“What’s this?” Theo said, cutting into the egg on his plate and poking a Piggly Wiggly bag.
“Oh, um. Birthday presents.”
Theo focused on the fork. Focused on the egg. Focused on the bite of pancakes, heavy with syrup.
“They’re just for fun,” Auggie said.
“Thank you.”
“They’re just little things.”
“Thank you for a lot of stuff, I guess. Last night—”
“Hey, Theo?”
“Hold on, I want to say this.”
“Actually, um, could you not? I know what you’re going to say. I understand. I get it: we’re already walking this weird line because you’re helping me with the stuff with Robert. That means a lot to me, and I don’t want to mess up, you know, our friendship, or whatever this is. So I just thought maybe we could forget about last night.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage—”
“Ok, this is why I said let’s just forget it. Pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I think you’re a great kid—”
“Didn’t happen. Nothing happened. Hey, hi, good morning.”
After a moment, a grin tugged at the corner of Theo’s mouth. “Hey. Hi.” Around a mouthful of pancakes, he said, “Good morning.” He swallowed, tried to think of the best thing he could say, and asked, “What are my presents?”
Auggie smirked. “I’m only telling you one; you have to open the rest yourself. Aspirin.”
“Because you’re a headache?”
“Jesus, Theo!”
In spite of the pounding behind his eyes, Theo laughed.
“Not nice,” Auggie said.
“Sorry.”
“Aspirin because you headbutted that asshole.”
“Right.”
“Not because I’m a headache.”
“Definitely not.”
Auggie grinned. “Want to hear what I found last night?”
“What?”
Auggie told him about searching Robert’s social media accounts, and when he displayed the picture of the room he thought was part of Robert’s apartment, he tapped the screen and said, “That sign you can see outside his building. Does that look familiar?”
“Kind of. But I don’t know what it is.”
“Damn,” Auggie said. “I searched through all these lists and images of corporate logos. I couldn’t find it.”
“We’ll keep looking. It’s a really good lead. You did a great job.”
A dusting of scarlet worked its way over Auggie’s cheekbones, and Theo would be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed: the tiniest bit of praise, just an ordinary kind word, made Auggie light up. Theo couldn’t help himself, now that he knew how it worked. He liked that look on Auggie’s face so damn much.
“These pancakes are really good, by the way. And the eggs are awesome.”
“They’re fried eggs, Theo. It’s not exactly rocket science.” But he was glowing again.
“Yeah, but I make pancakes all the time, and they’re not as good as this.”
“It’s Krusteaz. You literally just follow the instructions.”
“What instructions? You just dump in water until it looks right.”
“Oh my God.”
“Are you being serious? There are instructions?”
“Oh my God. How are you my professor?”
“Christ,” Theo said, fighting a grin. “How does an Orange County kid learn about Krusteaz? I figured your personal chef would be whipping up buckwheat hotcakes with organic, free-range eggs and—”
A piece of pancake hit Theo in the forehead. Laughing, he dodged the next one.
“Ok, ok,” he said, raising the fork in surrender. “But seriously: these are fantastic.”
“Because you’re a sloppy drunk and you’re dying for food,” Auggie said. But he was shining like a star. “And, uh, I kind of had to learn how to cook for myself pretty early, actually. I didn’t grow up in Orange County. And it’s not all rich people, you know. We just moved there last year.”
“Oh yeah?” Theo asked, cutting into the egg again.
“Yeah. My mom wasn’t around much. I mean, I guess she was. It’s hard to explain. I have two older brothers. Fer, Fernando, he’s the oldest. And Jesús is in the middle, but we just call him Chuy. We all have different dads, and they’re all gone. Fer’s died. Chuy’s is in prison. Mine just upped and left. I think I found him on Facebook, but the asshole never paid a dime in child support, and I’d rather see him get hit by a truck than make first contact. Uh, ok, I’m kind of hearing myself there. Sorry about that.”
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Theo said, but he remembered the raw edge of fury in Auggie’s voice when Theo had tried to offer advice and Auggie had said, I don’t need another dad.
“Anyway, Chuy went off the rails in middle school. He got into drugs pretty bad. He’s messed up, and he blames all of it on our mom. And Fer tries to hold everything together. He’s got a great job in pharmaceutical sales, he’s super smart, and he’s seriously the only reason I’m not as messed up as Chuy. Fer has this weird way of babying me where he’s also a giant tool at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it. When I was really little, he did everything for me: made my meals, packed my lunch, helped with my homework. But when he got this job, he didn’t really have time, so I had to figure a lot of it out myself.”
Theo thought about all the ways to respond: to tell Auggie he was sorry he had grown up like that, to tell Auggie that he understood what it was like to feel invisible and unwanted and unloved. The echo of I don’t need another dad rang in his ears, though, so he chewed slowly and tried to think his way down other paths.
After swallowing a bite of pancakes, Theo said, “So, I have this huge family. Extended family, I mean. And I have four brothers.”
“Oh shit.”
“Jacob, he’s the oldest. Abel, number two. Meshach, number three. Daniel Theophilus,” he jerked a thumb at himself.
“You’re shitting me.”
“No shits.”
“You have got to be shitting me.”
Theo rolled his eyes.
“I am literally going to call you Theophilus for the rest of my life.”
“Easy there, August.”
Auggie’s grin crinkled his eyes.
“And Luke,” Theo added. “He was the baby. I think I told you about him; he died a few years ago.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok. It was his own damn
