Andrew Smith - Winger

“You really are a gay caveman.”

I laughed.

“We’re having a lot of fun there.”

“Even Seanie and Isabel?”

“Well, okay. I’ll be honest. Not them. They’re total losers. But everyone else is.”

He sort of smiled.

“So, put your shoes on.” I stood up and held my hand out to him. He grabbed it, and I pulled him up so he was sitting with his feet on the floor.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Okay,” he said. He put his feet into his army boots and began lacing them up. “I’m sorry too, Ryan Dean. I really was going for her, you know? I never thought she’d be interested in you.”

Maybe I was still a little sensitive about the whole JP thing, but hearing him say that really did sting a little.

“Why’d you think that?”

JP shrugged. “ ’Cause you’re just a kid.”

“Screw that, JP.”

I know. I’m such a loser, but I was so sick of that crap, I almost felt myself getting ready to fight him again.

“Hey. You won. It doesn’t matter,” JP said. “Does it?”

He tied his bootlaces and stood.

I took a deep breath and tried to make myself believe that it didn’t really matter.

“I guess not. Come on. Let’s go. There’s still an hour until ten. Maybe you can at least get Isabel to dance with you.”

“Dude, she has more facial hair than Seanie.”

“I think she’s kind of hot,” I said. “And anyway, Seanie never dances, so you’ll have to settle for fuzzy Isabel.”

We shook hands again before we left, but it was an uneasy kind of peace between JP and me.

He was an intense guy, and I couldn’t expect him to just forget about everything. And I even asked him straight out, when we stepped outside into the cold on our walk over to the dance, “JP, do you think we’ll be friends again?”

And he said, without even thinking about it, “No.”

At least he was honest.

At least I could hope we’d stop fighting.

Mr. Wellins looked drunk, and he waved JP toward the door with an emotional “John-Paul, where have you been?”

JP just shrugged and said, “Homework.”

But before we went inside, JP stopped me and said, “Ryan Dean, I’m going to tell you something that I don’t really care if you know or not. And it’s probably the nicest thing I’ll ever do for you. You know the other day when you and Annie came back from Seattle? On Sunday?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember how you saw Annie give me a hug?”

I remembered that.

And I thought, What’s he trying to do? Start a fight, right here in front of everyone?

“Yeah.”

“Well, right before that, she’d just told me that she couldn’t come to the dance with me. That’s why I didn’t come tonight. She backed out on me. She felt bad, so she hugged me while you were over there talking to Seanie. She told me that she couldn’t come to the dance with me because she was so fucking in love with Ryan Dean West.”

“She told you that?” I asked. “On Sunday?”

“She started crying about it.”

Then I really felt confused.

That was the same day when she’d told me not to kiss her, when I went crazy on our run.

And then she admitted it to JP before she ever got close to telling me. Maybe she wanted to see if she could fight it. Maybe she wanted to wait for me to break down and say it first, like it wasn’t so goddamned obvious anyway. And then, the next day, I got in that fight with JP and busted his face and it was all over nothing, really, now that I heard what Annie had said.

I felt like dog shit.

“Why didn’t you tell me? When we were running at the lake, you could have said something,” I said.

“You wouldn’t shut up,” JP said. “All that crap about you and Annie running around naked or whatever the hell you were talking about. It was sickening, and then, when you pushed Seanie, I was ready to go. And I would have fucked you up if my foot didn’t slip and Seanie didn’t get his dumb ass in between us like that. I would have fucked you up.”

I didn’t say anything after that.

I felt like such an idiot.

We went into the dance, and I knew John-Paul Tureau and I really weren’t ever going to be friends again.

I MAY NOT HAVE SUCCEEDED, but I did what I needed to do.

At least I tried to make things right with the victims of the Wild Boy.

JP came to the dance, and, yeah, it was awkward. He didn’t say anything or dance or anything. He just sat on the sofa between Seanie and Isabel while Annie and I danced until the lights came on and they told us all to go home.

I didn’t see anyone from O-Hall then, but I volunteered to walk Annie and Isabel back to the girls’ dorm, so I let Seanie off a serious hook, because I knew he was dreading how, exactly, to go about saying good night to his “date.”

And he had the guts to call me “permavirgin.”

I was pretty sure the only female lips Sean Russell Flaherty had ever touched besides his mom’s were flickering images on a computer monitor.

Isabel walked about ten feet in front of us, but she’d turn around every few paces to make sure we were still there. Annie had her arm around my shoulders, because I was so cold. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the only reason.

I put my mouth next to her ear and whispered, “You told JP you were in love with me before I said it to you.”

“It doesn’t count if you tell someone else.” She smiled.

“Yes it does.”

“Okay, then, in that case, you told Joey you were in love with me wayyyy before I said anything to JP.” Then she laughed.

Wow. She just totally kicked my ass.

“Joey told you that?” I said.

She just smiled.

Of course he did.

“Okay. You got me,” I said. I kissed her. “I love you, Annie.”

“I love you, Ryan Dean.”

“Hey, Isabel?” Isabel stopped and turned around, and I said, “When was the very first time Annie told you that she . . .”

But Annie covered my mouth with her hand before I could ask the whole question, so I stuck my tongue out and licked her fingers all over, and she squealed and laughed and ran up to Isabel, whispering something urgent to her roommate.

WHEN I GOT BACK TO O-Hall, everything seemed weird, like I was walking into the last five minutes of a horror movie.

That’s about the only way to describe it.

It was totally dark and quiet, no lights in any of the windows. I thought that either everyone had come back and they were all asleep, or nobody had come back yet and I was there entirely alone.

I walked up the three steps to the landing and slipped my shoes off. I guess I didn’t need to go barefoot, because it wasn’t like I was technically sneaking in, but it was just so eerily quiet that I didn’t want to make any noise on my way upstairs.

Things got stranger inside the mudroom.

The door onto the lower floor was standing wide open, and there were all kinds of muddy shoeprints going in and out, like the place had been raided by an army of guys wearing athletic shoes. I could tell they weren’t the kinds of shoes that Mr. Farrow would wear, and definitely not Mrs. Singer, so I knew the tracks had to have been made by some of the guys from upstairs.

So I was kind of relieved that I was carrying my shoes, because I could just imagine the morning’s shoe investigation from a very pissed-off pair of resident counselors.

I took a step inside the girls’ floor.

My feet sloshed in a puddle of cold water on the linoleum. I was pretty creeped out by this point, and I kept wondering where the hell Mrs. Singer was.

She was gone.

I could tell the bathroom door was open too, and I could just faintly hear the sound of water splashing, like the guys had been in the girls’ floor showers and not turned them off all the way.