RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Like what?
RYAN DEAN WEST 2: I know that guy Nate isn’t real and he can’t hurt you. I know you don’t want to face that, do you? I also know that you’re going to drift away from Annie if you don’t straighten up and admit that you need help.
RYAN DEAN WEST 1: I don’t need anything. Just shut the fuck up.
RYAN DEAN WEST 2: I’ll make a deal with you: I’ll shut up if you’ll open the door and get us out of here. I’m hungry and cold. Open the door.
NATE: Yeah, kid. Just open the door.
RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Fuck you. I hate both of you.
RYAN DEAN WEST 2: Same to you, Snack-Pack Senior.
But he was right. I was hungry and cold. And he was probably right about the other stuff too. I just didn’t know what to do.
So I put my hand on the cold steel push bar across the door.
I held my breath and opened the door.
As the light from the stairwell spilled across the girls’ floor, something dark ran toward me from the far end of the hallway.
To be completely honest, I screamed. I probably would have pooped my pants if I’d eaten enough in the past day or so. And I don’t know why I did it, but I raised the pillowcase with Joey’s stuff in it over my head as though I could use it as a weapon.
It was probably Sun Tzu, or someone who lived a hell of a long time ago and wrote philosophical texts on how to go into battle, who most likely included in chapter fucking one, Never go to war with a monster, prepared for a pillow fight, Ryan Dean, you dumb fucking loser.
Yeah. Chapter one.
But the monster turned out to be a Sam-Abernathy-size raccoon. And all at once, the following things happened to me:
1. Relief—I wasn’t going to die yet. Probably.
2. Because what do raccoons eat, anyway?
3. But I was so happy that the thing on the other side of the door wasn’t Nate, I actually started crying.
4. I also ran so fast, one of my shoes nearly came off.
5. I didn’t just run; I ran and jumped, and ran and jumped, and ran and jumped, like a prancing unicorn or something that runs and jumps, because I was terrified that there were hundreds of hungry raccoons down there and they wanted to grab my legs, so I had to run. And jump.
6. I screamed all the way down the hallway.
7. And I screamed in the mudroom.
8. Then I screamed again when I made it out of O-Hall.
9. I was alive! I was alive! I was alive!
10. Shit. How long had I been in there? It was still raining, and it was dark outside.
11. I decided I could probably stop running and jumping.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“RYAN DEAN! I WAS ABOUT to go out looking for you!”
The Abernathy pointed a flashlight at me. He was bundled up in a fisherman’s raincoat and full-on rubber boots when I opened the door to our frigid open-air dorm room.
I wagged a finger at him. “Look. Never go looking for me. That is not allowed. And never, never tell Mr. Bream if I don’t come home. That’s, like, number one on the Code of Roommates.”
The Abernathy wiggled inside his shower-curtain outfit. “Do we have a code, Ryan Dean?”
“No. Stop talking to me now.”
“What’s in the pillowcase? Do you want to do laundry with me?”
“No. I’m taking a shower and I’m going to get something to eat before they shut down the mess hall.”
Then the peach-assed grunion said, “Can I come with you?”
I didn’t answer him. I closed our fucking window and watched as the Abernathy bleached pale and quivered. Then I dropped Joey’s pillowcase on the floor by my bed, stripped out of my cold and wet running stuff, and slipped into the coffin of our shower-stall-slash-toilet-slash-sink.
• • •
Knock knock knock.
“Hey, Ryan Dean, is everything all right?”
Okay. You know how when you’re cold and wet and have within the last thirty minutes nearly scared yourself to death by confronting man-killer raccoons, when there are not too many things more soothing than half of one of Spotted John Nygaard’s magic truth-inducing pain pills combined with an inordinately long hot shower, followed by an equally inordinately long getting-dry-and-making-my-hair-look-sexy-but-not-for-Tootsie-Roll-Midgee-with-limbs-Sam-Abernathy session, and there is one—well, two—other things you’re spending some quality time with and then a non-Irish leprechaun invades your moment of zen?
