Chapter Text
JJ limped along the side of the road, barefoot and bleeding. Occasionally, a car would pass, its headlights illuminating the stretch of road before being swallowed by the darkness. No one stopped for him. No one acknowledged him. It was always the same. The looks the teachers gave him when he came to school with bruises on his face were scorched into his memory, concern mixed with distaste. They knew it was Luke Maybank. They knew they weren’t to be involved; besides, who could blame them they weren’t paid enough to deal with cases of child abuse. The extent of action they took was limited to raising his grades and shooting him the occasional smile which offered meagre comfort in the face of everything.
Little was done to stop Luke Maybank as little was done to help JJ, leaving him walking barefoot down the road at one in the morning, shivering as a cold breeze grazed his skin. Pulling his arms around himself, JJ hoped to feel something other than the lingering numbness. Emptiness had plagued him for a week, a gaping hole in his heart left by the absence of John B. Seven days since the incident and the last time JJ saw Kie or Pope. For the first three days, he’d drifted like a ghost, dropping by The Chateau occasionally. Each time was just as painful as the last as he felt a pang of persistent wrongness when he crossed the threshold like the house itself was rejecting him as a punishment for failing to save John B. The blanket of velvety dust coating every surface was another reminder of John B’s painful absence. Another reminder that neither him or Sarah was coming back. For a week, JJ wandered with the weight of guilt crushing the air from his lungs. Returning to the Maybank house was as inevitable as the tide coming in. JJ had entered with all the determination of leaving again. He’d managed to make it as far as his bedroom before everything he’d been avoiding caught up with him .
He remembered fragments of the evening, a glancing blow, a shattered photo, glass digging into his skin as he curled inwards to shield himself from more attacks. JJ could clearly recall running from the house barefoot, blood roaring in his ears and adrenaline coursing in his veins. Even now, his heart was still hammering against his ribs as if trying to escape.
He was going to kill me.
The thought came suddenly and violently, an unwelcome truth amongst the haze of fear. JJ buckled and vomited onto the side of the road. His stomach was empty, leaving him dry heaving on his hands and knees, the acrid taste of cud burning the back of his throat. Digging his fingernails into his palms, JJ held onto the pain, knowing it was all he had. Tears ran down his face; he wasn’t sure when he started crying but the waves of emotion kept rolling over him. His life amounted to pain, the bassline for his existence was pain. Love was pain; inevitably replaced with loss. His mom. Sarah. John B. Even Luke, at one point JJ had been innocent enough to believe in good nature. All of that was bullshit. Bull- fucking- shit.
Spitting and attempting to rid his mouth of the vile taste, JJ pushed himself to his feet. He ran a hand through his hair, fingers coming away stained with red. A head wound was dangerous, internal bleeding and all that; Pope taught him that much. JJ felt around the large bump on the side of his face, fingers roaming around the back of his head searching for a cut. Eventually he found the trickle of blood down the side of his face, tracing upwards with his finger to reach its source: a cut above his eyebrow, probably from a stray piece of glass.
Satisfied with the lack of concussion, JJ continued his agonising walk to Pope’s house because he’d run out of options and run out of time.
…
John B and Sarah were dead, somewhere down the coast their bodies were floating with a capsized boat. Pope could imagine their water logged bodies all too clearly, swollen limbs and blue lips. The image was burned into the back of his mind, causing him to wake throughout the week and run to the toilet to empty his stomach. He stayed crouched on the floor for hours, head in his hands replaying the events leading up to and after the moment his world shattered. Eventually, he crawled back to his bed, finding solace in the quiet of his room.
Kiara and him were done, if there even was something there to begin with. She’d ended it, writing it off as a mistake on both their parts. Pope agreed. That was the last time Pope had seen her, sitting on a pontoon, knees drawn up to her chest staring into the distance. They’d barely spoken about John B or Sarah, both choosing to clumsily dodge the subject. But it was undeniable from Pope’s stutter and Kiara’s red rimmed eyes their attempt to skirt around the ugly truth was failing. An indescribable feeling crept over him. It was the lump in his throat, the ache in his chest, and the tiredness shrouding his mind.
