Stand-Off (7 page)

Annie laughed. Well, she tried not to laugh, but I could see all that liquid laughter pooling up in her eyes, which I always found to be incredibly hot. Combine that with Mrs. O'Hare's top button, and I was certain that Ryan Dean West was raising the internal temperature in Culinary Arts enough to turn milk into yogurt, and yogurt into cheese, and cheese into fucking fondue.

“I'd keep reading this,” she said. “It's really funny.”

“He's going to give me a stroke,” I said.

Annie sighed and shook her head. “Just listen to yourself, Ryan Dean. You're being
mean
. I've never seen you be mean to anyone. Not ever. Why have you decided this is how things are going to be this year? I don't like it at all.”

If you've never played a sport like rugby, then you might not know what it feels like to get the wind knocked out of you
and
punched in the balls at exactly the same time. But trust me. It was how I felt when Annie said I was being mean. And immediately after that, it also felt like somebody was adding a stiff knee to the kidneys on top of it all, because that's right when Sam Abernathy came into my constricting field of vision.

“Ryan Dean! I didn't know you liked to cook too!”

No. I can't. Just no.

And Sam Abernathy plopped his big-zipper-binder-organizer onto the prep table
right next to Annie
and proceeded to sit down as though it were entirely acceptable.

“Is this—?” Annie started.

“Sam Abernathy, meet Annie Altman, my girlfriend.”

And the Abernathy stuck out his sticky little cotton-candy puppy paw and shook Annie's hand. They were actually
touching
each other's skin and stuff.

I studied Annie.

That's when I saw it.

She blushed.

Okay. So, you know how when you completely know someone inside and out (I mean that in a totally non-sex [but it would be with protection, unlike that fictitious moron Stan Abercrombie] way) and then when that person you know actually looks at and touches the bare pink skin of another boy who I will openly admit (in a completely non-gay way) is clearly five out of five baby hedgehogs on the Ryan Dean West Scale of Things That Everyone Is Convinced Are Adorable but Ryan Dean West Thinks Are Totally Disgusting, and then that person who does the skin contact actually blushes and then hedgehog boy blushes too and you're sitting there watching a fucking hormonal blinking blush fest that looks like a flashing railroad-crossing sign and you're thinking to yourself,
Dear God, she thinks he's cute
and
Great Caesar's ghost, he's already got a crush on her
and
Are these ovens gas, and, if so, are their pilot lights out
and
Would it mess up my hair if I stuck my fucking head in one
and
Is this the first time in my life I've ever thought about my hair being messy?

Yeah. That.

Then hedgehog boy looked at me, his eyes grapefruit-size saucers of admiration and protopubescent lust, and said, “Wow, Ryan Dean, I had no idea you had a girlfriend.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I said.

Well, to be honest, I didn't say exactly that. In fact, I didn't say
anything at all, because (1) I was choking on something, possibly wishful-thinking gas, and (2) Mrs. O'Hare launched into her sermon on the gospel of Culinary Arts.

“Let's get this straight right away,” Mrs. O'Hare, whose voice was shockingly manlike, said. “If you think this is going to be an easy class, you are in for an unpleasant surprise.”

Annie leaned into my ear and whispered, “She sounds like a man.”

“If I close my eyes, I picture a young Ernest Borgnine,” I confirmed.

The Abernathy, whose feet couldn't reach the floor because we sat on tall backless stools, kicked and squirmed and bounced, which meant he was either really happy to be sitting with me and Annie or he needed to pee really bad again.

“To begin with,” Mrs. O'Hare chainsawed on, “this is
not
a cooking class. Anyone who calls it a
cooking class
is not fit to polish the Vikings.”

Side note: Is it just me, or does
“polish the Vikings”
sound really terrifying, in a deeply perverted way? I came to eventually find out that Mrs. O'Hare called her stoves “Vikings.”

And I have no problem admitting that I thought the class was going to be easy. I had already categorized it in my mind as a
cooking class
, and, speaking of which, I had never cooked anything in my life, unless by “cooking,” you mean “unwrapping and putting in your mouth.”

