Текст книги "Winger"

Автор книги: Andrew Smith

Соавторы: Andrew Smith
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CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

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.

She was crying.

I put my head down on my desk. Joey knew what was going on.

I am such a loser.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

OKAY. BEING IN CLASS WITH megan was pretty awkward.

But it was nothing like how I felt when I saw JP walk in to American Literature.

I’d practically run there so I could see Annie before anything happened. I was convinced that JP wouldn’t show up, that someone would come in to escort me to the headmaster’s office for what I’d done.

So I wanted to at least see Annie one more time before getting arrested or kicked out of Pine Mountain.

She was already sitting down when I got there. I dropped my bag onto the floor beside my desk and practically collapsed in the seat beside her.

“Hey,” she said. Her eyes looked so warm and happy. “I thought you’d stay home today. How are you, Ryan Dean?”

“I’ll be honest, Annie,” I said. “I am terrible. But I just needed to see you today.”

“I’m glad.” And she leaned over, just slightly, into the space between us, like we were playing that game that got us both so frustrated over the weekend. So I leaned a little closer too.

“You look amazing,” I said. “And this is the first morning since Friday I can look at you and not have to keep one eye out for a horny gay pug.”

She laughed.

We squeezed hands in the space between our desks. That’s when I knew everything was okay. And that’s when JP walked in and saw us.

He looked terrible. The bridge of his nose was swollen and red all the way across from eye to eye. His left eye had a big black bruise that slashed down toward his cheek, and his upper lip puffed out like he’d been stung by a bee.

I wanted to look away when he came in, because of the way he was glaring at me, but I thought that would seem too much like backing down, so I kept my eyes fixed right on his. I’ll admit that I was pretty scared. It really felt like we were going to fight again right then and there in front of Mr. Wellins. Then the old pervert would be even more convinced that everything just boils down to sex, I guess.

“JP, what happened to you?” Annie was surprised, but her voice still had that tone to it like nothing bad could ever happen.

I started coughing, and JP stared at me as he sat down on the other side of Annie.

“Nothing,” he said. “Rugby. Just playing too hard with the boys.”

He said it without blinking, looking past Annie. And I knew exactly what JP meant by the “boys” comment.

“Hey. Now you won’t need a mask for Halloween,” I said.

Annie gave me a scolding look. But those eyes, they were always smiling when she looked at me.

I knew I was going a little too far with JP, but I didn’t feel bad about it. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t going to give up—that he’d have to first. So then I really messed with him. I said, “Sorry about that, JP,” and I held my hand out to shake, right in front of Annie’s face, and I looked at JP like nothing in the world had ever happened out there at the turnaround by the lake.

I held my hand there, open.

JP wouldn’t take it.

I shrugged and pulled it back.

Score.

I just kicked your ass for the second time today, buddy.

Then Mr. Wellins began with his blah-blah-blah-Nick-Adams’s-father-brutalizes-the-Indian-woman-almost-like-he’s-having-sex-in-front-of-his-son-and-to-humiliate-and-castrate-the-woman’s-husband. So it was note-passing time.

Annie—

Did you see that? What JP did? Whatever.

Love,

Ryan Dean

Yeah. Don’t talk about it, remember?????

Love,

AA

I get my stitches out today.

Nice. I think they look sexy.

You never said that to me before.

Oh, well. They’ll be gone tomorrow, and so will the sexy. Ha ha ha.

I bet he’d be happy to split my head open again. Ha ha.

Stop it.

Okay. Sorry. Sawmill.

What’s that supposed to mean?

Nothing. Will you meet me at Stonehenge today after I get my stitches out? That way you can see if it really is possible for Ryan Dean West to lose the sexy.

You are perverted.

Will you? Please?

Okay.

Even if it’s raining?

You shouldn’t go out in the rain. You’re sick.

Say you will.

Okay.

OKay. See you there. Promise. RD

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT: her name was Hickey.