Pope knew what grief was. He knew the five stages. He knew he was in denial, still holding onto some fragile hope that his friends had survived. He felt like John B, still believing Big John was out there somewhere, lost in the vast expanse of the ocean. It was irrational and Pope was anything but irrational. He was aware that his feelings were fleeting glimpses of a sorrow that would pass. It didn’t feel like that, rather it was a dark rot in his chest. Festering and growing, it sank its roots deeper and deeper, until it was as though the foundations of his self were just pure misery. He could analyse and break down what he was doing wrong, organising it into a list of mistakes that were worsening his depression. Isolation, lack of sleep, lack of food, no sunlight; the list went on. But finding the effort to care was beyond him, the desire to do anything was constantly evading him. All Pope had was the swamping feeling of loss, drowning his senses. He’d lost the gold, lost his Merit Scholarship, lost Sarah, and lost John B. There was little he had left to cling onto.
Resigning himself to isolation, Pope turned to the silence in his room. Stacks of homework sat neglected on his desk, gathering dust. He saw no reason in doing any of it after losing his scholarship as with that any hope of his future burned to ash. Pope moved about his room during the day: Bed, floor, chair, floor, and finally bed again. Hours slipped by like sand running through his fingers as he wasted away his days staring at four walls. A book sat open on his bedside table, some neglected Summer reading project. Over the course of two hours, he skimmed a couple of pages, the words swimming on the page as he drifted off lost in a sea of grief. His parents tried to coax him out of his room but eventually his mom began to deliver his meals to him. The furthest Pope moved from his bedroom was making the difficult journey across the landing to the bathroom.
Pope gave up hope of seeing anyone besides his parents. The minutes after learning the boat was lost were a blur. His parents had hugged him, JJ left, Kiara was shepherded into her parent’s car, and Pope watched as life passed him by. Then he’d resigned himself to exile in his bedroom with only the memories of his friends for comfort.
It was one in the morning and insomnia had sunk its claws deep into Pope. He stood in the centre of his room, half asleep, swaying on his feet accompanied by a funeral dirge. He ran his hands through his hair, trying to sort through the storm of thoughts whirling around his head.
John B was dead. Sarah was dead. The gold was gone; it was all in vain after all.
It made more sense to view the events as a timeline of failures, a series of cautionary tales that should have been their warnings to stop. The moment Pope walked out of his interview was on constant replay; he wished he could go back, force his brain to quieten down, forget about the gold, and stay in his interview.
“Stupid,” he muttered. For someone who was supposedly ‘clever’, Pope felt like he made far too many mistakes to deserve that title. He hit his head once. “So fucking stupid.”
The pain came as a sharp reprieve from the dull numbness so he dug his nails into his skin, clawing long red scratches down his arms until he felt something else.
A knock at his window broke the trance, snapping him back to reality. Pope hesitated for a brief moment before scrambling to open the window to let JJ clamber inside. It had been a week since he’d seen the other boy but it felt like it had been an age. A long uncomfortable silence stretched between them, occupied only by the sounds of JJ’s struggle to get inside. He hit his head against the window, letting out a pained noise. That was the first indicator something was wrong. Pope moved to brush the flakes of white paint from JJ’s hair but stopped short as his fingers brushed something sticky.
“What-” He broke off suddenly realising what was coating his fingers. The realisation dawned on him over the course of three seconds as he mentally joined the dots, a cold sickening horror spread through his body settling into an uncomfortable knot in his stomach.
“JJ, what the fu-” He reached out to wipe away some of the blood.
“Stop, Pope. Please.” He caught his wrist in a vice like grip, only letting his fingertips brush the wound. “I can’t do this.”
“Dude, I can’t let you bleed all over my bed. Let me at least help you clean up.” The sudden arrival of JJ and the severity of the situation shocked Pope back to his senses.
Reluctantly, JJ let him help him to his feet and support him as they crossed the landing to the bathroom. His parents were thankfully used to Pope’s insomnia episodes, remaining undisturbed as the pair trudged to the bathroom and locked themselves inside. Pope flicked the light switch on, bathing the room in orange light. Immediately, he felt a pang of regret as the light exposed the worst of JJ’s injuries. There were far too many for Pope to order or to even register. Mottled patchwork bruises seemed to cover every inch of his skin. A deep cut still sluggishly bleeding sat above his eyebrow. It looked as though a chunk of hair was missing but it could have just been plastered to the side of his head, sticky with dried blood. His gaze slid to JJ’s arms which hugged his torso weakly. There he found crisscrossing cuts accompanied by more bruises.
