Andrew Smith - Winger

Joey joked, “Don’t make me pull this car over, boys.”

Chas wasn’t loosening his grip.

He wasn’t smiling, either.

I swallowed. The pins came back to my throat. My voice cracked as I said, “What do you want to know, Chas?”

Joey tried changing the subject. “I’m going to stop and get some coffee at the gas station here. You guys want some?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I need to pee.”

“Me too,” Joey said.

Chas let go of my leg. Joey pulled the car in to a minimart gas station. It was really quiet when he turned off the engine.

Nobody moved.

Awkward.

“We’ve kind of been fooling around,” I said.

There. I said it. Finally.

I noticed that Joey had been just about to shoulder his door open, but he froze as soon as he heard my confession.

It echoed like an empty church in that car. I don’t think anyone so much as took a breath after I said it. And I know Joey was thinking about what he should do if Chas jumped into the backseat and began murdering me on the spot.

“We just kissed a few times. That’s all.”

Well, actually, it was exactly twenty-four times, but I felt justified in using the generic “few,” realizing that any number greater than “never” was as good as saying “twenty-four.”

I could see Joey’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

Then Chas did something that nobody would ever have expected. He turned away from me and sighed. He actually looked like it hurt him to hear what I’d said.

“That’s what she told me yesterday,” he said. “I didn’t believe her. I thought she was just screwing around with me. You know how Megan is. Why the fuck would you do something like that to a guy on your own team, Winger?”

“I don’t know.”

Okay, why do teenagers use that answer so often, especially when we really do know? Of course I knew why I did it, and so did Chas, and so would anyone else who ever looked one time at Megan Renshaw.

Then I said, “We’re not doing it anymore.”

I put my shoes on and opened my door.

“I’m going to pee,” I said.

I heard Joey get out of the car behind me. Chas stayed in the passenger seat. As I was rounding the corner to the men’s room, Joey caught up to me.

“Damn, Ryan Dean. I think Chas is crying,” he said.

“Why am I such a punk, Joe?”

“I tried telling you,” Joey said. “You want coffee?”

“Yeah. Black.”

Joey went inside the minimart, and I went around back and peed in the bushes. I can’t stand gas station men’s rooms. I met Joey around front again, and he handed me two cups in paper sleeves. He held an elastic keychain, wrapped around his wrist.

“You need a key for the toilets,” he said.

“I peed in the trees.”

Joey said, “Oh. I’ll be right back.”

He went around the corner, and when I got back to the car, Chas was gone.

WE SPENT THE NEXT FIFTEEN minutes looking for Chas around the gas station, even walking both directions away from it along the road, but we couldn’t find any trace of him.

It started raining again, so Joey and I went back to the car and sat.

“I don’t know where he’d go,” Joey said.

I had a good idea Chas was probably running around in the woods naked, looking for something to kill. Probably something that weighed exactly 152 pounds.

I sighed.

“You really did make him drink pee tonight, on top of everything else, didn’t you?”

“Casey, too,” I said.

“Damn. Well, he’s probably not heading back to PM. It’s way too far.” Joey looked at his wristwatch. “It’s a little after two. We can finish this costume hunt, and maybe we’ll find him on the way back. I’m sure we will. He’s gotta be around here somewhere, just sitting alone, cooling off. We might get back in time to sleep a couple hours, at least, that way.”

I didn’t really feel bad about anything I’d done, but I did feel sorry that Chas was hurting over Megan, because I knew that feeling firsthand. But I tried to remind myself how stupid it was for me to feel sorry for a guy like Chas. Still, the whole thing made me think about how crazy I was for Annie, and how JP was trying to do the same thing to me that I’d been doing to Chas all along.

“Okay.” I yawned.

Joey started the car and we drove into Bannock.

“You don’t need to say it, Joey. I know this is all my fault.”

“It’s not totally your fault, Ryan Dean,” he said. “But you did let it go a little too far.”

“Yeah.” My eyes scanned ahead. I saw the lights of an all-night grocery store. What grocery store wouldn’t have costumes for sale just four days before Halloween?

“Hey, Joey,” I said. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend or anything?”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“Well, no one ever sees you with anyone at school. I mean, not like that,” I said.

“I wouldn’t do that at school. It would be too much trouble for both of us.”

“Oh. So you do have a boyfriend?”

“Of course.”

“Well I’m glad for you, then. It sucks being alone. Believe me, I know. Let’s try this store,” I said, and pointed to the supermarket. I really didn’t want to find out too much about Joey’s boyfriend, because it made me feel really awkward. I just wanted to know if Joey was okay in his life, because, like I said, I really liked Joey. But I do mean that in a totally non-gay way.

Joey pulled in to the parking lot. It was nearly empty, dark, and rain slicked, with a few scattered shopping carts reflecting the headlights from Chas’s car.

“Are there even any other gay guys at Pine Mountain?” I asked.

Joey laughed. “Oh my God, Ryan Dean, why do you care? You’re not curious , are you? Did Chas completely scare you off girls or something? ’Cause I wouldn’t believe that could ever happen.”

I shrugged. “No. I was just wondering. ’Cause I can’t tell. I mean, I would have never even thought you were gay except you told me. But I do know exactly how many fourteen-year-old juniors there are at Pine Mountain. One. And he’s a skinny-ass-loser. But he’s not gay.”

“Well, there are a lot of gay kids at Pine Mountain.”

“Hopefully, JP Tureau?” I said.

That would be awesome. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.

Joey laughed out loud. “You know? You and Kevin are, like, the only straight guys who’ve ever talked to me about me , about this stuff, who weren’t trying to play some kind of fucked-up game, Ryan Dean.”

“Well, why not? You’re my friend. You’re probably the best guy friend I have. But I don’t think I could ever be gay.”

“Everyone knows you’re not gay,” Joey said, and I thought, Phew! That’s a relief , just in case Joey was wondering if I was gay and trying to make, well, gay small talk, and then I thought, damn, that was a screwed-up thing to think about my best friend.

“But you want to know something crazy? And you can’t say anything to anyone about this, Ryan Dean. You know who’s been seriously trying to hit on me ever since school ended last year? Ever since I came out to everyone?” And then Joey paused to see if I would make a guess (which, I would have said Sean Russell Flaherty just because he’s so, well, not like other guys), but Joey said, “Casey Palmer. Can you believe it? Casey Fucking Palmer is gay. That’s why he begged Chas to get in the game with us tonight. He won’t leave me alone. He fucking scares me, he’s so hopped up about getting with me.”

Wow. That was a monumental secret, a career-builder for a guy like Seanie Flaherty. If Seanie kept such records, he would easily call that piece of info five out of five J. Edgar Hoovers in off the shoulder sundresses on the Sean Russell Flaherty Ruin Your Life Rating Scale.