Andrew Smith - Winger

“Oh. I thought I picked up on something else going on there.”

“Ryan Dean and JP are best friends, Coach.”

Now, that was going a little too far, I thought. I looked at Joey and then at Coach. I pulled my pants on and began knotting my necktie.

Coach M turned to Joey. “Who can play left wing on Thursday?”

“I can,” I interrupted before Joey could answer.

“I can’t let you play like that, Ryan Dean. What would I tell your parents if you hurt yourself again?”

“You’d tell them what they already know. It’s part of the game. Please, Coach. I don’t have a concussion. I’ll prewrap it and tape it up. Guys do it all the time. It’s no big deal. I really want to play, sir.”

I wasn’t going to do the fake-tears thing. I could bring real ones up at the thought of being benched for our first game.

“I want Ryan Dean in my line, sir. He’s our best wing. You know that,” Joey said.

Note to self: In your prayers tonight, be sure to thank God for making (a) that unbelievably hot nurse, (b) compression shorts, and (c) Joey Cosentino.

“I’ll have to think about it,” Coach said. Then he went to the door, cracked it open, and called out, “JP?”

JP came in, walking slowly, looking down. I could tell he felt bad, but I didn’t care about his feelings, anyway. Why would I? He didn’t care enough about mine. He held his hand out, and we shook. Coach wouldn’t have made him do that if he didn’t already know we’d been fighting.

“I’m sorry, Ryan Dean.”

“You already said that on the field, JP,” I said. I slipped my feet into my school shoes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Coach.”

I grabbed my cleats and the rest of my bloody practice clothes, threw my pack over my shoulder, and quietly walked out without turning back once.

I WAS ALMOST BACK TO O-Hall when I heard someone running up toward me from behind. I didn’t care who it was. Because once again, now that I was alone in the quiet beside the lake, all the anger and frustration over Annie and JP, and my possibly sitting out of the game, came swirling back through my aching head.

It felt like JP was trying to ruin my life in every way possible.

“What’s your fucking problem, Ryan Dean?”

I should have known it was JP behind me.

I thought about just going on into Opportunity Hall. He wouldn’t follow me there, not after getting in trouble for it the first week of school. But I stopped and turned to face him.

He was out of breath, panting fog in the cold as he caught up to where I stood.

“You know what this is about, JP,” I said. And then I really did cuss. “Fuck off.”

I turned around, thinking how stupid those words actually sounded coming from my mouth. It almost made me want to laugh, hearing myself say something like that, which is kind of hard for me to understand, because I don’t have a problem writing words like that.

I started walking toward the door again.

“You want to have it out right now?” JP said. “No one’s around. You want to fight again?”

I just kept walking and ignored him.

“Fuck you, Ryan Dean.”

I opened the door.

I went inside.

AT DINNER, I SAT ALONE at a table full of kids I didn’t even know. They were freshmen. They were all my age. And I didn’t understand them at all. It was like they were from a different planet entirely.

This is how much of a loser I am: I am such a loser that I don’t even fit in with other kids who are exactly my age.

Annie, JP, Seanie, Joey, along with everyone else, were sitting where we all usually sit, the way teenagers do, but I didn’t go over there. I was tired, sore, and pissed off, and I wanted to be left alone, exiled to this other world I didn’t know. As far as I could tell, my friends didn’t even know I was there, anyway.

I just kept my head down and ate my dinner. The freshmen around me probably thought I was a new kid or something. I could hear, a couple times, one of them say, “Who’s that kid?”

“Hey.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head and saw Megan standing behind me.

“I heard you got hurt,” she said.

“I did.”

It felt so good just to look at her, to feel the way her hand rested on my shoulder.

I glanced around to see if Chas was anywhere in sight. And, of course, I saw Joey, across the room, watching us. I looked away. I didn’t want to hear it, what I knew he was thinking.

“Let me see.”

Megan sat down beside me. I felt all the eyes of the freshman boys on us, like they were wondering if she was my older sister, or maybe a teacher, or a cop coming to arrest me, because there was no way a girl who looked like Megan Renshaw should be sitting there next to someone like me.

“I think stitches are sexy,” she said when I turned my face to her.

I almost choked on a crouton.

She had that look in her eyes like she was going to pin me down on the table and make out with me right there in front of the whole school. She touched the stitches over my eye.

“Are you okay?”

“You shouldn’t be doing this, Megan,” I whispered.

“What? Making sure my friend’s okay?”

“Come on, Megan. No girl here at Pine Mountain cares about me. I’m not a prize like Chas Becker. You can stop being nice now.”

“Is that what you think, Ryan Dean?”

She dropped her hand down onto my knee and rubbed my leg.

Stop looking at me, Joey!

“Hey, Meg. Where you been?”

Chas appeared out of nowhere, standing right next to me like the tree I was about to be lynched from. And Megan just left her hand on my leg, and I know Chas saw it, but she innocently said, “Did you see Ryan Dean’s eye?”

Chas lowered his face so that it was mere inches from my nose. He looked real serious. He looked like he could kill me and not even think twice about it.

“How many stitches, Winger?” he asked.

“Eighteen.”

“Looks like you won’t be playing.” He said it like he wasn’t just talking about the game.

“I can still play.” My voice cracked. Loser. What was I doing? I felt like I was facing off in a gunfight.

Chas didn’t move. He stayed there, staring at me.

“Everyone says you’re in a fight with Sartre.”

“I am.”

“You really do got big balls, kid. You better watch it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Chas straightened. “C’mon, Meg. Let’s go sit at the big kids’ table.”

Megan patted my leg and stood. “Don’t forget, Ryan Dean. Tomorrow. Calculus in the library. You and Joey. Okay?”

I tried to say “okay,” but nothing would come out. I squeaked like a doggie chew toy in Megan Renshaw’s unyielding pit bull teeth.

And Chas practically pulled Megan away, leading her off to where the seniors were sitting. But I saw him turn his face over his shoulder and look at me once, and I’ll be honest, it scared me. I considered scrawling a makeshift will on the back of a napkin, but as I took mental inventory of my life’s possessions, I realized no one would want them anyway.

I was as good as dead now.

Images of my funeral again: both Annie and Megan looking so hot in black; Joey shaking his head woefully and thinking how he told me so; JP and Chas high-fiving each other in the back pew; Seanie installing a live-feed webcam in my undersize casket; and Mom and Dad disappointed, as always, that I left this world a loser alcoholic virgin with eighteen stitches over my left eye.

“What the fuck are you doing all alone over here in loserland, Ryan Dean? How hard did you hit your head?”

Seanie pulled the chair out across from me and sat down. Annie stood behind him. No one else.