Winger

I can only imagine, not that I thought for even a fleeting instant about opening that goddamned package, that my mother had spent all day long asking all kinds of questions before deciding on just the right condoms and “how to have sex the first time” booklet, which she later undoubtedly exchanged for a cute pair of socks with sailboats on them before ultimately leaving the store and going to a different goddamned condom and “how to have sex the first time” emporium.

  This is shopping.

  And this was the Ryan-Dean-West-swim-trunk-shopping expedition with Annie and Doc Mom.

  At first, Annie was messing around and tried to make a case that I was on the Pine Mountain swim team, so she told Doc Mom to look in the Speedo section.

  Her mistake. I completely went along with her. What was she thinking? I actually thought it would be kind of hot to wear Speedos in front of Annie and her mom. But when Annie realized what was happening, she got this terrified, defeated look and said, “I think it’s time for you to move up to big boy board shorts, Ryan Dean.”

  “No. Really,” I insisted.

  Big boy board shorts. What a bunch of crap.

  The only cool part about the whole experience was that every time they’d look at a new pair of trunks, Doc Mom would hold them up to my waist, pinning them with her thumbs to my hips so she and Annie could imagine how I’d look in them.

  Yeah, I’ll admit I didn’t get too tired of that routine.

  And the shopping went on and on until Doc Dad said he had to pee really bad. So Annie and Doc Mom settled on a pair of plain red lifeguard baggies that were exactly the ones I would have chosen for myself about an hour and a half earlier.

  While they were waiting to pay, Doc Dad leaned close to me and whispered, “I don’t really have to pee, Ryan Dean, but I’ve found that the need to pee is about the only force that sufficiently shrinks Rachel’s universe to the point where she’ll cut short a shopping experience.”

  Now here was a guy I totally understood.

  I bet he could fake-cry, too.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  GREEN.

  That’s Bainbridge Island.

  It’s one of the most intensely green places I’ve ever seen. And I never for a moment imagined the kind of home Annie’s family lived in.

  The house was set right up against the shore, facing Puget Sound and, across it, Seattle. We drove up a long driveway through trees to the garage, and then walked a pathway through gardens that had been decorated with strange and beautiful metal and enamel sculptures of fish, animals, and native totems.

  “Annie made all of these sculptures herself,” Doc Mom said, “in her studio.”

  They were incredible. I looked at Annie. I always knew she was creative and brilliant, but I never realized she could do something as amazing as this.

  “You’re incredible,” I said to her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Where the gardens opened up, we stepped out onto a wide grass lawn in front of the house, which was mostly made of stone and had tall windows all along the front, looking out across the water. There was a broad wooden deck on the edge of the lawn, right where the grass gave way to a slope of black lava rocks that lined the shore. You couldn’t see any other house from there; the property was surrounded by forest.

  And just as we got to the front door, the sun hit the perfect angle in the west behind us, and it looked like the entire city of Seattle turned rust hued, and the peak of Mount Rainier seemed to float, salmon colored, in the sky.

  “Hey,” I said, “you can see the Space Needle from your front yard.”

  Annie rolled her eyes.

  “If you get changed out of your strip-search clothes, we can walk on the beach before dinner,” she said.

  I will admit that my inside-out sock was bothering me, but all I had besides school clothes were running shorts, sweats, and my new swim trunks.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Doc Dad led the way into the entry hall and said, “Annie, why don’t you take Ryan Dean to the guest room.”

  Damn.

  “Oh, he doesn’t want to be that far away, all alone,” she said.

  Oh my God. Will it actually happen?

  Annie continued, “I’ll put him in the little room across from mine.”

  Next thing I knew, I heard the clicking of manicured dog nails on the wood floor, followed by the chirplike shriek of repetitive barking, and then this smash-faced little dog appeared and immediately came after my leg in a hump ambush.

  “Pedro!” Annie scolded.

  “Just kick him,” Doc Mom said. “He never quits, otherwise.”

  You know, when someone tells you to kick their dog—the same dog who is currently in a breeding frenzy with your nicest pair of dorky school pants—it’s a difficult thing to judge exactly how hard the dog should be kicked. So I decided I’d give Pedro a conservative three out of five Cossack dancers on the Ryan Dean West How-Far-to-Kick-a-Gay-Pug Spectrum.

  “That’s mean!” Annie said, but she did kind of laugh as Pedro skittered like a hockey puck toward the sunken living room.

  “Good man, Ryan Dean,” Doc Dad said. “I don’t know why we haven’t cut his balls off yet.”

  And why is it, I thought, that whenever boys consider such measures—despite their justifiability—we always get a bit scared, morose, and angsty?

  Oh, well.

  “Come on,” Annie said. Then she grabbed my hand to lead me down the hallway to our right. She stopped suddenly.

  Annie must have realized what she was doing (unlike Pedro, she could control the involuntary impulse to conjugate with Ryan Dean West), because she immediately let go like my hand was a red-hot thing that gets . . . red . . . hot.

  Or something.

  I followed her, lugging my suitcase and the bag from the sporting goods store.

  “The door on the right is your room,” she said. “Just across the hall from mine.”

