Winger Read online

  Other than that, things were just swell.

  Then I did something I actually, honestly, have not done since I was in, like, fourth grade. I actually, honestly, started to cry.

  I am such a loser. I really didn’t belong here.

  I folded my arm across my eyes. I think only about two tears came out before I got hold of myself and stopped feeling so stupid and useless. Well, maybe I got hold of myself; maybe those two tears drained all the fluid I had left in me. And I just lay there like that until I began hearing the motion of kids on their way to afternoon classes, so I straightened up, put my shoes on, and headed back to the locker room for the last class of the day.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT MADE ME FEEL ALIVE to lace up my rugby boots. As long as they were on me, I could forget about everything else that swirled around inside this 142-pound sack of dehydrated failure.

  I love the sound of all those metal cleats moving around on the cold concrete floor in the locker room. There was something ancient in that noise, the music of a coordinated herd. I sat on the bench between Seanie and JP while we changed. I pulled the folded haiku from my pocket and gave it back to Seanie.

  “You suck at poetry,” I said.

  Seanie was tying up the drawstring inside his shorts.

  “You pissed off Annie, too,” JP said.

  Sometimes, just sometimes, Seanie could be sincere about things. He said, “I’m sorry I told her about you, Ryan Dean. I thought she’d think it was funny too. Really. I’m sorry.”

  JP sat on the bench and pulled his long socks up to his knees.

  “God,” he said, “I’ve been dying to play all summer. I need to hit someone.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “You want to hit me, Ryan Dean?” Seanie asked.

  “Get a ball in front of me on the field and you’re going the other way, yeah,” I said. “Other than that, I don’t think I’d ever hit anyone off the field.”

  “Me too,” JP said.

  And that was all we needed to say to let Seanie know it was okay.

  I couldn’t wait to see Coach McAuliffe—Coach M, we called him—again. He was a little guy, a former winger too, and he was a transplant from England who could talk the most civilized-sounding shit you would ever hear, and he could cuss you out with the most vicious obscenities and it would sound like he was reading from Shakespeare. But Coach M was a die-hard traditionalist as far as the sport was concerned, and everything had to be perfectly maintained that way, from the words we used (and didn’t use, because on the pitch nobody could cuss except for Coach M) when we were around him, to the clothes we wore during practice. He’d make us wear the shortest rugby shorts anyone ever saw. Now, inexperienced observers do not understand why the shorts in rugby have to be the way they are, but just trust me, that’s how they need to be.

  Nowadays, pretty much all the guys wore compression shorts under them anyway, and those would just about go down to our knees, but compression shorts were crucial because you’d almost never make it through a game without getting a square hit, punch, elbow, grab, or sometimes even the bottom of a foot, right in your balls.

  One of the funniest things I ever saw happened when Seanie first started playing after he’d quit the basketball team. Since Seanie was so tall and skinny, Coach M wanted us to try to lift him in lineout practice. A lineout is when the ball gets thrown in from out of bounds and players can lift up a teammate (by his shorts, usually) so he can reach the ball. Well, Seanie, at the time, was just wearing boxers under his shorts, rather than compression shorts, and when the forwards lifted him, he said it felt like his balls ended up in back of his nipples. His eyes bugged out, his hands both went right down to his crotch, and he said, “Ohmyfuckinggod!” Of course, the ball just sailed past him. He had other things on his mind.

  And he never came back to the pitch without some tight compression shorts on under everything.

  We shook hands with the other guys (the team always had to do that) when we passed through the locker room, and the three of us walked together up the hill path that cut between the other practice fields to the rugby pitch. This, of course, took us right beside the fields where the soccer and football teams practiced.

  We always got along well with the soccer team; they tended to be pretty clever with the jokes they’d play on us and were always appreciative of what we’d do to them. But, for whatever reasons, the football team just absolutely hated us. I don’t even think “hate” is a strong enough word for the emotions we stirred in them, which is why two of them had no problem whatever in deciding to put my face in a toilet the day before.

