ONLY ANGEL | JJ MAYBANK

TWELVE... no rest for the wicked

CHAPTER TWELVE

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Collins was oblivious to a lot of the things that went down on the island.

She found that most times, she wasn't very up to date on the town gossip and she didn't always have a very good idea on the things that were going on. She didn't have a phone- she never saw the need for one since Charlie was the only person she talked to, thus she had no form of social media to keep up with the island's current events. And they didn't have cable or get newspapers, but even when they did get their hands on some, the event had already come to pass. Take Midsummers for example, one of the most prestigious events of the summer where Figure Eight's finest celebrated at the Island Club to soak up each other's elitism.

It was a night that everyone planned months ahead in advance for. There was food to be catered, drinks to be bartended, live bands to be booked, costumes to be prepared— Midsummers was not a party that happened on a whim. And if you were lucky enough to be there (although it didn't come cheap when you needed an Island Club membership to attend) you would get to experience all the glitz and glamour that most Kooks feel everyday.

Collins had missed out on a lot of Midsummers. It was always something Charlie forgot to mention, then after he worked his shift, would delve into all the details of the night's happenings. She'd always listened to him recount the occasion with an envious twinge in her chest. She'd give anything to go, to just see it once for herself. It was her version of the royal ball.

Another thing that Collins had missed out on, was JJ Maybank's arrest.

She didn't know what had happened. She was completely in the dark. A part of Charlie briefly considered the idea-- while he watched JJ climb into the cop car- that maybe JJ wasn't as selfish as he may have looked at him to be. A selfish person wouldn't take the blame for a crime he didn't commit. He wouldn't have admitted to an audience that he was a no-good kid from the wrong side of the tracks to spare his friend's innocence, unless he was an unselfish person. He must've been smarter than Charlie thought he was, a better guy, someone who put himself before the people he cared about. That would be a trait that Charlie could respect.

However, guilty or not, Charlie didn't want Collins anywhere near it.

If pleading guilty for the destruction of property and getting into fights was the kind of thing JJ did for his friends, Charlie didn't want that rubbing off on Collins. He hoped that she knew that being there for the ones you love was important, that he'd shown her that and that she would take that lesson and apply it to her own life. He just didn't want her taking pages out of JJ's book and getting herself into trouble, thinking she was doing something good while doing it. He didn't want her to destroy herself in order to save someone else.

And Charlie knew that was exactly the sort of thing that she'd do, too.

She'd escaped to the beach that morning, slipping away past Charlie's slumbering body and sneaking out of the house while the sun was rising, its rays stretching like limbs into the sky after a long night's rest.

Another discussion about matters she didn't care to talk about when it was going to be a beautiful day was what brought Collins to her sandy solitude. She didn't have the energy to have it in with Charlie, but then again, she wasn't sure if she ever would.

Basically, that's why the Jacobson siblings hadn't started their day with a fight, which they ordinarily didn't do, but it had felt like it had been coming for a while now. Collins didn't like that it had become that way, so avoidance had become the preferred option. It's also why when Charlie came home after working his shift at Heyward's (which had been pretty tense after what happened with JJ), he'd decided that he didn't want to argue anymore either.