"This the place?" The Uber driver asked, his voice muffled by the roar of the air-conditioning, the breezy undertones of a Dr. Dog song playing softly underneath.

JJ glanced at the one-story, clean-cut white house with blue shutters displayed peacefully outside the tinted window.

"Uh, yeah!" JJ replied unsurely. "1379 Green St?"

"That's what it says, man." The Uber driver responded distractedly, already scrolling through his phone and looking for his next pickup.

"Alright, thanks." JJ mumbled under his breath as he climbed out of the car, grabbing his worn, green backpack from the back and swinging it over his shoulder. He felt a flicker of annoyance catching sight of the thick hospital band glinting loudly against his wrist in the sunlight. Maybe it was his experience in seeing his dad on house arrest, or maybe it was that he was embarrassed, but he didn't appreciate being forced to wear any bracelet that let other people know where he'd been or what he'd been up to. He vowed to find a knife or scissors as soon as he got into the house. That is if Peterkin hadn't hidden all the sharp objects while she was off at work, he caught himself thinking sarcastically.

He stared at the neat, little home in front of him, unsure of what to think. To be honest, he'd never really thought about where someone like a cop was supposed to live on the island – not able to afford anything close to the mansions the Kooks sprawled out in over on Figure 8, but definitely not slumming it over on his part of the island. Considering that the cops always seemed to be there – meddling in his life and hovering over his house – maybe JJ had just always considered that they lived in the stations or their cop cars or something.

Instead, the address that Peterkin had given him had taken him from the hospital to a small neighborhood, hidden tidily behind the looming shadow of one of the large, tourist hotels over on Figure 8. JJ had picked up a couple of busboy shifts there before but had always assumed the housing addition was for the live-in help or chefs or something. He wondered numbly if cops ever felt as over-shadowed by the Kooks as the Pogues did; their entire neighborhood was literally in the shadow of a giant "Kook-city" that they could never hope to afford.

No. He corrected himself sharply. They're nothing like the Pogue's. They're worse than the Pogue's.

At least people around the Cut were honest about who they were. He'd known plenty of shitty people on his side of the island, but at least they weren't hypocrites. Not like the cops around Kildare. He'd seen a cop turn a blind eye to a whole plate-full of coke being passed around at a Kook party, just to see him turn around and arrest the busboy from the Cut for a joint in the same parking lot. The same cops that had decided that it was a good idea to send him to the mainland to a foster family.

No, fuck cops.

For all the differences he and Luke had, this was one opinion that they shared, which made him again question why he was trusting Peterkin in the first place.

He stared suspiciously at the small home, hearing the music from the Uber fade quietly as it disappeared down the street. The lawn was recently mowed, with wide window boxes of purple azaleas spilling over their wooden boxes and gently dusting the lawn in long, loose coils. Small, green weeds sprouted lazily between the large, red stones that led as a sidewalk up to the front door. Although the neighborhood was compact – each house easily within 10 feet of the other – it was quiet. In fact, in between the beeping of the hospital monitors over the past week and the constant crash of the ocean when he slept on John B's couch, he couldn't remember the last time he had heard it so quiet.

In the heavy heat of midday, he felt a wave of tiredness wrap slowly across his thoughts. Partially, he felt guilty for being here. He felt guilty for trusting a cop in the first place, especially one that knew his family business and had never given a shit about him. But what other option did he have? He'd been down this thought pattern over and over, but this was the only way he wasn't going to be a burden on his friends or live in a tent. Besides, it was only going to be three months. If he could tough it out with Luke that long, he sure as hell could tough it out with Peterkin.

Standing nervously on the sidewalk with his backpack, the North Carolina sun beating down on him mercilessly, it was hard not to think about the last time that he'd been forced to live somewhere new…

…

JJ had always hated their house on W. Galvin Ave.

