The kid lived in the old house with the buckled veranda, the house with the peeling paint, the house that they had wondered about the other day, that they had thought was derelict: the only house at Whale Beach.

It was his grandmother’s house.

And the kid lived with her there, alone.

He asked Matthew and Lukas to come up and have lunch with him, and when Matthew got there, the old woman stared at him, and then stared at Lukas. She looked familiar, though Matthew couldn’t think where he had seen her before. He had an idea that it might have been a long time ago.

Lukas had come up in his wetsuit, because he didn’t have anything else on, and the kid showed him where his room was so that Lukas could get changed.

Matthew didn’t think he should be in their house with wet clothes on, and he said, ‘I don’t have anything,’ holding his wet shorts out when the kid came back.

‘You can lend a pair of mine,’ the kid said. His name was Rodney. Rodney Blecker. But you had to call him Rodney. He didn’t let people call him Rod, he said.

Inside, the house was pretty much as Matthew had imagined it would be. The floors were bare, bare wooden planks, grey with age, and not even varnished. And it was sparsely furnished. In the front room was the only floor covering he could see, a large, round, colourful woolen rug. There was a cane couch and armchairs, and a few etchings on the walls, though there were almost no ornaments, and didn’t seem to be a television set, or a stereo, or anything like that. By the front window, there was a telescope, an expensive looking telescope, pointed at the beach, Matthew supposed, though he was only able to glimpse into the room as they walked down the hall.

In the kitchen the floors were as bare as everywhere else. There was a large wooden table, without a cloth, and with some condiments in the centre of it. The kitchen fittings were from way back in the thirties or the forties. There was an old, rounded icebox, from the fifties, with a large chromium handle, and between the cabinets, and enamel stove, wood-fired, that his grandmother was cooking at.

The kid showed Lukas where his room was, and then, after he’d come back and Matthew had said that about his shorts being wet, Rodney led the way to his room again, with Matthew in tow. He opened the door, opening it on Lukas, who was naked, with his bare arse facing them as he stepped into his jocks.

He turned around.

Transformers. A Transformers pair of jocks. With Transformers written across the groin. Matthew had already seen them in the change room and he had thought they were pretty funny, seeing as how Lukas had been transformed but wouldn’t be transforming back again, not unless he got metal balls. In front of Rodney, though, he felt a bit embarrassed.

There was nothing in the room but a big old wooden bed, a bedside cabinet, and a closet. The front windows were enormous, and they overlooked the beach, but the kid didn’t have any posters on the wall, didn’t have any pictures, a stereo, a TV, or anything.

He opened the closet and squatted down, pulling the bottom drawer out. He started picking through a whole lot of shorts that he had in there as though he couldn’t make a decision. He stopped at one, and then went to another pair, stopped at those, went to another pair, and thought for a moment, but decided on that pair. He pulled them out and stood up.

‘You can keep them,’ he said, handing them to Matthew.

They were short shorts. Really short shorts. And really wide. And they were too loose for Matthew. He didn’t see how the kid could ever have worn them. They were faded blue, and the material was rotting. If he wasn’t careful, they would tear.

The kid stopped for a moment, looking at Matthew, and then he started, and left the room.

Matthew held the shorts up. There were little holes all over the arse of them where the cotton had frayed.

He pulled his shorts and his jocks off and pulled the shorts the kid had given him on. His cock flopped out of the bottom of them, because they were so short, an inch or two of his cock hanging out of one side against his leg. Matthew had to pull the shorts down till they were below his hips, so that he could cover the head of his cock. Fortunately, his T-shirt was long enough to reach the waistband of the shorts. When he sat down at the table, though, his arse would be showing.

Shit, he thought. He felt naked.

‘He’s pretty nice, eh?’ Lukas said. He was sitting on the kid’s bed and tying up his runners. ‘I really like him.’

Matthew nodded. He liked the kid too. He was friendly, and smiling, though he didn’t suppose Lukas would be too happy if he knew the kid had been feeling his mushed up balls. He probably wouldn’t like him so much then.

Matthew opened the door and went out to the front porch, where the kid had said he could hang his shorts. He spread his shorts and jocks over the rail, and walked back into the house again, hearing the screen door bang behind him, and feeling the breeze through the hallway blowing up his legs and all around his cock while it flopped as he walked. He paused before he got to the kitchen and pulled down on the shorts a little. He didn’t want Rodney’s grandmother to see his cock.

The kid was sitting at the table, and he looked up as Matthew came in, looking at Matthew’s smooth thighs, and the space where his cock was. He looked up and smiled at Matthew, a wide grin.

‘You can sit here,’ he said, pushing the chair out at the head of the table, which was beside him.

His grandmother opened the oven and pulled a roast chicken out of it as Lukas walked into the room. He had gone to the bathroom and washed his hands, no doubt, even though he’d just spent more than an hour in the surf.

‘Sit over here,’ Rodney said, pointing at the space opposite him.

The grandmother put the chicken on the table. She turned around and pulled a salad out of the fridge, turned back again and pulled butter, mayonnaise, dressing, and a bottle of milk out of it.

There were clean glasses in front of every space, and milk to drink. The bread was white, and his grandmother had baked it. She sat down, at the other end of the table from Matthew, and asked them all to say grace.

