Stand-Off (20 page)

“Look, that's three strikes, John. Remember the poster in Mrs. Blyleven's class that says “CONSENT: The first NO is the LAST WORD”? Give me a break, man. I like you and all, but that's about it, Spotted John. I could never be into it.”

“Really? I think under the right circumstances, any guy could be into it.”

“Is that what you think? Because I don't. It's a no, dude.”

And Spotted John said, “Okay, Ryan Dean. I won't pressure you. Because I really
do
like you. Just remember you still owe me a favor.”

“I won't forget,” I said.

How could I forget?

This was bullshit.

“And the other thing—I mean, I wasn't an asshole about it or anything. My friends, the guys on the team, they all know I'm bi. So if you're going to say anything—”

“Why would I say anything about it? You're my friend, John. It's no big deal. I just never thought about stuff like this. But, to be honest, you
were
an asshole
⁴
about it. You took pictures of me in my underwear and posted them online. Do you realize you could get
kicked out of Pine Mountain for doing stuff like that? I mean, I know it was a joke and all, and I even think it was pretty funny, to tell you the truth. But it was a real dick
⁵
move.”

Spotted John reddened and looked down. “I . . . I'm sorry, man. I'll remove the pictures. I promise. Really, I'm sorry.”

“Thank you.”

And we shook hands and left it at that.

So I asked, “Does this count as my anything-you-want favor?”

I made air quotes when I said “anything you want.”

“Ha ha,” Spotted John laughed.

“Heh.”

4
. Yes, I really
did
say that.

5
. And that, too.

I could
not
believe I was actually hanging out with the Abernathy on a Saturday afternoon.

A sudden Indian summer had set in that day, so everything felt like we'd gone back in time to July, which would have been fine with me because (1) I'd be at home, and (2) I would have no awareness of the existence of the kid my team named Snack-Pack. The Abernathy could open the window all he wanted to tonight. Hell, I'd even suggest it.

Maybe the warming of the weather caused some mystical increase of my tolerance, or maybe those pain pills Spotted John gave me had serious long-term, niceness-inducing side effects.

Who was I kidding?

To tell the truth, I was just trying to avoid Spotted John, and the Abernathy was the best deterrent I could come up with. Because now, on top of my anxiety, night terrors, fear of the dark shadowy guy who was following me everywhere, and sharing a coffin-size room with a claustrophobic twelve-year-old, I also had to deal with Spotted John's horniness.

So awkward.

Mrs. Blyleven could not possibly have dreamed up a better practical lesson for straight guys about consent. Now I totally understood what
I must have seemed like to so many girls last year when I was fourteen. You'd think Spotted John, at seventeen, would be grown-up enough to make it clear to his penis who was the bigger boss, which was Penis Commandment Three, according to Mrs. Blyleven, by the way.

To be perfectly honest, in my case, I believe my penis and rational brain were twin copilots on the same plane, and I couldn't really tell
who
was flying for Ryan Dean West Airlines. But at least we both flew fairly level. Well, most of the time.

So on Saturday afternoon, with our window open and the outside temperature warm enough for us to wear shorts (and I voluntarily left the room when Sam Abernathy wanted to change—I was such a well-trained loser), we sat at our desks and—unthinkable as it may sound—did homework together.

“What are you working on?” the Abernathy asked.

“Health. Don't talk to me.”

I caught the Abernathy as he took a quick glance under my desk.

“Not that part, Snack-Pack,” I said. “I am supposed to write a reflective paragraph about performing my TSE.”

“Oh! What are you going to say?” he asked. “Do you want to share out with me, like we do in Dr. Wellins's class?”

“Never.”

“Maybe I'll write a paragraph, then, too. Would you like to read
mine
?”

“Stop talking to me.”

It was so embarrassing, writing that goddamned paragraph for that stupid class.

“Ryan Dean?”

“What?”

“Are you any good at calculus?”

