I am. You know.
Such a loser.
I made it to the common room just in time to sign off on our check-in sheet with Mr. Farrow. The TV had just gone dark, and most of the guys from O-Hall were sluggishly making their way to their rooms. After I signed in, I went down the hall to the bathroom.
I stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes, looking at the stitches closing the cut over my eye. As I stared, the cut seemed to get bigger, blacker, worse than it was. I was tired and wanted to go to bed. I ran the water and washed my hands and face.
The door opened, and Chas came in. I hadn’t entirely forgotten about how he’d looked at me as he was leading Megan away, but I also figured that my fear had a lot to do with my own guilt about what his girlfriend and I were doing behind his back.
But I was wrong, because before I could even get my dripping hands on a towel, Chas grabbed me by the neck and spun me around, pinning my back against a hand-soap dispenser, right in the same spot where JP had knee-dropped me.
Yeah . . . it was definitely a four out of five possible mousetraps-on-the-balls on the Ryan Dean West Pain- ometer.
“What’s up with you and Megan, Winger?”
When one of my shoes came off, I realized my feet were actually dangling above the floor, and four mousetraps became a definite five.
“I saw how you two were looking at each other tonight,” he said. “Everyone says you flirt with her all the time.”
“Chas, who
I was sure he was about to hit me. And, like I said, I deserved it. So . . . ouch.
There was nothing else I could do. I had to hit him. I balled my right hand into a fist and drove an uppercut just below his sternum. I’ll be honest. I have punched guys before, but punching Chas Becker hurt my hand. Chas loosened his grip, and I was standing again, but he held on to my necktie with his left hand as he raised a fist with his right.
Whoever invented neckties must have never gotten into fistfights.
Okay. This was really going to be ugly, because I could quickly calculate the trajectory of his intended punch, and I estimated the point of impact would be somewhere between my tenth and eleventh stitches. All I could do was hope my saddest possible stitched-up-lost-puppy-injury look might earn me some sympathy.
Chas froze midswing when the door opened. He released my tie and dropped his fist. He turned around to see that Joey had followed him into the bathroom.
“What the fuck are you doing, Chas?” Joey said. “Can’t you see Ryan Dean’s hurt?”
And Joey was a fighter. He looked really pissed off, and stormed over to Chas and shoved him down the entire length of the bathroom, practically into a shower stall.
Then Joey yelled, “Don’t ever touch him! I’ll fucking kill you, Betch!”
I slipped my foot back into my shoe.
“It’s nothing, Joey,” Chas said calmly. “It’s no big deal. I wouldn’t hurt him. I just don’t like the way he looks at my girlfriend. No big deal. I just wanted him to know.”
And then Chas walked out of the bathroom, but as he pulled the door open, he grumbled, “You guys are fucking queers.”
Joey just stood there, leaning against the pale green tiles of the wall, his arms folded, staring at me. I could tell he was mad.
“You should have just let him punch me, Joe.”
Joey didn’t say anything.
I left and went to bed.
Chapter Thirty-Six
WEDNESDAY MORNING BROUGHT ONE of those cold Pacific rains that makes you feel like the gray of the sky has worked its way inside your skin.
When the alarm sounded, Chas and I both sat up. Usually, when we woke up, we would say things to each other—stupid things, the kind that Chas could understand. I never really minded sharing a room with him, either, to be absolutely honest. But that morning, our silence was ominous. Like a funeral. I kind of felt like telling him I was sorry for punching him, but then I thought it would just remind him that he was in the middle of returning the favor when we got interrupted by Joey, so I thought I’d better just leave the whole thing alone.
I lowered myself from the bunk bed to the cold floor, grabbed my towel, and headed down the hallway. The doctor told me I’d be able to take a shower that morning, as much as I’d have liked that nurse to help me out again.
I was really sore. My head, my back, my shoulders—I felt like a 142-pound sack of broken shards of glass. Actually, I was 152 now. I’d put on some weight since school started, and my skinny-bitch-ass pants were getting too short in the leg for me, too, which made me look like even more of a dork. Annie told me she’d let them down for me when we went to her house, which, of course, made me think of the perfect oh-I-didn’t-know-I’d-need-to- actually-take-my-pants-all-the-way-off-for-you-to-do-that plan.
When I got out of the shower, I saw Chas standing at the same spot where I’d punched him the night before, bent over the sink, shaving. He stopped and watched me as I padded, barefoot and wrapped in my towel, behind him.
I didn’t say anything to him.
He didn’t say anything to me, either.
Annie wasn’t in the mess hall for breakfast. I saw Isabel, though. She told me that Annie was sick and staying in bed. At first, I thought Mrs. Singer had put a diarrhea spell on Annie, but I shrugged off the idea. I was mostly disappointed because there was no way I’d be able to see Annie now until Friday. Boys were not allowed inside the girls’ dorm, and the team would be leaving early the next morning to drive down to Salem for our game.
I felt like I desperately needed to find out something from her. And I knew I could tell the truth by just looking at her, that I wouldn’t have to actually ask her if we’d really been about to kiss, because I don’t think I’d ever have the guts to say it.
But Isabel did give me a folded note from Annie, so I thanked her and told her I’d give her one later to take back.
I couldn’t go sit in my usual place; JP was there with Seanie. I knew I couldn’t keep avoiding JP forever, but I wasn’t ready to be around him yet, either, because I still wanted to fight him, and I believed I would if we were forced to be too close together. I knew that now, after punching Chas the night before, and I still really felt like JP and I needed to have it out some more.
So I took Annie’s note and tucked it inside my heavy coat and headed up to the locker room, half an hour early for Conditioning.
I straddled the bench by my locker and looked at the paper.
It wasn’t folded fancy, like some girls do. It was just in half, and then in half again.
On the outside, she’d written Ryan Dean West.
I opened it.
