“They do?” I couldn’t believe anyone would ever get bored here.
“I remembered seeing something here one time,” Annie said. “And I wanted to see if I could find it again, if it hasn’t been painted over.”
She moved past one of the thick steel girders that supported the roof.
“Come here,” she said. “Look. I thought about you when I saw this last time I was here.”
Annie pointed down to the base of one of the walls, and there, beneath a big red word that spelled out SOMEDAY, in interlocking letters, was a painting of two overlapping black circles.
“You remember that?” I said.
“It was about your wish, that last time we were at Stonehenge,” Annie said. “And I thought about it a lot. I felt bad because I’d been so mean to you that week, and I realized that I was pretty unfair to you too. I mean about the ‘little boy’ stuff.”
“Oh?” I knew we were standing too close again. I was practically sweating on her, and I didn’t want her to just be playing. But she was. I backed away, but just a bit, and I looked at the circles. “So, did you get over it? The outside-the-overlap part of me, I mean?”
She looked at me. Her eyes had that relaxed, smiling look in them. She didn’t say anything. We just looked.
Then she stepped closer to me and touched my hand.
I said, “Okay. I don’t care. I lose.”
And then I kissed Annie Altman.
For, like, twenty straight minutes.
And there was no interruption from the visually abrasive Mrs. Singer; there was nothing in the entire universe except for me and Annie finally getting something over with that had been making us both crazy for so long.
I didn’t care that she’d won our little game, because for those incredible minutes, pinning her body between mine and the coolness of the painted concrete wall in that old mill, my hands holding the back of her neck, feeling the softness of her hair falling across the sweat of my arms, I finally didn’t feel like such a loser.
I was shaking.
I said, “I told you I’d do it when I wanted to. And I decided I wanted to.”
We got back to her house at lunchtime, and her father said, “Wow, you two must have gone pretty far.”
Annie smiled at me, and I know she was thinking about the perverted comment I’d normally be tempted to make at such a statement, but this was not a normal time for Ryan Dean West, and she said, “Oh, it was the perfect run, Dad.”
And I said, “Yeah. Completely perfect.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
THAT AFTERNOON, ANNIE KEPT HER promise to fix my school pants, but her mom helped. So I stood there in the “sewing room” in my socks and underwear doing the on-off routine with my pants while hot Annie pinned and her hot mother worked the sewing machine.
You know, it’s easy to play all cool and stuff about how hot certain females are, but it’s another thing entirely to then find yourself actually standing in front of them in your underwear. I’m not really sure if I was handling the opportunity in the most advantageous manner.
I wondered if there were many guys out there who actually could.
I was so red and embarrassed, and Doc Mom tried to make small talk about how nice it was to have a boy in the house, but it was like my tongue had been bee-stung, and I couldn’t say anything because I just wanted to keep hearing both of them tell me to take my pants off again.
I am such a loser.
All I could think about was how I’d actually kissed Annie that day, and I wondered if we would ever have the guts to say anything about it, or if we’d even have the guts to make it happen again.
Then I had to stand there, waiting in my boxers while Doc Mom ironed the old hems out and made me try on every pair of slacks one last time before she was satisfied they were perfect. All I knew was that I wished I’d grow another two inches by the next morning so we’d be required to do it over again, and maybe next go-round, I’d be all suave and debonair and stuff, and make witty comments instead of just gurgling like a goldfish on a linoleum floor.
“There,” Doc Mom said. “I think you look very handsome.”
“Thanks, Doc Mom,” I said, and unbuttoned my pants and began pulling them down.
“Uh, Ryan Dean, you can leave them on now. We’re finished,” she said.
I am
“He got strip-searched at the airport, Mom,” Annie said. “I think he’s traumatized by it.”
“Really?” Doc Mom said.
Oh, yeah. She’s a psychologist. So now she needed to hear the whole story about what happened, and how poor Ryan Dean had been mentally abused. I gave Annie an ultraterrified, oh-my-God-please-don’t-tell-your-mom- about-the-Band-Aid-on-my-balls look, but it was too late for that. Annie launched into the entire story, going all the way back to Wednesday when Sean Russell Flaherty stepped on my nuts at rugby practice and I went to the doctor for it.
And Doc Mom, being the compassionate therapist that she is, laughed until she had tears in her eyes (just like Annie does) and said that was one of the funniest stories she’d ever heard.
When Annie was finished with the getting-on-the-airplane-as-Ryan-Dean’s-pants-fell-down-again part, I excused myself to return to my room so I could kill myself.
I probably would have, too, except just as I stepped out into the hallway, three things happened at once:
1. Pedro hump-ambushed me, and I almost fell down.
2. I realized that
3. Doc Mom said to Annie, “I just love Ryan Dean.” And I swear to God, but then again, this is coming from the same boy who’s heard all kinds of twisted things coming from Mrs. Singer’s mouth, but I swear to
Of course, I can’t be absolutely certain, because of the noise of anguished and love-starved grunts coming from that goddamned gay pug.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
WE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT WHAT happened in the abandoned sawmill, and we didn’t kiss again, either, for that whole endlessly long Saturday. And the next morning when I woke up, it was drizzling rain, and I was so depressed about having to leave Bainbridge Island and fly back to Oregon later that day that I seriously felt like I could cry.
So I stayed in bed until I heard Annie’s door open across the hall. Then she knocked.
“Come in.”