She leaned over me, so close her breath tickled the hairs on my eyebrow as she looked at the stitches there. My eyes just kind of naturally fixed straight ahead to the points of her boobs, which is when I noticed her name tag: D. L. HICKEY, R.N.

And I thought, what an awesome name. Of course, I also tried to make up as many perverted words beginning with D and L that I could stick before a hickey:

Does Love

Delivers Luscious

Daringly Lewd

Delightfully Located

And I was on about the seventeenth set, sweating in my collar, when she said, “Are you hot, Ryan Dean?”

Which almost made me start hiccupping again.

“Just a little.”

“Here.” Nurse Hickey loosened my tie and unfastened my shirt’s top buttons. Any more of that treatment and those stitches would have popped out by themselves. “Why don’t you lie back here, and I’ll get those right out.”

I put my head down on the paper-covered pillow on the bed and stared up as she snipped and pulled those stitches from my head, one by one.

“There,” she said. “All perfectly handsome again.”

Then she brushed her fingertip across the line over my eyebrow.

Whew. It was official. I could have asked her to write a note for Annie: Ryan Dean West did not lose the sexy.

I couldn’t move. Something behind my zipper would definitely have broken if I did.

When she finished, she put her scissors and tweezers-things down on a metal tray beside the bed and began scribbling something on my patient chart.

Then she got this puzzled look and she turned toward me, half smiling.

“You were in here two days in a row last week?”

“Uh, I was?”

She said, “Your chart says you came in with a laceration on your . . . scrotum.”

Oh, God.

They actually write stuff like that down?

Scrotum?

What a ridiculous word. If I ever became a doctor, I swore to myself then and there, I would legitimize the use of the word “ballsack.”

“Oh.” I cleared my throat. I felt like I was going to pass out. “Um. Yes.”

“From rugby?”

“Uh.”

And then I realized . . . score! I was getting Nurse Hickey to talk about my balls. What could be better than that?

“Have you ever thought about going out for the tennis team instead?”

“I love rugby. Nurse Hic . . . Hickey.”

Goddamnit. Hiccups.

“And how’s that healing up?”

Whoa.

Opportunity of a pathetic lifetime.

So I said, “I think it’s kind of buh . . . bothering me.”

“Here.” She set my chart down on the tray. “Stand up and drop your pants.”

I love America. Dreams do come true here.

Okay. I’ll be honest. She actually did tell me to stand up and drop my pants, which made it a milestone in my life, being that Nurse Hickey was a smoking five-out-of-five-toothless-one-eyed-hillbillies on the Ryan Dean West Drop-Yer-Pants-Boy Tote Board. Better still, she was now the third female with such a rating to make that demand of me in the past few days (counting Annie and Doc Mom, when they were fixing my trousers).

Well, needless to say, standing was a bit . . . uh . . . problematic for a couple reasons, probably the least of which was the woozy head rush I got when my feet hit the floor. But I bravely did as Nurse Hickey asked. Unbuckled and unzipped, my pants went to my shoes, and then she laughed and said, “Are those Pokémon?”

Ooops. I forgot.

Well, they were comfy.

“How cute.”

I felt myself turning red.

What a loser.

I lifted up my shirttails, stuck my thumbs in my waistband, pulled, and . . .

“Hold on there, hotshot,” Nurse Hickey said. “Keep them up for just a minute. Doctor Norris will be right in.”

Then she turned around and walked out of the examination room.

NO!!!!!!!

I knew I deserved it, but come on!

I am such a pathetic loser.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

OKAY.

I need to vent.

