by Andrew Smith
You know, there is something especially frightening when you’re stuck in the darkest depths of hell, in the middle of a raging torrent of mud, and the insane old lost guy in the front seat starts screaming like he’s going to die. I mean, I figured Ned had probably stared Death in the face more than a few times in just the past four or five hours, let alone since the discovery of fire, so when you hear a guy who you know has gone through as much shit as Ned has—in a lifetime that was undoubtedly measured by geologic periods as opposed to calendars—screaming like that, well . . . you just know you’re going to die too.
“Fuck!” Joey said again.
“Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!” Ned shrieked.
Oh, yeah.
Fun times.
Honestly, though, I have to admit to the selfish pleasure I took in the fact that the water was pouring in on the two fuckers in the front seat and not on the guy in the back who never would have come up to Ned’s abattoir for adolescent boys if Joey wasn’t so goddamned nice all the time.
Then Ned added something extra special to his scream. It kind of went like this: “BBBLLLLLAAAAARRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAGG!!!!!!!”
Which, I think, was probably Mrs. Singer’s first name.
But, anyway, the bloodcurdling sound was so unnerving that I screamed too, and just like a girl, which didn’t make Joey very happy.
“Fuck!” Joey said.
And when I screamed, it made Ned scream even more insanely.
I began laughing so hard, I was actually crying, which probably had something to do with the fact that I knew we were going to die and now I decided I didn’t want Ned to kill Joey first, because watching him do it would scare the shit out of me.
Ned shrieked again. It was a good one, too. Probably a solid fifteen seconds. And it was so high pitched that I’m pretty sure a pod or two of migrating gray whales in the Pacific veered off course for a minute, paused and looked landward, and knew exactly where that hundred-and-fifty-year-old asshole was, even if Joey and I didn’t have a fucking clue.
I laughed so hard, I thought I was going to throw up.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Joey said.
I could hear the wheels spinning uselessly in the muddy water outside, and the splashy-soothing-fountain sounds of Joey’s and the insane guy’s feet up front.
Then all I could hear was another scream. If I wasn’t laughing so hard, I probably would have beat Ned with his walker.
“I’m sorry, Joey.” I laughed. “Now I can finally say I told you so.” I paused. “Bitch.”
That’s technically not cussing.
I laughed.
Ned shrieked and wailed.
Joey said, “Fuck!”
“Okay, Joe. I’ll get out and see if there’s anything I can put under the wheels to get some grip.”
“But you’re sick, Ryan Dean.”
“Dude, Joey,” I said (scream). “Believe me, there’s nothing I want more than to get out of this car right now.”
I opened my door and looked down. The water rushed past the car’s running boards so fast, it looked like we were in a motorboat or something. I could see how the back wheels were spinning uselessly, kicking back rooster tails of mud in the dark.
I knew I’d end up getting soaked, which wasn’t a good idea, so I slipped off my socks and shoes and left them on the car seat. Then I pulled up the legs of my sweatpants as high as I could and stepped out into the cold and muddy flow.
Ned screamed again.
Damn, he had quite a set of pipes for an old guy.
I waded around to the back of the SUV, already wet up to my waist.
I yelled up to Joey, “Stop gunning it. I’m going to look for something to wedge under the wheels.”
Ned gave me an approving “EEEEEYYYYAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!”
I paused.
I slogged up to Joey’s window and knocked on it. The water was streaming into the rip in my sweats, pulling them away like a drift net. I hoped salmon didn’t bite.
I knocked on Joey’s window again.
He lowered it halfway.
“Joey,” I said.
Ned screamed, and Joey tensed and closed his eyes like it physically hurt him.
“Suppose I had a gun. With only one bullet in it. And I gave it to you. Would you shoot Ned, me, or yourself?” I laughed. Life doesn’t present a guy with too many the-lady-or-the-tiger kinds of lessons.
Joey flipped me off and raised his window.
Ned wailed.
