“I sure did.”
Seanie high-fived me.
But that was all I was going to say, because if I said anything about fooling around with her in the hot tub, or making out at the sawmill and in the airport, or how she woke me up both mornings—God! Just thinking about it was making me crazy—I knew they’d both go straight to Annie and tell her what I’d said.
I coughed.
Seanie said, “I saw Annie this morning. She said you got sick from running in the woods naked in the rain. Did you really do that?”
(Well, I wasn’t completely naked, but I’d take another shot over JP’s bow.)
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“Damn.”
“I’m not going to be at practice today,” I said. “I’m going to get my stitches out this afternoon.”
I could feel JP peering around Seanie to look at me.
Seanie said, “Go in there extra muddy and maybe that hottie nurse will give you another sponge bath.”
“My luck, Doctor No-gloves will want to check out my nuts again.”
“Just tell him all he has to do is look at Casey Palmer’s website.” Seanie laughed.
“Yeah. Very funny, Seanie. I heard about that. Trouble is, he’s seen mine in real life, so he’d know that those baby ones in your picture are so small, they could only belong to Sean Russell Flaherty.” I shoved him, and he came within a hair’s breadth of crashing into JP.
“Ouch. Good one,” Seanie said.
“Watch it, fucker.” JP almost tripped avoiding Seanie. I had no doubt he was pissed off at me now.
I was pretty sure the whole class had passed us by that time; I saw them all running back from the turnaround in the opposite direction. I stopped at the turn and folded my hands together on top of my head, then gave JP a dirty look.
I’ll admit it. I felt like fighting him.
“Something wrong?” I said to him.
“You almost knocked Seanie into me,” JP said. “Fuck you, Ryan Dean. I know what you’re trying to do.”
I kept my hands on my head, but I stepped right up to him. I know that was stupid. JP could kill me. He was a good four inches taller. And, yeah, I did cuss. But there is nothing else a guy can do at a time like that.
“No. Fuck you, JP.” I know. Not a very good comeback. Then I said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing asking Annie out? Aren’t there enough girls here who’d go out with you so you wouldn’t have to fuck over one of your former best friends?”
I’d been saving that up for about a week, and it sure felt good to get it out. Just like it was going to feel to get those stitches out, I thought. If I lived until the afternoon.
Seanie said, “Hey, come on. Stop it. Let’s just run, guys.”
Too late. I let go of my hands and dropped them in front of my chest and shoved JP back toward the water’s edge.
He came right back at me and threw a hellacious punch with his right fist, but his foot slipped away in the mud beneath him, so what would probably have knocked me out cold ended up glancing off my left rib cage. It hurt bad enough, though. In fact, I was pretty sure it cracked a rib. But I turned with JP’s punch and cocked a straight right fist and fired it square into his nose.
JP’s head snapped back, and purple blood sprayed from beneath my knuckles as he lost his balance and fell backward—right into the muddy shallows of the lake.
On the Ryan Dean West Stimulus-Satisfaction scale of things, it was without a doubt one of the best physical sensations of my entire, pathetic life. In fact, as I thought about it, punching that bastard was right up there in the top three:
And hearing and seeing him splash down in all that cold black mud was almost as pleasing as punching him. Unfortunately, I knew, he was going to get right back up.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” And the next thing I knew, Seanie, who was definitely not famous for his tackling ability, took me right down with a diving side tackle. He wrapped his hands around the collar of my sweatshirt, pinning my shoulders into the mud.
“What the fuck, Ryan Dean!”
I thought Seanie was going to hit me too. In the years I’d known him, I never saw Seanie so serious or mad about anything. From where I was pinned, I could look up and see JP stumbling out of the lake. He was soaked and filthy, and a mouth-wide streak of blood painted a line from his nose down across his shirt, to the top of his shorts. He came over to Seanie’s side and tried to kick me, but Seanie dove at JP’s foot and took the force of his kick in his own collarbone.
“Stop it, you fucking assholes!” Seanie yelled.
That kick had to hurt him, and I felt bad that he took it for me.
Seanie screamed at us, “You’re going to get thrown off the team. You’re going to get your asses thrown out of school!”
When JP realized he’d kicked Seanie, he backed away and turned around, pulling the bottom of his shirt up to stop the blood that streamed from his nose.
Seanie got off me, and I stood up, but he stayed between me and JP, who bent forward and kept his back to me.
“Okay, Seanie,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry, Seanie. I didn’t mean to get you in the middle of this crap. I’m a fucking idiot.”
Yeah, I was mad.
Then I turned around and ran back to the locker room.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
IT WAS SO AWKWARD SPENDING the next two hours in classes with Megan.
She and Joey tried talking to me, but I didn’t say anything. Joey looked tired too. He understood. In Calculus, I drew Joey a cartoon of Screaming Ned, and he started to laugh so hard, I thought he was going to pee his pants.
Then, during Econ, I started coughing pretty bad and excused myself so I could leave to get a drink.
