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.
“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
“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?”