So, after the lengthy and serious talk Doctor No-gloves gave me about how it’s perfectly normal for boys to get overly scared when they receive a catastrophic fucking penis injury, but that everything would be just fine and I should try to think of it in the same way I’d think about getting a cut on my elbow, which most boys normally don’t even think twice about (but my elbow isn’t my penis, you moron)—so just stop worrying, Ryan Dean, there is nothing wrong (except Doctor No-gloves got it ALL wrong about how the setup to the ballsack exam that Nurse D. L. Hickey was supposed to do happened in the first place); and, oh, I should probably start wearing boxer shorts instead of little-boy tighty Pokémon fucking briefs because my body was “changing,” and I would begin to appreciate the “growing space” and if I ever needed to talk to him about these kinds of things since my dad lived in fucking Boston, he’d be there for me, bare hands and all—I took my embarrassed, skinny (but now up to 157 pounds after Doctor No-gloves insisted on weighing me since I was fucking naked anyway) bitch-assed self out of that innermost circle of hell as fast as possible so I could take a quick shower to wash that bastard’s Old Spice smell off my scrotum and wait for Annie at Stonehenge.

Ugh.

Okay, I’m breathing again.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

IT WAS ACTUALLY NICE TO be in O-Hall when it was so quiet. All the guys were at either rugby or football practice.

I laughed to myself, thinking about Casey Palmer being gay. But, then, I didn’t think it was funny that Joey was gay. I guess it was because Casey was such a poser with his sexuality. But probably a lot of guys were. Who knew?

There was another FedEx package sitting on my bunk when I got to my room. My mom came through. I was a little worried about opening the box, though, because at this point, I didn’t know what to expect from her.

Nice.

She’d sent the size ten-and-a-half Nikes that I asked for, and in the box with them, she’d added a can of shaving cream, a razor, and some Chanel aftershave cologne. I guess she had a mother’s intuition about that one whisker on my chin. I found an index card in there too. On one side, my mother wrote:

Ryan Dean,

I hope I recognize you next time I see you.

I love you and miss you.

–Mom

And on the other side, in my dad’s writing:

Son,

You’re growing up, my man. I know you’ve seen me do this enough times that you won’t cut the shit out of your face (Mom would be pissed at me for not sending you a book called “How to Shave for the First Time.”) Ha ha.

Love,

Dad

Yeah, my dad talked like that.

So I showered, and I actually shaved, too, and put on some of that cologne. I gelled my hair. Oh, I also switched out of the Pokémon briefs, and I did realize there was a lot to be said for having that “growing room” down there, like Doctor No-gloves told me, but I still intended to wear them on Halloween under my Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island loincloth, growing room or not, just to keep things, uh . . . put away.

I put on those brand new Nikes and my nicest black and blue sideline warm-up suit from my rugby team gear, then headed downstairs before any of the other guys even made it back from practice.

But, in the stairwell, I ran right into something even worse than Doctor No-gloves’s nutsack exam and puberty pep talk, if there could be such a degree of miserableness.

Just as I opened the door from the boys’ floor, I stumbled onto Mr. Farrow and that freakishly unhot witch from downstairs, Mrs. Singer.

Together.

Standing at the landing on the tenantless girls’ floor. They were kissing, and it wasn’t one of those innocent oh-hello-you-frosty-and-cadaverous-old-hag-from-downstairs-so-nice-to-see-you-this-afternoon pecks on the cheek, either. It was all tonguing and moaning and noisy, and Mrs. Singer was wearing only a bathrobe, and it burns my eyes even now to admit that I noticed it, but she didn’t have anything on underneath it; and it sears the very depth of my soul to confess it, but I knew they must have just had sex.

Or something.

I think I screamed.

Like Ned.

Okay, I’ll be honest. I didn’t scream, but, for whatever reason, they both instantly radared in on me standing above them.

“Oh. Uh . . . Ryan Dean!” Mr. Farrow said, pushing himself away from the creature and nonchalantly combing a trembling hand through his wild, just-had-sex hair. I noticed the fresh shine of saliva in the corner of his mouth, and his glasses were crooked.

Apparently, they weren’t in on the doctor’s-appointment-early-return-day for Ryan Dean West, and I’m going to get a little sidetracked here, but I was always totally convinced that Mr. Farrow was completely gay.

