14
They sat in the Pocket’s cramped security office, which consisted of a desk, a filing cabinet, and folding chairs with the Wroxall logo on the foam back and seat. It also included, at no extra charge, the grim-faced security guard who had found them. It took a lot of talking to convince him to call his supervisor, and then even more talking to convince the supervisor to call Maria Maldonado, who—it turned out—was trying to watch the halftime show with the college president. Auggie could hear that much because Maria apparently had taken voice lessons.
“She’s not happy,” Theo said to Auggie, handing the phone back.
Auggie rolled his eyes. Then, because Theo’s jaw was tight, he asked, “Wait, what’d she say?”
Theo shook his head, but when Auggie continued to look at him, he said, “There was some mention of continuing the conversation with Dr. Kanaan on Monday.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Keep your voice down,” the guard barked before turning his attention back to the phone.
“It’ll be fine,” Theo said quietly. “They’re not going to kick me out.”
“No, they’re going to fuck up your funding and fuck with your exams and fuck with your dissertation until you leave all on your own.”
“Thank you, Auggie. I hadn’t put it into words like that. It’s so much better when you hear it all in a row.”
“Theo, this is bullshit; they can’t do that to you.”
“Shut up!” the guard shouted.
“They haven’t said they’re going to do anything. Not yet.” He squeezed Auggie’s knee. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Why can’t you be a little less stable? It would be nice if I wasn’t the only one who freaked the fuck out sometimes.”
“I freak out plenty, as you know, but in the name of being a good boyfriend, I’ll put that on the list too. Does that go above criminal behavior and below ‘be a more abusive boyfriend’?”
“The order’s not important, Theo. This is like the em dash all over again.” Auggie pressed his fingertips to his eyes before looking up again. “This is the whole problem, do you get that?”
That made Theo smile a little, and they sat in silence until the guard finally dismissed them with what, in Auggie’s imagination, some sort of prototypical father figure would have called a stern warning. They were walked out of the Pocket, and Auggie had the distinct feeling that they would not be returning for any VIP tours soon.
The crowd in the parking lot had thinned slightly, but there were still plenty of people grilling and drinking and laughing, the tailgating continuing well into the second half of the game. A few lost souls trickled out of the stadium, probably hoping to beat traffic. The air smelled crisp and clean, like dry leaves. There was, of course, no sign of Jenice.
“God damn it,” Auggie said.
“She’s going to meet with him later,” Theo said.
“We don’t even know who he is.”
“We know he’s connected to the team somehow. And we know where he’s going to be until the game ends, so all we have to do is wait.”
“And hope that we can spot her in a crowd of three thousand people.”
“It won’t be as hard as you think. She’s worried or nervous or scared, maybe all three, and she’s already slipped up once. She’s not going to be thinking clearly, which means she’ll make mistakes.”
“Ok, so, just to be clear, we’re going to look for a white girl in central Missouri who might be in a hurry to leave a football game she probably never wanted to be at in the first place.”
Rolling his eyes, Theo said, “I’ve noticed that this sarcasm does not come out on camera.”
Auggie grinned and flipped him the bird.
“Come on,” Theo said. “We’ll find her.”
They found her within fifteen minutes, and it would have been annoying except that Auggie had, over the last two years, accustomed himself to Theo being both much smarter than he was and, in certain ways, much more competent. The first year, and part of the second, it had made Auggie uncomfortable—insecure, if he was being honest. Now, he liked it. It was a kind of secondhand pride, being able to trust Theo’s judgment and capacity. Not that he was going to tell Theo anytime soon.
She was pacing under the bleachers near one of the gates that led up into the stands, and she was vaping hard. Auggie tugged Theo toward a concession window, and he kept a sidelong eye on Jenice as they waited behind a mother and three children, all of whom were screaming for “cartoon candy,” which Auggie took to be a bastardized version of cotton candy, while their mother tried to cajole them into popcorn instead.
“They’re going to be so disappointed when they find out there’s no such thing as cartoon candy,” he said quietly to Theo.
Theo raised his eyebrows. “That’s such a relief. I thought I was going to have to tell you.”
Auggie slugged him in the shoulder.
“Ow,” Theo said, laughing.
“This is not acceptable.”
“Jesus, Auggie. No more gym; you’re going to break my arm.”
“I do not appreciate this. Any of this.”
“I thought I was supposed to be meaner.”
Auggie slugged him again, and Theo stumbled back, laughing and rubbing his shoulder.
Jenice didn’t notice any of it. She vaped, and she paced. She was pretty, but the kind of pretty that would be scrubbed away in a few years: thin, petite, a narrow face. She needed somebody to suggest a new haircut, Auggie thought. Although, to look at her, it was clear she had bigger things on her plate.
“Sorry, guys,” the man in the concession stand called, and Auggie realized he’d lost track of the mom and the kids and the resolution of the cartoon candy incident. He was turning a pole, already rolling down the security grille. “I was supposed to close five minutes ago.”
Theo waved an acknowledgment while Auggie glanced over. Jenice was still pacing, and she hadn’t seemed to have noticed them yet, but the area around the gate was emptying. It wouldn’t take long for her to spot them by accident.
“Should we talk to her?” Auggie asked.
Theo shook his head. “I want to see who she was talking to in the locker room.”
“Well, we can’t just stand here.”
Before Theo could answer, a buzzer sounded, and a cheer raced through the stadium. People came down the steps, first a trickle, and then a flood as people rushed to beat the crowd.
“God damn it,” Theo said. “I only took my eyes off her for a second.”
But Auggie was still tracking Jenice through the crowd. He caught Theo’s fingers and tugged him forward, into the current of bodies.
They headed out to the parking lot, where the crowd began to disperse. It was easier to walk, and Auggie picked up the pace, trying not to lose Jenice in the mixture of darkness and sodium-light haze. The crowd had a celebratory atmosphere: two guys, covered in body paint, chest-bumped, and passersby cheered them on; a girl who couldn’t have been older than eight, like a tiny warrior in her eye-black grease and miniature jersey, kept sprinting ahead and looking back at her parents to ask, “Daddy, like this?”; a crowd of college-aged kids, all of them clearly drunk and supporting each other to keep from falling over, burst into a rendition of Wroxall’s fight song.
Theo made a face. “They sound like cats getting skinned.”
“Fer would have said they sound like cats getting their anuses defurred. Or deliced. Or something like that.”
Theo burst out laughing. “I’m getting the impression it’s going to be quite an experience, meeting Fer.”