Through the open back door, I heard Joey say, “Fuck!” It sounded kind of nice. It lifted my spirits.
I waded away. I actually considered, momentarily, just leaving Joey and Screaming Ned there, so I could become the Wild Boy of the Eighth Circle of Hell, but I did want to get back to Pine Mountain and Annie and a certain kid of French descent whose dreams still needed some serious crushing.
And, besides, we had another rugby game coming up that week, and the team would never be able to get by without Kevin, our winger, and our starting fly half.
When I got out of the creek we were stuck in, I found enough fallen tree bark and rocks to begin making sufficient braces all around the rear wheels. On the first trip back to the car, though, I fell down in the river, so I took my hoodie off and tossed it onto the backseat with my shoes and socks. No sense getting everything I owned soaked and muddy. I knew it was stupid, because I was sick, but I figured I’d be able to scrounge up something dry to wear among our new Halloween costumes.
Everything looked ready to go. I waded to the car and told Joey to try backing out, and that I’d stand away and watch. Before I closed my door, Ned screamed again, and then I said, “And, Joey? We are either going back to the store or I’m not getting in this car ever again. It’ll be you and Ned. Alone.”
Joey didn’t say anything.
I closed the back door and walked over to the side of the mud road.
The rain slowed to a drizzle, but the level of the creek didn’t change at all.
The SUV’s reverse lights came on.
Slowly, shakily, Joey got Chas’s car unstuck. He backed it up to the side of the road, where I was waiting for him. I got in the backseat, dripping and shivering.
It was three in the morning.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
NED STOPPED SCREAMING WHEN WE got back to the store.
Joey didn’t say a word the whole way there. And I just sat in the backseat with my arms hugged across my bare chest, smiling all the time because of how stupid we were for trying to do a good deed for a lunatic like Ned.
The worst part of the whole experience—no, wait . . . it wasn’t the worst part, because being stuck in the car with Screaming Ned was worse, and something even worse than that, still, was going to happen to me before the night was over.
So, okay, a pretty screwed-up part of the whole experience happened when we took Ned back to the store. I guess I truly did look like the Wild Boy of the Eighth Circle of Hell, because I was soaked and covered in mud, barefoot and shirtless, with my boxers hanging out from a gaping hole in my torn sweatpants that were pulled up past my bony kneecaps; and the store manager laughed at us when we offered to pay for a cab for the old fucker. He asked us if “Screaming Ned” had played his old funny trick again where he’d take foolish do-gooders out to the middle of the forest and scare the living shit out of them.
And we said . . . uh . . . um . . . no?
Oh, yeah. He said Screaming Ned was a regular fucking celebrity in Bannock.
And the manager laughed at us and walked Ned (Two steps. Lift. Set. Two steps. Lift. Set.) next door, to the donut shop owned by Screaming Ned’s fucking alcoholic son, who had been sleeping behind the counter while Ned did his performance art on me and Joey.
Yeah, I don’t think Joey would have even batted an eye if I told him I was going to throw a shopping cart through the window of that goddamned donut shop.
When we left, I got into the backseat again.
Joey said, “The water�
�s all gone from up front, Ryan Dean. You can sit up here.”
“I need to get some dry clothes on, Joey. And there was no way I was about to get undressed in front of Screaming Ned. I’m going to break down and do it, Joey. I’m freezing, and I’m going to put on some of those Pokémon briefs.”
Now, that was the worst part of the whole Screaming Ned episode.
Anyway, it was a three-pack, and I was pretty sure Chas wouldn’t count to see if one was missing.
“Joey,” I said as he started the car (finally!) along on its way out of the parking lot. “Please turn up the heater. And, by the way, I’ve never been completely naked in a car alone with a gay guy before.”
There was this raw-meat sucking sound as I tore my sweats and boxers down over my feet.
Joey laughed. “Neither have I. But, Ryan Dean, don’t try on the pantyhose.”
“Uh. Joey? Wasn’t going to. Ass.”
Joey laughed.
