It

A moment later she heard Patrick roar with mixed laughter and pain.
‘Six feet!’ Henry bellowed. ‘Just like a fuckin blowtorch! Swear to God!’
Silence then for awhile. Sweat trickling down her back. The sun beating ht rough the Ford’s cracked windshield on the nape of her neck. Heaviness in her bladder.
Henry bellowed so loud that Beverly, who had been close to dozing in spite of her discomfort, almost cried out herself. ‘Damn it, Hockstetter! You burned my frigging ass! What are you doing with that lighter?’
‘Ten feet,’ Patrick giggled (just the sound of it made Bev feel cold and revolted, as if she had seen a worm squirm its way out of her salad). ‘Ten feet if it was an inch, Henry. Bright blue. Ten feet if it was an inch. Swear to God!’
‘Gimme that,’ Henry grunted.
Come on, come on, you stupidniks, go, get out!
When Patrick spoke again his voice was so low Bev could barely hear it. If there had been the slightest breath of wind on the air that baking afternoon, she would not have done.
‘Let me show you something,’ Patrick said.
‘What?’ Henry asked.
‘Just something.’ Patrick paused. ‘It feels good.’
‘What?’ Henry asked again.
Then there was silence.
I don’t want to look, I don’t want to see what they’re doing now, and besides, they might see me, in fact they probably will because you’ve used up all your luck today, girly-o. So just stay right here. No peeking . . .
But her curiosity had overcome her good sense. There was something strange in that silence, something a little bit scary. She raised her head inch by inch until she could look through the Ford’s cracked cloudy windshield. She needn’t have worried about being seen; both of the boys were concentrating on what Patrick was doing. She didn’t understand what
she was seeing, but she knew it was nasty . . . not that she would have expected anything else from Patrick, who was just so weird.
He had one hand between Henry’s thighs and one hand between his own. One hand wa s flogging Henry’s thing gently; with his other hand Patrick was rubbing his own. Except he wasn’t exactly rubbing it — he was kind of . . . squeezing it, pulling it, letting it flop back down.
What is he doing? Beverly wondered, dismayed.
She did n’t know, not for sure, but it scared her. She didn’t think she had been this scared since the blood had vomited out of the bathroom drain and splattered all over everything. Some deep part of her cried out that if they discovered she had seen this, whatever it was, they might do more than hurt her; they might actually kill her. Still, she couldn’t look away.
She saw that Patrick’s thing had gotten a little longer, but not much; it still dangled between his legs like a snake with no backbone. Henry’s, however, had grown amazingly. It stood up stiff and hard, almost poking his bellybutton. Patrick’s hand went up and down, up and down, sometimes pausing to squeeze, sometimes tickling that odd, heavy sac under Henry’s thing.
Those are his balls, Beverly thought. Do boys have to go around with those all the time? God, I’d go crazy! Another part of her mind then whispered: Bill has those. On its own, her mind visualized her holding them, cupping them in her hand, testing their texture . . . and that hot fe eling raced through her again, sparking off a furious blush.
Henry stared at Patrick’s hand as if hypnotized. His lighter lay on the rocky scree beside him, reflecting hot afternoon sun.
‘Want me to put it in my mouth?’ Patrick asked. His big, livery lips smiled complacently.
‘Huh?’ Henry asked, as if startled from some deep dream.
‘I’ll put it in my mouth if you want. I don’t m — ‘
Henry’s hand flashed out, half-curled, not quite a fist. Patrick was knocked sprawling. His head thudded on the gravel. Beverly dived down again, her heart crashing in her chest, her teeth locked against a little whimpering moan. After knocking Patrick down, Henry had turned and for a moment, just before she dropped back into her little huddled ball on the passenger side of the driveshaft hump, it seemed that her eyes and Henry’s had locked.
Please God the sun was in his eyes,