Stand-Off

  Yeah. Pretty much that.

  But then who the fuck was he? I knew I knew him, which again, well, when you know you know something, you just know it, right?

  Maybe you can help me out. Here’s what he looked like: As I said, I think he must have been fourteen or fifteen years old. He was just a bit shorter than me, but he was fit, with square shoulders that showed me he probably played a sport—maybe rugby, since I had assumed he was enrolling in Pine Mountain, as opposed to doing what he was actually doing, which was canceling his enrollment. He had thick, wavy brown hair that you could tell he spent time on getting it to look perfectly messy, and a darker-than-Oregonian complexion with those kind of picket-fence braces on his upper teeth that looked like dot-to-dots played with a soldering iron. His non-student, non-tie shirt was open two buttons, and he wore one of those lassolike necklaces that attached by magnets at each end, and I swear on all things holy that I knew the kid.

  Maybe I’d played against him at some time, I thought. That must have been it.

  Anyway, since I was busted, like, practically checking this dude out as I sat there like a dork with my clipboard, I pointed at the kid and said, “I think I know you, don’t I?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, bro. I don’t think so.”

  He broed me. I hate getting broed.

  At which point I felt like a complete ass. With a clipboard, which only served to magnify my assishness. Bro.

  Headmaster Lavoie gave me a suspicious look that also conveyed his do-I-actually-have-another-person-with-a-clipboard-waiting-to-talk-to-me-during-lunch disappointment, and then shook hands with the man and the son.

  And he said this to them: “Mr. Cosentino, Mrs. Cosentino. Dominic. I’m sorry things aren’t going to work out here for you, son, but I understand completely. It was so nice to see you all again.”

  And that’s where I’d seen the kid before—in photographs my friend Joey had kept in his room in O-Hall. These were Joey’s parents, and the kid was his younger brother, Dominic—I remembered how Joey called him Nico—who under any other circumstances would have started school at Pine Mountain this year; and why he was not doing that was a no-brainer as far as I was concerned.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I FELT TORN, BUT I was thankful that some reasonable shred of my command center restrained me from blurting out something as horrendously dorky as Hey! I do know you! You’re Joey Cosentino’s family, and Joey was my best friend in the world and he saved my ass so many times from doing stupid things like blurting out a ridiculous and self-serving info-dump about myself in front of decent and loving human beings, which is why I’m not actually saying this right now, but only imagining how stupid I would feel if I did!

  Or something.

  But I did want to say something to the Cosentinos. To be honest, I wanted to tell them a lot of things. I desperately wished an opening would present itself, and when it didn’t, when Mr. Cosentino held the administrative center’s door open to let his wife and son—Joey’s brother!—out of the office, I just sat there with my clipboard and unfilled-out complaint form that I suddenly could not possibly care any less about, much less recall, who Sam Abernathy even was, with my mouth hanging open and eyes glazed over, looking like a Pekingese who’d been left too long inside a car on a sweltering summer afternoon.

  Click.

  The door shut behind them. They were gone.

  Headmaster Lavoie looked at me.

  Mrs. Knudson looked at me.

  “Were you waiting to see me, son?” Headmaster Lavoie asked.

  “Uh.”

  I glanced at the blank form pinched to my clipboard.

  “I’m writing a piece for the school newspaper,” I squeaked. “I was wondering how to pronounce your name, sir.”

  Headmaster Lavoie laughed.

  Mrs. Knudson laughed.

  It was all so fucking funny, wasn’t it?

  I handed the clipboard back to Mrs. Knudson, mumbling something about changing my mind and throwing in an abbreviated apology to both of them for wasting their time. And, fully embarrassed for all kinds of reasons, I ducked out of Headmaster Unpronounceable-secret-name’s office and followed the departing Cosentino family to the school’s parking lot.

