Stand-Off (34 page)

Coagulation Vat Connelly was stunned.

I was stunned.

Also, I fucking needed to pee again.

Coagulation Vat Connelly ran back to the pickup, and I thought, oh, God, he's going to get a gun; he's going to get a gun and kill us, and I totally blew my opportunity to have sex with Annie Altman on my final day with a pulse. But he didn't get a gun. He started the truck and drove away.

“Wait! Wait, fucker! Wait!” Curd-Cutter-Who-Needed-to-Poo Connelly was practically in tears. I actually started to almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

Nico let go of him, and the big redhead took off down the road after his brother.

So much for the teen unemployment rate in Oregon.

“I THINK I ACTUALLY MAY
have shit my pants,” Nico said.

“Dude. Put his eyeballs
inside your underwear
? That is so gross. I could have thought of a lot of places to put a dude's eyeballs besides inside my underwear.”

We were back on the road, eating Boob cheese and Boob jerky, and sharing the only nonlethal remaining bottle of Boob Juice, which was really good. The GPS estimated we were fifteen minutes away from Nico's house.

Nico said, “It was the first place besides my pocket I could think of. I didn't want to put his eyeballs in my pocket, because it didn't seem insane enough, so, you know . . . my underwear.”

“I just want to say one thing, Nico: Back there at the Boob stand, you said
I
was insane. Me. Ryan Dean West. But that was the most insane thing I've ever seen in my life. I seriously thought you were going to stab that jerk in the eyeball.”

Nico smiled and nodded. “So did I.”

“Well, thanks for not stabbing him in the eye, and also thanks for getting us out of there with no scratches on us or on Seanie's car.”

“No prob, bro.”

Then Nico did something that really surprised me. Well, not as much
as breaking a bottle and digging out eyeballs and sticking them inside his underwear would surprise me, but surprising in any event. He stuck his hand out and we shook. I also swerved the goddamned car again.

“You're a shitty driver,” he said.

“I got us here, didn't I?”

“Well, this doesn't mean I want to be friends, because I don't. I just thought that was fun shit back there. And great cheese.”

“Whatever.”

Nico Cosentino could be such a jerk. And I decided that when I got back to Pine Mountain, I would start being nicer to Sam Abernathy, and that he was a good friend, which was something I needed. Gross. I was finally admitting to myself that I liked the little grub.

Nico pressed commands into the navigation unit, and Sexy GPS woman asked, “Are you certain you want to cancel my guidance?”

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I live here. I know where we are now,” Nico said.

I felt sad for Sexy GPS woman. I could really use some guidance. We both could.

Then Nico added, “Turn right up there, where that sign is.”

The sign said
CAPE KIWANDA STATE NATURAL AREA.

I said, “We're going to the beach?”

Nico answered, “Yeah. Kind of.”

Damn. It was getting late. I was already feeling anxious and scared about driving all the way back to Pine Mountain by myself and in the
dark. I could already sense that icy and empty mood—the certainty that Nate was lurking around, just waiting for me to be alone and thinking about what a loser I was and how terrible Nico Cosentino made me feel about things.

Whatever. Once I got this over with and deposited Nico back at his parents' home, I'd never have to see or think about him again.

Yeah, right.

We left our shoes and socks at the end of a long trail we followed over dunes of wet grass that ended at the expanse of sand connecting the land to the sea. It was cold, and the wind howled like an animal. We kept our hands deep inside our pockets.

I walked beside Nico right up to the water's edge, and we both pulled our pant legs up when the first frothy wave spilled over our feet. Then we walked back to the base of a sea cliff and sat down in the sand. We stared out at the waves and the rocks that stuck up above the sea along the cape.

It was an incredible place.

Nico said, “I thought you'd want to see this spot.”

“It's nice,” I said, shivering. That water stung like needles.

“Well, the place where we stood in the water—after Joey died, we came here. We put his ashes right in that spot and we sat here and watched the tide come in and take him away. I thought you . . . I thought Joey would want me to let you know.”