He remembered the first day that Luke had shown him their new rental; a sticky, hot day where the Carolina flies buzzed furiously around his ears and the sweltering warmth of the marsh clung to his skin in a sweaty sheen. In this memory, he was twelve, recently released back into Luke's custody after being relinquished from his foster parent's home due to "failure to provide expected care". He leaned his face against the window of Luke's 2005 Chevy Silverado as it bounced uneasily down the marshy drive and briefly closed his eyes. The coolness of the window leached some of the warmth out of the remnants of a sickly, green bruise darkening the right side of his jaw – a parting gift from his foster mother. Luke hadn't bothered to ask about this, the same way he hadn't asked about the yellowing, peeling cast that was still cradling JJ's right arm after three months since their last fight.

JJ had just started to drift off to sleep when the truck jolted to a jerky halt, Luke clearing his throat loudly and giving JJ's knee a shove to wake up.

"We're here, princess." Luke called as he climbed out of the truck.

JJ climbed out of the truck slowly, not saying a word as he felt the lingering presence of Luke's heavy hand shoving against his knee. Luke had barely spoken to him – much less touched him – since he had been released back into his custody less than a week ago. Instead, Luke had been focused on finding a "safe place to live", in compliance with the court's demands for the return of custody. They had been crashing with one of Luke's brothers all week until they found a place – JJ placidly sharing joints with his Uncle Teddy throughout the week as he warily listened to his father curse into the phone in the other room, struggling to find a place that would house an ex-felon. When Luke had gotten really loud, Uncle Teddy would give him a sad smile and wave him out for a smoke on the porch. They had leaned against the cheap, black railing overlooking the bland sea of a gray parking lot from the 5th-floor housing complex, and Teddy told him that "Your dad wasn't always like this, ya know?" One time that week, Uncle Teddy had asked JJ what had happened to his arm. JJ hadn't answered, preferring to stare out at the dull parking lot and think nothing – be nothing—and Uncle Teddy went to the fridge and quietly handed him a beer.

A few days later, they were offered a tentative rental at the W. Galvin Ave address. JJ had found this strange, no tours or background checks were required, the move-in date was immediate with a first month's rent down payment.

Looking at the property, JJ understood why. The two-story house squatted forlornly towards the back of the property, the yard a swampy graveyard of rotted wood, broken bottles, and trash. Luke swore as he climbed up what remained of the porch stairs, kicking remnants of rotting wood and empty bottles out of the way as he jostled his keys out of his pocket and struggled to stick them into the sunken door.

JJ started to unload their belongings from the back of the truck, a meager collection of clothes and furniture that hadn't been re-possessed or lost in their last few respective months of jail or foster care. JJ felt his arm pulse with a dull throb as he struggled to balance a heavy, cardboard box between his left hand and cast as he picked his way carefully across the soupy, sunken marshland that was to be their front yard.

"Are you fucking serious?" Luke growled from inside the house, angry at something that JJ was sure he would hear about later.

JJ felt himself tense, but kept his eyes trained carefully on the ground as he continued to step carefully across the lawn.

Don't drop it. Don't drop it. He thought repeatedly as he balanced the box precariously as he climbed the remnants of the rotting wooden stairs. He shifted his weight to one side, leaning the box heavily against him, as he struggled to push the front door with his free hand. The door swung open with a creak and JJ breathed a sigh of relief when…

CRASH!

A rotted piece of deck fell underneath his right foot and he felt a tearing pain shoot hotly up the sides of his calf as the box fell heavily, spilling across the deck.

"What the fuck was that?"

A red-hot panic blinded JJ's thoughts as he heard Luke running to the door, struggling to wrench himself free from the splintered ruin of the deck where his foot had fallen through.

Luke threw open the door, staring at JJ in disbelief for a second before grabbing him underneath the arms, pulling him up onto the deck, and slamming him against the wall. Luke leaned in close and JJ vaguely registered that he thought he smelled alcohol on his dad's breath. He'd been with him all morning and hadn't seen him drinking…maybe it was just something that becomes a permanent fixture after a while, like when someone gets wrinkles from standing out in the sun too long.

