He woke in the morning with a hangover and pounding headache. He vaguely remembered coming up with Auggie, vaguely remembered the sex, and looked around, trying to figure out where Auggie had gone and just what the fuck he’d say to the student he’d just all but molested.
But Auggie was gone. His dresser drawers were open and empty, and the suitcase Theo had seen under the bed was missing. Then he remembered his confusion, Ian coming back to bed and Theo asking him something about the porch light, and he muttered, “Oh fuck.”
SPRING SEMESTER
JANUARY 2014
1
For Auggie, the three and a half weeks of winter break passed in a blur. Three and a half weeks of California days: sun and a breeze, warm enough to get by without a jacket until evening, the faint dustiness to the air that made him think of manzanita and Mrs. Gutierrez’s Indian paintbrush flowers next door. Three and a half weeks of making reunion videos with Logan and Devin, three and a half weeks of dodging Chan—she kept messaging and Snapchatting him, probably trying to apologize—three and a half weeks of Fer watching Pardon the Interruption in his underwear, and three and a half weeks of Mom coming back loaded, every single night, with Brendan.
“Why do you put up with this?” Auggie had asked. “You make the money. It’s your house.”
Fer had chucked the remote at him and said, “What the fuck did you just say?”
Auggie decided he hadn’t said anything.
Three and a half weeks of no contact from Theo. Three and a half weeks of nights where Auggie remembered the drag and burn of Theo’s beard across his chest and belly, the feel of his hands, the warmth of his mouth. Three and a half months of remembering getting back into bed, and Theo calling him Ian, and then packing in a hurry: everything from his clothes to the pack of Kools at the back of the drawer, like he was a little kid running away.
On the day Auggie’s plane landed, he got his first text from Orlando since the Final Judgment party: where r u? we need to talk
Auggie dismissed the message, snapped a picture of himself in Lambert-St. Louis, and then found a GIF of Billy Madison’s back-to-school montage. During the shuttle ride to Wahredua, Auggie replied to comments, snapped a few silly selfies, and sent a few experimental jabs at MikiLuvs2Sing, more out of boredom than anything else. Two more messages came from Orlando during the shuttle ride; Auggie dismissed both of them.
When Auggie got down from the shuttle at campus, he worked his bags lose from under the bus and set off toward Moriah Court. His phone buzzed as he was halfway across the quad, and he stopped to check it.
Orlando: u r being a real prick this is important.
Auggie shoved his phone back in his pocket and wished he’d gotten his coat out of his bag; Missouri winter was very real, and his hands were already going numb.
Across the quad, it looked like everyone was more or less on the same journey as Auggie: kids were coming back from wherever they had spent the winter holidays. Some of them had obviously traveled quite a distance; most of them had probably stayed within a day’s drive; and a good percentage had family in Wahredua. A pair of boys who had to be freshmen were carrying an air hockey table, cutting across the snow-covered lawn, the cord trailing behind them. For the next week or so, the air hockey table would be wedged in their dorm, and they’d have to crawl under it or over it to get to anything else, and then the RA would come along and make them dump it in the trash. It actually wasn’t a bad idea for the start of a video, but then Auggie thought of how badly things had ended with Orlando, and he decided most of his videos would have to be with his other Sigma Sigma friends from now on.
He was a hundred yards from Moriah Court when he saw Orlando charge out of the building. He had his head down, his hands shoved into his coat pockets, and he was headed toward the pathway along the side of the dorm.
As Auggie keyed himself into the building, the security guard—a thin-faced Korean-American girl named Elizabeth—stopped him.
“You’re August Lopez, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The police are waiting for you up there.”
When Auggie asked for details, Elizabeth just shrugged, so he lugged his bags toward the elevator, but of course, the assholes with the air hockey table were taking up the whole thing. Swearing under his breath, Auggie dragged his bags to the stairs and started up all four flights. The luggage swung awkwardly, clunking against each riser and pulling him off balance. By the time he got to the fourth floor, he was sweating. Sure enough, the door to his room was open.
Auggie stopped in the doorway and examined the sight in front of him. His room had been torn apart. Literally. Both dressers lay on the floor. The drawers were scattered across the carpet; several of them had been smashed, the particle-board bottoms splintered and caved. Both mattresses had been cut open and springs and fill pulled out. The closet doors had been ripped off. Orlando’s poster of the 2013 Wroxall wrestling team, himself included, had been torn from the wall. Auggie’s tripods and lamps had been smashed. Where he’d taped monthly business goals and projections, ideas for skits or posts, the wall was now bare; Auggie saw some of the pages on the floor, trampled by wet and muddy shoes.
Two men stood in the room, both of them in suits. One was older, probably in his late thirties; his hair was thinning on top, his face was freckled, and he had a little tummy going. The other guy was probably Theo’s age. And this guy was hot: he had a swimmer’s build, and his short, blond hair was messy, but his
