I LIED ABOUT GOING STRAIGHT HOME EMPTY-HANDED from that shop, our second day at Amity, I mean.
I didn’t end up buying anything that would keep the boathouse door closed, that part was the truth, yeah. But another truth was how I hated—always hate—to disappoint Jules. So I didn’t come home completely flat-out, bottoms-up empty-handed. Not completely.
I did bring her something back. Just a little dumb nothing piece of junk from a run-down convenience store, no big deal. But that afternoon when I went to give it to her, thinking it would make her smile, or whatever, she and Mom were all caught up putting contact paper on the cabinet shelves. That took about thirty years or so, and then it was more crappy pizza with the slimy canned mushrooms on top that no one likes except Dad, and another night of reading, stuffed up and wrapped like a mummy in my sleeping bag, listening to the firecracker banging from outside, from down by the river.
So that night, I just kept to myself, and waited.