“Furthermore,” Mrs. O'Hare said, “in Culinary Arts, we work in
pods
of two students . . .”

Great. Say good-bye to your little pink hedgehog, Annie.

“. . . which have already been determined by me . . .”

Wait a minute.

“. . . based on alphabetical order.”

No. No. No. No. This isn't real, right?

“Pod one: Abernathy and Altman.”

Sam Abernathy kicked and bounced with joy.

This can't be happening to me.

FINALLY. RUGBY.

And I needed to hit somebody, preferably someone who was twelve years old and smelled suspiciously like candy corn, baby powder, and vanilla frosting all at the same time.

But I knew that wasn't going to happen. The first week back on the pitch was always about noncontact drills and Coach M looking us over to decide who went where in the fifteen. Rugby is a very specific sport in terms of where you play based on your build and abilities. I had always been at the wing because I was small and fast, but when Coach McAuliffe saw me suited up for practice that day, his eyes widened, and he squeezed my shoulder and said, “Look at you, Ryan Dean! I daresay I could move you up to flanker.”

No. Please, God, do not make me a forward.

There is this thing in rugby called a scrum, which is basically something that looks like a crab with sixteen legs fighting another crab with sixteen legs. The crab is made out of the eight forwards on the team. I guess the flankers would be like the crab's pinchers. Still. Gross. In rugby, it wasn't only about the physical attributes of a player, it also had a lot to do with the psychology. For example, to be a forward, you have to be like a really loyal, big fluffy dog who doesn't mind how much his owner abuses him, with two exceptions.
The number two guy—the hooker (his name was Jeff Cotton, and everyone on the team called him Cotton Balls)—has to not care if he dies, and the number eight guy—the eight-man, a kid who came all the way from Denmark to enroll at PM, John Nygaard, who was nicknamed Spotted John and had a schoolwide reputation for breaking every rule at Pine Mountain, has to not care if he accidentally kills anyone else, including his own teammates.

I was not cut out to be in that pack.

Then there's the guy who gets the ball from the crab, the number nine guy—the scrum half, which is where Seanie played—who is kind of like the crazy and lonely cousin who always shows up at family reunions and tells jokes that nobody gets, and when he leaves everyone keeps saying what a nice guy he is, but you still don't quite understand why you like him.

The back line starts with the fly half—number ten. That was where Joey played. After he died, Coach M moved some guys around, but the whole season was shot for us after that and nothing seemed to click. Then you have a couple of center backs, the wings, and, finally, number fifteen—the fullback, JP Tureau, who we sometimes called Sartre—who basically had to be immune to pain and have a monstrous ego, since fullbacks are so often responsible for saving—or losing—the game. A perfect spot for JP.

There were always new guys coming out for rugby at the start of every year. The general practice was to not bother trying to learn any
of their names because most of the new guys would quit after finding out that rugby is more difficult than anything. (One thing's for sure: Coach M
never
had to give the scare-kids-away speeches that I had to sit through in Creative Writing and Culinary Arts classes). It usually only took a day or two for most of the rookies to quit; and besides, most of the guys who stuck it out and made the team got named by their teammates, anyway, which is why they called me Winger.

But after seeing Coach M that day, I was scared my nickname was going to be changed.

When practice was over and we'd all showered and dressed and were heading back to our dorms or to dinner (which was the first time I'd even thought about Sam Abernathy in hours, and I thought,
Why can't every day be like this, all day long?
), Coach M stopped me on my way out of the locker room. He asked if I'd mind coming into the coach's office and having a “little chat.”

Okay. Two things here, maybe three: First off, Coach McAuliffe is English, and he has the nicest, most civilized way of saying things. Also, I loved Coach M as much as anyone I ever knew. But I always felt raw terror when any adult asked to have a one-on-one talk with me, and Coach M was no exception to that dreadful fear.

“Sit down,” Coach M said.

