TWENTY-SIX... collins and jj

                                        

                                              
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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You never know how hard it will be to cope with the loss of someone, until you're in that phase of waking up every morning in pure dread of what it is you'll be waking up to. 
A life without John B and Sarah wasn't the life that Collins had expected to be living after becoming their friend. Before that summer, she'd never really even known the two as individuals, so she had lived without them before, but back then she didn't have the memories with them to haunt her. Back then, she never knew what it was like to not have them as friends, but now she did. Since they'd gotten to know each other and built a friendship together, Collins had never imagined not knowing such strong willed, loyal, and caring people. 
She missed the days spent following after John B, half loving his ability to concoct because he had been pretty on the nose with his wild theories, but also the other half of the time she was scared he would hurt himself from all the trouble he got himself into. He'd broken his arm and almost fallen into a well that he'd willingly climbed into. And ultimately, look where he was now. Collins supposed she was never wrong to be worried in the first place. 
And Collins couldn't help but find herself reminiscing on that one night she had arrested herself to being trapped on a boat with Kie and Sarah when they looked at each other as enemies instead of friends. She thought she was going to be collateral damage that night. The hate they had for each other was so strong, no one would have ever believed they could've mended the bridge that had been burned between them. Collins herself had had very little hope that JJ's plan would actually work but she was eternally grateful that it did. It had turned out to be one of the best nights of her life. 
Two people she had never known she would ever miss so much were gone and Collins didn't know what to do with herself. 
And no one understood her like the Pogues did. They shared the same grief with her, they knew exactly what each other was going through and that drew them together like some kind of centripetal force was working on them. Everyone else on the island was brainwashed into believing that John B was the villain who killed Peterkin and dragged Sarah down with him in his escape. They were completely alone with the truth of the matter and even further isolated from the rest of the world. 
Because of that, there were very little moments where they ever wanted to be apart from each other. The realization that their friends were gone would hit them at the most random times and so they needed each other as sources of comfort for when it did.
One case in particular was with JJ, who had taken the loss his best friend especially hard. Collins wanted to do everything in her power to console him, almost to the point where she was using it as a coping mechanism to deal with her own sadness by helping him with his. Like if she could get him through this, then she could get herself through it.
They spent a lot of their time together, not just with their other friends but with each other, just the two of them. Collins got back on her studying for the ACT and SAT, even though she found herself spacing off more than solving actual problems, and JJ kept her company. Sometimes they would go to the library (a place JJ never thought he'd ever step foot in) and they'd find a book for her to read with him. They finished Treasure Island finally; at least the main character got their treasure. But after that, they tried to avoid books with hunts for gold in the synopsis. 
It had become their thing to spend cool summer days at the base of an angel oak tree. Sometimes Collins would be nose deep in her notebook with her pen in hand trying to follow one of the writing prompts from the practice SAT tests while JJ was twenty feet above ground, sitting on a thick branch with his leg dangling off the side.