Field & Stream

The Guilt-Free Zone

I DIDN’T KNOW HOW the kid got his pudgy hands on my little secret. I just knew I was dead meat.

I was 12, and I’d torn some pages out of a buddy’s magazine and stuffed them into a soft glasses case that my brother Frank never used, then jammed that behind the baseboard heater beside his bed. No one would ever find it there.

Weeks passed, and almost every day after school I

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