Stand-Off (8 page)

“A long time ago,” I kind-of lied.

Man, I was not doing good here, considering how much I respected Coach M.

I needed to get out of there. I shifted in my medic-station seat.

“I'm going to move Mike Bagnuolo to the number eleven wing.”

That was no big deal, I thought. Mike—we called him Bags—played backup winger last year. I liked him. He was a good guy, a junior, who was still more than a year older than me. I just figured this meant Coach M would put me over on the right wing—number fourteen.

No big deal, right? Except, as I thought about it, the right wing doesn't get the ball as much as the left wing, at least not according to my calculations, because since most guys are right-handed, the passes out from backs under pressure tend to go to the number eleven guy—the left wing—which was MY SPOT.

I swallowed. “Oh. Okay.”

“My plan is to pull up Timmy Bagnuolo to play on right wing.”

Now that was a shock. Timmy, Mike's sophomore brother, had played varsity a couple times in relief last year. The guys called him T-Bag—what else? But it all only meant one thing to me: THERE WAS NO PLACE FOR ME.

I felt flushed and sweaty, kind of like I was trapped in after-class detention, all by myself with Mrs. O'Hare, and she was lecturing me on the proper way to use dry rubs on meat—and WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW, WHEN COACH M IS BASICALLY CUTTING MY ASS FROM THE TEAM?

“Naturally, this all means, what are we going to do with you, Ryan Dean?”

I tried to play it off like I was okay with anything Coach M wanted to do, but then my voice cracked like a handful of uncooked spaghetti when I said, “Okay,” and I felt like such a monumental crybaby loser.

“Of course, I'd want to have some input from the captain,” Coach M said, but, to be honest, my head was so gunked up between thinking about being off the wing and thinking about being in detention with Mrs. O'Hare talking about rubbing meat that I couldn't even begin to think rationally, as though that was something I'd be good at anyway.

Coach M clearly noticed I was zoning out. He said, “You know. The captain?”

I suddenly realized I didn't know
anything
about cooking—and how was I
ever
going to get through Culinary Arts, especially with Sam Abernathy, who could probably poop out perfect soufflés in the time it took me to read the instructions on a frozen pizza, paired up with Annie?

“Ryan Dean?”

“Huh?”

“Do you even know what I'm talking about?”

“I'm thinking it isn't about cooking?”

“I'm asking you to be team captain this year.”

What?

“Why?”

“Because the players all love you, Ryan Dean. You have a good head for the game, and you set a good example for everyone on the pitch.”

“Are you talking about
me
?”

Coach M laughed.

“How can you ask me to be captain if I'm not even in the first fifteen?” I said, trying to sound manly but coming off terribly undercooked.

“That's the other part of the proposal,” Coach M said. “Look at you now. The team would be best served moving you off the wing, so you can have more influence in the game. I saw you kicking the ball today. You're tough, you're a match to anyone on the team,
you can take anything anyone hits you with, and your passes are strong to both sides. Having you on the wing is a waste of the man you are.”

God no,
I thought,
please don't move me to the pack, please don't move me to the pack, please don't move me to the pack.

“But I want to stay on the wing, coach.”

“I want to move you inside the line, to number ten.”

“No,” I said flatly. “I can't do that.”

He didn't know what he was asking me. Joey played number ten last year. I could never play that spot.

“I think you can,” Coach M said.

“That's Joey's spot. I couldn't be fly half, Coach. Please.”

“It's a number, a job, Ryan Dean. It isn't the person. I'm not asking you to be Joey, or to somehow erase what he means to you.”

“I—”

Here's another thing about rugby that you might not know: Because the numbers determine the position assigned to a player, the jerseys come off and go back to the team at the end of every game, so getting one of the first fifteen (numbers sixteen to twenty-three are substitute players' jerseys) was an important thing. Being moved around also meant you'd end up wearing a jersey that someone else had worn the last time it had been used in a game. Last year, after Kevin, one of our locks, was taken out of the season, Coach M didn't let anyone else wear the number four jersey for the rest of the
season. And after Joey died, our replacement fly halves always wore the number twenty.