“Leave me alone. I’m doing the first part of my health homework for Mrs. Blyleven.”
Fuck those pain pills. I never wanted to take one of those talk-to-Sam-slash-pain-pills again. But they did make me feel good.
“Oooh! What’s your health homework about, Ryan Dean?” came a birdsong of little Abernathy chirps through the bathroom door.
So, you know how sometimes you can tell yourself—insist, in fact—that you must not participate in conversational overtures from a gerbil-size twelve-year-old, especially because you happen to be in the middle of your required testicular self-exam, which, by the way, we were all advised to perform after taking a hot shower (then to actually be expected to write a paragraph-long reflective response on the gross awkwardness of what Mrs. Blyleven assigned us boys to do), and all of a sudden you can’t help but answer automatically, as casually as if you were phoning for take-out pizza, “My health homework was to examine my balls, Snack-Pack,” and then, all excited, he asks, “Oh, what do you have to do to examine your balls, Ryan Dean?” and then you have this entire through-the-door chat about the all the details of the TSE you’re in the middle of giving yourself because you can’t kick the spill-your-guts side effects of Spotted John Nygaard’s goddamned pain pills?
Pretty much exactly that.
And then the Abernathy said, “Well if it’s that important for all boys to do, I’m going to do one too! And right now, so don’t come out of there till I tell you it’s okay, Ryan Dean!”
No.
I never, never wanted to think about that, or talk about our balls with Sam Abernathy again.
And I was such an idiot, I didn’t do anything to stop the Abernathy from following me to dinner. What could I do? Without an easy excuse like Annie around, I was either stuck with the kid, or I’d have to end up punching him. And how could I do that? Punching the Abernathy would be like stepping on a newly hatched baby duckling with rugby cleats. On me, not on the duckling.
“The corn dogs at Pine Mountain are the best thing in the world, don’t you think, Ryan Dean?”
Not one time in my life did I ever rate corn dogs anywhere near the apex of the Ryan Dean West Best Things in the World List.
I watched as the Abernathy swabbed his meat stick through a puddle of blue cheese dressing.
So gross.
Also, I wanted to cry because I suddenly realized the depth of my catastrophic social downfall: Here I was, alone on a Friday night, having a corn dog dinner with the Abernathy, who had just examined his balls while I was, like, three feet away from them, examining mine.
“Hey, Ryan Dean, do you know what these cherry tomatoes remind me of all of a sudden?”
No. Just no.
Now cherry tomatoes were officially on the Ryan Dean West Things-I-Will-Never-Ever-Eat-Again List.
“Aww. This is very nice. The Snack-Pack boys are having dinner together!”
I didn’t even notice that Spotted John had been hovering behind me and my corn dog and TSE cherry tomatoes buddy.
“Hey, Spotted John!” the Abernathy squeaked. “We’re having corn dogs!”
Whatever.
“Hi, kid,” Spotted John answered.
“Spotted John,” Sam Abernathy began, “I was wondering—why do they call you Spotted John?”
I was horrified of where this conversation would go. Because like every other guy on the rugby team, as well as a few twelfth-grade girls at Pine Mountain, I knew the answer to the Abernathy’s question about Spotted John’s nick
name.
“I’ll show you how I got that name in the locker room after practice on Monday, okay?” Spotted John said.
“Thanks!” The Abernathy wriggled.
Here’s the thing. The guys called Spotted John Spotted John because he had a birthmark that was perfectly round and about the size of a dime. And the birthmark was on Spotted John Nygaard’s penis. Which he was going to show our manager, Snack-Pack, in our locker room, on Monday after rugby practice.
Well, the Abernathy did ask for it, I guess.
Gross.
“You’re welcome! You can’t possibly be an effective manager of a rugby team and not know these kinds of things!” Spotted John chirped back.
The Abernathy kicked his little legs that couldn’t reach the floor in the air. “I really like being manager of the rugby team!”
Gross. He had to clean up our dirty towels and socks off the locker room floor every day after practice. That’s what managers do.
