Chapter Text
After having been on the road for almost 13 hours, only stopping briefly for gas or food, being out on the Boardwalk really wasn't high on my priority list. But, regardless, here we were. We'd only been at Grandpa's for a few hours, enough to eat dinner and unpack, but Mom had suddenly suggested that we go shortly after we were done with dinner. She claimed to need to start looking for work and that the boys needed to get rid of some of their pent-up energy. I suspect the tick under Grandpa's eye also had something to do with this little excursion.
We had left Phoenix early in the morning, so I know she must have been exhausted. I was exhausted, and I only drove for a few hours. But my younger brother, Sam, hadn't stopped complaining since we got here. First, it was the smell of the ocean air. Then, when Grandpa was playing dead, he started getting excited about the fact, thinking that if Grandpa was dead, we could go back to Phoenix. When he realized that there wasn't a TV in the house, you would have thought the world had ended. The comment about Grandpa's taxidermy room looking like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre probably pushed him over the edge. We hadn't seen Grandpa more than a handful of times in the past seven years, and I'd be willing to bet that he already regretted letting us move in. So, Mom took us to the only place that might entertain my brothers for a while - the Boardwalk.
Looking into "Video Max's," I couldn't help but grin. Michael and Sam had both run off almost as soon as we got there, with Mom yelling at them to stay together. Who knew if that would happen. I stuck with Mom. Along the way, we ran into a little boy who'd gotten separated from his mother, so mine had taken his hand and gone into the store to see if there was a way to find his mom or report him missing. The kid's mom had shown up rather quickly and left already. When it became obvious that mine would be a bit longer, I'd moved out of the main thoroughfare to a knick-knack store nearby that had a cart of books outside. Nothing struck me as worth buying, but it was a good way to waste time while waiting.
When I looked up again a few minutes later to see if progress had been made, Mom was still chatting away. Before I turned away, however, a group of young men walked out. Bikers, from the looks of it. Definitely troublemakers. The man in the store was glaring at them, and they looked like they were off to cause mischief somewhere else. Shaking my head, I grinned and began to turn back to the books when I caught the eye of the platinum blond leading the group. It was a brief moment, just long enough for me to get the feeling of Deja Vu, or maybe a premonition, and for him to notice. I mentally shook my head, then slowly nodded once in acknowledgment. He smirked, then paused just briefly enough to pretend to tip his non-existent hat to me before continuing on. The other guys with him didn't notice the interaction.
Mom left the video store before I had time to dwell on the odd exchange. I put down the book I was looking at and headed over, linking arms with her as she started babbling about what a nice man Max was and that he had offered her a job on the spot. As we drifted toward the car, I hadn't realized that I'd started toying with my necklace until she chastised me for it.