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PIPER HAS KNOWN but a few people as long as she has known JJ and her father. One of those being John B. Piper knew John B, and she knew him well. So, she probably shouldn't have been expecting a recuperation period before being shoved back in the Volkswagen for John B's second stop on his paternal excavation. A large oversight on her part, but she had been expecting maybe a small little memorial for Alfonso. Maybe they would dig a hole and bury him. Lay some fallen brush from the hurricane. But, nope. First stop was terrorizing Ms. Lana, and the second stop was apparently not going to be there in an hour because John B all but shoved Piper, JJ, Pope, and Kie back into the sticker-clad van.
Piper might have been able to elude John B and JJ's appearance at Ms. Lana's fishing shack, but apparently she ran out of luck.
"I mean, it's obvious, right?" John B asked. Piper wasn't sure what particular thing was obvious, but she aptly assumed it was about Big John. However much she loved John B and his father, Piper cared more about rummaging underneath the seat in the van that lifted up like the compartment for storing caught fish in the stern of a boat. She stored CDs and cassettes underneath the seat next to JJ's marijuana so she could control the music. Pope had somehow gotten the compass from John B and was studying it; he held it by its string in front of his face and let it twirl in the air as his eyes traced the patterns in the bronze. JJ was sitting across from Pope, and Kie was taking what cassette or CD Piper handed her, glancing at it, and deciding whether it was worthy of being played. None of them were because Piper was feeding Kie Sex Pistols selections instead of some obscure reggaeton. "A family heirloom. What better place to hide a message? He had to know it was gonna get back to me, right?"
"Is that a rhetorical question, John B?" Piper asked, holding a cassette in front of her face and blowing dust off its case. It was Bob Marley. Piper caved from her brit-punk pity party and handed Kie, quite normal, reggaeton.
Kie rammed her elbow into Piper's shoulder—"Fuck, Kie"—and nodded, "Yeah. It's possible."
"It could also be possible that you're concocting wild theories to help, you know, deal with your sad feels," Pope interjected.
"Bro," JJ said. "You know how I process my sad feels: dank nugs and the stickiest of ickies—"
"I can't believe we're related," Piper choked through a gag.
"That's rich, Pipe. You almost tore a house down two summers ago, you were dealing with so many sad feels—"
"I did not almost tear down anything, thank you very much—"
John B pushed through as Piper and JJ began to bicker, "I'm not concocting, okay? My dad's trying to give me a message."
"If it helps you believe, John B," Kie said sympathetically. John B looked like he was about to blow the roof off of Kie's pity party.
