THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THERE.

They had searched the ruins of the ship with the drone at least three times, but there was no gold in sight, not even a flake. Nothing to prove that there had ever even been gold there. In fact, there was nothing but wood half-buried in the sand of the ocean floor. 

Bree's heart dropped along with her smile as she realized that there was no hope and that the gold wasn't there. She knew that she shouldn't have gotten her hopes up. She had just gotten so caught up in the hunt and adventure that she didn't think rationally, and now all of her hopes were crushed.

"It's not there. Look, just — just pull the drone up," John B told Pope when realization came to him as well. The Callaway girl realized that this must've hit him really hard because of everything with his dad. He leaned away from the monitor and muttered, "Shit."

As he paced to the other side of the boat and ran a hand through his hair, Pope, in an attempt to make him and the rest of the teenagers feel better, said, "Look, we can do another pass, recharge the battery. We can...We can go back down."

"We've been through it three times. There's nothing there," JJ yelled from the driver's seat, and they all glared at him for being his brutally honest self. Sometimes, he was helpful, but now was not the time to rub it in.

Kie shouted, "Shut up!"

"What? It's true!" the blonde boy pointed out what they were all thinking but none of them wanted to say, like saying it out loud would make it true.

The Carrera girl argued, glancing at the Routledge boy on the end of the vehicle that looked like he was about to punch something or someone. Bree felt so bad for him. He lost his father because of this stupid ship. "The gold could be buried. We don't know."

"If it was there, it would've been found on the metal detector, okay?" John B informed them, turning around to face his friends. "Somebody beat us to it."

"Or it was never there," JJ mumbled, and the brunette girl was the only one who heard it since she was closest to him. She would take off one of her shoes and hurl it at his head if she wasn't scared it would get blown away in the wind.

They hauled the drone back up, which took some effort to say the least, and headed back. The ride back to land was basically silent as none of them knew what to say or how to say it. The gold wasn't there, and that was that. Everything they and Big John had worked for was gone and pointless now.

Bree came home in a foul mood after they found the Royal Merchant. She was upset that after everything they had been through — being shot at, almost dying when the men came to John B's house, getting chased by the dog, etc. — there was nothing there. 

And, after everything that had happened in the past couple of days, she had completely forgotten that her mom had yet to see her black eye.

"Oh. my God," the woman exclaimed when her daughter entered the house. She was so shocked that she almost dropped the glass she was holding. Bree furrowed her eyebrows in confusion as Allison rushed over to her. When she put her cold hand on her eye, the younger girl realized what she was staring at. Her hand reached up to cover Allison's hand with her own.

She winced as her mother applied pressure. "Ow, Mom. That hurts."

"Sorry," she responded, removing her hand from the eye, but her palm was still grasping the girl's face so that she could get a better look at the bruise. "What the hell happened?"

"It's nothing. I ran into a tree on the way into work. They got me all patched up and taken care of there," Bree lied, but her mother seemed to believe it, even if she was a little hesitant to do so.

Allison pulled her daughter into a hug, and the girl winced when her eye pressed up against her neck. The younger Callaway smiled a bit, even though she knew she couldn't see her face. The woman asked, "You promise you would tell me if someone hurt you, right?"

"Yeah, of course," she muttered in response, glad that she was in an embrace so that she didn't have to look her in the eye and lie to her. She was great at telling her mother she was going to work when she was actually hanging out with the Pogues, but she was absolutely horrible at lying to her mother about big things. "I'm gonna take a nap, I think. It's been a long couple of days."

And that was the truth.

《✵》

"TOPPER KNOWS I SUNK HIS BOAT." 

Bree's jaw completely dropped. She had gone to the Chateau to see if anyone wanted to hang out because she couldn't find Sarah anywhere, but when no one was there, she headed to JJ's house. 

The first thing that startled her was the gunshots being fired, and she quickly rushed to the corner of the house to peek around and see was was happening. She let out a breath of relief when she saw that the Maybank boy was the one with the gun, and he was firing at an old teddy bear. 

