Текст книги "Winger"
Автор книги: Andrew Smith
Соавторы: Andrew Smith
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Yeah. I know. I’m such a loser.
“Are you okay, Ryan Dean?” JP asked.
“Huh?”
“Dude, you looked like you were sleeping with your eyes open for the last five minutes,” he said. “Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
“About what?”
“Halloween.”
“Oh,” I said, “what did you say?”
And I thought, did I accidentally babble something about what I’d like to wear for Annie?
“About the dance,” Seanie said.
Halloween was coming up on the Thursday after our game.
Whenever Halloween fell during the week, since we were so isolated, Pine Mountain would have a dinner dance. I hadn’t even thought about it, beyond my perverted fantasy about Annie, but it suddenly dawned on me that I couldn’t go. Pine Mountain’s rules did not allow O-Hall boys to attend such events.
“Me and Annie are going together,” JP said.
Okay. I really wanted to cuss. But I didn’t.
I felt my eyes get big, and a little watery. I looked at Annie with a what-the-fuck-is-he-talking-about look on my face, but she just looked perfectly normal; perfectly, hotly, matter-of-fact Annie.
I looked at JP. “What?”
“Dude. You don’t want her going alone, do you?”
I looked at Annie again.
“No. You’re right.”
I stood up. My head was spinning, and I felt like I was going to end up on my face. I needed to get out of there. Now I knew what it meant, all those times I noticed JP looking at her, watching me, too. I wanted to kick his fucking head in right there, so I just left. I went for the doors and stepped out into the cold afternoon.
And I could hear her calling, in her I’m-singing-a-song voice, all relaxed and sweet, “West? West? What’s wrong now?” But I didn’t even turn around.
Joey came after me.
“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I cannot believe that crap, Joey.”
“It’s just Annie and JP. It’s no big deal,” Joey said.
I was practically crying, but there was no way I was going to cry in front of a gay guy, even if he was my friend.
“I can’t believe he’d do that to me,” I said. “We’re supposed to be friends. Why would he do that?”
“You know what, Ryan Dean? You’re a fucking hypocrite. So now what are you going to do?”
And Joey turned around and walked back into the mess hall.
1Okay. If you haven’t read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, you should. Because it is fucking hilarious, and there’s no way you’d understand “Hello, Central” unless you read the book.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
RUGBY PRACTICE CAME. IT WOULD be our last hard practice before the game.
I wanted to hit someone. I wanted to get hurt, too.
After two hours of running drills, backline plays, and conditioning, we were all of us covered in sweat and grass and mud. It was the toughest practice we’d had all year, and Coach M told us he wasn’t going to let us play a game, which is how we usually ended, because he didn’t want to see us making any mistakes.
Instead we ended with a resistance drill we called Sumo, a one-on-one drill where a ball carrier had to drive the ball in and touch it down to a very small circle in the grass against one tackler. And the drill would not stop until the ball got there, no matter what; so there have been times when I’ve actually seen guys collapse from exhaustion if they couldn’t get the ball in against a very tough tackler.
After we’d gone about halfway through the team, Kevin ended up in the middle, as the tackler against Chas. It was an intense fight. They were equal in size and strength, and Kevin just kept taking Chas down, inches before he could touch the ball into the circle, taunting Chas and pissing him off.
Finally, I think Kevin either got tired or felt sorry for Chas, because Chas slipped his arm through and got the ball down into the circle, diving onto his belly as he did and saying, “Fuck you, Kevin.”
Then Kevin helped him up to his feet, and I looked at Coach M, who seemed to be pretending he didn’t hear Chas cuss.
Now Chas was in the middle, and the way we play is that the guy in the middle gets to call out whoever he wants to have run against him.
I already knew who I’d call when I got a chance.
Chas looked around the circle of our dirty and tired teammates, and he bullet passed the ball to me and said, “Winger.”
What a jerk.
I smiled.
