But I knew I couldn’t go back to the boys’ dorm.
“Please don’t transfer me out of O-Hall, Mr. Farrow,” I said. “I’d get in too much trouble. If I went back to my old room, I’d be kicked out of school the first day, and I’m not going to say why, but you just have to believe me. Please?”
And, yeah, I was doing the think-about-peeing face on him.
“Well, then,” he said.
The door opened. Casey and Chas came up the stairs toward us. Chas was saying something to Casey about how “she’s been crying all goddamn day long,” but I avoided looking at them.
I knew what he was talking about, anyway.
Still, I had to wonder what Chas would say if he knew he was pouring his lovesick heart out to a gay guy with the serious hots for the fly half on our rugby team.
I passed them on my way down. And when I glanced back over my shoulder, Mr. Farrow was gone and the stairwell was empty.
At the bottom, I saw Mrs. Singer watching me through the window on the door to the girls’ floor. Then she turned away and the window was empty. It actually made me shudder. I stopped just before going outside and pressed myself up against the girls’ door.
“My name is Ryan Dean West,” I said.
My voice cracked. Loser. “I’m the boy you caught down here in the bathroom that first night before school started. I just wanted to say I’m sorry and ask you to please stop doing all these horrible things to me.”
The door cracked open, and I could see just a bit of her so-unhot-she-looked-like-Screaming-Ned-after-a- close-shave face. Mrs. Singer said, “I’m going to cook you and eat you on Halloween, Ryan Dean West.”
Then I ran.
Okay. To be perfectly honest, she probably said, “Nice to meet you, Ryan Dean West,” but I did my duty by apologizing, and I wasn’t about to stick around and have my soul sucked, receive a cascade of ice shards pouring through the fly of my boxers, come down with diarrhea, suffer a spontaneous bloody nose, or have her lay another ungodly curse on my as-yet-untested reproductive appliances, either.
Chapter Eighty
ANNIE WAS ALREADY AT STONEHENGE when I got there.
She walked along the wishing-circle path, and I stood back at the edge of the trees and watched her.
“The nurse said for me to tell you that I did
She looked at me and laughed.
“Let me see it,” she said.
Hmmm . . . another Ryan Dean West would have undoubtedly made a perverted comeback to that, but, somehow, I just felt different standing there.
She walked over to me, and I could see her eyeing me up and down, but I watched her face. I leaned close.
Game on, Annie.
She put her thumb on the small scar.
“Well?” I asked.
“Okay,” she said. “You look good dressed like that, and the way you fixed your hair, Ryan Dean. You look taller.”
That’s when I realized that Annie had completely stopped calling me West. I thought it meant something. And I liked it.
“You’re the second person to say that, Annie. I think I’m going to have to come over and have you and your mom fix my pants again.”
“Do you want to come back?”
“Oh my God, Annie, I’d leave right now if I could. I’d start walking.”
Annie said, “Maybe you can come for the four days over Thanksgiving.”
“That would be awesome,” I said, even though I knew it would make my mom and dad unhappy that I wasn’t going home. I held her hand, and we walked under the trees. It was beginning to rain again, but none of it fell through.
“What were you wishing for?” I said.
“Not going to tell you.”
“Okay.” I inhaled. On the walk out here, I’d thought about what I needed to tell her. It was important, and I knew I had to stop acting like such a . . . uh, Wild Boy.
“I need to tell you something, though, Annie. Me and JP got in another fight today. That’s why his eye was black. I punched him. I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it again. I don’t want you to get mad about it, so I told you before you heard it from Seanie or someone else. I don’t know why I’ve been acting so stupid.”
Annie sighed. “Ryan Dean.”
“I know. I’m sorry. And I decided I can’t be upset about you going to the dance with him either. I’m just going to have to forget about it. I’m really sorry, Annie. Will you forgive me for being such a jerk?”
She stood right in front of me, so close we were practically touching. We just looked at each other’s eyes, and I knew we were going to kiss, but she pulled back and said, “I can’t be in love with you, Ryan Dean.”
Yeah. I heard that before. And this time I wasn’t going to be a baby about it and run away. So I said, “Yes you can be.”
For the longest time, it seemed like there was no sound at all except the rain dripping through the trees above us.
I said it again. “Yes, you can be, Annie.”
And she said, “I know.”
“I know, too, because I’ve never said this to anyone, but I am so in love with you, Annie, that I almost can’t stand it, and it’s making me insane.”
Then I don’t know if she laughed or was going to cry, but she kind of shook and she put both of her hands on my shoulders and said, “I
I felt so relieved. I closed my eyes and inhaled, and we kissed like we did that other day in the sawmill, and neither of us would let go. It was better than every wish I ever made coming true all at the same time.
“You smell nice,” she said.
“I shaved.”
She laughed. “Why?”
“Hey, now.”
We walked through the forest, heading back toward O-Hall along the trail by the lake. It was getting late, and I needed to change back into my dress clothes or they wouldn’t let me have dinner.
I didn’t care, though. Everything was perfect, and I just wanted to sleep.
But it was so exciting to think about sitting down to dinner with Annie for the first time as a real, honest- to-God couple. I wanted so badly to be alone with her.
Annie said, “Oh my God. I am in love with a fourteen-year-old boy.”
“Get over it, old hag. When you’re ninety, I’ll be eighty-eight.”
Chapter Eighty-One
EVERYTHING IN MY UNIVERSE CHANGED that day.
Annie left me at O-Hall. We promised to meet for dinner in half an hour. I watched her walk away, and after