  Of course, I had no idea what I might say to them, only that I felt an urgent need to let them know who I was before they left, because I was certain I’d never have a chance to speak with Joey’s parents and brother again.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  So I dashed out into the parking lot just as Mr. Cosentino was getting into the driver’s seat of what I guessed could only be a rental car—because it was a red minivan, and there was no way I could picture anybody in Joey’s family driving a red minivan. I waved my arm and said something dumb like “Excuse me! Mr. Cosentino? Excuse me! Wait up!”

  Which caught Joey’s dad’s attention, stopping him at his open van door. And when he looked back, I can only assume this is what he saw: He saw me, Ryan Dean West, waving my hand over my head like a dork and looking at him with pleading eyes. Then he probably saw me cutting between one of the first rows of diagonally parked cars. The car I jogged past happened to be Seanie Flaherty’s black off-road vehicle (I know, right? Now that Seanie was a senior, not only could he drive a car, but he was allowed to keep his own car here at Pine Mountain, and actually go places—like home on the weekends, since his family lived in Beaverton, to visit his vast pornography collection), and I couldn’t help but notice all the inappropriate bumper stickers Seanie had all over the back window, like the one that read RUGBY, BECAUSE YOU’RE ALREADY DRUNK! And I thought, Man, if Headmaster Whatever-that-dude’s-human-name-is ever notices this, he’s going to make Seanie take it off.

  And then Mr. Cosentino probably saw the waving, cutting-between-the-cars dorky dude hook the toe of his right foot square into one of those goddamned concrete-turd thingies that like Headmaster Lavoie’s last name no human being knows what to call them, and that also separate rows of parking spots, and then lurch forward like the waving, cutting-between-the-cars dorky dude was running away from a German trench in World War I and just caught a Mauser round squarely between his shoulder blades.

  I went down.

  And while I was noticing the smell of asphalt and considering the acidic sting of a certainly road-rashed knee, I could only imagine the Cosentino family having an in-van conversation that went something like this:

  I got up.

  When I dusted myself off, I noticed my pants were ripped, and through that newly opened window I could see a bloody right knee.

  Great.

  Mr. Cosentino just stood beside his car and watched, no doubt wondering what the hell was going on with the kid, the lion pit, and the parking lot.

  I waved. “I’m okay.”

  What an idiot.

  Mr. Cosentino turned to get into the van.

  “No. Wait. Can I talk to you for a minute, Mr. Cosentino?”

  I threaded my way between the next row of cars and crossed to where the Cosentinos sat in their red minivan. When I got up to the driver’s-side door, Mr. Cosentino grimaced slightly and pointed at my bloody knee.

  “Oh. Uh, wow. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. Then I stuck out my hand and realized I still had bits of gravel embedded in my palm. I wiped my hand off on my butt and stuck it out again.

  “Mr. Cosentino, I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Ryan Dean West, and I . . . well . . .”

  Then I realized I didn’t actually know how to finish what I was trying to say. In fact, I didn’t have any clue as to what I should say to him at all.

  But Mr. Cosentino, obviously the father of the son, saved me—as Joey had so many times. He shook my hand and smiled.

  “Oh! Ryan Dean! Joey used to talk about you all the time! It’s so nice to finally meet you,” Mr. Cosentino said.

  And as I shook Mr. Cosentino’s hand, standing there in the slight drizzle that fell over Pine Mountain’s parking lot, bleed
ing from my stinging right knee, I thought, Hmm . . . I wonder what Joey said about me, because it couldn’t possibly be good, since Joey was constantly saving my butt from terrible fates only a half-wit loser could get himself into, like fooling around with another girl when I was madly in love with Annie Altman, or gambling and being talked into drinking alcohol with Joey and some of the other guys on the team, or having my face busted open a couple of times by getting into stupid fights—well, not stupid fights, because God knows I’d always win in a stupid fight, just look right here at my torn school pants and bloody right knee and there’s all the proof you’d need, but . . . I really just wanted to know what Joey told them about me!

  But I couldn’t say anything at all because I was so choked up over the fact that I was actually shaking hands with my best friend Joey Cosentino’s father.

