Winger

you just so you can kick me in the nuts again?

I glanced back and saw that JP and Seanie were watching me.

Crap!

Something happens when guys watch guys doing things like this. They knew what was going on, and they got to watch the Ryan Dean West suicide mission from the front row. It’s like jumping out of a plane. There’s no time-outs or do-overs, there’s just gravity. That, and lots of witnesses to see your chute collapse as your body plummets helplessly toward certain death.

All I could do now was hope I didn’t cry like a little girl in front of the hundreds of kids having breakfast.

It was a surreal comic of my life, and I pictured the worst possible outcome:

“Annie. Would it be okay if I sat down with you for a minute?” I said in the sweetest, most injured tone of voice I could manage. (It’s not like my voice hadn’t changed last year, though. I was no candidate for a position in one of those churchy boys’ choirs.)

Then she looked at me square in the eyes, and at that moment I knew everything was going to be okay. There’s just ways friends can see things in each others’ faces, kind of like the ha-ha-I-made-Joey-look-at-your- balls/haiku conversation I’d had with Seanie the night before, except, of course, the way Annie looked at me was really nice.

“Hi, West. Sure,” she said.

Score.

Except I really wished she’d call me Ryan Dean.

And I lucked out again, because Isabel was sitting right across from her, which meant I had to sit beside Annie, which gave me the opportunity to ever-so-gently brush my thigh against hers, which caused a very dizzying and embarrassing migration of otherwise fully employed red blood cells to a highly depressed and underemployed (as my Econ professor might speculate) region of Ryan Dean West Land.

“Hi, Isabel.” My voice cracked when I said it. I felt like an idiot. I don’t think there was any blood left in the northern provinces. “Did you have a good summer?”

“Yeah,” Isabel said.

Okay, now go away, moustache-girl (not that your moustache isn’t kind of hot). Ugh. I think I’m passing out.

I cleared my throat. I looked at Isabel. God! I wanted her to leave, because I knew exactly what they’d do after this whole uncomfortable scene ended: They would replay and reinterpret everything that happened, and they would make stuff up, too—things they thought I’d said that never came out of my mouth.

“Annie,” I began.

After that, I didn’t have any idea what to say. I just sat there staring at her. I was so lost, I even thought about the Preamble to the Constitution.

I, the people, am such a loser.

And then, thank God, Annie saved me.

“Are you feeling better this morning?” she asked.

Okay. That’s when I knew, knew, I was totally, totally, in love with her. And that realization made me instantly sad, too, because I’m a smart kid; I knew I had absolutely no chance at all.

I looked at my hands where they rested on the table next to a mustard stain. And I thought I actually did feel pretty good, relieved that Mrs. Singer hadn’t coincidentally caused me to come down with a fit of projectile vomiting or something.

“Yeah. I feel a lot better. How about you?”

“Good. I started reading that Hawthorne story.”

“So did I. It’s weird.”

“Yeah.”

I squeezed my fists as tight as I could. They turned white.

Time to jump.

“Annie, I am really sorry about how stupid I was. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but now I’m smarter, but I’m also worse off because I made you mad and I would never do anything, ever, to purposely make you mad, ’cause you’re my best friend in this whole pathetic place, so I’m really sorry and I guess I’ll go now, but I just had to tell you.”

Zen archery of run-on-sentence apologies.

And I almost looked up to see if my chute would catch air or just flutter around up there like a giant dirty sock.

I pressed my hands on the table and started to stand.

Then she put her hand on top of mine and said, “It’s okay, West. I don’t want you to go. And I’m not mad anymore either. You were just temporarily stupid. What boy doesn’t hit that mark at least ten times a day?”

I sighed and relaxed in my seat. My leg touched hers again.

Please don’t move your hand, Annie.

When she started to pull her hand away, I covered it with mine and squeezed. And she squeezed back.

Ryan Dean West was actually holding hands with a girl who wasn’t his mom.

People began moving around us, hefting their books and packs. The day’s first class would be starting in five minutes, but I didn’t want to move. Besides, I probably would have collapsed if I tried to stand up.

Then Isabel got up from her seat and said, “Bye, Ryan Dean. See you later, Annie.”

And, still holding on to Annie’s hand, I said, “Can we just talk later? Alone?”

“Sure.”

“Will you meet me at Stonehenge after practice?”

“You want to go for a run?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

FOR CONDITIONING CLASS, WE DID tear-offs in weight lifting on Tuesdays. Tear-offs can make a guy scream if you do them right. Seanie and JP were spotting the bar and pulling off weights until I was just down to the bar and nothing else, until I couldn’t even lift the bar anymore and they had to help me just to get it back on the braces.

“Damn. Winger’s been lifting weights,” JP said.

I just lay there on the bench and rubbed my shoulders. I felt so good.

“Winger’s pumped,” Seanie said. “What’d Annie say?”

“If I told you, you’d probably make a MySite about it.”

“I already did make an Annie and Ryan Dean MySite,” Seanie said.

“Yeah, right.”

I wasn’t buying his shit anymore.

“Yeah. I did,” Seanie said. “And nothing ever happens on it.”

“Annie’s pretty hot, dude. You really not going to tell us?” JP asked. I grabbed his hand, and he lifted me up so we could trade places.

“She’s not mad at me,” I said. I matched the weights on my side to Seanie’s. Of course, at his size, JP was almost twice as strong as me. And then I added, “And we held hands, too.”

“No way!” Seanie said. “You are such a fucking loser, Ryan Dean. You’re in eleventh grade, not kinderfuckinggarten.”