The rain stopped the way it always did, all at once, like somebody had turned off a tap. By the time he got his bike out of the shelter the sun was out again and steam was coming off the asphalt in sheets. The washes would be running for an hour. He took the long way home on Columbus to stay out of the low spots.
It was only when he was carrying the bike up onto the carport at home that he saw the photograph.
It was stuck to the back of the Goonies case. Flat, wet, glued there by rain and grit so that he hadn't seen it under the wire of the basket. He peeled it off carefully, holding it by the corners, and it came away with a little sucking sound.
It was another group picture. Four people on a narrow street, steep, with brick buildings on both sides and bunting hanging between them. Flags. A Fourth of July, maybe. The man from the porch picture, older now, with a cigarette. Mrs. Abbott, younger, in sunglasses. A girl of twelve or so in shorts.
And a hole where the fourth person's face had been.
This one was bigger. The person had been taller. A teenager, maybe. You could see the shoulders of a striped T-shirt, a skinny arm hanging down, a hand holding a sparkler that had burned out. The hole had been cut so close to the hand that the scissors had nicked the sparkler wire.
He turned it over.
Brewery Gulch, July 4, 1960, it said in the slanted pencil. Walt, June, me, and then there had been a fourth name, and someone had scratched it out. Not crossed out. Scratched, hard, with something sharp, so that the paper was furred and thin there. He held it up to the sun. The light came through the thin place, and in the light he could see the shape of the pencil grooves underneath, the letters pressed into the paper by the original hand before anybody had gone at them.
C. A. R.
He couldn't make out the rest. He didn't need to.
"Carter? That you?"
His father's voice came from the other end of the carport, where the workbench was. Carter jumped and shoved the photograph into the back pocket of his jeans, which was stupid, because it was wet, and because there was no reason to hide it. He didn't know why he did it. He just did.
"Yeah, it's me."
"You get caught in that?"
"Kind of. I was in the bus shelter."