Pope was in front of him, and when he finally got the boy's attention, he had dropped the bomb that was 'Topper knows I sunk his boat.'

"You sunk Topper's boat?" the Callaway girl exclaimed as she made herself known, stepping out into the grass and away from the side of the house.The two boys looked like deer caught in headlights as they looked at each other frantically.

"Can you give us a moment please?" JJ asked dramatically and politely, holding a finger up at her that signaled for her to wait. He turned to Pope. "How do you know they know?"

Pope sighed, and JJ sat down on a stump next to him. "Because Rafe and Topper posted outside of Heyward's and mad dogged me."

"Will you two stop for a second and tell me what the hell you did?" the Callaway girl yelled over them. They stopped arguing and turned to her.

"Why are you mad at me?" JJ exclaimed with a shocked voice, picking up on her angry tone, turning to her and forgetting about Pope before gesturing to her bruised eye. He had stood up and was now standing a few feet in front of her. "In case you've forgotten, Rafe hit you with a freaking golf club."

She sighed at his antics, running a hand through her hair as she replied, "Yeah, I know, but he's a Kook."

"Oh, so he matters more than us? If you care so much, why don't you just run off and tell your little boyfriend what we did then?" he spat out, throwing his hands up in the air angrily.
She gaped at him in complete astonishment, offended that he would even think that that was what she was trying to say. She knew that he knew that she would never even imply anything like that. "You know that's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?" he questioned with his eyebrows raised, looking around before his eyes landed on her once again. "Because from where I'm standing, it sounds like your calling me a lousy Pogue."
"If they find out that Pope sunk his very expensive boat, then one or both of you are going to jail, and neither of them are worth it, especially if it means giving up your future," she told him, aiming the last part at Pope who was inches away from getting his merit scholarship. She knew he could do it, and she wasn't letting him give that up because of Rafe and his idiotic actions.
JJ just took a deep breath and sighed. "They don't know shit."

"They better not," she responded with a pointed look. She didn't know what she would do if either of them went to jail because of something as stupid as Topper.

"Now, will you calm down and get a grip, man?" JJ questioned, spinning back around trying to get his pacing friend to settle down and stop worrying. "They don't know shit."

"They have cameras. They could've seen me," the Heyward boy stressed.

The Maybank boy furrowed his eyebrows as he plopped down on the stump once again and looked up at him. "There was no power. How could they have seen you?"

"We've got generators," the brunette informed him, and he just shot her a look that told her that she was not helping the situation.

"Exactly," Pope said, pointing to her. He was being very dramatic with his hand gestured while he spoke. "They don't give scholarships to kids who vengefully sink boats. It's not a good look on my transcript."

JJ stood up again and yelled, "Enough with the regret, bro! They caved your face in, and they gave Bree a fucking black eye. They hit us, we hit them. It's the law of the jungle. Now, if any Kooks come up to you and ask you if you had anything to do with it,  you walk up to them, look 'em right in the eye, and..."

"Deny the living shit out of them," Pope finished for him after a moment of hesitation, and Bree had the feeling that this was not going to end well for any of them.

"That's right. Deny, deny, deny," the blonde boy confirmed with a nod. Then, he pointed to the gun on the stump. "But, just for safety, we don't go anywhere without protection. Right?"

He patted the Heyward boy on the neck as Bree sighed, running a hand through her hair. "Something tells me that the gun will cause more problems than it'll solve."

"Yeah, I agree," Pope told him.

"Oh, please. What problems could it cause?" the Maybank boy questioned, waving them off when they glanced between him and each other. After a moment of silence, he looked up at the Callaway girl wit a smug grin. "Would you miss me if I went to jail?"

"No, most definitely not."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

just fyi, these next couple of chapters alone with this one are a little short since most of this episode focuses on john b and sarah. thank you guys for all the support. i love you!