Winger

Okay, I’m breathing again.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

IT WAS ACTUALLY NICE TO be in O-Hall when it was so quiet. All the guys were at either rugby or football practice.

I laughed to myself, thinking about Casey Palmer being gay. But, then, I didn’t think it was funny that Joey was gay. I guess it was because Casey was such a poser with his sexuality. But probably a lot of guys were. Who knew?

There was another FedEx package sitting on my bunk when I got to my room. My mom came through. I was a little worried about opening the box, though, because at this point, I didn’t know what to expect from her.

Nice.

She’d sent the size ten-and-a-half Nikes that I asked for, and in the box with them, she’d added a can of shaving cream, a razor, and some Chanel aftershave cologne. I guess she had a mother’s intuition about that one whisker on my chin. I found an index card in there too. On one side, my mother wrote:

Ryan Dean,

I hope I recognize you next time I see you.

I love you and miss you.

—Mom

And on the other side, in my dad’s writing:

Son,

You’re growing up, my man. I know you’ve seen me do this enough times that you won’t cut the shit out of your face (Mom would be pissed at me for not sending you a book called “How to Shave for the First Time.”) Ha ha.

Love,

Dad

Yeah, my dad talked like that.

So I showered, and I actually shaved, too, and put on some of that cologne. I gelled my hair. Oh, I also switched out of the Pokemon briefs, and I did realize there was a lot to be said for having that “growing room” down there, like Doctor No-gloves told me, but I still intended to wear them on Halloween under my Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island loincloth, growing room or not, just to keep things, uh . . . put away.

I put on those brand new Nikes and my nicest black and blue sideline warm-up suit from my rugby team gear, then headed downstairs before any of the other guys even made it back from practice.

But, in the stairwell, I ran right into something even worse than Doctor No-gloves’s nutsack exam and puberty pep talk, if there could be such a degree of miserableness.

Just as I opened the door from the boys’ floor, I stumbled onto Mr. Farrow and that freakishly unhot witch from downstairs, Mrs. Singer.

Together.

Standing at the landing on the tenantless girls’ floor. They were kissing, and it wasn’t one of those innocent oh-hello-you-frosty-and-cadaverous-old-hag-from-downstairs-so-nice-to-see-you-this-afternoon pecks on the cheek, either. It was all tonguing and moaning and noisy, and Mrs. Singer was wearing only a bathrobe, and it burns my eyes even now to admit that I noticed it, but she didn’t have anything on underneath it; and it sears the very depth of my soul to confess it, but I knew they must have just had sex.

Or something.

I think I screamed.

Like Ned.

Okay, I’ll be honest. I didn’t scream, but, for whatever reason, they both instantly radared in on me standing above them.

“Oh. Uh . . . Ryan Dean!” Mr. Farrow said, pushing himself away from the creature and nonchalantly combing a trembling hand through his wild, just-had-sex hair. I noticed the fresh shine of saliva in the corner of his mouth, and his glasses were crooked.

Apparently, they weren’t in on the doctor’s-appointment-early-return-day for Ryan Dean West, and I’m going to get a little sidetracked here, but I was always totally convinced that Mr. Farrow was completely gay.

Go figure.

I guess he was attracted to corpses and decay and not just to boys.

Then Mrs. Singer looked up at me, but I was too crafty for her. I kept my eyes fixed straight down on the floor until she left and I heard the door close behind her. So it was just me and Mr. Farrow.

Like, superawkward.

I kind of wanted to laugh. I wondered if he had a mom who’d sent him a “How to Have Sex the First Time with a Cadaverous Hag from Hell” leaflet.

Farrow began coming up the stairs toward me.

There was no way out.

“Did you skip practice today, Ryan Dean?” he asked. And he moved and talked all calm and slow, like a murderer. A murderer who had just had sex with a cadaverous hag from hell.

I pointed to my eye.

“I was at the doctor’s. Got my stitches out today.”

“Oh.” He leaned close. He didn’t need to—he could see perfectly fine from where he was. He smelled like sweat. “It looks good.”

“Thanks. Well. Uh. Bye.”

I started to slip past him.

“Ryan Dean.”

I froze.

“Please don’t say anything about this.”

What a creepy child-molester thing to say.

Then Mr. Farrow said, “I can transfer you back into the boys’ dorm at the ten-week grade report. In two weeks.”

I didn’t say anything. The door off the mudroom opened, and Joey and Kevin came in.

“Hey,” Joey said. He stopped and looked at me, then he high-fived me. Not a record breaker, but a solid one nevertheless. “Nice job on the stitches. And, damn, Ryan Dean. You look about two inches taller than yesterday.” And he laughed. “My ears are still ringing from Screaming Ned.”

“That was almost the worst thing I ever had to put up with,” I said.

But, I thought, not even close to what I just saw about a minute ago.

“Hey,” Kevin said. He had a rugby ball tucked inside his sling. “Nice hair, Winger. Let me guess . . . Annie?” And Kevin leaned close to my face and sniffed, then said, “Oooooh.”

I said, “Yeah,” and they kept going upstairs.

I lowered my voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Farrow. Say something about what?”

Then Mr. Farrow nodded like we were striking some kind of deal, but we weren’t. Because I thought about it right then. Yeah, I didn’t like Chas Becker. I hated him, in fact. And some of the other guys in O-Hall were real dipshits, and the communal bathroom was always nasty and crowded, and bunk beds are for prisons.