Pope took it all in at once, struggling to know where to start; he swore under his breath. All the while JJ sat on the toilet seat, staring off into the distance with an unfocused gaze. Pope swore again.
“What’s the diagnosis, Doc?” JJ asked with a hollow grin that failed to reach his eyes.
“You look like shit.” It was all he could muster in the moment.
“You know, you don’t look too hot either, Spock.” He paused, “Is it terminal?”
Pope ignored his jokes, instead reaching for bandages and painkillers from the cabinet. He finally settled on an obvious question, “What happened?”
“Same old shit. No broken bones this time. No cracked skull. No concussions. Although… I think I have glass in my arm.”
“Okay.” He exhaled and then calmly reached for the tweezers. He’d taken out splinters before, what was a little glass? “I’m gonna clean you up... if that’s alright.”
“Do what you need to.”
Pope started by disinfecting the wounds. He quickly got lost in the methodical nature of the work, letting himself fall into the rhythm of clean, rinse, and repeat. Occasionally, JJ would wince in pain but he never said anything to object or stop Pope. As he was cleaning the cut above his eyebrow and simultaneously searching for stray shards of glass, JJ caught his arm, examining the long red scratches running in vertical lines.
He hummed under his breath. “What happened here?”
“Eczema.”
JJ snorted. “Bullshit. You don’t have fucking eczema. Pope, are you-”
“I’m fine,” he lied. A very bad and very blatant lie.
“Oh yeah, me too bro.”
So they were both lying now. That was good.
“Where’ve you been,” Pope asked, settling for an easier question.
Shrugging, JJ fixed his gaze firmly on a hangnail he was tugging at, refusing to meet Pope’s eye. “Y’know, around. Went to The Chateau a couple times. Went to the beach.” He let out a stilted laugh. “Went home.”
“You didn’t come here.” Yes, Pope’s isolation had been self imposed but he hadn’t seen JJ for a week and it still hurt like an open wound exposed to salt water.
“No, I figured you and Kiara would want to be alone.”
“We’re not together,” he said sharply. He wanted to add a ‘fuck you, JJ’ to the end of that but left it off, knowing his anger was unproductive. Pope buried that shit with all the other repressed emotions deep inside of him.
“Oh- I guess I just thought since you declared-”
“Yeah well you thought wrong.” His gaze hardened as he remained focused on the task at hand. “It’s not like that. It was a mistake.”
JJ glanced at him, finally meeting his eye. “She break your heart or something?”
“No.” Pope wasn’t sure he had a heart to break. He didn’t feel much romantically but he chalked that up to being honed in on his studies and lacking the time to deal with those emotions. Without the distraction of school, he settled on the natural conclusion there was just something defective with him.
“Good. Wouldn’t want that to happen. I guess that’s why we have the ‘no Pogue on Pogue macking’ rule for a reason.” He winced as Pope dug out a chunk of glass from his arm. It was the only piece that had actually stayed buried in his skin. “Fucking hell, you know I actually thought I’d make it in and out. God, I’m an idiot.”
“It’s not your fault, man.” He’d said those words far too many times over the course of their friendship. Pope covered the wound with a bandage once he was certain it wasn’t as deep as he’d first thought.
JJ twisted his arms, admiring Pope’s handiwork. “Don’t we need to get air on this shit or something.”
“Oxygen,” Pope corrected automatically. “Technically, for the platelets in your blood to clot and form a scab you need to expose the cuts to oxygen. But those need to be bandaged to stop you from bleeding everywhere.”
“Bio sucks.”
He shrugged, knowing JJ had slept through most of their classes the past year. It wasn’t his fault, of course, especially when Luke was making it harder and harder for JJ to even go home. The array of bruises across his face was evidence of the fact, not that they needed evidence to know how bad it was. Even though it remained unspoken, the Pogues were in agreement that if JJ ever needed a place to crash their floors, sofas, and beds were always available. It usually was The Chateau JJ went to, especially after Big John left. But now John B was gone… and JJ was in Pope’s bathroom.
“What are we gonna do?” The question was posed to the mirror Pope was staring into. “You can’t go back to Luke.”
“No shit.”
