Auggie’s gaze was still fixed on the crack; his vision blurred. “When we hang out, I feel like I can just be me.”
Something changed on the end of the call—the car had stopped, maybe. Fer’s voice was clearer when he said, “I’ve never heard you talk about a . . . girl like that before, Augustus.”
Fer’s pause hung between them.
“What about Chan?” Auggie said.
“You never talked about Chan like that.”
“Ok, well, what’s the secret?”
“Give that bitch the little spaghetti noodle between your legs.”
“I hate you so much, Fer.”
He was laughing again. “Ok, here’s the deal. It took me a long time and a lot of wasted money to figure this out. Anybody worth having around, they’re not going to care if you can buy them the most expensive jewelry or the fanciest clothes or whatever the fuck some assholes want. If . . .” Again, that pause. “If she’s worth your time, all you have to do is buy her something that shows you know who she is, really is, and that you care about her and like her.”
Auggie stared at the crack in horror. “How the fuck am I supposed to do that?”
“Bye, Augustus.”
“You are absolutely no fucking help, Fer. That’s a fucking impossible request. Don’t you fucking dare hang up on me, don’t you—”
Fer was laughing as he disconnected the call.
Great, Auggie thought. Just buy Theo something personal and intimate and that fully recognizes his personhood and his value and, also, if it’s not too much of a stretch, apologizes for your being a total dick and, you know, just maybe also expresses that you can’t stop thinking about him no matter how hard you try to keep yourself busy.
“I am fucked,” Auggie said to the crack in the wall.
Then he got his shoes and walked to the Piggly Wiggly.
The grocery store was quiet at this hour. He found an ice cream cake, and he found streamers. The only remaining birthday banner was rainbow letters on white vinyl, saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FAVORITE SON. He put it in the cart anyway. Then he wandered up and down the aisles, looking for something that could be a singular, meaningful gift that represented how much Theo had come to mean to Auggie over the last month. In a Piggly Wiggly. Auggie stopped in one aisle, stared at a bottle of hoisin sauce, and thought maybe it’d be easier if he just never ever saw Theo again.
He found a few things, though, and a card, and he bought them and lugged them back to Theo’s house. He stored the cake in the freezer, hung the banner and streamers, and because he didn’t have any wrapping paper, he just used the shopping bags as best he could to hide what he’d bought. Then, staring at the setup on the kitchen table, Auggie smiled. Something unknotted in his chest, and he went back to the couch, and for the first time all night, he could focus.
On Instagram, he scrolled through his list of followers. A hundred thousand was a lot, and he did not want to go through them one by one. But he also felt sure that Robert’s name would be on that list. Robert had told him, at the Sigma Sigma Bid-ness Party, that he followed Auggie. It was entirely possible that Robert had been lying—after all, he’d lied about being a student, lied about being a pledge, lied about his age, lied about his name. Lied about almost everything, in fact. But the reality was that, for some reason, Robert had approached Auggie at the party. And Robert had come up with the idea of stealing the car. And Robert had enrolled in the same Civ class as Auggie. And someone had tagged Auggie in a video where it looked like Robert was being murdered. So Auggie thought it was likely that Robert had been following him on social media. For the first time, Auggie realized how much of his life he exposed on the feed. Even the carefully controlled pictures, the filters, all of it—they still told a story about where he’d been, who he’d been with, what he’d been doing. No wonder it had been easy for Robert to find Auggie.
Digging a pen and a scrap of blank paper out of Theo’s clutter, Auggie worked his way through all the Instagram usernames that started with rob. If the account was locked, he sent a follow request and wrote it down on the paper. If the account was unlocked, he checked the profile picture and scrolled through the feed, looking for anyone that looked like Robert. Eventually, the rob usernames bled into the robert usernames. When Auggie had finished them, he glanced at the clock on his phone and saw that it was almost eight. He had a list of twenty accounts he needed to check when—if—they accepted his follow request, but he hadn’t found Robert McDonald.
He switched his tactic, starting now with the mc usernames. He knew that his approach wasn’t foolproof; Robert could have unfollowed him already, or Robert could have created an account with a completely random username. Robert McDonald could be hashluvver1996 or mctwinkiehole or bigeyeddoeppppp. Auggie guessed that, if worse came to worst, he could work his way through every single account in his list of followers, but he really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He followed the same routine, examining unlocked accounts, requesting access, and writing down the names of the ones that were locked. Another hour dragged by; a low headache had started behind his eyes.
Caught up in the rhythm of the search, Auggie almost missed it. mcdaddyr, which had to be one of the stupidest usernames in the history of the world, was unlocked, and the profile picture showed a guy with a godawful center-part haircut and frosted tips. It took Auggie half a second to realize, behind the different hair, Robert McDonald, aka Robert Poulson, was staring
