THEY WERE ALL RIDING IN THE TWINKIE SO THAT POPE COULD TALK TO HIS MEE-MAW. After everything that had happened with Pope and his dad, they were invested in what the hell this Limbrey lady wanted with the key. It must be something big if she was willing to go to such length to get it.

"Guys, the thing that Limbrey said, I don't think she meant to let it slip," Pope told them as he sat in the back with all of the girls. He had this look on his face like he was thinking for a long time before he finally spoke. "She said the key leads to the Cross of Santo Domingo."

"Wait. Can I see that?" JJ questioned, reaching out for the key, and the Heyward boy handed it to him. The blonde boy began to examine it with Bree peeking over the seat to do the same.

Sarah furrowed her eyebrows, looking to Pope. "Are we supposed to know what that is?"

"I'm guessing it's some sort of historical artifact of great importance." he answered, and for some reason, Kie was the only one who thought to pull out her phone and look it up.

She scrolled for a second before informing them, "Well, according to the interwebs, it was a gift from New Spain to the Spanish king."

"New Spain? Is there an Old Spain?" the Maybank boy questioned, confused.

"Old Spain is Spain, and New Spain was where the Spanish settlers settled in North America," the brunette girl explained to him. She was not sure if she was correct, so she turned around to raise her eyebrows at Pope. "Right?"

He nodded, and he seemed impressed that she knew that. "Pretty much?"

"Nerds," JJ muttered, causing Bree to grab one of the hats on the floor of the vehicle — there were many left over the years — and whack him on the head with it.

"Shit, talk about over-gifting," the Carrera girl mumbled before holding out a picture on her phone for everyone else to see. "Look at that thing. Look at the person standing next to it."

The blonde boy concluded, "So it's a giant-ass cross."

"It was widely considered at the time to be the most extravagant tribute ever from the provinces. It was lost off the coast of Bermuda in 1829," the raven-haired girl explained to them, reading from a website on her phone.

The Maybank boy perked up at the last part of her sentence, and they all knew what he was about to say. "Did you just say Bermuda?"

"Oh, no. Not the triangle," John B groaned, and all of the rest rolled their eyes.

"It always leads back to the triangle, dude," JJ pointed out, almost excitedly. "Like every single time something's weird, it's Bermuda."

Moving on and talking over him, Kiara furrowed her eyebrows at Pope. "Okay, well, what does a key found above your mee-maw's pharmacy have to do with any of this? Where do we come in?"

"I don't know. That's a good question," he replied with a sigh. John B came to a stop in front of the nursing home, and Pope climbed out. Everyone else was about to follow him when he stopped them. "Hey, actually, I think I'm gonna do this one by myself."

"Are you sure?" Kie questioned with raised eyebrows.

Pope nodded and answered bitterly. "Yeah, I can handle it. I don't really need you, so..." That made Bree's eyes widened. She had not really had a one-on-one talk with Kie since her and Pope had sex, so she had no idea what happened or where the hostility came from.

"Oh, we're just all one big happy family today, aren't we?" JJ quizzed sarcastically.

John B, not wanting to deal with fighting, just leaned in and poked his head out the window so that the Heyward boy could see him. He let him know, "Hey, man, pick you up in a bit."

"Of course I thanked Topper," Sarah informed Kie and Bree as they walked out of a store. They had gone inside to get drinks while they waited for Pope to come back. "He saved my life, and I'd put him through so much already. And you'd think that that is the crime of the century."

"Tell me about it. All of this crazy shit's happening, and Pope's giving me the silent treatment for not being in love with him," Kie informed them. She had explained everything that happened earlier. Apparently, she had told Pope that it was not working and that she just wanted to be friends. He did not take that very well, as demonstrated earlier.

Sarah nodded, rolling her eyes. "And we're the dramatic ones."

"Yeah, and..." the Callaway girl spoke up, but then she trailed off as she thought about it for a second. Then, she gave up. "Yeah, I got nothing going on in my love life right now."

"Sure," Kiara scoffed, causing the brunette girl to furrow her eyebrows in confusion and the blonde girl to raise hers in interest.

Bree questioned curiously, "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing," the Carrera girl responded but then she and Sarah shared a knowing look that Bree did not miss.

"I saw that," she exclaimed, gesturing between the two and stopping so that they could talk. The other girls just kept on moving toward the Twinkie. "What are you talking about? Come back!"

《✵》

"I WONDER HOW IT'S GOING IN THERE," KIE TOLD THEM. Pope had been inside the nursing home for a pretty long time, and they were starting to get concerned. They had never met his Mee-maw, so they were not totally sure what they expected to happen. So, they just had to sit there, not knowing anything and hoping for the best.

Bree was not too bored or worried because she had something else on her mind. She was thinking about what the two girls had said earlier when they were walking out of the store. Were they talking about JJ? If it wasn't him, then who the hell were they talking about? She and JJ had been a little weird lately after what happened in the woods when they were gathering firewood, but neither of them had mentioned it. She hoped that it would stay that way, at least for a while because she had no idea what she would say to him yet.

The blonde boy spoke up all of a sudden, snapping her out of her thoughts as she looked up at him. "What if Pope's Mee-maw killed him?"

"What?" she exclaimed, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion.

He turned around in his seat so that he could look her in the eye, and he used hand gestures as he talked. He clarified, "Like, what if she just pulled a knife on him?"

"You don't think Pope could get away from an old lady?" she questioned. Pope was actually pretty fast, breaking the stereotype of nerds not being athletic. That was his only athletic aspect as Bree remembered him throwing rocks at the window at that motel. "You have that little faith in him?"

"Well, what if she used a sneakier tactic like poison or something. Or a hitman," he suggested, counting the two things on his fingers as all of his friends shook their heads at him.

"Wait, wait, wait," John B spoke up, jumping into the conversation and putting his hand up to stop it from continuing for a second. He asked, "Why would Pope's Mee-maw want to kill him?"

The blonde boy thought for a moment before coming up with an answer, a really awful one at that. "Maybe she secretly despises him for not coming to visit her or something."

"What...?" Sarah trailed off, so confused as Kie just rolled her eyes at all of them. What the hell were they talking about? She was sure that they had cracked from delirium or boredom or something.

Bree threw her hands up in the air frustratedly, leaning her head back on one of the seats behind her because she really did not have the energy for that conversation. She moaned, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"It makes sense," he argued.

Kie shook her head, finally joining the conversation because what he had just said was just so absolutely ridiculous that she could not let it slide. "No, it doesn't."

"It really doesn't," the Routledge boy agreed with a nod, and they all looked up when they saw something in the corner of their eyes. Pope was finally walking back toward the Twinkie with an unreadable expression on his face.

As soon as he opened the door of the van and climbed in, the Carrera girl quizzed curiously, "What took so long?"

"JJ thought your Mee-maw murdered you," Bree informed him as he sat down next to her again. Something really seemed to be bothering him because he was just staring at the ground.

"What?" he asked, snapping out of his little trance and looking up at her. Once he realized that he really did not care, he shook his head. "Never mind. Uh, I have some news."

John B eyed him, a little scared about what his announcement would be."What kind of news?"

"I'm related to Denmark Tanny."