Winger

  “I bet Seanie and Isabel haven’t moved from that couch all night,” I said. “Let’s go see.”

  Annie’s cheeks were red from dancing.

  I watched her as she drank lemonade tea.

  “Wait a second,” I said.

  I pulled her back so we were face to face. She looked at my eyes, and I knew she was playing that game we have between us. She knew I was doing it, too.

  I whispered, “You can be in love with me.”

  She hugged me and put her mouth to my ear and said, “I know.”

  And I looked at her and said, “Oh. Now, about that physical, doctor . . . .”

  She pushed my shoulder back. “Shut up.”

  We held hands, and I led her over to the sofa, where I found the Seanie-gap-Isabel arrangement had not changed since I left. Annie and I sat down on the small side of the L, so I could sit facing Seanie with my legs uncrossed.

  Seanie nonchalantly flipped me off.

  “Annie, can you wait here for a few minutes? There’s one last thing I have to take care of,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I want to go get JP and make him come to the dance before it’s over.”

  “I don’t know if you should. He’s pretty pissed, Ryan Dean,” Seanie said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “One more try.”

  I rubbed Annie’s knee and kissed her cheek, quick, so no one would notice. “And don’t let Seanie try to get you to play the want-to-see-what’s-under-the-raincoat game.”

  “Oh. He already did that,” she said, and rolled her eyes.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

  THE COLD AIR FELT GOOD on my sweating skin, but only for about half a minute.

  That’s when I started shivering.

  Then I decided I should run to the boys’ dorm.

  In the dark, I saw the black and white stripes of what could only have been Joey, walking down the trail ahead of me, like he was going home to O-Hall. And I could just tell by the way he was moving that he was pissed off about something.

  I called out, “Hey Joe.”

  He stopped and turned. I could see his shoulders relax a bit.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “I’m going home.”

  I walked over to where he stood.

  “I found Annie in there,” I said.

  “I saw you dancing. You guys look great together, and it’s about fucking time, Ryan Dean.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  Joey said, “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Yeah. Something happened.

  I knew Joey would tell me about it later and that it was probably something ridiculous, too. Casey Palmer was on a tirade, no doubt. The asshole just wasn’t going to let things go.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I’m going to try to get JP to come out to the dance before they send us home,” I said. “He’s in his room, pouting. I can try, at least.”

  “Well, I’ll see you later, then,” Joey said.

  “You sure everything’s okay?”

  He sighed.

  Something was wrong.

  “Ryan Dean? I figure that between you, Kevin, and Annie, I have about three real friends here. So, thanks for that.”

  “You’re my best friend, Joe,” I said, and he smiled. “Hey. Do you ever listen to the Who?”

  “Um, do I look like I’m fifty?”

  “My dad loves them. Sometimes he walks around with his shirt off, singing, acting like he’s Roger Daltrey, but he’s so my dad, and he looks like a scrawny lawyer from Boston,” I said. “Anyway, they have this song he always sings, ‘How Many Friends.’ Ever hear it?”

  “No.”

  “I have an iPod. Want to listen to it?”

  “You have an iPod?” Joey said. He looked intrigued, but at the same time he kind of knew I was playing a joke on him.

  “Yep.”

  “Okay.”

  I put my hand inside my loincloth. Man! It felt like a frozen leg of lamb going down there against my skin. I dug around, then pulled my hand up and held my closed fist out for Joey.

  “Here,” I said.

  He held out his hand and I put (of course) nothing in it. Then I said, “Here, you need the earbuds,” and I proceeded to put nothing into each one of his ears with the tips of my freezing thumbs.

  “Is it loud enough?” I said.

  “Um. No?”

  “Retard. You didn’t even touch play. Don’t you even know how to use a fucking iPod?”

  And, yes, I apologize. I really did say that. Joey looked kind of shocked, too, but I knew he needed a little magic.

  Joey pressed his index finger down into his empty palm. I windmilled my arm like I was Pete Townshend slashing a guitar. And, yeah, I’m a rugby player. We sing and we’re not uptight about it. So I jumped up in the air and gave my best howling impersonation of my scrawny-Boston-lawyer dad imitating Roger Daltrey.

  Joey squinted a cautious look at me and shrugged.

  And I sang, “ ‘How many friends have I really got? That love me, that want me, that’ll take me as I am?’ ”

  I heard someone, out in the dark, scream, “Shut the fuck up, Ryan Dean!”

  “Okay, that’s it. I’m not singing anymore,” I said. “Now give me back my iPod before we get in trouble.”

  Joey smiled and shook his head.

  I said, “Dude. High five.”

  We slapped hands. Truly our all-time gay-straight high five record setter.

  “Oh. One more thing.” I said, “Chest bumps.”

  Then we jumped up and bumped chests, and I started laughing so hard.

  “Joey, that was the gayest thing I ever did. Well, except for the time I wrote a poem to Seanie.”

  That made Joey laugh.

  Just a little, though.

  “Damn,” I said. “I’m freezing my nuts off. I better go get JP before they shut it down.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Joey said. We shook hands, and Joey put his hand on my shoulder. “Thanks, Ryan Dean.”

