Winger

  “Come here,” she said. “Look. I thought about you when I saw this last time I was here.”

  Annie pointed down to the base of one of the walls, and there, beneath a big red word that spelled out SOMEDAY, in interlocking letters, was a painting of two overlapping black circles.

  “You remember that?” I said.

  “It was about your wish, that last time we were at Stonehenge,” Annie said. “And I thought about it a lot. I felt bad because I’d been so mean to you that week, and I realized that I was pretty unfair to you too. I mean about the ‘little boy’ stuff.”

  “Oh?” I knew we were standing too close again. I was practically sweating on her, and I didn’t want her to just be playing. But she was. I backed away, but just a bit, and I looked at the circles. “So, did you get over it? The outside-the-overlap part of me, I mean?”

  She looked at me. Her eyes had that relaxed, smiling look in them. She didn’t say anything. We just looked.

  Then she stepped closer to me and touched my hand.

  I said, “Okay. I don’t care. I lose.”

  And then I kissed Annie Altman.

  For, like, twenty straight minutes.

  And there was no interruption from the visually abrasive Mrs. Singer; there was nothing in the entire universe except for me and Annie finally getting something over with that had been making us both crazy for so long.

  I didn’t care that she’d won our little game, because for those incredible minutes, pinning her body between mine and the coolness of the painted concrete wall in that old mill, my hands holding the back of her neck, feeling the softness of her hair falling across the sweat of my arms, I finally didn’t feel like such a loser.

  I was shaking.

  I said, “I told you I’d do it when I wanted to. And I decided I wanted to.”

  We got back to her house at lunchtime, and her father said, “Wow, you two must have gone pretty far.”

  Annie smiled at me, and I know she was thinking about the perverted comment I’d normally be tempted to make at such a statement, but this was not a normal time for Ryan Dean West, and she said, “Oh, it was the perfect run, Dad.”

  And I said, “Yeah. Completely perfect.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  THAT AFTERNOON, ANNIE KEPT HER promise to fix my school pants, but her mom helped. So I stood there in the “sewing room” in my socks and underwear doing the on-off routine with my pants while hot Annie pinned and her hot mother worked the sewing machine.

  You know, it’s easy to play all cool and stuff about how hot certain females are, but it’s another thing entirely to then find yourself actually standing in front of them in your underwear. I’m not really sure if I was handling the opportunity in the most advantageous manner.

  I wondered if there were many guys out there who actually could.

  I was so red and embarrassed, and Doc Mom tried to make small talk about how nice it was to have a boy in the house, but it was like my tongue had been bee-stung, and I couldn’t say anything because I just wanted to keep hearing both of them tell me to take my pants off again.

  I am such a loser.

  All I could think about was how I’d actually kissed Annie that day, and I wondered if we would ever have the guts to say anything about it, or if we’d even have the guts to make it happen again.

  Then I had to stand there, waiting in my boxers while Doc Mom ironed the old hems out and made me try on every pair of slacks one last time before she was satisfied they were perfect. All I knew was that I wished I’d grow another two inches by the next morning so we’d be required to do it over again, and maybe next go-round, I’d be all suave and debonair and stuff, and make witty comments instead of just gurgling like a goldfish on a linoleum floor.

  “There,” Doc Mom said. “I think you look very handsome.”

  “Thanks, Doc Mom,” I said, and unbuttoned my pants and began pulling them down.

  “Uh, Ryan Dean, you can leave them on now. We’re finished,” she said.

  I am such a loser.

  “He got strip-searched at the airport, Mom,” Annie said. “I think he’s traumatized by it.”

  “Really?” Doc Mom said.

  Oh, yeah. She’s a psychologist. So now she needed to hear the whole story about what happened, and how poor Ryan Dean had been mentally abused. I gave Annie an ultraterrified, oh-my-God-please-don’t-tell-your-mom-about-the-Band-Aid-on-my-balls look, but it was too late for that. Annie launched into the entire story, going all the way back to Wednesday when Sean Russell Flaherty stepped on my nuts at rugby practice and I went to the doctor for it.

  And Doc Mom, being the compassionate therapist that she is, laughed until she had tears in her eyes (just like Annie does) and said that was one of the funniest stories she’d ever heard.

  When Annie was finished with the getting-on-the-airplane-as-Ryan-Dean’s-pants-fell-down-again part, I excused myself to return to my room so I could kill myself.

  I probably would have, too, except just as I stepped out into the hallway, three things happened at once:

  1. Pedro hump-ambushed me, and I almost fell down.

  2. I realized that both Annie and her five-out-of-five-leather-couches-on-the-Ryan-Dean-West-Hot-Therapist-Ink-Blot-Test mom had just had a conversation about my balls.

  3. Doc Mom said to Annie, “I just love Ryan Dean.” And I swear to God, but then again, this is coming from the same boy who’s heard all kinds of twisted things coming from Mrs. Singer’s mouth, but I swear to God that Annie said, “So do I.”

