Winger

but a tough, stand-up-for-yourself variety of parakeet—in a stare-down with a saltwater crocodile.

“After lights-out, a couple of the guys are going to sneak in here for a poker game. That’s why. We always play poker here on Sundays. Twenty-dollar buy-in. Do you know how to play poker?”

“Count me in.”

I don’t know if the choking or unconsciousness urge was stronger at that point, but I survived my first private, witness-free encounter with the one guy who I was convinced would end up trying his hardest to thoroughly ruin my life just before killing me sometime during my eleventh-grade year at Pine Mountain.

Capter Three

AFTER CHAS TRIMMED HIS MOHAWK down to a buzz cut, we put on our shirts and ties and went to the registrar to get our schedules and ID photos taken—not that we actually walked there together.

I saw my former roommates, Seanie and JP, waiting in line for pictures, and it made me feel good to see my old friends, but sad, too, because I missed rooming with them. We all three shared a room for our first two years at PM.

In the regular boys’ dorm, the rooms were big and comfortable and usually had three or four guys per room, not like O-Hall, where the rooms were like tiny cells with those dreaded metal bunk beds.

Seanie and JP played rugby too. We hung out and got along because they weren’t forwards either. Seanie played scrum half, even though he was really tall and skinny, but he had a wicked pass and flawless hands; and JP played fullback, which is the position usually given to the all-around fittest, most-confident guy on the team, and with the highest tolerance for pain. This year, they’d both be moving up to the varsity team since about half the starters from last year had graduated.

One of the things about rugby that’s an inescapable tradition is that everyone on the team has to sing, and everyone also gets a nickname. It’s not conscious or thought out, it just happens. Like salmon swimming upstream, or the universe expanding . . . or contracting . . . or whatever it does, I guess. And, when someone finally settles on calling you by a nickname, you’re stuck.

Forever.

So, no matter what happened to me in life, as far as the guys on the team were concerned, my name was always going to be Winger. JP’s nickname was Sartre. His real name was John-Paul, so, naturally when I started calling him Sartre, the name just stuck even though most of the guys on the team didn’t get it and they just assumed that since I was so smart it probably meant something ultraperverted in French (which I hinted it did). Seanie was lucky. He inherited the most nontoxic kind of nickname; his real name was just Sean.

Chas Becker’s nickname was Betch, a nonaccidental shortening of “Becker” combined with what a lot of guys didn’t have the guts to call Chas to his face.

But there’s no arguing nicknames once a rugby team tattoos yours in their heads. You just have to forget about it and smile.

“The Winger’s still alive,” Seanie said as we shook hands.

“God, Seanie. What’ve you been doing?”

“Nothing. I played two-and-a-half straight months of video games since school let out. This is the first time I’ve seen the sky since last June. It’s so bright, I think I’m going to have a seizure.”

Seanie was kind of a geek, and I completely believed what he said was true.

“They didn’t put anyone new in our room with us yet,” JP said. “So maybe that’s a good sign that you’re going to be coming back. How’s the O-Hall, anyway?”

I almost said, The toilets smell real nice!

But I didn’t.

“I’m sharing bunk beds with Betch.”

I saw a horrified look of grief wash over my friends’ faces.

“He’s going to turn you into an asshole,” JP said.

“Or kill you,” Seanie added. “You’ll never get out of that shithole.”

We moved a step forward in line, toward the beacon of flashes at the photographer’s booth. Each of us clutched a class schedule in our hands. After the pictures, we’d be free for the rest of the day to mourn the final moments of our unstructured summer.

“He actually did something kind of nice, kind of weird,” I said. “He asked me to play poker with some of the guys tonight after lights-out.”

“Winger, you know he’s going to end up getting you in so much trouble this year,” JP said.

And Seanie added, “Why do you think so many of the first fifteen are permanently assigned to O-Hall, anyway? And everyone knows about those games. You just better look out for the consequence.”

The consequence was what they’d assign to the first guy who lost his way out of the game. It was usually innocuous and embarrassing stuff, like the time they made Joey Cosentino run around the rugby pitch naked in the middle of the night, and then, when he snuck back into the room, they made him do it again because he accidentally ran counterclockwise, something the team never allowed; or the time they made Kevin Cantrell swim across Pine Mountain Lake in his boxers (also in the middle of the night). Of course, all the consequences had to be performed in the middle of the night since just playing the poker game after lights-out would get the guys into a lot of trouble. And getting caught by anyone from school during the commission of the consequences was sure to be even worse.

And anyway, I considered myself to be a pretty good poker player, so I wasn’t too concerned about the consequence. No sweat.

After our pictures were taken, and fresh, chemical-smelling laminated ID cards were spit out into our hands, we agreed to catch up to each other again at dinner. JP and Seanie left to finish unpacking, taking off in one direction and leaving me sad and envious of their start of our junior year in the nice dorm room I used to live in.

So I set off, alone, already feeling weak and small and sorry for myself when I swore I wasn’t going to be any of those things this year, on the narrow and kind-of-Ansel-Adamsish trail along the lake toward Opportunity Hall, the leaking, dilapidated, and lonely two-story log building that at one time was the only housing structure on this entire campus.

“Hey! West! Did you get everything taken care of?”

Annie came running up on the path behind me.

She called me West. I liked it, I guess. Nobody else called me that.

I stopped and turned around and quietly held my breath so I could get the full impact of watching Annie Altman coming toward me like it was some kind of movie where she actually wanted me to throw my arms around her or something.

I held up my schedule and ID card to answer her question.

“How’d it go? This morning, with Chas?”

“Not a mark on me,” I said. “I was scared about nothing. He was kind of nice to me, in an edgy and predatory sort of way.”

“He probably is counting on banking up frequent disappear-for-half-an-hour-so-he-can-have-sex-with-Megan favors from you,” she said.

Megan Renshaw was Chas’s girlfriend.

Smoking hot, too.

“Or my money. We’re supposed to play poker tonight.”

Annie Altman went on, in a scolding tone. I’ll admit that I had fantasies involving Annie. And scolding. “You haven’t even been to one day of classes and you’re already doing something idiotic that could get you into trouble.”

We began walking toward O-Hall.