Winger

that.

So, when the alarm went off at seven, I dreamed I was back in that car, stuck in the river, sitting behind Screaming Ned as he sharpened his meat cleavers.

Chas wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get up and hit the snooze button either, and when I did finally stumble down from the top bunk, I couldn’t figure out how to turn the goddamned thing off, so I just yanked the plug from the wall.

But it was one of those clocks with a battery backup, since we lose power so much in that old dorm, and it kept Screaming-Nedding at me.

So I put it under my pillow.

Think about Annie.

Think about Annie.

I wanted to stay in bed so bad. I knew I was horribly sick from all the crap I’d been through in the past twenty-four hours, but I had to force myself to think about Annie Altman, because I knew I had to get in JP’s way as much as I possibly could for the next three days, before Halloween.

So I had to make myself go to school.

I left a groaning Chas Becker and the door open behind me and stumbled down the hallway toward the showers, dragging my towel along the floor at my feet, with my eyes crusted over and half-closed.

I saw Mr. Farrow standing at his doorway. He cocked his head toward me, kind of like a cat who’d been sprayed in the face with a squirt gun. Then I saw a couple guys coming out of the bathroom, and one of them pointed and started laughing at me.

I looked down.

Oh, yeah.

Pokemon.

Briefs.

Crap.

I am such a loser.

What could I do? I looked at the guys straight on. I kept walking toward the showers.

I said, “Oh yeah. Admit it. You know you want some of these bad boys.”

Chapter Seventy-Four

BUT I MISSED ANNIE AT breakfast, and I barely made it to Conditioning class on time, having to run and attempt to tie a necktie with shaking hands the whole way from O-Hall to the athletics complex.

I was a mess.

That day, getting through my world was like trying to swim in a pool of warm mayonnaise while carrying two bowling balls.

I just had to keep telling myself I could do it, but I had a hard time convincing the tired and sick Ryan Dean West.

I knew ahead of time that I wasn’t going to say anything to Seanie about what I’d done the night before. As great as the story was, I’d have to keep all those things bottled up—how I’d gotten drunk again and made Chas and Casey drink my piss, the drive into Bannock and how Chas started crying and ran away when he found out I’d been making out with his girlfriend, learning about how Casey was gay and had been hitting on Joey, getting our Halloween costumes, and, of course, the lunatic Screaming Ned—and hope I didn’t explode from not being able to tell. Because most of it just wasn’t the kind of stuff I’d want everyone in the whole world finding out about on some new perverted website designed by our demented scrum half.

I had to run in regular tennis shoes in Conditioning class because of what I’d done with my running flats on Bainbridge Island the day before. God! I could not believe that only twenty-four hours had passed since I tore my clothes off in the rain during that run with Annie. Hopefully, my mom would get those new shoes to me by the afternoon, even if she was probably still crying about my growing up, getting taller, having sex, and whatever else she imagined that wasn’t really happening to me.

We were sent out on the three-mile lake run, and this time I decided I was going to stay right there with Seanie and JP. No matter what, I wasn’t going to let JP try to get between me and Seanie, too. Even if they were roommates and we did hate each other, I was going to stay friends with Seanie Flaherty.

We ran three across, with Seanie in the middle of us, slowly, in the back of the pack. It stopped raining, and our legs were splattered with mud to our thighs. I thought if I talked to Seanie the whole way, even about stupid stuff, it would shut JP up and make him mad at the same time.

“Hey, Nutsack, did you guys play cards last night?” Seanie asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, did you win? Did you lose? Did you get drunk? What happened?”

“I’m not saying, Seanie.”

“Dude, one of these days all you guys are going to get thrown out of school for that shit.”

“Oh. Tough break. Throwing me out of O-Hall,” I said. “Casey Palmer played with us.”

Have you ever noticed how, when you’re going into a conversation and you tell yourself ahead of time, do not say anything about X, your mouth will almost automatically start spilling its guts about X before you can do anything to stop it? So I kind of felt my stupid-hungover-cherry-menthol mouth beginning to say, “And Casey Palmer is gay and won’t stop chasing after Joey,” but just in the nick of time steered clear of it and said, “And Casey Palmer . . . won.”

“Why’d you play with that asshole?”

I shrugged.

Shut up, Ryan Dean.

“Hey, by the way,” Seanie said, “did I tell you? I’m taking Isabel to the dance.”

“Nice,” I said. Why the hell did he have to bring that up? “Isabel’s hot.”

(If you happen to have a thing for girls with faint moustaches.)

“You think every girl is hot. Didn’t you get any of that pent-up sexual frustration out of your system at Annie’s house over the weekend?”

(If anything, the weekend made it worse.)

I sighed, picturing Annie and me pressed up against that painted wall in the sawmill. Then I took a dig at JP.

“I sure did.”

Seanie high-fived me.

But that was all I was going to say, because if I said anything about fooling around with her in the hot tub, or making out at the sawmill and in the airport, or how she woke me up both mornings—God! Just thinking about it was making me crazy—I knew they’d both go straight to Annie and tell her what I’d said.

I coughed.

Seanie said, “I saw Annie this morning. She said you got sick from running in the woods naked in the rain. Did you really do that?”

(Well, I wasn’t completely naked, but I’d take another shot over JP’s bow.)

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“Damn.”

“I’m not going to be at practice today,” I said. “I’m going to get my stitches out this afternoon.”

I could feel JP peering around Seanie to look at me.

Seanie said, “Go in there extra muddy and maybe that hottie nurse will give you another sponge bath.”

“My luck, Doctor No-gloves will want to check out my nuts again.”

“Just tell him all he has to do is look at Casey Palmer’s website.” Seanie laughed.

“Yeah. Very funny, Seanie. I heard about that. Trouble is, he’s seen mine in real life, so he’d know that those baby ones in your picture are so small, they could only belong to Sean Russell Flaherty.” I shoved him, and he came