You know . . . I have lived my entire life and never once,
RYAN DEAN WEST: No! Please, God . . . . Tell me you did not do that . . . . Mom? FUCK!!!
Okay. I’ll be honest. I do not say “fuck” to my mom. During the ensuing and second awkward silence, I spend a moment seriously thinking about killing myself.
MOM: Well, you should ask your friend if she would like to visit Boston sometime.
RYAN DEAN WEST: Okay, Mom.
I realized how deeply I hated talking to my mom ever since I became a teenager. And if there’s a more potent deterrent to perversion than the Niagara Falls of razor-sharp ice shards poured down your pants, it has got to be talking to my mom about “condoms” and “how to have sex the first time.”
RYAN DEAN WEST (
MOM: I love you, Ryan Dean.
RYAN DEAN WEST: (
Click.
I suddenly felt so
Chapter Forty-Three
THE SOCIAL BEGAN WINDING DOWN a little after four o’clock, and we moved through the cafeteria shaking hands and migrating out toward the bus for our long ride back to Pine Mountain.
Seanie and I were among the first to leave. I don’t think either of us really paid much attention to the group of four boys who were waiting around for us by the bus. If we had, we surely would have noticed that they were not Sacred Heart kids, because they weren’t dressed in ties and slacks.
They were just scrub kids from Salem, out to watch a rugby game, I guessed.
As Seanie stepped ahead of me onto the bus, one of the boys said, “Congratulations. Good game.”
“Thanks,” I said. I put my foot up on the first step into the bus.
“I’m waiting to say hi to my cousin,” the boy said. “He’s on your team. Joey Cosentino. Is he coming out?”
I turned around and saw Joey and Kevin leaving the cafeteria.
“He’s right back there.” I hitchhiked a thumb over my shoulder.
Then the four boys walked back to where Joey was, and I watched them, but it didn’t look like Joey was expecting them at all. In fact, Joey looked startled when he saw them. And the next thing I knew, all hell broke loose and someone yelled to look out because the kid had a knife in his hand.
I’ve seen people do some pretty stupid things in my life, but trying to jump a rugby player in front of his whole team has to be about the stupidest. One of the boys ran off right away. I saw Chas going after him, but the punk had too much of a lead on Chas, so I thought I’d help him out, which was also pretty stupid considering my stitches and that other injury I’d been trying to forget, but couldn’t, because I felt the sting of pain every time I moved my right leg.
I caught the kid and took him down right on the wet black asphalt of the Sacred Heart driveway. I didn’t get hurt, because he was wearing a down jacket and I landed on top of him, but he scraped up his face pretty good when he hit the pavement. I just pinned him down and tried to not get his blood all over my dwindling supply of school shirts, and Chas caught up to us and kicked the kid twice in the ribs. I know he broke something when he did it, too, because Chas was never one to go soft on anyone if he decided to actually go that far.
“What the fuck are you thinking?” Chas said, but the kid didn’t answer, he just gasped and bled. A lot. And Chas continued, “You’re hardly bigger than Winger. I should just piss on you, you stupid dumb fucker.”
Well, that really didn’t do much for my self-esteem, but I said, “Let me get off him first if you do, Chas.”
When I stood up, I heard sirens. Someone had called the police.
I looked back to the crowd where Joey and Kevin had been standing, and I saw that Coach M and some other adults were holding on to the other three boys.
“Let’s take him back to the others,” I said.
And Chas grabbed the bleeding kid in a wristlock and forced him back toward the cafeteria. As we got closer, we both saw that several people were kneeling. Kevin was down on the ground, lying on his back. A nun had her hand on his forehead. Joey was saying something to him. He was holding Kevin’s hand. The front of Kevin’s shirt was covered in blood, and he was coughing and staring straight up into the sky.
Kevin Cantrell had been stabbed.
A knife lay on the ground beside his shoulder.
The sirens grew painfully loud, and the first cop car screeched up right alongside where Kevin was lying.
Chapter Forty-Four
COACH MCAULIFFE RODE WITH KEVIN to the hospital in an ambulance.
The boy who pulled the knife was taken, handcuffed, in another.
Kevin had been stabbed in the shoulder when he tried to take down the guy with the knife. He wasn’t badly cut, and Coach assured us he was going to be okay. Not so good for the guy who stabbed him, though, because Joey broke that boy’s arm and jaw when he slammed him into the pavement. I honestly think that kid might have died if there haven’t been so many grown-ups around.
By the time the cops had arrested the four boys and gotten us all to write out our statements, it was almost seven o’clock and a cold rain was falling. Coach called from the hospital and told the bus driver to take us back to Pine Mountain.
It was a quiet and dark ride home.
No singing.
I don’t think any of us could stop thinking about Kevin and why something like this happened to someone as easygoing as him. It hurt us all because Kevin could accept anyone and anything, which is why, we all knew, he didn’t mind rooming with Joey—something that would be social death to most guys.
But Kevin was just Kevin.
I hoped it didn’t ruin him.
JP was still upset about the penalty he’d given up. Every fullback I’d ever known was like that; they had the toughest job on the team, and when they made mistakes, it was usually costly, so they tended not to let go of things very easily. That was probably the biggest reason why I believed our fight was far from over—the fullback psychology. But I knew I’d have my opportunity over the weekend to ruin his chances with Annie once and for all.