Go figure.

I guess he was attracted to corpses and decay and not just to boys.

Then Mrs. Singer looked up at me, but I was too crafty for her. I kept my eyes fixed straight down on the floor until she left and I heard the door close behind her. So it was just me and Mr. Farrow.

Like, superawkward.

I kind of wanted to laugh. I wondered if he had a mom who’d sent him a “How to Have Sex the First Time with a Cadaverous Hag from Hell” leaflet.

Farrow began coming up the stairs toward me.

There was no way out.

“Did you skip practice today, Ryan Dean?” he asked. And he moved and talked all calm and slow, like a murderer. A murderer who had just had sex with a cadaverous hag from hell.

I pointed to my eye.

“I was at the doctor’s. Got my stitches out today.”

“Oh.” He leaned close. He didn’t need to—he could see perfectly fine from where he was. He smelled like sweat. “It looks good.”

“Thanks. Well. Uh. Bye.”

I started to slip past him.

“Ryan Dean.”

I froze.

“Please don’t say anything about this.”

What a creepy child-molester thing to say.

Then Mr. Farrow said, “I can transfer you back into the boys’ dorm at the ten-week grade report. In two weeks.”

I didn’t say anything. The door off the mudroom opened, and Joey and Kevin came in.

“Hey,” Joey said. He stopped and looked at me, then he high-fived me. Not a record breaker, but a solid one nevertheless. “Nice job on the stitches. And, damn, Ryan Dean. You look about two inches taller than yesterday.” And he laughed. “My ears are still ringing from Screaming Ned.”

“That was almost the worst thing I ever had to put up with,” I said.

But, I thought, not even close to what I just saw about a minute ago.

“Hey,” Kevin said. He had a rugby ball tucked inside his sling. “Nice hair, Winger. Let me guess . . . Annie?” And Kevin leaned close to my face and sniffed, then said, “Oooooh.”

I said, “Yeah,” and they kept going upstairs.

I lowered my voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Farrow. Say something about what?”

Then Mr. Farrow nodded like we were striking some kind of deal, but we weren’t. Because I thought about it right then. Yeah, I didn’t like Chas Becker. I hated him, in fact. And some of the other guys in O-Hall were real dipshits, and the communal bathroom was always nasty and crowded, and bunk beds are for prisons.

But I knew I couldn’t go back to the boys’ dorm.

“Please don’t transfer me out of O-Hall, Mr. Farrow,” I said. “I’d get in too much trouble. If I went back to my old room, I’d be kicked out of school the first day, and I’m not going to say why, but you just have to believe me. Please?”

And, yeah, I was doing the think-about-peeing face on him.

“Well, then,” he said.

The door opened. Casey and Chas came up the stairs toward us. Chas was saying something to Casey about how “she’s been crying all goddamn day long,” but I avoided looking at them.

I knew what he was talking about, anyway.

Still, I had to wonder what Chas would say if he knew he was pouring his lovesick heart out to a gay guy with the serious hots for the fly half on our rugby team.

I passed them on my way down. And when I glanced back over my shoulder, Mr. Farrow was gone and the stairwell was empty.

At the bottom, I saw Mrs. Singer watching me through the window on the door to the girls’ floor. Then she turned away and the window was empty. It actually made me shudder. I stopped just before going outside and pressed myself up against the girls’ door.

“My name is Ryan Dean West,” I said.

My voice cracked. Loser. “I’m the boy you caught down here in the bathroom that first night before school started. I just wanted to say I’m sorry and ask you to please stop doing all these horrible things to me.”

The door cracked open, and I could see just a bit of her so-unhot-she-looked-like-Screaming-Ned-after-a-close-shave face. Mrs. Singer said, “I’m going to cook you and eat you on Halloween, Ryan Dean West.”

Then I ran.