I pulled on my dry socks.
It was really weird. Those Pokémon briefs were surprisingly comfortable, and I hadn’t worn briefs since I was in, like, third grade. I put on Joey’s convict pants, pulled on my hoodie, and climbed up into the front seat beside Joey, just as we came to the gas station where we’d lost Chas earlier.
“I feel a lot better,” I said. “I swear I won’t wreck your prison pants.”
“I swear to God I won’t pick up any more psychos.”
“Does that mean we aren’t going to look for Chas?”
We found Chas Becker walking back along the road toward Pine Mountain. He was wearing one of those big plastic yard-leaf bags. He must have gotten it from a sympathetic gas station clerk; and he kind of looked like a big, reflective, black ghost when we passed him.
Joey slammed on the brakes and backed the car up right on the highway until Chas lifted his down-turned head and saw it was us. I started to climb over to the backseat, but Joey grabbed my hood and pulled me back, saying, “No way. I do not want to sit by him, Ryan Dean. Let him sit there.”
The next thing I knew, Chas was tearing off his garbage-bag rain slicker and getting into the backseat.
“You guys are assholes,” Chas said. “I was almost going to call the cops and say you stole my fucking car. Pricks.”
“We tried to find you, Chas,” Joey said. “You took off; it wasn’t our fault.”
I was staying out of it entirely, but after a few seconds, Chas said, “Well, fuck you anyway, Winger. I still don’t think we’re settled about this.”
I just looked at Joey, but I didn’t say anything.
But at that moment, I knew I was going to stay away from Megan Renshaw, even if I also knew how difficult she could make keeping that commitment. And, hell, I knew how weak I was too, and I don’t mind admitting it.
I sighed.
I just had to think about Annie.
It had been such an incredibly long day that started way back when she came into my room while I was still in bed and we went running in the rain together on Bainbridge Island.
Then, all of a sudden, Chas threw my soggy sweatpants and boxers onto the dashboard in front of me, which kind of made Joey swerve the car because it startled him. It sounded like a rump roast being dropped onto a basketball court.
Chas leaned over from the backseat and looked at me.
“Are you naked? What the hell were you two homos doing in my car back here?”
Then we had to tell him the whole story. Well, to be honest, Joey told it to him, because I was shutting up for the rest of the night. And it wasn’t really the whole story, either. Joey told him about the costumes, and then how we picked up Screaming Ned, but he wisely left out the part about getting Chas’s car stuck in a fucking flash flood. He just said I fell in a creek when I was helping Ned get to his house.
So Chas said, “What a total do-gooder dipshit.”
And I left it at that.
But I made him drink pee.
And I made out with his smoking-hot girlfriend too.
Somehow, miraculously, we made it back to O-Hall, and I was finally in bed (although I was sharing my accommodations with a now-lighter bottle of urine—which made me think, as far as a bottle of piss is concerned, are you more of an optimist if you think it’s half-empty?—and a still-unopened FedEx mailer of condoms and porn from my mom).
I was completely, irreversibly, asleep by five o’clock.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
YOU KNOW, THERE IS SOMETHING tragically disappointing in two hours’ sleep after an epic night like that.
So, when the alarm went off at seven, I dreamed I was back in that car, stuck in the river, sitting behind Screaming Ned as he sharpened his meat cleavers.
Chas wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get up and hit the snooze button either, and when I did finally stumble down from the top bunk, I couldn’t figure out how to turn the goddamned thing off, so I just yanked the plug from the wall.
But it was one of those clocks with a battery backup, since we lose power so much in that old dorm, and it kept Screaming-Nedding at me.
So I put it under my pillow.
Think about Annie.
Think about Annie.
I wanted to stay in bed so bad. I knew I was horribly sick from all the crap I’d been through in the past twenty-four hours, but I had to force myself to think about Annie Altman, because I knew I had to get in JP’s way as much as I possibly could for the next three days, before Halloween.
So I had to make myself go to school.
