Winger

  Just then, Seanie came up from behind, totally out of the dark.

  He was out of breath from running after us. “What are you guys doing?”

  JP walked off without answering, straight for the boys’ dorm.

  “What the fuck, Ryan Dean? We used to all be friends. What the fuck?” Seanie was pissed again. He turned away, following JP.

  “Seanie,” I said. “I didn’t do anything this time. I swear to God.” I followed after him. “Seanie, listen to me. Just a second.”

  But he wouldn’t stop, so I just let him go.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  I COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT.

  I just lay there on the top bunk and stared up at the emptiness between me and the ceiling, thinking about what Seanie had said, how we all used to be friends, and how his voice had a tone in it like he blamed me for doing something that I don’t think was entirely under my control.

  This time.

  I listened to Chas sleeping and wondered how I’d managed to live this long sharing a room with him. I wanted to ask him about Megan, but I knew those would likely be the final words spoken on this earth by Ryan Dean West.

  For three days, Chas hadn’t said one word to me, but Megan looked so sad and it made me feel terrible, because deep down I didn’t see her as just some hot girl. I really did like her. I really did think she was a great person. I just knew better than to get too close to her again.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: Did you actually just say that to yourself—that you don’t see Megan Renshaw as just some hot girl?

  RYAN DEAN WEST 1: I can’t help it. Something’s changing in me.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: Oh . . . so you finally did decide to join Team Joey.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 1: That’s a shitty thing to say.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: How about Isabel? Isn’t she fuzzy-hot?

  RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Shut up.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: Doc Mom? Mrs. Kurtz? Aren’t they my-best-friend’s-kinky-mom hot?

  RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Ugh.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: How about Annie?

  RYAN DEAN WEST 1: If you weren’t me, I’d punch you in the face.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: Nurse Hickey?

  RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Okay. I’ll give you that. Nurse Hickey is a hissing five out of five leaky air-conditioning units on the Ryan Dean West Global Hotness Scale.

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: My man. There is hope for you after all.

  (RYAN DEAN WEST 1 wipes the sweat from his forehead.)

  RYAN DEAN WEST 2: Loser.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get my wimpy, feeling-sorry-for-myself ass out of bed.

  I slipped on my warm-ups and carried my shoes in one hand so I wouldn’t squeak on the floor, and I left.

  In the dark hallway, I ran into Joey as he was coming out of the bathroom.

  He whispered, “Are you leaving or something?”

  “I have to go outside. I can’t sleep.”

  “Dude, I am so beat up from the game, I can’t even lie down. Let me get dressed, and I’ll meet you out there in a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t feel awkward talking to Joey, or being in a situation where we were alone together, and I know that’s a crappy thing for me to even point out in the first place, like I have to defend myself to myself for being best friends with a guy who happens to be gay.

  But most guys just got all tense around Joey in normal social situations, like any time when we weren’t out on the pitch and bashing each others’ brains in playing rugby.

  You could just see it in the way guys’ shoulders would tighten up, and you could hear it in the way they’d talk—like they never really talked directly to Joey, even if they were asking him something, it always looked like they were talking past him, or to the ground or something, and in really short sentences.

  It’s weird, but I noticed it, and I’m sure Joey did too.

  I saw him come out from the mudroom, and he let the door close slowly behind him so it didn’t make the slightest sound. Then he sat down on the steps and slipped his shoes on.

  “Where are you going?” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “That witch downstairs didn’t see you, did she?” I said.

  “Why are you so scared of her?”

  We talked low until we were far enough away from O-Hall.

  “Dude, Joey, she does horrible things to me. Trust me. I know she’s a witch or something.”

  Joey laughed. “Whatever.” Then he said, “I asked Kevin to come, but once he’s in bed, forget it. It hurts him too much to get in and out of bed, anyway.”

  Joey walked slowly and carefully. He limped.

  There really isn’t too much in the world that hurts worse than a guy’s body does the night after a rugby game, and the fly half almost always takes more shots than any other player on the field.

  I threw a rock out into the lake.

  “I caught Mr. Farrow having sex with Mrs. Singer on Monday, when I came back from having my stitches out. How nasty is that?”

  Joey laughed. “No fucking way.”

  “Dude, don’t tell anyone. At least, that’s what Mr. Farrow begged me. That’s why we were talking on the stairs when you and Kevin came in that day. He even said he’d get me out of O-Hall if I kept quiet about it.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “I asked him not to,” I said. “I wouldn’t last in the boys’ dorm. JP hates me. I think Seanie does now too. It sucks.”

  “You push things too far, sometimes, Ryan Dean. Just your luck.”

  “I know.”

  “But, shit, everyone knows you’re a fighter. You’re not afraid to take on anyone,” Joey said.

  “Oh, I’m afraid. But when you have to fight, you have to fight. There’s nothing else you can do.” I threw another rock. “Annie finally told me she’s in love with me.”

  “Did you tell her first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn. You’ve got some guts, Ryan Dean.”

  “So, sorry if it seems like we’ve been ignoring everyone else.”

  “Dude. It’s pretty obvious.”

  Then Joey high-fived me, but it was weak, so we had to do it again.

