Dreamer | Outer Banks

05 - Stupid Things Have Good Outcomes All The Time

"Well that was fun." JJ laughed as we sped away from the motel and made our way back to the docks. "Could have warned us sooner."

"We would have, except Pope was on the math team." Kiara pointed out, causing me to stifle a laugh before Pope glared at me.

"You were on the math team?" JJ questioned, generally surprised while putting his arm around me as we sat at the front of the boat.

"The cops took everything like it was a crime scene." Pope explained ignoring both Kiara and JJ's comments. "Did you guys find anything?"

"Did we find anything?" JJ repeated, pulling out the gun and a stack of money. "No, I don't think so. Oh yeah, we did."

"What the hell!" Pope yelled standing up from his seat. "Dude, what?" Kiara added, shocked at what JJ was holding in his hands.

"Dude, chill. Come on." JJ said, acting like it was normal to take a gun and money from a crime scene.

"Why take that from a crime scene." Pope continued to yell as JJ stood up and walked over to him to show him the gun and money up close.

"It's better than the cops having it!" JJ tried to defend himself while holding his hands up in the air.

"You serious?" Kiara questioned him, starting to get fed up.

"I'm going to lose my merit scholarship." Pope muttered, clearly starting to panic.

"Hey, hey, hey. Sh, sh, sh, sh, sh." JJ wrapped an arm around Pope's shoulder and held the gun to his mouth to shush him.  "At least you have us, right?"

Pope sighed and sat back down next to John B as he drove the boat. "I'm living the nightmare."

~~~

The five of us sat in front of a random store when we noticed a woman freaking out and panicking off in the distance. "Who's that?" John B asked a girl a few years younger than us who was sitting near us.

"It's Scooter Grubbs. He was out during the storm." She explained texting on her phone but stopped to pull up a picture. "Check out this pic I got. Dead body."

"Insane." Kie muttered, trying to sound enthusiastic which made JJ chuckle from behind me.

"Holy shit." Pope muttered from the other side of the girl.

Me on the other hand was mortified, this was the first time I've seen a dead body and somewhere deep down, I was honestly happy it wasn't my dad's.

"What kind of boat did he have." JJ asked while he stood on top of a crate and hovered over me.

"Somehow, that dirtbag copped a brand new Grandy-White. Everyone's out looking for it." She said, excited she got to pass on all the gossip.

JJ and I exchanged speechless looks before turning our heads to paramedics rolling the dead body of Scooter into an ambulance.

~~~

I stood next to John B back at the Château and watched JJ from the other side of the porch keep on flipping his lighter on and off continuously.

"Okay. So, um...we didn't see anything. We don't know anything." Pope walked through the screen door out of breath and took a seat on the couch next to Kiara. "We need to have total and complete amnesia."

"Actually, Pope's right for once." JJ agreed, standing up from his chair and walking closer to all of us. "See, I agree with you sometimes. Deny, deny, deny."

"Guys, we can't keep that money." Kie argued from the couch. "Okay. Not all of us can afford unlimited data plans, Kiara." JJ pointed out.

"We have to pass that off to Lana Grubbs." Kiara insisted, holding her hands up in the air. "Otherwise, it's bad karma."

"Bad karma to be implicated in a felony, too." Pope added, shaking his head and looking back up at JJ. "We gotta go dark."

"If that means we get to keep the money, then I agree." JJ said walking back and forth before stopping on the other side of John B and looking out at the lawn.

John B stood up from his leaning position and patted JJ on the shoulder before walking away to the other side of the porch. "I don't agree."

"What? Why?" JJ asked him while he followed my brother to where he was standing. "Just think about it. This is Scooter Grubbs we're talking about. Same dude that's buying individual cigarettes at the Porthole. Shit, one time I saw this dude begging for change in the Save-A-Lot parking lot because he needed gas."

I walked over and placed my hand on my brother's shoulder. "John B's right, we're talking about a guy who's never had more than forty bucks in his pocket and all the sudden he's got a Grandy-White? Just saying."

We all walked down to the docks as John B continued talking to us about Scooter. "All right, so think about it, Pope. How does a marina rat get a Grandy-White?"

Pope thought for a minute as he fished in the lake. "Prostitution?"

"Square groupers, bro. Okay, flying under the radar, no aerial surveillance. They don't do that stuff during a hurricane." John B explained while he sat on the ledge of the docks dangling his feet over the water. "What does that mean? Kenn?"

"They were straight smuggling." I said with a grin on my face.

"Smuggling." My brother repeated before turning back to Pope. "And I guarantee there's a serious amount of contraband in that wreck."

"Hell yeah." JJ agreed with us before he felt a tug on his fishing rod and began to reel it in. "Fish on!"

"For the record, if that is a smuggling ship with illegal contraband on the inside of it...it probably belongs to someone else." Pope explained as we were now sitting in my room.

"Minor details." Kie added, sitting in a chair by my desk.

"They could be looking for it." Pope continued holding the stack of money. "Taking it would be catastrophically stupid."

JJ climbed over me while I sat on my bed and grabbed the money out of Pope's hand. "Right. Well, stupid things have good outcomes all the time."

"What? No they don't" I argued as I sat up from my spot and gave JJ a confused look.

"All we need to do is figure out a way to get into the cargo hold of that wreck. Until then, we just lay low. Just act normal." JJ continued, clearly ignoring me.

"Right. And how exactly do we do that?" Pope sighed next to me. "Kegger?" Kie and I asked in sync and smiled at each other.