Текст книги "Winger"

Автор книги: Andrew Smith

Соавторы: Andrew Smith
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

CHAPTER NINETY

IT WAS WEIRD BEING BACK in the boys’ dorm after so long.

It all looked so nice and normal, like a resort hotel compared with the linoleum-cement-rough-wood-lack-of-heating of O-Hall. But it was kind of the same way I felt that night when I sat down with the freshmen having dinner—I could make a case that I belonged here, but I knew I really didn’t.

Not much of an overlap anymore, I guess.

Seanie and JP’s room was on the second floor. There was an elevator, too. Weird.

I knocked.

“JP?”

I knocked again.

I heard his voice through the door. “Come in.”

I opened the door.

He knew it was me. I guess he recognized my voice. He didn’t even move his eyes when I came in.

JP was lying down on the couch, watching television. That’s how these dorm rooms were: Everyone had his own—private—bedroom, and two or three of them would connect to a common living room and a bathroom, so it was a lot more private and a lot more like living at home than the prisonlike atmosphere of O-Hall’s barracks.

He was alone, but he had taken the time to put a costume on, which meant he was at least thinking about going out.

Typical JP: His face was blacked, which was a good cover for the massive purple bruise around his eye, and he was dressed in combat fatigues with a camouflaged bucket hat that shaded his eyes.

“Hey.” I sat down on a red chair across from him. “They let O-Hall go to the dance.”

“You look like a gay caveman,” JP said.

“Well, that wasn’t quite the effect I was going for.”

“Dude. You have Pokémon underwear on.”

Damn that crossing-the-legs requirement!

“Cool, huh?”

JP inhaled and raised his eyebrows, a silent “whatever.”

“JP, I’m going to say it one more time, and then I’m going to shut up,” I said.

“Or you could shut up now,” he said.

I swallowed. “No. I’m sorry for being such a dick. I’m sorry I started those fights with you. You should have kicked my ass, and I can’t blame you if you’re still planning on doing it. But I came to take you to the dance.”

“You really are a gay caveman.”

I laughed.

“We’re having a lot of fun there.”

“Even Seanie and Isabel?”

“Well, okay. I’ll be honest. Not them. They’re total losers. But everyone else is.”

He sort of smiled.

“So, put your shoes on.” I stood up and held my hand out to him. He grabbed it, and I pulled him up so he was sitting with his feet on the floor.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Okay,” he said. He put his feet into his army boots and began lacing them up. “I’m sorry too, Ryan Dean. I really was going for her, you know? I never thought she’d be interested in you.”

Maybe I was still a little sensitive about the whole JP thing, but hearing him say that really did sting a little.

“Why’d you think that?”

JP shrugged. “ ’Cause you’re just a kid.”

“Screw that, JP.”

I know. I’m such a loser, but I was so sick of that crap, I almost felt myself getting ready to fight him again.

“Hey. You won. It doesn’t matter,” JP said. “Does it?”

He tied his bootlaces and stood.

I took a deep breath and tried to make myself believe that it didn’t really matter.

“I guess not. Come on. Let’s go. There’s still an hour until ten. Maybe you can at least get Isabel to dance with you.”

“Dude, she has more facial hair than Seanie.”

“I think she’s kind of hot,” I said. “And anyway, Seanie never dances, so you’ll have to settle for fuzzy Isabel.”

We shook hands again before we left, but it was an uneasy kind of peace between JP and me.

He was an intense guy, and I couldn’t expect him to just forget about everything. And I even asked him straight out, when we stepped outside into the cold on our walk over to the dance, “JP, do you think we’ll be friends again?”

And he said, without even thinking about it, “No.”

At least he was honest.

At least I could hope we’d stop fighting.

Mr. Wellins looked drunk, and he waved JP toward the door with an emotional “John-Paul, where have you been?”

JP just shrugged and said, “Homework.”

But before we went inside, JP stopped me and said, “Ryan Dean, I’m going to tell you something that I don’t really care if you know or not. And it’s probably the nicest thing I’ll ever do for you. You know the other day when you and Annie came back from Seattle? On Sunday?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember how you saw Annie give me a hug?”

I remembered that.

And I thought, What’s he trying to do? Start a fight, right here in front of everyone?

“Yeah.”

“Well, right before that, she’d just told me that she couldn’t come to the dance with me. That’s why I didn’t come tonight. She backed out on me. She felt bad, so she hugged me while you were over there talking to Seanie. She told me that she couldn’t come to the dance with me because she was so fucking in love with Ryan Dean West.”

“She told you that?” I asked. “On Sunday?”

“She started crying about it.”

Then I really felt confused.

That was the same day when she’d told me not to kiss her, when I went crazy on our run.

