep her face is twisted in the frown of someone who’s been to hell and back. He’s not gonna tuck her in or anything, though; he has done his charity work for the day.
He moves to leave, but a light squeeze on his arm stops him.
“Jayj?”
It’s just a whisper, almost imperceptible; yet Rafe distinguishes clearly the prayer on Kiara’s lips.
That name causes an irrational clench of rage in his guts; almost as much as the note of hope in her voice. Lids half open, her mouth slightly parted, like she’s holding her breath. She really thinks it’s him.
He swallows back his anger.
“He’s not coming back from the grave, Kie,” he says. “Go back to sleep.”
She recognizes Rafe by the sound of his voice – it’s clear from the way she clenches her jaw and releases her grip on his arm like she just touched a cockroach.
That glint of hope burns away from her eyes, leaving ashes in its wake.
*
The anger of the ocean crashing against the shore feels somehow appropriate, and eases Kie’s mind a little. It reminds her of their little surf trip, not long ago; Sarah and John B, JJ and her. Kiara can almost hear the phantoms of their laughs, their breaths merging between the waves.
On her side, half buried in the sand, her phone is lightning up with unanswered messages.
The last time she was on a beach with JJ she was laying on him, at peace with the world. Home.
They were celebrating the impending arrival of the baby Poguelet, and JJ suggested his own name. “Goes both ways,” he smiled.
Scenes like that keep haunting her, day and night. She wonders if he knew what was gonna happen to him, if he could feel it somehow in his bones; or if he was just being his cheery self, smiling at a future he would never get to see. She clutches her chest, short of breath.
“Kie?”
Her mum’s voice behind her is like a memory from her early teens. Sometimes Kie would come back from school and barricade herself in her room, wallowing about something that had gone wrong – an English test, a fight of no consequence with some friend. And her mother would open the door and approach in slow motion, like with a stray cat, scared to make her run.
It all feels so far away now.
“What are you doing here?”
“Your friends came to me. They’re worried about you.”
Kiara knows they are. She’s been avoiding them for a while.
Sarah and Cleo have been trying to talk to her, offering a shoulder to cry on. Problem is, she doesn’t want to cry anymore; it’s no use.
Rafe has been around too, although she’s not sure what his deal is. She doesn’t even wanna know.
John B and Pope have been watching her back - never too far, but never imposing their presence. They were there in their relentless chase of JJ’s murderer, and then back in everyday life, guarding her and trying to take small steps to rewind the film, get things back to what they once were.
Things will never be the same. They know it, too.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Anna murmurs.
Kie snorts. “You were always against him.”
“We were worried about you. Didn’t wish any harm on him.”
It’s no consolation. If she thinks of all the shit JJ had to endure in his life, of all the people who gave him hell for no reason, all she wants to do is tear everything apart until this island is turned on itself and stops eating its own children.
“You didn’t know him,” she says instead. “Not you, not dad. Not Shoupe. None of you.”
“You’re right.”
“You treated him like shit.”
“I’m sorry, Kie…”
“And what good does it do now?”
She stands up, suddenly feeling an urge to tear her hair out of her scalp, to scream until her voice runs out and she doesn’t have to listen anymore.
They didn’t know him, she did. She would have married him. She would have grown up with him, followed him anywhere – and now she can’t reach him.
“Honey.”
Her mum takes a tentative step, raising a hand to brush her cheek. “I know it hurts. I’m so sorry. It will get better.”
“I don’t want it to get better.” Kie’s voice breaks. “I want him.”
She falls down in her mother’s arms, and cries until there’s no water left outside of the raging ocean.