  I opened my door and set my bags down on the floor.

  It’s amazing how much a guy can appreciate a non-bunk-bed bed and a bathroom that doesn’t have at least two other guys in it at all times. The window was uncovered and looked out at the beach and tall dark pines, and I had my own television and a huge bathroom with an ice-block shower cubicle.

  “How do you like it?” Annie said.

  “Please adopt me,” I said. Then I added, “No. On second thought, that could get a little weird. Let’s just hop across the border to Canada and get married.”

  Annie laughed. I kicked my shoes off and said, “I’ll get changed.”

  “Okay. Meet me in the hall in, like, thirty seconds,” she said.

  Hmmm . . . I thought, thirty seconds meant I’d have time to get out of my clothes but not into them. Oh, well, wishful thinking. Docs Mom and Dad would probably disapprove of the clothing-optional houseguest, and that dog was out there waiting for me, anyway.

  “Okay,” I said, and Annie left me alone.

  Whenever I get off an airplane, I feel like I’ve been deep fried, dripping in oil. And I probably smelled like booze from drunk-bald-fat-guy slobbering on my shoulder. So it felt really good to tear all my clothes off (without a couple security guards pawing through them), and even better to just throw them onto the floor, something I hadn’t been able to do all year.

  Now, with all the scattered, discarded articles of boy-clothes, this looked like a real guy’s room.

  All I needed to do was mess up the perfectly smoothed bedcovers, which I did with a jump.

  I put on the red trunks they bought me, as well as a gray Pine Mountain RFC (which means Rugby Football Club) sweatshirt, some clean, inside-in socks, and my running shoes, and I was out my door and in the hall in under a minute.

  Annie opened her door.

  No matter what she wore, Annie Altman always looked perfect. She had changed into faded jeans that were just wearing through at the knees and along the bottoms of the pockets, with a pale blue sweater that really made her black hair and blue eyes
stand out, even in the dim light of the hallway.

  I had never seen her dressed in “home clothes” before, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  And, I am such a loser, I couldn’t even speak when she asked, “Want to see my room?”

  Her room was so . . . Annie. The walls were covered with paintings, and sculptures of fish and birds that she’d made. Her windows looked out into the forest, and she had French doors that opened to a stepping-stone path.

  Next to her bed was a Wonder Horse, one of those spring-mounted things kids used to play on, like, a hundred years ago.

  “Wow,” I said, but my voice cracked like a kid who suddenly realized he was alone inside the bedroom of the girl he loved, which made sense, considering the oppressive reality of my surrounding conditions. “Do you still ride?”

  Annie laughed. “Come on.”

  She opened the paned doors and led me onto the path outside her room.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  WE WALKED ALONG THE ROCKY beach in the sunset.

  The water in the sound was so black and rolling, jagged and alive. Everything smelled like the sea and trees. Between the cracks in the rocks, I could see the claws of wedged-in crabs, spitting bubbles, sometimes moving slightly like they wanted to keep an eye on us, like they were spying on us.

  “Tomorrow morning we can go run out past that point.” Annie’s hand indicated a distant and darkening stand of trees.

  “This is so nice,” I said. My shoes were wet from walking too close to the water. “Thanks so much for asking me, Annie.”

  “I knew you’d like it.”

  “I never knew you were such an artist,” I said.

  “Just like you,” she said.

  “Crud. You are so much more. I draw stick figures. You make stuff that’s real.”

  “I can tell my mom and dad really like you.”

  I pulled out the leg of my trunks. “I got the trunks on.”

  “They look good.”

  We stopped and turned back toward the house. It was beginning to get dark.

  I was convinced she was playing the same game with me that I was playing with her, but I wasn’t going to fall for it. Not for a second. There was still that sensible and pathetic part of my mind that kept telling me Annie Altman only thought I was a little kid and nothing else.

  But we did stand there for a minute, and I could smell her, and feel the warmth like a static charge coming from her. And she looked at my face, and we were so close when she said, “Your stitches look like they’re getting better.”

  I leaned closer to her. Damn, she looked so nice, and I was so impressed by how she lived and the beautiful things she’d created there with her own hands, and I wanted to . . .

  Do not kiss her, Ryan Dean West.

  Ugh.

  I am such a loser. She knew exactly what she was doing.

  She started back to the house and said over her shoulder in her singing voice, the voice that knew everything and made nothing matter, “Don’t even tell me that you didn’t almost do it just now, Ryan Dean.”

  Damn.

  I couldn’t say anything.

  Annie stopped and looked back. “So there. We’re even. Admit it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I followed after her, and when I caught up beside her, I held her hand.

  “I bet JP would be jealous,” I said.

  “Don’t even go there, West. You said we shouldn’t talk about JP to each other.”

  “Okay.”

  I sighed. In the fading light, we hadn’t noticed that her mother and father had been standing just down the beach, watching us. But we didn’t let go of our hands.

  Her father’s arm was around her mother’s shoulders. Doc Mom smiled and said, “You look so nice walking on the beach together.”

  After dinner, Annie and I went out to the pool house to go for a swim.

