I opened my door and looked down. The water rushed past the car’s running boards so fast, it looked like we were in a motorboat or something. I could see how the back wheels were spinning uselessly, kicking back rooster tails of mud in the dark.

I knew I’d end up getting soaked, which wasn’t a good idea, so I slipped off my socks and shoes and left them on the car seat. Then I pulled up the legs of my sweatpants as high as I could and stepped out into the cold and muddy flow.

Ned screamed again.

Damn, he had quite a set of pipes for an old guy.

I waded around to the back of the SUV, already wet up to my waist.

I yelled up to Joey, “Stop gunning it. I’m going to look for something to wedge under the wheels.”

Ned gave me an approving “EEEEEYYYYAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!”

I paused.

I slogged up to Joey’s window and knocked on it. The water was streaming into the rip in my sweats, pulling them away like a drift net. I hoped salmon didn’t bite.

I knocked on Joey’s window again.

He lowered it halfway.

“Joey,” I said.

Ned screamed, and Joey tensed and closed his eyes like it physically hurt him.

“Suppose I had a gun. With only one bullet in it. And I gave it to you. Would you shoot Ned, me, or yourself?” I laughed. Life doesn’t present a guy with too many the-lady-or-the-tiger kinds of lessons.

Joey flipped me off and raised his window.

Ned wailed.

Through the open back door, I heard Joey say, “Fuck!” It sounded kind of nice. It lifted my spirits.

I waded away. I actually considered, momentarily, just leaving Joey and Screaming Ned there, so I could become the Wild Boy of the Eighth Circle of Hell, but I did want to get back to Pine Mountain and Annie and a certain kid of French descent whose dreams still needed some serious crushing.

And, besides, we had another rugby game coming up that week, and the team would never be able to get by without Kevin, our winger, and our starting fly half.

When I got out of the creek we were stuck in, I found enough fallen tree bark and rocks to begin making sufficient braces all around the rear wheels. On the first trip back to the car, though, I fell down in the river, so I took my hoodie off and tossed it onto the backseat with my shoes and socks. No sense getting everything I owned soaked and muddy. I knew it was stupid, because I was sick, but I figured I’d be able to scrounge up something dry to wear among our new Halloween costumes.

Everything looked ready to go. I waded to the car and told Joey to try backing out, and that I’d stand away and watch. Before I closed my door, Ned screamed again, and then I said, “And, Joey? We are either going back to the store or I’m not getting in this car ever again. It’ll be you and Ned. Alone.”

Joey didn’t say anything.

I closed the back door and walked over to the side of the mud road.

The rain slowed to a drizzle, but the level of the creek didn’t change at all.

The SUV’s reverse lights came on.

Slowly, shakily, Joey got Chas’s car unstuck. He backed it up to the side of the road, where I was waiting for him. I got in the backseat, dripping and shivering.

It was three in the morning.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

NED STOPPED SCREAMING WHEN WE got back to the store.

Joey didn’t say a word the whole way there. And I just sat in the backseat with my arms hugged across my bare chest, smiling all the time because of how stupid we were for trying to do a good deed for a lunatic like Ned.

The worst part of the whole experience—no, wait . . . it wasn’t the worst part, because being stuck in the car with Screaming Ned was worse, and something even worse than that, still, was going to happen to me before the night was over.

So, okay, a pretty screwed-up part of the whole experience happened when we took Ned back to the store. I guess I truly did look like the Wild Boy of the Eighth Circle of Hell, because I was soaked and covered in mud, barefoot and shirtless, with my boxers hanging out from a gaping hole in my torn sweatpants that were pulled up past my bony kneecaps; and the store manager laughed at us when we offered to pay for a cab for the old fucker. He asked us if “Screaming Ned” had played his old funny trick again where he’d take foolish do-gooders out to the middle of the forest and scare the living shit out of them.

And we said . . . uh . . . um . . . no?

Oh, yeah. He said Screaming Ned was a regular fucking celebrity in Bannock.

And the manager laughed at us and walked Ned (Two steps. Lift. Set. Two steps. Lift. Set.) next door, to the donut shop owned by Screaming Ned’s fucking alcoholic son, who had been sleeping behind the counter while Ned did his performance art on me and Joey.

Yeah, I don’t think Joey would have even batted an eye if I told him I was going to throw a shopping cart through the window of that goddamned donut shop.

When we left, I got into the backseat again.

Joey said, “The water’s all gone from up front, Ryan Dean. You can sit up here.”

“I need to get some dry clothes on, Joey. And there was no way I was about to get undressed in front of Screaming Ned. I’m going to break down and do it, Joey. I’m freezing, and I’m going to put on some of those Pokémon briefs.”

Now, that was the worst part of the whole Screaming Ned episode.

Anyway, it was a three-pack, and I was pretty sure Chas wouldn’t count to see if one was missing.

“Joey,” I said as he started the car (finally!) along on its way out of the parking lot. “Please turn up the heater. And, by the way, I’ve never been completely naked in a car alone with a gay guy before.”

There was this raw-meat sucking sound as I tore my sweats and boxers down over my feet.

Joey laughed. “Neither have I. But, Ryan Dean, don’t try on the pantyhose.”

“Uh. Joey? Wasn’t going to. Ass.”

Joey laughed.

I pulled on my dry socks.

It was really weird. Those Pokémon briefs were surprisingly comfortable, and I hadn’t worn briefs since I was in, like, third grade. I put on Joey’s convict pants, pulled on my hoodie, and climbed up into the front seat beside Joey, just as we came to the gas station where we’d lost Chas earlier.

“I feel a lot better,” I said. “I swear I won’t wreck your prison pants.”

“I swear to God I won’t pick up any more psychos.”

“Does that mean we aren’t going to look for Chas?”

We found Chas Becker walking back along the road toward Pine Mountain. He was wearing one of those big plastic yard-leaf bags. He must have gotten it from a sympathetic gas station clerk; and he kind of looked like a big, reflective, black ghost when we passed him.

Joey slammed on the brakes and backed the car up right on the highway until Chas lifted his down-turned head and saw it was us. I started to climb over to the backseat, but Joey grabbed my hood and pulled me back, saying, “No way. I do not want to sit by him, Ryan Dean. Let him sit there.”

The next thing I knew, Chas was tearing off his garbage-bag rain slicker and getting into the backseat.

“You guys are assholes,” Chas said. “I was almost going to call the cops and say you stole my fucking car. Pricks.”

“We tried to find you, Chas,” Joey said. “You took off; it wasn’t our fault.”

I was staying out of it entirely, but after a few seconds, Chas said, “Well, fuck you anyway, Winger. I still don’t think we’re settled about this.”

I just looked at Joey, but I didn’t say anything.

But at that moment, I knew I was going to stay away from Megan Renshaw, even if I also knew how difficult she could make keeping that commitment. And, hell, I knew how weak I was too, and I don’t mind admitting it.