The SUV’s reverse lights came on.
Slowly, shakily, Joey got Chas’s car unstuck. He backed it up to the side of the road, where I was waiting for him. I got in the backseat, dripping and shivering.
It was three in the morning.
Chapter Seventy-Two
NED STOPPED SCREAMING WHEN WE got back to the store.
Joey didn’t say a word the whole way there. And I just sat in the backseat with my arms hugged across my bare chest, smiling all the time because of how stupid we were for trying to do a good deed for a lunatic like Ned.
The worst part of the whole experience—no, wait . . . it wasn’t the worst part, because being stuck in the car with Screaming Ned was worse, and something even worse than that, still, was going to happen to me before the night was over.
So, okay, a pretty screwed-up part of the whole experience happened when we took Ned back to the store. I guess I truly did look like the Wild Boy of the Eighth Circle of Hell, because I was soaked and covered in mud, barefoot and shirtless, with my boxers hanging out from a gaping hole in my torn sweatpants that were pulled up past my bony kneecaps; and the store manager laughed at us when we offered to pay for a cab for the old fucker. He asked us if “Screaming Ned” had played his old funny trick again where he’d take foolish do-gooders out to the middle of the forest and scare the living shit out of them.
And we said . . . uh . . . um . . . no?
Oh, yeah. He said Screaming Ned was a regular fucking celebrity in Bannock.
And the manager laughed at us and walked Ned (Two steps. Lift. Set. Two steps. Lift. Set.) next door, to the donut shop owned by Screaming Ned’s fucking alcoholic son, who had been sleeping behind the counter while Ned did his performance art on me and Joey.
Yeah, I don’t think Joey would have even batted an eye if I told him I was going to throw a shopping cart through the window of that goddamned donut shop.
When we left, I got into the backseat again.
Joey said, “The water’s all gone from up front, Ryan Dean. You can sit up here.”
“I need to get some dry clothes on, Joey. And there was no way I was about to get undressed in front of Screaming Ned. I’m going to break down and do it, Joey. I’m freezing, and I’m going to put on some of those Pokemon briefs.”
Now,
Anyway, it was a three-pack, and I was pretty sure Chas wouldn’t count to see if one was missing.
“Joey,” I said as he started the car (finally!) along on its way out of the parking lot. “Please turn up the heater. And, by the way, I’ve never been completely naked in a car alone with a gay guy before.”
There was this raw-meat sucking sound as I tore my sweats and boxers down over my feet.
Joey laughed. “Neither have I. But, Ryan Dean, don’t try on the pantyhose.”
“Uh. Joey? Wasn’t going to. Ass.”
Joey laughed.
I pulled on my dry socks.
It was really weird. Those Pokemon briefs were surprisingly comfortable, and I hadn’t worn briefs since I was in, like, third grade. I put on Joey’s convict pants, pulled on my hoodie, and climbed up into the front seat beside Joey, just as we came to the gas station where we’d lost Chas earlier.
“I feel a lot better,” I said. “I swear I won’t wreck your prison pants.”
“I swear to God I won’t pick up any more psychos.”
“Does that mean we
We found Chas Becker walking back along the road toward Pine Mountain. He was wearing one of those big plastic yard-leaf bags. He must have gotten it from a sympathetic gas station clerk; and he kind of looked like a big, reflective, black ghost when we passed him.
Joey slammed on the brakes and backed the car up right on the highway until Chas lifted his down-turned head and saw it was us. I started to climb over to the backseat, but Joey grabbed my hood and pulled me back, saying, “No way. I do
The next thing I knew, Chas was tearing off his garbage-bag rain slicker and getting into the backseat.
“You guys are assholes,” Chas said. “I was almost going to call the cops and say you stole my fucking car. Pricks.”
“We tried to find you, Chas,” Joey said. “You took off; it wasn’t our fault.”
I was staying out of it entirely, but after a few seconds, Chas said, “Well, fuck you anyway, Winger. I still don’t think we’re settled about this.”
I just looked at Joey, but I didn’t say anything.
But at that moment, I knew I was going to stay away from Megan Renshaw, even if I also knew how difficult she could make keeping that commitment. And, hell, I knew how weak I was too, and I don’t mind admitting it.
I sighed.
I just had to think about Annie.
It had been such an incredibly long day that started way back when she came into my room while I was still in bed and we went running in the rain together on Bainbridge Island.
Then, all of a sudden, Chas threw my soggy sweatpants and boxers onto the dashboard in front of me, which kind of made Joey swerve the car because it startled him. It sounded like a rump roast being dropped onto a basketball court.
Chas leaned over from the backseat and looked at me.
“Are you naked? What the hell were you two homos doing in my car back here?”
Then we had to tell him the whole story. Well, to be honest, Joey told it to him, because I was shutting up for the rest of the night. And it wasn’t really the whole story, either. Joey told him about the costumes, and then how we picked up Screaming Ned, but he wisely left out the part about getting Chas’s car stuck in a fucking flash flood. He just said I fell in a creek when I was helping Ned get to his house.
So Chas said, “What a total do-gooder dipshit.”
And I left it at that.
But I made him drink pee.
And I made out with his smoking-hot girlfriend too.
Somehow, miraculously, we made it back to O-Hall, and I was finally in bed (although I was sharing my accommodations with a now-lighter bottle of urine—which made me think, as far as a bottle of piss is concerned, are you more of an optimist if you think it’s half-empty?—and a still-unopened FedEx mailer of condoms and porn from my mom).
I was completely, irreversibly, asleep by five o’clock.
Chapter Seventy-Three
YOU KNOW, THERE IS SOMETHING tragically disappointing in two hours’ sleep after an epic night like
