Winger

throwing up. The other guys were already making their way into the locker room and the warmth of the showers.

I slipped my hand down inside my compression shorts, just to make sure everything was still attached properly. Something stung, and when I pulled my hand out and looked at my fingers, there was blood on them.

Crap.

Chapter Forty

Seanie Flaherty,

Asshole, you stepped on my nuts.

Please. Someone kill me.

“Here,” I said, dropping the folded paper beside Seanie where he sat eating dinner. “I wrote a haiku about how much I hate your stinking guts, Seanie.”

“Dude, how gay are you?” Seanie said in his usual deadpan, focusing on his food and opening the note. “You wrote me a haiku about your balls.”

JP was just sitting down across the table. I didn’t care. I wasn’t talking to him, and he wasn’t going to keep me away from my friends.

And then Joey asked, “What did the doctor say, Ryan Dean?”

Yeah. Here’s another thing I realized: You’d think that receiving an injury to your balls is probably the worst thing that can possibly happen to any guy, but it’s not.

Going to the doctor for an injury to your balls is much, much worse.

So here I was, sitting down to eat among friends and enemies alike, with the alluringly hot and faintly moustached Isabel, wide-eyed in rapt attentiveness, no doubt taking it all down so she could get right back to the recuperating Annie Altman and deliver an update on the status of Ryan Dean West’s testicles.

“Was that hot nurse there?” Seanie practically drooled.

“No,” I said. “Just Doctor No-gloves.”

“Eww,” Seanie said. “Did he touch your little Westicles?”

I took a bite of chicken, pretending that was all I was going to say about the matter. I looked over at JP, and he looked away.

“Are you going to tell us, or what?” Seanie said impatiently.

I paused to gather my thoughts.

“Do you believe in witches?” I asked.

“I give up,” Seanie said, and took a drink of milk.

I looked at Isabel. It was kind of embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as telling everyone in the infirmary why I showed up, scared pale and covered in mud with my hand thrust down my shorts, holding onto my balls. Even my friends were too embarrassed to go there with me, afraid they might have to face their own fears and watch in that cold examination room while I sat naked on a rustling paper sheet and the doctor looked me over. Head wounds were one thing, but, like I said, no boy ever wants to come face to face with a catastrophic penis injury.

“It’s just a cut,” I said. “On my balls. He put a Band-Aid on it.”

“Was it a SpongeBob Band-Aid?” Seanie asked, almost spitting out his milk when he said it.

Even Joey laughed.

I am such a loser.

“Dude,” Seanie announced, “how awesome is that? You are the only guy I’ve ever known in my entire fucking life who had to have a doctor put a Band-Aid on his ballsack. That’s the kind of thing you just can’t make up. Ryan Dean West, you are going to be a fucking legend!”

“Seanie,” I said, “I can’t even begin to put into words how much I hate you right now.”

“Aww . . . I love you too, Ryan Dean,” he said.

Chapter Forty-One

I NEVER COULD SLEEP THE night before a game, especially a first game.

After dinner, Joey kept his appointment for our Calculus study group with Megan at the library, and I came back to O-Hall alone and tried to relax in bed. But it was absolutely impossible to get comfortable, considering the locations of my injuries. And I know I’m a pig for thinking it, but I really wanted to make out with Megan again.

So I just lay there, staring up at the ceiling with my knees bent, listening to Chas’s breathing, wondering if Annie had read my note, and what she was thinking about at that moment, if she was awake like me.

And I knew that if you could keep score for such a thing, and, of course, I did keep that score, my Degree of Loserdom would be nothing short of godlike.

To make matters even worse, by midnight I had to pee. But there was no way in hell I was going to go down that hallway on the night before a game and run the risk of a face-to-face with Mrs. Singer again. So I held it as long as I could, but that just made my Band-Aided wound hurt more. When I couldn’t stand it any more, I fumbled around the side of the mattress where I stored that Gatorade bottle Joey brought me when I was sick. I unscrewed the top—Mmm! It still smelled like lemon—and, kneeling on the top bunk, I filled it to within half an inch of overflowing.

The Ryan Dean West Emergency Gatorade Bottle Nighttime Urinal was an invention of depraved genius. After a quick check on the snugness of my Band-Aid, and, pausing momentarily to wonder how many days it might take to fall off, since—sweet mother of God—there was no way I was going to yank it and all the hairs affixed to it off, I screwed the lid back on as tightly as possible, tucked the bottle down by my feet, where I noticed it produced a very pleasant warmth, pulled the covers back over me, and finally went to sleep.

Chapter Forty-Two

AT SIX IN THE MORNING, we were all on the bus heading down from Pine Mountain to play our first rugby match of the year. It had stopped raining during the night, so it was going to be a perfect and soggy day for rugby. Twenty-five players rode on the bus, most of us stretched out in our own seats, along with the coach and a couple other adults, and I swear I had to go from seat to seat and personally tell the story of the Band-Aid on my balls to every one of the boys who hadn’t been there at dinner the night before.

It was a four-hour bus ride to Sacred Heart. Our kickoff was scheduled for one o’clock; and, as always after the game, in a rugby tradition called a social, we would sit down with the opposing team and have dinner before our ride back to Pine Mountain. We always had to wear our school uniforms and ties whenever we showed up for a rugby match; that was just the way things were done. So every one of us knew it was going to be a long and tiring day.

But we didn’t know just how tough, and unexpected, things would actually turn out to be.

We sang almost the entire way there. I don’t know how Coach M put up with it. It was like he was deaf or something, because he never showed the slightest expression even when the songs got completely vulgar. It was like singing was the only time he’d tolerate our cussing, and he’d just keep his attention pinned on his notebook,