“What part?”

“Derivatives of implicit functions?”

I had fashioned a kind of barrier using a row of novels between our desks, which otherwise may just as well have been connected. I moved the books out of the way and sighed. “Let me see what you're doing.”

The Abernathy slid his notebook and text across the now-unfortified border between our desks so I could see.

“This is pretty hard stuff, but I can show you how to do it,” I said.

The Abernathy squirmed with joy.

For the next hour and a half, I did math with Sam Abernathy.

Fun.

To be honest, I missed doing calculus and being in Mrs. Kurtz's class.

By the time we were all homeworked-out and I was midway through my what-I-think-about-fondling-my-balls reflective paragraph for Mrs. Blyleven, the Abernathy said, “I have to tell you something, Ryan Dean.”

“No you don't.”

“I live in Texas.”

“I'm happy for you.”

“Well, the reason I'm claustrophobic is because when I was four years old, I fell into an uncovered well that was about sixty feet deep and only this big around.”

When he said “this big around,” the Abernathy made a circle the size of a soccer ball between his curled hands.

“Oh. That would suck.”

“It took them three days to get me out. I almost died.”

“Oh.”

Why was he telling me this? I was actually beginning to feel sorry for him, so I had to keep reminding myself that Risotto Boy was currently alive and that he was also my roommate.

“And the other thing is, the reason I don't ever get undressed or take showers around other boys here is because . . . well . . . I'm not really starting to . . . um, change yet, and I don't have, you know, any hair around my wiener or under my arms. And it's embarrassing.”

No.

He actually was talking to me about his
wiener
.

I never wanted to talk to Sam Abernathy about his
wiener
.

But I also recalled, with deep horror, what it was like to be the only twelve-year-old freshman in a pretty much entirely sixteen-year-old-boys' locker room. I had nearly blocked it out of my mind, and I decided then and there that if I ever had a son (which meant I would eventually have the opportunity to actually breed with a noninflatable living female human being), I would never, never,
never allow anyone to suggest the idea of moving him forward in school.

Trust me, it was the most God-awful thing that could ever happen to a boy.

“Nobody cares about that, Sam,” I said, which was kind of a lie, and also unwarrantedly kind.

“Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't have come here to Pine Mountain, because I don't belong with all you grown-up boys.”

Why the hell was he telling me this?

I couldn't even respond to him, because I felt so bad for the kid. I was such an asshole to him.

I was
not
supposed to feel sorry for Sam Abernathy.

But Sam Abernathy was a living photocopy of all the terrible shit I had experienced for three solid years at Pine Mountain. Now that I was fifteen, and a senior, I had finally started to feel like I was on a level playing field with all the other boys at PM, and here that little bastard Sam Abernathy had to disinter all the shitty loser feelings I thought I'd buried over the summer. To be honest, I was getting a bit choked up, so I turned my face down at the page I'd been writing on and focused my attention on a description of rolling my testicles between my fingers (Mrs. Blyleven had strict rules about using correct vocabulary terms, so we had to include words like “penis,” “testicles,” and “scrotum,” regardless of how stupid those words sound in comparison with the preferred, simpler vernacular).

And then Sam Abernathy said, “If it weren't for you, I'd feel so lonely, Ryan Dean.”

That was it. Time for Ryan Dean to go. I had to leave.

I finished my goddamned balls paragraph and stood up, clearing my throat.

“Thanks for the calc help,” the Abernathy said.

I did not answer him. I put on my sneakers and changed into a tank top. I stuffed some clean socks, underwear, and a T-shirt into my gym bag.

“Where are you going?”

My voice cracked a little when I answered, which made me feel like a stupid loser, so I stared at the door that would get me out of here.

“I need to go work out or something. Lift some weights,” I said, which was a lie, because there was no way I'd ever want to get caught alone in the locker room on a Saturday with Spotted John on the prowl.

And the Abernathy said, “Can I come with you?”