  I figured there was a sort of predictable pattern to a football-player-versus-rugby-player exchange that went something like this: The football player fires a put-down he’d probably been thinking about all day; then the rugby player comes up with an even more-scathing comeback and laughs; then the football player, who can only think of one thing to say and nothing else, says something about wanting to fight and walks away.

  So, as I fully expected, when JP, Seanie, and I passed the football field, Casey Palmer, the quarterback and practically my next-door neighbor in O-Hall, and Nick Matthews, his roommate and coconspirator in the give-Ryan-Dean-a-welcoming-bath-in-the-toilet plot, were standing by the fountain trough at the edge of the sideline, and Casey shouted to us: “Oooh! Rugby players! Nice shorts, gayboys!”

  Good one. What a predictable dipshit.

  And Seanie, as stoic as ever, said, “You wanna know how I know you’re gay, Palmer? ’Cause you got a picture of some guy’s ballsack on your MySite, that’s how! Ha ha!”

  “Are you the one who did that, Flaherty? If you are, I’ll fucking kill you!” Casey yelled back.

  JP and I just looked at each other, and then at Seanie.

  “Does he have a picture of some guy’s balls on his MySite?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Seanie said. “Haven’t you seen it?”

  “No.”

  “No,” JP added.

  Then Seanie just looked at us with his cold reptilian eyes and said, “Okay. It took me about ten straight hours on Friday to hack his password and put that picture on. I guess he hasn’t been able to resolve the issue yet. Maybe he’ll figure it out if he goes home this weekend. I sent a mass e-mail out to everyone on the football team, saying, ‘I wonder why there is a picture of some guy’s nutsack on Casey Palmer’s MySite.’ ”

  JP and I began laughing, staring right at Casey, who looked at that moment like he could kill someone.

  “The best part is, they’re my balls,” Seanie said, absolutely straight-faced. “I have a printout, if you guys want to see it.”

  “Sean Russell Flaherty,” I said. “You are so disturbed.”

  “That’s fucking demented,” JP agreed. “In an elegant way, though. And, no, you don’t have to show me the printout of your balls, Seanie.”

  “Dude, Seanie,” I said. “You put a picture of your own balls on the Internet.”

  “I know.” Seanie actually laughed. Twice. Monotone. Weird.

  “This is probably the best reason I have right now for why I don’t have a MySite,” I said.

  “Oh, but you do have a MySite, my friend,” Seanie said in an incredibly creepy voice. “I’ve seen it. You friended me. And JP’s got one too.”

  “You are fucking kidding me,” JP said. He sounded pissed.

  “Ha ha!” Seanie said, “Yeah. I’m just kidding.”

  And again, that was what was so fucking creepy about Seanie. Who could tell if he really was kidding?

  And then, as we were about halfway up the hill toward the pitch, as if Casey Palmer’s inflated sense of masculinity hadn’t been assailed enough, we all heard a soft, familiar voice with an English accent say, “Why are you boys staring at my players’ asses?” Because I guess Casey and Nick just kept watching us as we walked up the hill.

  Coach M knew what was up. He’d never let the football team get away with any shit on us.

&nb
sp; Not ever.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PRACTICE WAS LIGHT. COACH M said we weren’t going to start hitting until he could see what he had; and I was okay with that because I was weak and felt so shitty after what I’d gone through.

  We ran through a usual warm-up: a slow jog, some stretches, a few quick-hands passing drills, then we ran some forties and suicides, and that’s when Coach M noticed that I was definitely not the fastest guy out there.

  He said, “Did you slow down over the summer, Winger? You’re going to need to put on some speed if you expect to keep your job.”

  And that made me feel even worse, because not only did I screw things up for myself and Annie, but I let Coach M down too. So, before we broke up into teams for a little touch sevens, I asked Coach M if I could talk to him.

  “I’m sorry, Coach, I’m just really sick today. I’ll be back up to speed tomorrow.”

