Stand-Off

  Seanie put his face down in his hands and shook his head.

  Everyone—except for Spotted John, who had both of his hands in Seanie’s hair (Wait . . . were they having “a moment”? No. No. It couldn’t be—right?)—at the table saw the thing (THE THING!) on the top of Seanie’s scalp and said, “Gross!” and turned away.

  Yeah.

  Dinner was pretty much over.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  AS MUCH AS I HATE to admit it, Sam Abernathy knew what was up.

  He’s twelve years old! He’s not supposed to know what’s up with things like JP wanting to kick my ass or me needing to sort all this shit out with Joey’s little brother! How can he know this stuff?

  But the Abernathy left us alone when I told him Nico and I wanted to talk, and he went back to our soon-to-be-freezing claustrophobia-slash-popcorn Cooking Channel den, where Nico Cosentino would be spending the night on our floor.

  Good luck! Just thinking about that made me feel even sorrier for the kid.

  And maybe it was the concussion Seanie got during the game, but he deliriously offered to drive Nico home to Pacific City, which was not ridiculously far from Beaverton, since he would be taking Annie to the airport the next day. Of course, I told him I was coming too and that I would just catch a bus back to Pine Mountain from Beaverton. Because although I didn’t say it, there was no way I was going to spend the weekend at Seanie Flaherty’s house.

  Gross.

  “When I came back to school this year, I started getting really scared at night. I think it’s like panic attacks. And it gets so bad, sometimes I think I’m actually going to die.”

  Nico and I walked on the trail beside the lake. We sat down at the bench by the jumping-off spot and tossed pebbles into the water.

  “That happened to me,” Nico said.

  “What did you do about it?”

  “Talked to people. Went to therapy. Thought about smoking weed and shit. Wondered if I was losing my mind.”

  “Me too. Well, not the smoking weed part,” I said.

  “It’s kind of like a seed that you don’t notice is sprouting, and all of a sudden when it shoots up you have no idea where it came from or how it grew into such a huge weed.”

  “You sound just like your brother. You know that?”

  Nico threw another rock.

  “Everyone likes you, Ryan Dean. You have lots of friends. You should have heard those two girls—Annie and Isabel—talking about you during the game.”

  This was important information.

  “No, dude. Everyone does not like me. JP Tureau, our fullback, for example, hates my fucking guts.”

  “Wow. Joey always told me you never swore,” Nico said.

  “I don’t. I just did because . . . I don’t know . . . you’re such a guy. Now I feel like a douche. That’s not cussing, is it?”

  Nico laughed. “You think I’m such a guy? Yeah. Well, ‘douche’ is probably safe in most states. But the girls talked about JP, too.”

  And this was very important information.

  “What did they say about him?”

  “Oh. It was girl stuff. You know. They talked like I wasn’t even listening at all, even though I was getting it in stereo. They think JP’s conceited.”

  Well, he is.

  And Nico went on, “And I guess Isabel had sex with him over the summer, and she said it was the biggest letdown of her life.”

  THANK YOU, GOD.

  “Nico?”

  “What?”

  “Can I high-five you? I really need to high-five a dude after that.”

  “You’re really weird, Ryan Dean.”

  Weird or not, Nico was willing to honor my request. It was a blistering five out of five unattended boilerplates on the Ryan Dean West Things-That-Sting-the-Shit-Out-of-Your-Palms Scale. Nico slipped and buried his left foot in the mud. He nearly fell into the lake. That would have been bad.

  I grabbed his hand and pulled him back up the bank.

  “Thanks,” Nico said. “I almost ate shit, bro.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We should get back before we freeze to death. And while there’s still so many guys going in and out, it will be easier to sneak you past Mr. Bream.”

  We walked back toward campus through the woods. It was drizzling slightly, and we both had our hands in our pockets, just about up to our elbows. I noticed Nico was shivering a bit too.

  “I’m really glad you decided to come,” I said.

  “What else was I going to do? It’s not like I had any plans this weekend.”

  “Don’t you go to school?”

  “Nah,” Nico said. “I do school online, from home.”

