XXXVII. half a heart without you

      Holding grudges was something Dylan hated. She never let her anger get in the way of her judgment but sometimes she couldn't help herself. She was passionate about a lot of things and getting John B and Sarah back on the island was something she wasn't going to give up on. But that didn't stop her from feeling guilty about what she said to Kiara. She was blinded by hatred but they needed each other. They needed to get their best friends back.

Dylan pulled Kiara to the side as Pope and JJ examined the inside of the drain. The hippie girl was hesitant. Dylan stood in front of her. "I know what I did and said to you last night was horrible and I'm really sorry," she began. "I just. . . I'm driving myself crazy with everything and I just want to put this asshole in prison for what's he's done—" when she felt herself getting angry, she took a breath. "But that doesn't mean I have the right to lash out on you. I'm so sorry, Kie."

Kiara's eyes scanned her face and she let out a sigh. "I'm sorry, too," she admitted truthfully. "I know what I did was stupid. I also know how much this whole thing is killing you."

The other girl smiled and took her hands in hers, squeezing them. "Are we okay?" She asked in a hopeful tone.

Kiara's eyes flickered to the sky and she hummed, a smile curling on her lips. "I suppose so." She answered and they laughed.

"If you two are done making out, you wanna do this or not?" Pope shouted at them from the drain.

She rolled her eyes. "Don't be mean just because I'm a better kisser than you!" She shouted back and they started walking over to them.

"OH!" JJ shouted and laughed loudly.

He rolled his eyes and Dylan slipped out a smirk. She cupped his hands and leaned on her toes, pressing her lips to his and she pulled back with a loud pop. "No need to be jealous, honey. We only kissed once." She joked.

Kiara held up a finger. "Twice, actually, but we were drunk for one of them." She corrected.

JJ's eyes widened and he looked between them with a goofy smile. "Man, I love women."

Pope rolled his eyes. "Can we move on, please?" He insisted and grabbed his girlfriend's hand.

"Alright, so if the gun go flushed out from this drain, it would've been pushed out to, like—"

"Somewhere in this trash." Pope finished and referred to all of this plastic bags in the water.

"Correct."

Kiara let out an aggravated sigh. "God, people who use plastic should be shot."

"I do vaguely remember when I use to use plastic straws," Dylan mentioned. She met Kiara's disapproving expression. "I switched to paper, though! I even got my family to switch."

"Personally, I love plastic. Use it every day. Love that stuff." JJ chimed.

"K, well hopefully, you recycle it and don't just let it flush into the ocean!" Kiara shot.

"Yeah, think about the fish, dude!" The other girl agreed.

"I thought you might say something like that, so. . ." Pope trailed and held up a roll of trash bags that he brought. "Trash bags."

Both of them smiled at him. "Did you just proactively protect the environment?" Kiara asked proudly.

Dylan squealed and she walked forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I'm so proud of you!"

He hummed with a sheepish grin.

"You two are so adorable it makes me want to shoot myself," JJ commented sarcastically, resulting in Pope throwing the trash bags at him.

After they finished picking up the trash, with help of Dylan's gloves, they still couldn't find the lost gun. "If it's not in the trash, then it's gotta be in the storm drain," Pope claimed.

"It's. . . It's in the drain." JJ affirmed expressionlessly.

Dylan stared into the drain with a disgusted look on her face. "This reminds me of that one case I studied about a man who butchered a ton of men and threw their body parts into a drain." 

The two boys looked at each other disturbingly. "Yeah,  I'm not going in there." Pope decided.

"Me either."

Kiara sent her a glare, making Dylan laugh regretfully. "Sorry."

"In the sewer, there's this worm what you get when you're down there," JJ informed while he and Pope ripped the front of the drain open with a crowbar. "It gets into your blood, and then it has to come out of her pecker. And Dylan's statement didn't make it any better, so, uh. . . That would be a hard pass for me."

"Yeah, that's gonna be a no for me too," Pope agreed. He looked at the girl next to him. "Sorry, honey."

"No, I get it. I get it. You guys are scared," Kiara mocked them. "They're scared, DJ."

"Aww, that's cute." She added with a wide smile.

"I'm not scared!" JJ denied.

"No, it's just the pecker thing," said Pope. "I'm not scared."

"You should've just led with that. You don't have to be scared. I'll do it." Kiara declared and moved them back so she could stand in front of the drain.

