Chapter 10

The next day, Bud crouched in his tree house with Thorny. The boys passed postcard folios between them, often making rude comments about the size or shape of the posing girls. Thorny thumbed through the pictures over and over, shuffling them like baseball trading cards.

"Here's a new one," Thorny said and tossed a folio at Bud. "She looks fresher than most of the regulars."

Bud looked through photo series; it was a corny Greek mythology story. A girl dressed in a gauzy shift and a mask posed next to a very fake looking forest pond. She shed more and more of her clothing in each photo. Finally, she spread her knees and played with her pussy as the camera caught her every move.

"Not bad," Bud agreed. Arriving at the end of the folio, he flipped back to the beginning and ran through the pictures again. He stopped at one particular picture. The girl was bent over in a cheesecake pose, her leg and hand strategically placed to keep her private parts from view.

"Holy shit," he said, half to himself. His eyes zeroed in on a small mark, almost like a bruise, on her hip. He knew it because he'd run his hands across it before; run his hands across it as he caressed his girlfriend's body.