Winger (26 page)

Then I knew Chas was going to do something to get even with me.

Probably something painful, but at the very least humiliating.

Annie helped me out of the car. I put my feet down in a puddle of rainwater, then realized my shoes were still sitting on the floor beneath the backseat, where I’d left them.

I am such a loser.

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry, Ryan Dean,” Annie said. But she was laughing about it too.

Of course it was funny. I just felt like crap.

I slipped my soggy socks back into my shoes and wiped the sweat from my forehead.

“You need to take a hot shower and get into bed,” Annie said.

I wasn’t so sick I couldn’t say, “I might need some help doing that, Annie.”

“You are such a pervert.” She smiled, and those eyes almost made me feel better.

Joey put my bag over his shoulder and said, “Come on, I’ll take this back for you.”

We walked through the main gates to the campus together, and just as Annie was turning off toward her dorm, I saw Seanie and JP coming up from the lake path. I turned to Annie and grabbed her hand.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah.”

I moved a little closer. I really felt like we were supposed to kiss or something, but I didn’t know. I mean, isn’t that the normal thing to do after people go away for a weekend together?

“I really did have a great time, Annie. Sorry I got mad about things this morning. You know, I just feel like . . .” I looked down at my sloshing feet and said, “Whatever.” I didn’t want her to go.

“It’s okay, Ryan Dean. Get better, okay?”

Then she let go of my hand and turned away. I sighed. I really wanted
to grab her and turn her around right there in front of everyone and just kiss her, the same way we kissed in the sawmill, but I knew Annie wasn’t like that, and that no matter how I felt, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. So I slumped my shoulders and followed Joey toward O-Hall, my feet slosh-slosh-sloshing behind him as he carried both of our bags.

“Hey, Nutsack, welcome back.” Seanie jogged up to me. “How was the trip?”

Of course, JP stayed back on the path, away from me. And when I turned around to talk to Seanie, I saw that JP was saying something to Annie. And I saw her smile at him, and I wondered if we had that same kind of tired-of-each-other look that Chas and Megan did.

No. I knew we didn’t.

“Dude, did you even hear what I’ve been saying?” Seanie said.

I wasn’t really listening to him. I was watching Annie give JP a hug. And then JP looked right at me. It felt like getting kicked in the balls by both of them. I turned away. God, I hated him.

“Huh?” I said. “Oh. I had a great time, Seanie. It was great.”

He followed along as we walked to O-Hall, and we talked about things, but I wasn’t paying attention at all. I know I told him I’d gotten sick, and I know Seanie was laughing about something he’d done to someone on the Internet over the weekend, and it was probably me and probably had something to do with a Band-Aid, but it was all fogged through the filter of my sickness and how much I wanted to kill John-Paul Tureau at that moment.

AT MIDNIGHT, SOME ASSHOLE PULLED
the sheets off my head and beamed a flashlight on my face.

“Get up, Pussboy, we’re playing poker.”

Ugh.

“Let me sleep, Chas. I’m sick. I don’t mind if you guys go ahead and play.”

My throat felt like I had swallowed a handful of sewing needles. Sideways.

Sheets.

Off.

On the floor.

Gravity.

Hands grabbing my legs. Being pulled over the edge.

My feet slapped down onto the cool of the floor, and someone held me up by my armpits to stop me from recracking my head open.

Crap.

I really hate Chas Becker.

I yawned, and when the fluid cleared from my eyes, I could see Joey, Casey Palmer (of all people—why’d Chas ask that dickhead to play?), and Kevin Cantrell, standing there in front of me with his right arm folded inside a black cloth sling.

“Kevin. Wow. Are you okay?” Awkwardly, I shook his left hand.

There is something really weird about being cornered into shaking a guy’s left hand. It felt creepy and dirty. Standing there in my boxers didn’t do anything special to make it feel closer to normal either.

I picked my sheet up from the floor where Chas had thrown it and wrapped it around me. I was shivering a little, and sweating, but I wasn’t going to get dressed. I refused to.

I fully planned on going back to bed.

Chas began setting up the game, and the guys sat in a circle on the floor. I stayed on my feet.

