Read Online Stand-Off by Andrew Smith - Free Book Online

are.”
    Coach smiled and shook his head slightly. “I mean the talent, Ryan Dean. It seems we’ll have a first fifteen that will be nearly all seniors, and experienced ones at that.”
    â€œWe have some holes here and there,” I said, “but it’s only the first day.”
    As usual during the first week back on the pitch, we’d ended practice with some matches of touch sevens, which is a kind of tag-rugby played with seven kids on a side, and everyone more or less plays like a back. It wasn’t too surprising that some of the guys made frustrating mistakes or got winded too easily. Rugby practice just wouldn’t be rugby practice without at least one guy puking on the sidelines because he was being worked too hard. That day it was our eight-man, Spotted John Nygaard, who threw up. And he was mad about it too. Spotted John was a tough guy, but he kept the forwards in line. And, like a lot of forwards, Spotted John resented how much Coach M made us run during practices because he said if you were a good team, you shouldn’t have to run too much during a game. Everyone knew that was bullshit, though. In a full rugby match, it’s not unusual for a player to run more than eight miles.
    Coach M sat down and wheeled his chair over so his knees were practically touching mine. I spun the ball around and around.
    â€œAnd tell me, how are things for you this year, Ryan Dean?”
    Well. I could have said a lot to him.
    I could have told Coach M that things were terrible, that I didn’t know whether or not I could make it through my senior year at Pine Mountain, or how scared I was—all at the same time—about not being at Pine Mountain next year and having to go on to college. I could have told him that I felt like I was slipping away from the only friends I’dmade since coming here, or—worse yet—that I’d been feeling distanced from Annie, like there was something getting between us. I knew exactly what that thing was because I kept drawing it and seeing it over and over again, but I didn’t really want to talk about it with anyone. You know, the dark guy called Nate—the thing that kept telling me to be ready, because just when you think everything’s all fine, that would be when he’d pop around and another terrible something else would happen. I could have told Coach M that sometimes I got scared at night, but I didn’t tell that to anyone either. And I could have told him that I was pissed off at being assigned a slummy dorm room with a twelve-year-old kid named Sam Abernathy, whom I absolutely refused to allow myself to become friends with, no matter what, or that Mrs. O’Hare was a gleaming five out of five polished Vikings on the Ryan Dean West Scale of Things That Make Me Sweat in Culinary Arts Class. And I could have asked him if he maybe had any idea why I wasn’t going to tell him any of this stuff.
    But instead of all that, I gave him the vaguely bullshitty synopsis that went as follows.
    â€œEverything’s okay with me, Coach.”
    Yeah. I know.
    But it wasn’t like I was lying to Coach M, was it? I didn’t look him in the eye, though, either. I kept my eyes on the rugby ball I spun around in my grasp.
    â€œYou’re sure about that, Ryan Dean?”
    â€œReasonably confident, sir.”
    â€œGood, then, because I have a few ideas I thought I’d present to you—things I’ve been thinking about after seeing you work with the team today,” Coach McAuliffe said.
    â€œOh?”
    â€œI trust the differences between you and Jean-Paul Tureau have been put aside?”
    â€œA long time ago,” I kind-of lied.
    Man, I was not doing good here, considering how much I respected Coach M.
    I needed to get out of there. I shifted in my medic-station seat.
    â€œI’m going to move Mike Bagnuolo to the number eleven wing.”
    That was no big deal, I thought. Mike—we called