Henry stared at the number on the magazine and tried to figure out what
Corey meant. Corey reached for the TV Guideand ripped off the part of the
cover that he had used for the drawing. Then, seeing that the pen had
imprinted the number on the next few pages as well, he tore off more corners
until he couldn’t make out the number anymore.
“By the way, don’t tell anybody about me and Jessica,” Corey said as he
turned to face the television again. “She has to dump Lunchbox before we’re
official.”
“Who’s Lunchbox?” Henry asked.
“I mean it, Hank.”
The next weekend Bryce and Justin came over to Henry’s house to play roller
hockey in the street. Later, after dinner, they started talking about a sleepover,
the way they always would when it got late and nobody wanted to go home.
Sleepovers meant games of kick the can and ghost in the graveyard. They
meant hall hockey tournaments with four players, even if Henry had to play
with Lee on his team. They meant staying up late and trying to prank the
person who fell asleep first.
Henry’s father thought it over and finally agreed when Henry started to beg.
They followed the usual procedure: Bryce and Justin took turns calling home
and asking, mentioning that the other was staying too, saying that they would
behave and that Mr. Harver had enough sleeping bags and that Henry had
extra pajamas they could borrow and that they could brush their teeth with
their finger just this once.
Around ten o’clock Henry’s father went upstairs and told them to behave
themselves because he didn’t want to have to come back down. They all said
goodnight and then went back to paging through Henry’s fourth grade
yearbook picking out the prettiest girls. Justin went upstairs to the kitchen on
a mission for Oreos. He was gone a long time, and Bryce and Henry looked