“I’ll be okay,” Kevin said. “They have to see if there’s going to be nerve damage. The season’s over for me, though.”

“That’s fucked up,” Chas said. “I don’t know who we’re going to get to lock with me now.”

In rugby, locks came in pairs, like training wheels. Like balls. Chas and Kevin were arguably the most important guys in the forward pack.

Chas began shuffling.

“Get your twenty dollars out and sit down, Pussboy.”

I guess he’d gotten used to my new name.

It did have a lyrical sound to it.

I said, “Pussboy’s going back to bed.” I looked at Casey and started to climb back up to the top bunk. I still couldn’t believe
he
was there in
my
room.

Then Chas said, “Sit the fuck down and get your fucking foot off my bed.”

And he sounded seriously dangerous. I knew he was pissed off about Megan. I knew we were going to have to settle it.

Joey said, “Leave him alone, Chas. He doesn’t want to play.”

Chas started to say something, and I could tell it was going to be horrible, too. You know how you just kind of get that oh-here-comes-Chas-Becker’s-fucked-up-comment-about-me-and-Joey-being-gay-together-when-he-knows-goddamn-well-his-smoking-hot-girlfriend-loves-to-make-out-with-me feeling? So before he even fully got the first word out of his mouth, I rasped, “No big deal, Joey. I’m in.”

At least, I figured, with five players instead of four, my odds were 5 percent better of not receiving
the consequence
. I grabbed a twenty from my desk and tossed it down to the Bank of Chas.

“Here,” I said. “And screw you, Chas.”

That’s not cussing, is it?

Then Casey tried to be funny and said, “Is it just me, or is someone here about to get his ass kicked?”

“Well, if you’re scared, Casey, you could go back to your room and get your pads on, you fucking human tampon,” Kevin said.

That was cool. I would have high-fived Kevin, but I felt sorry for his arm.

Casey glared at Kevin. I watched him. Joey was right about Casey
Palmer. There was something cruel and cold in that kid’s eyes. Casey Palmer really did know what hate was.

“Hey, come on,” Joey said. Damn, Joey always stuck up for everyone. Even tools like Casey Palmer.

I sat, cross-legged, shirtless, and barefoot, with my sheet wrapped around my waist. I probably looked like Gandhi or something, so I put my hands together and said,
“Namaste.”

But Joey was the only one who got it. He laughed, while Kevin looked politely confused, and Casey looked like he was still pissed off about being called a human tampon, and Chas said, “Whatever, you fucking puss. Let’s have a drink.”

God.

I looked at Joey’s feet. He and Kevin were wearing our rugby socks again. But this time, Kevin pulled his sweats up and showed he had a full bottle of whiskey tucked inside the top of one of his socks, and a Maxine’s House of Spirits in Atlanta shot glass in the other. I rolled my eyes, but I still had to wonder if Maxine was hot, and if she lived in a haunted house, or was that just made up, and if it was a haunted house, were there any girl ghosts, and can a ghost be hot?

Yeah . . . I just knew someone was going to die tonight.

I DECIDED THAT WHISKEY FROM
A Maxine’s House of Spirits in Atlanta shot glass tasted a hell of a lot better than beer from a can, even if I did notice one of Kevin Cantrell’s leg hairs floating in it.

Oh, well, drinking another guy’s leg hair can’t kill you, can it? But it did make me feel kind of like a zombie. I mean the leg-hair thing—you know, consuming the flesh of the living—not the whiskey, because that made me feel like the Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island.

And then, too, I had to wonder what Gandhi would have thought about the whole leg-hair thing, him being a vegetarian and all.

So, yeah, I did have a drink of whiskey.

Well, to be honest, maybe two.

I know . . . I’m such a loser.

And I’m not going to feel sorry for myself or try to defend my stupidity, which had been elevated to a kind of Wild-Boy-Meets-Gandhi religion, but the whiskey did wash those sewing needles out of my throat, and I was so pissed off about JP and Annie hugging that I honestly believe I was trying to hurt myself.

I had a feeling I wouldn’t be going to my classes in the morning anyway.

Eventually, the Wild Boy had just about taken over my entire consciousness, and after two tips from Maxine’s shot glass, he was ready to fight Chas and Casey at the same time to settle anything left unfinished between us.

