Kenny thinks he’s hidden his porn by putting it in a folder called “System Backups.” Boys in my class maybe get off on photos of naked women, but Kenny’s a senior. He should be figuring things out in the back seat of his car, not from websites for losers.

Tell Mom? She’ll just take away our computer. Tell Kenny he’s a perv? Just ignore it? I don’t know.

Well actually, I don’t think he’s a perv, just horny, but he still shouldn’t be looking at this stuff.

Roland stole the program off the school server, Roland being smarter than the vice principal who loaded it to track where we go in the computer lab. They block it, you copy it, I tell Roland and give him a little kiss. He’s a total geek and I want to marry him someday. Everybody knows that geeks make great lovers by age 30 or 38.

Roland’s sister Deanne is in Kenny’s grade. I know her from PE. She has to take PE as a senior because she chooses classes like calculus, and colleges see if you took PE. She’s plenty cute, though, even with her hair always in a braid.

Deanne’s how I get the goods on her brother, like how he knew to sell his baseball cards when the market was high. My brother bought them.

Deanne doesn’t fuck, just kisses them at the doorstep. Save it till it counts, her plan. Me, I don’t have a plan.

Roland doesn’t even know he’s my almost-boyfriend, unless, of course, he knows and isn’t telling me that I’m his almost-girlfriend. It’s hard to out-psych a geek who’s smarter than the vice principal.

I’m not a total woose, though. Roland might think I can’t tell what he’s up to, but I know what’s up when he brushes against me while showing me about the screen-saver and things. I know where to stand.

Did I say, “What’s up?” Why hush my mouth!

Mom says that a girl’s teen years are complicated and she’s right.

Kenny keeps the computer screen turned away and clicks the mouse whenever I barge in. No problemo por esta chica! (I’m taking Spanish.) The program Roland got me shows where my brother’s been surfing. I can tell how long it takes Kenny to jerk off by how many minutes he’s not using the mouse.

I can’t believe it! Maybe 15 seconds to download some guy and a cheerleader having oral sex, maybe a 3-second look, and then it’s trashed. Emptying the Recycle Bin is another thing that Roland’s program outfoxes. Kenny dawdles on the chick celebrities that deep-throat each other at the awards ceremonies, but I’m curious about them, too. I know that he’s not gay because he never went back to the ones about policemen doing blowjobs.

There are two photos that have me so curious. Two nudes, maybe in their twenties, taking showers. Frontal, but not like they’re hawking something. I know the pop stars, and these two aren’t. No tattoos, crap like that. Both girls are looking at their boobs.

Kenny looks at these two girls almost every night.

One of the nudes is by a shower wall. Yellow tiles. Gold necklace. Hair pushed up, but a strand’s fallen on her front. No tan at all. Shaved down below, but some’s grown back. She’s so regular.

The other girl, the thinner one, is maybe in a backyard. Tan line shows how her bikini fits. Wet hair across her collarbone. Tits are smaller than the other’s, more pronounced. Rectangle of hair. Maybe she’s latina, like me. Sorta’ looks like me, anyway, her face. Maybe she took the hose out of the water barrel; you just see the side of it. This picture looks more like a scan of a print.

The first nude’s boob looks soft; the second one’s, not. The second nude has the darker nipples, more out.

I think of the two nudes during Geography. They help me imagine a boyfriend. The first girl has just made love on her bed and her room looks like mine. The second girl did it beside the lake.

I look at the two pictures after school when Kenny has cross-country and Mom thinks I’m doing homework.

In the bathroom, I stand against the wall until Kenny bangs, hurry up. I go to the backyard and water the violets.

I’m not like those two girls because I’m not that pretty. My boobs aren’t as cute. My hair’s just a tuft. I think about theirs. One I can see; the other, just imagine. Am I a lesbian?

I’d never let some asshole take my picture. I’ll let a guy see me naked someday, though. Maybe Roland

Kenny looks at the pictures after supper. I hang out by the door and hear the chair go squeak-squeak. He masturbates to them, same as me, different, but the same.

Does he wake up in the middle of the night and think of the pictures? Maybe the two of us come at the same time, just a room apart. Whenever I get up to pee, I listen.

I don’t even know Kenny’s still in the den. I’d left my geometry book somewhere, maybe there, and we have a quiz tomorrow on Chapter 8. I hope that’s all it’s on, anyway.

I open the door and there’s my book exactly where I left it, and my brother’s asleep in the chair. Dummy! I walk across the rug to grab my book. The rug was braided by Grandma Katie, Mom’s mom.

I’m not even looking at the screen of fish chasing fish, but I guess I make a noise because Kenny starts and jiggles something and the first nude appears.

And Kenny’s awake, confused, trying to get his hand out of his pants -- no surprise, but I never thought I’d actually see it -- while trying to click the little x.

But, shit-fire! He clicks behind it and now it’s the other girl. Then she’s gone and there’s a hooker in a red convertible. He kills her and there’s some sort of ridiculous animation until he gets the screen cleared, flustered and silent.

“What the hell?” as I can’t pretend to be blind.

“It’s nothing,” pretty lame.

“You’re looking at that crap?”

“I’m fucked,” he admits, looking at the wall.

He deserves it, especially due to the animated sex. But, naah. He’s my brother. “I’ll keep my mouth shut this time, pervert.”

“I’m not really into it that much.”

“Enough to jerk off, though,” I point out.

He looks at me, but doesn’t deny it.

“Kenny?”

He looks away.

“What were first two?”

“Just some shit,” wanting me to bug off.

“The two girls washing.” I push. “Where’d you get them?”

“There’s a million sites.”

“They’re actually pretty sexy.”

“They’re just girls.”

“You look at them all the time,” how I say it, telling him I know it for a fact. I don’t want to explain about Roland’s program, but he doesn’t ask.

“I’ll delete everything,” he decides.

“The crap,” I agree. “Not those girls, though.”

He nods.

“Show me them.”

He wavers a moment, then brings them to the screen, one, then the other.

“You think they’re sexy?” I wonder.

“Sorta’, I guess.”

I look at him. “Not that they’d let you do anything.”

“I suppose not.”

I elbow him. “They might, though.”

He’s confused.

“Them looking for virgins.” giving him another shove and making him grin.

“Hey chick,” he comes back. “Got a boyfriend that knows how?”