  Not a record breaker, but it was solid.

  “At least there’s one thing I haven’t totally screwed up,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  Damn, I thought. Joey didn’t have to agree with that. But then again, Joey wasn’t the kind of guy who’d ever lie about things just to make someone feel better.

  I sighed. “Yeah. I feel terrible about JP and Seanie. We used to be such good friends. But I couldn’t handle him chasing after Annie like he’s been doing. I should have known she didn’t really care about him. Well, not like that, anyway. God! I am such an idiot. I wish I could just do it all over again. I wish I never got put in O-Hall in the first place, and now it’s like I can’t ever get out.”

  Joey threw a rock too.

  “Yep,” he said. “You know, nothing ever goes back exactly the way it was. Things just expand and contract. Like the universe, like breathing. But you’ll never fill your lungs up with the same air twice. Sometimes, it would be cool if you could pause and rewind and do over. But I think anyone would get tired of that after one or two times.”

  “Sometimes, don’t you just ever feel like screaming, like Screaming Ned?” I asked.

  Joey laughed out loud, “Sometimes I feel like driving back to Bannock and finding him at that donut shop just so I can kick the shit out of him.”

  Then I laughed too. “That was one of the most amazing nights ever.”

  “Yeah.”

  I felt better.

  We walked back to O-Hall and kicked off our shoes before opening the door and climbing upstairs. I was afraid we’d run into Mrs. Singer, but then I thought she just had this certain thing for zeroing in on me, so Joey was like a protective charm against her.

  I said good night and thanks, and we hugged—a guy hug, okay? with the patt
ing on the back and stuff—and Joey slipped into his room.

  And as I was walking down the hallway to my room, I saw that Casey Palmer had been watching me, just standing in front of his door with his arms folded, like he was pissed off and wanted to fight.

  He whispered, “That explains it. What were you guys out doing tonight, little fucking faggot?”

  Man, I thought, you have some balls saying shit like that to anyone.

  I walked past where Casey was standing.

  Then I stopped and said, “Don’t be stupid, Palmer.”

  “I fucking hate you queers. I’m sick of all the shit Joey pulls around here. Someone needs to straighten his shit out.”

  Nick Matthews opened the door to their room and stepped out into the hallway, shirtless and wearing only his boxers. Nick was a fat offensive lineman with a tattoo of a skull on his hairy shoulder.

  “We should fuck these little queers up, like you said, Case.”

  I glanced back toward Joey’s door. I wished he’d been there to hear what Nick and Casey said, but I was also glad he wasn’t. It would have been a terrible fight, right then and there.

  And I can’t even explain how much I wanted to rip into Casey about what I knew, and out him in front of his hairy, tattooed roommate, but I literally bit down on my tongue and went to bed without saying another word.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  SEANIE AVOIDED ME THE WHOLE next day. He wouldn’t talk to me in Conditioning or even at our team meeting at the end of the day.

  We didn’t have practice on Halloween. Coach let us out early. Most of the guys on the team didn’t live in O-Hall. That meant they were all going to the dinner party, while the O-Hall boys would be the only twelve kids eating in the mess hall and then going home.

  Alone.

  At least some of us had costumes. And I knew that Joey and Kevin were going to do whatever they could to make sure we all had something to laugh about that night. So I just tried to not think about what Annie was going to be doing without me.

  But, of course, that was like trying to not think about getting kicked in the balls right as you’re watching that foot make contact.

  Things like this were really the worst part of being assigned to O-Hall, because as Joey, Kevin, and I left the mess hall after our quiet dinner, we could all hear the sound of the music coming from the activities center.

  And I’m not going to lie about it, but even though Annie and I had made our commitment to each other, the sound of that music was eating me up on the walk back to my room.

  I didn’t say anything to Joey about running into Casey the night before.

  I probably should have, now that I think about it, but at the time, I just thought it would make Joey want to fight him. But when we got back to O-Hall and we saw the painfully unhot Mary-Todd-Mrs.-Singer standing on the stairs (which was the first time I’d ever seen Mrs. Singer in the presence of any of the other guys, so I was a little relieved to finally know she was real), I found out something that was almost unbelievable.

  “Mr. Farrow is not here this evening,” she said. “He’s left me in charge.”

  Which, I thought, meant she actually was going to cook me and eat me.

  “I don’t care what you boys do. Just stay off my floor and keep the noise down, and none of us will get into trouble. Correct?”

  I looked at Kevin and Joey.

  They heard it too.

  So, to me, the “I don’t care what you boys do” part was as good as a permission slip for us to go to the dance.

  The Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island was ready to break free.

  We ran upstairs to dig out the costumes.

  “I think she killed Mr. Farrow,” I said. “Or she’s got him chained to her bed.”

  Then Kevin said, “Maybe we should have stalled her a little longer to give him a chance to finish chewing off his arm, then.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

  SO THERE I WAS, STANDING in the middle of the floor, wearing absolutely nothing but those Pokémon briefs, when the door pushed opened and Chas and Casey walked in.

  Chas just stared at me and shook his head.

  “What?” I said.

  But it really did creep me out the way that Casey looked at me, especially considering what I knew about him, and what he obviously thought about me and Joey, too.

