Winger

there and listen to her demonic incantations. I was on a mission. I ran upstairs, wondering whether or not I should jump out the window so I wouldn’t have to see her again on my way down.

Damn! I was starting to sweat.

I threw my door open and tossed the book pack up onto my bunk.

I looked out the window, and I could see Chas, Joey, and Kevin returning from practice. At least I knew I wouldn’t have to jump, because Chas and Kevin’s souls were way more suckable than mine; they had to be much more liquefied, since they were forward-pack guys. But what sucked most of all was that just as I was about to leave so I could go meet Annie, Mr. Farrow appeared, blocking the doorway out of my room.

“Ryan Dean,” he said, “it looks as though you’re feeling much better today. Let’s have a chat, shall we?”

On second thought, I would rather have had my soul lamprey-sucked from my skull.

Mr. Farrow stood in the open doorway, just watching me like he was waiting for some kind of confession. My head spun, because there sure was a lot of crap I could potentially be confessing to, pulled from the Ryan Dean West record of the past forty-eight hours. So all I could do was try my best to look and sound innocent, and of course my voice cracked like a Cub Scout’s when I said, “Mr. Farrow, I’m supposed to meet someone before dinner. It’s about a homework assignment, and I’m afraid I’m going to be late.”

I heard the sound of the guys coming up the stairs.

“I’m concerned you may have gotten off to the wrong kind of start this semester, Ryan Dean.”

Oh, God. It sounded like he knew everything.

Now there’d be the inevitable call home; and next thing you knew, Ryan Dean West would be an ex-PM junior on a plane to Boston with a goddamned unaccompanied-minor-smiley-airplane-name-tag-that-says-hi-my- name-is-fucking-loser stuck to his skinny-bitch-ass-fourteen-year-old collar in the morning. I could only hope the stewardess in charge of feeding and toweling me off would be, well . . . five out of five steaming bowls of chowder on the Ryan Dean West In-Flight-Entertainment-Things-You-Don’t-Mind-Burning-Your-Tongue-On Heat Index.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Farrow. I can do better.”

“I expect you can, Ryan Dean, especially if we’ve set a goal of getting you placed back in the boys’ dorm by the semester break.”

It sounded like there was hope after all.

Now, careful, Ryan Dean. Don’t say too much.

“But as far as the food in the room and your two visitors last night are concerned,” Farrow said, “I think I’m going to have to put you on in-room detention.”

Which was even worse than being kicked out. It meant no Annie. No Megan Renshaw.

What a cruel deal it is to have been born with testicles, and to have to carry them around along with me on my miserable path through life. They may just as well have been the size of Volkswagens for the burden they had become.

I tried my hardest to make some tears pool in my eyes. Thinking about peeing usually does it for me; at least, it works on my parents.

“Please, Mr. Farrow,” I said. “I was really sick, but I forced myself to go through the entire . . .”

Think about peeing. Think about peeing.

“. . . first day of classes because I want to try so hard . . .”

Think about peeing. Think about peeing.

“. . . this year to show I can be better. But then I fell asleep . . .”

Think about peeing. Think about peeing.

“. . . and my friends were concerned, so they woke me up and brought some . . .”

Think about peeing. Think about peeing.

“. . . food.”

To kind-of quote Ovid: “Tears at times have the weight of speech.”

Just as the guys spilled noisily out from the stairwell, one perfect tear streaked down from the corner of my eye. And I quickly wiped it away, pretending I’d be embarrassed if the other guys had seen I was crying.

And I could see by Farrow’s pained expression that the time-tested and sparingly applied Ryan Dean West pee-tear scam worked beautifully.

Ryan Dean West, performance fucking artist.

“Please,” I added, so sweetly, like a bullfighter inserting the final estoque. I imagined the ultrahot and impassioned Annie and Megan throwing a shower of blooms at my feet, and I’d pick one up, smell it, and clench it between my teeth; and the impaled Mr. Farrow looked at the boys coming down the hall, then leaned close as though he were protecting my vulnerability, and whispered, “I’ll let it go this time, Ryan Dean. You just take care. Now run along.”

Yes!

And when I sailed through the hallway, past Joey, I raised my hand and slapped him with the hardest and loudest high five ever executed in the history of gay-straight high fivery, and said, “Thanks for the hair gel, Kevin. Thanks for the smells-good, Joey.”

And I flew down the stairs, not even slightly concerned that I’d run into that soul-sucking-and-so-unhot Mrs. Singer.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

ANNIE LAUGHED WHEN SHE SAW me. Her eyes squinted, full of water like they get when she laughs. She held the note I gave her in Lit class and waved it at me like a surrender flag.

“You are such a pervert, West. Babysit? Bathe?”

“ ‘Here, Beatrice,’ ” I said, quoting our Hawthorne story, “ ‘see how many needful offices require to be done to our chief treasure.’ ” And I swept my hand downward along my body and pointed.

To me.

She giggled. “Per-vert!”

“You would not believe the bullet I just dodged, Annie.”

We sat on a mossy and black tree trunk that had fallen down in some storm years before I’d ever entered Pine Mountain. I told Annie all about my run-in with Mr. Farrow, and how hard I worked, thinking about peeing, to make myself get a tear from one eye, and she laughed and leaned close to me, so close that we were almost touching. And, unfortunately, at that moment I realized that all my pee-mantra meditations with Mr. Farrow and the recounting of the story actually did make me want to pee, but I wasn’t about to move, either.

“I’ve never seen you with gel in your hair, West,” she said. And she leaned her face really close to my neck (I tipped just a little closer toward her, hoping her lips would touch me), and she inhaled and said, “And you smell like cologne.”

“I always wear this stuff,” I said, trying to sound as confident and masculine as possible, considering the magnitude of my certain and fourteen-year-old wimposity.

“Well, you look absolutely adorable,” she said.

I just stared at her soft knees, where they peeked out from beneath the perfect hem of her skirt.

I hate that word. “Adorable.” Especially the way Annie said it. Because it sounded like something any girl might say about a pink hoodie sweatshirt in a Hollister catalog, not something she’d say about a boy. Unless he was wearing diapers or drop-seat pajamas with feet on them and had a pacifier in his mouth, which kind of gave me a semiperverted idea for a Halloween costume I’d like to wear just for Annie. Okay . . . I’ll be honest. It wasn’t semi-, it was totally perverted.

I sighed.

“Thanks, Annie,” I said. “You look totally hot yourself. Want to make out now?”