Oh.

My stomach knotted up.

I pulled my knees into my chest and closed my eyes, imagining what that must have been like for Nico to see his brother—for his parents to watch their boy—disappearing away from them like that, into the ocean.

“I'm really sorry,” I said. “None of this was ever fair. Thank you for bringing me here, Nico.”

“I come here a lot. If you walk down the beach that way a couple miles or so, you'll get to my house,” Nico said.

I looked south, in the direction Nico pointed. This place was huge and wild and quiet. It was a perfect place to let Joey go.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Go for it.”

“Well, maybe two things.”

“Ask whatever you want,” Nico said.

“Do you really not like me? Because, I mean, I think we should be friends, Nico. I think we need that.”

Nico shook his head. “It's not a matter of liking you or not. You're a good guy, Ryan Dean. It's just . . . I don't know.”

“Yeah. I don't know either,” I said. “Because I thought what you did back there to the Cheese Brothers was fucking awesome. And having a beer together last night, and the stuff we talked about. Friends do that kind of shit together.”

“Joey wants me to tell you to stop fucking cussing, Ryan Dean,” Nico said.

“Yeah. I kind of heard him saying that too. But the other thing—you know, I went back inside O-Hall by myself. It was creepier than anything, and I don't think I'll
ever
do that again. But I found a list of things Joey wanted to do. Did you know Joey made lists, like, every day, of things he had to do?”

“Yeah. He always did that.”

“And the last thing on his list said, in capital letters, ‘TELL RYAN DEAN.' And I don't know what it means, or if Joey ever did tell me what he wanted to tell me. And that's been messing with my head. But I never had the guts to ask you about it, so I figured that since we're not going to be friends and everything that I'd just ask you if you knew what it meant before I leave.”

Nico looked at me like he couldn't understand what I was saying. Then he faced the water again and was quiet for a painfully long time before he said, “I know what Joey wanted to tell you. He talked to me about it every time he'd come home. It was that he was totally in love with you, Ryan Dean. And he was too afraid to tell you.”

No.

What?

I felt like I'd been punched in the gut and had my eyes gouged out with a broken bottle. Of course Joey loved me. I loved Joey too. We were best friends. But the way Nico said it meant something else entirely.

“No way, dude. Joey had a boyfriend. We were best friends. Nothing could ever change that.”

“No, bro. Joey did
not
have a boyfriend. It was kind of funny how much he was in love with you. And he was so messed up about it because he always told me how superstraight you are, and how much he liked Annie, too, so he didn't want to do anything that would make you not be his friend.”

I put my face down in my knees again. Shit. I actually felt something leaking from my eyelids. I also felt kind of rugged because Joey and Nico both thought I was “superstraight.”

Nico went on, “I kept teasing him about it, telling him how could a fly half in rugby be afraid of anything?”

“I'm afraid of a lot of things,” I said. “But I kind of wished Joey would have told me.”

“I wish he would have done that too,” Nico said.

I THINK THE COSENTINOS MUST
have been genetically predisposed to scolding Ryan Dean Wests about doing the right thing.

Ugh.

Because in the span of about fifteen minutes after arriving home with Nico, these were the lists of violations I had committed that now needed to be made right:

1. Laundry. Yes, laundry. Mr. and Mrs. Cosentino insisted that Nico wash and dry the hoodie I loaned him before letting me go back to school.

2. Dinner. They also said that I needed to stay for dinner, which was pretty awkward because I knew Nico didn't like me.

3. THE BIG ONE: driving without a license. If Mr. and Mrs. Cosentino were as volatile as Nico with a broken bottle, they might have threatened to gouge my eyes out over this matter, which led to Terms of Correction item number four.

4. Sleepover. I had to give up Seanie's key fob (and just when I was getting used to not swerving so much) and spend the night, so that Mr. Cosentino could drive Seanie's car back to Pine Mountain in the morning while Mrs. Cosentino followed in the family minivan, which turned out
not
to be rented (and I silently
prayed that I could ride in Seanie's car so that nobody I knew would ever see me in a minivan).