Auggie didn’t say anything to that because he wasn’t sure if experience was the right word. Murder might be a better one, although Auggie wasn’t sure about that either—mostly, he wasn’t sure whether Fer would kill Auggie, or if he would kill Theo, or if he would kill both of them and the real struggle would be figuring out which one to kill first.
“Relax,” Theo said, squeezing his hand. “We’re not rushing into anything, remember?”
Auggie offered a smile, although it felt tight. Then a white guy, who looked like an old stock-pot chicken in a dirty three-piece suit, staggered into their path. He was playing something on the saxophone—it sounded like a poorly transposed, and even more poorly executed, take on the theme from Friends—and they had to swerve to miss him. By the time Auggie had gotten back on the sidewalk, Jenice had disappeared.
“She’s in a hurry,” Theo said.
“We lost her.”
“No, we didn’t. Come on. But not too fast, because we don’t want to make noise, and we definitely don’t want to freak her out because two guys come sprinting up behind her.”
The crowd had continued to thin as they proceeded on foot away from the stadium and Wroxall’s campus, so they jogged, still holding hands. It was a new experience for Auggie, and although it wasn’t exactly romantic, he liked how Theo kept hold of him, how there wasn’t any question about it, and how easily they moved together. Theo might not be able to keep up the pace like this forever—his bad leg had never come back a hundred percent—but a stolen glance at his boyfriend reminded Auggie that Theo was a guy at his peak: not gym-sculpted muscle, but a man’s body, strong, full of life. It was the second time in his life that Auggie ran a quarter mile with a stiffy, and the first not in gym class.
By the time they saw Jenice again, the streets had emptied, and they had to drop to a walk and hang back. This section of Wroxall was undergoing a great deal of construction—in two or three years, it wouldn’t be recognizable, Auggie thought. It would be stucco and glass and steel, mixed-use buildings, bars and expensive condos. Wroxall was changing Wahredua, and although Auggie liked the idea of having an array of ever-more-hipsterish coffee shops within walking distance, he wasn’t sure Wahredua was ready for the change. But then, he wasn’t sure he’d still be here in a few years. He was on track to graduate at the end of the next school year. And even though Theo bitched and moaned about his progress, he was a hard worker, and he’d defend his dissertation and be moving across the country for a professorship soon too. Auggie ran his hand along a length of temporary chain-link fencing, the metal chiming, his fingers bumping the signs that said KEEP OUT and DANGER and OPEN PIT DO NOT ENTER. Someone, a kid probably, had laid a sheet of plywood over a plastic culvert that was waiting to be put in the ground, making an impromptu ramp, and Auggie walked it heel-to-toe and then jumped off at the end, holding Theo’s hand the whole while. When he looked over, Theo was smiling.
“What?”
“You’re just—I don’t know how to put it.”
“Let me guess: something about taking a puppy on a walk.”
The smile glowed brighter, but Theo shook his head. “You’re so full of life.”
“Because I did a perfect ten dismount from a plywood ramp?”
Laughing quietly, Theo nodded. “It’s nice. That’s all.”
Auggie rolled his eyes, but he squeezed Theo’s hand. He wanted to ask, What happens in a year? He wanted to say, Sometimes you’re full of life too, but then sometimes you’re not, and it scares me, the dark places you go, and I don’t know how to help you. He wanted to ask, How can I be this happy and terrified at the same time, and what am I supposed to do with all these feelings?
He didn’t say any of those things. Theo pointed, and Auggie glanced forward in time to see Jenice turn. When they reached the side street, Theo shook his head. Auggie knew there were streets like this around campus—Harley Gilmore lived on a similar one—but it was still something else, to find the big, old homes that had been built around the college just off a street with strip malls full of Subways and copy centers and check-cashing loan stores.
Jenice was already starting up the drive of a house halfway down the street, and Auggie hurried after her. As they got closer, he could make out more details between the branches of the trees that screened the front of the yard. The house was enormous, a white-brick colonial luminous in its own floodlights. Corinthian columns divided up the porch, and front and center, a balcony looked down on the circular drive. Gauzy sheers hung in every window, softening the light behind them. Not bright light, Auggie thought. Weak, and multicolored. Which made him think whatever was happening inside, it wasn’t Ovaltine and Parcheesi before bed.
They kept their distance, slowing as they started up the drive in case Jenice looked back. She didn’t. She kept to that same brisk pace, power-walking her way toward the house, and when she reached it, she let herself in through the front door without slowing. In those few moments that the door was open, Auggie glimpsed the darkness and the prismatic splinters of the party lights, and the muffled thump of bass escaped toward the street.
“They’re having a party,” Theo said.
Auggie looked at him.
Scratching his beard, Theo looked away and muttered, “It was an observation.”
“Please don’t embarrass me in there,” Auggie said as they headed toward the front door. “Please. It would be nice to make some new friends, and it’s not going to happen if you’re asking people about their career goals and encouraging them to make good life choices and recommending that they see a dentist.”
“His mouth wouldn’t stop bleeding, Auggie. He was eating corn chips, and it looked like a horror movie.”
“John doesn’t believe in brushing his teeth. He’s fine.”
“He’s clearly not fine, Auggie. Not if he needs to carry around his own spittoon for the blood coming from his loose teeth.”
“And if someone says a name that you don’t recognize, just look at me. I’ll give you a discreet signal if it’s a cultural reference you’re supposed to recognize. Oh, like this—” Auggie mimed stroking his non-existent beard.
Silence.
“Like Sam Smith,” Auggie added.
“Yes,” Theo said. He sounded like he was gritting his teeth. “Thank you.”
“In case you forgot.”
“Ok, Auggie.”
“Or in case you thought I missed that little gem from your birthday party.”
“There are universities that don’t have huge undergrad populations. I could have gone to one of those. I could have gone my whole life without teaching a single undergrad.”
Smirking, Auggie pulled open the door and nudged Theo inside.
The party swallowed them: darkness, the pink and purple and red and green and blue of the party lights needling the walls, the heat and press of too many bodies, the smell of sweat and weed and alcohol. House music pounded from an overhead sound system, obliterating everything else, and everywhere, couples and groups danced together, grinding on each other, making out. Above them, on a second-floor landing that looked down, more bodies ghosted through the shadows.
“Jenice?” Theo shouted in Auggie’s ear.
