“Yeah, I’m just sticking with beer tonight,” Auggie said.
Josh shrugged and moved off, shouting, “Shots!” again.
“Dance,” Orlando said, coming out of nowhere to grab his arm and steer him back into the melee.
“Hey, do you remember doing an interview?”
“Just dance, Auggie.”
For a while, Auggie danced, but now he was tired and sweaty and thirsty, the taste of beer gummy in his mouth. For a while, he was grinding up against a blond girl with tinsel earrings and a Santa Claus necklace. Then, for a while, it was a black girl with a short, sequined dress. Then the blond was back. Then a redhead who kept groping him through his pants. She grabbed too hard, and when she got hold, she just kind of mashed him.
Auggie finally got free and stumbled into a dark, empty room. He was surprised that any rooms in the house were dark and empty. He was surprised it was past two in the morning. Some of the alcohol had worked its way out of his system, and he dropped down onto a sofa and stretched out, glad for a moment of quiet. His brain kept going back to what Josh had said about an interview. He remembered it now, vaguely. The chapter secretary had interviewed them at the Bid-ness party. He’d tracked down everybody with a sash, asked the same questions, put their answers on a form. Lying there, Auggie took out his phone again. No new messages. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought maybe he was still pretty drunk because he felt himself drifting.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” Orlando swatted his legs until Auggie moved, and then he sat next to Auggie. “It’s hookup time, man. The redhead was seriously into you. She’s still out there.”
“Yeah,” Auggie said. He kept thinking about the interviews. Some part of his brain wouldn’t let go of it. The chapter secretary had done interviews with everyone wearing a pledge sash. Everyone. The poor guy had been making his way through the crowd at the Bid-ness party, which seemed like a pretty stupid time to do an interview, but that’s what had happened. Everybody with a sash. Every single guy with a sash.
When Auggie sat up, his vision swam.
“So, um, is it weird if we both take a girl back?” Orlando said. “Honestly, it won’t bother me. Just kind of, you know, keep your eyes on the prize.”
Every single guy with a sash. And Robert had been here. Robert had been wearing a sash. Robert had stolen one or bribed someone to give him one.
Auggie tried to figure out why it mattered. The beer cloud made it hard. Robert was dead. They had found him, and he was dead, and it was over. Auggie could just move on with his life. He had to do one more semester at Wroxall, and then he’d have money, have a life, have everything he ever wanted.
But Auggie still didn’t have the answers that mattered. He didn’t know why Robert had singled him out. He didn’t know why someone had tagged him in a video of Robert’s murder. He didn’t know why any of it had happened. And he wanted to know who had been trying to fuck up his life.
“If that’s weird,” Orlando said, “my buddy gave me a key to his apartment; he already went home. I can—”
“No, just, you know. Go ahead. I’m going to do something.”
“What?”
Getting to his feet, Auggie shook his head. “Nothing. You danced with that girl with curly hair for a long time. You should see if she’s still around; I think she really likes you.”
When Orlando stood, his face was inches from Auggie’s and his breath smelled sweet like rum. After a moment, he grinned and shook his head. “Nah.”
“What do you mean, nah? You’re the one that came in here talking about hooking up.”
“I don’t know. I want to see what you’re doing.”
Auggie was too drunk to parse that, too drunk to argue the logic of it, so he just nodded.
The party was thinning out quickly, and it was easy for Auggie and Orlando to blend into the people leaving as they made their way to the chapter president’s office. It was the only room on a short hallway, and the lights were off. Just a few feet away, partygoers streamed past them. Most of them seemed oblivious to Auggie and Orlando; the few that looked, Auggie thought, probably assumed they were just a couple who had found a dark space to make out. The thought closed around his chest like a fist.
When Auggie checked the door, it opened.
They stepped inside, and when Orlando shut the door behind him, Auggie flipped on the lights. He had been in here once for an interview during rush; it was the college boy’s dream of the executive office: dark wainscoting, wingback chairs, a massive desk. Auggie made his way to the filing cabinets and stumbled once. The drawers were locked.
“Shit,” Auggie said.
“What are we doing?” Orlando said.
“Those interviews they did the night of the party. I want to see them.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
“You are so fucking strange.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“You do such dumb stuff.”
“Ok.”
“Is this why you’ve been acting so weird all semester?”
“Orlando, focus: either help or shut up.”
Orlando’s jaw tightened, but he said, “The guy who did them, he had a binder like that.”
When he pointed to the shelves behind the desk, which were filled with binders, Auggie remembered it too: the secretary stuffing the form into the binder when he’d finished the interview. Auggie started pulling binders from the shelves. Some of them held chapter and regional growth plans: outreach initiatives, market studies, demographics, branding ideas. Others held policy handbooks, documents approved by the national board, official positions that the fraternity was expected to uphold. Some held financial documents, but they were all chapter-specific and minor, often detailing local fundraising activities; Auggie guessed that the locked filing cabinets held the more substantive information.
“Here,” Orlando said, sliding an open binder toward Auggie.
The