I shook my head and tried to concentrate on my dinner and nothing else, which was kind of impossible to do. Then Spotted John put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Actually, I was looking for you, Ryan Dean.” And Spotted John gave an evil eight-man eye to the Abernathy and rubbed his head. He added, “Why don’t you take your corn dogs and run along to bed, Snack-Pack. I need to talk to Ryan Dean about something, and it’s kind of confidential, if you know what I mean.”
The Abernathy looked wounded, but he could never argue with Spotted John. Actually, I don’t think the Abernathy could ever argue with anyone. So, dejected, the Abernathy gathered up his batter-dipped, blue-cheese-dripping meat stick and headed off.
“I’ll see you at home, Ryan Dean,” he half whimpered.
Home?
No.
And Spotted John sat down next to me. He made a couple spy-like conspiratorial is-the-coast-clear glances around the nearly empty mess hall.
“What’s up?” I said.
Spotted John lowered his voice, even though there was really no reason to. All the cool kids were gone for the weekend, and nobody was within earshot of us, anyway. “You know that boy you called from my phone last night? He called back about an hour ago. He thought I was you.”
That snapped me out of my post-TSE-and-corn-dog-feast-with-the-Abernathy-social-suicide haze.
Now I whispered too. “What did he say?”
“When he realized I wasn’t you? Not too much. But he must have thought we were roommates or something, because he asked me if you were there, and if he could talk to you.”
This was huge. I felt like there was some hope that maybe I could get rid of all the bad stuff that was happening to me, invading my head, and following me everywhere. And maybe Nico knew what it was that his brother had wanted to tell me. Or maybe he was just going to cuss me out for stalking him and calling him in the middle of the night and he was going to tell me the Code of Strangers: that I should never try to fucking speak to him again. Because we had that code, right?
“He did?”
“I told him I’d give you the message.”
I squirmed like the Abernathy in a poetry reading frenzy, but stopped short of grabbing my wiener. Well, almost. Stupid teenage boy instinct.
“You have to let me borrow one of your phones, Spotted John.”
“Screw that shit. Nobody takes my phones. I have private stuff on them.”
I could only imagine. Gross. And some of that “private stuff” included photos of me and Cotton Balls’s inflatable girlfriend, Mabel.
But I needed to talk to Nico.
“John. Please?”
“No. I’ll let you call him, though. But you’re not taking my phone. You have to do it in my room so I can keep an eye on you. And if you screw around and look at any of my personal shit, I’ll fuck you up, Ryan Dean.”
“I promise, John. Thank you.”
“All right. Whatever. But you owe me big-time.”
I honestly didn’t think I wanted to owe Spotted John Nygaard big-time. That sounded potentially frightening. But Spotted John had been a pretty decent guy to me, despite the whole bedtime photo-shoot thing. That was just one of those dumb rugby guy things intended to entertain and amuse, as opposed to torment and humiliate, which is a fine line that all rugby players can see. Like a dog whistle to a pug. Which made me think of Annie’s poor dog, Pedro, the frisky little pervert who’d just had his balls cut off.
That was very sad.
I swallowed. “Whatever you want, name it.”
Spotted John nodded. “Okay. Whatever I want.”
Okay, so you know how sometimes when you really want to do something and so you make a promise to someone you don’t completely trust because somehow that person has just magically evolved into, like, the greatest human being you have ever known but there’s still some deep-down warning signal saying what the fuck did you just promise to do, Ryan Dean but you don’t care because you really want to believe that whatever Spotted John wants is not going to include multiple things that will ruin your life, so you hurriedly grab the pen and sign the contract on the dotted line?
Yeah. That.
“Anything. I promise,” I said.
Spotted John wiped his palm across mine. “It’s a deal. Come over when you’re done with your corn dogs. Alone. Without your little buddy.”
I wanted to fire something back at Spotted John about how the Abernathy was as far away from being my “little buddy” as Pine Mountain was from Copenhagen, but I wasn’t going to risk pissing him off and losing the chance to use his phone.
