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In English, they learned about protagonists and antagonists. Like Luke Skywalker is a protagonist and Darth Vader is an antagonist and everyone else has other names but the story isn't about them. JJ embarrassed himself explaining it to Pope, thinking it was really cool and new information and Pope looked at him and said, “Did you just learn that?”
And JJ said, “No, I just think it's cool."
And Pope said, “Way cool, bro” and JJ decided that was a great time to throw his calculator on John B’s roof and Pope decided that was a good time to drop JJ’s sandwich in the chicken coop and that was fun for a few minutes then John B showed up and said, “Hey! Hey! Hey. Do you want to keep playing or do you want to come with me and see the old shed that’s on fire?”
And they did, they dropped what they were doing right then. John B was the protagonist. He always had been.
Pope was a secondary character. He tagged around and didn’t even always go along with what they did, because he had homework or work or dinner. Kiara was sometimes a protagonist, especially when she got them spending all their time trying to stop the development over the turtle sanctuary, but she always gave way to John B when it came down to it.
JJ didn’t know what he was. When he was a kid he imagined superhero stories with him as an invisible alien who was able to blow things up with his mind, but that was the only place he knew what he was. Maybe, when he went on benders or crashed other people’s cars or got stuck up a tree he was a featured character, but actually probably he was an antagonist because no one liked that shit, even if they loved telling stories about it later.
But he knew damn well that not for a minute of his life was a protagonist.
The first time JJ stole--a plastic container of mini M&M’s--he couldn’t believe Ms. Belle didn’t see him. She was standing two feet away, talking to Mr. Forrester, and staring at her JJ grabbed one off the shelf. He was six and never had anything to trade and the round containers were perfect. Then he took another. Then he had three. He tried for a fourth but it fell and made a loud, long rattle when it hit the floor.
Ms. Belle turned to him and her face shriveled up and he thought it was because she figured it out, but it was just because he was a Maybank because she said, “Is your daddy here? I told him not to set foot in my store.”
And JJ said, “No ma’am.”
Then she said, “Well I know you ain’t got money, so get out.” and didn’t even say anything about the fact that he was gripping the M&M containers in his hands as he walked out. It was the biggest thrill of his life, it was like flying.
For a while JJ thought he had a superpower, because he kept getting braver and stealing more, mostly things he didn’t need but sometimes things he did, and he never ever got caught. Eventually, someone might yell at him to get out because they, “Didn’t need Luke’s kid out here stirring up trouble,” not realizing that by the time they noticed him, plenty of trouble had already been stirred and was done being stirred thank you very much.
On a day in fifth grade that JJ was considering telling John B about his superpower, he absentmindedly took the projector remote off their teacher’s desk and slipped it into his pocket. John B followed him to his locker.
“What are you doing?”
JJ looked at him. For a while, they traded off being taller than each other, but JJ was shorter then and wouldn’t be taller again until eighth grade. “Opening my locker, that was my first plan.”
“Why’d you take the remote? Is it a prank, because I really want to prank her.”
He reached in his pocket to see if it had fallen out somehow but it was there. “You saw that?”
“Yeah,” John B said. “Mostly you take stuff that teachers took from you, or candy, or food or something. The remote is really random though.”
It was like that minute in Wizard of Oz when they found out the entire thing was totally fake and not real at all. Because if John B could see him, why couldn’t other people?
Maybe every few years, he had teachers, mostly new young teachers, who asked a lot of questions and wanted to know why he didn’t turn in any assignments and why he didn’t come to school for a month that time and why did he have stitches in his lip. Even as a kid JJ picked up a pattern that when those people were around, DCS came to his house and the principal's office, but that never lasted for very long.
Sometimes a DCS person would come who’d seen him a couple of times and he could tell they were annoyed or bored and absolutely believed that JJ’s jaw was scraped raw not from being dragged up off the cement back steps after a failed attempt to get away, but messing around with his buddies on the sidewalk near the beach. It felt like being right when they’d say, “Call us if you need anything” with as much contempt as, “Stop wasting our time.”
John B didn’t live that way. He thought he did, right? But he always needed JJ to distract or play lookout or lie because people were invested in him and saw what he did. JJ could get there if he created a spectacle, for a minute, if he told a story with loud enough voices, put himself in danger or started a fire that got too big, or something. But it wasn’t the default setting.
Like how the second, the second, Big John died, DCS was at John B’s door. Which really fucking sucked, because on top of being a fucking orphan, evil social workers were showing up and asking questions. It was a major, new threat and one JJ didn't realize no one knew he'd been shoving off for years until he was there when it happened to John B for the first time.
Which was really lucky for John B. Like, seriously lucky because John B was stupid sad and stoned and just kind of looked out the window when they heard a car pull up and said, “Oh look, a car.”
“That’s a DCS car man,” JJ said urgently.
John B by sat up, but not with the amount of urgency required. “What? No."