But this was a new year, right? And things get put behind us, right?

I stared out through the reinforced windows that looked from the coaches' office onto the empty shower room, half expecting to see some dark dude wrapped in a cloak staring at me from behind a row of lockers.

Coach M stood up and went to a bank of wire mesh shelves.

I knew what he was doing. I seriously thought about leaving. Why was he doing this to me?

“Here,” Coach M said. Then, very gently, he placed the number ten jersey on my lap.

I picked it up and looked at it, turning it around. There was a grass stain over the right shoulder. It hadn't been washed since the last time Joey wore it, which was on the day before Halloween last year.

I could almost see Joey there in my hands. I could smell him in that jersey.

I swallowed hard.

Coach said, “You remember that last match Joey played? Against that team from California?”

I looked back out at the empty locker room. It was so quiet in there, all I could hear was the splattering dribble where one of the showers hadn't
been turned off all the way. I was getting a little too choked up to be sitting here alone with Coach M, and all I could force myself to say was, “They were shitty, Coach.”

“Ryan Dean.” Coach M had a stern tone in his voice. We were
never
allowed to cuss in front of Coach M.

“I apologize, Coach.” I handed the jersey back to him and said, “I can't do this.”

“Nonsense,” Coach M told me. “It's the best thing for you, and it's the best thing for the team.”

“Spotted John can do it,” I said.

“Are you saying you'd like to play number eight?”

I shook my head and bit my lip. Nothing could possibly be more ridiculous than asking me to play a position where you had to scare people and yell at them. Suddenly, dealing with a claustrophobe cooking-show addict didn't seem so tough. I thought about leaving, just going back to my dorm room so I could pout and be alone and think about quitting everything again.

“I'll tell you what, Ryan Dean. If it makes a difference, and I believe it might, we won't call you fly half. We'll call you stand-off. I prefer the name for the number ten, anyway, because it really says what it is you do on the pitch—you stand off from the pack and you design the strategy for the squad to win.”

Stand-off. I'd heard the name before. Old-school guys from the north used it instead of “fly half.” I couldn't even think of “fly half”
and not think of my friend Joey Cosentino, whose jersey I had just held in my hands.

I stood up, a little wobbly.

“I don't know, Coach.”

And I left it at that.

I KNEW FOR CERTAIN I
did not want to do it.

But I was incapable of saying no to Coach M.

So Ryan Dean West, fifteen-year-old Pine Mountain senior and human napkin, was trapped. And I walked away from the locker room in the dying light of evening while one of those heavy Pacific Northwest mists that is neither fog nor rain coated everything in gray. I could hear the sounds of all the kids gathering in the dining hall, and as I looked up at the random silhouettes performing against drawn blinds in the dorms, every voice that ever raised a question, objection, doubt, or observation seemed to shout at once inside my head.

RYAN DEAN WEST 1:
It's fucking cold out here.

RYAN DEAN WEST 2:
You might consider buttoning your shirt, loser.

RYAN DEAN WEST 3:
I bet Stan Abercrombie, he of legendary unprotected-sex carelessness and soccer-ball pajamas, has the goddamned window open again.

RYAN DEAN WEST 2:
The kid doesn't even know what unprotected sex is, Ryan Dean One, maybe you should have a talk with him.

RYAN DEAN WEST 4:
We aren't ever going to talk to the kid, remember?

RYAN DEAN WEST 1:
Yeah. What he said.

RYAN DEAN WEST 5:
All I know is, Coach M is crazy if he thinks I can play fly half.

SPOTTED JOHN NYGAARD:
Of course you can't play fly half. What's Coach thinking?

RYAN DEAN WEST 6:
Coach said to call him the stand-off.

RYAN DEAN WEST 7:
That's a perfect name for where we are right now. A real standoff, right? Besides, it's not like you
can't
play fly . . . er . . . stand-off, it's just that you won't let yourself even try.

RYAN DEAN WEST 8:
Because you're afraid you might be good at it. You're afraid you might be as good as Joey—or maybe better.

