I DRAGGED MYSELF THROUGH UNIT 113’s doorway, wondering if it would even be possible to lie in my bed and not feel pain.
The Abernathy, all soccer-jammied-up, was already there watching television, wrapped in his blankets next to the open fucking window. And what a surprise—it was the Cooking Channel.
Mrs. O’Hare would probably dock me points for not calling it the Culinary Arts Channel.
“Hi, Ryan Dean. Want some popcorn?”
“No.”
Watch. Watch. Watch.
I sat on the edge of my bed and snaked off my belt, acutely aware that I was unable to bend forward enough to untie my shoes. I kicked them off and stiffly unbuttoned my shirt.
The Abernathy was still watching me, as opposed to paying attention to the riveting feature about marmalade preservation.
“Is something wrong?”
Duh. My ribs hurt so bad, I couldn’t even take my pants off. I was not about to ask Sam Abernathy to lend a hand. I lay down on my bed, a mess of unbuttoned, unfastened school clothes.
“No.”
Why, I wondered, was it the case that every syllable from the Abernathy’s lips was like a little rusty knife stabbing into my side?
“Stop . . . talk—talking to me.”
“Is that why you’re sleeping in your clothes? Because you’re drunk? I heard some of the forwards talking about getting drunk and smoking marijuana with Spotted John. So if you did, you can trust me. I won’t tell anyone.”
What kid says “marijuana”? And anyway, Spotted John was from Denmark. That explained everything, right?
Still, I refused to engage. Also, my pain receptors, like the larva in soccer pajamas, refused to quiet down.
“How’s your knee?”
NO.
Look, I knew it was going to be a long season and a rough year. The Abernathy wasn’t making things any easier for me either. The simple truth is that number ten—the stand-off—gets hit more often than any player on a rugby team, so I couldn’t reasonably count on being out of pain until May or June. I was also well aware that there was nothing that could be done for injured ribs besides taking painkillers of some kind. I was desperate, too—desperate enough to actually say something to Sam Abernathy.
Painkillers.
That was it. Legendary rule breaker and future Prince of Denmark Spotted John Nygaard could hook me up. I should have thought of it before getting halfway out of my clothes and lying down. I rolled over and slid my knees down to the floor. I thought about slipping my shoes back onto my feet, but the thought was enough to sway me over to the hell-no camp.
“Ryan Dean! You are drunk, aren’t you?”
“No. Shut—shut up.”
I heard the soft little sound of Abernathy feet hitting the floor behind me.
“Are you okay? Do you need help? Are you going to make vomit?”
Who says “make vomit”?
“No. I . . . my ribs . . . I think I crack—cracked them.”
I groaned and stood up. Sam Abernathy’s baby cow eyes were as big as billiard balls.
“Oh my gosh, Ryan Dean! Oh my gosh!”
Holding up my pants, I slid my socked feet toward the door.
“If . . . If you say . . . anything to Coach . . . about this, our claus—claustrophobia truce ends. Got it?”
And the Abernathy repeated, “Oh my gosh, Ryan Dean!”
“Let me back in . . . when I . . . knock.”
“Where are you going, Ryan Dean? Do you need help? Can I come with you?”
“No.”
I didn’t even have the strength to grab my room key from my little desk.
I left.
Spotted John Nygaard’s room was on the sixth floor, a level in the caste of Pine Mountain that I was destined only to look up to from my untouchable earthbound banishment in the wasteland called Abernathy.
Some random kid with a ketchup stain on his shirt was waiting for the elevator. He looked me up and down and said, “You missing a few articles of clothing, dude?”
Funny.
And I said, “Did you miss your fucking mouth with that french fry, asshole?”
Well, to be honest, I thought about saying that, but I didn’t.
I buttoned my beltless pants, which wouldn’t stay up because I’d dropped a few pounds, and then I did that elevator thing where you just stare directly ahead at the crack in the door and wonder when the fuck the random ketchup-stain kid is going to get the hell out of my elevator. And when the random kid got out at floor three, I flipped him off. After the doors were closed, though.
That’s how I roll when I have busted ribs, an open (but unstained) shirt, and only one sock on.
Daring.
And my greatest fear was that Seanie Flaherty would be standing in the hallway when I got out of the elevator. He and JP Tureau also lived on the celestial floor six, which I had been to a couple of times but always imagined as some kind of endless pleasure dome of fun, which was a stupid thing to fantasize about, being that there were only boys on the sixth floor and this was Pine Mountain, where pleasure domes—like campfires, kissing, and cell phones—were against the rules.
Luckily for me, the hallway was empty except for the potted palms on either side of the elevator. And then I found myself momentarily seething with jealousy over the sixth floor’s foliage, when all floor one had was a claustrophobic, insane twelve-year-old who wore soccer pajamas and knew how to make hollandaise sauce from scratch. Unfortunately for me, there was a sock slung over Spotted John’s doorknob, which I understood to be the internationally accepted boys’ dorm symbol for “keep out.”
Keep out, unless it’s an emergency, right?
And as I stood there, debating whether or not to actually ignore The Sock, I thought, Hey . . . convenient. I could use an extra sock right about now.
And then I wondered if it was clean and if I could actually stand the pain of putting it on.
Gross.
I decided to bury Spotted John’s sock in a shallow, unmarked grave in one of the potted palms.
And again, as luck—or the absolute absence of luck—would have it, just as I was finishing up my sock funeral, the elevator doors slid open and out walked Seanie Flaherty and JP Tureau.
“Ryan Dean! Why are you digging in our palm tree? And why are you practically naked?” Seanie Flaherty said.
“And are you even allowed up here?” JP added.
I had to think on my feet, one of which was bare.
“I . . . uh . . . need some palm . . . root . . . for Cu—Culinary Arts class.”
Brilliant.
JP stared at me. He could tell he hurt me at practice; I knew it. Then he leaned over the potted palm’s pot and looked at me, then at my bare foot, then at me again.
“And why are you burying your sock in our palm tree?” he asked.
Seanie saw it too. He shook his head. “Dude. That’s so fucking gross. Why don’t you just throw your special sock in the trash, like a normal guy would do?”
Seanie made air quotes with his fingers when he said “special sock.”
“It’s not . . . my . . . sock.”
Which was probably the worst thing I could say.
“Dang,” Seanie said. “Snack-Pack’s got some big feet.”
“I hate . . . hate you . . . Seanie.”
Then Seanie Flaherty gave me his creepier-than-usual creepy Seanie Flaherty expression and backed toward his doorway.
“Well, it was nice seeing you, and, uh, your sock, Ryan Dean. Or Snack-Pack’s sock. Whatever. It’s all okay with me.”
Seanie made air quotes when he said “okay.”
And he continued, “I’d invite you in to kick it with some TV or shit, but you probably need to finish doing what you were doing with your sock. Or whoever’s sock. Or getting dressed. Or whatever. Dude.”