“We have to do something. We have to tell someone-”
“No.” JJ said flatly, cutting him off mid sentence. “We’re not telling anyone. It won’t change anything.”
“But we could get him reported-”
“And what Pope? Get the police involved so they’ll arrest my dad. And then what? I go into foster care and end up being forced off Kildare. Then I lose you, and Kie, and… I can’t lose anyone else; I can’t lose you. Reporting him will do jackshit in the long term. The best thing I can do is wait till I’m eighteen and then get the fuck out of that house.” His voice was bitter as though the words were poison on his tongue.
Pope didn’t know whether JJ would survive until eighteen.
JJ ran a hand through his hair before burying his head in his hands. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I can’t be here anymore.”
“Here here?”
“No. Fuckin’ Kildare. The Outer Banks. I can’t take it anymore. This place is poison.”
Okay, so he wanted to leave for a bit. That was fine. Pope could deal with that; it was still a manageable problem.
“Where would you wanna go?”
“The Moon, maybe.” He said quietly. “Take a rocket straight there.”
“Be serious, JJ”
“I am. Listen, you can come to. We’ll head straight to Saturn afterwards. Honeymoon on the Rings, enjoy the heat.”
“The Rings are made of ice,” Pope corrected instinctively. “Where would we actually go?”
“You know that song about country roads and Virginia,” he paused, waiting for some kind of confirmation Pope was following. “Yeah, I wanna go there. Swear there are some old mountains there.”
Blue Ridge Mountains. It wasn’t too far, probably would take them a week or so. He should have spent longer considering it but all the reckless decisions he’d made over the Summer had eroded too much of his common sense. If JJ said that’s where he wanted to go, he would find a way to get there, with or without Pope. It was far safer for Pope to take him. It was glaringly obvious that they couldn’t stay surrounded by ghosts, maybe some distance would do them all some good.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “We can take my dad’s truck.”
JJ chuckled. “Look at how far you’ve fallen. Sure, your old man won’t kill you?”
No, that’s only something Luke would do.
Digging his nails into his palms, Pope bit down on his lip, fighting the urge to spit back a biting retort. His anger was unproductive and misdirected. “I’ll leave a note or something. First ferry off the island is at six thirty; I say we head over to Kie’s first-”
“No,” JJ said sharply.
“What?”
“I… I don’t want her to see me like this,” he stammered. “Last time, she- that was bad enough. She… she can’t see me like this.”
Oh. Oh.
“Alright, so just you and me. That’s… chill.” He’d ended things with Kiara. It had been a mutual agreement. There was no good reason as to why there was a twisting feeling in his chest, or why he suddenly felt like he was going to be sick. Dragging his eyes away from JJ, he busied himself with clearing away any of the evidence of the injuries.
“Can I shower?”
He couldn’t bear to listen to JJ's voice, the thin wavering sentences and the defeated slump of his shoulders. He despised Luke, vile hatred burning through his veins. He wanted to tear the man apart for what he’d done to his son.
“‘Course. We’ve got time before we should leave.”
At first, JJ made no attempt to move, instead looking slightly awkwardly at Pope. “Hey, man, I kinda need your help getting this shirt off. It’s my ribs. It's just… y’know difficult.”
“Yeah… yeah.”
Pope took a half step closer, fingers awkwardly fumbling with the hem of JJ’s t-shirt. He was careful not to let their skin brush, even as his knuckles grazed his collarbone. There was little space between them and he could feel JJ’s warm breath against his skin. Quickly, an uncomfortable flush of heat spread up the back of his neck. As soon as the shirt was off, Pope forced himself to take a jerky step backwards, nearly stumbling over the edge of the bathtub. His eyes fell on the purple blossoming across JJ’s ribs and he felt another wave of anger roar deep inside of him, hands forming a fist. Pope forced himself to turn away to search for a change of clothes and a spare towel. Taking a moment outside the bathroom, he stood on the landing, drawing in slow jagged breaths, letting his rage dissipate. Focus. He slipped in the towel and clothes just as the shower turned on.
Pope set to work getting organised for their trip. He dusted off a backpack he’d shoved under his bed at some point in time. Stuffing in clean clothes littering his room, he packed up whatever he might need for roughly a week. It was all bare essentials, some painkillers, a water bottle, his phone and charger. After he was done, Pope surveyed his room with a grim coldness. There were traces of John B’s presence all over it: A crumpled polaroid taken by a bonfire, one of his old textbooks stacked on his desk, his t-shirt thrown over Pope’s chair. In the dim morning light, his bedroom had become transformed into a tomb, a memorial to his dead friend. He took one last look at everything before shutting the door, hoping to leave the ghosts behind.