5. Buttermilk. Yes,
buttermilk
. By dinnertime, I was so terrified of Mr. and Mrs. Cosentino that when they poured me a glass of buttermilk (without asking, I might add—who
ever
gives someone a glass of buttermilk without asking, unless it was some form of punishment?) at dinner, I felt compelled by shame to drink it. I had never had buttermilk before, but if you blindfolded me and told me I was participating in a taste test of milk with piss in it, that's what buttermilk tastes like.

Nico watched me drink it with an amused look on his face. And that fucker had ice water. He knew what was going on. In the unspoken, wordless telepathy of teenage boys (who are all naturally and deeply disgusted by buttermilk) we had quite a cuss-out session over that goddamned buttermilk.

I nearly cried with joy when I finished the glass. And then I barfed a little in the back of my throat when Mr. Cosentino asked me if I wanted some more.

After dinner, Nico showed me the guest room where I'd spend the night. It was a far cry from Unit 113, but I actually missed being home, freezing my ass off with the Abernathy. The room was five times the size of my dorm room at Pine Mountain, with its own bathroom—a real bathroom too, not a closet with a shower in it—and a sliding door onto a balcony deck that looked out on the beach.

“Do you think I could borrow your phone, so I can call Seanie and let him know everything's okay and I'll be back tomorrow?” I asked.

“Seanie has a phone at Pine Mountain? Has that place gone entirely to hell?”

“No. The ninja dude. Spotted John. He and Seanie . . . well, he'll let Seanie know.”

Nico passed his phone to me, and I scrolled through his recent calls until I found Spotted John's number. And Nico asked if I wanted him to leave me alone, but I told him no, that he could stay. Besides, I said, I needed him to show me how to work the TV.

I called Spotted John.

SPOTTED JOHN:
Hello?

RYAN DEAN WEST:
Hey, John. It's me, Ryan Dean West. Is Seanie around?

I'll admit, when I glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly ten o'clock at night, I felt embarrassed and guilty for asking that.

SPOTTED JOHN:
What's wrong? Did you fuck up his car? (
Rustling noises and the sound of Seanie saying something I couldn't understand.
)

RYAN DEAN WEST:
No, dude, I just wanted to talk to Seanie for a minute.

SPOTTED JOHN:
Okay, bud. Hang on.

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
Ryan Dean? Did you fuck my car up?

RYAN DEAN WEST:
No, dude. Seriously. I just wanted to tell you the Cosentinos are making me spend the night here, then Mr. Cosentino is going to drive your car back to PM in the morning.

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
Oh. Okay, Ryan Dean. They're not letting you drive back?

RYAN DEAN WEST:
Nah, man. They're all responsible and stuff.

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
Oh, man. Don't you hate that?

RYAN DEAN WEST:
I don't know. It's all okay. But they made me drink buttermilk. (
Nico falls back on the bed, laughing at me.
)

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
Gross. Ryan Dean, is everything okay? You sound kind of bummed.

RYAN DEAN WEST:
About the buttermilk? No. Everything's all right. And how about you and John?

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
Really good, man. Thanks.

RYAN DEAN WEST:
Oh. Hey. Would you do me a favor?

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
Sure. What do you want?

RYAN DEAN WEST:
Would you check in on Snack-Pack before you go to bed. Shit! No. I mean, uh . . . before you go to sleep. When you sleep. Um. And let him know I'm okay and I'll see him tomorrow?

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
Dude. You are soooo Ryan Dean.

RYAN DEAN WEST:
I know. Sorry.

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
I'll go down and see the kid and tell him.

RYAN DEAN WEST:
Thanks, Seanie. And, Seanie?

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
What?

RYAN DEAN WEST:
I just want you to know, you're my friend, and I love you, dude.

SEANIE FLAHERTY:
That's a weird thing to say, Ryan Dean. Why are you telling me that?

RYAN DEAN WEST:
I don't know. You never know when you might regret not telling that to someone.