I get out of the car, taking the bags I have in the trunk with me, and head to the house. I'm almost sure this is the place so I ring the bell and wait for someone to open the door for me. I don't wait long "Hey, come in! I'm glad you are here." Rafe says as he hugs me. "I went to your place yesterday but your father said you had spent the day with Tom."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about not saying anything, but Tom practically dragged me to the boat with him. We wanted to make a sibling trip for a while and he decided to do it yesterday." I determine that it is better to lie to him. He doesn't need to know that I spent the day with Kiara and Sarah because of the pogues. "Anyways, I brought you some things, in case you're needing."

He takes me the kitchen, where I leave the groceries and gives me a tour of the house. "How are you staying here?" I ask him with legitimate curiosity.

"The house belongs to the Glissons. They're in Sun Valley all summer."

"And they just let you crash here?"

"Well... I didn't tell them, alright?" he shares with me.

"I told you could stay at my place, Rafe. It is better than being here!" I'm truly worried about his situation.

"Hey, I know you care and you want to help me," he says, placing his hands in mine. "but I can fix this one by myself, I swear."

"I have no choice, right?" he nods and I kiss his cheek. "I'm here for anything. How is your arm by the way?"

"I think I'm handling it!" he proudly shows me his arm, covered in a sterile bandage as I told him to do.

"When did you last change the bandage?"

"Yesterday." he answers.

"Okay, it's time to do it again." I go to the bathroom and I feel Rafe right behind me. I sit in the sink and he gets closer to me. "I'm taking care of your arm, not your face. You don't need to get this close."

"I know you like it." I blush with his comment, which is not my usually behaviour, I guess I have to blame it on this time apart from him. I can't say that I don't miss him, but I'm not sure I'm ready to be with him again, yet.

I finish cleaning the wound and Rafe tries to make me stay a little longer. "You don't have to spend the night here, but you could stay a little longer! We could watch a movie or something."

"I promise my dad I would be home soon, I'm sorry!" I feel guilty for lying to him, but he would never understand the side of the pogues I had recently discovered.

They were just like us, in general, but Tom's friends were amazing. And I knew they helped Tom a lot after Cali.
But to Rafe, they will always be worse people than us, not worthy of hanging out. And I want to change his mind, but the situation is not the best and I can't just tell him I'm going on a treasure hunt with the Pogues.

"Okay, text me when you get home, please."

I say goodbye to Rafe and make my way through the door, leaving some dollar bills in the kitchen counter, while he's not looking.

After stopping at Rafe's new place, I head over to the Chatêau. We decided to go for the gold tonight and they're just waiting for me to leave to Crain's house. I told them I had to do an important thing before the gold hunting, but I didn't explain what, it was just not worthy of an argument.

〚〛

"Tell me again the stories about this house." I ask them as we approach the stone wall.

"Mrs Crain supposedly killed her husband with an axe and buried his body in the property."

"No way, that's some fucked up shit!" I don't know if I should believe it or not.

"It was no supposedly Kie." JJ turns to me to explain. "Hollis, their daughter was my babysitter and she told me all about it, okay?"

Kie looks at me as if to say "don't buy his shit" and I laugh facing JJ's scared face.

"You don't believe me? Your problem" JJ seems now upset, but I just ignore his childish behaviour.

Suddenly, out of nowhere two spotlights brighten the yard making us hide in a hurry.

"Okay, so she has motion sensor lights." Pope gasps

"We could, uh... move really slowly, maybe?"

"That's not how it works." I answer to JJ's nonsense.

"Oh, shit. Let's throw a rock at it." John B suggests.

"What?" my brother looks at him, trying to understand if he was joking or not.

"That's a really good idea. Let the axe murderer know that we're here." Kiara says ironically

"You have a better idea?" John B inquires

"Literally anything but that." Kiara continues

"What about the breaker? In the circuit box on the porch." Finally, someone has a good idea "We used to play hide-and-seek here as kids." Sarah continues "And if we were brave enough,we'd go all the way up to the porch. I've seen it."

"No, no. You're not going in the house alone." John B tries to stop her

"Crain chops people into pieces." JJ adds

"If you believe that, but she's like what, 85?" Sarah has a point. "She's probably barely still kicking."

"Here. I'll go with you." Kiara says and Sarah thanks her.

"We'll wait for your signal." Tom advises.

"Hey! Be safe." John B says as Sarah and Kiara are leaving.

"We will." she answers.

As they left, JJ grabs Pope's face "Be safe."

"I'll be so safe. I'll be safe for you." Pope plays along.

"Can you guys stop. Stop! I'm gonna kill you." John B isn't finding that funny.

"But how would that keep us safe?" My brother laughs with the boys while John B rolls his eyes. I just watch and smile, Tom is so happy with these guys.

After a while, everything turns dark again, they did it! We enter the crawl space, and JJ starts to rant about something.

"Holy crap, you know what this is? It just hit me" the boys ignore him as they start to set up everything. "Pope, look. This is C.H.U.D. Full C.H.U.D."

"What is he talking about?" I ask, confused.

"Cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers?" Never heard of it "Have you guys not seen that film? It's actually a good film. It's about cannibals that live in the sewers and under New York City, and it's like--"

They finish the setup and John B shushes JJ. "All right. How deep do you think this is, Pope?"

"I have no idea." after that answer, John B doesn't look confident but still goes for it. "Hey guys, I have one request," he says already going down "Don't drop me." After those words, JJ pretends to drop him and Pope just scolds him.

I'm really not sure what I'm doing since the three boys have way more strength than I do, but still, I feel useful.

"Wait, hold on one second. I'm gonna get situated." I look over to JJ and see him having some trouble with holding the rope. And then he accidentally drops it. We (the boys since I'm not doing much) handle the situation, but John B makes too much noise while falling "I told you not to drop me!" he yells. "What the hell was that?"

"Little technical difficulties" Pope tries to calm him down and we continue to lower him, slow. He eventually reaches "some sewage-water lookin shit" but asks us to keep going. Unfortunately, it turns out to be nothing, and we pull him back up. Halfway he asks us to stop and to give him some time; he says he found something.

We are waiting for him when the girls come to us, running. "Guys! Mrs Crain, she's up there! She tried to kill us with a fire poker." Kie says, breathing heavily."

"We got to go. We locked her in the parlor, but we got to gotta go." Sarah adds

"Okay, code red." JJ screams to the well. "Let's go, John B! Get back on, man!" We start to pull the rop,e but John B is not tied to it anymore. They all begin to call him and pull back again, this time with John B in it.

He's almost here when a gunshot makes us drop the rope. I look around and see an old lady, Mrs Crain I presume, holding a gun in her hands and I quickly hide. She continues to shot at us and I realise she won't give up so I try to make my way to John B's van.

We run for our lives and suddenly we're all inside the van, except for John B. JJ starts to drive slowly as John B jumps the wall and makes a run to us.

John B is covered in mud but he seems fine. We all check each other, we're okay if we ignore the fact that JB looks disgusting.

"You smell like ass." Kie comments

"What the hell just happened?" Sarah asks and I don't think any of us as the answer to her question. Until JJ screams from the driver seat "All-time Pogues hall of Fame, baby!"

They all start to talk at the same time about what just happened and Mrs Crain. John B seems quiet, and when I look to his hands, I understand. "Is that...?"

"We did it, baby!" he shouts euphorically and they all start to whoop and scream.

I look at them, thrilled, and remember everything Tom had told me. They deserved this. Then I look to my bruised hands probably developed when JJ dropped the rope. "This looks pretty nasty," I thought to myself. But what did it matter? We had the gold, that was all that matter!