  Then Mr. Cosentino leaned toward the car and said, “Sheri, Nico, this is the boy Joey told us about—Ryan Dean. Remember?”

  I still needed to know what, exactly, Joey had said.

  Doors opened on the other side of the van, and I realized that I was now actually afraid of talking to the Cosentino family, but I had kind of painted myself into a corner. And I also managed to get a bloody knee and torn pants in the process.

  I got choked up like a thirteen-year-old girl at a boy-band concert when Nico got out of the van and stood between me and Mrs. Cosentino.

  He eyed me up and down. He was as unsmiling as he’d been inside the headmaster’s office.

  “You ate shit over there, bro.”

  Okay, so my knee was pretty bloody and Nico just broed me for the second time in less than fifteen minutes.

  “I . . . Uh . . . Mrs. Cosentino, it’s very nice to meet you. And, Nico, Joey used to keep a picture of you in his room. That’s why I recognized you. And I just . . . I . . .”

  Mrs. Cosentino nodded and smiled at me. “I understand, Ryan Dean. Really. We know how much you all meant to Joey. Really we do, honey.”

  Joey’s mom melted my heart.

  Nico began sidling his way back into the van. He said, “Well, nice meeting you. We got to go, though.”

  And my voice cracked when I said, “I know you probably have to leave, but if you ever come back—maybe to watch us play rugby or something—it would be . . . I mean, I’d really like to maybe hang out and talk to you, Nico. Or, you know, we can’t have phones and stuff, but if you wrote a letter to me here at PM, I’d write you back. Or draw something. I draw.”

  And then Joey’s brother, Nico, turned back from the edge of the van’s sliding door and said, “Thanks, bro, but I don’t really need to talk about things.”

  Then he climbed inside and pulled shut the door.

  Mr. Cosentino gave me an embarrassed glance, and Joey’s mom looked a little hurt and saddened.

  And before they left, she said to me, “I’m really sorry about that, Ryan Dean.”

  Yeah. Me too.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR PANTS?”

  Sam Abernathy—our team manager and the guy I had just nearly filed divorce papers on—caught me on my way into the locker room as he carried out two heavy baskets of water bottles for Coach M. The kid tottered along, grunting from the weight of the bottle carriers, which probably doubled gravity’s pull on him.

  And somehow the Abernathy had managed to appear there at the big metal double doors to the locker room at the start of practice every day since becoming manager, dressed in baggy shorts and a Pine Mountain Rugby Football Club hoodie big enough to function as his sleeping bag. I never asked him about it—because, you know, I don’t actually converse with the larva—but I had to wonder if he made Coach M or the rest of the staff leave the locker room at the end of lunch so he could change into his adorable little manager’s costume.

  The guys on the team instantly adopted the Abernathy as a sort of mascot, too. They couldn’t help themselves; after all, the kid gave off this fluffy-baby-chick-in-an-Easter-basket vibe that kind of made you want to hold him inside your cupped hands. Until he ran out of oxygen, in my case.

  But I had to be nice at practice. Well, at least I had to not be mean, since I was captain and had to set an example of all the ethical and responsible stuff that frequently went against my gut instincts.

  Spotted John walked in front of me and rubbed the Abernathy’s head. That was something else everyone on the team did too. Every day on the way into the locker room and on our way out at the end of practice, all the guys rubbed Sam’s hair and called him Snack-Pack. JP Tureau seemed to take pleasure in pointing out at any opportunity how Snack-Pack Abernathy also happened to be my roommate.

  “How’s it hanging, Snack-Pack?” Spotted John said.

  “Hi, Spotted John. What happened to your pants, Ryan Dean?” the Abernathy annoyingly persisted in his investigation into my trousers.

  I fantasized about putting Snack-Pack Abernathy in a chokehold and washboarding my knuckles on his head with enough friction to start a fire. But Captain Ryan Dean outmuscled Immature Ryan Dean. And, speaking of this inner struggle, I was absolutely convinced that Immature Ryan Dean was far more likely to go skinny-dipping with Annie Altman than Captain Ryan Dean, who responsibly and wholeheartedly embraced Mrs. Blyleven’s all-boys Health class Ten Commandments to My Penis.