And then she admitted it to JP before she ever got close to telling me. Maybe she wanted to see if she could fight it. Maybe she wanted to wait for me to break down and say it first, like it wasn’t so goddamned obvious anyway. And then, the next day, I got in that fight with JP and busted his face and it was all over nothing, really, now that I heard what Annie had said.

I felt like dog shit.

“Why didn’t you tell me? When we were running at the lake, you could have said something,” I said.

“You wouldn’t shut up,” JP said. “All that crap about you and Annie running around naked or whatever the hell you were talking about. It was sickening, and then, when you pushed Seanie, I was ready to go. And I would have fucked you up if my foot didn’t slip and Seanie didn’t get his dumb ass in between us like that. I would have fucked you up.”

I didn’t say anything after that.

I felt like such an idiot.

We went into the dance, and I knew John-Paul Tureau and I really weren’t ever going to be friends again.

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

I MAY NOT HAVE SUCCEEDED, but I did what I needed to do.

At least I tried to make things right with the victims of the Wild Boy.

JP came to the dance, and, yeah, it was awkward. He didn’t say anything or dance or anything. He just sat on the sofa between Seanie and Isabel while Annie and I danced until the lights came on and they told us all to go home.

I didn’t see anyone from O-Hall then, but I volunteered to walk Annie and Isabel back to the girls’ dorm, so I let Seanie off a serious hook, because I knew he was dreading how, exactly, to go about saying good night to his “date.”

And he had the guts to call me “permavirgin.”

I was pretty sure the only female lips Sean Russell Flaherty had ever touched besides his mom’s were flickering images on a computer monitor.

Isabel walked about ten feet in front of us, but she’d turn around every few paces to make sure we were still there. Annie had her arm around my shoulders, because I was so cold. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the only reason.

I put my mouth next to her ear and whispered, “You told JP you were in love with me before I said it to you.”

“It doesn’t count if you tell someone else.” She smiled.

“Yes it does.”

“Okay, then, in that case, you told Joey you were in love with me wayyyy before I said anything to JP.” Then she laughed.

Wow. She just totally kicked my ass.

“Joey told you that?” I said.

She just smiled.

Of course he did.

“Okay. You got me,” I said. I kissed her. “I love you, Annie.”

“I love you, Ryan Dean.”

“Hey, Isabel?” Isabel stopped and turned around, and I said, “When was the very first time Annie told you that she . . .”

But Annie covered my mouth with her hand before I could ask the whole question, so I stuck my tongue out and licked her fingers all over, and she squealed and laughed and ran up to Isabel, whispering something urgent to her roommate.

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

WHEN I GOT BACK TO O-Hall, everything seemed weird, like I was walking into the last five minutes of a horror movie.

That’s about the only way to describe it.

It was totally dark and quiet, no lights in any of the windows. I thought that either everyone had come back and they were all asleep, or nobody had come back yet and I was there entirely alone.

I walked up the three steps to the landing and slipped my shoes off. I guess I didn’t need to go barefoot, because it wasn’t like I was technically sneaking in, but it was just so eerily quiet that I didn’t want to make any noise on my way upstairs.

Things got stranger inside the mudroom.

The door onto the lower floor was standing wide open, and there were all kinds of muddy shoeprints going in and out, like the place had been raided by an army of guys wearing athletic shoes. I could tell they weren’t the kinds of shoes that Mr. Farrow would wear, and definitely not Mrs. Singer, so I knew the tracks had to have been made by some of the guys from upstairs.

So I was kind of relieved that I was carrying my shoes, because I could just imagine the morning’s shoe investigation from a very pissed-off pair of resident counselors.

I took a step inside the girls’ floor.

My feet sloshed in a puddle of cold water on the linoleum. I was pretty creeped out by this point, and I kept wondering where the hell Mrs. Singer was.

She was gone.

I could tell the bathroom door was open too, and I could just faintly hear the sound of water splashing, like the guys had been in the girls’ floor showers and not turned them off all the way.

I decided right then that I was not going to take another step further into the hallway, and just then I heard a couple screams like wildcats out in the woods, very distant, but the kind of sound that you just hate to hear in the middle of a quiet and spooky night.

When you’re all alone.

That was enough for me. I turned around and went upstairs, without shutting the door and without so much as glancing behind me even one time.

Upstairs was like a tomb.

I walked the length of the hallway, quietly wishing someone would pop out from a room to go to the bathroom or something, even if it was that asshole Casey Palmer.

But there were no sounds at all.

I kicked an empty whiskey bottle, and it clinked along the floor. It sounded like a hundred xylophones inside a stone tomb.

Someone fucked up.

There were footsteps on the staircase. This was it, I thought, I was about to be murdered.

Casey Palmer appeared at the top of the stairwell. He had abandoned the Wonder Woman outfit and was dressed in sweats. His skin was slick with sweat, and his eyes were drunken and glazed.