There were exactly two chairs in the locker room office: one of them was in front of Coach M's computer, which I don't think he'd ever used, and the other was positioned beside a stainless-steel cart
with first-aid gear and butterfly bandages on it. Lots of bloody stuff got taken care of in Coach M's office.

“Thanks.”

I sat in the chair by the medic's cart. I'd sat there enough times before. If things were ever beyond cart-level repairs, guys would have to go to the health office, a round-the-clock clinic for the students at Pine Mountain that was headed by Doctor Norris, a physician the guys on the team nicknamed Doctor No-gloves for obvious reasons.

A rugby ball sat in the bottom bin of the medic's cart. I picked it up and spun it around in my hands, just kind of waiting to see what Coach M wanted to talk about, hoping it had nothing to do with last year, nothing to do with Joey Cosentino.

There's something about the way a brand new rugby ball feels in your hands. I'm not even going to try to explain it because I don't need to if you've ever played the game, and it wouldn't mean a thing if you haven't.

“There are a lot of good boys on the team this year,” Coach McAuliffe said.

“It's rugby, right? There always are.”

Coach smiled and shook his head slightly. “I mean the talent, Ryan Dean. It seems we'll have a first fifteen that will be nearly all seniors, and experienced ones at that.”

“We have some holes here and there,” I said, “but it's only the first day.”

As usual during the first week back on the pitch, we'd ended practice with some matches of touch sevens, which is a kind of tag-rugby played with seven kids on a side, and everyone more or less plays like a back. It wasn't too surprising that some of the guys made frustrating mistakes or got winded too easily. Rugby practice just wouldn't be rugby practice without at least one guy puking on the sidelines because he was being worked too hard. That day it was our eight-man, Spotted John Nygaard, who threw up. And he was mad about it too. Spotted John was a tough guy, but he kept the forwards in line. And, like a lot of forwards, Spotted John resented how much Coach M made us run during practices because he said if you were a good team, you shouldn't have to run too much during a game. Everyone knew that was bullshit, though. In a full rugby match, it's not unusual for a player to run more than eight miles.

Coach M sat down and wheeled his chair over so his knees were practically touching mine. I spun the ball around and around.

“And tell me, how are things for you this year, Ryan Dean?”

Well. I could have said a lot to him.

I could have told Coach M that things were terrible, that I didn't know whether or not I could make it through my senior year at Pine Mountain, or how scared I was—all at the same time—about
not
being at Pine Mountain next year and having to go on to college. I could have told him that I felt like I was slipping away from the only friends I'd
made since coming here, or—worse yet—that I'd been feeling distanced from Annie, like there was something getting between us. I knew exactly what that thing was because I kept drawing it and seeing it over and over again, but I didn't really want to talk about it with anyone. You know, the dark guy called Nate—the thing that kept telling me to be ready, because just when you think everything's all fine, that would be when he'd pop around and another terrible something else would happen. I could have told Coach M that sometimes I got scared at night, but I didn't tell that to anyone either. And I could have told him that I was pissed off at being assigned a slummy dorm room with a twelve-year-old kid named Sam Abernathy, whom I absolutely refused to allow myself to become friends with, no matter what, or that Mrs. O'Hare was a gleaming five out of five polished Vikings on the Ryan Dean West Scale of Things That Make Me Sweat in Culinary Arts Class. And I could have asked him if he maybe had any idea why I wasn't going to tell him any of this stuff.

But instead of all that, I gave him the vaguely bullshitty synopsis that went as follows.

“Everything's okay with me, Coach.”

Yeah. I know.

But it wasn't like I was lying to Coach M, was it? I didn't look him in the eye, though, either. I kept my eyes on the rugby ball I spun around in my grasp.

“You're sure about that, Ryan Dean?”

“Reasonably confident, sir.”

“Good, then, because I have a few ideas I thought I'd present to you—things I've been thinking about after seeing you work with the team today,” Coach McAuliffe said.

“Oh?”

“I trust the differences between you and Jean-Paul Tureau have been put aside?”