Discard

But when we got back to O-Hall and we saw the painfully unhot Mary-Todd-Mrs.-Singer standing on the stairs (which was the first time I’d ever seen Mrs. Singer in the presence of any of the other guys, so I was a little relieved to finally know she was real), I found out something that was almost unbelievable.

So, to me, the “I don’t care what you boys do” part was as good as a permission slip for us to go to the dance.

Casey Palmer was a dangerous psychopath.

I didn’t really want to be alone with them when they opened the bags and saw what we got for them to wear, so I was glad when the convict-striped Joey appeared down the hallway, walking toward my open door.

Casey Palmer just moped along with us, stung and angry, wearing that cheesy elastic-band-highly-flammable-carcinogenic-plastic Wonder Woman mask and dangling about a yard-and-a-half-long cord of gold lame from his right hand.

It was hard to recognize anyone else, because I didn’t know what kids were wearing what costumes, and the place was so dark and crowded. I decided I’d have to do my duty and fully check out every single girl there—and, potentially, every cross-dresser—until I found Annie.

Still, I was glad for mine, especially when I’d get the incidental brush-up from a girl. It was by far the best costume there.

“I came to apologize to you again, Seanie. And I’m going to apologize to JP, too. I know we’re probably never going to be friends again, not like we were, but I’m sorry for starting a fight and then getting you caught in the middle of it.”

I held out my hand, and Seanie shook it. I could tell by the way he squeezed that everything was okay with him. Guys can just tell things about other guys with the pressure of a handshake.

We got real close, and I held on to Megan’s hips, which, now that I think about it, was a huge mistake, because I suddenly forgot everything in the world except for how incredibly hot (and I don’t mean thermally hot) she was.

“You are a better person for it, Megan. You are beautiful and brilliant, and nobody who sees that in you ever stopped for a minute to consider how you had beaten all the other girls at Pine Mountain to win the dubious prize of Chas Becker.”

“Annie sure is lucky,” she said. “You’re the best person I know.” I didn’t know what to say to that. It felt terrible and amazingly wonderful all at the same time. It sure sounded nicer than “adorable.”

I felt embarrassed and stupid as I backed away through all the dressed-up dancers.

Kids get in trouble for kissing at Pine Mountain, so you have to be discreet. And the best place to be discreet was out there in the middle of the dance floor, so the Wild Boy of Bainbridge Island took a tight squeeze on Annie’s hand, so we wouldn’t get separated, and I pulled her out through the crowd and into the deepest, darkest, wildest kiss we ever had.

Something happened. I knew Joey would tell me about it later and that it was probably something ridiculous, too. Casey Palmer was on a tirade, no doubt.

He looked intrigued, but at the same time he kind of knew I was playing a joke on him.

So I jumped up in the air and gave my best howling impersonation of my scrawny-Boston-lawyer dad imitating Roger Daltrey.

That’s how these dorm rooms were: Everyone had his own—private—bedroom, and two or three of them would connect to a common living room and a bathroom, so it was a lot more private and a lot more like living at home than the prisonlike atmosphere of O-Hall’s barracks.

Maybe I was still a little sensitive about the whole JP thing, but hearing him say that really did sting a little.

He was an intense guy, and I couldn’t expect him to just forget about everything.

And then she admitted it to JP before she ever got close to telling me. Maybe she wanted to see if she could fight it. Maybe she wanted to wait for me to break down and say it first, like it wasn’t so goddamned obvious anyway.

I may not have succeeded, but I did what I needed to do. At least I tried to make things right with the victims of the Wild Boy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

I was summoned to the headmaster’s office.

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.

So when I was finished talking about Joey, Doc Mom said, “Okay, Ryan Dean, I am not a therapist anymore. Now I’m just a mom.”

What happened to Joey messed me up worse than anything I ever had to recover from.

I know it’s kind of ridiculous, but I realize now how wrong that old pervert Mr. Wellins is. Almost nothing at all is ever about sex, unless you never grow up, that is. It’s about love, and, maybe, not having it. What an old, delusional idiot he is.

There are plenty of words I can put on paper, words I can see with my eyes and scribble with my hand, that I never had the guts to say with my mouth.

You know how when you’re a senior in high school, and you officially know absolutely everything about everything and no one can tell you different, but on the other hand, at the same time, you’re dumber than a poorly translated instruction manual for a spoon?

It had somehow failed to sink in to my soiled-napkin brain that my last year’s roommates, Chas Becker and Kevin Cantrell, had graduated from Pine Mountain and moved on to the fertile breeding grounds of adulthood, leaving me roommateless, condemned to a single-size room with two beds in it, and matched up with Joe Randomkid

Scene: A very small ground-floor room in the boys' dorm at Pine Mountain Academy, a prestigious prep school for future deviants and white-collar criminals, located in the Cascades of Oregon

One of them contained all my clothes and boy stuff—you know, deodorant and the razor Dad sent me last fall that was still as unnecessary as ever—and the other had school supplies, some brand new bedsheets, and a microwave oven, which I had no idea why they’d insisted I bring along.

I lugged in the big canvas duffel bag filled with all my rugby gear that was soon to be packed away in my locker over at the sports complex.

So we’d had to stop at a department store in this little town called Bannock, which is about twenty minutes from Pine Mountain, to get some sheets, and the only ones they had that would fit my dorm bed following the incoming rush of PM brats were pink flannel and decorated with a winged unicorn who, according to the inscription beneath her glinting hooves, was named Princess Snugglewarm. Yeah. It was going to be a great year, wasn’t it?