“What happened, Casey?” I said. I tried to sound as nice as I could, because, I’ll be honest, I was afraid of the way Casey Palmer was looking at me.

Casey ignored me. He walked past me, kind of floating like a ghost in the dark. He smelled like sweat and whiskey and puke, all at the same time.

He stopped and swiped his hand at me to grab me, but I slipped away from him. Casey stumbled and nearly fell down.

He said, “I’ll fucking kill you if you ever say anything to me again, kid.”

Then Casey slipped inside his room and shut the door.

When I got to my room, I actually began wishing that Chas would be in there.

I opened the door. At first, all I could see were the red numbers on our alarm clock. I bent forward and looked into the lower bunk. Chas was there, asleep. I actually breathed a relieved gasp at seeing him. I leaned over him, just to make sure he was really there.

“What the fuck are you doing, homo?” he said.

Yeah. Good night to you, too, Betch.

“I’m sorry. I was creeped out. It’s like nobody’s here, and it looks like someone trashed the girls’ floor, or something.”

I was shivering, mostly from the cold.

I took off my costume and slipped on some boxer shorts and a sweatshirt. I debated whether or not to go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I grabbed my toothbrush and stuff, but I was still spooked about the way things felt out there.

“I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” Chas said. “I’ve been trying to sleep for a while, and I don’t think Farrow or that bitch downstairs is even here, because about an hour ago there was all this running around and slamming shit around until I stuck my head out in the hall and told them to quiet the fuck down.”

I decided to skip the dental hygiene.

Something was definitely not right out there, and I wasn’t going to get caught up in it.

I climbed up in my bunk and lay there, trying to stay awake and see if I would hear that howling again.

But I fell asleep.

PART FOUR:

words

after midnight

JUST WORDS.

No more pictures. No charts or plays or poems.

Now it’s just about the words.

friday morning

THE CREEPIEST NIGHTS SEEM TO evaporate into nothing once the sun comes up and you can hear the sounds of guys out in the hallway talking crap to each other and play fighting while they get ready for school.

So I hardly gave another thought to how scared I had been when I came home from the dance; and I didn’t really even want to ask any of the other boys what had gone on in the dorm before I got back to O-Hall.

Routine has a way of making you feel like an idiot after you’ve gotten all worked up over things not being in their expected order. So I showered and got into my uniform, just like I’d do on any other morning.

We ran in Conditioning class.

JP still wasn’t talking to me, but I had a feeling that things were just okay, and nothing better than that, between us; and when Seanie and I spoke, I was careful to not be such a smart-ass and say things just to pick at JP again.

But Joey didn’t show up that day for Calculus.

I remembered how pissed off he seemed the night before, and since it was Friday and all, I just figured he was taking a day off and going home early. Still, I mostly hoped I’d be able to talk to him again before he left, so I could find out what he was so bugged about when I saw him outside the dance.

Then it really sank in that it was Friday.

It meant Annie and just about everyone else would be leaving for home too, and I wished I didn’t feel so goddamned scared and alone without my friends around.

When Megan saw me in class, she smiled and said, “I like how you dance, Ryan Dean. Pretty hot.”

I turned red.

“Sorry about that. We were kind of getting a little nasty, Megan.”

She laugh-whispered, “A little?”

“Hey, did you see Joey, or hear if he’s sick or something?”

“No. I saw Kevin this morning, though,” she said. “You should ask him.”

“Okay. And thanks for the dance, Megan. I had a lot of fun.”

She turned around and rubbed my forearm and winked at me.

Ugh.

She made me feel so weak.

lit class

I DIDN’T NORMALLY RUN INTO kevin at school, but I looked for him everywhere that day after Halloween.

Eventually, I just quit trying. I knew I’d see him at lunchtime, when he and the others left for their weekends at home.

Somehow, I’d managed to scrawl out my Nick-and-Bill-are-gay-for-each-other essay for Mr. Wellins, and he practically salivated when I handed it in to him at the start of Lit class.

What a moron.

What a criminal waste of a blue book, too.

I sat down.

Annie smiled, but JP didn’t even turn to look at me.

I wished he’d just get up and change seats and leave us both alone.

After all, I did what I could. I screwed up and got into a fight with a guy who was one of my best friends. And I knew JP was going to pout like this for the rest of the year—maybe the rest of high school entirely.

Then Mr. Wellins began talking about Halloween costumes, and how they were manifestations of suppressed sexuality, and he started blah-blah-blahing about every goddamned kid in the class and how he took notes on all of us at the dance last night, and Ryan Dean West was in touch with his atavistic and primal man-drives, and, oh—let’s go around the room and talk about our Hemingway essays.

