Winger

Joey acts as a representative of Ryan Dean’s conscience and a role model for him. He consistently reminds Ryan Dean that he’s hurting the people he cares about by continuing to be with Megan, warnings that Ryan Dean finally heeds. Joey is portrayed as honest, caring, and confident—although there are vulnerabilities buried beneath his self-assured exterior. He values Ryan Dean’s friendship in part because he doesn’t think he has very many true friends at Pine Mountain. He senses the inauthentic acceptance he receives from most of his classmates. Joey is open about who he is, as demonstrated when he comes out, and he is as open and honest with others as he is with himself, even when it sometimes results in “tough love” honesty. Smith writes, “Joey wasn’t the kind of guy who’d ever lie about things just to make someone feel better” (367). Casey and Nick use Joey as a scapegoat when they murder him, and his death symbolically calls attention to the culture of Pine Mountain that is intolerant of “the other.” 

Annie is Ryan Dean’s close friend and crush who eventually becomes his girlfriend. She is characterized as caring, artistic, and thoughtful. Her thoughtfulness is sometimes expressed through caution and a desire for stability, which explains her hesitation as she rebuffs Ryan Dean as a romantic partner several times in the novel. She is unsure about dating a younger boy and is also attached to their friendship. Her traits are reflected in her bedroom at her parents’ house, where the walls are “covered with paintings, and sculptures of fish and birds that she’d made” (244); she also keeps an old childhood toy by her bed. This artistic expression and reminder of childhood purity fit in with Annie’s role as “the Maiden” archetype, who is simultaneously pure and erotic. Her nurturing qualities, which are expressed most strongly to Ryan Dean after Joey’s death, also connect her to “the Mother”, which again blurs the boundaries between the two, just as Ryan Dean perceives Annie’s own mother as both Mother and Maiden at various times. 

Chas is Ryan Dean’s senior roommate and rugby teammate. He’s rebellious and subscribes to the “macho” masculinity identity endorsed at Pine Mountain. As such, Ryan Dean thinks he’s a dumb jock. However, although he’s coarse and often hostile toward Ryan Dean, Chas frequently challenges Ryan Dean’s expectations of him. For example, in Chapter 2 Ryan Dean assumes that Chas is asking if he has any money because he wants to steal it. Instead, Chas invites him to participate in a weekly poker game, with the money serving as Ryan Dean’s buy-in. Just as Joey seems confident but harbors vulnerabilities beneath his surface, Chas recognizes that it’s hard for his classmates to get along with him and admits to Ryan Dean, “I don’t have any…friends” (424). At the end of the story, he and Ryan Dean learn to tolerate each other despite Chas’s eternal torment of Ryan Dean. They even form a fragile friendship as they move into a pod in the boys’ dorm with Kevin. Chas’s qualities make him a foil for both Joey and Casey, since he has Casey’s exterior but is somewhat closer to Joey in his interior self.