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chapter seven / the pogue effect
Ask Ilyshah Tūrei at this very moment how her summer dream was going, and you are guaranteed she would say—Like out of a movie.
Not the stupidly good rom coms projected onto the walls of their pool house as Sarah Cameron cuddled up to her side with a packet of sour patch kids. Definitely not the at times absurd sundance films Spencer Fishers would subject her to.
No. If you asked Ilyshah what movie she starred in today, holed up in the stale surrounds of a chicken coop, straws of hay already embedded into her hair. With four teenagers she only just acquainted as they hid away from two men willing to put a bullet through their heads over a compass of all things. She'd say a horror movie.
"Do something, Pope. Shut him up," JJ growled through gritted teeth, both him and Ilyshah on their bellies beside one another.
Pope harshly whispered. "What do you want me to do?"
"Pet it, or talk to it. I don't know," Kiara gave a frightened whimper that Ilyshah herself was teetering on the edge of as she shielded herself from view.
As loud clucking escalated to violent flapping of feathers across their cheeks, JJ Maybank knew he had to act fast less they were dead and gone. Sorry you have to see this Ilyshah. A walking talking contradiction of both wanting her to be close by without having to endanger her, cruelly manifesting in hands senselessly wrapped around the throat of an animal who couldn't be helped the second they jumped into that coop.
She flinched like the shutter of a camera as the snap of its neck travelled to her ears from beside her. What haunted JJ the most wasn't what he did, nor the bloodshot eyes Ilyshah sent his way as the two men drove off.
It was her hands soft as silkened frangipanis closing over his trembling ones, silently begging him to drop the now dead animal to which he obeyed without question. Giving off heat to his icy veins as they lingered on his wrists for a second longer.
"Okay, I think now is the time for one of you to explain what the heck just happened," Ilyshah halted the Pogues in their tracks as they loaded the Twinkie with their belongings, JJ still absent in his expression as he moved her surfboard from the back seat to the roof rack.
John B exhaled in preparation for what was to come. "Alright, so you know the guy they found — Scooter Grubbs..."
Kicking the story off with adead body was a sure fire way to put the Tūrei's mind at ease when they were one more cluck away from ending up the same. It curved down winding roads of finding Scooter Grubbs' Grady-White, breaking into motel rooms, diving expeditions where they found the greenstone and evading the two men who just stormed the property, all leading up to this very moment.