"What did you do that for?" Luke demanded angrily, his blue eyes boring into JJ's.

"Sorry, dad." JJ stammered. "It was an accident." He finished lamely.

Luke's jaw tightened and JJ felt himself stiffen, but relaxed when he felt Luke let go of him and bend down.

"God damn it, boy." Luke muttered, kneeling next to JJ's right leg. JJ felt a quick pressure on his lower leg and Luke's hand came up next to JJ's face, covered in a bright red, sticky sheen. "The fucking court is going to think that I did this."

JJ felt a whoosh of light-headedness as he looked down at a large, open gash bleeding angrily from his mid-calf down to his ankle. "Sorry," he heard himself mutter quietly as Luke swore and helped him into the kitchen.

"Damn it, JJ, you've got to be more careful." Luke said as he found some towels and told JJ to hold them across his leg. "The court's got me by the balls right now, and if they see something like this…" He gestured towards JJ's leg. "They're going to have me back in jail faster than a whore would steal my wallet. So, you gotta be fuckin' careful, alright? You don't wanna see your old man back in jail, do ya?"

JJ shook his head, trying to ignore the searing hot pain burning through his lower leg.

"Alright then." Luke patted him on the side of the face and gestured to the bathroom. "Now get that cleaned up and come help me out, alright? Your old man ain't what he used to be."

JJ limped to the bathroom, propped himself up against the sink and tried to stop his arms from shaking. He stared at himself through the dirty mirror, hating the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes and threatening to spill out.

Pathetic, a voice growled out in his mind.

After years of living with Luke, moving around and getting kicked out of places, getting put into foster care, and here he was tearing up in the bathroom because of a little cut, like a child.

Fucking pathetic, the voice echoed again in his mind.

He took a deep breath, wiped his eyes, and started to clean out his cut.

Since then, JJ had never liked that house. "A bad start means a bad end.", he'd heard Pope's dad, Heyward, say in a vague, world-wise way one day when they were kids. Although he hadn't even been talking about JJ, it had always stuck with him. He was a bad start, so why should he expect anything other than a bad end? Just the laws of nature. The same thing went for that house on W. Galvin Avenue. What the court promised was going to be "a fresh start", of course, wasn't. It was a bad start, the same way that anything that JJ had even been involved in was a bad start.

And he was right; Luke had laid off him for a couple more days, afraid of the "all-knowing" court jurors that were going to show up and drag him back to jail. A few extra days to forget the experiences of a prison cell in a fog of pills and booze and Luke remembered a hard truth that everyone else already knew - that the court is over-worked, under-staffed, and wants nothing to do with the likes of him and his son unless it has to. And another hard truth, as afraid of Luke as he was, JJ was first and foremost – a smart ass. A week later, JJ was again sleeping out under the stars again on the beach, nursing a new black eye and avoiding Luke in a temper, trying to numb the promise of another "new start" with a fifth of vodka he swiped from his dad's cabinet.

…

A gnat buzzed angrily in JJ's ear, snapping him back to the present. A rush of embarrassment flushed through his body as he realized he had been caught paralyzed in a memory; whatever it was between this and his nightmare at the hospital had been occurring far too often for his comfort.

JJ swatted away the gnat angrily, readjusting the backpack over his shoulder as he walked to the door.

Honestly, he was glad that Sheriff Peterkin had said that she was going to be at work when he was due to be released from the hospital. She had reflexively apologized when she realized that she wasn't going to be home, but JJ thought that she was just as glad as he was that they didn't have to do the awkward "move in because you're otherwise homeless" thing right away. This wasn't a hallmark movie and JJ sure as hell didn't want to treat it as one.

Typing in the key code and feeling the door swing open into the blissful, cool air of a dark, comfortable house – JJ just tried to remember this for what it was, a cop trying to keep another low-life Maybank off of Kildare streets.

And what better way to keep track of him than in her own house?