Winger (31 page)

She was crying.

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

I am such a loser.

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

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.

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.

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.