Winger

The three boys drive toward town, and Joey pulls into a gas station. Chas unexpectedly asks Ryan Dean what’s going on between him and Megan. Even though he’s nervous about what Chas will do to him, Ryan Dean admits that he and Megan have been fooling around. To his surprise, Chas is more sad than angry, adding that Megan already told him about her and Ryan Dean. Relieved not to be keeping a secret from Chas, Ryan Dean gets out of the car to use the bathroom while Joey goes inside the gas station to get coffee. Joey says he thinks that Chas is crying. When the boys return to the car, Chas is gone.

After looking for Chas for a while, Ryan Dean and Joey decide to keep going into town to complete the “consequence” before trying to find Chas on the way back. As they drive, Ryan Dean asks Joey why he doesn’t have a boyfriend. As it turns out, Joey is seeing somebody but won’t say whether it’s a boy from school or someone else. He also tells Ryan Dean, under the strictest confidence, that Casey is gay and has been pursuing him ever since the previous summer. Ryan Dean is shocked. The two enter a supermarket to look for Halloween costumes. 

Ryan Dean and Joey find Halloween costumes and leave the store. As they’re about to get in the car, an old man with a walker asks them to give him a ride home and names a road that he lives on. Joey agrees, and the old man gets in the car with them. Ryan Dean took some cold medicine he bought in the store, so between his illness, the whiskey, the late hour, and the medicine, he is very disoriented. He stretches out in the backseat to try and sleep, but eventually he and Joey realize that the old man has dementia and doesn’t actually remember where he lives. 

While they debate what to do with the old man, whose name is Ned, Joey realizes that the car stuck in the mud of a dirt road. Ryan Dean gets out and braces the wheels with rocks and sticks until Joey gets the car out. They decide to take Ned back to the store, since he obviously doesn’t know where he lives.

The boys take Ned back to the store and tell the owner about him. It turns out that Ned’s son owns the store next door, and Ned is prone to asking for rides from drivers. The exasperated and angry boys head back toward the school, where they see Chas walking along the road. They pick him up, and Chas, still angry at Ryan Dean, says ominously that he’s not sure the matter of Megan is settled yet. 

Exhausted, the boys go to bed when they get back to school, and Ryan Dean wakes up after two hours of sleep. Even though he knows he’s not really in any shape to go to school, he drags himself out of bed because he wants to monitor the JP-Annie situation.

During conditioning class, Ryan Dean runs with Seanie and JP, talking to Seanie the whole time and ignoring JP. When they stop to turn around, Ryan Dean and JP get in a fight over the Annie debacle, and Seanie intervenes to keep them from hurting each other. Before he can separate them, though, Ryan Dean punches JP in the nose and shoves him into the lake. Seanie, frustrated that the two friends are fighting, tells them off.

Ryan Dean goes to the classes he shares with Joey and Megan. Megan follows him out of class when he has to get a drink of water and is about to kiss him again when Ryan Dean tells her they can’t fool around with each other anymore. When Megan comes back to class in tears, Ryan Dean feels awkward. 

In Ryan Dean’s class with Annie and JP, JP comes in with a bruised face and black eye from their fight that morning. Ryan Dean insults his appearance in front of Annie, who he’s already flirted with at the beginning of class. Then he offers JP his hand in a false apology, but JP refuses to take it, still angry at Ryan Dean. Ryan Dean and Annie pass notes throughout class and agree to meet at Stonehenge later that day after Ryan Dean gets his stitches out. 

The nurse that Ryan Dean is attracted to takes out the stitches in his face. After she’s done, she asks about the injury to his testicle. Hoping she’ll “examine” it, Ryan Dean lies and says that it’s been bothering him. At that point she leaves the room, saying she’ll get the school’s doctor to come examine the injury.

Ryan Dean reflects with dismay on how his plan at the doctor’s office backfired in that he had to be examined by the school’s male doctor, instead of the nurse. 

Returning early to the dorm when he would normally be at rugby practice, Ryan Dean gets ready to meet Annie at Stonehenge. He showers, puts on nice clothes, shaves, and does his hair. On his way out of the dorm, he stumbles upon Mr. Farrow and Mrs. Singer kissing passionately, Mrs. Singer dressed only in a bathrobe. The two are clearly having a sexual relationship, and as he embarrassingly leaves, Mr. Farrow asks Ryan Dean not to tell anyone about it. In exchange, he’s willing to get Ryan Dean transferred back to a regular boys’ dormitory early in two weeks. Ryan Dean decides not to take the deal—although he promises not to say anything about Mr. Farrow’s relationship—because he doesn’t want to go back to the boys’ dorm, which would mean rooming with JP again.

As he leaves the dorm, Ryan Dean overhears Chas tell Casey that Megan has been crying all day. 

Ryan Dean meets Annie at Stonehenge, where she admires his appearance. The two do the wishing walk, although Annie refuses to tell him her wish. They discuss the idea of Ryan Dean going to stay with her family over the Thanksgiving break. Ryan Dean is honest with Annie about what he did to JP that morning; though disappointed, she is glad to know the truth.

The two are about to kiss again when Annie tries yet again to protest that they aren’t really in love with each other. This time, Ryan Dean asserts that they are in love with each other, and Annie relents as the two kiss passionately. They decide to become an official couple.