  “Is that fun?” I asked.

  “No. It’s terrible. I never get to talk to anyone. I don’t have any friends. I never have a chance to get in trouble, or anything normal. And the dances? Pathetic.”

  “Why don’t you go to a regular school, then?”

  Nico sighed and shook his head. “In case you’re wondering, I’m not gay.”

  I stopped walking. “Why would you even think I was wondering if you were gay?”

  “Because the other guys I’ve known always do. It sucks when you’re thirteen or fourteen and your older brother is out and everyone’s okay with it and he’s happy about who he is and you love him, but then all the dudes at school give you nothing but shit, and then I’m like, I wonder if my mom and dad are going, ‘Why doesn’t Nico have a girlfriend?’ and sometimes I just get so sick of all the shit, you know?”

  His voice got a little knotted up. I knew it was hard for Nico to say it, and I never thought about how tough it must be for a kid in junior high school—about to start high school—when the social trail through the underbrush of assholes and knuckleheads in front of him was cut by his older brother, who happened to be gay, and who happened to be my best friend, too.

  “That really sucks. I’m sorry,” I said.

  Okay. So, you know how when sometimes a person who you think is an okay guy tells you something you know he’s been holding inside for a long time and it makes you feel really bad for him and you try to think of a thousand things you could do or say to make him feel better, but there’s just nothing you can do at all—which is why I now understood how none of the rugby boys at dinner wanted to talk to Nico—so you just feel awkward and sad and stupid because you really think the other guy (who you think is an okay guy) probably just needs a hug from a friend and to hear a friend tell him “none of this bullshit matters,” but you don’t think you can do anything like that, so you just keep your hands in your pockets and you say nothing and you feel like a massive pile of shit and you know he feels like shit and there’s, like, this huge, incredible, growing shit supernova swallowing you up and making you both feel so terrible and you’re not really looking where you’re going because it’s dark and you’ve just cut through the woods and your toe gets stuck beneath a goddamned tree root (screw you, goddamned tree) and you fall down in wet tree mulch and get a cigarette butt stuck to your forehead because your hands were in your pockets and this happened to be the—air quotes—assembly hall—end air quotes—for the Pine Mountain Nicotine Club and then the guy you think is an okay guy is laughing, and that makes you feel better, because of all the things you thought about that might make him not feel so shitty, gravity was not on that list?

  Yeah. That’s what happened.

  And screw you, gravity.

  “Dude! Are you okay?” Nico grabbed my arm and pulled me up.

  I was wet, and partially camouflaged with forest detritus.

  “I meant to do that,” I said.

  Nico smiled and shook his head.

  I am, as always, such a loser.

  I wiped the cigarette butt off my forehead. Now everything in my shit-supernova universe smelled like a goddamned ashtray. “So gross.”

  “Do you guys still have those poker games?” Nico asked.

  “Nah. All those hardcore dudes graduated last year. I miss tho
se guys, though. Even the assholes—excuse me for saying that, but there were some assholes who played in those against-the-rules poker games,” I said.

  “Too bad,” Nico said. “I would kind of like to have a beer with you, Ryan Dean.”

  “That would emotionally scar the Abernathy. It would devastate the little whelp,” I said. “But I just might be able to do something about that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  LIVING IN UNIT 113 WAS kind of like camping without a tent, in the middle of fucking winter, with strangers who wore soccer pajamas.

  I explained all of this to Nico, who, like his brother, was one of those extremely rare human beings who seemed to be able to put up with anything wierdos like me or Sam Abernathy could dish out and still conduct himself with nothing but understanding and patience.

  I know, right? What planet did the Cosentino boys come from?

  We’d pushed our desks up against the TV-slash-microwave shelf, then stacked our chairs in the corner beside the bathroom door in order to make enough space on our floor for poor Nico to sleep. Naturally—and I shouldn’t have wondered about this at all—the Abernathy had a complete spare set of blankets and sheets (they were Donkey Kong, which made me momentarily seethe with jealousy because Donkey Kong is way cooler than Princess Snugglewarm, and I could only imagine the Abernathy hatchling snatching up the last available set of Donkey Kong bedding at the one and only local store).

