Someone to stay || JJ Maybank

29

"Honey life is just a classroom"

Just like JJ predicted last night, John B and Sarah came back this morning way earlier than I would've liked, making so much noise while coming I had to wake up. Don't know what for though, it took us like an hour to melt down the gold while John B and Pope worked on some better working variation of the pulley, one that would be able to bring up as much gold as possible at once and wouldn't drop John B down the well while doing that.

The new plan was to go back to Crain's house to get the gold the night after tonight. We protested that we needed to go as soon as possible, but apparently John B had some thing with Ward Cameron tomorrow morning and couldn't risk being late from that. And I get that he needs to go. The Cameron's did take him to live with them after all. I understood why, but it didn't stop it from annoying me.

But back to present, we melted the gold successfully. It doesn't look pretty and you can definitely tell it's been melted down but at least there's no wheat symbol in it, so trying to change it to money in the pawnshop shouldn't be that much of a problem. And that's where we were heading to right now, sitting in silence in Twinkie, everyone too nervous to say a word.

When John B starts to slow down the car, starts the nervous moving around in one's place. JJ was the main character of our plan. He was supposed to do the talking and all while the rest of us will just hang around the shop. In my opinion that would be where the plan fails, it'll be too suspicisous when six teenagers walk in there with a melted down gold worth like a hundered thousand dollars. But no one listened, of course. They said it was gonna be suspicious anyway, so it wouldn't matter if we went in there or not.

"Hell of a job melting the gold down, Dr. Frankenstain", JJ complains to Kie as he steps out of the car, looking at the gold in his hands. He knew the signs of melting would wake suspicion too, among every other unusual thing in this plan.

"Like you could've done any better", Kie sighs slightly pissed at JJ for not appreciating her efforts.

"I could've have, much better. I took a welding class", JJ says. I'm not sure that's true but it was not relevant right now.

"You- when?" Kie looks at him confused for a while before her voice changes to unbelieving, brows raise a little, challenging his words.

"Whoa, whoa. Sh!" John B gets between the two, shushing them to being quiet. "Chill out, okay?"

I can see how both of them want to keep arguing but swallow their words when John B hardens his stare on them. "Easy for you to say", JJ says then, continuing the complaining about Kie's work, but not directly to Kie. "You're not the one that has to pawn this piece of shit off. How did I get this job anyway?"

"'Cause you're the best liar", Pope shrugs. It was obvious to everyone, JJ included. He knew very well why he got the job.

A small bell rings above the door as we step in to the pawnshop. The lightning is shadow, not much of the sunlight from outside reaching inside. It didn't look like a place you should take your gold to. I had never been here before, surprisingly I never had anything to pawn, but I had expected something more tidy or modern. But then this was the shouthern side, nothing here was modern or tidy.

"Afternoon, ma'am", JJ greets the woman by the desk while I walk after John B to look at the things in the shelfs.

"Afternoon." I hear the woman answer. She's older, probably should soon to be retired, but we don't know such a thing around here. Somehow it made this whole place seem more uncomfortable. Some younger person would've probably had better education, but again, what was it that I expected?