“You ever had a fucking sedan drive up to your house? It’s what they rent off the ferry. Every time. Right now, you have to clean shit right now.”
John B finally believed him, especially when a tall skinny white lady got out of the car and it was super obvious he was right.
“ Fuck!” John B whispered. He whirled around, taking in the weed on the table, the empties and the entire house that screamed, No adults, not suitable for children.
“Okay,” JJ said, “what kind of stoned are you, can you hide shit or stall?”
“Uhhh, hide shit,” John B decided, “But you’re too stoned to stall, man. Ten seconds ago you were squishing my face.”
“Nah,” JJ said, “I’m never too stoned for this.” All that took way too much time, so JJ had to run out of the house and barely stop the social worker from coming onto the porch. “Excuse, me, excuse me?” he said, “Hey, oh thank god you came to save me.”
She looked taken aback, which meant he succeeded. “Excuse me?”
JJ walked down the steps, coming into her space and forcing her back. He smiled wide and held his hands up, innocent and unthreatening. She looked at him with wide eyes, like a teenage boy at the house where she presumably was going to meet a teenage boy was way unexpected.
“Can I borrow your car? It’ll just take a second, I’ve been waiting for a way to get across the cut all day, and you can totally make my dreams come true.”
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to step around him but he blocked her.
“C’mon, please? I can tell you’re the kind of person who likes to help people, I can feel it.”
“Are you John Routledge?” she asked. Amateur hour.
“Oh no ma’am,” he said, anticipating her move to the other side and following it. “God, I wish I was. His uncle is so nice, man. Last night he made me the best turkey sandwich, totally wish I was. You know, and their house has like, hot water and always has food, it’s like. Man, wish I was John Routledge.”
“I need to move past you, sir,” she said.
She was new as hell.
“Sir!” JJ crowed, “Did you call me sir?”
Like it was planned, the front door opened and John B stepped out, “Hey there,” he said. “Hey, can you give us a ride? We gotta get across town.”
JJ lurked around the house while John B talked to the social worker. John B’d never done it before, but he was a protagonist so he instinctively knew what to do.
Oh, no ma’am that smell isn't weed, we got skunks around here who think it’s their house. Did she see any weed? Where was his uncle? Uh, right now he was a few miles off the coast, was she a strong swimmer? Oh, well if she had to see him then she should have called ahead.
“If you aren’t being supervised by your uncle, who is looking after you? You can’t stay here alone.”
What?
“Uh, my good friend JJ man, I’m staying with him.”
The social worker pivoted to him. “Can I have the name and phone number of your guardian, then?”
John B was an idiot, but he was stoned and didn’t have to do this that often. “No,” JJ said, “no, no, John B isn’t staying with me anymore. He’s staying with Pope Heyward’s family. Here, I have the number.”
She left, but not before talking on and on about how there needed to be evidence that John B was being supervised, and that just having a house with running water and food wasn’t enough, he had to be being cared for, and if there wasn’t evidence of that soon they would have to talk about an out of home placement and--
And
What the everliving fuck. They had a problem with that? That was enough for foster care to be an imminent threat for a protagonist?
JJ smacked him in the back of the head when she left. John B turned around, in too good a mood about having fooled a DCS worker one time to be mad. “Oh shit, I’ve talked to more compassionate cops. ‘You need supervision’ shit. Do I strike you as someone who needs supervision? No. She’ll see that too, they’ve got kids with actual problems on their caseload so I’m in the clear right?”
He was definitely supposed to respond to that, but for once didn’t know how. JJ felt like he was suddenly the highest he’d ever been, like he wasn’t even there anymore. John B waved a hand in front of his eyes. “Dude, we did it?”
“Yeah we did,” JJ high fived him, pretty sure that he looked and sounded right. “Can we please smoke again? I didn’t come over here for that. ”
John B reached above the fridge and pulled the weed out of the tea box that probably never had tea in it. “Oh my god, she came here and I was like ‘Oh shit.’ Thank god it was your here because could you imagine if it was Pope? Kiara? ”
“Kiara would have been awful,” JJ agreed. John B rolled the joint in the fucking stupid way he always did and JJ fixed it. “You did pretty good.”
“Pretty good? Sorry, I’m new to the orphan game, but I think I was fucking great.”
John B sounded annoyed like what, he was supposed to give out gold stars? Fuck that.
Fuck that.
Fuck.
That.
JJ put the joint on the table and reached for his lighter. “You did a shitty job dealing with that.”
John B laughed loudly. “The fuck?”
“That was fucking stupid man, don’t ever tell anyone my dad is the one taking care of you. That’s a great way to get taken away.”
John B sobered quickly. “What does it matter? They don’t know who your dad is.”
And it was really JJ’s fault that John B looked so surprised. It wasn’t like JJ hadn’t shown up beat to hell a few times or was ever that secretive around it with other people. But those times he sat across a table from a social worker in the admin office at school, played out an imaginary skateboarding accident or called the electric company fake crying to get it turned on half an hour before a home visit? That, he didn’t tell anyone about. Not even John B.