Chas stood in front of the small circle in the grass and crouched in a hitting position, just staring at me. I took two steps toward him and stopped. He was so flat on his feet, I knew he wouldn’t be able to touch me. I head-faked, then cut back the other way and sailed around him, touching the ball down without Chas even wiping a finger’s width of sweat off me.
The guys on the team laughed at Chas, murmuring “Betch,” and he turned to me and mouthed, “Fuck you,” in a whisper so Coach couldn’t hear.
Now I had the ball. Normally, I’d call out Bags, one of our other wings, because we were about the same size, even though he was older, but I’d made my mind up ahead of time that if I got the ball, there was one guy who’d have to run against me.
“Sartre,” I said.
Everyone had to figure this would be no contest, that a guy who was built with JP’s strength and drive would be able to stay low and plow right through me, that I had to be insane for calling out our fullback.
I heard a bunch of low-toned “oooh”s from the guys, and I threw the ball at JP, low, at his knees, so he had to bend down to catch it. It was a dick move; I’ll admit it. Because I took off as fast as the ball, and as soon as it was in his hands, I flew, shoulder first, into JP’s legs and twisted my body as I wrapped him up and drove him into the ground.
“Fuck,” JP grunted as I hit him.
Springing to my feet, I pushed myself up by putting my left hand firmly down into his nuts, and JP groaned and doubled up, letting go of the ball. When he tried to scoop the ball back in, I hacked it out of his hand, kicking his fingers as I did. I know this was dirty, but I was pissed off at JP and now, I’m sure, he knew it too; because he had to get up and chase after the ball and try to run it in again.
JP broke through the circled boys who stood watching us. When he ran to get the ball I’d kicked, I followed right behind him. I noticed that Coach M was moving toward us on the outside of the Sumo ring. He looked amused.
As soon as JP had his fingers on the ball, I took him down again, this time pulling his jersey up out of his shorts and dragging him with it until it was fully inside out and covering his head. We were about ten feet out of the ring now, and the guys opened a gateway for JP to run through so he could get to the score. If he could make it past me.
JP stood up, leaving the ball at his feet as he tucked his jersey back into his shorts.
There were streaks of grass and black mud on his face.
“What the fuck, Ryan Dean?”
“Watch your mouth, JP,” Coach M warned. He added, “Nice job, Eleven.”
I don’t think I’d ever been so physically aggressive in my life, but all I could think about was JP and his smug I’m-taking-your-girlfriend-out announcement over lunch, and how Annie told me to get tough this year. So I was sick of this shit, of being treated like a little kid, especially by my best friends, and I wasn’t going to let it keep on happening to me.
“Trick or treat, assbreath,” I said.
I’m certain Coach M had to think about that one, and, since he didn’t say anything, he must have concurred with me that “assbreath” is not a true cuss word.
JP smiled. “Oh. I get it. Okay, Winger. Happy Halloween to you, too.”
Now it was clear to everyone. JP and I were in a full-scale fight, the only kind you could possibly get away with at PM.
He ran at me again, but this time he slipped my tackle and I fell, managing only to wrap the crook of my arm tightly around his left ankle. I rolled, and JP fell on top of me, dropping his knees (on purpose, I’m sure, but it was totally fair for him to do it) right into my back. It felt like he broke my ribs, but as he went down JP dropped the ball, and his left cleat came right off his foot and into my hands.
I got to my feet. I was sweating and in pain. I could feel my heart drumming against the bones inside my chest. I knew I was just about finished, that I couldn’t keep JP out of the circle much longer and he was getting really pissed off about it.
I think what probably pushed him over the edge was that, as he was getting up again, I threw his cleat as far as I could down the pitch and some of the guys laughed.
I could hear Seanie saying, “JP’s Winger’s bitch,” and the guys laughed even more.
JP stood there, panting, the ball tucked into his arms. He looked to where I’d thrown his cleat, then he looked back at me, not even a hint of friendship in his expression, then he got low, put his head down, and wearing only one shoe, came at me full speed.