"Do you want me to go with you? Sister power?" Dylan asked but was secretly hoping she would say no.

"No, that's okay. I can manage swimming through trash myself," she answered with slight sarcasm. 

She didn't mind because she didn't want to go in anyways. "Okay. Be careful."

They watched her crawl inside the drain. "Just, uh,  holler if you need anything, okay?" JJ said into the drain, his voice echoing. "We'll, uh. . . We'll holler back."

"Very helpful. Thank you!"

"I can feel my skin crawling just watching this." Dylan said and shuddered. She stood up and looking at the two boys with a smile. "Well, and then there were three."

JJ looked at the couple reluctantly. "More like two and a half."

She kissed Pope on the cheek again and he sent her a smile.

The remaining three waited patiently outside as Kiara continued to search for the gun. Dylan sat on the top of the concrete and messed around with the bracelets on her wrists. From a foot or two away, Pope stared at her girl with a lighthearted expression. He never got tired of looking at her. It was hard for him to believe sometimes that she was real.

Dylan lifted her head and caught his eye, sending him a smile. "What are you looking at?" She asked and squinted her eyes from the sun.

"You. Is there a problem with that?" He said back with a cheeky grin.

Her face turned a light shade of red and her smile widened giddily.

JJ faked a gag.  "I'm about to drown myself in this nasty ass water."  He said dramatically and walked away from them.

"Go ahead. Maybe you'll see some limbs while you're in there." The girl responded teasingly, making Pope hold back a laugh.

The blonde pointed a finger at her.  "Don't say shit like that!"

"Guys, I think I found something!" They heard Kiara shout from inside the drain.

Dylan's ears perked and she hopped down from the top. They crouched down in front of the drain. "Wait, you got it?" JJ shouted back.

"Is it the gun?" Asked Pope.

Suddenly, they heard the girl let out a scream. "Gosh,  there's something dead in here!"

Dylan's eyes went wide. "Is it a body?" She shouted into the drain.

"You sound way too excited to ask that!" JJ exclaimed.

"Kie, come back!"

"What is Ward put Gavin in the sewer?"

Dylan widened her eyes again. "Oh my god, Kie, is Gavin in there? Is he chopped up?" She called out.

"You guys owe me for life?" Was all she shouted back.

As they continued to shout at the girl, they heard a faint rumbling sound. Then, there was creak, then they heard the water to bubble. "JJ! DJ! Pope, the water!" Kiara shouted in a panic.

"Shit. Get outta there now!" Pope yelled.

"Kiara!" Dylan shouted and they started tugging on the fence that covered the drain. "Kiara, climb the latter!"

Water came flooding out of the sewer drain and drowned over them. Dylan let out a small scream and she held into the bars tightly. "We have to go! Go, go, go!" JJ yelled and they sprinted away from the drain and went searching for the manhole.

Dylan ran as fast as her legs could carry, her heart beating painfully in her chest. She could hear Kiara's screams for help as they ran down the street and they saw the manhole. "Kiara, we're coming!" She shouted out.

"Kie, we're coming!"

"Hey, guys! I'm over here!"

They saw her fingers reach out of the holes and they stopped to their feet around the manhole. "Pull! Pull it!" She begged them.

Dylan gripped the metal and used all of her strength to pull but it didn't budge. She grunted in pain when she felt her shoulders strain. "Pull harder, guys!" She shouted at the boys.

"Dylan, please! Please!" Kiara shouted at the girl.

"We'll get you out of there, babe. I promise!" She yelled back and grunted again when she pulled back. "J, do something!"

The blonde boy took out his pocket knife and started filing around the metal. They heard the water sloshing in the drain and it continued to rise, almost going over Kiara's head completely. The tip of it broke and fell between the openings. "Fuck!" Dylan screamed in frustration.

Kiara's whimpers of fear were masked by the water surrounding her until she was completely submerged. The water bubbled around their feet and the detective felt a rush of adrenaline as the fear in her continued to grow. She wrapped her fingers around the metal and sucked in a breath and pulled as hard as she could along with JJ and Pope. All three of them let out loud and painful grunts until eventually they were able to pull the metal off and Kiara popped out of the drain, gasping and coughing for air.

Dylan fell backwards and exhaled deeply. Her limbs shook like crazy and she felt as if she was going to have a heart attack.

Kiara laid her head on the wet ground tiredly and she continued to gasp for air. Dylan quickly sat up and she and JJ helped pull her out of the drain completely. "Kie, honey, are you okay? I'm so sorry." She quickly threw at her.