  Of course, I can’t be absolutely certain, because of the noise of anguished and love-starved grunts coming from that goddamned gay pug.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  WE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT WHAT happened in the abandoned sawmill, and we didn’t kiss again, either, for that whole endlessly long Saturday. And the next morning when I woke up, it was drizzling rain, and I was so depressed about having to leave Bainbridge Island and fly back to Oregon later that day that I seriously felt like I could cry.

  So I stayed in bed until I heard Annie’s door open across the hall. Then she knocked.

  “Come in.”

  This time, she just walked right in.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I pulled the covers over my face and hid. “I don’t want to go back to school, Annie. Make it be yesterday again.”

  “Do you want to run?”

  “I love running in the rain. Meet me in the kitchen in, like, thirty seconds.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s just run in the woods today.”

  We sat down to breakfast with the doc parents. We had oatmeal and black coffee. I love coffee. I hate oatmeal, but I’ll be honest, I’d eat anything at the Altmans’ table. I wore my black running shorts and Pine Mountain RFC sweatshirt with a blue cap that I started to take off when I sat down, but Doc Mom told me to keep it on, that I didn’t have to be like that in their house.

  “Next time you come up, Ryan Dean,” Doc Dad said, “do you think you could bring me one of those sweatshirts? I don’t have any rugby stuff anymore.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “And I fully intend on coming down and seeing you play a match this season too,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the game. Too long.”

  “That would be really cool,” I said.

  Doc Mom looked sad. I could tell it was hard for her to always say good-bye to her daughter, but Annie told me they saw each other more often now that she was at Pine Mountain than they ever did when they all lived together full-time.

  I guess things work out like that sometimes.

  “I’m sure going to miss having you here, Ryan Dean,” Doc Mom said. “I want to see you back before Thanksgiving, if your folks will let you.”

  “If it’s okay with Annie,” I said. “This was the best weekend I ever had in my life, I think.”

  Annie tipped her coffee c
up empty and said, “Let’s go, West, if you’re done.”

  We went out into the gray, wet morning.

  Running through the woods north of her house, it amazed me how green things grew on top of green things that were still green and growing. Trees were covered with ferns and vines and mosses, and everywhere it looked as if nothing had been dry in centuries. And in the dark woods as we ran, I could smell that living-ocean scent of the island, and I heard nothing but the sounds of our feet on the wet ground, our breathing, and the static-spark sizzle of rain dripping through the forest cover.

  She was running fast, trying to push me, or trying to get somewhere that I didn’t know about.

  “Hey!” I said. “Stop for a minute, Annie.”

  Where a tree branch arched across the trail, black, and covered with hair of brilliant moss, Annie stopped and turned around to wait for me. I was panting. Dark rings of sweat made circles under my arms and a V that pointed at my belly, down from my neck. My cap was soaked dark with the drizzling rain.

  “Don’t kiss me, Ryan Dean.”

  Now, that was like getting kicked in the balls again.

  “Okay.”

  I bent forward and put my hands on my knees. I spit between my feet.

  “Did I do something wrong, Annie?”

  “No. I just think we shouldn’t do that again.”

  Ugh.

  “Okay with me,” I said.

  I tried to sound like Annie would if she’d said it, all nonchalant and singsongy, but my voice cracked and I felt like a fucking idiot. “I just wanted to say thanks again for having me here. And how much I like your mom and dad.”

  “You’re welcome, Ryan Dean,” she said. “Do you want to turn around?”

  “No. I want you to make it be yesterday again.”

  “Stop it, Ryan Dean.”

  “Okay, Annie. I know what’s up. Okay.”

  “I can’t be in love with you, Ryan Dean.”

  I turned around and started running back to her house. Maybe, I thought, if I ran fast enough, like those fucking stupid old science fiction movies, I could go back in time.

  I ran faster than I ever had in my pathetic life.

  But it didn’t work.

  I am such a loser.

  What a bunch of crap.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  I JUST RAN.

  The woods were dark; the clouds were getting thicker.

  I took off my cap and tossed it into the blackberry vines that grew everywhere in these woods. Then I pulled my sweatshirt off, soaked and inside out, and dropped it in the mud of the trail.

  I kept running.

  I kicked my foot out of one shoe and threw it as far as I could into the woods to the right. And I whispered, “Fuck you, shoe” when I chucked it. I listened to it hit, falling like a dead bird somewhere out in the dark green. Then I kicked off the other shoe and threw it in the opposite direction. I threw it so hard, it hurt my arm.

  My socks were black with mud.

  I guess I was kind of insane.

  No, I’ll be honest. What Annie was doing to me made me completely insane, and I couldn’t stand myself anymore. I pulled my socks off and left them in the trail.

  Part of me wanted to strip completely naked and just run out into the woods and be some kind of free and wild boy who never had to do anything for anyone except run around naked in the forest and kill things when he got hungry. But just feeling the nylon of my running shorts against my shriveling skin, I guess, somehow reminded me that I had a plane to catch later that day, and Calculus homework, and I was supposed to be reading In Our Time; and I’d been neglecting all that stuff because I was too busy thinking I was some kind of free and wild boy ever since Friday afternoon. So now it was time again to be Ryan Dean West, the fucking loser kid who’s fourteen and in eleventh grade.

  I sat on the wet concrete outside their front door, shivering.