When I hit him from the front, JP went straight into my tackle and landed squarely on top of me. He went down, too, but he brought his knee up into my face and I heard something pop—like stepping on a grape—when he hit my eye. I remember hearing the “ooh”s from the guys when I sat up, and as I tried to get to my feet I saw a blurry red image of JP scoring behind me, and the next thing I knew, Seanie and Joey were there, putting their hands against my shoulders and telling me not to stand up.
Everyone began crowding around me.
I looked down at my lap. I was covered in blood, could feel it pulsing down my face and onto my jersey, splattering my muddy legs.
Coach M kneeled beside me. “Let’s have a look,” he said. I realized my left eye was closed for some reason, so I turned my head to look at him.
“That’s going to need stitches,” he said.
And then Seanie was right in my face, saying, “You can see his skull! You can see his skull!”
Which is probably just about the last thing you want to hear at a time like that, even if Seanie did sound overjoyed by the discovery.
I started to lie down, but they wouldn’t let me. The physio was there, wrapping gauze and tape like a headband tightly around my pulsing head, over my left eye. Then Seanie and Joey each took an arm and helped me to my feet.
I was sore and dizzy, but I willed myself not to collapse.
I remember Coach M telling them to put me in the cart and drive me down the hill to the doctor’s, and I saw JP standing in front of me, holding the cleat I’d thrown.
“Hey. Sorry, Ryan Dean.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
IT TOOK EIGHTEEN STITCHES TO close the cut across my eyebrow, some inside the skin, and some outside. But the cut itself wasn’t that big. The doctor let me look at the stitches in a mirror when he was finished, but I mostly paid attention to how horrible the rest of me looked. I was filthy and damp and covered with blackened crusty blood that clotted on my skin and in my hair.
Seanie and Joey stayed there with me while the doctor stitched me up, but he wouldn’t let them stand too close when he was doing the actual sewing part. I didn’t say a word the whole time I was there; all I could do was think about JP and Annie and how mad I was.
Then the doctor left the room, and his exceedingly five-out-of-five-possible-fruit-arrangements-on-your-head-in-a-Brazilian-dancer-kind-of-way-on-the-Ryan-Dean-West-Samba-mometer nurse came in and asked me to lay my head back on the pillow.
“Let’s take off that bloody shirt,” she said, so sweetly. “Here. Raise your arms.”
And—oh my God—she had a stainless-steel basin of warm damp towels with her!
She pulled my jersey up out of my shorts and lifted it, so gently, over my head. When it was all the way off, I quickly looked around the room to see if my great-grandma and that run-over Chihuahua were present. I was convinced I had died and gone to a much, much better place.
Thank God for compression shorts.
“Boiiing!” Seanie said.
I had to laugh. “Shut up.”
You know, I sometimes disappoint myself. Because at that moment, if anyone had asked me about Annie, I know I would have said, “Who is that?”
“Does it hurt?” she asked. She softly swiped a warm towel around my face and began rubbing my hair clean with a second wet towel.
I tried to look extra sad. “Just a little.”
I lied. I couldn’t feel it at all.
“Aww,” she said.
If I was a cat, I would have purred.
If I was an alligator, I would have been hypnotized.
But since I was only me, all I could do was lie there and contemplate everything perverted I had ever dreamed about since I was, like, seven years old.
She dropped the first blood-rusted towels onto a tray by the bed and grabbed two more. She wiped off my neck and shoulders. She sponge bathed me where blood had dried on my chest and belly, right down to the waistband of my shorts. She even toweled off the thin hair in my armpits, which kind of tickled, but there was no way I was about to giggle. And I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t stop staring at her extreme hotness. Then she gently wiped the blood from my knees and up my thighs, all the way to where my compression shorts ended, and at that point I got so flustered, I began hiccupping.
I am such a loser.
She put all the dirty towels in a pile beside the bed and said, “Now you look perfectly handsome again. There’s no concussion, so you won’t have to stay here tonight . . . .”
Damn. Uh . . . you look pretty good yourself.