Auggie shook his head. He was still holding Theo’s hand, and he tried to take the lead again, forcing a path through the bodies. The time at the gym made it easier than it would have been a year or two ago, but it still was harder than he liked—muscle or not, he was smaller than most of the guys, and there were a lot of people in the way. Theo dragged him to a stop, and although it was impossible to hear Theo’s sigh over the thrum of the music, Auggie could see it in his face, and it made him grin. Then Theo was in front, using his shoulder like a battering ram, leaving in his wake squawking party boys and party girls who’d been caught by surprise mid-grind and, in one memorable case, jarring a girl as she opened a can of beer and, as a result, sprayed the three girls next to her like she was holding a fire hose.
The party was an order above what Auggie had experienced so far in college. Yes, the Sigma Sigma parties had been wild, but they’d been wild in the sense that they’d been fueled by alcohol and lust. Here, something more was happening. In the next room, a boy knelt over the coffee table doing a line of coke. When he looked up, traces of it dusted his hipster mustache, and he grinned and started talking to the empty air, words lost in the sound, mouth moving mechanically fast. Then he stopped, and his eyes held Auggie’s, and he winked. It was so bizarre that Auggie grinned back. A girl stampeded past Auggie and Theo, another girl riding piggyback and using the first girl’s ponytail to steer. They continued toward the back of the house, where a crowd of guys formed a circle in the far corner, and when they shifted, Auggie was fairly sure he saw in the center of the circle a girl giving a blow job. In the kitchen, a girl sat on the counter, her head hanging back, while two boys made out. One of the boys had his hand up the girl’s skirt. The other boy was cupping the first boy’s bulge, stroking him through pleated shorts. Younger college kids, maybe even freshmen were doing keg stands and cheering each other woozily, and a skinny white boy with a huge tattoo of a Gothic cross on his forearm was trying to figure out how a beer bong worked by filling it up with water at the sink first. A huge guy who had to be a football player was puking into a decorative bowl. Two girls with nerdy chic vibes were playing quarters and slowly removing articles of clothing while a gaggle of boys, faces blank with desire, watched.
A couple of times, Theo tried to cover Auggie’s eyes. It helped because it made Auggie laugh and bat at Theo’s hand, and Auggie knew that’s why Theo had done it. But it didn’t change the fact that Auggie had never seen anything like this before, and a part of him was aroused, and a part of him was full of the skin-crawling desire to get out of this madhouse.
Then someone broke through the wall of bodies. A guy naked except for body paint, moving so fast he was a blur of green and jiggling balls, streaked between Auggie and Theo, forcing Auggie to drop Theo’s hand. Laughter erupted, chased by drunken cheers. The crowd surged into the gap between Auggie and Theo, the press of bodies buoying Auggie back on the tide. He lost sight of Theo almost immediately.
For a moment, Auggie was adrift, off balance, staggering as another wave of bodies struck. Then arms wrapped around him. Strong arms. His first thought was, Theo. Then the arms tightened, reeling him in, until Auggie bumped against a firm body. A mouth found his neck. Coarse stubble scraped him. It was like a nightmare, his brain trying to keep up, still half believing that Theo had caught him and half understanding that this was something different, something wrong. He twisted, and he was pulled back more tightly. The guy holding him was hard, his erection digging into Auggie’s ass. He bit. He thrust. He forced Auggie’s head to the side and bit again, pinning Auggie against him, humping harder.
It was meant to be a shout, but it came out more like a scream, Auggie throwing an elbow and thrashing, “Get off me! Get the fuck off me!
A girl next to Auggie screamed.
Angry shouts went up.
In the instant before the crowd closed again, Auggie glimpsed the hipster-mustachioed cokehead, and he heard him over the thundering music: “He wanted it! He was asking for it!”
It was like being caught in a whirlpool, people shoving Auggie, knocking him aside. Then the tide shifted, bodies swirling apart, and Auggie saw the French doors that opened to the patio. He dove toward them, and a moment later, he broke free, stumbling without the crush of bodies to balance him. The night air was cold and clean, with only the slightest hint of skunkiness, and it raised goose bumps as he escaped the party’s suffocating heat.
Theo seemed to come out of nowhere, a hand at the small of Auggie’s back. “You ok?”
Auggie nodded, gulping air.
“No, you’re not. What—”
“I’m fine, Theo.”
The silence crackled in Auggie’s ears.
Theo glanced around and gave Auggie a gentle push toward the patio furniture. “Sit down. I’ll see if I can find her.”
“No, I’m fine. I just wanted—” How did you tell someone older than you that you’d thought you were worldly, you’d thought you were experienced, you’d thought TV and the internet and a couple of years on your own had shown you pretty much everything there was to see, and all it took was one bad guy to make you realize you didn’t know anything? And then you couldn’t stop realizing. You realized that sex was different, life was different, everything was different when it happened to you, when you couldn’t stop being scared of it and it was there, locked into your future, like you were riding toward it on rails and couldn’t turn, couldn’t stop, not if you ever wanted a relationship. How could you explain it when even in your head, it only made sense if you looked at it in a mirror? No wonder, Auggie thought. The words had an anesthetized coolness. No wonder he thinks I’m a kid. He cleared his throat and managed to say, “—to see if she was out here.”
Tinkling laughter came from around the corner of the house, then splashing.
“Hot tub,” Theo said. Then he scratched his beard, looked away again, and rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know I did it again. No commentary please.”
A woman’s intake of breath, full of pleasure, was followed a moment later by a moan, and then more splashing. Auggie could feel his face getting hotter and hotter.
“How about this?” Theo said. “You find a spot on the side of the house where you can watch to make sure she doesn’t leave. I’ll check inside.”
Auggie nodded too quickly. He felt like he was about to catch on fire.
“Stay out of sight.” Then Theo was gone, plunging back into the insanity.
Another deep moan came from around the corner of the house, so Auggie turned away from the noise and started toward the far side of the house. He wasn’t sure that he’d actually be able to watch the front and back at the same time—the house was too big for that—but he could at least give himself some room to move back and forth and do the best he could.
He’d only made it a few steps, though, before a voice called, “Hey!”
Auggie glanced back, and then he stopped. He recognized the guy coming toward him, although he couldn’t remember his name. He was one of the football team captains whom Auggie and Theo had spoken to several weeks before, when Maria had taken them to the Pocket. He was white, although he had a deep tan even in October, with dark hair spiked up in a side part and dark eyes. Cute, almost pretty, Auggie thought, rather than handsome. The flannel work shirt, the white tee, the jeans fashionably tight and even more fashionably ripped, the Adidas Superstars in Wroxall’s green and silver—they were all working for him. He had a girl with him, and the way they moved together told Auggie they were more than friends. She was Asian, her dark hair in an angular bob, just enough makeup that you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t smiling, but that was ok; the guy was doing enough smiling for both of them.