  “There’s a wolverine back there by the soccer field,” I said. “It tried to tear my leg off.”

  I winced and looked away as I touched the Abernathy’s dirty little-boy hair. You know, rituals and customs, you have to do them in rugby, even if they’re completely disgusting.

  “Really?”

  “No. Not really. And stop talking to me.”

  And while I was getting changed into my rugby stuff, our little manager-fetus told on me. Not because I was mean to him; the Abernathy told Coach M that Captain Ryan Dean was bleeding from his kneecap, which meant I had to go back inside the coaching office and allow manager-grub Sam Abernathy to clean and tape up my cut, since there are very strict laws against playing rugby while hemorrhaging from open wounds and stuff, and taping up semidetached body parts was one of the things rugby managers sometimes had to do, along with collecting up all the dirty uniforms and towels from the locker room floor at the end of a game.

  Why anyone would volunteer to do such a thing mystified me, and I refused to consider—as Annie had theorized—that Sam Abernathy only volunteered to manage the rugby team because it was his singular mission to become friends with me.

  I’d told her he was more likely trying to give me a burst blood vessel in my brain.

  And the Abernathy’s hands were too small for medical gloves. When he put them on, it looked as though skin was dripping like melted wax from the ends of his tiny baby fingers. He even got one of the fingertips stuck beneath the pressure wrap when he wound it around my knee.

  “So, how did you do this, again?” Sam Abernathy asked.

  “I told you. A wolverine.”

  Sam Abernathy laughed.

  “I think you’re one of the funniest guys I know, Ryan Dean.”

  I shrugged and cleared my throat. I was still perturbed about the way Joey’s brother Nico had completely dismissed me—worse, he broed me—so I was in no mood to entertain the Abernathy’s attempt at flattery.

  The front-row guys—the props and the hooker—because they were honestly pretty fat, referred to Thursday practices as “hashtag throw-up Thursdays” because they were generally the toughest workouts of the week. That day, the day of my run-in with Joey’s family and my scuffed-up knee, was no exception. Our practice seemed to expand through time, with endless suicide sprints and ladder drills until Coach finally relented and divided us up into four teams for sevens.

  Playing the game was what we all lived for, anyway, and Coach M knew exactly how to time things so that just as we were all ready to collapse he could use the final reward of some honest and hard-hitting play to get our heads back into what we were there for. Unfortunately for me, my head wasn’t
where it was supposed to be that day, after missing lunch and hanging out in Headmaster Name-that-shall-not-be-spoken’s office and then the terrible experience in the parking lot, as well as having to endure first-aid treatment from Snack-Pack Abernathy.

  And my team was poised to win it all, too. I had the brute Spotted John Nygaard playing center for me, and Seanie Flaherty feeding the ball back from the front guys. But during our last game, just after getting the ball out of our three-man scrum, I got distracted by something.

  Well, to be honest, it wasn’t just something. I looked up for a moment and I could swear I saw that dude I’d been drawing—the one in black named Nate—standing in goal at the far end of the pitch, just watching me from behind the posts.

  And it was while I was caught in that momentary distraction that JP Tureau, who was playing on the opposite team, sailed shoulder-first into my chest and crushed me into the turf of the pitch. I felt something pop, and I tried rolling over to protect the ball, but JP had his hands twisted in my jersey and he pinned me there, rucking over me so his teammates could poach the ball.

  Being on the bottom of a ruck in rugby is one of the worst places a human being could ever find himself. Luckily for me, rucks in sevens didn’t involve as many assailants as a ruck in a full game, but still, they gave your opponents easy chances to rough you up with grabs, hair pulls, occasional punches, and frequent kicks. I got a little bit of all that while JP pinned me down. He even put his face next to my ear and called me a bitch before raking the ball out of my arms with his cleats, and then feeding it to Bags, who went on to score and win the game.