"I'm fine. I'm fine," she responded and continued to cough.

She pushed the wet hair out of her face and examined her in worry. "Fucking shit, what the hell happened?" She asked but it was more of a rhetorical question.

"There's no way that just happened out of nowhere." Pope chimed and shook his head.

"Well, clearly the universe hates us," Kiara implied and sat up, still coughing because of the water in her lungs. She tiredly pulled the gun out of her back pocket and smirked. "This isn't what we were looking for, right?"

The three of them looked at each other with wide and they all began to laugh. "Holy shit, Kiki, you did it!" Dylan beamed.

JJ took the gun and wrapped it in his bandana. "We're gonna get this son of a bitch, man!"

Dylan let out a string of loud laughs and she helped pull Kiara to her feet. She enveloped the girl into a tight hug, not paying attention to how awful she smelled. "Oh my god, I was so fucking scared!" She exhaled.

"Sorry I couldn't find any dead bodies." Kiara replied in exhaustion.

She shook her head. "As long as it's not yours."

JJ continued to laugh in happiness and the group of four hugged each other tightly.

Later that night after the sun went down, the group of pogues drove to the sheriff's station with the gun. Pope carefully laid the weapon on Shoupe's desk. The man looked at the gun and then at the teenagers and his eyes went back and forth. "So y'all are telling me this is the firearm Rafe Cameron killed Peterkin with?" He questioned.

"Yes sir." Dylan confirmed.

"And the exact same firearm that Ward used to kill Gavin," Pope added more information.

"I—" Shoupe started to say and paused. "And where's that corpse again?"

"Didn't you look?" Kiara asked in disbelief, her skin and clothes still wet and dirty.

"I checked the hospital. I went by his house. He was out."

"He was out?"

"No shit! Cause he's dead!"

As they continued to yell things at him, Shoupe tried to remain calm. "Just because he's not in his damn home does not mean he was a victim of a homicide."

Dylan stood up from the chair she was sitting in and stood in front of his desk. "We saw Ward kill him. How much more clear can we be?" She raised her voice.

"You gotta be kidding me." JJ scoffed in anger.

"Are you at least gonna sent it in for ballistics and shit, or are you just gonna sit on your ass?" Kiara shot.

"He'll sit there and wax that flan mustache. Is that even real?"

Shoupe stood from his chair. "I'll wax this—"

"Don't threaten him!" Dylan shouted at the man.

"Will you two shut up!" Pope hissed at them.

"It's not fair!" Kiara said as the man began to walk away.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I hurt his feelings?" JJ taunted.

"This is why my family and I don't trust people like you!" The girl blurted out in anger.

"Hey!" Pope raised his voice again, his eyes looking between the two of them. "You two are making this worse!"

Dylan stared at him silently and she clicked her jaw.

Shoupe stood at his now open door. "Get out. I got work to do. Y'all are smelling up my damn office."

Kiara shook her head and she stood up from her chair. She stood in front of the man and tried to hold back her tears. "Did Ward bride you? This doesn't make any sense." She asked him before walking out.

Dylan didn't move. Her arms laid at her side but her hands were squeezed into fists. The others paused when they realized she wasn't coming with them. "D?" Pope spoke softly.

She chewed on her tongue and tried to keep quiet but she couldn't. She was so angry but most of all, she was drained. She felt drained of her happiness and her life. Her heart was in so much pain. She missed her best friend so much that it was driving her insane. Everything they were doing, everything they risked, was to get John B back and it still wasn't enough. Why was it not enough? Dylan finally moved and she stood in front of Shoupe with her brown eyes full of tears. "You've known my family for a long time. You know me. I've never lied a day in my life. A boy that I've known since I was born is gone and we have evidence of what happened and it's still not enough for you?" She spoke and her voice cracked achingly. "You people will always believe the upper power over us."

She moved past her friends and ran outside. When she pushed open the doors, let out a muffle cry and pressed one of her hands to her chest. It hurt unendurable and she felt like half of her heart was gone. John B was her heart. She was half of a person without him.

A pair of arms wrapped around her and she sank into them, feeling herself unravel even more. "We're going to avenge him, DJ. I promise." It was JJ. He understood better than anyone. The three of them were brothers and sister. Throughout life, it was always them. He understood her pain because it's exactly how he was feeling.