Pope met a freshly showered JJ on the landing, his hair still damp from the shower smelling faintly of coconut shampoo. Most of the blood and dirt was gone from his face, exposing the dark circles under his eyes and the bruises already forming around his face.
“You ready?” Pope asked. “We can head out now and wait for the ferry.”
“Yeah.” He gave him an unenthusiastic grin. “Let’s hit the road.”
Downstairs, Pope scribbled out a brief note, explaining the gist of events to his parents. Even as he wrote the words, he had the nagging knowledge that his words were empty promises at best and straight bullshit at worst. Halfway through his final apology, he paused, unable to finish the final sentence.
This is a bad idea.
It was always a bad idea if it involved JJ. But it was JJ… and a small part of Pope knew he would never be able to say no to him. He would always choose him over logic and common sense because… Because that’s what friends did. That’s what Pogues did.
He forced himself to sign the letter, positioning it by the fridge where his mom would undoubtedly see it when she woke up. Before they left, he made some sandwiches for the road, handing them to JJ to pack in the shared backpack. He had enough money to last them for a couple of days wadded up in the front pocket of the bag. It was sorted into gas, food, and miscellaneous. Pope ignored the thick layer of dread that settled over him as he took the truck keys from where they hung near the door.
The backpack was wedged between their legs in the front of the truck. Pope exhaled before turning the keys to start the ignition. It was the first step to leaving, all he needed to do was follow through. The truck began to move as he reversed outwards, getting onto the stretch of open road. Step two, done. Step three was the easiest one: Drive. His foot pressed the acceleration and he shifted gears; step three was underway. He let out a sigh of relief.
“You alright there, buddy?”
Pope nodded. “Yeah, just thinking about the ferry timings.”
Who spent their time thinking about ferry timings? The answer was no one. Could JJ tell he was uncomfortable? Was he that obvious?
JJ began to fiddle with the radio, flicking through channels at a rapid speed. Far too fast for him to even register what was playing on each one.
“Stop touching that,” Pope said quickly.
“Alright, chill out. Just wanted to fill the silence.” He sat back looking slightly put out but within ten minutes JJ had nodded off.
Silence didn’t bother him. The long stretches of road were eerie this early in the morning. The sky was a pale purple bleeding into a paler blue as the sun began to creep across the horizon. It exposed what the shadows had hidden, mainly the remnants of Agatha. The sides of the road were still strewn with wreckage, reminders of her unrelenting rage. A piece of corrugated roofing was torn and discarded in the leaves. An old tire was trussed up in a tree. The Cut was still littered with the destruction of the hurricane, a cruel reminder of the deprivation on one half of the island. One half was being bled dry as wealth migrated to Figure Eight. The two sides were like twins, except one was slowly consuming the other in the womb. More and more of The Cut disappeared yearly as property developed and luxury housing grew in demand. The locals were being starved out of their homes. Pope rationalised his existential dread by reminding himself coastal erosion meant Kildare itself was being eaten away bit by bit. One day, the island would be broken down into nothing; hotels, golf courses, and mansions wouldn’t matter as everything would rejoin the ocean.
The Merit Scholarship was bullshit. Losing it had only succeeded in making him realise how futile it had all been. What would it really have achieved? He would’ve gone to college and then what? Make money and move up in the world, rising in the ranks of society until the Pogue in his blood had dried up… maybe be like Kiara in her ‘Kook Year’ as they’d dubbed it. That wouldn’t change the divisions on the island, only his personal status. What about the people he would leave behind? Lingering on it made him realise how insidious it all was. The idea Pope would improve his own personal circumstances while letting his past rot made him loathe the part of himself that had wished to find the gold to go ‘Full Kook’. Fucking embarrassing. He’d been so ready to abandon the people just like him for some neoliberal quote on quote American Dream. Like he’d said it was bullshit.
Maybe JJ was right about the island being poison.
