back and forth in place, eyeing his shoes as they pivoted in the grass. “Don’t
let Bryce mess with you. He probably doesn’t know anything about it.”
Henry felt embarrassed about mispronouncing “genitals” and just as
confused about masturbating as before. But Corey punched him lightly on the
arm as he went inside. Henry was glad he had asked.
Corey stood at the kitchen counter most of the night on the phone with Jessica
Price, twisting the telephone cord until it coiled up to his elbow.
Henry and Lee watched “Home Improvement” while Corey was on the
phone. Then they all watched a Discovery Channel special on cheetahs. Later,
Henry helped Corey put Lee to bed.
When they were back downstairs, Corey switched to “Nick at Night” and
they watched “The Munsters” for a while. During a commercial break, Corey
said to Henry, “If Bryce teases you about sex words, just ask him if he knows
what ‘69’ means.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like when you 69 with a girl. No way Bryce knows about that.”
“What’s 69?”
“Look,” Corey said, grabbing a TV Guide and a pen from the coffee table.
“69’ing is when a boy and a girl are like this.” He drew the number 69 on the
back cover of the TV Guide. Then he ran his pen around the 6 again from
bottom to top. “See, this is the head and this is the rest of the body.” Then he
ran his pen around the 9 again from top to bottom. “And this is the other
person’s body. Get it?”
Henry didn’t get it.
“Then, ya know, they do it, and that’s 69’ing.”