to him.”
I looked at Joey. “What did you say to him?”
“Nothing,” Joey said. “Don’t worry about it. Go find your girlfriend.”
Later, I found out from Kevin that Joey told Casey Palmer straight out that there were plenty of gay kids at Pine Mountain and that Casey needed to stop hitting on him, and that Joey would be happy to introduce him to some of the other gay boys around school.
He said it loud enough that people heard it. Chas Becker, in his permanent state of cluelessness, didn’t realize that Joey Cosentino was not joking.
A girl from the soccer team, wearing a grass skirt, glided up to Kevin and started cooing over his stab wound. Yeah—it was the whole stitches thing with some of these girls. Next thing I saw, Kevin had his hook looped into the top of her skirt and she was leading him out to dance.
The dance floor was crowded with kids dressed in every imaginable disguise. A few of them wore school clothes, which, I guess, was a kind of costume in itself, because there wasn’t much sense in bothering to pack a Halloween costume for incarceration at Pine Mountain. Still, I was glad for mine, especially when I’d get the incidental brush-up from a girl. It was by far the best costume there.
The air in the room was thick and humid.
I waded out through the pulsing, vibrating crowd.
I saw Seanie sitting down on a giant L-shaped sofa next to Isabel. They were drinking sodas. I knew I’d never find him dancing, he was so uptight about stuff like that. And, of course, Seanie was dressed like a flasher, wearing a long yellow raincoat with what looked like nothing on underneath it. Isabel seemed more than a little uncomfortable next to him and kept an obvious gap between them open on the couch. I figured Seanie had already played the want-to-see-what-I-have-on-underneath-my-raincoat game with her.
Isabel was dressed like an octopus or something. I didn’t really get it, but she had a lot of arms. Oh, and a moustache, which I still found kind of hot.
“Hey, Seanie.”
Seanie practically jumped when he saw me.
“Hi, Ryan Dean,” Isabel said. “Awesome costume.”
“Thanks.” I gave her a little flex and showed some thigh.
“How’d you get in?” Seanie asked.
“They let us out of O-Hall. Hey, can I sit down for a second?”
Seanie, always uncoordinated with things like that, scooted over to give me space between him and his date.
Whatever.
I sat.
One of Isabel’s stuffed arms brushed up along my bare leg.
I looked at her, then at Seanie.
“I came to apologize to you again, Seanie. And I’m going to apologize to JP, too. I know we’re probably never going to be friends again, not like we were, but I’m sorry for starting a fight and then getting you caught in the middle of it.”
I held out my hand, and Seanie shook it. I could tell by the way he squeezed that everything was okay with him. Guys can just tell things about other guys with the pressure of a handshake. Too tight, and you’re a competitive asshole. Not tight enough, or cold and moist, you probably spend a lot of time looking at porn sites.
It’s a science.
“We’ll always be friends, Ryan Dean.”
“Thanks.”
Then Seanie said, “Why do I suddenly feel like we should go back to your place and make out or something?”
Isabel coughed.
She didn’t get Seanie at all. I don’t even know why she came out with him in the first place.
Seanie said, “JP isn’t here. He didn’t come. He stayed at home, pouting.”
“That sucks,” I said. “ ’Cause of me. Is Annie here?”
Seanie looked around. “She’s here somewhere. She’s kind of pouty too.”
“What’s she dressed like?”
“A doctor.”
Oh. Score.
“Hi, Ryan Dean!” Mrs. Kurtz appeared before us, obviously surprised to see an O-Hall boy at the dance.
Then she leaned over to Seanie and whispered something to him, which I thought was pretty weird, and he laughed.
Mrs. Kurtz straightened up and gave me a wink, then disappeared into the crowd of dancers.
“What was that all about?” I said.
Seanie said, “She told me to tell you, Pokemon, if you’re going to sit on the couch, maybe you should cross your legs or something.” Then Seanie leaned forward, looked up my loincloth, and said, “Yep. You want to know how come I know you’re gay?”
“Because guys who check out other guys’ balls just kind of
Yeah, it was back to normal with Seanie, but I still didn’t cross my legs.
Whatever.
What guy crosses his legs?
I saw Megan in the crowd, dancing by herself, or, at least it looked like she was dancing by herself. She could have been dancing with a hundred people, for all I knew.
And, damn, she looked good. She was dressed like a stewardess, complete with that little angel-food-cake- shaped hat, pinned at a tilt in her fluttering hair. She had been watching me.
I stood up.
“We’ll have to make out later, Seanie,” I said. “I’m going to cruise around and try to find Annie.”
Of course, that wasn’t completely a lie. Well . . . the making-out part was.
Seanie said, “It’s a date.”
So I moved out into the dancers, watching Megan, who was looking right at me.
I reasoned that Halloween was going to turn out to be some kind of a Ryan Dean West twelve-step-and- apologize-to-everyone-whose-feelings-I’ve-hurt night.
Seanie made one down.
Now I had the rest of the fucking planet to go.
Then Mrs. Kurtz hip-bumped me, the way people did when they danced at discos in the seventies.
Two things: (1) Are you kidding me? And (2) That was incredibly hot.
So I leaned closer to her ear, since the music was blaring, and I said, “I apologize for how I was sitting over there, Mrs. Kurtz. It was rude. I’ve never worn a skirt before.”
And she high-fived me and said, “Ryan Dean, you are adorable.”
Eh . . . the jury’s still out on that word.
I really don’t think I like it much.
Mrs. Kurtz danced off, and I snaked through the flailing bodies.
But, there. I had apologized to
Megan wasn’t going to be as easy as those first two, though, because, deep down, I still knew she could get anything she wanted from me.
Anything.
And that was pretty scary.
I got right next to her. It was so hot there in the middle of all those people. And I mean hot, not necessarily “hot,” even though Megan, the naughty stewardess, scored an unarguable five out of five depressurization-air-