  But there was going to be one big claustrophobic problem.

  I said, “Look, Sam, we can’t leave the door open because Nico is not a student here, and someone will see him. And, although you know I’m willing to put up with it, it would be cruel of us to force him to sleep on the floor below an open window. So we’re going to have to brainstorm a solution to this whole claustrophobia situation.”

  When I said “brainstorm,” I made air quotes.

  And then Nico said this: “Oh. I totally don’t mind, Ryan Dean. I understand, and it’s okay with me.”

  For some reason, human evolutionary pressures had failed to eradicate the compassion gene, despite all the apparent evidence to the contrary.

  The Abernathy squiggled like a chihuahua on a trampoline on his bed. In his soccer jammies.

  He said, “Thanks, Nico! Sleepovers are the best!”

  No. Just no.

  Whatever.

  I took off my tie and shirt and slipped on a hoodie and some sneakers. Then I tossed a clean sweatshirt to Nico.

  “Here,” I said. “You might as well put on something dry and warm, then.”

  “Thanks.” Nico shook out the sweatshirt and sniffed it. Something all guys do, I think—just to make sure there’s no gross boy-B.O. stuck to it.

  And I added, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going, Ryan Dean?” the Abernathy chirped.

  “Up to Spotted John’s.”

  The Abernathy’s eyes widened. The last time I did this, things didn’t work out as planned. Not that I ever—air quotes—made plans with the Abernathy.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be back in, like, two minutes.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  THIS TIME, I SHOWED A little mercy to Spotted John’s door sock. I really did feel bad about burying his first door sock in the potted palm. Burying another one would make me like a serial killer. Of door socks.

  I knocked.

  Waited.

  Nothing.

  So I knocked again.

  “Go the fuck away. Can’t you see the sock?” came the choppy Danish-accented warning from the other side of the door.

  “Spotted John, it’s me, Ryan Dean. I need a favor.”

  “Dude. You still owe me for the last one. Go away.”

  “Please?”

  I used my sad-puppy-in-the-pound-about-to-be-euthanized voice, something I only use on special occasions.

  It always works.

  “Oh, bloody hell.”

  I heard a groan. I imagined Spotted John getting up from his ninja-video-game love seat. Sometimes, and it usually happens a couple hours after a rugby game, the soreness starts setting in, and it becomes really hard to move.

  He cracked the door and glanced around in the hallway behind me to make certain I was alone. Spotted John’s eyes were red—half closed—and he was standing there in his boxers and shirtless. And there was a hickey the size of a half-dollar on his collarbone. You don’t get hickeys playing rugby, by the way. In case you were wondering.

  “Oh, you didn’t need to get dressed up just for me, John,” I said.

  “Be quiet. Cotton’s asleep,” he whispered. “All right. Come in.”

  Okay. So the place smelled like pot. That was weird and made me feel awkward. But the weirdness and awkwardness I felt were guppies in a fish tank of tiger sharks compared with the weirdness and awkwardness I felt when I saw Seanie Flaherty sitting on Spotted John’s love seat. Stoned. Shirtless. In his boxers. And there were socks and T-shirts and half-knotted neckties and Pine Mountain good-boy uniform slacks and shirts scattered around the floor like Spotted John’s flat had been redecorated as the inside of a clothes dryer.

  So freaking awkward.

  Side note: Cancel those two questions I was going to ask Annie.

  I cleared my throat and stood just inside the closed door while Spotted John went over and sat down on the love seat next to Seanie.

  “Uh. Hi. Seanie,” I said. “Um. How’s your cuddle—er, concussion? Head? No! No, I mean your stitches? How are the stitches, Seanie?”

  God! I am such an idiot sometimes.

  But for the first time in his life, I think Seanie just didn’t have anything to say to me to deflect my observation of what had obviously been going on here. In fact, he looked a bit sick.

