“I DON’T GET IT, RYAN Dean. Why, exactly, do I need to take condoms with me to the airport?” Annie asked.
It was a fair question.
To be honest, I hadn’t quite gotten around to telling her that I was going to be the one who’d be driving (or attempting to drive) her to PDX and that Seanie was staying at Pine Mountain to take care of his—air quotes—concussion.
I had all kinds of work cut out for me.
Nico, who’d gone to Conditioning class with me—well, not with me, since we were not friends—had been hanging out with Coach M in the gym, waiting for us to get out for lunch. I’d loaned him some of my gym clothes that morning, and he worked out with us. It was kind of sad, to be honest, because running with Nico along the lake trail felt so much like running with his brother, Joey. Except unlike Joey, we didn’t really talk much on the run. Nico was an athlete too. You can just see that in guys sometimes. He must be a hell of a rugby player, I thought.
So my persuasive speech to Annie Altman about having sex with me went something like this: “What if Seanie’s car breaks down and the only option the four of us have is to stay in a motel room together, and the motel is supercreepy and you can tell by looking at it that it is totally haunted, but the haunted motel only has rooms with king-size beds in them, and there are only two rooms available, and there’s no way you’d stay in one by yourself, but you’d never share a room with Nico, who is a stranger, or Seanie, who is gross and has a head wound, and so we finally have our opportunity to be somewhere where we can have the right kind of consensual sex, but we can’t decide on names for the baby even if it is nine months from now, but you know how we promised—and not just because Mrs. Blyleven made all us boys sign a Condom Promise—that we would use condoms the first time we do it, but mine are still in that FedEx package my mom sent me last year, which is in O-Hall, and I’m way too creeped out to break into O-Hall because there are ravenous man-eating raccoons living in there? Have you ever thought about that, Annie?” I asked.
“No, Ryan Dean, strangely enough, I have not ever thought about that. And besides, Seanie’s car is brand new. I don’t think you should count on it breaking down next to a haunted motel.”
We were whispering in the hallway before Foods—er, Culinary Arts—class.
“Still, it could happen.”
Annie laughed. And I’ll admit it, between my having-sex-in-a-haunted-motel plot synopsis and her laugh, I was getting a bit . . . well, worked up. So I said, “Trust me, Annie. I have a plan.”
Just then, sadly enough, the Abernathy, weighed down with a school backpack as big as a fourth grader, all shiny shoed and perfectly parted hair, swallowed up in a necktie and impeccably creased dress shirt, came marching excitedly down the hallway.
“Hi, Ryan Dean! Hi, Annie! Happy Friday!” he yipped.
I held up my flattened traffic-cop palm. “No. Do not talk to my girlfriend.”
Annie pushed my chest, which made Copilot Two even more determined to taxi onto the runway. I had to nonchalantly adjust myself, which is ridiculously impossible to be nonchalant about in a high school hallway standing in front of a twelve-year-old Cub Scout.
Annie smiled and said, “Stop it, Ryan Dean.”
Which made me even more insane.
• • •
“Hey, Nico, there are some bottles of water back there for you if you’re thirsty,” I said.
“Thanks, bro. I’m not thirsty,” Nico said.
“I really think you should drink a few bottles. I heard that hydration is superimportant when you’re riding in the backseat of a Land Rover.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Nico said.
Damn. I really wanted Nico to make me pull over so he could pee and so I could then abandon him. Well, I’d come back for him eventually.
“How about we stop for some coffee?” I said.
“Ryan Dean, how can we possibly stop? You haven’t even started the car yet,” Annie pointed out.
It was a valid point.
And she added, “Are you sure you’re okay with driving Seanie’s car?”
“Seanie’s car and I have honestly and openly discussed the matter, and we both enthusiastically granted our consent,” I said. “The only thing is, I’m not really sure how to turn her on.”
Annie shook her head and groaned.
Nico was either relatively clueless or ignoring me, or maybe both.
“No. Really. I have never been in a car that doesn’t have one of those things you stick a key in,” I said. “In fact, Seanie’s car doesn’t even have a key.”
“Why don’t you try pushing that button there?” Nico, who was sitting in the backseat—which made me jealous in an embarrassed kind of way—reached between us and pointed to an illuminated red button in the dashboard:
The engine came to life, and I sat there momentarily constructing a diagram of all the reasons why I should hate Nico Cosentino.