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 a dead 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.

      "Eh, wait a minute," Ilyshah narrowed her eyes, caring about a single detail among that cross wired retelling. "That's why you were taking scuba off the Cameron's boat the other morning. You were stealing it?"

John B lazily slapped down his arms. "For the record, that was JJ's idea and no harm was done, okay?"

"Hey, man. Don't rat me out like that."

    "John B, I don't think what just happened to us was no harm done."

"Are you saying you're out now?"

   Her gut told her run, run for the dunes. But, her heart. The greenstone, the divine timing of it all just when she desperately longed for a connection to something, anything from home even if it didn't belong to her.

The eye of the storm chewed up and spat out more than sunken wrecks, lifeless pale corpses and a sacred stone from its unforgiving hold. It unearthed her deepest desires as her gaze flickered over to JJ Maybank perched against the van, his eyes now clouded over as he nibbled down on his thumbnail.

She would've been long gone at this point, if it weren't for him.

                 "Don't think you're getting rid of me that easily."

Ilyshah made a mental count of all the things she shared in common with JJ as they periodically bumped knees in the back of the Twinkie. Potheads, check. Entertains wild ( yet not so wild in Ilyshah's head ) theories about Atlantis, check. Anger issues? Debatable. It seemed to only be sparked when John B and Pope ordered him to set up a post for bogeys as they all stood before Redfield lighthouse.

"Look, JJ. There are independent and there are dependent variables, and you're an independent variable, we don't know what you're gonna do —"

"Shut up! Just shut up!" JJ's voice climbed over Pope's as John B intervened in their clash of tongues to make his final commandment to the trio before he set off with Kiara.

  "I'm gonna work on my merit scholarship essay, and I'm trying to keep felonies down to a minimum," Pope pressed to JJ.

    "Alright, will you just shut up already?"

    Ilyshah rolled her eyes with a soft smile, resting a hand on Pope's shoulder as a warmth crept up to the back of his neck. "I can help you, I wrote one myself before."

     "And why would you need a scholarship, princess? Your uncles a hotshot retired quarterback," JJ retorted, kicking a tin foil ball up with his kneecaps.

   "It was when I lived in New Zealand, egg," She scoffed, cleaning underneath her fingernails as she sat with Pope in the frame of the Twinkie with a written draft of his essay pulled out. "None of this cook pogue business over there."

       "Just saying, if you have a passport and you came here in a Boeing. Definitely a kook, definitely a princess."

   "Ignore him," Pope glowered, but Ilyshah was more amused by JJ's words than offended. He had no idea who she was, or where she came from, and she relished in being a perpetual question mark to everyone.

"What you have so far is really good Pope," She murmured sincerely, scanning his merit scholarship essay with intent. The boy was intimidatingly smart, with secret poems written into the crevices of his heart only to be pulled apart by his mind and split into a logical equation.

    He scratched at his temple with a toothless grin, then looked up at JJ still kicking the ball around. "He looks lonely, don't you think?" Her gaze followed his with a huff of amusement just as JJ looked back at them. "Yeah, he does."

She twirled around the ballpoint pen with the cap between her teeth as she annotated Pope's draft while he kept JJ company. They let out chuckles of excitement every now and then as they kicked the ball to each other, which were soon replaced by a head turning siren hailing down the dirt road.

"Guys!" Ilyshah called out, muttering a curse under her breath as she slid the van door shut before JJ and Pope jumped in the front. "Where are they?! I can't see them anywhere."

"Dude, are we gonna peel?" Pope panted.

JJ gripped onto the steering wheel, already stepping on the gas. "We have no choice, man! If they search us and find the gun—"

With a cloud of dust left in their wake, they were gone.

"You guys I can't be caught by the cops my uncle will kill me," Ilyshah said, eyes fixated on the rear window to check if they were being followed. "Can you drop me home, please?"

Two perfectly viable reasons why JJ Maybank didn't want to take her home. One, he didn't want to cross into enemy state lines. Two, he still wanted her and her sweet perfume of sea salt and coconut milk around.

But, even he had to admit he didn't want her at his place, not with how his dad acted around her last time.

Before they knew it, the Twinkie crossed the bridge and parked by the Tūrei residence reminiscent of a resort. Palms lined the front with orange groves out back, walls of glass and teakwood leading out to the sun glazed rooftop deck in its own Malibu style haven. JJ jumped out of the drivers seat to help unlatch Ilyshah's surfboard off the roof rack, stopping her after she said her goodbyes to Pope.

      "Hey uh," JJ scratched his scalp, dusting off leftover chips of paint still clung to his hair. "I didn't get to say earlier but... I'm sorry for tweaking on you like that, the other day."

   Ilyshah gave a nod as she readjusted the tote on her shoulder to balance the surfboard on her torso better. "Good, you should be." She shared a fleeting smile, "I hope John B and Kiara are okay..."

"I wouldn't worry, they're Pogues after all."

