“Sleeves look good,” Auggie said, tightening the cuffs. “Hair—”
“Auggie.”
“Ok, ok. I’m not going to touch. It looks good. Beard is on point. Umm, if you’d just let me undo this top one—”
“If you touch that button, you’re going to fail Civ 1.”
“Hey!”
“We get in and we get out, ok?”
“Oh, wait. Is that the plan?”
Theo crossed his arms; he had very nice arms, and the cuffed sleeves accentuated them.
“That thing you’ve been saying since like two o’clock this afternoon,” Auggie said. “That thing about getting in and getting out. That thing you wouldn’t stop saying the whole way back to campus. The first thing you said to me when I came down from my dorm. That’s our plan?”
“Auggie.”
“Don’t worry, I’m locking it in.” Auggie pretended to type something and made a few computer noises. “Yep, got it.”
“A million people think this kind of stuff is cute? They actively seek out this kind of behavior from you?”
Grinning, Auggie, pulled out his phone and displayed the picture of Samantha Kretzer, the girl he had contacted on Instagram after finding Robert featured in several of her photographs from the night of the Bid-ness Party.
“This is who we’re looking for?” Theo said.
“No, she’s just really pretty.” Auggie was fighting to keep the grin under control. “That was a joke.”
“A million people. That’s what I’m supposed to believe?”
“So,” Auggie said, “if I remember correctly, our plan is to get in and get out, but I just wanted to confirm—Theo! Wait up!”
When they got to the Alpha Phi house, the party was already going strong. Auggie gave the guy at the door cash for him and Theo, and he barely looked at them before waving them inside. Like the Sigma Sigma house, the main floor of the building was divided up into common areas: an industrial-size kitchen, two rooms with TVs, a room clearly designed for studying, and then all-purpose rooms with vinyl-upholstered furniture and high-traffic carpet. Tonight, every space had been adapted for the party. Webs of fairy lights were clipped to the ceilings, providing the only illumination in much of the house. From speakers mounted in every room, the thump-thump of a Pitbull song pounded in time with Auggie’s heartbeat. The air smelled yeasty from too much beer, underscored by a hundred different perfumes. People were everywhere: dancing, making out, drinking. A girl was handling a glow-in-the-dark beer bong like a champ, while the guys and girls around her shouted encouragement.
The press of bodies was so thick that Auggie grabbed Theo’s wrist, towing him through the crowd. He passed a dollar bill to a guy at a folding table, took one of the red plastic cups filled with beer, and kept going. Theo reached past him and took the beer.
“I paid for that,” Auggie shouted over the din.
“Great,” Theo shouted back. “I’ll give it back when you’re twenty-one.”
Auggie rolled his eyes and kept going. They had made a complete circuit before Auggie let out a frustrated breath.
“Did you see her?”
Theo shook his head; he was still holding the beer.
“You can drink that. My treat.”
Theo gave another slight shake of his head.
It was a really good party. Auggie got out his phone, found the right angle—a shot of his face, bemused but happy, and over his shoulder, the throng of bodies and the fairy lights and the rotating, multicolored spots near the DJ’s table. He snapped a few pictures, tried a few filters, and finally settled on one that he liked. He posted it with a caption that said i wanna dance with somebody . . . wish u were here and watched the likes and comments begin pouring in.
“What does she say?” Theo shouted.
“What?”
“Did you message Samantha? Where is she? What did she say?”
“Oh, yeah. Um. Still haven’t heard from her.”
He tapped out a quick direct message and heard Theo say something like, “No, really, I’m ok.”
When Auggie looked up, he almost dropped his phone. A girl who looked barely eighteen—Auggie recognized, distantly, the irony—had pulled Theo into a knot of dancing bodies, and now she was grinding up against him. She was pretty: blond, with big, dark eyes and a quirky way of smiling. Theo was still trying to say something to her—probably explaining something about Shakespeare, Auggie thought—and he was trying to juggle the beer and get himself loose. The girl wasn’t taking no for an answer; she was holding Theo’s free hand, pulling him tight against her, and thrusting back into him like she had a serious itch.
Auggie’s phone buzzed, and he saw a message from Samantha: upstairs, 2nd bedroom on right.
Theo was bending down, talking into the girl’s ear, and she said something back. Theo laughed. He threw his head back like she’d said the funniest thing all year. And then he took a long drink of the beer.
Pushing between a pair of upperclassmen, Auggie went to find the stairs. The music was too loud; it was a shit party, he realized now. The fairy lights were stupid. The strobing, sweeping colored spots at the DJ’s table were stupid. This many people in one house, everybody crammed together, that was stupid. Hadn’t they ever heard of a fucking fire code?
He dug more cash out of his wallet. When he got to another drink table, he bought himself two shots of Jose Cuervo Silver, shook his head, wondered if he was breathing fire. He wondered if Theo was bi. He wondered about a third shot.
Instead, he kept moving, found the stairs, and went up. The crowd thinned a little; a guy was shirtless, pressed against the banister by a girl kissing him all over; a pair of girls, both of them looking like they’d borrowed their outfits from Stevie Nicks, were making out hard on the top step. Auggie skirted them, turned right, and rapped on the second door. It opened, and Samantha stood there in a pink skirt
