Winger (15 page)

I got to my feet. I was sweating and in pain. I could feel my heart drumming against the bones inside my chest. I knew I was just about finished, that I couldn’t keep JP out of the circle much longer and he was getting really pissed off about it.

I think what probably pushed him over the edge was that, as he was getting up again, I threw his cleat as far as I could down the pitch and some of the guys laughed.

I could hear Seanie saying, “JP’s Winger’s bitch,” and the guys laughed even more.

JP stood there, panting, the ball tucked into his arms. He looked to where I’d thrown his cleat, then he looked back at me, not even a hint of friendship in his expression, then he got low, put his head down, and wearing only one shoe, came at me full speed.

When I hit him from the front, JP went straight into my tackle and landed squarely on top of me. He went down, too, but he brought his knee up into my face and I heard something pop—like stepping on a grape—when he hit my eye. I remember hearing the “ooh”s from the guys when I sat up, and as I tried to get to my feet I saw a blurry red image of JP scoring behind me, and the next thing I knew, Seanie and Joey were there, putting their hands against my shoulders and telling me not to stand up.

Everyone began crowding around me.

I looked down at my lap. I was covered in blood, could feel it pulsing down my face and onto my jersey, splattering my muddy legs.

Coach M kneeled beside me. “Let’s have a look,” he said. I realized my left eye was closed for some reason, so I turned my head to look at him.

“That’s going to need stitches,” he said.

And then Seanie was right in my face, saying, “You can see his skull! You can see his skull!”

Which is probably just about the last thing you want to hear at a time like that, even if Seanie did sound overjoyed by the discovery.

I started to lie down, but they wouldn’t let me. The physio was there, wrapping gauze and tape like a headband tightly around my pulsing head, over my left eye. Then Seanie and Joey each took an arm and helped me to my feet.

I was sore and dizzy, but I willed myself not to collapse.

I remember Coach M telling them to put me in the cart and drive me down the hill to the doctor’s, and I saw JP standing in front of me, holding the cleat I’d thrown.

“Hey. Sorry, Ryan Dean.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

IT TOOK EIGHTEEN STITCHES TO
close the cut across my eyebrow, some inside the skin, and some outside. But the cut itself wasn’t that big. The doctor let me look at the stitches in a mirror when he was finished, but I mostly paid attention to how horrible the rest of me looked. I was filthy and damp and covered with blackened crusty blood that clotted on my skin and in my hair.

Seanie and Joey stayed there with me while the doctor stitched me up, but he wouldn’t let them stand too close when he was doing the actual sewing part. I didn’t say a word the whole time I was there; all I could do was think about JP and Annie and how mad I was.

Then the doctor left the room, and his exceedingly five-out-of-five-possible-fruit-arrangements-on-your-head-in-a-Brazilian-dancer-kind-of-way-on-the-Ryan-Dean-West-Samba-mometer nurse came in and asked me to lay my head back on the pillow.

“Let’s take off that bloody shirt,” she said, so sweetly. “Here. Raise your arms.”

And—oh my God—she had a stainless-steel basin of warm damp towels with her!

She pulled my jersey up out of my shorts and lifted it, so gently, over my head. When it was all the way off, I quickly looked around
the room to see if my great-grandma and that run-over Chihuahua were present. I was convinced I had died and gone to a much, much better place.

Thank God for compression shorts.

“Boiiing!” Seanie said.

I had to laugh. “Shut up.”

You know, I sometimes disappoint myself. Because at that moment, if anyone had asked me about Annie, I know I would have said, “Who is that?”

“Does it hurt?” she asked. She softly swiped a warm towel around my face and began rubbing my hair clean with a second wet towel.

I tried to look extra sad. “Just a little.”

I lied. I couldn’t feel it at all.

“Aww,” she said.

If I was a cat, I would have purred.

If I was an alligator, I would have been hypnotized.

But since I was only me, all I could do was lie there and contemplate everything perverted I had ever dreamed about since I was, like, seven years old.