“Andrew, right?” he asked, transferring a red cup to his free hand so he could reach out for a shake.
“Auggie.” They shook. “Sorry, I’m totally spacing.”
“Trace. We met at the Pocket. Ms. Maldonado brought you and your friend to talk to us.” He turned to the girl and said, “They’re, like, detectives or something. They were looking for Coach’s daughter. Oh, dang. Im, this is Auggie. Auggie, Imogen.”
Auggie offered his hand, but Imogen ignored it. She was studying him with smoke-dark eyes, and she was holding her plastic cup too tightly.
“Not detectives,” Auggie said with his best Instagram smile. “Just, you know, helping out. It’s kind of a weird situation.”
“I’ve seen you,” Imogen said.
“Oh, I’m double-majoring, English and Communication—”
“No.”
The word was severing, the silence frayed.
“Oh my gosh,” Trace said, a smile growing on his face. “Oh my gosh, Im, no way.”
Imogen didn’t exactly sneer, but there was something nasty in her eyes.
“You do those videos, right? You’re aplolz.”
Auggie offered another Instagram smile at the mention of his username. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I don’t expect people to—”
“Dude, you’re hilarious.” Trace slapped his shoulder. “I follow you on Snapchat too. You’re really good.”
And the way he said good, the way he smiled, the way his eyes didn’t move away, meant something entirely different.
“Where the fuck did you go?” That voice came from the house. Two guys emerged, and Auggie recognized the other two captains from the team, although he couldn’t recall their names. One of them was just plain big. The other one was huge.
“This is Auggie,” Trace said, clapping Auggie on the shoulder. “Aplolz. On Instagram. Ms. Maldonado introduced us to him, remember?” Neither of the guys responded, so Trace continued, “Auggie, this is Andre.” That was the regular-big guy; his skin was about the same shade as Auggie’s, and he had a round face, a twist-braid goatee, and he wore his long hair in a bun. He was carrying two red plastic cups. “And this is Chevalier, but we just call him Chev.” Chev, on the other hand, was what the dictionary would have called fucking ginormous. He had gold undertones to his dark skin, a tightly trimmed goatee—maybe those were a thing for football players—and he wore his long locs in a high ponytail. “Guys, Auggie is hilarious. If you haven’t watched his stuff, you need to.”
“Thanks,” Auggie said with a shrug. “I’m actually doing more lifestyle stuff these days.”
“With your boyfriend,” Trace said. If the word bothered him, there was no sign of it. “Yeah, it’s cool. Im and I think you guys are so cute together.”
“Jesus Christ,” Andre said.
Chev still hadn’t said anything. He stood with his arms folded, staring down at Auggie, his face unreadable.
“You want something to drink? Here—” Trace reached for one of the cups Andre was carrying, and Andre jerked them away.
“Bitch, these are mine.”
“I really shouldn’t anyway,” Auggie said. The words popped out before he could stop them; a vision of Theo hovered in the back of his head.
Trace and Imogen were painfully not looking at each other, and Andre was smirking. Chev’s face was still blank.
“I’ll grab something in a minute,” Auggie amended, although he knew the damage had been done.
Andre’s smirk got bigger. He held out one of the cups. “‘Scuse me. Shouldn’t have been rude, but this greedy motherfucker is always grabbing with both hands. Go on.”
“No, really, I can get my own—”
“You’re a guest,” Andre said. “Take the motherfucking beer.”
“He said he didn’t want it.” Those were Chev’s first words, and his voice was higher than Auggie expected. His face was still blank. His eyes were wells to fall into. Auggie had the shivering thought that a guy that big could hit you once, just once, and you might not get up. “Tell you what: I’ll take you inside, get you a drink. How about that?”
“Beer’s fine,” Auggie said and took the cup. He drank, wiped his mouth, and grinned. That was when he noticed that Imogen had vanished. He tried to cover his search for her by adding, “Thanks.”
Andre grunted. He traded looks with Chev, and then he said to Trace, “How long you going to be out here?”
Trace shook his head. “I’ll catch up in a bit.”
Andre and Chev shared another look, and then the two larger men headed back into the party’s maelstrom.
Silence fell between Auggie and Trace. Trace offered an aw shucks smile that, in Auggie’s professional opinion, landed somewhere in the panty-dropper zone. He wondered how many girls had gone to bed with Trace because of that smile. Then he remembered how Trace had said good, and he wondered if it had only been girls.
“Sorry,” Trace said, the smile growing, “I can’t get over the fact that I’m talking to a real-life celebrity.”
“I’m definitely not a celebrity. Ask my brother sometime; he’ll be happy to set you straight.”
The smile dropped. “Trust me, I get it. My parents want what’s best for me, but they ride me so hard. They act all interested and concerned, but when I want to tell them something, I mean, something really important, it’s like they can’t hear me. They don’t want to hear, that’s why. Imogen doesn’t get it, of course. Her family’s a mess; she looks at my family, and she sees this perfect little nuclear unit. I’ve tried to tell her, but all she cares about is that my parents aren’t divorced, they put money in my bank account every month, and they go to the right parties and know the right people.”
“Nobody’d mistake my family for the perfect nuclear unit. My brothers and I have different dads, and my mom is a mess. Fer holds everything together, but—but he still acts like I’m twelve. I mean, it doesn’t matter what I do. He’s never going to change. And some of it, I can’t even talk to him about because he’ll lose his shit. I mean, Theo and I had this huge break in the search tonight—” Auggie stopped himself. Trace was watching him, dark eyes intent, and Auggie took another drink to give himself an excuse to look away. “I probably shouldn’t talk about that.”
The thudding house music gave the silence its own pulse, a kind of pressure. Trace was still looking at him; Auggie could feel it. When he looked over, Trace’s eyes met his, and Auggie looked away again. He took another drink. He looked over again, and this time, Trace’s dark eyes held him.
“That’s ok,” Trace said quietly. “Everybody’s got secrets.” His flannel shirt hung open, and the white tee underneath fit him perfectly, exposing the cleft of his pecs, the stiffness of one nipple tenting the cotton. He passed his beer from one hand to the other. He rubbed the back of his neck. The movement disturbed a chain, and a cross slid into view from beneath his shirt. The gold was a dusky star against his skin. Trace must have followed Auggie’s gaze because he hooked a thumb under the chain and brought out the cross. “FCA,” he said in barely more than a whisper. His hand slid down his chest, brushing his nipple. He was smiling again, halfway between aw shucks and a kind of hopeless helplessness. “So, um, you wanna talk somewhere else? Normally, I’d ask you upstairs, but they’re fumigating.”