I paused at the door. Goddamn that little kid.

“Sure. I guess.”

ON SATURDAYS, WHEN NEARLY ALL
the students are away from Pine Mountain, a custodian named Red stays in the boys' athletics area to do things like hand out clean towels and tell guys to wipe down the weight machines after we use them, and to keep an adult eye on the PM boys.

We were required to always sign in and sign out if we used the locker room and athletics facilities on the weekends, just so they knew where we were.

Pine Mountain had become very “supervised” following my friend Joey's death the year before. So after we lifted weights together (God! I was now officially such a loser—
lifting
weights
with the Abernathy!), Sam Abernathy and I went into the locker room.

I took a towel from Red's perfectly folded stack. The old man eyed us suspiciously, like our sole purpose for being there was to make a mess of the place.

The Abernathy said, “Why are you going to take a shower
here
, Ryan Dean?”

“Because our bathroom—no, our
shower
room
—sucks, Snack-Pack. It's ridiculously gross and small.”

Sam Abernathy sat down on the bench in front of the bank of lockers where I'd undressed. “Okay, Ryan Dean. I'll just wait for you here.”

“Fine.”

And when I came out of the shower to get dressed, I found the tiny little hedgehog undressed and wrapped in a towel of his own (it went around his waist two or three times), with his arms folded tightly across the pencils of his rib cage.

The Abernathy was out of breath with nervousness, practically on the edge of a panic attack. “I decided to take a shower here too, like regular PM boys do. Only, will you stay here? You're not going to look at me taking a shower, are you, Ryan Dean?”

“I told you nobody cares about that stuff, Abernathy.”

The pale little barefoot salamander padded off in the direction of the showers.

I added, “And stop talking to me.”

“I thought you said you weren't going to work out today,
Snack-Pack Senior
.”

Spotted John Nygaard stood at the end of the row of lockers. I guess he'd been watching the Abernathy and me for a while. And now that I was naked and just about completely unwrapped from my towel, I felt especially naked. Like, supernaked. Nakeder than I'd ever been in my life.

Now here was a real standoff. I heard the water come on in the shower, and then I thought,
I never, never want to think about the Abernathy in the shower
.

There was nothing I could do—my towel was already hanging in front of me like a curtain in my hands. If I put it back on, it would
look like I was all weirded out by Spotted John standing there, looking at me, which I
was
weirded out by, but I didn't want to look like it to Spotted John, which was a very complex internal/external stalemate involving all kinds of straight-guy hangups.

“I didn't say I didn't want to work out. But I'd already promised Snack-Pack I'd take him to the weight room and show him how to lift,” I lied.

I inhaled deeply. My shoulders tensed up like the backbones of two alley cats getting ready to fight. Then I dropped my towel on the bench and got dressed as quickly as I could without even glancing at Spotted John Nygaard. Well, to be honest, I watched his feet. He stood there, leaning against the lockers and looking at me the whole time. What a piece of shit.

“You took
Snack-Pack
to the
weight room
?”

I shrugged. “He kinda needs it, don't you think?”

The water in the shower turned off.

“Look, I'm sorry I was an asshole, Ryan Dean. About everything. And I want you to know I took down those pictures of you from my blog.”

Spotted John looked genuinely sorry.

“Thanks, John. That's really decent of you,” I said.

“You're welcome, dude. And, um, anytime you want to use my phone or Internet, well . . . you know you can. I promise I won't bug you about . . . you know . . . anymore.”

Pat-pat-pat!
came the sounds of the Abernathy's bare wet puppy paws on the concrete floor of the locker room.

I grabbed my gym bag and wadded up the towel so I could throw it into Red's hamper. Guys
do not
want Red getting mad at them for leaving a mess.

“Let's go outside so the kid can get dressed in peace,” I said.

I felt better about the whole Spotted John thing. He really was an okay guy. He just needed to study his Penis Commandments a little harder.

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