She dropped the first blood-rusted towels onto a tray by the bed and grabbed two more. She wiped off my neck and shoulders. She sponge bathed me where blood had dried on my chest and belly, right down to the waistband of my shorts. She even toweled off the thin hair in my armpits, which kind of tickled, but there was no way I was
about to giggle. And I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t stop staring at her extreme hotness. Then she gently wiped the blood from my knees and up my thighs, all the way to where my compression shorts ended, and at that point I got so flustered, I began hiccupping.

I am such a loser.

She put all the dirty towels in a pile beside the bed and said, “Now you look perfectly handsome again. There’s no concussion, so you won’t have to stay here tonight . . . .”

Damn. Uh . . . you look pretty good yourself.

“. . . but you’ll need to take it easy . . .”

I can’t move right now anyway.

“We’ll call your parents and let them know. Would you like to speak with them?”

NO!

“Uh.”
Hiccup.
Crap. “Just tell them”—
hic!
—“I’m okay.”

“Do you have any clothes you can put on?”

No, you better take the rest of these dirty things off me. I don’t mind.

“We can get his stuff from the locker room,” Joey said.

Shut up!!!

“That’s so sweet of you. Thank you,” she said, then she bundled up the towels and threw them into a hamper by the door as she left. “I’ll be right back, boys.”

“Dude,” Seanie said. “That was like watching a porn flick.
Nurses Gone Wild
.”

“Ugh.” I closed my eyes and dropped my arms out from the sides of my bed. “I thought I was going to lose”—
hic
—“con . . . consciousness. Please tell me that really happened just now.”

“All I can say is, no matter what, I’m cracking my skull open tomorrow,” Seanie said. “And if you want me to, Ryan Dean, I can go get her and tell her she missed a spot.”

“Oh my God. Would you do that for me, Seanie?”

“Dude, you are such a perv for a little guy.”

I laughed.

The door opened again and Coach M came in, carrying my clothes from the locker room on a hanger he held over his shoulder. He had my shoes and book bag in his other hand.

“I brought these for you, Ryan Dean,” he said. “Save you an unnecessary trip.”

“Thank you, Coach.” I sat up, dangling my feet over the side of the bed. Before the door swung shut, I could see that there were a number of guys from the team, showered and changed back into their school clothes, waiting outside. Knowing they had come made me feel really good, but not as good as that warm-towel session did.

“And thanks to you two for looking after your mate,” Coach M said to Joey and Seanie. “Here, let’s see that.”

I tilted my chin back so Coach could have a good look at my stitches.

“Welcome to the Zipper Club, Ryan Dean,” he said. That’s what rugby guys said when they got stitches.

“Flaherty,” Coach M said, “why don’t you go back to the showers and get dressed. I want to speak with Ryan Dean and his captain.”

“Will you be able to make it to dinner?” Seanie asked me.

“I’ll be there.”

Seanie left. I could hear him talking to the guys outside as his metal cleats clacked against the shiny infirmary floor.

I began changing into my clothes. I pulled off my shorts. Right about now, I thought, it would be really cool if that nurse came back.

“You can’t get those sutures wet,” Coach said.

“They told me,” I answered. “Eighteen stitches. But no concussion.”

I knew where this was going. If I’d gotten a concussion, I’d be off the roster for a long time.

“I’ve never seen you hit like that before, Ryan Dean,” Coach said. “That was inspired, to say the least. Is there something going on between you and Tureau you’d like to tell me about?”

I was stuck. I’d have to tell the truth, especially in front of Joey. And Coach M did not tolerate fighting among the team. He’d probably have to kick me off, and I probably deserved it. I changed my socks and began buttoning my dress shirt, avoiding their eyes, trying to think of how I’d say it.

I felt sick. Maybe it showed in my eyes.

I said, “Coach, JP and I . . .”

Joey interrupted. “Were just seeing how hard they could go. And
Ryan Dean proved why he belongs in the first fifteen, Coach.”

“Oh. I thought I picked up on something else going on there.”

“Ryan Dean and JP are best friends, Coach.”

Now, that was going a little too far, I thought. I looked at Joey and then at Coach. I pulled my pants on and began knotting my necktie.