  God! That was all I needed after the crap I’d been through that week, to have some angry, horny, gay football player chasing after me, or jealously thinking I’d been having sex with the guy he was attracted to.

  Casey Palmer was a dangerous psychopath.

  “Your costumes are there in the cubby,” I said. “Have fun. You’re going to like what we got.”

  Joey and I had left a bag marked CHAS, and one marked PALMER, inside my closet after we separated out the goods.

  I didn’t really want to be alone with them when they opened the bags and saw what we got for them to wear, so I was glad when the convict-striped Joey appeared down the hallway, walking toward my open door.

  “Joey!” I called, and he came over.

  “You’re not going like that, are you, Ryan Dean?” he said.

  I just gave Joey a dirty look, but I noticed as Casey eyed him, then looked back at me, back and forth, like he was watching a tennis match or something. And I wanted to say, Dude, you have it so fucking wrong about me and Joey, you stupid moron, but it was so obvious what he was thinking.

  He was burning up. I could see him turning red, how his hands shook.

  Like he was actually jealous of me, and in a totally, obviously gay way, too. I couldn’t decide whether it was funny, scary, or what.

  I pulled the Wild Boy leopard skin up over my legs and tied the single strap on my shoulder. I had to tie it pretty loose, because the fake-jagged-cut bottom barely covered my nuts.

  I thought it was perfect.

  “Oh, yeah, Annie will dig this,” I said, hoping that Casey was paying attention to the fact that I wasn’t talking about a guy.

  I slipped my bare feet into my running shoes and walked past Joey. “I’m going to go get some hair gel from Kevin.”

  And, as I left, I heard Chas saying, “I’m not putting that shit on,” and Casey complaining, “Is that all you fucking got me?”

  So I guess they weren’t totally satisfied with their outfits.

  But they put them on anyway. And I don’t know why Casey Palmer had to tag along with us, either. He could have gone out with Nick or any of the other assholes from O-Hall, but he was making it so obvious—to Joey and me, at least—that he had some kind of perverted interest in hanging around us.

  Casey Palmer was after something.

  What a fucking dolt.

  Chas looked especially ridiculous.

  We didn’t really think about it that night in Bannock, but not too many women come in size six foot four, so he had to cut the feet out of the pantyhose just to get the crotch past his knees.

  Then he had his own pair of Pokémon briefs on top of the red nylons.

  I said, “Oh! Twinsies!” And I lifted up my loincloth.

  Chas flipped me off.

  He wore our blue rugby socks to cover the holes at his feet, then a white T-shirt we had marked up with a big blue C, and, finally, the cape, which, since it was for a kid, went down to just the top of his ass.

  Yeah, Joey confirmed what I sensed all along: You couldn’t get much gayer looking than that.

  Kevin looked great. He was all in black, with that hook-hand sticking out from his sling. Of course, he had an eye patch, and he’d tied his hair down under a doo rag made from an old black T-shirt.

  It was a big deal for Kevin to do that, because his perfect blond hair was always, well . . . perfect. Kevin Cantrell had magic hair. It never even got messed up playing rugby, and he hated wearing anything that would put one strand out of place. Then he had a three-pointed pirate hat on top of the doo rag, and he’d even taken a black Sharpie and drawn a moustache (that was about half as thick as Is
abel’s) across his lip.

  Kevin was a great sport. He would do anything, even if it meant permanent marker to the face.

  He even offered to draw chest and leg hairs on the Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island, but the whole permanent-ink thing was a deal breaker as far as I was concerned.

  Casey Palmer just moped along with us, stung and angry, wearing that cheesy elastic-band-highly-flammable-carcinogenic-plastic Wonder Woman mask and dangling about a yard-and-a-half-long cord of gold lamé from his right hand.

  And on that long walk across campus from O-Hall to the dance, I kept wondering the same few things over and over.

  First, why the hell is Casey tagging along with us, and who is going to be the one to orchestrate the ditching of his ass? Second, it is really, really cold walking around practically naked. And, oh, by the way, third, it feels like my balls have turned into frozen raisins and the skin on my one exposed nipple has shriveled to the size of . . . uh . . . something . . . that’s really small and round. And hard.

  Or something.

  Brrrrrr.

  And I didn’t even think, the whole way over there, that they weren’t going to let the O-Hall boys into the dance once we got there, but that’s exactly what was going to happen.

  “Ryan Dean West? What are you doing out?”

  The old pervert, Mr. Wellins, was working the door.

  He added, “Fantastic costume, by the way.”

  Yeah. Whatever. Stop staring at my shrunken nipple.

  But I knew Mr. Wellins liked me. I could lay it on so thick when I wrote essays for him, and, of course, I had the highest grade in his Lit class. I knew exactly what he wanted to hear: duh, sex.

  Why don’t other kids get that?

  It’s never about what you think, it’s about what the professor wants you to think.

  No-brainer.

  “But you boys are going to get into trouble for being out of Opportunity Hall.”

  I knew I had to work my magic.

  Anyway, my eyes were watering already. I really did need to pee, even though I thought it would probably come out in sharp yellow ice cubes.