The beer was hitting harder than Auggie expected, the buzz already starting like the first spin of a propeller. It took him longer than he liked to say, “What would your girlfriend say about that?”
Trace’s smile shrank, but it took on fresh amusement. “Not much. We understand each other. She knows what I want. I know what she wants.”
And since Auggie had no idea what to say to that, he laughed and took another drink. That one killed the beer, the last of it running around his mouth, and he wiped his chin as he lowered the cup.
“You put that one back fast,” Trace said. “Here, have mine.”
Auggie opened his mouth to say no, but Trace was already swapping cups with him, and then he nudged Auggie’s hand up. It felt automatic, bringing the cup to his mouth, tasting Trace on the plastic. The beer was making him sweat, even though the night was cold. And the beer was making him hard, too. He pulled the cup away, but he could still taste Trace.
“Let’s get a couple more,” Trace caught Auggie’s elbow, “and we can go somewhere quiet and talk.”
Auggie fumbled through the beer for an excuse. “Your room? I thought they were fumigating.”
Trace laughed. “No, that’s, like, a room they set aside for the team. More like a suite. It’s over the garage. Imogen and I have an apartment on the south side of campus. The Varsity Club owns this house. They let the team party here after the games. Other times, too.”
He maneuvered Auggie toward the party’s maw, but Auggie came to another stop. He drank as an excuse to free his arm from Trace. When he lowered the cup, he said, “Did Suemarie come to these parties?”
Something like hurt flashed across Trace’s face, and then it was gone, and his expression was closed off. “Are you interrogating me?”
“I’m asking a question.”
“What the heck?”
“It’s just—” The world tilted, and Auggie couldn’t finish whatever he’d been about to say. He took a step, trying to keep from falling, and he barked his shin against a patio chair. He barely felt it. The world was still spinning, and he lost the beer; the last of it went all over the deck, and then Auggie started to go down too.
He would have hit the boards except Trace caught him, both arms around Auggie, hoisting him up. “What the heck, man?”
Auggie closed his eyes. He smelled Trace’s soap, his warm body, the flannel. He smelled his breath, he remembered the taste of the beer, and his skin felt too tight.
“What the hell is going on?” Theo’s voice cut through the ambient noise. “What are you doing to him?”
“He’s not feeling too good,” Trace said. “I don’t think he can hold his beer.”
Heavy steps moved across the deck. Then Auggie smelled the cedar and moss that meant Theo, and a different set of arms was holding him.
“Auggie? Open your eyes.” Theo’s voice changed like he was talking to someone else. “How many beers did he—are you kidding me? Where the hell did he go?” Then his voice came back. “Auggie, eyes open. Right now.”
It was a struggle, but Auggie did it. He was lying down, he realized. Or mostly lying. His head and shoulders were resting on something, and he was looking up at Theo.
“Your eyes are like wildflowers,” he said and then dragged his fingers through Theo’s beard.
“Oh my God,” Theo said, catching his hand and moving it away. Auggie reached up with his free hand, but Theo caught that one too. “What the hell, Auggie?”
“I’m ok,” Auggie said, but it didn’t sound quite right, so he tried it a few more times. “I’m ok. I’m ok. I’m ok.” He was pretty sure he’d nailed it on the last one, so he repeated more slowly, “I’m ok.”
“You’re not ok. You’re drunk. Jesus Christ.” Theo scratched his beard. Then he got an arm around Auggie and helped him to his feet. “We’re going home.”
“‘mnotdrunk. Had one beer.” Auggie held up two fingers. He tried to get one of them down. “One beer—one!” He giggled into Theo’s neck and whispered “Two.”
“Two. Sure. I’d like a recording of this. I’d like it fully documented that you’re a complete and total lightweight so that I have evidence the next time you throw a fit because I won’t let you filch a beer.”
“I love you,” Auggie said into Theo’s neck. “You take care of me.”
Theo was steadying him, and he stopped now. Then he got an arm around Auggie’s waist and braced him. “Well, I’m not doing a great job tonight, am I?”
“You just want to keep me safe, and I’m such an asshole to you.”
“Auggie, I need your help, please. We’ll get to the curb, and I’ll call an Uber.”
“I know why you’re so scared I’ll get hurt, so I should be nicer.” He wriggled free and turned, trying to stare into Theo’s eyes. “I know why you’re so scared.”
Theo didn’t seem to be breathing. Then he closed his eyes. Only once, and only for an instant. When he opened them again, he asked, “Do you?”
“I know.”
Theo started walking them around the side of the house.
“I know,” Auggie said.
“If you know,” Theo said, stopping to haul Auggie upright again, “then quit fucking talking about it.”
Auggie knew he had messed up, but he wasn’t sure how. He focused on keeping up with Theo, who was walking too fast for him now, almost dragging Auggie with him. It wasn’t until they emerged from the deeper shadows along the side of the house into the backwash from the floodlights that Auggie thought he had an idea.
“Jenice.”
“I looked all over that place. She’s not there.”
Auggie tried to dig in his heels, but Theo just grunted and half-lifted, half-towed him forward. “They’ve got a room. The team. A room upstairs.”
“I checked upstairs. Trust me, aside from chlamydia spreading like wildfire, there’s nothing in that house.”
But a tiny part of Auggie, the part that was still awake, was screaming, and somehow Auggie managed to say, “The garage.”
Theo slowed.
“Over the garage,” Auggie mumbled.
Theo took a deep breath. Then another. He walked Auggie into the light, turned him by the chin, and studied him. “You swear to God you only had two beers?”
Auggie held up two fingers.
“What the hell is going on with you, then? You’re not that much of a lightweight. I’ve seen you do shots.”
Auggie made a noise. It was nice not to be walking. And it was nice to have Theo touch him like this. His head bobbled forward, and he let it fall against Theo’s neck. Then he kissed him.
“Uh, no,” Theo said.
Auggie rolled his hips, grinding against Theo’s thigh.
“Oh my God,” Theo said, hands on Auggie’s hips while Auggie sucked on his neck. “Oh my God,” he said again, and this time, he sounded like a man being strangled. “Auggie, knock it off.”
“Horny.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. I said no, Auggie.”
Auggie whined as Theo forced his hips back, depriving him of contact.
“Mother of God, I am going to kill whichever peckerbrain doped your drink.”
Auggie’s answer was to suck and bite Theo’s neck some more.