  Okay. So, we’ve all heard stories about teenage boys who get caught doing—air quotes—the thing that every teenage boy is an expert at, like maybe when his mom bursts unheralded into his room on some all-of-a-sudden, stealth “I just want to empty your trash can” urge, or maybe when a sibling trespasses through his closed door with a riveting story about something that happened at softball practice that just couldn’t wait until some other time—like never—to be told, neither of which could have ever possibly happened to me since (1) we have a maid, so my mother wouldn’t know how to empty a trash can, and (2) I am an only child (but let me state for the record that my parents have hired a new maid since last summer, so it doesn’t technically count about what the first maid saw, and I hope she never remembers who I am anyway, and—God!—why couldn’t that woman—Ursula was her name; I will never forget it—learn how to KNOCK ON MY FUCKING DOOR before walking into MY GODDAMNED bedroom), well, I can only imagine that the look on my face—no! I meant my hypothetical “his” face, not mine, people—would be exactly the expression Seanie Flaherty had when I said my extremely awkward “hi” to him as I came into Spotted John’s pot-filled dorm room and found my friend Seanie Flaherty there, with Spotted John, stoned and sitting on a love seat (which was not so much a love seat as a chair wide enough for a fold-out single-size foam mattress bed), snuggled up together, stoned and wearing absolutely nothing but their boxers.

  It was a beautifully touching moment that also made me feel really, really weird.

  Seanie just moved his mouth, like a bloodless albino fish on a hot summer sidewalk.

  Whatever. Like I cared about this stuff, anyway.

  Spotted John put his hand on Seanie’s bare thigh and said, “Ryan Dean’s cool with me, Seanie.”

  So I wagged my finger at Seanie and made a joke. “This is exactly why I never play strip Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners with Spotted John. I’ll bet the shirt off my back you’re naked in, like, thirty seconds, Seanie.”

  Okay, given the scene, the shirt off my back was probably the wrong thing to wager.

  “Whatever, Ryan Dean,” Spotted John said. “What the fuck do you want?”

  By the way, the TV—the video game—wasn’t even turned on.

>   “Hmmm,” I said, “I—I can’t remember what I wanted.”

  What I actually wanted was to not EVER have walked in on Seanie and Spotted John Nygaard on a love seat together in their boxers.

  But I seriously could not remember why I came to Spotted John’s room for, like, the thirty most agonizing, staring-at-my-buddy-practically-naked-with-another-guy seconds (not that I’ve had multiple experiences with such a situation) of my life.

  Oh yeah.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I came to ask you if I could borrow a couple cans of beer. Well, not borrow, since you undoubtedly won’t want them back after we drink them, but have. Yeah. Um. Shit.7 Can I have some beer, Spotted John?”

  And now I was blushing, but I couldn’t force myself to look away from Seanie and Spotted John. They were, to be perfectly honest, a cute couple.

  “Stop staring at us, you weirdo,” Spotted John said. “What? Are you and Snack-Pack going to get drunk tonight? Sounds like a wild time.”

  Stop looking at them. Stop looking at them. Stop looking at them.

  “Um. No. No. It’s for me. And Nico.”

  And Seanie said, “Dude. Don’t say anything about this, okay?”

  “Shut up, man. You guys are my friends. Why would I ever say anything?”

  Stop looking at them. Stop looking at them. Stop looking at them.

  I actually wanted to tell someone so bad, my head felt like it was about to burst. So I said, “Well, Spotted John? Can I?”

  “Help yourself. They’re in the minibar. And now you owe me again.”

  “Thanks, dude. You’re the best,” I said. I declined to add a sure-to-be-broken I.O.U. of whatever you want.

  And, yes, Spotted John Nygaard had an actual minibar beneath his not-turned-on television. And it was filled with beer, those little airplane-size bottles of liquor, and all kinds of other weird stuff.

  “Wow! You have cookie dough, too?”

  “You can’t have my cookie dough,” Spotted John said.

  I slipped two cans of beer into the pouch on my hoodie. I looked like a deformed kangaroo.

  “Huh! Big balls, Snack-Pack Senior,” Spotted John said.