  “What’s the matter, Ryan Dean?”

  “I just . . .” And then, “Last night was my first night in Opportunity Hall. And I couldn’t sleep at all. I feel horrible.” It wasn’t really a lie.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I understand, Ryan Dean. Let’s hope you can get your shit straightened out this year and get out of O-Hall.”

  See? That’s just how he talks, but it sounds so musical and soothing with that English accent. And then he added, “Before Chas Becker turns you into an asshole.”

  Coach M picked four guys to be team captains, and then we had a little sevens tournament. Sevens is a scaled-down version of rugby where there are only seven, as opposed to fifteen, players on a team. And we were playing touch instead of tackle, so the entire game was really based on speed and ball handling.

  I was still surprised, though, when Joey, who is our regular Backs Captain, picked me first to be on his team. JP was also on our team, along with a couple centers and some of the second-string loose forwards.

  Seanie actually ended up on a team with Chas and Kevin, so I knew the games would be really competitive, and, when it came down to the end, it was our two teams in the final match. I scored first off a sweet fake-loop pass from Joey, because as soon as I had that ball in my hands I was gone. But that was all we managed to put up, and Chas’s team came back with three unanswered scores to win the tournament.

  Sometimes, losing in rugby is more fun than winning. On that day, at the end of practice, Coach M made the three losing squads jog down to the practice fields and sing a song to the football team. Joey led us, and we all decided to sing “Oh! Susanna,” but we changed “Susanna” to “Casey.” And we are horrible singers, but we sing really loud, so Casey and the other football players couldn’t do anything about it. They tried to ignore us, but they were helpless, and all they could manage to do was fire out comments like “What a bunch of faggots.”

  When we were finished, some of the football players actually clapped. At least they got it, that it was all in fun and that if you messed with the rugby team, we were going to mess right back. But it wasn’t a threatening or intimidating “messing with”—it was always meant to show that we could take a joke, and joke back, too.

  Casey started it with his “nice shorts” comment at the start of practice, and now he had to endure being the object of our serenading. When we finished the first verse and one chorus, we jogged down to the locker room.

  The day had finally ended, and as I sat down on the bench and took off my cleats, the horrible day I’d had came back to me, and I thought again about what a loser I was already turning out to be on the first day of my eleventh-grade year.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I THREW MY CLOTHES ON without showering. I could do that back at O-Hall, even though the showers here in the locker room were so much cleaner and more private. But all I wanted to do was get away from school and deposit myself into bed. So I just wadded up my gear and stuffed it into my locker. I put my sweater inside my backpack and sloppily hung my tie over my shoulders without even buttoning or tucking in my shirt. The day was over, and now it didn’t matter if we were dressed properly or not.

  I didn’t even wait for Seanie and JP to get out of the showers. I shook hands with a few of the guys as I left the locker room.

  I guess it was about four thirty when I made my way down the hill on the path toward the lake. I could see some people walking around the campus below, but most kids at that time of day were either back in their dorms or finishing up whatever team sports were being practiced in September.

  I noticed Joey walking on the path, maybe about a hundred yards ahead of me, obviously heading back to O-Hall too. But when he got down to the football field, I saw Casey and Nick step out of a crowd of players who were standing around doing nothing (which is what most football players do all practice) and run over to Joey. And I could tell just by the way they were moving that they were looking to start shit with Joey, so I turned around, but no one else from the rugby team was walking down from the locker room yet.

  Great.

  Me and Joey versus the entire steroid-crazed-dumbass football team.

  I started walking faster. Casey and Nick didn’t even notice I was coming. They looked up the hill toward the locker room as Joey got closer, but who would notice my skinny-bitch-ass body coming down that way? Or, if they did notice me, what would it matter to them, anyway?

  Then I saw Casey, puffing his chest out, walk right up to Joey and push him hard, knocking Joey back. And Casey said, “You think you’re funny with your song, queer?”