  I think my skin was as gray as the sky and I was hugging my knees to try and get warm when she came up to the house, holding my soaked and muddy sweatshirt and socks at her side.

  “What are you doing, Ryan Dean?”

  “N-nothing.” I was stuttering, I was so cold. “I told you I like running in the rain. I wanted to get wet.”

  “I’m sorry, Ryan Dean.”

  “It’s no big deal, Annie. Really.”

  “Stay there,” she said, dropping my clothes on the step beside me. “I’m going to get you a towel.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  WE DIDN’T SAY THINGS LIKE we usually do on the drive to the airport. Doc Mom asked if I had a good time and if I wanted to come back. I gave the polite one-word answers that would have been written down in a script about some other kid.

  And the truth is, yeah, I had a great time, and, yeah, I wanted to come back so bad, it felt like I was getting stabbed in my skinny-bitch-ass chest, but just wanting that and feeling that wasn’t going to change my universe.

  I sat at the window on the plane.

  I read “Indian Camp” and held Annie’s hand for the whole flight, but I didn’t say anything to her. I just looked out the window or read.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  WE WERE THE FIRST ONES back, so we had to wait in the airport for Joey.

  And then it wouldn’t be until Megan and suspended-license Chas arrived from LA that we’d take the achingly quiet and long drive back to Pine Mountain.

  So we sat, silently, next to each other on the black vinyl seats in the arrivals lounge, waiting for Joey’s flight from San Francisco.

  It was ironic that I’d read “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” the second story in the Hemingway book, because I thought it was all about how guys and girls don’t understand each other at all. And I was already guessing what kinds of ridiculous things Mr. Wellins would say about those first stories, but, still, I thought they were probably some of the best writing I’d ever read. Maybe it was just my mood, I don’t know.

  I closed the book when Annie said, “Do you want to get something to drink, or something?”

  What a choice. I could have something or something.

  I wondered if “something” to Annie included all the possible somethings that existed to me, and then I got mad at myself for drawing a diagram of those somethings in my head.

  “I’ll take some of the second something,” I said.

  Annie smiled.

  “Are you going to talk to me?” she said.

  “The Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island doesn’t talk,” I said. “He grunts.”

  She laughed. But her eyes looked sadder than they usually did.

  “What do you want to talk about, Annie?”

  “About how we can’t be, like, in love with each other. It would be ridiculous, Ryan Dean.”

  I leaned my head sideways on the seat back. I think they make those things so uncomfortable just to remind you there could always be something worse than a seat on an airplane, or an eternity in hell.

  Our shoulders were touching.

  “Oh, I totally agree with you, Annie.”

  I didn’t blink. I just looked right at her.

  “So don’t be sad, Ryan Dean.”

  We were so close.

  “That would be ridiculous,” I said.

  She just watched me. I wondered if she thought I was playing, because I wasn’t. I was serious then, and I had pretty much given up on everything.

  I even thought that once we got back to Pine Mountain, I was going to call my dad and tell him I wanted to go home.

  I needed to go home.

  I was giving up.

  “Did you start reading this yet?” I held the Hemingway up in front of her.

  “No.”

  “It’s really good.”

  “Really?”

  And then she leaned even closer to me. I wondered if she noticed I’d shaved that one whisker off.

  “Or something,” I said.

  And then I thought, Oh my God, she’s acting like she’s going to kiss me. How ca
n she be doing that? This is absolute bullshit.

  Please kiss me, Annie.

  She closed her eyes, and very softly, she put her lips on mine. And I closed my eyes too, because I didn’t know if I was madder than hell or if I wanted to cry, but why was she doing this? And it felt nicer than anything, and she tasted like the air smelled on the island, full of life and energy.

  When she pulled away, we both opened our eyes.

  I said, “You are going to make me completely insane, Annie.”

  “Me too.”

  We didn’t even notice that Joey had been standing right there, watching us the whole time.

  “Well, it’s about fucking time,” Joey said.

  I’ll say.

  And Annie kind of stammered, “Uh. We were not just doing that, Joey.”

  “Yeah. That would be ridiculous,” I said. “You must have been drinking on the plane if you thought you saw us kissing.”

  “Okay,” Joey said. “I timed it and everything. It was at least a minute and a half. That’s not kissing. You’re right. It’s making out. It’s practically having sex in public.”

  I wanted to high-five Joey so bad, my hand was twitching.

  What a fucking awesome thing to say, especially coming from a gay guy.

  “Ugh,” Annie said, “I need to go get a bottle of water.”

  When she left, I stood up and said, “Hell, yeah!” and, yes, a new decibel-level record was officially established for the loudest-ever, airborne (since I jumped), gay-straight high-five. Unfortunately, it was a little too loud, and Annie wasn’t out of earshot on her water-shopping trip, so she gave me the patented-Annie-Altman-that-will-never-happen-again look.

  “What’s up with her?” Joey said.

  “Dude, she is being really weird about it. She’s making me crazy. I don’t think she knows what she wants.”

  “Maybe she’s afraid she’ll get hurt,” Joey said. “Because of the way you objectify every girl in the fucking world.”

  “Dude, Joey. Are you telling me off again?”