“. . . but you’ll need to take it easy . . .”
I can’t move right now anyway.
“We’ll call your parents and let them know. Would you like to speak with them?”
NO!
“Uh.” Hiccup. Crap. “Just tell them”—hic!—“I’m okay.”
“Do you have any clothes you can put on?”
No, you better take the rest of these dirty things off me. I don’t mind.
“We can get his stuff from the locker room,” Joey said.
Shut up!!!
“That’s so sweet of you. Thank you,” she said, then she bundled up the towels and threw them into a hamper by the door as she left. “I’ll be right back, boys.”
“Dude,” Seanie said. “That was like watching a porn flick. Nurses Gone Wild.”
“Ugh.” I closed my eyes and dropped my arms out from the sides of my bed. “I thought I was going to lose”—hic—“con . . . consciousness. Please tell me that really happened just now.”
“All I can say is, no matter what, I’m cracking my skull open tomorrow,” Seanie said. “And if you want me to, Ryan Dean, I can go get her and tell her she missed a spot.”
“Oh my God. Would you do that for me, Seanie?”
“Dude, you are such a perv for a little guy.”
I laughed.
The door opened again and Coach M came in, carrying my clothes from the locker room on a hanger he held over his shoulder. He had my shoes and book bag in his other hand.
“I brought these for you, Ryan Dean,” he said. “Save you an unnecessary trip.”
“Thank you, Coach.” I sat up, dangling my feet over the side of the bed. Before the door swung shut, I could see that there were a number of guys from the team, showered and changed back into their school clothes, waiting outside. Knowing they had come made me feel really good, but not as good as that warm-towel session did.
“And thanks to you two for looking after your mate,” Coach M said to Joey and Seanie. “Here, let’s see that.”
I tilted my chin back so Coach could have a good look at my stitches.
“Welcome to the Zipper Club, Ryan Dean,” he said. That’s what rugby guys said when they got stitches.
“Flaherty,” Coach M said, “why don’t you go back to the showers and get dressed. I want to speak with Ryan Dean and his captain.”
“Will you be able to make it to dinner?” Seanie asked me.
“I’ll be there.”
Seanie left. I could hear him talking to the guys outside as his metal cleats clacked against the shiny infirmary floor.
I began changing into my clothes. I pulled off my shorts. Right about now, I thought, it would be really cool if that nurse came back.
“You can’t get those sutures wet,” Coach said.
“They told me,” I answered. “Eighteen stitches. But no concussion.”
I knew where this was going. If I’d gotten a concussion, I’d be off the roster for a long time.
“I’ve never seen you hit like that before, Ryan Dean,” Coach said. “That was inspired, to say the least. Is there something going on between you and Tureau you’d like to tell me about?”
I was stuck. I’d have to tell the truth, especially in front of Joey. And Coach M did not tolerate fighting among the team. He’d probably have to kick me off, and I probably deserved it. I changed my socks and began buttoning my dress shirt, avoiding their eyes, trying to think of how I’d say it.
I felt sick. Maybe it showed in my eyes.
I said, “Coach, JP and I . . .”
Joey interrupted. “Were just seeing how hard they could go. And Ryan Dean proved why he belongs in the first fifteen, Coach.”
“Oh. I thought I picked up on something else going on there.”
“Ryan Dean and JP are best friends, Coach.”
Now, that was going a little too far, I thought. I looked at Joey and then at Coach. I pulled my pants on and began knotting my necktie.
Coach M turned to Joey. “Who can play left wing on Thursday?”
“I can,” I interrupted before Joey could answer.
“I can’t let you play like that, Ryan Dean. What would I tell your parents if you hurt yourself again?”
“You’d tell them what they already know. It’s part of the game. Please, Coach. I don’t have a concussion. I’ll prewrap it and tape it up. Guys do it all the time. It’s no big deal. I really want to play, sir.”
I wasn’t going to do the fake-tears thing. I could bring real ones up at the thought of being benched for our first game.
