“What are you talking about? What flash drive?”
The hand on Auggie’s arm tightened until he grunted. “Don’t fuck around, August.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Robert had a flash drive. He was supposed to deliver it. Then somebody, maybe you, killed that stupid son of a bitch. You were the last person to see him alive. That means I think you have the flash drive.”
“I don’t. I don’t have anything. I swear to God.”
“Then you’d better find it,” the woman said. “I’m not going to ask you again. You have two weeks.”
“Did you know that the average chimpanzee is worth approximately fifty-seven thousand dollars, if you harvest and use all of its parts correctly?” the girl’s voice was effervescent; Auggie had to blink to make sense of the girl his age, her blond hair spilling out from under a knit cap, proffering a clipboard and a pen. “And did you know that right now, millions of chimpanzees are going to waste, dying in Africa, their fur and organs sadly underutilized by local—”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Jerome roared.
The girl squeaked, dropped her pen, and ran.
Jerome glanced at the woman with the swastika, his head dropping. “Sorry, Mae.”
She didn’t look at him. Her gaze was on Auggie. “Now, the last time we ran into each other, your friend really did a number on us.” Her hand traced an almost-invisible scar that bisected her eyebrow. “I think you might need a little encouragement, and we do owe you some payback. So I want you to hold out a hand, and Jerome’s going to break your fingers.”
“What? No, I don’t need encouragement. I’ll find the flash drive, I’ll—”
“If you don’t pick, I’ll let Jerome decide.”
“They’re going to hear. I’m going to scream, and everybody’s going to hear. It’s the middle of the quad.” Jerome grabbed his hand, and Auggie twisted, trying to pull free. “You can’t do this.”
“But we are doing it,” Mae said. “And by the time campus security gets here, we’ll be gone. Go ahead, Jerome.”
Jerome grabbed Auggie’s pinkie.
“No,” Auggie shouted. People were stopping to stare now, but nobody moved to intervene. Auggie twisted again, and Jerome’s grip tightened as he forced the finger back. Auggie went up onto his toes.
“Auggie?” Orlando pushed through the crowd. “Hey, what the hell?”
Jerome was already releasing Auggie, and as Auggie settled back onto his heels, Jerome shoved him. After a few slippery steps, Auggie crashed into Orlando, who wrapped an arm around him to keep him from falling. More people had stopped to watch, but Mae and Jerome just turned and hurried toward the edge of campus; Auggie lost sight of them in the crowd after a few moments.
“What the fuck was that?” Orlando said.
Auggie realized he was still pressed against Orlando, still had Orlando’s arm around his waist. He managed to stand up straight, massaging his pinkie as he stepped clear of his roommate, and then he shuddered.
“Well, there’s nothing to fucking see here,” Orlando said. “Move the fuck on.”
As the crowd dispersed, Auggie realized Orlando was wearing Sorels and gym shorts and a coat over his wrestling tee. He’d obviously rushed out of the dorm without really dressing, and now, meeting Auggie’s gaze, he blushed and held up Auggie’s coat.
“Sorry, I thought, you know, you might want this.”
Auggie’s teeth were chattering so badly that when he tried to say thank you, it wouldn’t come out. A small part of him was wondering how Orlando had known where he would be, but he couldn’t get that question to come out either.
“Here,” Orlando said, helping him into the coat.
Auggie tried the zipper a few times, but he couldn’t get the zipper to catch.
“Let me,” Orlando said, and he got it in one and zipped the coat. Then he met Auggie’s eyes. “What the fuck was that?”
“Nothing,” Auggie managed.
“That was definitely something. Something really serious. They were trying to hurt you.”
“No,” Auggie said. “It was just a misunderstanding.”
“Come on, don’t bullshit me. I’m trying to help you.”
“I don’t need help,” Auggie said, too loudly. He took a step away from Orlando, shook his head, and said, “I don’t. I’m fine. Thank you for the coat, but I’m fine.”
And then he jogged west across the quad; he needed to talk to Theo.
4
Theo got lucky; the bus from Downing was on time, and he made it to Liversedge Hall with an hour to spare before his first class. He was teaching another section of Civ 1, and although he’d made some modifications to the course, the prep was much less substantial this semester. He rode the elevator up, sharing the car with Peg. It was his first interaction with anyone from the department since the holiday party at the end of December; judging by the way Peg’s carnation-pink nails played with the buttons on her coat and the way she kept her gaze on the floor, Theo guessed nobody had forgotten his behavior yet.
“I had a great Christmas, Peg,” Theo said into the stuffy silence and the smell of wet wool that filled the elevator car. “Thanks for asking. How about you?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, addressing her comments to the third button on her coat. “We tried tamales. Too ethnic for me, but the boys gobbled them up.”
“And I guess everybody now officially considers me the department drunk, as well as being the department pity project?”
“Well, you know, Theo, I had a great-uncle once who had a little too much to drink now and then. And, you know, like you, he’d suffered just so terribly.”
Theo waited and realized that was the end of the statement. He drew a deep breath and pictured a meteor smashing into the elevator.
When