But then the Gandhi part of me said I should just let them both beat the living crap out of me until they got tired of it.

So it was a real ethical dilemma.

Kevin and Joey looked quiet and steady, like they always did. I don’t think they drank as much as the other two guys while we played. Casey and Chas were pretty drunk. I thought it was a miracle that they didn’t start yelling and breaking things and wake up Mr. Farrow.

After about half an hour, Chas and I were both losing badly, so it became a kind of race between us to see which of us would lose out first and get the consequence, even if the Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island kind of hoped it had something to do with running around in the woods naked in the rain and killing something with my bare hands and eating it raw.

That’s when Chas said to Casey, “So what’s up with all that shit on your MySite? Now you’ve got a picture of
his
nutsack . . .”

Chas hitchhiked his thumb at me.

Oh, great. Now everyone thinks they’re my balls.

“. . . with a Band-Aid on it . . .”

Of course.

Sean Russell Flaherty’s creative touch, no doubt.

“. . . and all this shit about how much you love
Ryan Dean West
, and there must be about fifty pictures of Pussboy on it too.”

It kind of choked me up that Chas actually knew my name, and also that Seanie had that many pictures of me.

I hoped they were good ones.

“I don’t know who the fuck has been doing that,” Casey said.

I looked at Joey.

“You don’t
really
love me, do you, Palmer?” I said.

“Do you want me to kill you now or later?” he answered.

Chas bumped Kevin’s good arm and said, “Give me another shot, Maxine.”

Chas downed the drink in one swallow and said, “Damn that stuff tastes terrible.”

Okay, that was the precise moment the Wild Boy took complete charge of my sensibilities as the pacifist was sleeping off a binge.

I said, “You should try it with a splash of Gatorade in it, Chas.”

Well, to be honest, I actually did say “Gatorade,” but I was thinking “warm-four-day-old-fermented-Pussboy-piss.”

He said, “You have Gatorade?”

“Only just a little.”

“I’ll try it. Thanks, Pusswing.”

Wow. It was just like Christmas. I got another new hate-name from Chas
and
I was about to watch him drink my pee. What could be better than that?

Dear
Pussboy
Ryan Dean:

Note to self: After I watch Chas drink my piss, it would be a good time to fully commit to NEVER kissing Megan Renshaw again.

Ever.

Kevin began pouring.

“Leave some room on the arrp,” I said.

“What?” Kevin asked.

I realized I had grunted.

Wild Boy had so taken control that I was losing the ability to express myself with the conventions of spoken language.

“Room. Leave some.”

I took the shot glass from Kevin and chimped up to my bunk. I dug around for my Ryan Dean West Emergency Gatorade Bottle Nighttime Urinal and carefully uncapped it.

In the name of all things holy that piss stunk! I could almost feel the fetid gas cloud escaping from the mouth of the bottle and wafting like a moist cadaver’s hand across my face. A quick splash, a speedy recapping, and I was back down on the floor, sweating in my loincloth, presenting Chas with his drink.

“Gunga Din to the rescue,” I said.

“Does anyone
ever
know what the fuck you’re talking about?” Chas said, and took the glass from me.

I watched.

My sheet came unraveled and fell to my feet.

I sat.

Chas drank.

Oh, yeah. Take that, Betch.

He squinted, cocked his head, smacked his lips, and said, “I think I like it better straight.”

I looked at Joey. His mouth hung open. He looked like he was witnessing a beheading, or something even grosser, like a beheading where the victim is forced to drink some other guy’s four-day-old fermented piss first. Because it dawned on me that I had told Joey about the Gatorade bottle when we were on the bus coming back to Pine Mountain from Salem.

“Fuck,” Joey said. And I know he would have high-fived me, but he was too deeply repulsed, and he was probably afraid I had some piss on my hand, besides.

“What?” Chas asked.

“Nothing.”

And then Christmas came twice in the same day, because Casey said, “Let me try some with Gatorade in it too.”

And that’s when Joey honestly looked at me like I was a depraved serial killer, or I was going to die or something, but I didn’t care because I was the grunting, piss-in-your-drink Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island.