“I want Ryan Dean in my line, sir. He’s our best wing. You know that,” Joey said.
Note to self: In your prayers tonight, be sure to thank God for making (a) that unbelievably hot nurse, (b) compression shorts, and (c) Joey Cosentino.
“I’ll have to think about it,” Coach said. Then he went to the door, cracked it open, and called out, “JP?”
JP came in, walking slowly, looking down. I could tell he felt bad, but I didn’t care about his feelings, anyway. Why would I? He didn’t care enough about mine. He held his hand out, and we shook. Coach wouldn’t have made him do that if he didn’t already know we’d been fighting.
“I’m sorry, Ryan Dean.”
“You already said that on the field, JP,” I said. I slipped my feet into my school shoes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Coach.”
I grabbed my cleats and the rest of my bloody practice clothes, threw my pack over my shoulder, and quietly walked out without turning back once.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I WAS ALMOST BACK TO O-Hall when I heard someone running up toward me from behind. I didn’t care who it was. Because once again, now that I was alone in the quiet beside the lake, all the anger and frustration over Annie and JP, and my possibly sitting out of the game, came swirling back through my aching head.
It felt like JP was trying to ruin my life in every way possible.
“What’s your fucking problem, Ryan Dean?”
I should have known it was JP behind me.
I thought about just going on into Opportunity Hall. He wouldn’t follow me there, not after getting in trouble for it the first week of school. But I stopped and turned to face him.
He was out of breath, panting fog in the cold as he caught up to where I stood.
“You know what this is about, JP,” I said. And then I really did cuss. “Fuck off.”
I turned around, thinking how stupid those words actually sounded coming from my mouth. It almost made me want to laugh, hearing myself say something like that, which is kind of hard for me to understand, because I don’t have a problem writing words like that.
I started walking toward the door again.
“You want to have it out right now?” JP said. “No one’s around. You want to fight again?”
I just kept walking and ignored him.
“Fuck you, Ryan Dean.”
I opened the door.
I went inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AT DINNER, I SAT ALONE at a table full of kids I didn’t even know. They were freshmen. They were all my age. And I didn’t understand them at all. It was like they were from a different planet entirely.
This is how much of a loser I am: I am such a loser that I don’t even fit in with other kids who are exactly my age.
Annie, JP, Seanie, Joey, along with everyone else, were sitting where we all usually sit, the way teenagers do, but I didn’t go over there. I was tired, sore, and pissed off, and I wanted to be left alone, exiled to this other world I didn’t know. As far as I could tell, my friends didn’t even know I was there, anyway.
I just kept my head down and ate my dinner. The freshmen around me probably thought I was a new kid or something. I could hear, a couple times, one of them say, “Who’s that kid?”
“Hey.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head and saw Megan standing behind me.
“I heard you got hurt,” she said.
“I did.”
It felt so good just to look at her, to feel the way her hand rested on my shoulder.
I glanced around to see if Chas was anywhere in sight. And, of course, I saw Joey, across the room, watching us. I looked away. I didn’t want to hear it, what I knew he was thinking.
“Let me see.”
Megan sat down beside me. I felt all the eyes of the freshman boys on us, like they were wondering if she was my older sister, or maybe a teacher, or a cop coming to arrest me, because there was no way a girl who looked like Megan Renshaw should be sitting there next to someone like me.
“I think stitches are sexy,” she said when I turned my face to her.
I almost choked on a crouton.
She had that look in her eyes like she was going to pin me down on the table and make out with me right there in front of the whole school. She touched the stitches over my eye.
“Are you okay?”
“You shouldn’t be doing this, Megan,” I whispered.
“What? Making sure my friend’s okay?”
“Come on, Megan. No girl here at Pine Mountain cares about me. I’m not a prize like Chas Becker. You can stop being nice now.”
“Is that what you think, Ryan Dean?”
She dropped her hand down onto my knee and rubbed my leg.
Stop looking at me, Joey!
“Hey, Meg. Where you been?”
