“If they ask for a milkshake I’m telling them it’s broken,” Ryan said immediately. “No way am I cleaning it twice in one night.”
He watched as a girl hopped out of the passenger side of the wagon and trotted across the patio toward the order window. She was wearing jeans and big glasses and a parka with one of those fake fur hoods on it, her dark hair up in a massive bun at the top of her head. “Oh,” Nate said, sliding the window open. “That’s Chelsea. Hey, Chelsea!” he called, waving cheerfully. “How are you?”
“Hey, Nate.” The girl, Chelsea, smiled. She went to their school, Ryan knew, though he didn’t think they’d ever had any classes together. Ryan was not exactly on what one would call an accelerated track. “Are you guys open?”
“Definitely,” Ryan heard himself say, sticking his hand right out through the window to shake hers. “I’m Ryan.”
The girl smirked. “I know who you are, Ryan.”
“Oh.” Ryan blushed. God, heblushed. Ryan never blushed. But something about the way Chelsea was looking at him made him feel like he was wildly out of his depth. “Okay. Well.” He looked back at her for a moment, smiled his most charming smile. All of a sudden his head didn’t hurt at all. “Can I get you a milkshake?”
RYAN
“Do you know Chelsea Rosen?” Ryan asked Gabby the next day, plunking his lunch tray down next to hers in the cafeteria.
“Did you seriously get three pork chops?” Gabby said instead of answering. This was the first year they’d had the same lunch period, and Ryan thought they were both kind of getting used to it: they still only ate with each other about half the time, since she refused to come sit with his friends and sometimes spent the entire period in the library reading about the Tudors. Still, he was always glad when he spied her wispy blond ponytail across the cafeteria, for the chance to pick her brain about what to get his mom for her birthday or a new show he’d seen on TV. They didn’t hang out alone as much—or hang out as much, period—since she’d started dating Shay. It wasn’t that Ryan was jealous or anything like that. He’d put his dumb crush on Gabby to bed as quick as humanly possible—or had tried to, at least. He didn’t begrudge her her girlfriend. He justmissedher sometimes.
“Chelsea Rosen is in my gym class, but I don’t really know her. I try never to make eye contact with anyone in gym,” Gabby continued now, unwrapping her wheat-bread turkey sandwich. “I think she works at Arcade World.” She raised her eyebrows. “Why?”
Ryan shrugged, tucking that piece of information into hisback pocket for later use. “No reason. She came by Walter’s last night. She seemed nice.”
“Sure,” Gabby said, rolling her eyes like she thoughtnicewas probably a euphemism. She was always super dismissive of the other girls in his life, which sometimes felt a little unfair to Ryan. It wasn’t like she wanted to be dating him herself, clearly. But she also never seemed to think particularly highly of girls who did.
In any case, Ryan didn’t take the bait. “You wanna do something tonight?” he asked instead, digging into his mashed potatoes. He didn’t get why everybody always said school lunch was disgusting. “I’ve got a game, but after that? Go bowling?”
“I can’t,” Gabby said. “Shay’s got a cello thing. Her teacher is this super-fancy old guy who lives in a big mansion in Katonah, and every December he has all his best students come for a recital and then a reception.”
Well, that sounded horrible. Still: “You want company?” Ryan heard himself ask. He’d go to some nerdy concert, if that’s what she was doing. After all, it wasn’t exactly like he’d started hanging out with her because of the super-fun activities she was always getting up to. Their entire friendship was built around playing Monopoly. “I’ll tag along.”
“You want tocome?” Gabby looked like he’d suggested accompanying her to the gynecologist. “I mean, sure, if you want, but it’s not really your bag.”
That annoyed him a little. “Why?” Ryan asked, poppingthe top on his Mountain Dew. “Because I’m a moron and you’re erudite?”
“What?” Gabby said quickly, shaking her head. “No, stop. That’s not what I meant. Of course you’re not a moron.”