  “I mean this in such a completely and totally non-gay way, Joey, but I love you,” I said.

  “Shut the fuck up, Ryan Dean.”

  I laughed.

  Joey went off to O-Hall, and I ran on frozen bare legs for the boys’ dorm, where I used to live.

  CHAPTER NINETY

  IT WAS WEIRD BEING BACK in the boys’ dorm after so long.

  It all looked so nice and normal, like a resort hotel compared with the linoleum-cement-rough-wood-lack-of-heating of O-Hall. But it was kind of the same way I felt that night when I sat down with the freshmen having dinner—I could make a case that I belonged here, but I knew I really didn’t.

  Not much of an overlap anymore, I guess.

  Seanie and JP’s room was on the second floor. There was an elevator, too. Weird.

  I knocked.

  “JP?”

  I knocked again.

  I heard his voice through the door. “Come in.”

  I opened the door.

  He knew it was me. I guess he recognized my voice. He didn’t even move his eyes when I came in.

  JP was lying down on the couch, watching television. That’s how these dorm rooms were: Everyone had his own—private—bedroom, and two or three of them would connect to a common living room and a bathroom, so it was a lot more private and a lot more like living at home than the prisonlike atmosphere of O-Hall’s barracks.

  He was alone, but he had taken the time to put a costume on, which meant he was at least thinking about going out.

  Typical JP: His face was blacked, which was a good cover for the massive purple bruise around his eye, and he was dressed in combat fatigues with a camouflaged bucket hat that shaded his eyes.

  “Hey.” I sat down on a red chair across from him. “They let O-Hall go to the dance.”

  “You look like a gay caveman,” JP said.

  “Well, that wasn’t quite the effect I was
going for.”

  “Dude. You have Pokémon underwear on.”

  Damn that crossing-the-legs requirement!

  “Cool, huh?”

  JP inhaled and raised his eyebrows, a silent “whatever.”

  “JP, I’m going to say it one more time, and then I’m going to shut up,” I said.

  “Or you could shut up now,” he said.

  I swallowed. “No. I’m sorry for being such a dick. I’m sorry I started those fights with you. You should have kicked my ass, and I can’t blame you if you’re still planning on doing it. But I came to take you to the dance.”

  “You really are a gay caveman.”

  I laughed.

  “We’re having a lot of fun there.”

  “Even Seanie and Isabel?”

  “Well, okay. I’ll be honest. Not them. They’re total losers. But everyone else is.”

  He sort of smiled.

  “So, put your shoes on.” I stood up and held my hand out to him. He grabbed it, and I pulled him up so he was sitting with his feet on the floor.

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  “Okay,” he said. He put his feet into his army boots and began lacing them up. “I’m sorry too, Ryan Dean. I really was going for her, you know? I never thought she’d be interested in you.”

  Maybe I was still a little sensitive about the whole JP thing, but hearing him say that really did sting a little.

  “Why’d you think that?”

  JP shrugged. “ ’Cause you’re just a kid.”

  “Screw that, JP.”

  I know. I’m such a loser, but I was so sick of that crap, I almost felt myself getting ready to fight him again.

  “Hey. You won. It doesn’t matter,” JP said. “Does it?”

  He tied his bootlaces and stood.

  I took a deep breath and tried to make myself believe that it didn’t really matter.

  “I guess not. Come on. Let’s go. There’s still an hour until ten. Maybe you can at least get Isabel to dance with you.”

  “Dude, she has more facial hair than Seanie.”

  “I think she’s kind of hot,” I said. “And anyway, Seanie never dances, so you’ll have to settle for fuzzy Isabel.”

  We shook hands again before we left, but it was an uneasy kind of peace between JP and me.

  He was an intense guy, and I couldn’t expect him to just forget about everything. And I even asked him straight out, when we stepped outside into the cold on our walk over to the dance, “JP, do you think we’ll be friends again?”

  And he said, without even thinking about it, “No.”

  At least he was honest.

  At least I could hope we’d stop fighting.

  Mr. Wellins looked drunk, and he waved JP toward the door with an emotional “John-Paul, where have you been?”

  JP just shrugged and said, “Homework.”

  But before we went inside, JP stopped me and said, “Ryan Dean, I’m going to tell you something that I don’t really care if you know or not. And it’s probably the nicest thing I’ll ever do for you. You know the other day when you and Annie came back from Seattle? On Sunday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember how you saw Annie give me a hug?”

  I remembered that.

  And I thought, What’s he trying to do? Start a fight, right here in front of everyone?

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, right before that, she’d just told me that she couldn’t come to the dance with me. That’s why I didn’t come tonight. She backed out on me. She felt bad, so she hugged me while you were over there talking to Seanie. She told me that she couldn’t come to the dance with me because she was so fucking in love with Ryan Dean West.”

  “She told you that?” I asked. “On Sunday?”

  “She started crying about it.”

  Then I really felt confused.

  That was the same day when she’d told me not to kiss her, when I went crazy on our run.