That’s when Megan followed me out.
And I didn’t even know it until I was bent over the drinking fountain and I felt her cool hand rubbing the back of my neck.
I’m not going to lie. It felt pretty goddamned nice.
Think about Annie.
Think about Annie.
“Are you okay, Ryan Dean?”
I stood up and turned around. I wiped my mouth with my shirtsleeve.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Me and JP got in a pretty bad fight this morning. I think I’m going to get in big trouble. I busted his face. And to top it off, I’m pretty sick.”
She just looked at me with those half-scolding-half-sympathetic-totally-hot Megan Renshaw eyes and brushed my hair back with her hand. I knew she was going to kiss me, too.
Think about Annie.
Think about Annie.
I turned my face away.
“I can’t do this anymore, Megan. We have to quit doing this.”
I walked back to class. I felt even worse.
And then I felt like dying when Megan came in.
She was crying.
I put my head down on my desk. Joey knew what was going on.
I am such a loser.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
OKAY. BEING IN CLASS WITH megan was pretty awkward.
But it was nothing like how I felt when I saw JP walk in to American Literature.
I’d practically run there so I could see Annie before anything happened. I was convinced that JP wouldn’t show up, that someone would come in to escort me to the headmaster’s office for what I’d done.
So I wanted to at least see Annie one more time before getting arrested or kicked out of Pine Mountain.
She was already sitting down when I got there. I dropped my bag onto the floor beside my desk and practically collapsed in the seat beside her.
“Hey,” she said. Her eyes looked so warm and happy. “I thought you’d stay home today. How are you, Ryan Dean?”
“I’ll be honest, Annie,” I said. “I am terrible. But I just needed to see you today.”
“I’m glad.” And she leaned over, just slightly, into the space between us, like we were playing that game that got us both so frustrated over the weekend. So I leaned a lit
tle closer too.
“You look amazing,” I said. “And this is the first morning since Friday I can look at you and not have to keep one eye out for a horny gay pug.”
She laughed.
We squeezed hands in the space between our desks. That’s when I knew everything was okay. And that’s when JP walked in and saw us.
He looked terrible. The bridge of his nose was swollen and red all the way across from eye to eye. His left eye had a big black bruise that slashed down toward his cheek, and his upper lip puffed out like he’d been stung by a bee.
I wanted to look away when he came in, because of the way he was glaring at me, but I thought that would seem too much like backing down, so I kept my eyes fixed right on his. I’ll admit that I was pretty scared. It really felt like we were going to fight again right then and there in front of Mr. Wellins. Then the old pervert would be even more convinced that everything just boils down to sex, I guess.
“JP, what happened to you?” Annie was surprised, but her voice still had that tone to it like nothing bad could ever happen.
I started coughing, and JP stared at me as he sat down on the other side of Annie.
“Nothing,” he said. “Rugby. Just playing too hard with the boys.”
He said it without blinking, looking past Annie. And I knew exactly what JP meant by the “boys” comment.
“Hey. Now you won’t need a mask for Halloween,” I said.
Annie gave me a scolding look. But those eyes, they were always smiling when she looked at me.
I knew I was going a little too far with JP, but I didn’t feel bad about it. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t going to give up—that he’d have to first. So then I really messed with him. I said, “Sorry about that, JP,” and I held my hand out to shake, right in front of Annie’s face, and I looked at JP like nothing in the world had ever happened out there at the turnaround by the lake.
I held my hand there, open.
JP wouldn’t take it.
I shrugged and pulled it back.
Score.
I just kicked your ass for the second time today, buddy.
Then Mr. Wellins began with his blah-blah-blah-Nick-Adams’s-father-brutalizes-the-Indian-woman-almost-like-he’s-having-sex-in-front-of-his-son-and-to-humiliate-and-castrate-the-woman’s-husband. So it was note-passing time.
Annie—
Did you see that? What JP did? Whatever.
Love,
Ryan Dean
Yeah. Don’t talk about it, remember?????
Love,
AA
I get my stitches out today.
Nice. I think they look sexy.
You never said that to me before.
Oh, well. They’ll be gone tomorrow, and so will the sexy. Ha ha ha.
I bet he’d be happy to split my head open again. Ha ha.
Stop it.
Okay. Sorry. Sawmill.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Nothing. Will you meet me at Stonehenge today after I get my stitches out? That way you can see if it really is possible for Ryan Dean West to lose the sexy.
You are perverted.
Will you? Please?
Okay.
Even if it’s raining?
You shouldn’t go out in the rain. You’re sick.
Say you will.
Okay.
OKay. See you there. Promise. RD
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT: her name was Hickey.
She leaned over me, so close her breath tickled the hairs on my eyebrow as she looked at the stitches there. My eyes just kind of naturally fixed straight ahead to the points of her boobs, which is when I noticed her name tag: D. L. HICKEY, R.N.