Okay. To be perfectly honest, she probably said, “Nice to meet you, Ryan Dean West,” but I did my duty by apologizing, and I wasn’t about to stick around and have my soul sucked, receive a cascade of ice shards pouring through the fly of my boxers, come down with diarrhea, suffer a spontaneous bloody nose, or have her lay another ungodly curse on my as-yet-untested reproductive appliances, either.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

ANNIE WAS ALREADY AT STONEHENGE when I got there.

She walked along the wishing-circle path, and I stood back at the edge of the trees and watched her.

“The nurse said for me to tell you that I did not lose the sexy. She said there’s way too much of it going on there.”

She looked at me and laughed.

“Let me see it,” she said.

Hmmm . . . another Ryan Dean West would have undoubtedly made a perverted comeback to that, but, somehow, I just felt different standing there.

She walked over to me, and I could see her eyeing me up and down, but I watched her face. I leaned close.

Game on, Annie.

She put her thumb on the small scar.

“Well?” I asked.

“Okay,” she said. “You look good dressed like that, and the way you fixed your hair, Ryan Dean. You look taller.”

That’s when I realized that Annie had completely stopped calling me West. I thought it meant something. And I liked it.

“You’re the second person to say that, Annie. I think I’m going to have to come over and have you and your mom fix my pants again.”

“Do you want to come back?”

“Oh my God, Annie, I’d leave right now if I could. I’d start walking.”

Annie said, “Maybe you can come for the four days over Thanksgiving.”

“That would be awesome,” I said, even though I knew it would make my mom and dad unhappy that I wasn’t going home. I held her hand, and we walked under the trees. It was beginning to rain again, but none of it fell through.

“What were you wishing for?” I said.

“Not going to tell you.”

“Okay.” I inhaled. On the walk out here, I’d thought about what I needed to tell her. It was important, and I knew I had to stop acting like such a . . . uh, Wild Boy.

“I need to tell you something, though, Annie. Me and JP got in another fight today. That’s why his eye was black. I punched him. I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it again. I don’t want you to get mad about it, so I told you before you heard it from Seanie or someone else. I don’t know why I’ve been acting so stupid.”

Annie sighed. “Ryan Dean.”

“I know. I’m sorry. And I decided I can’t be upset about you going to the dance with him either. I’m just going to have to forget about it. I’m really sorry, Annie. Will you forgive me for being such a jerk?”

She stood right in front of me, so close we were practically touching. We just looked at each other’s eyes, and I knew we were going to kiss, but she pulled back and said, “I can’t be in love with you, Ryan Dean.”

Yeah. I heard that before. And this time I wasn’t going to be a baby about it and run away. So I said, “Yes you can be.”

For the longest time, it seemed like there was no sound at all except the rain dripping through the trees above us.

I said it again. “Yes, you can be, Annie.”

And she said, “I know.”

“I know, too, because I’ve never said this to anyone, but I am so in love with you, Annie, that I almost can’t stand it, and it’s making me insane.”

Then I don’t know if she laughed or was going to cry, but she kind of shook and she put both of her hands on my shoulders and said, “I do love you, Ryan Dean,” and then we just about collapsed into each other’s arms.

I felt so relieved. I closed my eyes and inhaled, and we kissed like we did that other day in the sawmill, and neither of us would let go. It was better than every wish I ever made coming true all at the same time.

“You smell nice,” she said.

“I shaved.”

She laughed. “Why?”

“Hey, now.”

We walked through the forest, heading back toward O-Hall along the trail by the lake. It was getting late, and I needed to change back into my dress clothes or they wouldn’t let me have dinner.

I didn’t care, though. Everything was perfect, and I just wanted to sleep.

But it was so exciting to think about sitting down to dinner with Annie for the first time as a real, honest-to-God couple. I wanted so badly to be alone with her.

Annie said, “Oh my God. I am in love with a fourteen-year-old boy.”

“Get over it, old hag. When you’re ninety, I’ll be eighty-eight.”