Winger (30 page)

But it was one of those clocks with a battery backup, since we lose power so much in that old dorm, and it kept Screaming-Nedding at me.

So I put it under my pillow.

Think about Annie.

Think about Annie.

I wanted to stay in bed so bad. I knew I was horribly sick from all the crap I’d been through in the past twenty-four hours, but I had to force myself to think about Annie Altman, because I knew I had to get in JP’s way as much as I possibly could for the next three days, before Halloween.

So I had to make myself go to school.

I left a groaning Chas Becker and the door open behind me and stumbled down the hallway toward the showers, dragging my towel along the floor at my feet, with my eyes crusted over and half-closed.

I saw Mr. Farrow standing at his doorway. He cocked his head toward me, kind of like a cat who’d been sprayed in the face with a squirt gun. Then I saw a couple guys coming out of the bathroom, and one of them pointed and started laughing at me.

I looked down.

Oh, yeah.

Pokémon.

Briefs.

Crap.

I am such a loser.

What could I do? I looked at the guys straight on. I kept walking toward the showers.

I said, “Oh yeah. Admit it. You know you want some of these bad boys.”

BUT I MISSED ANNIE AT
breakfast, and I barely made it to Conditioning class on time, having to run and attempt to tie a necktie with shaking hands the whole way from O-Hall to the athletics complex.

I was a mess.

That day, getting through my world was like trying to swim in a pool of warm mayonnaise while carrying two bowling balls.

I just had to keep telling myself I could do it, but I had a hard time convincing the tired and sick Ryan Dean West.

I knew ahead of time that I wasn’t going to say
anything
to Seanie about what I’d done the night before. As great as the story was, I’d have to keep all those things bottled up—how I’d gotten drunk again and made Chas and Casey drink my piss, the drive into Bannock and how Chas started crying and ran away when he found out I’d been making out with his girlfriend, learning about how Casey was gay and had been hitting on Joey, getting our Halloween costumes, and, of course, the lunatic Screaming Ned—and hope I didn’t explode from not being able to tell. Because most of it just wasn’t the kind of stuff I’d want everyone in the whole world finding out about on some new perverted website designed by our demented scrum half.

I had to run in regular tennis shoes in Conditioning class because of
what I’d done with my running flats on Bainbridge Island the day before. God! I could not believe that only twenty-four hours had passed since I tore my clothes off in the rain during that run with Annie. Hopefully, my mom would get those new shoes to me by the afternoon, even if she was probably still crying about my growing up, getting taller, having sex, and whatever else she imagined that wasn’t really happening to me.

We were sent out on the three-mile lake run, and this time I decided I was going to stay right there with Seanie and JP. No matter what, I wasn’t going to let JP try to get between me and Seanie, too. Even if they were roommates and we did hate each other, I was going to stay friends with Seanie Flaherty.

We ran three across, with Seanie in the middle of us, slowly, in the back of the pack. It stopped raining, and our legs were splattered with mud to our thighs. I thought if I talked to Seanie the whole way, even about stupid stuff, it would shut JP up and make him mad at the same time.

“Hey, Nutsack, did you guys play cards last night?” Seanie asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, did you win? Did you lose? Did you get drunk? What happened?”

“I’m not saying, Seanie.”

“Dude, one of these days all you guys are going to get thrown out of school for that shit.”

“Oh. Tough break. Throwing me out of O-Hall,” I said. “Casey Palmer played with us.”

Have you ever noticed how, when you’re going into a conversation and you tell yourself ahead of time, do
not
say anything about
X
, your mouth will almost automatically start spilling its guts about
X
before you can do anything to stop it? So I kind of felt my stupid-hungover-cherry-menthol mouth beginning to say, “And Casey Palmer is gay and won’t stop chasing after Joey,” but just in the nick of time steered clear of it and said, “And Casey Palmer . . .
won
.”

“Why’d you play with
that
asshole?”

I shrugged.

Shut up, Ryan Dean.

“Hey, by the way,” Seanie said, “did I tell you? I’m taking Isabel to the dance.”

“Nice,” I said. Why the hell did he have to bring that up? “Isabel’s hot.”

(If you happen to have a thing for girls with faint moustaches.)

“You think every girl is hot. Didn’t you get any of that pent-up sexual frustration out of your system at Annie’s house over the weekend?”

(If anything, the weekend made it worse.)

I sighed, picturing Annie and me pressed up against that painted wall in the sawmill. Then I took a dig at JP.

“I sure did.”

Seanie high-fived me.

But that was all I was going to say, because if I said anything about fooling around with her in the hot tub, or making out at the sawmill and in the airport, or how she woke me up both mornings—God!
Just thinking about it was making me crazy—I knew they’d both go straight to Annie and tell her what I’d said.

I coughed.

Seanie said, “I saw Annie this morning. She said you got sick from running in the woods naked in the rain. Did you really do that?”

(Well, I wasn’t completely naked, but I’d take another shot over JP’s bow.)

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“Damn.”

“I’m not going to be at practice today,” I said. “I’m going to get my stitches out this afternoon.”

I could feel JP peering around Seanie to look at me.