  I threw my backpack down and ran as fast as I could.

  I knew Joey would fight. He wasn’t afraid of anyone. You had to be like that to be a fly half, and I’m sure that Joey had been hit square against his unpadded body at least a thousand times more than Casey ever had. But I wasn’t going to let him get gang-jumped by those assholes.

  So I ran faster than I did in practice. I had to. And just as Joey was making a fist, Nick was circling behind him, and Casey was in the process of throwing the first punch, I launched myself, head up and shoulder down, right into Casey’s knees and wrapped my arms around his legs, driving him, crashing, to the ground.

  I sprang up off Casey.

  Casey said, “What the fuck?” and he punched me in the face just as I got to my feet, knocking me down into Joey.

  And just then, one of the football coaches saw what was happening and yelled at us to cut it out. The coach just stood there, down the field, holding a clipboard and spitting tobacco, watching us like he was too lazy to come over and see if this was really a fight or not.

  All I can say is that if Coach M had seen what I did, my ass would be done. Over. Off the team. Kicked out of school.

  “What the fuck you think you’re doing, you little piece of shit?”

  I could only assume Casey Palmer was talking to me.

  Then I noticed my chest was covered in blood and my unbuttoned, once-white school uniform shirt was splattered with red. My knees buckled. I had to sit down.

  Okay, I thought, this was it. I had done as much to my body as it could take in the last twenty-four hours. Now I was surely dying. I prepared myself to look into the tunnel of light and see my great-grandma and the little Chihuahua dog I had when I was four that got run over by a UPS van.

  Well, they didn’t both get run over by the UPS van, but you know what I mean.

  Then I heard a whistle, and the football coach screamed at Casey and Nick to get back over to their standing-around drill, and I knew I wasn’t dead, but my nose was bleeding pretty good.

  “God. I am such an idiot,” I said.

  “Why the fuck did you do that?” Joey sounded pissed off.

  “Overlap. Two on one.”

  I slipped my shirt off and held it over my face. I pulled it back and looked. I wasn’t bleeding so bad anymore.

  Maybe I was empty.

  “You better get cleaned up, or you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

  I wiped off the blood as much as I could with my
ruined shirt and stood up.

  “I’ll just say it happened in practice,” I said. “Tackling a guy. It’s the truth.”

  I’d gotten more bloody noses playing rugby than I could count.

  Well, actually, I only have one nose that’s been bloodied, but it has happened dozens of times.

  “God. I am so done for today.”

  I balled up my shirt and stuffed it into my backpack. I took off for O-Hall just as I saw the guys from our team coming out from the locker room and making their way down the hill.

  Joey just stood there at the edge of the football field, looking at those assholes practice, waiting for our teammates to catch up to him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE WATER ON THE TILES in the shower stall turned pink around my feet where the dried blood washed down from my body. When it was finally clear, I turned the water to full cold and stood there for thirty seconds. It almost made me scream. I toweled off and went to bed.

  It was five o’clock.

  I lay there with my books, finishing the small amount of homework I’d been assigned—just a couple review problems in Calculus. Then I opened a paperback and began reading. We were supposed to read “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and write a response paper on it, but I had until Wednesday. So I read the first page, then put it down beside my pillow and stared up at the ceiling.

  I love the way Hawthorne said things. I wished that I could also find “no better occupation than to look down into the garden” beneath my window, but I had, in such a short time, gotten myself so occupied with crap that I lay there convinced there was no way I would make it through my eleventh-grade year.

  I opened my notebook and wrote a letter to Annie. Even if I never gave it to her, at least I felt like I could write down what I wished I could tell her. In true Ryan Dean West fashion, I drew a Venn diagram on the note, trying to explain to her something about myself, the little boy, hoping that maybe she would realize what I thought was so obvious about the people we deal with, who are all around us, everywhere and every day. And as soon as I’d written the first couple of sentences, I reread them and they sounded so pathetic and lost that I just tore the page from my notebook and threw it away.