“I’m done. Let’s go now,” I said.
I tossed the uneaten half of my dinner into the garbage and walked back to the dorm with Spotted John.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“DO YOU WANT A BEER?”
How the hell did Spotted John Nygaard keep a steady supply of beer inside the boys’ dorm at Pine Mountain?
Oh yeah, he was a ninja.
I wondered if he’d ever assassinated anyone.
We sat down on the awkwardly close-quartered love seat. Spotted John kicked off his sneakers and turned on a video game called Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners, which was an absolutely inane contest involving murder, ninjas, a World War Five battle in future Stalingrad, and women whose clothes were apparently not as professionally stitched together at the seams as what the male characters wore.
“I better not,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to get crazy with Mabel again.”
“Oh. No worries. Besides, Balls took her home with him for the weekend.”
So totally gross.
“Do you ever play this game?” Spotted John asked.
Let me be clear: I never play video games, but I know a bit about diplomacy.
“I’m terrible at it. I’ll just watch you play.”
“I’m the bisexual ninja with the flame gun,” Spotted John said.
That confession was definitely five out of five rogue asteroids on the Ryan Dean West Things-I-Never-Saw-Coming Scale. “Uh. You actually smuggled a flame gun into Pine Mountain?”
“In the game,” Spotted John said.
“Oh. Yeah. I knew that’s what you meant. In the game.”
I figured we were going to make small talk before Spotted John broke down and did what he agreed to do. Maybe he was lonely without Cotton Balls around on the weekend. I got that. Being alone at Pine Mountain was rough sometimes. Weekends could be insufferably long.
“Since you’re a ninja and all, I was wondering, have you ever killed anyone?”
“Not in this country,” Spotted John answered. He bit the edge of his lip and flipped buttons on his game controller. “Do you ever smoke weed?”
I shook my head. “Nah. Not in Oregon.”
He said, “How are your ribs?”
I shrugged. “I think you were right. Just bruised. They’re a lot better now. Thanks for the pain pills, though.”
“Anytime, dude.”
Spotted John touched my side where JP Tureau had splattered my r
ibs. I kind of did what any guy would do and leaned away from him. Then he let his hand rest on my thigh.
What?
No no no no no.
I tried to make a joke of it. “Um, Spotted John, you are never going to get to checkpoint one on Mrs. Blyleven’s roadmap to consent, dude. So forget about it.”
“Ha ha,” he laughed.
“Heh.” I laughed back at him.
So fucking awkward.
And he left his hand there on my thigh for just a little bit too long for it to have been a Danish mistake, or a rogue five-fingered asteroid for that matter.
It was way too weird. What did I get myself into this time?
Spotted John paused his game. He pressed his hands into his knees and stood up. He cleared his throat and said, “Well, I’m going to have a beer, then. I’ll get the phone for you.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Spotted John sat beside me and drank his Danish beer. He watched to be certain I didn’t get into the personal stuff he was concealing on his phone, and he listened, at least to the Ryan Dean West lines in the conversation I had with Nico Cosentino.
And I’ll admit my voice was a little shaky, because what the holy crap was Spotted John thinking?
NICO COSENTINO: Hello?
RYAN DEAN WEST: Hi. Nico? This is Ryan Dean West, Joey’s . . . uh . . . friend. Is this Nico?
NICO COSENTINO: Yeah. Hi.
RYAN DEAN WEST: Hi.
NICO COSENTINO: Is that all we’re going to do? Just keep greeting each other, back and forth?
Side note: To be honest, it was a fair question, and one I was asking myself, which made me realize that I liked Nico Cosentino for thinking the same way I did, at least about stuff like saying “hi” and stuff.
RYAN DEAN WEST: I hope not, because this is a borrowed cell phone and I probably don’t have all night.
NICO COSENTINO: Yeah. I didn’t think you guys were allowed to have shit like cell phones at Pine Mountain.
RYAN DEAN WEST: We’re not. The dude I got it from’s a ninja.
NICO COSENTINO: That must explain it, then. Did he kill anyone for it?