Ryan Dean and Annie go back to their dorms. On his way upstairs to change for dinner, Ryan Dean pokes his head into the girls’ floor of O-Hall and sees Mrs. Singer standing there. He thanks her, feeling that she’s lifted the “curse” on him, and goes upstairs.

Over the next few days, Ryan Dean and Annie are blissfully preoccupied with their status as boyfriend and girlfriend, but Ryan Dean notices that many of their friends are mad at them or engulfed in troubles. Megan, still upset about Ryan Dean’s rejection, breaks up with Chas. Chas isn’t speaking to Ryan Dean, and neither are JP and Seanie. Ryan Dean is uneasy about the tensions between all of them. He is also uncomfortable carrying the secret that Casey is gay.

Pine Mountain wins a rugby match at home against a California team. Joey scores three tries during the match. Afterward, JP confronts Ryan Dean alone, and Ryan Dean genuinely tries to apologize for his role in their fight. JP brushes him off, however, and Seanie continues to be mad at him too.

That night, unable to sleep, Ryan Dean and sneaks out of his room to go outside. In the hall he runs into Joey coming back from the bathroom. Joey is so sore from the rugby match that he can’t sleep either, so he joins Ryan Dean out on the grounds. The two go out by the lake and Ryan Dean tells Joey about Annie, his fights with his friends, and Mr. Farrow and Mrs. Singer’s relationship. Joey tells Ryan Dean that sometimes people and life change in irreversible ways.

The two sneak back into the dorm, and Casey sees them come back in, calling both Ryan Dean and Joey gay. His roommate, Nick, comes out of their room and threatens to hurt anyone they suspect is gay. Though tempted to out Casey to Nick, Ryan Dean doesn’t say anything and goes to bed.

The next day is Halloween. The rest of the school has a special dinner and a dance, while the O-Hall boys must go straight back to their dorm after eating in the cafeteria. Once there, they find that Mr. Farrow is gone and has put Mrs. Singer in charge of the building. She says that as long as they keep the noise down, she doesn’t care what they do. Taking this as permission to go to the dance, Ryan Dean, Joey, and Kevin go upstairs to change into their costumes. 

The O-Hall boys all change into their costumes and go to the dance together, with Casey hanging around Ryan Dean and Joey in a way that Ryan Dean finds suspicious. At the dance entrance, the boys wheedle their way in after Ryan Dean charms the teacher at the door with an essay topic. 

After they get into the dance, Ryan Dean sets out to look for Annie. As he leaves Joey and Kevin, Ryan Dean learns that Joey told Casey in front of Chas not to pursue him because he wasn’t interested, effectively outing Casey. Chas doesn’t seem to realize that the remark was serious. Thinking it'll blow over, Ryan Dean sees Seanie and goes over him to apologize again. Seanie accepts his apology, and their friendship is repaired. Then Ryan Dean sees Megan dancing and decides to go and apologize to her as well. They dance together for a while, which arouses Ryan Dean, and then he apologizes. She accepts his apology but admits that she’s in love with him, which is why she broke up with Chas. Troubled, Ryan Dean goes off to keep looking for Annie.

Still at the dance, Ryan Dean runs into Chas and apologizes to him for getting involved with Megan. Chas seems to accept Ryan Dean’s apology. Ryan Dean finally sees Annie, and the two reunite with a hug and a surreptitious kiss, since the dance chaperones won’t tolerate displays of affection. They dance for a while until Ryan Dean decides to act on his last resolution for the night—to go and apologize to JP, who stayed in the dorm instead of going to the dance. He leaves Annie with Seanie and Isabel and heads off to see his former friend. 

On his way to find JP, Ryan Dean sees a visibly angry Joey going back to the dorm. Something is clearly wrong, but Joey promises to tell Ryan Dean later. Ryan Dean tries to cheer Joey up by giving him an invisible “iPod” and singing The Who to him, which seems to work a little. Before they part ways, Ryan Dean tells Joey that he loves him.

Ryan Dean finds JP in his dorm and, after apologizing again for his behavior over Annie, convinces him to come to the dance. As they walk over together, Ryan Dean asks JP if he thinks the two of them will ever be friends again. JP firmly says no. He tells Ryan Dean that the hug he and Annie shared the day she returned from Seattle came after she turned down his request to attend the dance together, because she realizes she’s in love with Ryan Dean. Irritated that Annie told JP before she told him, Ryan Dean resigns himself to the idea that his friendship with JP is over.

The dance ends, and Ryan Dean walks Annie and Isabel back to the girls’ dorm. On the way, Ryan Dean and Annie debate about which one of them first admitted to one of their friends that they loved the other person.

When he gets back to O-Hall after the dance, Ryan Dean immediately feels that something’s not right. The dorm is quiet and seems deserted, but there are signs of a scuffle or mishap. The entranceway is covered in muddy footprints, and the door to the girls’ floor of O-Hall is open. There’s water on the floor and a light on. Ryan Dean hears a couple of distant screams in the woods outside and hurries upstairs. On Ryan Dean’s way to his room, Casey overtakes him on his way back to his own room. Drunk and disoriented, he tells Ryan Dean never to talk to him again.

Ryan Dean is relieved to find Chas trying to sleep in their room, since it makes him feel like things are somewhat normal. But Chas tells him there were loud sounds like a scuffle in the hallway a while before, and that he yelled at whomever was making the noise to be quiet. Uneasy, Ryan Dean decides not to leave the room to brush his teeth and goes to bed.