Winger

This time, she just walked right in.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Are you okay?”

I pulled the covers over my face and hid. “I don’t want to go back to school, Annie. Make it be yesterday again.”

“Do you want to run?”

“I love running in the rain. Meet me in the kitchen in, like, thirty seconds.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s just run in the woods today.”

We sat down to breakfast with the doc parents. We had oatmeal and black coffee. I love coffee. I hate oatmeal, but I’ll be honest, I’d eat anything at the Altmans’ table. I wore my black running shorts and Pine Mountain RFC sweatshirt with a blue cap that I started to take off when I sat down, but Doc Mom told me to keep it on, that I didn’t have to be like that in their house.

“Next time you come up, Ryan Dean,” Doc Dad said, “do you think you could bring me one of those sweatshirts? I don’t have any rugby stuff anymore.”

“No problem,” I said.

“And I fully intend on coming down and seeing you play a match this season too,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the game. Too long.”

“That would be really cool,” I said.

Doc Mom looked sad. I could tell it was hard for her to always say good-bye to her daughter, but Annie told me they saw each other more often now that she was at Pine Mountain than they ever did when they all lived together full-time.

I guess things work out like that sometimes.

“I’m sure going to miss having you here, Ryan Dean,” Doc Mom said. “I want to see you back before Thanksgiving, if your folks will let you.”

“If it’s okay with Annie,” I said. “This was the best weekend I ever had in my life, I think.”

Annie tipped her coffee cup empty and said, “Let’s go, West, if you’re done.”

We went out into the gray, wet morning.

Running through the woods north of her house, it amazed me how green things grew on top of green things that were still green and growing. Trees were covered with ferns and vines and mosses, and everywhere it looked as if nothing had been dry in centuries. And in the dark woods as we ran, I could smell that living-ocean scent of the island, and I heard nothing but the sounds of our feet on the wet ground, our breathing, and the static-spark sizzle of rain dripping through the forest cover.

She was running fast, trying to push me, or trying to get somewhere that I didn’t know about.

“Hey!” I said. “Stop for a minute, Annie.”

Where a tree branch arched across the trail, black, and covered with hair of brilliant moss, Annie stopped and turned around to wait for me. I was panting. Dark rings of sweat made circles under my arms and a V that pointed at my belly, down from my neck. My cap was soaked dark with the drizzling rain.

“Don’t kiss me, Ryan Dean.”

Now, that was like getting kicked in the balls again.

“Okay.”

I bent forward and put my hands on my knees. I spit between my feet.

“Did I do something wrong, Annie?”

“No. I just think we shouldn’t do that again.”

Ugh.

“Okay with me,” I said.

I tried to sound like Annie would if she’d said it, all nonchalant and singsongy, but my voice cracked and I felt like a fucking idiot. “I just wanted to say thanks again for having me here. And how much I like your mom and dad.”

“You’re welcome, Ryan Dean,” she said. “Do you want to turn around?”

“No. I want you to make it be yesterday again.”

“Stop it, Ryan Dean.”

“Okay, Annie. I know what’s up. Okay.”

“I can’t be in love with you, Ryan Dean.”

I turned around and started running back to her house. Maybe, I thought, if I ran fast enough, like those fucking stupid old science fiction movies, I could go back in time.

I ran faster than I ever had in my pathetic life.

But it didn’t work.

I am such a loser.

What a bunch of crap.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

I JUST RAN.

The woods were dark; the clouds were getting thicker.

I took off my cap and tossed it into the blackberry vines that grew everywhere in these woods. Then I pulled my sweatshirt off, soaked and inside out, and dropped it in the mud of the trail.

I kept running.

I kicked my foot out of one shoe and threw it as far as I could into the woods to the right. And I whispered, “Fuck you, shoe” when I chucked it. I listened to it hit, falling like a dead bird somewhere out in the dark green. Then I kicked off the other shoe and threw it in the opposite direction. I threw it so hard, it hurt my arm.

My socks were black with mud.

I guess I was kind of insane.

No, I’ll be honest. What Annie was doing to me made me completely insane, and I couldn’t stand myself anymore. I pulled my socks off and left them in the trail.

Part of me wanted to strip completely naked and just run out into the woods and be some kind of free and wild boy who never had to do anything for anyone except run around naked in the forest and kill things when he got hungry. But just feeling the nylon of my running shorts against my shriveling skin, I guess, somehow reminded me that I had a plane to catch later that day, and Calculus homework, and I was supposed to be reading In Our Time; and I’d been neglecting all that stuff because I was too busy thinking I was some kind of free and wild boy ever since Friday afternoon. So now it was time again to be Ryan Dean West, the fucking loser kid who’s fourteen and in eleventh grade.

I sat on the wet concrete outside their front door, shivering.

I think my skin was as gray as the sky and I was hugging my knees to try and get warm when she came up to the house, holding my soaked and muddy sweatshirt and socks at her side.

“What are you doing, Ryan Dean?”

“N-nothing.” I was stuttering, I was so cold. “I told you I like running in the rain. I wanted to get wet.”

“I’m sorry, Ryan Dean.”

“It’s no big deal, Annie. Really.”

“Stay there,” she said, dropping my clothes on the step beside me. “I’m going to get you a towel.”

Chapter Sixty

WE DIDN’T SAY THINGS LIKE we usually do on the drive to the airport. Doc Mom asked if I had a good time and if I wanted to come back. I gave the polite one-word answers that would have been written down in a script