And I thought, what an awesome name. Of course, I also tried to make up as many perverted words beginning with D and L that I could stick before a hickey:
Does Love
Delivers Luscious
Daringly Lewd
Delightfully Located
And I was on about the seventeenth set, sweating in my collar, when she said, “Are you hot, Ryan Dean?”
Which almost made me start hiccupping again.
“Just a little.”
“Here.” Nurse Hickey loosened my tie and unfastened my shirt’s top buttons. Any more of that treatment and those stitches would have popped out by themselves. “Why don’t you lie back here, and I’ll get those right out.”
I put my head down on the paper-covered pillow on the bed and stared up as she snipped and pulled those stitches from my head, one by one.
“There,” she said. “All perfectly handsome again.”
Then she brushed her fingertip across the line over my eyebrow.
Whew. It was official. I could have asked her to write a note for Annie: Ryan Dean West did not lose the sexy.
I couldn’t move. Something behind my zipper would definitely have broken if I did.
When she finished, she put her scissors and tweezers-things down on a metal tray beside the bed and began scribbling something on my patient chart.
Then she got this puzzled look and she turned toward me, half smiling.
“You were in here two days in a row last week?”
“Uh, I was?”
She said, “Your chart says you came in with a laceration on your . . . scrotum.”
Oh, God.
They actually write stuff like that down?
Scrotum?
What a ridiculous word. If I ever became a doctor, I swore to myself then and there, I would legitimize the use of the word “ballsack.”
“Oh.” I cleared my throat. I felt like I was going to pass out. “Um. Yes.”
“From rugby?”
“Uh.”
And then I realized . . . score! I was getting Nurse Hickey to talk about my balls. What could be better than that?
“Have you ever thought about going out for the tennis team instead?”
“I love rugby. Nurse Hic . . . Hickey.”
Goddamnit. Hiccups.
“And how’s that healing up?”
Whoa.
Opportunity of a pathetic lifetime.
So I said, “I think it’s kind of buh . . . bothering me.”
“Here.” She set my chart down on the tray. “Stand up and drop your pants.”
I love America. Dreams do come true here.
Okay. I’ll be honest. She actually did tell me to stand up and drop my pants, which made it a milestone in my life, being that Nurse Hickey was a smoking five-out-of-five-toothless-one-eyed-hillbillies on the Ryan Dean West Drop-Yer-Pants-Boy Tote Board. Better still, she was now the third female with such a rating to make that demand of me in the past few days (counting Annie and Doc Mom, when they were fixing my trousers).
Well, needless to say, standing was a bit . . . uh . . . problematic for a couple reasons, probably the least of which was the woozy head rush I got when my feet hit the floor. But I bravely did as Nurse Hickey asked. Unbuckled and unzipped, my pants went to my shoes, and then she laughed and said, “Are those Pokémon?”
Ooops. I forgot.
Well, they were comfy.
“How cute.”
I felt myself turning red.
What a loser.
I lifted up my shirttails, stuck my thumbs in my waistband, pulled, and . . .
“Hold on there, hotshot,” Nurse Hickey said. “Keep them up for just a minute. Doctor Norris will be right in.”
Then she turned around and walked out of the examination room.
NO!!!!!!!
I knew I deserved it, but come on!
I am such a pathetic loser.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
OKAY.
I need to vent.
So, after the lengthy and serious talk Doctor No-gloves gave me about how it’s perfectly normal for boys to get overly scared when they receive a catastrophic fucking penis injury, but that everything would be just fine and I should try to think of it in the same way I’d think about
getting a cut on my elbow, which most boys normally don’t even think twice about (but my elbow isn’t my penis, you moron)—so just stop worrying, Ryan Dean, there is nothing wrong (except Doctor No-gloves got it ALL wrong about how the setup to the ballsack exam that Nurse D. L. Hickey was supposed to do happened in the first place); and, oh, I should probably start wearing boxer shorts instead of little-boy tighty Pokémon fucking briefs because my body was “changing,” and I would begin to appreciate the “growing space” and if I ever needed to talk to him about these kinds of things since my dad lived in fucking Boston, he’d be there for me, bare hands and all—I took my embarrassed, skinny (but now up to 157 pounds after Doctor No-gloves insisted on weighing me since I was fucking naked anyway) bitch-assed self out of that innermost circle of hell as fast as possible so I could take a quick shower to wash that bastard’s Old Spice smell off my scrotum and wait for Annie at Stonehenge.
Ugh.
Okay, I’m breathing again.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
IT WAS ACTUALLY NICE TO be in O-Hall when it was so quiet. All the guys were at either rugby or football practice.
I laughed to myself, thinking about Casey Palmer being gay. But, then, I didn’t think it was funny that Joey was gay. I guess it was because Casey was such a poser with his sexuality. But probably a lot of guys were. Who knew?
There was another FedEx package sitting on my bunk when I got to my room. My mom came through. I was a little worried about opening the box, though, because at this point, I didn’t know what to expect from her.