She shook her head laced with mirth. "I honestly still don't know what the heck that means JJ, but okay — hit me up if anything interesting happens, yeah?"

"Sure, if we had power I would," He cocked his eyebrows, sinking realisation into her newfound bubbled world where generators existed.

"Then I'll see you when I'm looking at you."

     Ilyshah crept past Lani decked out on the lounge watching more reality tv, insistent on no questions being asked until she had a shower. On her way to the comfort of her bedroom, she waltzed past Aunt Claire's at home office, catching 'Ms Davis we need utter discretion about this' in a stern tone that made her ears turn to the closed door.

As she leaned closer, she could barely make out the hushed whispers and certainly not when Lani snuck up behind her as she gasped and clutched at her chest.

"Lans, don't do that," She hissed, giving her arm a light slap as she chuckled.

Lani frowned, her fingers plying out strings of hay from her cousins hair. "Where've you been? A ranch?"

"Girls? What's going on?" Claire Tūrei sighed after opening the door to her office. "Hey, we haven't seen you all day Lysh."

    Claire Tūrei. Heralded as the finest interior designer in the Outerbanks, word travelled through social spheres trickling on down to the celebrities of the hills on the opposite coast who dished out cheques to have her design their homes just as lavish as her own. She basked in the WAG limelight with her piercing viridian stare and pearly whites. Though really, at home she was your typical WASP.

       "Hi aunty... I've just been at the beach all day," she shyly smiled.

   "Busy being a surf rat, mom," Lani interjected, hands on her hips.

      Claire tilted her head to the side. "Well, that's fine Lani at least she's not sitting on the couch all day like you," she commented, eliciting an eye roll from Lani before she retreated to her bedroom. "You should go for a shower at least sweetheart, look you've got dirt everywhere."

   "Sorry aunty, I'm on it," Ilyshah drawled softly, hands clasped behind the small of her back in childlike innocence.

     Brown tinged water pooled at her feet, a sight she hadn't seen since her days as a coastie roaming through the woods often. Under the rainfall head, she encased herself in the glass walls for what felt like hours, scrubbing her skin raw, and combing through the knots in her tresses until her scalp burned. She stared down at the greenstone in her palm, in hopes that perhaps the longer she stared, eventually it would give her the answers she needed. The Pogue effect.

   The sun had waved goodbye, and Ilyshah was still getting ready for dinner with the Fishers like she promised. Adorned in black lacy lingerie, running the flat iron through her hair with Kolohe Kai on blast in her bathroom.

      And only four hours after being dropped off, JJ Maybank returned. Resorted to climbing up the jasmine vine threaded ladder that lead to her balcony because he knew he couldn't just knock on the door and steal his bosses niece. He tapped on the glass with a wide grin, though as it dawned on him what he was now staring at, it quickly faded when it met her dropped jaw as she caught sight of him.

"Far out JJ!" She shrieked, then covered her mouth as she didn't want to alert all the Tūrei's. The tangerine yellow crotchet knitted dress hanging off her wardrobe door had been ripped from its coat hanger before she hastily slipped it on from her ankles, smoothing it over and fixing the straps. "You sneak up on all girls like this?"

JJ stumbled over the bottom railing of the sliding door and collapsed on the floor as she shushed him, smoothly recovering by leaning on his elbow from the side. "I thought you'd be happy to see me so soon?"

"Maybe when I'm clothed, yes," Ilyshah harshly whispered, outstretching her hand to pull him up on his feet.

"Well uh, hey," He clicked his tongue paired with a lonesome finger gun, "you're clothed now so let's go."

"Something interesting seriously happened in the four hours you were gone?"

       "I love that you count the hours I'm gone," His lips curved into a smirk as butterflies swarmed in her stomach and her cheeks were tinted rouge, "and sí señora, something interesting did happen but JB won't tell us until we get there so," he whistled in birdsong, jabbing his thumb towards the balcony door. "Let's go."

   "JJ, I can't. I promised—"

      "I know, Pope told me. Spencer's, right?"

    She gnawed on her bottom lip and nodded towards the floor. "Um... yes, yeah. Spencer's."

    "Look, screw Spencer and his pasta fazool right now," He exclaimed, pulling a saccharine sweet giggle from her lips. "We need you."

What JJ really meant was I need you. But even hearing him say we had Ilyshah spun in cotton floss sent floating into open air with no sign of falling back to earth anytime soon.

As capri blue rimmed ceramic dinnerware was passed over the dinner table, Spencer Fishers bumped his knee up and down, waiting and waiting as bowls of baked analleti were served up until finally, his pocket buzzed.

New Text Message (1) at 7:36 pm
Lyshie : I have to skip undool is keeping me back to do chores, sorryy x

Whale Rider ━━ JJ Maybank
Chapter Seven, The Pogue Effect
Outerbanks S1 ━━ Ep.2 The Lucky Compass