RYAN DEAN WEST 1:
Shut the fuck up. Don't ever talk to me about Joey.

NATE:
You
should
be afraid, kid.

RYAN DEAN WEST 1:
You're not allowed in my head.

NATE:
Apparently, the doorman didn't get the memo, kid.

MRS O'HARE:
Don't forget, Ryan Dean, tomorrow is the quiz on
units of measure
and how to properly
dry rub a meat
!

RYAN DEAN WEST 1:
I . . . I just can't.

SAM ABERNATHY:
Oh, hi, Ryan Dean! Annie and I were waiting for you!

“Huh?”

All the voices in my head vanished, except for the one who was really there, who also happened to be twelve years old and was standing maddeningly close to my girlfriend beside a menacing-looking
juniper shrub at the walk-up to the dining hall. And they were
sharing Annie's umbrella
!

Rain immediately turned to steam as it struck the forge of my white-hot head.

“You're later than all the other rugby guys. Did something happen?” Annie asked. She looked me over, no doubt scanning for any blood or stitches or bandages, which, considering that I was partially undressed, was kind of hot.

It was an agonizing scene: Here I was, completely confused about everything I had believed I was
okay
about. My hair was still wet from the shower, my shirt was untucked and unbuttoned, hanging open on my damp goose-bumped skin. I was carrying my school socks that I didn't feel like putting back on, and my unraveled tie hung like a dead wet otter around my neck. In contrast, Annie Altman and her apparent dinner–slash–umbrella date, Joe Randomkid, looked like advertisements for Pine Mountain's exquisite lifestyle—all done up perfectly with their impeccably ironed outfits and flawless hairstyles that seemed to magically repel the autumn dampness. If Sam Abernathy weren't so much shorter than Annie, you could swear they were the youthful and healthy offspring of some genetically superior country club billionaires, on their way to the fall cotillion.

I was sweaty, wet, cold, angry, and confused.

“Oh. Yeah. Coach M wanted to talk to me,” I said.

“Is everything okay?” Annie asked.

I locked eyes with her for a quiet moment—probably long enough to make it clear to the Abernathy that I really wished it could be okay if I just hauled off and punched him—and I wanted to say so much to Annie, and I wanted to hold her so badly, but I also didn't want her to think that there was something wrong with the little kid she'd fallen in love with, that maybe I was losing it and I wasn't all that good at getting past things.

“Yeah. Everything's great,” I said. “You guys can save me a seat. Let me go get some dry clothes on and I'll catch up to you in a couple minutes.”

“We'll save you a seat, Ryan Dean!” the Abernathy gurgled.

And as I walked away I thought,
I really wish you would shut the fuck up, Abernathy
.

OKAY, I'LL ADMIT IT: I
did not go back and sit down to dinner with Annie and the Abernathy.

I don't know why it made me so angry to see them together, looking for me. Wait. Yes I do know why it made me mad. It was because of Abernathy. That's all. Possibly the umbrella, too. And when I walked away from them, all I could think about was how they were probably buddying up over giddy dinner conversation about how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon, and then I realized I DID NOT KNOW HOW MANY TEASPOONS ARE IN A TABLESPOON AND I WAS FACING THE PROSPECT OF FAILING A QUIZ AT PINE MOUNTAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY FUCKING LIFE.

Because here's the thing: Up until this point in my academic journey, nobody had ever tested me on any subject that I didn't already know something—a lot—about. But all I knew about cooking was that Sam Abernathy apparently had mad skills when it came to getting every last fucking kernel to pop inside a bag of microwave popcorn.

And then it was like the next thing I knew, I had gone completely past the boys' dorm building and was halfway around the lake, dripping wet and standing on the path that led to the front steps of the old abandoned O-Hall.

I shivered as I came to the realization that I had just been standing
there staring at the empty building, replaying mental filmstrips of ghosts from the past. And there was something that seemed to want to pull me even closer. I was absolutely certain that if I just walked up to that mudroom door, it would be unlocked and I could step right inside the biggest fucking haunted nightmare imaginable.