I left a groaning Chas Becker and the door open behind me and stumbled down the hallway toward the showers, dragging my towel along the floor at my feet, with my eyes crusted over and half-closed.
I saw Mr. Farrow standing at his doorway. He cocked his head toward me, kind of like a cat who’d been sprayed in the face with a squirt gun. Then I saw a couple guys coming out of the bathroom, and one of them pointed and started laughing at me.
I looked down.
Oh, yeah.
Pokémon.
Briefs.
Crap.
I am such a loser.
What could I do? I looked at the guys straight on. I kept walking toward the showers.
I said, “Oh yeah. Admit it. You know you want some of these bad boys.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
BUT I MISSED ANNIE AT breakfast, and I barely made it to Conditioning class on time, having to run and attempt to tie a necktie with shaking hands the whole way from O-Hall to the athletics complex.
I was a mess.
That day, getting through my world was like trying to swim in a pool of warm mayonnaise while carrying two bowling balls.
I just had to keep telling myself I could do it, but I had a hard time convincing the tired and sick Ryan Dean West.
I knew ahead of time that I wasn’t going to say anything to Seanie about what I’d done the night before. As great as the story was, I’d have to keep all those things bottled up—how I’d gotten drunk again and made Chas and Casey drink my piss, the drive into Bannock and how Chas started crying and ran away when he found out I’d been making out with his girlfriend, learning about how Casey was gay and had been hitting on Joey, getting our Halloween costumes, and, of course, the lunatic Screaming Ned—and hope I didn’t explode from not being able to tell. Because most of it just wasn’t the kind of stuff I’d want everyone in the whole world finding out about on some new perverted website designed by our demented scrum half.
I had to run in regular tennis shoes in Conditioning class because of what I’d done with my running flats on Bainbridge Island the day before. God! I could not believe that only twenty-four hours had passed since I tore my clothes off in the rain during that run with Annie. Hopefully, my mom would get those new shoes to me by the afternoon, even if she was probably still crying about my growing up, getting taller, having sex, and whatever else she imagined that wasn’t really happening to me.
We were sent out on the three-mile lake run, and this time I d
ecided I was going to stay right there with Seanie and JP. No matter what, I wasn’t going to let JP try to get between me and Seanie, too. Even if they were roommates and we did hate each other, I was going to stay friends with Seanie Flaherty.
We ran three across, with Seanie in the middle of us, slowly, in the back of the pack. It stopped raining, and our legs were splattered with mud to our thighs. I thought if I talked to Seanie the whole way, even about stupid stuff, it would shut JP up and make him mad at the same time.
“Hey, Nutsack, did you guys play cards last night?” Seanie asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, did you win? Did you lose? Did you get drunk? What happened?”
“I’m not saying, Seanie.”
“Dude, one of these days all you guys are going to get thrown out of school for that shit.”
“Oh. Tough break. Throwing me out of O-Hall,” I said. “Casey Palmer played with us.”
Have you ever noticed how, when you’re going into a conversation and you tell yourself ahead of time, do not say anything about X, your mouth will almost automatically start spilling its guts about X before you can do anything to stop it? So I kind of felt my stupid-hungover-cherry-menthol mouth beginning to say, “And Casey Palmer is gay and won’t stop chasing after Joey,” but just in the nick of time steered clear of it and said, “And Casey Palmer . . . won.”
“Why’d you play with that asshole?”
I shrugged.
Shut up, Ryan Dean.
“Hey, by the way,” Seanie said, “did I tell you? I’m taking Isabel to the dance.”
“Nice,” I said. Why the hell did he have to bring that up? “Isabel’s hot.”
(If you happen to have a thing for girls with faint moustaches.)
“You think every girl is hot. Didn’t you get any of that pent-up sexual frustration out of your system at Annie’s house over the weekend?”
(If anything, the weekend made it worse.)
I sighed, picturing Annie and me pressed up against that painted wall in the sawmill. Then I took a dig at JP.