minivan. Henry wondered if Bryce would call him a masturbator again if he
tried to give the picture back.
A moment later Bryce’s mother pulled into the parking lot. “See ya, Hank,”
Bryce said as he backpedaled away from Henry. “Mom says you and Justin
can come over on Saturday if you want.”
Henry fixed his backpack as he waited for his brother Lee, who took longer
collecting his things at the end of the day than Henry did. Henry’s first
thought seeing Lee come out of the building was that Lee was lucky not to
have to worry about the picture. Blooming guilt made Henry’s voice sound
funny when he greeted Lee, and he wondered if his brother was looking at
him strangely. Henry fixated on the picture as they walked, even as Lee
described how somebody brought a cat skeleton to class and how a new girl
had told him that she had never seen Power Rangers before. “Can you believe
it?” Lee asked, and Henry said that he couldn’t. Henry imagined the square of
paper shuffling down through the things in his backpack. He hoped it made it
all the way to the bottom, like when he sank to the mesh floor of the
McDonald’s ball pit as other kids jostled above him.
He thought about how he would hide the picture when he got home. He
would either stash it in a pile of Sports Illustrated for Kids issues in his closet, or
he would put it under his mattress. It would have been the kind of thing to
hide under a loose floorboard—like in the movies—but his house was too
new for loose floorboards and his bedroom was carpeted. Lee would
sometimes sneak into Henry’s room to cut photos of his favorite athletes from
the magazines for collages he made on construction paper with glue sticks. So
Henry first thought to hide the picture under his mattress. But he didn’t know
when his father would be coming for his sheets. When his mother was still
alive, Henry had helped her with the laundry on Saturdays, but his father
didn’t stick to a schedule. There were just some days when he would overturn
the house in a frenzy of chores. If Lee found the picture he might tell on
Henry, but there was a chance he wouldn’t if Henry let him look at it. Henry
didn’t even want to think of his father finding it.