Andrew Smith - Winger

Then I ran.

Okay. To be perfectly honest, she probably said, “Nice to meet you, Ryan Dean West,” but I did my duty by apologizing, and I wasn’t about to stick around and have my soul sucked, receive a cascade of ice shards pouring through the fly of my boxers, come down with diarrhea, suffer a spontaneous bloody nose, or have her lay another ungodly curse on my as-yet-untested reproductive appliances, either.

ANNIE WAS ALREADY AT STONEHENGE when I got there.

She walked along the wishing-circle path, and I stood back at the edge of the trees and watched her.

“The nurse said for me to tell you that I did not lose the sexy. She said there’s way too much of it going on there.”

She looked at me and laughed.

“Let me see it,” she said.

Hmmm . . . another Ryan Dean West would have undoubtedly made a perverted comeback to that, but, somehow, I just felt different standing there.

She walked over to me, and I could see her eyeing me up and down, but I watched her face. I leaned close.

Game on, Annie.

She put her thumb on the small scar.

“Well?” I asked.

“Okay,” she said. “You look good dressed like that, and the way you fixed your hair, Ryan Dean. You look taller.”

That’s when I realized that Annie had completely stopped calling me West. I thought it meant something. And I liked it.

“You’re the second person to say that, Annie. I think I’m going to have to come over and have you and your mom fix my pants again.”

“Do you want to come back?”

“Oh my God, Annie, I’d leave right now if I could. I’d start walking.”

Annie said, “Maybe you can come for the four days over Thanksgiving.”

“That would be awesome,” I said, even though I knew it would make my mom and dad unhappy that I wasn’t going home. I held her hand, and we walked under the trees. It was beginning to rain again, but none of it fell through.

“What were you wishing for?” I said.

“Not going to tell you.”

“Okay.” I inhaled. On the walk out here, I’d thought about what I needed to tell her. It was important, and I knew I had to stop acting like such a . . . uh, Wild Boy.

“I need to tell you something, though, Annie. Me and JP got in another fight today. That’s why his eye was black. I punched him. I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it again. I don’t want you to get mad about it, so I told you before you heard it from Seanie or someone else. I don’t know why I’ve been acting so stupid.”

Annie sighed. “Ryan Dean.”

“I know. I’m sorry. And I decided I can’t be upset about you going to the dance with him either. I’m just going to have to forget about it. I’m really sorry, Annie. Will you forgive me for being such a jerk?”

She stood right in front of me, so close we were practically touching. We just looked at each other’s eyes, and I knew we were going to kiss, but she pulled back and said, “I can’t be in love with you, Ryan Dean.”

Yeah. I heard that before. And this time I wasn’t going to be a baby about it and run away. So I said, “Yes you can be.”

For the longest time, it seemed like there was no sound at all except the rain dripping through the trees above us.

I said it again. “Yes, you can be, Annie.”

And she said, “I know.”

“I know, too, because I’ve never said this to anyone, but I am so in love with you, Annie, that I almost can’t stand it, and it’s making me insane.”

Then I don’t know if she laughed or was going to cry, but she kind of shook and she put both of her hands on my shoulders and said, “I do love you, Ryan Dean,” and then we just about collapsed into each other’s arms.

I felt so relieved. I closed my eyes and inhaled, and we kissed like we did that other day in the sawmill, and neither of us would let go. It was better than every wish I ever made coming true all at the same time.

“You smell nice,” she said.

“I shaved.”

She laughed. “Why?”

“Hey, now.”

We walked through the forest, heading back toward O-Hall along the trail by the lake. It was getting late, and I needed to change back into my dress clothes or they wouldn’t let me have dinner.

I didn’t care, though. Everything was perfect, and I just wanted to sleep.

But it was so exciting to think about sitting down to dinner with Annie for the first time as a real, honest-to-God couple. I wanted so badly to be alone with her.

Annie said, “Oh my God. I am in love with a fourteen-year-old boy.”

“Get over it, old hag. When you’re ninety, I’ll be eighty-eight.”

EVERYTHING IN MY UNIVERSE CHANGED that day.

Annie left me at O-Hall. We promised to meet for dinner in half an hour. I watched her walk away, and after every few steps, she’d turn around and see me following her with my eyes, and she’d say, “Go on, Ryan Dean. Get dressed.”

But I watched her until I couldn’t see her anymore.

I went inside. I could hear the guys upstairs noisily getting ready to storm the mess hall. I paused beside the girls’ door and looked through the window to see if Mrs. Singer was there. For some stupid reason, I wanted to say thanks to her, like she’d lifted the curse or cast some love spell over Annie.

I know. That was dumb.

I pushed the door open and stuck my head inside. The hallway was dark, but I saw Mrs. Singer standing at the far end, just staring at me. She looked like Mary Todd Lincoln . . . and not just because she had the big-black-dress thing going on; I mean, she really looked like someone dug up the corpse of Mary Todd Lincoln fifteen minutes ago and propped her up at the end of the O-Hall girls’ floor hallway.

I said, “Thanks,” and slipped back upstairs.

SEANIE AND JP DIDN’T SIT near us at dinner that night.

It didn’t matter to me.

Annie and I played “feet” under the table. We hardly ate anything at all because we just stared at each other, and I could tell it started to annoy Joey and Isabel that we were so focused in our own thing—it was like the rest of our friends didn’t exist.

The next couple of days were kind of like that: Mine and Annie’s universe got smaller and quieter.

Seanie didn’t say much to me.

I know he was mad about my starting that fight with JP at the lake, and how Seanie had to take some punches himself when he got between us. JP had long since stopped talking to me, and Megan just moped around like she was so depressed.

Yeah, she didn’t talk to me either.

Oh. And neither did Chas—ever since last Sunday night and the consequence and Screaming Ned, and me making Chas cry when I confessed that Megan and I had been fooling around.

He didn’t even put forth the effort to call me Pussboy or Asswing anymore.

Nothing.

Joey told me that Megan had broken up with Chas and it was all because of me. So, if I threw in the fact that I’d caught Mrs. Singer and Mr. Farrow practically copulating right there in the O-Hall stairwell, I figured all I’d need to do was publicly out Casey Palmer, then the entire state of Oregon, minus Annie Altman and Joey Cosentino, would want me dead.

I was on thin ice, but I didn’t care.

THE DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN, WE had another rugby match.

We played at our own field, on Wednesday after classes, so Annie got to be there.

Our opposition was a club team from Southern California called the Pumas that had come up on tour to play against teams in the Pacific Northwest, where everyone knows we play a tougher game. None of us really liked playing against club teams; they were notorious cheaters as far as things like player eligibility were concerned, and most club coaches’ only priority was winning, so they’d do anything unethical to get there. Coach M knew it too, but it was preseason and we all wanted to play anyway.