Chas appeared out of nowhere, standing right next to me like the tree I was about to be lynched from. And Megan just left her hand on my leg, and I know Chas saw it, but she innocently said, “Did you see Ryan Dean’s eye?”
Chas lowered his face so that it was mere inches from my nose. He looked real serious. He looked like he could kill me and not even think twice about it.
“How many stitches, Winger?” he asked.
“Eighteen.”
“Looks like you won’t be playing.” He said it like he wasn’t just talking about the game.
“I can still play.” My voice cracked. Loser. What was I doing? I felt like I was facing off in a gunfight.
Chas didn’t move. He stayed there, staring at me.
“Everyone says you’re in a fight with Sartre.”
“I am.”
“You really do got big balls, kid. You better watch it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Chas straightened. “C’mon, Meg. Let’s go sit at the big kids’ table.”
Megan patted my leg and stood. “Don’t forget, Ryan Dean. Tomorrow. Calculus in the library. You and Joey. Okay?”
I tried to say “okay,” but nothing would come out. I squeaked like a doggie chew toy in Megan Renshaw’s unyielding pit bull teeth.
And Chas practically pulled Megan away, leading her off to where the seniors were sitting. But I saw him turn his face over his shoulder and look at me once, and I’ll be honest, it scared me. I considered scrawling a makeshift will on the back of a napkin, but as I took mental inventory of my life’s possessions, I realized no one would want them anyway.
I was as good as dead now.
Images of my funeral again: both Annie and Megan looking so hot in black; Joey shaking his head woefully and thinking how he told me so; JP and Chas high-fiving each other in the back pew; Seanie installing a live-feed webcam in my undersize casket; and Mom and Dad disappointed, as always, that I left this world a loser alcoholic virgin with eighteen stitches over my left eye.
“What the fuck are you doing all alone over here in loserland, Ryan Dean? How hard did you hit your head?”
Seanie pulled the chair out across from me and sat down. Annie stood behind him. No one else.
“I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
I could see by the way Annie tilted her head that she was trying to look at the cut or trying to look at my eyes, but I didn’t really want her to. As much as I wanted to just see her and nothing else on this whole weird planet, I felt so terrible about everything that had happened to me and the shitty things I had done to myself that I just couldn’t bring myself to face her.
Seanie tapped the shoulder of the freshman boy who was sitting beside him. “Hey. Kid. Move so she can sit down.”
The boy picked up his tray and moved farther down the length of the table.
“By the way,” Seanie said as Annie took the vacated seat, “I forgot to tell you, I liked the ‘Trick or treat, assbreath’ comment at practice.”
I sighed.
Sometimes I just wanted to grab Seanie by the neck and shake him.
I was finished eating. I really wanted to leave. Then Annie reached across the table and lifted my chin with her soft hand. I know that Annie had touched me before—how could it be avoided? Friends touch. But it never felt like that. And she held my head there and looked at the cut above my eye, then she just looked right into my eyes and we didn’t blink or anything. I don’t know what I looked like to her, because I don’t think there was any expression on my face at all, and it didn’t matter. All we could see were each other’s eyes.
“Wow,” Seanie said. “This is one heavy moment. Are you two getting ready to make out or something? ’Cause if you are, it’s about time.”
Annie pulled her hand away, and I looked down.
“Are you okay, West?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“You still planning on coming to my house this weekend?”
Nothing, especially not John-Paul Tureau, could stop me.
“Is it okay if I do?”
I was scared she’d say no.
“Best friends,” she said. “It’s going to be fun.”
“Best friends.”
Then she stood and left us there. It was getting late, and most of the students were making their way back to the dorms. I was so glad she didn’t say anything else, anything about JP.
She didn’t have to.
“Damn,” Seanie said. “Why don’t you just get it over with and fucking kiss her, Ryan Dean?”
“Shut up, Seanie. Annie knows what’s going on.”
“Everyone on the planet knows what’s going on. Except you.”
“Seanie?”
“What?”
“Thanks for not saying nothing about JP and me.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
