
It wasn’t our fault, that’s what you have to remember. It was the book. This old book: tattered, dirty, the leather brittle and cracked. I don’t know where Annie found it, some stinking secondhand place down near the docks, she said, or wherever. The point is — it wasn’t supposed to be real, you understand? It was just for fun, for god’s — no fucking pun intended — sake. We were too young for it to be real.