Pope pulled over once they reached the ferry; they still had a long while before they’d be leaving Kildare. He left JJ sleeping in the passenger seat and took a walk along the docks. Heading to the pay phone, he dialled Kiara’s number, hoping despite the early hour she’d pick up.
It rang for half a second before she picked up. It was predictable, they’d both been afflicted by the insomnia and guilt plaguing them.
“Kie.”
“Pope,” she said hesitantly, voice crackling with the poor reception. “What’s up?”
“It’s JJ.”
“Oh.”
“Luke really messed him up this time. We’re gonna try and leave the island for a bit, head to the Blue Ridge Mountains maybe,” he explained, steeling himself in anticipation for Kiara’s response.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I can pack now and meet you at the ferry. Or you could pick me up, maybe-”
Pope sighed, running a hand through his hair. “No, Kie. It’s just JJ and I going. I wanted to let you know.”
“Is this about what happened between us?” She asked quickly. “Because you know it was mutual.”
“No, this isn’t about you.” Pope paused before clarifying, “Or me for a matter of fact.”
“Then who is it about?”
“JJ,” he said simply.
“You can be a real asshole, Pope.”
Several long seconds of stagnant quiet passed between them.
“I know,” he settled on replying. “I’m sorry.”
Kiara sighed, the sound coming across as a crackle. He could imagine her perched on her bed, glowering at her phone with her lips pressed into a firm line. Or maybe she was standing by her window, curtains open hoping to catch a glimpse of the truck. Either way, wherever she was, she was disappointed with his answer. “Why do you have to agree with me?”
“Because you’re right. I just thought-” He didn’t know what he was thinking, maybe he just wanted to hear the reassuring steadiness of her voice. It was something he didn’t realise he had been missing. There was far too much Pope missed, Kiara’s laughter, Sarah’s quips, John B’s smile… “I just thought you should know before we disappear.”
Pope didn’t want their disappearance to be the second absence Kie had to endure.
“How bad is it,” she asked grimly.
“Bad.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “As long as he’s not at home, right?”
“As long as he’s not at home,” Pope echoed, the words hollow on his tongue. “I wouldn’t call that place home, Kie. Luke almost-”
She cut him off before he could voice the horrible truth as though either saying it would make it more real. In all honesty, it couldn’t be more real than the bruises covering JJ’s face and the cuts across his skin. It couldn’t get more real than it already was, maybe that was why Pope was so ready to run when JJ said the word. “I know. Goddammit, I know. Just keep in touch, please.”
“I will. I’ll get you a postcard, or something.”
“I think I deserve more than that, maybe a t-shirt.”
“Sure, we’ll get matching ones.”
She laughed. “You’re such an idiot, Pope.”
And then she hung up on him, leaving Pope standing by the pay phone as the sun crested over the trees. He took a few more quiet seconds outside the truck before climbing back in and shaking JJ awake. The other boy woke with a sudden gasp, eyes nervously darting around as though he couldn’t remember where he was. Then he focused on Pope and seemed to steel himself, sucking in a slightly laboured breath. Pope saw no reason to comment on it, besides they’d done this song and dance before. He’d learned to ask was worse than to ignore. The least he could do was treat JJ like an actual person.
“Where’d you go,” he asked.
“Called Kiara.”
As the sentence left his mouth, JJ flashed him an expected annoyed look. “I didn’t want her to know about this.”
Pope turned the keys in the ignition. “Yeah, but I couldn’t just leave her without a word.”
“So you are still hung up on her.” JJ grinned at him, drumming his fingers against the dashboard.
“It’s not like that, dude. We’re… friends.” Nothing more, nothing less. How it should be. “It was the wrong time as well.”
“Alright, say whatever you want.”
“It’s not like that,” Pope repeated quieter.
He couldn’t verbalise the twisting knot of emotions in his chest, couldn’t make sense of the complicated web of feelings he’d found himself caught in. Mostly, he couldn't understand why he felt a compulsion to run when JJ had asked him. Maybe, he’d be able to figure it out along the way.
He turned to JJ, whose gaze was fixed on the road ahead. JJ had taken the fall for him countless times. Studying the mess of bruises and cuts across his face, Pope felt the familiar twist of uncertainty as though he was on the precipice of something but still not ready to take the plunge. Pope didn’t know what they’d find, all he had was the lingering knowledge they couldn’t stay in the Outer Banks and that was reason enough to leave.