Seanie said, “Go in there extra muddy and maybe that hottie nurse will give you another sponge bath.”

“My luck, Doctor No-gloves will want to check out my nuts again.”

“Just tell him all he has to do is look at Casey Palmer’s website.” Seanie laughed.

“Yeah. Very funny, Seanie. I heard about that. Trouble is, he’s seen mine in real life, so he’d know that those baby ones in your picture are so small, they could only belong to Sean Russell Flaherty.” I shoved him, and he came within a hair’s breadth of crashing into JP.

“Ouch. Good one,” Seanie said.

“Watch it, fucker.” JP almost tripped avoiding Seanie. I had no doubt he was pissed off at me now.

I was pretty sure the whole class had passed us by that time; I saw them all running back from the turnaround in the opposite direction. I stopped at the turn and folded my hands together on top of my head, then gave JP a dirty look.

I’ll admit it. I felt like fighting him.

“Something wrong?” I said to him.

“You almost knocked Seanie into me,” JP said. “Fuck you, Ryan Dean. I know what you’re trying to do.”

I kept my hands on my head, but I stepped right up to him. I know that was stupid. JP could kill me. He was a good four inches taller. And, yeah, I did cuss. But there is nothing else a guy can do at a time like that.

“No. Fuck
you
, JP.” I know. Not a very good comeback. Then I said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing asking Annie out? Aren’t there enough girls here who’d go out with you so you wouldn’t have to fuck over one of your former best friends?”

I’d been saving that up for about a week, and it sure felt good to get it out. Just like it was going to feel to get those stitches out, I thought. If I lived until the afternoon.

Seanie said, “Hey, come on. Stop it. Let’s just run, guys.”

Too late. I let go of my hands and dropped them in front of my chest and shoved JP back toward the water’s edge.

He came right back at me and threw a hellacious punch with his right fist, but his foot slipped away in the mud beneath him, so what would probably have knocked me out cold ended up glancing off my
left rib cage. It hurt bad enough, though. In fact, I was pretty sure it cracked a rib. But I turned with JP’s punch and cocked a straight right fist and fired it square into his nose.

JP’s head snapped back, and purple blood sprayed from beneath my knuckles as he lost his balance and fell backward—right into the muddy shallows of the lake.

On the Ryan Dean West Stimulus-Satisfaction scale of things, it was without a doubt one of the best physical sensations of my entire, pathetic life. In fact, as I thought about it, punching that bastard was right up there in the top three:

And hearing and seeing him splash down in all that cold black mud was almost as pleasing as punching him. Unfortunately, I knew, he was going to get right back up.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” And the next thing I knew,
Seanie, who was definitely not famous for his tackling ability, took me right down with a diving side tackle. He wrapped his hands around the collar of my sweatshirt, pinning my shoulders into the mud.

“What the fuck, Ryan Dean!”

I thought Seanie was going to hit me too. In the years I’d known him, I never saw Seanie so serious or mad about anything. From where I was pinned, I could look up and see JP stumbling out of the lake. He was soaked and filthy, and a mouth-wide streak of blood painted a line from his nose down across his shirt, to the top of his shorts. He came over to Seanie’s side and tried to kick me, but Seanie dove at JP’s foot and took the force of his kick in his own collarbone.

“Stop it, you fucking assholes!” Seanie yelled.

That kick had to hurt him, and I felt bad that he took it for me.

Seanie screamed at us, “You’re going to get thrown off the team. You’re going to get your asses thrown out of school!”

When JP realized he’d kicked Seanie, he backed away and turned around, pulling the bottom of his shirt up to stop the blood that streamed from his nose.

Seanie got off me, and I stood up, but he stayed between me and JP, who bent forward and kept his back to me.

“Okay, Seanie,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry, Seanie. I didn’t mean to get you in the middle of this crap. I’m a fucking idiot.”

Yeah, I was mad.

Then I turned around and ran back to the locker room.

IT WAS SO AWKWARD SPENDING
the next two hours in classes with Megan.

She and Joey tried talking to me, but I didn’t say anything. Joey looked tired too. He understood. In Calculus, I drew Joey a cartoon of Screaming Ned, and he started to laugh so hard, I thought he was going to pee his pants.

Then, during Econ, I started coughing pretty bad and excused myself so I could leave to get a drink.

That’s when Megan followed me out.

And I didn’t even know it until I was bent over the drinking fountain and I felt her cool hand rubbing the back of my neck.

I’m not going to lie. It felt pretty goddamned nice.

Think about Annie.

Think about Annie.

“Are you okay, Ryan Dean?”

I stood up and turned around. I wiped my mouth with my shirtsleeve.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Me and JP got in a pretty bad fight this morning. I think I’m going to get in big trouble. I busted his face. And to top it off, I’m pretty sick.”

She just looked at me with those half-scolding-half-sympathetic-totally-hot Megan Renshaw eyes and brushed my hair back with her hand. I knew she was going to kiss me, too.

Think about Annie.

Think about Annie.

I turned my face away.

“I can’t do this anymore, Megan. We have to quit doing this.”

I walked back to class. I felt even worse.

And then I felt like dying when Megan came in.