Winger

masks-plus-a-bonus-chicken-potpie on the Ryan Dean West Frequent-Flyer-in-Flight emergency survey.

That’s, like, off-the-scale hot.

“Hey,” I said.

“Dance,” she said.

I’ve never been shy about dancing.

Boys who are shy about dancing look like uncoordinated morons, and girls definitely get turned off by that. So I danced. We got real close, and I held on to Megan’s hips, which, now that I think about it, was a huge mistake, because I suddenly forgot everything in the world except for how incredibly hot (and I don’t mean thermally hot) she was.

“Megan?”

“What, Ryan Dean?”

“Huh?”

She rubbed her hips square into mine. She began hiking up my little leopard-skin loincloth with the curve of her butt. God! Good thing we were out in the middle of the crowd, ’cause this was the kind of dancing you read about in the papers where schools get burned down by angry crowds of torch-carrying, moonshine-cooking, toothless, one-eyed hillbillies.

“I said, ‘What, Ryan Dean?’ ”

RYAN DEAN WEST 2: Think about baseball.

RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Crap. I don’t know a goddamned thing about baseball.

RYAN DEAN WEST 2: It’s just a figure of speech. Think about a place in the universe where there is no such thing as sex.

RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Okay, you’re going to have to give me a hint. Is it Bannock?

RYAN DEAN WEST 2: You’re a fucking idiot. Think about your middle name.

RYAN DEAN WEST 1: Okay. I hate my middle name.

RYAN DEAN WEST 2: So do I.

RYAN DEAN WEST 1: What’s my middle name, anyway?

I couldn’t even remember my middle name.

“Do you know what my middle name is, Megan?”

“No. What is it?”

Then I said it. “Mario.”

I’ll be honest. That actually is my middle name. And saying it helped snap me out of the fact that I was beginning to act like Pedro-the-humping-pug-dog right there in front of half the goddamned school.

And she said, “That is the hottest middle name ever!”

Which didn’t do anything to help slow the boy-to-dog transformation.

“I needed to tell you something,” I said. “Stop dancing for a second.”

Then she looked serious.

We stopped.

I pulled my loincloth, which was up over my belly, down. Nobody even noticed. That’s how high school dances are these days, in case you didn’t know.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry, Megan.”

“Okay, Ryan Dean.”

“I really like you, Megan. You’re honestly the first girl I ever kissed. I really like you. But I’m in love with Annie. You know that, don’t you?”

“I broke up with Chas.”

“I know,” I said. “And if it’s my fault, I’m sorry for that, too.”

“Don’t be.”

“You are a better person for it, Megan. You are beautiful and brilliant, and nobody who sees that in you ever stopped for a minute to consider how you had beaten all the other girls at Pine Mountain to win the dubious prize of Chas Becker.”

I sounded like William Jennings Bryan giving a speech about crosses and gold and shit.

Megan said, “You should be a lawyer, Ryan Dean.”

“Are we okay, then? Or do you hate me?” I asked.

“We’re okay,” she said. But she looked sad. Then she said, “I’m in love with you anyway, Ryan Dean.”

Ugh. I did not see that coming. I swear I almost fell down.

“Start dancing,” I said. My voice cracked, but she couldn’t hear over the music anyway, so I just felt like a loser, I didn’t actually sound like one.

“I’m going to take a little walk. I need to think about things before I screw them up worse than they are.”

Megan started dancing.

“Ryan Dean?”

“What?”

“Annie sure is lucky,” she said. “You’re the best person I know.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It felt terrible and amazingly wonderful all at the same time.

It sure sounded nicer than “adorable.”

She kept her eyes on me. I felt embarrassed and stupid as I backed away through all the dressed-up dancers.

Someone tugged at me from behind. Kevin had switched his hook into his good hand and caught my shoulder strap with it. He was dancing with about six girls, and he pulled me into the middle of the circle.

“Isn’t this awesome?” he said.

“Have you seen Annie?”

He shrugged.

I was dripping with sweat.

“I need to find her,” I said.

Chapter Eighty-Eight

IT TOOK ME A WHILE to break out from Kevin’s girl-circle.

It was kind of like playing Red Rover, only against six hot girls who I didn’t mind bumping into over and over until I finally made my way through.

As soon as I cleared a path, I ran face-first directly into a big blue C.

“Watch it, Pussboy.”

For just a second, I was almost touched that Chas Becker was speaking to me again.

I gulped.

I had to do it. I was on a mission.

I put my hand on his shoulder and pulled his Tyrannosaurus Rex head down to my skinny-bitch-ass-size- snack-morsel face.

“Chas, can I talk to you for a second?”

Before you finally kill me.

God! He looked so ridiculous in that outfit.

“What about?”

“I . . . uh . . .”

Yeah, Pussboy forgot what he was doing.

Okay, snap out of it.