  And then she admitted it to JP before she ever got close to telling me. Maybe she wanted to see if she could fight it. Maybe she wanted to wait for me to break down and say it first, like it wasn’t so goddamned obvious anyway. And then, the next day, I got in that fight with JP and busted his face and it was all over nothing, really, now that I heard what Annie had said.

  I felt like dog shit.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? When we were running at the lake, you could have said something,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t shut up,” JP said. “All that crap about you and Annie running around naked or whatever the hell you were talking about. It was sickening, and then, when you pushed Seanie, I was ready to go. And I would have fucked you up if my foot didn’t slip and Seanie didn’t get his dumb ass in between us like that. I would have fucked you up.”

  I didn’t say anything after that.

  I felt like such an idiot.

  We went into the dance, and I knew John-Paul Tureau and I really weren’t ever going to be friends again.

  CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

  I MAY NOT HAVE SUCCEEDED, but I did what I needed to do.

  At least I tried to make things right with the victims of the Wild Boy.

  JP came to the dance, and, yeah, it was awkward. He didn’t say anything or dance or anything. He just sat on the sofa between Seanie and Isabel while Annie and I danced until the lights came on and they told us all to go home.

  I didn’t see anyone from O-Hall then, but I volunteered to walk Annie and Isabel back to the girls’ dorm, so I let Seanie off a serious hook, because I knew he was dreading how, exactly, to go about saying good night to his “date.”

  And he had the guts to call me “permavirgin.”

  I was pretty sure the only female lips Sean Russell Flaherty had ever touched besides his mom’s were flickering images on a computer monitor.

  Isabel walked about ten feet in front of us, but she’d turn around every few paces to make sure we were still there. Annie had her arm around my shoulders, because I was so cold. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the only reason.

  I put my mouth next to her ear and whispered, “You told JP you were in love with me before I said it to you.”

  “It doesn’t count if you tell someone else.” She smiled.

  “Yes it does.”

  “Okay, then, in that case, you told Joey you were in love with me wayyyy before I said anything to JP.” Then she laughed.

  Wow. She just totally kicked my ass.

  “Joey told you that?” I said.

  She just smiled.

  Of course he did.

  “Okay. You got me,” I said. I kissed her. “I love you, Annie.”

  “I love you, Ryan Dean.”

  “Hey, Isabel?” Isabel stopped and turned around, and I said, “When was the very first time Annie told you that she . . .”

  But Annie covered my mouth with her hand before I could ask the whole question, so I stuck my tongue out and licked her fingers all over, and she squealed and laughed and ran up to Isabel, whispering something urgent to her roommate.

  CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO O-Hall, everything seemed weird, like I was walking into the last five minutes of a horror movie.

  That’s about the only way to describe it.

  It was totally dark and quiet, no lights in any of the windows. I thought that either everyone had come back and they were all asleep, or nobody had come back yet and I was there entirely alone.

  I walked up the three steps to the landing and slipped my shoes off. I guess I didn’t need to go barefoot, because it wasn’t like I was technically sneaking in, but it was just so eerily quiet that I didn’t want to make any noise on my way upstairs.

  Things got stranger inside the mudroom.

  The door onto the lower floor was standing wide open, and there were all kinds of muddy shoeprints going in and out, like the place had been raided by an army of guys wearing athletic shoes. I could tell they weren’t the kinds of shoes that Mr. Farrow
would wear, and definitely not Mrs. Singer, so I knew the tracks had to have been made by some of the guys from upstairs.

  So I was kind of relieved that I was carrying my shoes, because I could just imagine the morning’s shoe investigation from a very pissed-off pair of resident counselors.

  I took a step inside the girls’ floor.

  My feet sloshed in a puddle of cold water on the linoleum. I was pretty creeped out by this point, and I kept wondering where the hell Mrs. Singer was.

  She was gone.

  I could tell the bathroom door was open too, and I could just faintly hear the sound of water splashing, like the guys had been in the girls’ floor showers and not turned them off all the way.

  I decided right then that I was not going to take another step further into the hallway, and just then I heard a couple screams like wildcats out in the woods, very distant, but the kind of sound that you just hate to hear in the middle of a quiet and spooky night.

  When you’re all alone.

  That was enough for me. I turned around and went upstairs, without shutting the door and without so much as glancing behind me even one time.

  Upstairs was like a tomb.

  I walked the length of the hallway, quietly wishing someone would pop out from a room to go to the bathroom or something, even if it was that asshole Casey Palmer.

  But there were no sounds at all.

  I kicked an empty whiskey bottle, and it clinked along the floor. It sounded like a hundred xylophones inside a stone tomb.

  Someone fucked up.

  There were footsteps on the staircase. This was it, I thought, I was about to be murdered.

  Casey Palmer appeared at the top of the stairwell. He had abandoned the Wonder Woman outfit and was dressed in sweats. His skin was slick with sweat, and his eyes were drunken and glazed.

  “What happened, Casey?” I said. I tried to sound as nice as I could, because, I’ll be honest, I was afraid of the way Casey Palmer was looking at me.

  Casey ignored me. He walked past me, kind of floating like a ghost in the dark. He smelled like sweat and whiskey and puke, all at the same time.