When Grandpa died, Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Todd got the house, and we got some money. Moving back to his boyhood home must have seemed strange for Uncle Todd, but once he got the kitchen remodeled, he was happy. My cousin Arianna got what had once been Mom’s room, upstairs.

We’d visit them on holidays, the place big enough, Mom and Dad got the downstairs guest room, and me, Uncle Todd’s old room upstairs next to Adrianna’s.

The two of us got along pretty well, both liking sports: me, football, though I usually didn’t get in until the fourth quarter if the score wasn’t close; her, volleyball, since she was tall. We’d jog in the morning and I could see her nipples, her knowing, I was rather sure. Sometimes we’d get where I could somewhat feel her up, as long as it seemed not on purpose.

The two upstairs rooms were alike: a dormer window and a closet made by splitting the wall between. It was Mom who said to stick my suitcase in the far back so she wouldn’t trip over it when hanging up my clothes.

It was in putting my suitcase there when I noticed the tab of tape peeling from the wall. Had it not curled, I’d never have seen the hole behind it, behind which was a stud space, and on the far side, light through a nail hole through I could see into Arianna’s room.

I had to wait till she was occupied downstairs to check if the hole on her side was visible within the plaster, and no, it wasn’t. I’d shut my closet door to keep light from shining through behind me when I lifted the tape.

My goal, of course, was to watch her undress, but as it turned out, she tended to do that out of my line of sight, the best I could do being to see her when she walked near her bed in her underwear, and even that, not that often and not for long. I weighed enlarging the hole, but dropped it because a larger nail hole might have drawn her attention.

But at last, there she was one evening, perched on her bed, unhooking her bra, but facing the wrong way. She moved out of view, and when she returned, she was in her pajamas. Her bare back was progress, however.

The following night she turned enough to reveal the side of a breast. Progress, most definitely.

Next bedtime was the charm. Once she’d gotten her bra off, up she stood and made a quick pirouette looking for something, and I was out of my closet and onto my bed as fast as I could so I didn’t come before I got there.

That became the pattern: to see what I could through the hole and take care of the rest on my mattress.

And then one night, she flopped back, pulled her sheet over her and began doing what I’d never have expected. You know it when you see it, even if girls do it differently.

But before she finished, she raised a sheet of paper she must have prepared beforehand. “ICU2.”

ICU2? I see you, too?

I’m fried!

At breakfast, though, there was Arianna, talking about volleyball, how she’d been moved to the front line, though hardly a spiker.

I ate my Wheaties in silence, not looking up.

As it was our job to clear the table, I couldn’t avoid her, but as she seemed to have nothing to say other than which dish needs drying — as if I couldn’t tell, but that’s the way she was-- I didn’t have to say much.

It’s no big thing for your cousin to bump into you. What was different, though, was her bending over so I could see down her PJs and grinning.

As the hole looked like nothing from her side and it was dark in my closet, how did she know? What was with the “too”?

But when I looked at my own wall behind her closet, there it was, an almost-invisible hole, and when I checked inside her closet, a flap of tape like the one in mine. Spy holes, both directions!

At dinner, nothing was said between us, but Arianna toed between my legs under the table while recounting something about a match, raising her forefinger.

“Zero sense, what we’re doing,” she told me as we cleaned up the kitchen.

“What?”

“Spying.”

“Oh,” not knowing what else to say.

“You’re fun to watch, but we should do it together.”

“Do what?”

“In my room.”

I joined her after the adults turned in. She’d two pillows on her bed and pointed which was mine.

“Thought you’d never show. Turn off the light.”

Given that we’d spied on each other, I wasn’t sure why she wanted the light out, but it was her room.

It was after we masturbated that I thought more. How’d the spyholes come to be? Did the kids before us watch each other and then get together, too? The kids? Mom and Uncle Todd?