So, yeah, Annie and I pretty much shut it all out, scooted our desks close together, held hands on my lap—score one for atavism!—and whispered and mouthed our own unobserved conversation. And all the while, I was praying that old pervert didn’t call on his favorite caveman to out poor Nick Adams and his friend.

“I had so much fun last night,” I said.

“So did I. You’re a great dancer.”

“Shut up.” I rolled my eyes and squeezed her fingers. “It’s going to be so boring here this weekend. Ask your mom and dad about Thanksgiving. I really want to go.”

“I know they’ll want you to come. It’ll be so great, Ryan Dean. It’s just a few weeks away.”

“It’ll seem like forever. I’m going to go crazy this weekend without you.”

She leaned closer and looked right into my eyes with that amazing look she had.

I know we would have kissed if we hadn’t been sitting right there in a classroom.

JP coughed and gave us a quick dirty look and scooted his desk farther away from Annie’s.

Good.

“Who are you going to the airport with?” I asked.

“Kevin’s driving. With one arm. And Megan and Joey.” She said, “Chas isn’t coming, so you won’t be totally lonely, Ryan Dean. Think of all the fun you two boys will have together.”

She laughed quietly.

Crap.

“Have you seen Joey today? He wasn’t in Calc or Econ.”

“He’ll meet us at lunchtime.”

“I’ll walk you out when you leave.”

“Okay.”

“Which brings us to young Mr. West,” Mr. Wellins announced, snapping Annie and me out of our midclass dream.

He went on, “Ryan Dean has a particularly interesting theory on sexual tension that is quietly hinted at, like an urgent whisper, by Hemingway in ‘The Three-Day Blow.’ ”

Ugh.

The class weakly attempted stifling their laughter.

All this crap, just to get into a stupid Halloween dance. And, by the way, what did he mean with that “young Mr. West” comment? I was so sick of that crap, and I even got it from perverted old professors.

“Please elucidate, Ryan Dean,” Mr. Wellins said.

“Oh. Please do, young Mr. West,” JP whispered mockingly from the other side of Annie’s desk, without turning to look at me.

Crap.

lunchtime

BY THE END OF CLASS, I started getting pretty depressed thinking about Annie going home for the weekend.

When I saw her at the start of lunch, carrying her suitcase out to the parking lot, I imagined myself throwing my body in front of Kevin’s car, kicking and screaming, to stop her.

She waited at the gate for me, standing with Kevin and Megan. I couldn’t see Joey anywhere.

I grabbed the suitcase from her hand so I could carry it for her. I took Kevin’s from him, too.

He said, “Thanks, Ryan Dean.”

“Any of you seen Joey?”

The girls both looked at Kevin, who shook his head and said, “He didn’t come home last night. I was hoping maybe you’d know what happened.”

Kevin looked worried.

That’s when I got kind of scared.

“No one knows where he is,” Kevin said. “I went and checked at the office, too, because his car’s still here.”

I looked out at the lot.

Joey’s BMW was parked next to Kevin’s car, like it always was.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. “I saw him leaving the dance.”

“I didn’t see him all night,” Kevin said. “Once I started dancing, I never saw him after that. They called his parents. They think he ran away or something. He did it before, remember? The cops are going to come.”

I did remember the time Joey ran away from school for three days, but he didn’t have a car then. Why wouldn’t he just drive away this time?

We started walking out to Kevin’s car.

Kevin said, “He got into a fight or some shit with Casey and Nick. Some of the guys on the team got between them or there would have been a fucking riot at the dance. Nobody even noticed.”

“And you’re just going to leave anyway?” I said.

“What else can I do? Joey’s a big boy. He’s almost eighteen, Ryan Dean. He’s done this before, and I haven’t gone home in three weeks,” Kevin said. “Joey’ll be okay. He’s just pissed about something. Again. No big deal. The boys will cool off, and everything will be back to its old shitty, O-Hall self.”

“He looked pissed off last night,” I said.

“Nick and Casey got drunk,” Kevin said. “Shitfaced. They fucked the place up, and nobody knew anything about it. Those fuckers stayed up all night cleaning the mess up. Farrow and the old woman downstairs never knew shit about what those guys did while they were gone on their little Halloween binge.”

“Something’s not right,” I said.

“You worry too much, Winger.”

We loaded the suitcases into Kevin’s car, and I walked over to Annie’s door. I hugged her, and we kissed before she got in.

“I’m going to miss you,” I whispered. “I love you.”

She looked like she was about to cry, and in a weird way that made me feel really good.

I closed her door, and Kevin started the car.

He said, “Tell Joey to call my house when he shows up. He’ll be back today. I know Joey. Just watch.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, I’m going to check with the office again.”

“It’s going to be okay, Ryan Dean. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

I looked back at Annie and said, “Bye. See you, Kevin. Megan.”

And I stood there beside Joey’s car and watched them drive away.