They brought one of the dead spiders back in a pickle jar. Their father said he’d never seen anything like it before, and the brothers fought over the jar all night, turning it round and round, pressing their noses to the glass, examining the bristles on the spider’s crooked legs, its leathery body, its wolfish eyes.
“It’s my specimen,” Ben said. “I collected it.”
“It doesn’t belong to you,” Henry said.
“Who does it belong to, then?”
“God,” Henry said.
Their mother wouldn’t let them keep the jar on the table while they ate dinner. “It’s a hideous thing,” she said.
After their meal, Ben brought out his magnifying glass and an encyclopedia from the set their father had given them. He made a drawing of the spider, labelling its parts — cephalothorax, pedipalps, chelicerae. At the top of the page he wrote ARACHNID in big, bold letters. Ben kept a protective arm around the drawing so Henry had to crane his neck to see anything. Eli pulled himself up and hung onto Henry’s chair, his chubby legs bouncing rhythmically while he sucked on Henry’s knee. Henry grabbed the spider jar and thrust it in his face, twisting his mouth and roaring at him. “I need to see it,” Ben said, grabbing the jar back and setting it carefully in front of his drawing. Henry watched Eli for a moment before reaching down to pinch the soft fold of skin behind one of his knees. When the baby cried and fell to the floor, their mother stuck her head out of the kitchen. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said, stroking the fine hair on Eli’s head. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
Later that night, Henry locked the bathroom door and took off all his clothes. In front of the mirror, he brushed his teeth vigorously until a thick froth poured from his mouth onto the counter. With his black eye he looked like a hideous thing. He snarled like a rabid dog then spit the toothpaste into the sink. He ran his hands over his skinny arms and legs and along the ribs jutting out from his chest, whispering cephalothorax, pedipalps, chelicerae.
There was a bang at the bathroom door. “Get out,” Ben yelled.
After Ben finished his drawing and the brothers were in their pajamas, they watched as their father packed the spider jar in a box and sealed it with loops of masking tape. Tomorrow morning first thing, he would send it off to a lab in Victoria for analysis. He posted Ben’s drawing on the fridge.
Later that night, Eli cried and slept in their parents’ bed, and Henry had nightmares, but he didn’t tell anyone.
WHEN HENRY WOKE THE next morning his first thought was, Today is Ben’s birthday. He kicked off the sheets but lay in bed watching the patterns from the curtain roll across the ceiling. The shapes morphed from fat triangles to skinny diamonds to long spears and then disappeared. Henry decided he would change himself today. He’d tried it before, but it never worked. By the time he was back in bed that night, he’d realize he was exactly the same. He was determined this morning, though, not to be the same old Henry. He combed his hair straight back instead of parting it in the middle and practiced speaking with the British accent he’d heard on the radio the other day.
The birthday party was at the lake and the day was sunny, but a cool wind skipped across the water, stirring up waves that lashed the shore. Fat picture-book clouds glided across the sky, trailed by dark shadows over the lake’s surface. Henry helped his mother tie blue balloons to the picnic tables, where they whipped around in the wind, competing for attention. Ben and his friends gathered to eat hot dogs then open presents. Henry’s father pulled the last gift out from under the picnic table, and in the frenzy Henry helped Ben rip open the package. Ben held the brand new BB gun — a pump-action Daisy Red Ryder with a solid wood buttstock — high above his head and everyone cheered, even Henry, because he was different today. After the gifts, all the boys went into the lake. Henry stood beside the shore at his father’s side for only a moment before running full tilt toward the water.
“Be careful, Henry. You can’t go in over your head,” his mother called after him.
“Be careful, Henry,” one of the boys mocked.
Henry bellyflopped into the lake, the cold sending prickles over his flesh and knocking out his breath. He thrashed his arms and kicked his legs, scraping his feet on the rocks in the shallow water and gasping as waves hit him in the face. He wanted to turn back to the shore’s safety, but after a minute he realized his feet could still touch the lake’s bottom and he could bob along easily, only pretending to swim like the other boys. If he found himself too far, losing the feeling of sand between his toes, he simply paddled himself around and went back. The water was no longer cold but felt pleasant and Henry began to feel as calm as the pure, fluffy clouds drifting overhead. Shouts and laughter bounced over the water as he buoyed himself along. “Ello,” he said in his cheerful British accent to any boy who crossed his path. “Ello, ello.” The water was clear, his pale toes wiggling like creatures among the glittering rocks on the lake bottom. The boys splashed one another, sending droplets through the air that hit Henry’s smiling face. He drifted over to the dock, where Ben and some friends were doing cannonballs into the water, and he floated underneath, weightless between the cobwebbed pillars. Through the slats he watched the boys’ bare feet slap along the dock; occasionally he poked a finger up and tickled their soles. “Quit it, Henry,” Ben shouted from somewhere above. His head appeared, hanging over the end of the dock, “I see you.”
As Henry drifted back out into the open, someone jumping from the dock landed on him, sending him under. Henry swallowed a large gulp of lake water, panic springing through his body as he flailed to get to the surface. A foot hit him in the side of the head. He reached out to grasp onto something and felt a body in front of him. His fingers clutched at the loose cloth of a pair of swimming trunks that floated around someone’s skinny legs. Henry yanked on them to pull himself out of the water, but the shorts came down, so he grabbed at one of the arms pushing at him and brought himself to the surface, gasping and rubbing the water out of his eyes.
“You pulled my shorts off,” the boy screamed, shoving Henry back under the water.
When Henry surfaced again, all the boys were screaming and swimming away from him farther out into the lake or climbing up onto the dock. The boy scowled at Henry as he climbed up the ladder, hanging onto the back of his swimming trunks as though Henry might try to pull them off again. Henry sunk down until only his nose was above the surface. “Sorry,” he said, but the word was trapped underwater. He could hear the syllables lose themselves in the bubbles. His father glided through the water and scooped him up over his shoulder, the way he used to when Henry was little, carrying him back to the picnic tables. As they walked across the sand, Henry heard someone say pantywaist. At first he thought the word came from his father, but then he realized it was only his mind playing tricks on him. By the time he was back sitting at the picnic tables, the boys were all standing in a line again at the end of the dock, taking turns doing cannonballs.
IN THE KITCHEN, THE moonlight came slanting through the window and made the countertops glow. Henry drank a glass of water, sitting cross-legged on the table in case the spider came alive and escaped its jar, but then he remembered the spider was in Victoria. On the fridge, the white page burned around the lines of Ben’s drawing. Henry stared at the picture of the spider until his eyes started to wobble and its legs started to move.