Theo shuddered. Then he caught Auggie by the shoulders and turned him around, depriving him of the opportunity for future hickeys. “You’re sure they said the garage?”
“Trace said it’s the team’s room. They let the team have it.”
“Ok. Here we go. Oh no—you’re facing forward because you’re currently not trustworthy.”
Theo steered Auggie toward the garage, and they found that the door on the side was open. Inside, the garage was empty, and it smelled like cold concrete, engine oil, and steel. When Theo found a light, a bank of fluorescents came on, and Auggie had to squint against the sudden brightness. There were no cars, but there was a lawnmower that looked like it had never been used, a pegboard hung with spotless tools, a stainless-steel jerry can, and yard waste bags propped against the wall. Oil stains marked the concrete slabs. It looked like what it was, Auggie realized dimly—a house where nobody lived but where people stayed occasionally. Across from them were two doors. One was outlined with a rectangle of light, and to judge by the sound of voices and music, it led into the house. The strip of floor under the other door was dark. Theo helped Auggie across the garage, and when he tried the doorknob, it turned. A flight of stairs led up.
“God damn it,” Theo muttered. “Come on.”
Somehow, Theo got them both up the stairs. The overpowering smell of air freshener buried something else, an undernote of something fouler, and Auggie remembered Trace saying something about fumigation. At the top, another door was closed, and music—slow and pulsing with bass—filtered out to them. Theo adjusted Auggie’s weight. He made an irritated noise as Auggie began to hump his leg, and when Auggie leaned in to kiss him, Theo forced his head away. He muttered something that sounded like “blue-ball nightmare.”
“What?” Auggie asked.
“I said I need a rolled-up newspaper to deal with you. Now be quiet.”
Auggie opened his mouth, but the music cut off, and a man spoke. Auggie recognized the voice; it belonged to Andre, the team captain who’d given him the first beer.
“Bitch, I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
Someone answered. It might have been Jenice, but the voice was quieter, and the closed door made it impossible to tell.
“I told you what to do,” Andre said. “I told you to delete those fucking messages and never talk about it again. Now, I’m tired of telling you to be smart and you not listening to me. Keep this shit up, and you’re not going to get a second chance.”
The other voice said something, and this time, Auggie was almost positive it was Jenice.
“Fine,” Andre said. “A fuck’s a fuck. What the fuck do I care, fucking redneck trash?”
At the last moment, the words moved toward them. There was no time to do anything. The door flew open, and Auggie and Theo stared at Andre, who stood in the doorway, halfway into a t-shirt.
“What the fuck?” Andre asked.
Theo was tangled up with Auggie, trying to keep Auggie upright—that was why it all went wrong. As Theo began to disengage from Auggie, Andre swung, and the punch connected with the side of Theo’s face. Theo rocked backward. He dropped Auggie, turning toward Andre, and caught the next punch dead on. It was a bell-ringer; Auggie watched as Theo’s knees buckled. Somehow, Theo got hold of Andre’s shirt, and then he fell, pulling Andre with him. The two men rolled down the stairs. A girl screamed, and when Auggie glanced through the doorway again, he saw a short hallway. At the end of the hall, Jenice was naked on a bed, trying to pull a sheet over herself.
The sound of another blow came from below, and Theo grunted. Auggie dragged himself down the steps. His fault. This was his fault. Theo knew how to take care of himself. Even against a younger guy like Andre, an athlete in his prime, Theo probably wouldn’t have had much trouble, because when things got down to bare bones, Theo was a brutal, ugly, dirty motherfucker of a fighter, and he didn’t hold back. But tonight, because Theo had been trying to take care of Auggie, because Auggie had fucked everything up, Theo was getting the shit knocked out of him. The crack of another punch ricocheted up the stairwell.
When Auggie reached the garage, Andre squatted on top of Theo, raining down blows. Theo had his arms up, blocking the punches, but his face was already covered in blood. He didn’t look over at Auggie, but he shouted, “Get out of here! Go!”
Instead, Auggie staggered toward them. The next time Andre’s arm came back, Auggie caught it. He hauled on Andre, trying to dislodge him. Theo took advantage of the opening to throw a punch. Andre shook Auggie off with enough force that Auggie, already unbalanced by whatever had been in his drink, fell backward. He landed on his ass, while Andre rubbed his ribs, returned his attention to Theo and began whaling on him again.
Get up.
The voice in Auggie’s head sounded a little like Fer and a little like Theo and, to his own surprise, a little like what he’d heard from himself in situations like this before. He got to one knee. Then he got to his feet. The world carouseled around him, and when he took a step, it got worse. He zigzagged toward Andre, course correcting every step because the garage kept shifting around him. When he got close enough, he half jumped, half fell on Andre’s back. Andre grunted and clubbed Auggie on the crown of the head. The world went squiggly for a moment. The smell of body spray and sweat was overpowering. Auggie turned his head and bit whatever was closest.
Judging by Andre’s scream, it was his ear.
The athlete twisted, simultaneously trying to get free of Auggie and, at the same time, not create any additional pressure on his ear, which was still between Auggie’s teeth. The taste of blood and skin made Auggie want to retch. When the next wave of dizziness swept over him, he released Andre.
It was a mistake. He knew it as soon as he did it, but it was too late. Andre shook Auggie off. Somehow, Auggie managed to land on his feet, and he backpedaled, the poured concrete like ice under him. Andre surged up. Theo wasn’t moving. Auggie couldn’t tell if it was his own perception, messed up from the drug, or if Andre had gotten in a few more blows, but Theo’s face was a welter of blood. Wiping blood from his ear, Andre stalked toward Auggie.
“We just—” Auggie tried.
The first punch caught him dead on; Andre had an athlete’s speed and coordination, and Auggie didn’t even see it coming. It snapped his head back. The world dimmed like someone had rolled a dial. He felt another blow connect with his chest—he was too disoriented for the pain to register—and it forced him back. He hit a seam in the slab, and he stumbled again. When he struck the pegboard, the pressed composite was rough against the back of his neck. A weed whacker tumbled loose and struck the floor next to him. Auggie tried to stay up, but his legs weren’t responding, and he folded slowly and slid down the wall. He hit the jerry can on his way down, and it spun away, steel singing against the concrete.
Still wiping blood from his ear, Andre came to stand in front of Auggie. His face was furious, but his eyes were smiling. “I’m going to kill you for that, you little faggot.”