He was still pissed and really felt like he had the right to be.
“The hell they don't, you think you’re the only one on their radar?”
Secondary characters, or whatever he thrived on adults not paying attention and doing more than checkboxes and accepting obvious lies. John B though, he was a protagonist. Protagonists had major conflicts, obstacles to uncover, and JJ knew that social workers couldn’t really save anyone, so what was he so jealous for anyway?
“What are you talking about?”
JJ smiled so wide his eyes nearly closed. “Bro. Come on.”
“Come on nothing, what are you talking about?”
“Are you seriously playing dumb right now? You know what goes on for me.”
“I didn’t know that DCS was involved. How could you not have told me that?”
“What, you’re the only one they can know exists? My shit is visible, there's records of it. They hear a rumor that you might not have someone tucking you in and boom, here they are.”
John B stepped back. “Dude, are you jealous? You think I want to be threatened with foster care? You think that’s fun for me?”
None of the words JJ knew would work or could even come up, so he hurled his lighter at John B. John B shoved him off the couch, hard. JJ sprang up and rammed his arm into John B’s chest and they froze, staring at each other. JJ had the kind of white roaring noise and pounding in his face that preceded beating someone down worse than he meant to and he Did Not want to do that to John B.
“Go call your fucking social worker,” he bit out. JJ grabbed the weed and walked out to do some background character shit.
It wasn’t that JJ wanted to go to a foster home, it was that when he got called to the admin office at the end of the day, or the day after he’d showed up looking like roadkill, his heart would beat hard not just with the fear of getting taken away, but with the knowledge that someone had noticed. Someone thought it was a problem.
Someone wanted it to stop.
John B came to school halfway through the day. He found the stupid class for stupid kids that JJ was forced into, and stuck his face in the door window, drumming his fingers on the glass. JJ glanced at the teacher and debated how invisible he was. The stupid kid class only had eight kids, but Jack Vanhansen was having a meltdown, so he didn’t hesitate before grabbing his bag and leaving. John B opened the door for him, and gently closed it behind him.
“You wanna get out of here?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” JJ agreed, following him out the side door.
Ideally, they’d surf for a while, but wasn’t warm enough yet. They went to the dock by Heyward’s. A lot of the time they found each other there, it was the midpoint between most of their spots, and not far from The Wreck. Wordlessly, they walked down the dock and sat on the edge, dangling their feet over the water.
They weren’t going to fight anymore, and hopefully, they were barely going to talk about what happened.
“Hey, you know how I’m an idiot?” JJ asked.
“Oh yeah,” John B said, nodding solemnly. “Don’t worry, I told Kiara about my terrifying encounter with the big, bad, DCS so I’ve done all my crying and gotten all the sympathy I need.”
JJ picked at the dock, looking for something to throw into the water. "Good, you had your movie moment, I don't have to deal with that. We're cool, right? Can we do something now?"
“I’ll kill your dad if you want me to,” John B said. Startled, JJ looked over. To people who didn’t kill people, murder was a joke but John B looked dead serious.
“How?” was all he could think to say.
John B nodded like he expected this. “Make it look like an OD. Seems simple enough, he always has enough shit to kill a small country.”
“Then what, genius?” JJ laughed, “DCS takes us in a two for one deal, best case scenario?”
“We’ll just kill every social worker who comes, they’ll run out eventually.” JJ laughed hysterically at how serious he was, and John B worked to keep a serious face but eventually busted up too.
They tapered off and JJ geared up to change the subject to the exact opposite of that, but John B said, “It seems like….” he trailed off, “...I don’t know, you really don’t want people to know. You know, you always lie about it, or make jokes when you don’t. I've tried to talk to you about it, you don't want anything to do with it.”
And he couldn’t disagree with that. He had no right to expect anyone to save him when he lied any time it looked like they might try.
“Yeah,” he eventually said, “yeah, I can’t really live with it if I cry every time I take a hit. I have a lot of other shit to do.”
“But you’re literally getting hit. You can stay with me you know. Just stop going back there.”
JJ shrugged. He wished he had something to smoke or throw or steal. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I pretty much do live with you. I don’t even go there that much. It’s not that serious.”
John B nodded. “Okay. Just say the word though, life becomes the Let’s Kill JJ’s Dad movie.”
JJ stood up, hitting John B in the shoulder to get him to follow. “Yeah, that’s not really the story I want. I’d rather have the JJ Gets Rich or the JJ Goes To Space story. Literally anything else.”
John B fell into step behind JJ and put his hands on his shoulders, creating leverage to jump up and down as he said, “You got it, the JJ Story, coming to a theater near you.”
It was as imaginary as being an invisible superhero who blew stuff up, but JJ would get by on that just fine.