dog days of summer//pope heyward

ten

There's a moment in every kid's life when you feel like anything's possible. When you feel like you've got the total mojo. You could, I don't know, free-climb El Capitan, land on Mars, or, uh... get elected president. The whole world's there for the taking if you've got the sack to go for it. And then, when you least expect it, some Kook shows up and tells you there's no eternal mystery. And then all that talk about free-climbing and Mars and the president... bullshit. Magic gets cancer and dies.

Right now is one of those moments.

The wreck is the Merchant but it's not what we were hoping to find. There is no gold, no nothing. The ship barely even resembles a ship anymore.

John B sighs. "It's not there. Look, just... just pull the drone up." Thunder keeps rumbling. "Shit."

"Look, we can do another pass. recharge the battery. We can... we can go back down," Pope offers.

"We've done it three times. There's nothing there," JJ says.

Kiara yells at him, "Shut up!

"What? It's true!" JJ shouts back.

"The gold could be buried. We don't know," I offer.

"If it was there, it would've been found on the metal detector, okay? Somebody beat us to it," John B states.

JJ mutters under his breath, "Or it was never there."

As I walk towards the front door of Heyward's I notice Topper and Rafe sitting in a car just watching. I head inside and find Pope.

Pope smiles when he sees me. "What's up?"

"I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but Rafe and Topper are totally staking you out right now," I tell him.

Pope looks worried. "They're outside?"

I nod my head. "They're sitting in an SUV. They just glared at me as I walked in."

Pope starts to pace back and forth. "This isn't good. This is very not good."

I grab Pope's arm and force him to look at me. "Hey, Pope, listen to me."

"What am I gonna do?" Pope asks.

"Everything is gonna be fine," I assure him.

"I gotta find JJ," Pope insists.

"Alright I'll drive you, just calm down," I tell him.

When we get to JJ's we find him in his backyard. He is practicing shooting the gun. He's using a teddy bear as the target.

"JJ!" Pope shouts as he runs towards JJ.

"What was that?" JJ asks as he fires the gun again.

"JJ!" I shout trying to get his attention.

JJ fires the gun again. "That's what I thought, man."

"JJ! They know," Pope tells him.

"What?" JJ asks.

"They know," Pope repeats.

"All right, chill, bro. All right? They don't know shit," JJ insists.

"Topper knows I sunk his boat," Pope says.

"How do you know they know?" JJ asks.

"Because Rafe and Topper posted outside of Heyward's and mad dogged him," I explain.

"Will you calm down and get a grip, man? They don't know shit," JJ insists.

"They have cameras. They could've seen me," Pope argues.