He bent, grabbed Auggie by the shirt, and dragged him away from the wall. Auggie kicked. He tried to aim for the knee, but Andre and the rest of the world swam in his vision. He felt his heel scrape Andre’s shin, and Andre laughed.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Andre said in a low voice, adjusting his grip on Auggie, “and take our time.”
Then the jerry can connected with the side of his head. Andre blinked. He looked like Elmer Fudd, eyes wide and confused, not able to process that everything had gone wrong. The jerry can whistled through the air again. It made a hollow boom when it struck Andre again. This time, Andre staggered.
Theo followed him, slamming the jerry can against his head over and over again until Andre went down. Then Theo knelt astride him, bringing the can down with both hands, the steel flexing and then, with a shrill noise, warping, blow after blow.
That same voice in Auggie’s head said, He’s going to kill him.
Auggie pushed himself up, a hand on the wall. The pegboard slid, and he had to catch himself to keep from sliding along with it. “Theo.”
Another ringing boom came as the can connected with Andre’s face.
Auggie hobbled forward. “Theo!”
The next blow cracked Andre’s head to the side. He wore a mask of blood, and his eyes were half-open and blank, the smile knocked out of them.
When Theo brought the can back again, drops of blood outlined the dents and dings in the steel. Auggie caught his arm.
Whirling around, Theo raised his free hand for a blow. Gore covered his face. If his nose wasn’t broken, it was the next best thing. Cuts ran under his eyes and on his cheekbones, and both lips were split.
“Theo!”
He stopped. He eyes were as empty as Andre’s. Then he shivered, and he had to work his fingers, stretching them, before he could release the can. It clattered against the concrete. He got up stiffly, and then he looked around. When he saw Andre, he didn’t flinch, but his whole body tightened, and his eyes skated away. The year before, a man named Wayne had hit Auggie, knocking him out. Auggie hadn’t seen the fight that followed, but he’d seen Wayne after, seen the damage Theo had done. Now, he’d seen the fight itself. Where Auggie still held Theo’s arm, he could feel Theo trembling—not fear, not even emotion, just high-voltage energy begging to be channeled into violence. Auggie saw, again, the battered can coming up, the light from the fluorescents glinting on beaded blood. He saw Theo on weekends, trying to read while Auggie put his feet in Theo’s lap. He remembered the instant Theo had spun around, ready to attack him too. And Theo in the River Rest, his hands on Auggie’s thighs as Auggie straddled him, talking him down with that same quiet calm. It was like one of those old projectors, two slides stuck in place, the images overlapping so you couldn’t make sense of anything except the edges.
Theo was saying something.
“What?” Auggie asked.
He touched his lower lip, winced, and said, “Are you ok?”
No, Auggie thought. Neither of us is ok. I can see that now.
But he nodded.
“You’re going to have a black eye,” Theo said, turning Auggie’s head. “God, he really got you. I’m sorry I let that happen.”
The giggle tore its way free. It was the unreality of this moment, of Theo apologizing from behind a curtain of blood, and the backwash of adrenaline, and the fear still eating its way, even though the fight was over.
Shushing him, Theo pulled Auggie’s face against his chest. He was warm, and his body was familiar to Auggie now, but he smelled like blood and concrete and oil, not like Theo. Then Auggie was trying not to cry.
“It’s ok,” Theo repeated again and again.
“It’s not ok,” Auggie finally managed, and he pulled away. “Theo, your face.”
“I’ve had worse. Come on, we’ve got to go.”
“Jenice.”
Theo hesitated.
“We have to talk to her,” Auggie said. “She’ll get away, and we might never see her again.”
Theo moved as though trying to stretch, and then he stopped, wincing. “I don’t think I can help you up the stairs, and I’m not leaving you down here with that psycho.”
“I can do it. Moving around helps.”
The thudding music of the party marked the seconds between them. Then Theo nodded.
Auggie had to crawl, and Theo leaned heavily against the wall, his shoulder dragging as they made their way up the stairs. The door was closed and locked, but Theo got it open with the debit card. Auggie thought about the jokes and how they didn’t feel funny anymore. Theo must have remembered too because he gave Auggie a bloody smile, and Auggie almost started to cry again.
Inside, a door stood immediately to their left, and then another door, and then the short hallway opened into a bedroom. The bed was unmade, and the musk of sex hung in the air, competing with that overpowering air freshener and, a dark undernote, something foul that made Auggie’s nose prickle. Fumigation. One window was open, and a cold breeze ripped through the room.
Theo tried the first door. It was locked, and a frightened gasp came from the other side. He looked at Auggie, and Auggie waved for Theo to stay put. Auggie wobbled to the next door. This one opened to reveal a closet with a single hang rod and a few empty hangers. An empty shelf had been installed above the hang rod. Two cardboard boxes were stacked at the bottom of the closet. Auggie shut the door.
The bedroom itself didn’t offer anything more interesting. Sex stains on the sheets. The roach of a joint on the nightstand. In the nightstand drawer, condoms and lube and a few small yellow pills that Auggie thought were probably molly. He tried to remember what Trace had said. They’ve got a room they set aside for the team. And earlier, Normally, I’d ask you upstairs. He thought about the beers. He wanted to close his eyes, but he thought if he did, he’d slide right off into the dark.
Mirrored closet doors, the sliding kind, faced out from the wall connecting to the coat closet he’d already inspected. It was a strange design; why hadn’t they just installed one closet and made it bigger. The guy in the mirror had one eye that was red and starting to puff up. He looked older than Auggie remembered, and too tired, and a stranger. Auggie slid the door open, and it was a relief not to see that other guy anymore. This closet was empty too, but the prickling funk was stronger. He looked for another moment. Then he slid the door shut. When he got back to Theo, he shook his head.
Theo called through the door, “Jenice, I know you’re scared, but Andre can’t hurt you anymore. I need you to open the door and talk to us. We’re trying to find Suemarie Gilmore, and we need your help.”
“I can’t help you!” The words were squeaky, on the verge of a breakdown. “Go away! He’s going to be so mad!”
“Open the door, Jenice.”
“No!” And then she shrieked, “No, no, no, no, no!”
“We know you have Suemarie’s phone,” Auggie said. “We heard you talking to Andre in the locker room. You’ve been getting my messages on Instagram, but you’ve also been getting my texts to Suemarie. Why don’t you open the door and tell us what happened? You’ll feel better. And if you’re scared, we can talk to the police, make sure that you’re protected.”
A single sob came in answer. The breeze picked up, drawing the screen in the window taut. Auggie shivered and hugged himself. He hadn’t been lying earlier; the adrenaline from the fight had cleared his head and made it easier to think, but the fog was rolling in again, and Auggie’s eyes kept wanting to drift shut.