Coach M turned to Joey. “Who can play left wing on Thursday?”

“I can,” I interrupted before Joey could answer.

“I can’t let you play like that, Ryan Dean. What would I tell your parents if you hurt yourself again?”

“You’d tell them what they already know. It’s part of the game. Please, Coach. I don’t have a concussion. I’ll prewrap it and tape it up. Guys do it all the time. It’s no big deal. I really want to play, sir.”

I wasn’t going to do the fake-tears thing. I could bring real ones up at the thought of being benched for our first game.

“I want Ryan Dean in my line, sir. He’s our best wing. You know that,” Joey said.

Note to self: In your prayers tonight, be sure to thank God for making (a) that unbelievably hot nurse, (b) compression shorts, and (c) Joey Cosentino.

“I’ll have to think about it,” Coach said. Then he went to the door, cracked it open, and called out, “JP?”

JP came in, walking slowly, looking down. I could tell he felt bad, but I didn’t care about his feelings, anyway. Why would I? He didn’t care enough about mine. He held his hand out, and we shook. Coach
wouldn’t have made him do that if he didn’t already know we’d been fighting.

“I’m sorry, Ryan Dean.”

“You already said that on the field, JP,” I said. I slipped my feet into my school shoes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Coach.”

I grabbed my cleats and the rest of my bloody practice clothes, threw my pack over my shoulder, and quietly walked out without turning back once.

I WAS ALMOST BACK TO
O-Hall when I heard someone running up toward me from behind. I didn’t care who it was. Because once again, now that I was alone in the quiet beside the lake, all the anger and frustration over Annie and JP, and my possibly sitting out of the game, came swirling back through my aching head.

It felt like JP was trying to ruin my life in every way possible.

“What’s your fucking problem, Ryan Dean?”

I should have known it was JP behind me.

I thought about just going on into Opportunity Hall. He wouldn’t follow me there, not after getting in trouble for it the first week of school. But I stopped and turned to face him.

He was out of breath, panting fog in the cold as he caught up to where I stood.

“You know what this is about, JP,” I said. And then I really did cuss. “Fuck off.”

I turned around, thinking how stupid those words actually sounded coming from my mouth. It almost made me want to laugh, hearing myself say something like that, which is kind of hard for me to understand, because I don’t have a problem writing words like that.

I started walking toward the door again.

“You want to have it out right now?” JP said. “No one’s around. You want to fight again?”

I just kept walking and ignored him.

“Fuck you, Ryan Dean.”

I opened the door.

I went inside.

AT DINNER, I SAT ALONE
at a table full of kids I didn’t even know. They were freshmen. They were all my age. And I didn’t understand them at all. It was like they were from a different planet entirely.

This is how much of a loser I am: I am such a loser that I don’t even fit in with other kids who are exactly my age.

Annie, JP, Seanie, Joey, along with everyone else, were sitting where we all usually sit, the way teenagers do, but I didn’t go over there. I was tired, sore, and pissed off, and I wanted to be left alone, exiled to this other world I didn’t know. As far as I could tell, my friends didn’t even know I was there, anyway.

I just kept my head down and ate my dinner. The freshmen around me probably thought I was a new kid or something. I could hear, a couple times, one of them say, “Who’s that kid?”

“Hey.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head and saw Megan standing behind me.

“I heard you got hurt,” she said.

“I did.”

It felt so good just to look at her, to feel the way her hand rested on my shoulder.

I glanced around to see if Chas was anywhere in sight. And, of course, I saw Joey, across the room, watching us. I looked away. I didn’t want to hear it, what I knew he was thinking.

“Let me see.”

Megan sat down beside me. I felt all the eyes of the freshman boys on us, like they were wondering if she was my older sister, or maybe a teacher, or a cop coming to arrest me, because there was no way a girl who looked like Megan Renshaw should be sitting there next to someone like me.

“I think stitches are sexy,” she said when I turned my face to her.

I almost choked on a crouton.

She had that look in her eyes like she was going to pin me down on the table and make out with me right there in front of the whole school. She touched the stitches over my eye.