Winger (37 page)

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.

I decided right then that I was
not
going to take another step further into the hallway, and just then I heard a couple screams like wildcats out in the woods, very distant, but the kind of sound that you just hate to hear in the middle of a quiet and spooky night.

When you’re all alone.

That was enough for me. I turned around and went upstairs, without shutting the door and without so much as glancing behind me even one time.

Upstairs was like a tomb.

I walked the length of the hallway, quietly wishing someone would pop out from a room to go to the bathroom or something, even if it was that asshole Casey Palmer.

But there were no sounds at all.

I kicked an empty whiskey bottle, and it clinked along the floor. It sounded like a hundred xylophones inside a stone tomb.

Someone fucked up.

There were footsteps on the staircase. This was it, I thought, I was about to be murdered.

Casey Palmer appeared at the top of the stairwell. He had abandoned the Wonder Woman outfit and was dressed in sweats. His skin was slick with sweat, and his eyes were drunken and glazed.

“What happened, Casey?” I said. I tried to sound as nice as I could, because, I’ll be honest, I was afraid of the way Casey Palmer was looking at me.

Casey ignored me. He walked past me, kind of floating like a ghost in the dark. He smelled like sweat and whiskey and puke, all at the same time.

He stopped and swiped his hand at me to grab me, but I slipped away from him. Casey stumbled and nearly fell down.

He said, “I’ll fucking kill you if you ever say anything to me again, kid.”

Then Casey slipped inside his room and shut the door.

When I got to my room, I actually began
wishing
that Chas would be in there.

I opened the door. At first, all I could see were the red numbers on our alarm clock. I bent forward and looked into the lower bunk. Chas was there, asleep. I actually breathed a relieved gasp at seeing him. I leaned over him, just to make sure he was really there.

“What the fuck are you doing, homo?” he said.

Yeah. Good night to you, too, Betch.

“I’m sorry. I was creeped out. It’s like nobody’s here, and it looks like someone trashed the girls’ floor, or something.”

I was shivering, mostly from the cold.

I took off my costume and slipped on some boxer shorts and a sweatshirt. I debated whether or not to go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I grabbed my toothbrush and stuff, but I was still spooked about the way things felt out there.

“I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” Chas said. “I’ve been trying to sleep for a while, and I don’t think Farrow or that bitch downstairs is even here, because about an hour ago there was all this running around and slamming shit around until I stuck my head out in the hall and told them to quiet the fuck down.”

I decided to skip the dental hygiene.

Something was definitely
not right
out there, and I wasn’t going to get caught up in it.

I climbed up in my bunk and lay there, trying to stay awake and see if I would hear that howling again.

But I fell asleep.

JUST WORDS.

No more pictures. No charts or plays or poems.

Now it’s just about the words.

THE CREEPIEST NIGHTS SEEM TO
evaporate into nothing once the sun comes up and you can hear the sounds of guys out in the hallway talking crap to each other and play fighting while they get ready for school.

So I hardly gave another thought to how scared I had been when I came home from the dance; and I didn’t really even want to ask any of the other boys what had gone on in the dorm before I got back to O-Hall.

Routine has a way of making you feel like an idiot after you’ve gotten all worked up over things not being in their expected order. So I showered and got into my uniform, just like I’d do on any other morning.

We ran in Conditioning class.

JP still wasn’t talking to me, but I had a feeling that things were just okay, and nothing better than that, between us; and when Seanie and I spoke, I was careful to not be such a smart-ass and say things just to pick at JP again.

But Joey didn’t show up that day for Calculus.

I remembered how pissed off he seemed the night before, and since it was Friday and all, I just figured he was taking a day off and going home early. Still, I mostly hoped I’d be able to talk to him again before he left, so I could find out what he was so bugged about when I saw him outside the dance.

Then it really sank in that it was Friday.

It meant Annie and just about everyone else would be leaving for home too, and I wished I didn’t feel so goddamned scared and alone without my friends around.

When Megan saw me in class, she smiled and said, “I like how you dance, Ryan Dean. Pretty hot.”

I turned red.

“Sorry about that. We were kind of getting a little nasty, Megan.”

She laugh-whispered, “A
little
?”

“Hey, did you see Joey, or hear if he’s sick or something?”

“No. I saw Kevin this morning, though,” she said. “You should ask him.”

“Okay. And thanks for the dance, Megan. I had a lot of fun.”

She turned around and rubbed my forearm and winked at me.

Ugh.

She made me feel so weak.

I DIDN’T NORMALLY RUN INTO
kevin at school, but I looked for him everywhere that day after Halloween.

Eventually, I just quit trying. I knew I’d see him at lunchtime, when he and the others left for their weekends at home.

Somehow, I’d managed to scrawl out my Nick-and-Bill-are-gay-for-each-other essay for Mr. Wellins, and he practically salivated when I handed it in to him at the start of Lit class.

What a moron.

What a criminal waste of a blue book, too.

I sat down.

Annie smiled, but JP didn’t even turn to look at me.

I wished he’d just get up and change seats and leave us both alone.

After all, I did what I could. I screwed up and got into a fight with a guy who was one of my best friends. And I knew JP was going to pout like this for the rest of the year—maybe the rest of high school entirely.

Then Mr. Wellins began talking about Halloween costumes, and how they were manifestations of suppressed sexuality, and he started blah-blah-blahing about every goddamned kid in the class and how he took notes on all of us at the dance last night, and Ryan Dean West was in touch with his atavistic and primal man-drives, and, oh—let’s
go around the room and talk about our Hemingway essays.

So, yeah, Annie and I pretty much shut it all out, scooted our desks close together, held hands on my lap—score one for atavism!—and whispered and mouthed our own unobserved conversation. And all the while, I was praying that old pervert didn’t call on his favorite caveman to out poor Nick Adams and his friend.

“I had so much fun last night,” I said.

“So did I. You’re a great dancer.”

“Shut up.” I rolled my eyes and squeezed her fingers. “It’s going to be so boring here this weekend. Ask your mom and dad about Thanksgiving. I really want to go.”

“I know they’ll want you to come. It’ll be so great, Ryan Dean. It’s just a few weeks away.”

“It’ll seem like forever. I’m going to go crazy this weekend without you.”

She leaned closer and looked right into my eyes with that amazing look she had.

I know we would have kissed if we hadn’t been sitting right there in a classroom.

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.”