Then soft steps came from inside the room, and the door opened. Jenice’s dark hair was mussed, and she was in jeans and a lacy blue bra, her arms tight around her body. She shook her head, and then she laughed, and she said, “The police?” She laughed again, the sound far too old for her, and she said, “You guys don’t know shit, do you?”
“What don’t we know?” Theo asked.
She shook her head again. “I don’t have her phone. This is my phone. And if you don’t believe me, you can call the police, and they can look at my phone bill and check the IMEI or the serial number or whatever you call it. I bought it; it’s mine.”
“That’s an interesting thing to know, that stuff about the serial number,” Theo said. “Most people wouldn’t know that. Why don’t you let us take a look at the phone?”
With an expression like she was on the brink of sticking out her tongue, she pulled a phone from her back pocket, unlocked it, and handed it over. Theo studied it, tapping it a few times. Then he shrugged and passed it to Auggie. Auggie fumbled with the settings, trying to decide what he should look at. After a moment, he looked at Theo and shook his head.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Theo said, “what you were saying about the police. We’ll tell them what we heard, and they can take a look around your place, see if Suemarie’s phone magically turns up.”
“I don’t have it! I told you!”
“We’ll see about that.”
“You don’t have any idea what you got yourselves into,” she said with a whispery laugh. “You don’t have a fucking clue. I don’t know where Sue is. She’s gone, that’s all I know. And good for her. She got away from these bastards.”
“Was her father a bastard too?” Theo asked.
Jenice sneered at him.
“Did Sue kill her father and run?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she killed her father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seems like you should know,” Theo said. “If you were such good friends, seems like you should at least have an idea what she’s capable of.”
“Yeah, well, turns out I didn’t know her at all. She ran. She left me, and we were like sisters, we shared everything—”
Jenice was still talking, but Auggie didn’t hear any more; the phrase we shared everything had snared him, and now he was turning over the thought in his mind, trying to see if it made sense, struggling with the slow thickness of his thoughts.
“Let me see your phone.”
Theo and Jenice both looked at him.
“Right now,” Auggie said. “Let me see it.”
Jenice hesitated, and Theo snagged the phone from her hand and passed it to Auggie. It was still unlocked, and Auggie opened the settings, navigating through the accounts.
And there it was.
Suemarie Gilmore’s Apple ID was signed into the phone.
“You’re getting her messages,” Auggie said, looking up. “You’ve been getting all of them, even when she was still here.”
Jenice flinched.
“What?” Theo asked.
“She signed into the phone with the same ID, with Sue’s Apple ID. You can do that on iPhones. They have different phone numbers, different serial numbers, but anything that’s Apple related gets mirrored; the phones are identical in that way. That includes iMessages.”
Theo looked at Jenice. She worried her lip. Then words burst out of her: “We did it because she had iTunes, and because she didn’t mind sharing. And then we realized we were getting each other’s messages, but it was ok, because we didn’t have any secrets. It was fun. Sometimes a guy would try to talk to both of us, hit us up the same night. It was something to laugh about.” But Jenice didn’t sound like she was laughing; her voice trembled as she added, “It was supposed to be fun.”
“What happened?” Theo asked.
Jenice shook her head.
“You got a message you weren’t supposed to see,” Theo said. “What was the message?”
Hugging herself tighter, Jenice looked down, trying to make herself as small as possible.
“We can have this conversation with the police—”
“I deleted the messages,” Jenice said, the words falling to the floor. “And you can’t get them back; I checked. And I won’t tell the police or you or anybody anything. You don’t get it.” She squeezed herself, and Auggie could see her ribs. “They’ll kill me.”
“Who?” Theo asked. “Who’s going to kill you?”
But all she would do is shake her head. Then she started to cry, one hand over her eyes as she continued to hug herself.
“Any ideas?” Theo asked in a low voice.
Auggie was biting a knuckle, using the pain to stay alert and, to a degree focused. He stared at the phone. And then he swiped until he found the app called Find My iPhone. It took a moment, and then a map appeared, complete with a dot marking the location.
Theo stepped closer, studying the phone with Auggie. Then he made a disappointed noise. “That’s this house. It’s just showing Jenice’s phone. Good idea, though.”
Auggie stared at the phone. Maybe it was his eyes. Maybe that was why the dot looked slightly misshapen. Maybe it was whatever he’d been doped with, making things blurry.
Or.
Or maybe it was two dots that didn’t quite overlap.
“She’s here,” Auggie said. “She’s here in the house. Or the phone is.”
“Auggie, I went through every room—”
“Theo, her phone is here. Not in the main house. In this little apartment. Look, you can see where the dots are on the map—they’re in the garage.”
At the same time, Theo and Auggie both looked at the coat closet.
“Stay here,” Theo said, pressing a hand to Auggie’s chest. “Shout if she tries anything.”
Jenice’s sniffles sounded indignant.
Theo opened the coat closet. He took out the cardboard boxes and checked them, but they were both empty. He turned them upside down and shook them. Nothing came out. He pressed a hand to a cut on his cheek. In profile, his one eye that was visible to Auggie narrowed. His gaze moved back to the closet. Then he drew in a slow breath.
Auggie saw it too: where the back panel of the closet didn’t fit around the bracket supporting the shelf.
“I want both of you to go downstairs,” Theo said.
Auggie shook his head; it was a meaningless gesture because Theo wasn’t looking at him.
Theo glanced over his shoulder. “Auggie, go. Take Jenice and stay clear of Andre.”
Auggie shook his head again.
Jenice seized the moment; she snatched the phone from Auggie and sprinted down the stairs. Auggie put a hand on the wall to push off and go after her, but Theo said, “Let her go.” He took another breath. “I keep doing it. I tell myself I’m going to keep you safe, and then I let you get hurt over and over again.”
If he wanted an answer, he didn’t wait for one. He got his fingers into the seam where the back panel didn’t quite meet the wall, and he yanked. The panel popped free easily, and stench wafted out. Auggie gagged and turned his head. He had smelled death before. When he heard Theo move, he forced himself to look.
The opening was tall enough for a man—even a big man—to squeeze through, although the space on the other side would have been cramped. In the weak light, Auggie could make out the dead girl propped in the corner of the room. Decomposition was advanced, and her features were unrecognizable to him. A gun lay on the floor next to her. And so did a laptop.
“It’s her,” Auggie said. He couldn’t have proven it. But he knew.
Theo shook his head and reached for his phone. “I’ll call Lender.”
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