Andrew Smith - Winger

“Ouch. Good one,” Seanie said.

“Watch it, fucker.” JP almost tripped avoiding Seanie. I had no doubt he was pissed off at me now.

I was pretty sure the whole class had passed us by that time; I saw them all running back from the turnaround in the opposite direction. I stopped at the turn and folded my hands together on top of my head, then gave JP a dirty look.

I’ll admit it. I felt like fighting him.

“Something wrong?” I said to him.

“You almost knocked Seanie into me,” JP said. “Fuck you, Ryan Dean. I know what you’re trying to do.”

I kept my hands on my head, but I stepped right up to him. I know that was stupid. JP could kill me. He was a good four inches taller. And, yeah, I did cuss. But there is nothing else a guy can do at a time like that.

“No. Fuck you , JP.” I know. Not a very good comeback. Then I said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing asking Annie out? Aren’t there enough girls here who’d go out with you so you wouldn’t have to fuck over one of your former best friends?”

I’d been saving that up for about a week, and it sure felt good to get it out. Just like it was going to feel to get those stitches out, I thought. If I lived until the afternoon.

Seanie said, “Hey, come on. Stop it. Let’s just run, guys.”

Too late. I let go of my hands and dropped them in front of my chest and shoved JP back toward the water’s edge.

He came right back at me and threw a hellacious punch with his right fist, but his foot slipped away in the mud beneath him, so what would probably have knocked me out cold ended up glancing off my left rib cage. It hurt bad enough, though. In fact, I was pretty sure it cracked a rib. But I turned with JP’s punch and cocked a straight right fist and fired it square into his nose.

JP’s head snapped back, and purple blood sprayed from beneath my knuckles as he lost his balance and fell backward—right into the muddy shallows of the lake.

On the Ryan Dean West Stimulus-Satisfaction scale of things, it was without a doubt one of the best physical sensations of my entire, pathetic life. In fact, as I thought about it, punching that bastard was right up there in the top three:

And hearing and seeing him splash down in all that cold black mud was almost as pleasing as punching him. Unfortunately, I knew, he was going to get right back up.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” And the next thing I knew, Seanie, who was definitely not famous for his tackling ability, took me right down with a diving side tackle. He wrapped his hands around the collar of my sweatshirt, pinning my shoulders into the mud.

“What the fuck, Ryan Dean!”

I thought Seanie was going to hit me too. In the years I’d known him, I never saw Seanie so serious or mad about anything. From where I was pinned, I could look up and see JP stumbling out of the lake. He was soaked and filthy, and a mouth-wide streak of blood painted a line from his nose down across his shirt, to the top of his shorts. He came over to Seanie’s side and tried to kick me, but Seanie dove at JP’s foot and took the force of his kick in his own collarbone.

“Stop it, you fucking assholes!” Seanie yelled.

That kick had to hurt him, and I felt bad that he took it for me.

Seanie screamed at us, “You’re going to get thrown off the team. You’re going to get your asses thrown out of school!”

When JP realized he’d kicked Seanie, he backed away and turned around, pulling the bottom of his shirt up to stop the blood that streamed from his nose.

Seanie got off me, and I stood up, but he stayed between me and JP, who bent forward and kept his back to me.

“Okay, Seanie,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry, Seanie. I didn’t mean to get you in the middle of this crap. I’m a fucking idiot.”

Yeah, I was mad.

Then I turned around and ran back to the locker room.

IT WAS SO AWKWARD SPENDING the next two hours in classes with Megan.

She and Joey tried talking to me, but I didn’t say anything. Joey looked tired too. He understood. In Calculus, I drew Joey a cartoon of Screaming Ned, and he started to laugh so hard, I thought he was going to pee his pants.

Then, during Econ, I started coughing pretty bad and excused myself so I could leave to get a drink.

That’s when Megan followed me out.

And I didn’t even know it until I was bent over the drinking fountain and I felt her cool hand rubbing the back of my neck.

I’m not going to lie. It felt pretty goddamned nice.

Think about Annie.

Think about Annie.

“Are you okay, Ryan Dean?”

I stood up and turned around. I wiped my mouth with my shirtsleeve.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Me and JP got in a pretty bad fight this morning. I think I’m going to get in big trouble. I busted his face. And to top it off, I’m pretty sick.”

She just looked at me with those half-scolding-half-sympathetic-totally-hot Megan Renshaw eyes and brushed my hair back with her hand. I knew she was going to kiss me, too.

Think about Annie.

Think about Annie.

I turned my face away.

“I can’t do this anymore, Megan. We have to quit doing this.”

I walked back to class. I felt even worse.

And then I felt like dying when Megan came in.

She was crying.

I put my head down on my desk. Joey knew what was going on.

I am such a loser.

OKAY. BEING IN CLASS WITH megan was pretty awkward.

But it was nothing like how I felt when I saw JP walk in to American Literature.

I’d practically run there so I could see Annie before anything happened. I was convinced that JP wouldn’t show up, that someone would come in to escort me to the headmaster’s office for what I’d done.

So I wanted to at least see Annie one more time before getting arrested or kicked out of Pine Mountain.

She was already sitting down when I got there. I dropped my bag onto the floor beside my desk and practically collapsed in the seat beside her.

“Hey,” she said. Her eyes looked so warm and happy. “I thought you’d stay home today. How are you, Ryan Dean?”

“I’ll be honest, Annie,” I said. “I am terrible. But I just needed to see you today.”

“I’m glad.” And she leaned over, just slightly, into the space between us, like we were playing that game that got us both so frustrated over the weekend. So I leaned a little closer too.

“You look amazing,” I said. “And this is the first morning since Friday I can look at you and not have to keep one eye out for a horny gay pug.”

She laughed.

We squeezed hands in the space between our desks. That’s when I knew everything was okay. And that’s when JP walked in and saw us.

He looked terrible. The bridge of his nose was swollen and red all the way across from eye to eye. His left eye had a big black bruise that slashed down toward his cheek, and his upper lip puffed out like he’d been stung by a bee.

I wanted to look away when he came in, because of the way he was glaring at me, but I thought that would seem too much like backing down, so I kept my eyes fixed right on his. I’ll admit that I was pretty scared. It really felt like we were going to fight again right then and there in front of Mr. Wellins. Then the old pervert would be even more convinced that everything just boils down to sex, I guess.