  Unfortunately, her parents came along. They just sat there reading in lounge chairs, but they were keeping an eye on us too, and I think they enjoyed doing it. But when we sat in the hot tub, I started playing with Annie’s feet and rubbing her legs with mine. It was the best feeling I could ever have dreamed up, and I could tell Annie liked it too, but it was really making me crazy. So I leaned my head back on the deck and closed my eyes because I wasn’t about to let her think I wanted to kiss her. Or something else. But I will say that all Annie would have had to do was whisper, “Let’s go skinny-dipping,” and those goddamned red lifeguard trunks would have been hanging from the rafters.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  IT FELT SO COMFORTABLE SLEEPING in that bed that I guess I must not have wanted to wake up. When I did, the sun was already pouring through my window and someone was knocking on my door.

  “Ryan Dean. Are you still sleeping?”

  It was Annie.

  “I was. Until maybe two seconds ago.”

  “Sorry.”

  I rubbed my eyes.

  “You can come in,” I said.

  The door cracked open, and she cautiously peeked her head into my room. I could see she was dressed for a run.

  I folded my hands on the pillow beneath my head. This was like a dream come true: Annie Altman waking me up in the morning after we practically took a bath together the night before.

  “Come get some breakfast, and let’s go for our run. It’s beautiful out there.”

  It’s not so bad in here, either, I thought.

  “Okay.” I sat up and rubbed my chin. “I’ll be right there after I get ready. I think I need to shave.”

  Annie laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  “Hey. I have one whisker. Right here under my chin. Just one. I’m thinking of giving it a name, but I don’t know if I should let it grow out or chop its head off.” I tilted my head back and put my finger on my jaw. “See it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you can’t see it from way over there. You have to get close.”

  She moved to the edge of the bed.

  Score.

  “Look,” I said. “It’s even dark and everything.”

  I kept my chin up, and Annie leaned over me.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I can see it.”

  She was so close.

  She said, “It looks so lonely and lost, maybe you shouldn’t shave it. And maybe you should name it ‘Ryan Dean.’ ”

  I looked into her eyes.

  “I better get out of here,” Annie said, straightening. Then she spun around and went to the door.

  “We’re not even anymore, Annie.”

  Then I heard her call “Pedro,” and that little disgusting animal came nail-tapping-panting-slobbering-excited-grunting into my room. Annie left, shutting the door just as Pedro sailed up onto my bed and began frantically mounting my foot. I scooped him up by his little sweaty armpits, his hips still pumping at the air, opened the door with my elbow, and scooted him like a shuffleboarded puck-puppy to the opposite end of the hallway.

  Annie was smiling, standing there, watching me.

  I looked at her and said, “So, are you going to give me time to get dressed, or is it okay if I come to breakfast in my underwear?”

  She laughed, and I said, “And, no, we are not even. Ryan Dean West has officially pulled into the lead.”

  “It’s not fair if you count getting Pedro to think about kissing you.”

  “Good one, Annie. In that case I’m way ahead of you.”

  I went back inside my room and got into my running gear.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  DOC MOM FED US BAGELS with butter and sweet tomato jam she’d made from her own summer garden, and we drank black coffee and orange juice. And throughout the meal, the doc parents were both trying to talk to us, but our feet were twitching and we needed to get outside.

  “I’m sorry, Doc Mom,” I said. “I don’t usually sleep this late, but this place sure is a beautiful spot for resting.”

  “Thank you, Ryan Dean. Doc Mom—I like that. Poor
boy, you sleep as late as you want. You can do whatever you feel like when you’re in our house,” she said.

  I fired a quick and perverted, arched-eyebrow-(it hurt my stitches)-remember-the-Jacuzzi look at Annie, who rolled her eyes.

  We ran so far that morning.

  I’d almost forgotten that Annie’s being on the cross country team meant that anything under ten miles was a warm-up for her. I followed Annie along trails and streets, heading south along the shore of the island, and we came to a park where a stream cut a V-shaped harbor. The place was deserted, too; I saw just one small fishing boat rocking like a lazy walrus off the shore. We stopped running, and walked through wide fields of knee-high grass that made our legs wet.

  The park was the site of an old sawmill, now abandoned, but the outer walls of the mill building still stood, square, like a fort, in the middle of the field. And you could tell from the outline of the perimeter of the open space, and how the forest butted up against it, that there had been tall trees there at one time, before the mill was operational.

  “Come on,” Annie said. “I want you to see inside the building.”

  I followed her.

  It was kind of a surreal place. What was left of the old mill—the floor and side walls—had been entirely constructed of concrete. Huge openings in the sides and in the roof were the gutted remains of former doors and skylights. And just about every available surface inside was painted with bizarre and colorful graffiti, some of it very artistic, and a lot of it just nasty and drugged out. There was even a tree growing from a hole in the floor, all the way up through one of the open skylights, about twenty feet over our heads.

  “Who did all this?” I said, turning in my place and scanning all the images.

  “Just kids. They get bored living here.”

  “They do?” I couldn’t believe anyone would ever get bored here.

  “I remembered seeing something here one time,” Annie said. “And I wanted to see if I could find it again, if it hasn’t been painted over.”

  She moved past one of the thick steel girders that supported the roof.