“I know I’m not,” Ryan said. “I just usederuditein a sentence.” It had been the word of the day on the app he’d downloaded, which sent a push notification to his phone every morning. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d pronounced it correctly. Still, it bugged him, the idea that Gabby thought there were certain things he automatically wouldn’t like or appreciate. He felt like she thought it more now that she was with Shay.
“You did, it’s true.” Gabby was smiling now. “Okay,” she said after a moment, reaching across the table and breaking off half of his chocolate chip cookie. “Yeah, come along. It’ll be fun.”
RYAN
He had a game against Hudson High that afternoon, up at the ice center near the river. Hudson was the only team in their league Ryan actually hated playing, a bunch of dickbags with faces like bulldogs and attitudes to match. They weren’t even that good, but their defensemen were all fucking giants, like the bad guys in an ’80s sports movie about the Cold War. Last time Colson had played them one of theirwingers had wound up with a broken collarbone; a couple years ago, one of Hudson’s players hit aref.
“All right, dudes,” Ryan said to the rest of the guys as they all huddled around the bench before the puck drop. It was his third season on varsity, and he was co-captain now. He’d never thought of himself as much of a leader, but Coach Harkin had the captains take turns talking at the beginning and end of every game, and Ryan always really liked pepping everybody up, telling them all what he thought they were good at and what they needed to focus on to beat a particular team. Sometimes he thought he liked that part more than actually playing. “You ready?”
It was an ugly game from the second the clock started. Colson was behind from the very beginning, their stick handling sloppy, their passes sluggish and slow. Ryan felt like he had lead in his skates. He could hear his dad’s voice in his head, just like he always could when things weren’t going well on the ice, sure as if the guy was sitting in the stands calling his name:The hell kind of hustle is that, kid? Why are you wasting my time?
Ryan shook his head, trying to focus. He knew his plays forward and backward, should have been able to skate through this defensive line in his sleep. But the truth was he was distracted: he kept thinking about that pile of bills next to the fridge in the kitchen, about what might happen if he couldn’t nail down a scholarship come next year. He knew that thinking about it was only going to make things worsefor him. But he couldn’t put it out of his mind.
Things got a little better in the second period; Colson managed to tie it up, the puck slipping past Hudson’s goalie and hitting the net with a satisfying whoosh. Ryan was headed back across the center line, stopping briefly to bump his glove against his buddy Remy’s, when one of Hudson’s wingers checked Colson’s center, a scrappy freshman named Jeremy, hard enough to send him sprawling to the ice.
“Shit,” Ryan said, though Remy didn’t even take a moment to swear before he flew at the winger, fists waving, his hockey stick clattering to the ice. Then two Hudson defensemen threw themselves onRemy, and half a second later both teams were piled up in the center of the rink, gloves and sticks and legs and skates in a whirling tangle like a cartoon cyclone.“Shit,”Ryan said again, his own voice echoing inside his helmet, and skated right into the middle of the fray.
RYAN
The house in Katonah was in fact huge, a sprawling Victorian monstrosity with gingerbread scrollwork in the eaves and a wraparound porch and a turret. It smelled like flowers inside, and a little like death. Shay’s recital was being held in the formal living room, which was so big Ryan was fairly sure you could have fit several of his own house inside it. Rows of wooden folding chairs were set up facing a massivestone fireplace. He wondered if he should have worn a tie. His head hurt; he’d caught a skate to the side of the skull during the fight this afternoon, although that didn’t feel like a thing he ought to complain about too much. He’d played it off with Harkin in the locker room; ever since his trip to the hospital last year, he’d felt like the guy was watching him extra closely, and the last thing he needed now was to get benched.
“Hi!” Shay said when she spotted Gabby and him, edging around the clusters of arty-looking parents in their dark overcoats and expensive scarves. She was wearing a white top and a stretchy black skirt, and she looked nerdier than she usually did—she looked, actually, like the kind of person who would take cello lessons for thirteen years—which made Ryan feel less threatened by her than normal. She kissed Gabby hello, nudged Ryan in the elbow. “Thanks for coming, dude.”