Matthew bowed his head, knowing that his cock was hanging out of his shorts, hanging over the edge of the chair, and dangling, as long as it could get. But there was nothing he could do about it.

Behind him, he knew his T-shirt had ridden up, and half his arse was bare, because of how he’d had to pull the shorts down.

The grandmother said nothing during the meal, simply looking from one to the other of them as they spoke about stuff they liked. Lukas was smiling, and he had milk moustache, his hair all ruffled after being in the surf, his green eyes sparkling.

About half-way through the meal Rodney dropped a piece of bread on the floor. He bent down to pick it up, and Matthew felt his hand on the inside of his knee. Matthew let the kid open his legs up, as he was trying to do, looking at his cock, obviously, dangling out of the shorts. Matthew was drinking milk, and swallowing, when he felt the kid take his cock in his hand. Matthew put the glass down, choking, hit his chest, and coughed. The kid picked his cock up and held it in his hand, weighing it to see how heavy it was, like he was weighing a piece of dough. Matthew swallowed and stared away from the grandmother who was watching him.

‘It landed butter side down,’ Rodney said, coming back up from under the table, and then he chewed on the bread, smiling at Matthew, his eyes crinkling.

When they were driving home, Matthew frowned, thinking he had been pretty stupid to tell the kid about Lukas’ nuts. He was fifteen, just like Matthew had thought, and he was still at school, though he didn’t seem to go a lot. They had seen him at Whale on two schooldays already.

The kid had asked for his number, and he had given it to him, and then had taken the kid’s number as well, putting it into Lukas’ phone because Matthew didn’t have his.

Before they had left, the kid had showed them the telescope, and Matthew realised he could see people way out beyond the breakers, as though he was looking through a magnifying glass, clearer and closer than if he’d been right up next to them. He’d probably seen Lukas out there naked, on Friday, when Lukas had lost his jocks. It was after that, Matthew remembered, that they’d seen the kid in the change room, when he’d come in and planted his cock in Lukas’ arse. There obviously wasn’t any need for Rodney to be using the change room, to be showering there, when he lived at Whale.

He was a pretty naughty kid.

And he had liked what Matthew had done to Lukas, Matthew said to himself. He had got off on it, and had even said to Matthew that he should cut Lukas’ cock off.

Still, though, he could tell someone. And if he did, Matthew could go to jail.

Matthew shook his head, stopped at the lights to the Mission bypass. He exhaled, and then he started wondering where he had seen the kid’s grandmother.

He thought she might have been the woman in the surf on Friday, the woman in the black costume who had stared at Matthew, but he wasn’t sure.

The strangest thing was the thought that that had been Friday, when today was Tuesday. On Friday, only four days ago, he had been holding Lukas in the surf and hurting his balls, and now, four days later, Lukas’ nuts were crushed, were slop, just like Lukas had wanted.

It wasn’t going to take much to do his nuts properly now, and to do Lukas’ cock as well. And it was kind of good that Rodney knew. It would be good to show someone, when it was done, and laugh about it with them.

And Rodney did want to see it. He had come out to Matthew on the veranda, when Matthew was wrapping his wet shorts and jocks in a towel, and had asked Matthew if he could have Lukas’ cock when it was done. He probably wouldn’t tell.

Matthew imagined what it would be like in a week or two from now, with Lukas up on the board in the wetsuit again, with all of his gear done, with Rodney having his hand up inside the wetsuit, feeling Lukas’ patch of nothing. And he could fuck Rodney from behind while Rodney was getting off on it. He could say that to Rodney, that Rodney had to let him fuck him while he was feeling it, though he didn’t suppose Rodney would let him.

Still, Matthew felt his cock growing hard at the thought. He had on the shorts that the kid had given him, and his cock was lying alongside his leg on the seat. It sat up, sitting up out of the shorts, and became as hard as it could be, vertical.

‘Fuck,’ Lukas said.

‘I can’t help it.’

Matthew turned his head, and realised there was a bus beside him, stopped at the lights, a bus full of twelve-year-old school boys in some private school uniform. They were looking down into the car, and pointing, with eyes open wide, laughing and punching each other.

The lights changed, and Matthew floored it.

That night, Matthew dreamed that he was on a dark stage, in an empty theatre. There was a spotlight shining on him, and a spotlight shining on Lukas, who was standing there, facing him.

Lukas had his arms held out, held askew from his body, and his head was tilted at an unusual angle. There were strings, Matthew noticed, attached to Lukas’ elbows and wrists, to his knees and feet, and a string attached to his head.

Lukas lifted his head up.

‘Am I your puppet?’ he said, and did a little dance, his arms and legs jiggling till his head was hanging askew again, with his eyes looking up at Matthew.

Matthew opened his mouth to answer, only his mouth didn’t move. He couldn’t speak. His head turned, and faced one arm. There were strings attached to it. His head turned again, and faced his other arm. There were strings attached to that. His head turned down, so that he could see his legs, and there were strings attached to those.

His head turned up, and he looked at Lukas.

And then his body jiggled in the same comic little dance that Lukas had given him, an excited little dance.

Matthew woke in darkness, with his heart thumping. It was three or four in the morning. He wondered about the dream, staring at blackness, though when he woke again, in daylight, he had forgotten all about it, and he didn’t remember it again until weeks later.