Andrew Smith - Winger

JP coughed and gave us a quick dirty look and scooted his desk farther away from Annie’s.

Good.

“Who are you going to the airport with?” I asked.

“Kevin’s driving. With one arm. And Megan and Joey.” She said, “Chas isn’t coming, so you won’t be totally lonely, Ryan Dean. Think of all the fun you two boys will have together.”

She laughed quietly.

Crap.

“Have you seen Joey today? He wasn’t in Calc or Econ.”

“He’ll meet us at lunchtime.”

“I’ll walk you out when you leave.”

“Okay.”

“Which brings us to young Mr. West,” Mr. Wellins announced, snapping Annie and me out of our midclass dream.

He went on, “Ryan Dean has a particularly interesting theory on sexual tension that is quietly hinted at, like an urgent whisper, by Hemingway in ‘The Three-Day Blow.’ ”

Ugh.

The class weakly attempted stifling their laughter.

All this crap, just to get into a stupid Halloween dance. And, by the way, what did he mean with that “young Mr. West” comment? I was so sick of that crap, and I even got it from perverted old professors.

“Please elucidate, Ryan Dean,” Mr. Wellins said.

“Oh. Please do, young Mr. West,” JP whispered mockingly from the other side of Annie’s desk, without turning to look at me.

Crap.

BY THE END OF CLASS, I started getting pretty depressed thinking about Annie going home for the weekend.

When I saw her at the start of lunch, carrying her suitcase out to the parking lot, I imagined myself throwing my body in front of Kevin’s car, kicking and screaming, to stop her.

She waited at the gate for me, standing with Kevin and Megan. I couldn’t see Joey anywhere.

I grabbed the suitcase from her hand so I could carry it for her. I took Kevin’s from him, too.

He said, “Thanks, Ryan Dean.”

“Any of you seen Joey?”

The girls both looked at Kevin, who shook his head and said, “He didn’t come home last night. I was hoping maybe you’d know what happened.”

Kevin looked worried.

That’s when I got kind of scared.

“No one knows where he is,” Kevin said. “I went and checked at the office, too, because his car’s still here.”

I looked out at the lot.

Joey’s BMW was parked next to Kevin’s car, like it always was.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. “I saw him leaving the dance.”

“I didn’t see him all night,” Kevin said. “Once I started dancing, I never saw him after that. They called his parents. They think he ran away or something. He did it before, remember? The cops are going to come.”

I did remember the time Joey ran away from school for three days, but he didn’t have a car then. Why wouldn’t he just drive away this time?

We started walking out to Kevin’s car.

Kevin said, “He got into a fight or some shit with Casey and Nick. Some of the guys on the team got between them or there would have been a fucking riot at the dance. Nobody even noticed.”

“And you’re just going to leave anyway?” I said.

“What else can I do? Joey’s a big boy. He’s almost eighteen, Ryan Dean. He’s done this before, and I haven’t gone home in three weeks,” Kevin said. “Joey’ll be okay. He’s just pissed about something. Again. No big deal. The boys will cool off, and everything will be back to its old shitty, O-Hall self.”

“He looked pissed off last night,” I said.

“Nick and Casey got drunk,” Kevin said. “Shitfaced. They fucked the place up, and nobody knew anything about it. Those fuckers stayed up all night cleaning the mess up. Farrow and the old woman downstairs never knew shit about what those guys did while they were gone on their little Halloween binge.”

“Something’s not right,” I said.

“You worry too much, Winger.”

We loaded the suitcases into Kevin’s car, and I walked over to Annie’s door. I hugged her, and we kissed before she got in.

“I’m going to miss you,” I whispered. “I love you.”

She looked like she was about to cry, and in a weird way that made me feel really good.

I closed her door, and Kevin started the car.

He said, “Tell Joey to call my house when he shows up. He’ll be back today. I know Joey. Just watch.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, I’m going to check with the office again.”

“It’s going to be okay, Ryan Dean. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

I looked back at Annie and said, “Bye. See you, Kevin. Megan.”

And I stood there beside Joey’s car and watched them drive away.

IT WASN’T OKAY.

The police came before the end of lunch. I was summoned to the headmaster’s office. I had to tell them about seeing Joey when he left the dance, and how he looked upset but he wouldn’t say why, and who the guys were from O-Hall that went along with us.

The officers listened.

They wrote it all down.

But I didn’t tell them everything. How could I tell them everything ?

At first, the policeman who talked to me seemed kind of nice and concerned about Joey. And he knew about how Joey had run away before. He told me that if Joey didn’t show up, they were going to search the campus and the woods in the morning.

Then the officer who interviewed me asked if I knew Joey was gay. And when I told him yes, he asked flat out if I was gay, or if I knew if Joey had a “lover” or not, and that just pissed me off so bad, I wanted to cuss, but I didn’t.

I shut up.

I told him he should go talk to someone else.

Stupid fucking bastard.

JOEY NEVER SHOWED UP.

Something was wrong, and I knew it. I could feel it jangling my nerves like the sound of the empty whiskey bottle I’d kicked when I walked the hallway in the dark the night before.

I got back to O-Hall at about four o’clock that afternoon.

The place was quiet and empty, which was typical for a Friday afternoon. Downstairs, everything had been cleaned up from the night before. But I was still sick from that lingering feeling you just can’t shake after waking up from a terrible nightmare—remembering the muddy shoeprints, the water on the floor, the shower running in the bathroom, and those weird sounds I’d heard coming from the woods.

But it wasn’t a dream. Kevin Cantrell knew that. He knew enough about O-Hall and the boys we lived with, though, so it was no big deal to Kevin.

I could not make it not a big deal.

I was stressed out and in a bad mood from everything that had happened; and I wished I didn’t feel so alone, that Annie could be there with me.

As I passed by the downstairs hall door, I decided to go for a run before dinner.

I froze when I saw Mrs. Singer watching me from the other side of the door. I wasn’t about to open it, but somehow, she didn’t scare me as much as she used to. I still wouldn’t look at her face, though.

I just watched the doorknob and listened to see if she was going to come out.

She didn’t.

I went up to my room and changed out of my clothes and into my running things.

I didn’t go all the way up to Buzzard’s Roost. It was getting too dark, and I had to turn back. But I stopped at Stonehenge and sat down for a while on that same fallen tree where I’d sat so many times with Annie Altman.

I missed her so much. Even though she’d only been gone for a few hours, it felt like I’d never see her again.

I walked the wishing circle.

That night, Chas and I watched television with Mr. Farrow. Awkward. It was like sitting in a sauna naked together. We were the only ones left in O-Hall, but we didn’t say anything to him, or to each other. I could tell Mr. Farrow was uncomfortable around me, though, and I probably would have thought it was funnier if I could only get rid of the creepy feeling that I hadn’t been able to shake since the day before.