“We have two weeks, Auggie. We’re going today. If you don’t want to drive, I will.”
“You will?”
Theo scrubbed his beard. “Uh, no. That was a pure bluff. Please don’t make me drive.”
Auggie smiled and pulled away from the curb.
They merged into traffic, heading out of the city and toward Route 50. Snow was starting to stick to the roads, enameling the asphalt for an instant before the tires of the car ahead of them erased it. Pools of slush on the side of the road were freezing over, glazed with thin layers of ice that rocked when one of the big trucks roared past. On either side of them, the quilted landscape of central Missouri replaced the town: stretches of dense woodland crowding the highway, and then patches of stubble fields choked with snow, and then pasture with split-rail fencing. They drove along two hundred yards of a cornfield where the shocks had been left to rot over the winter. They passed an old-fashioned water tower; the original lettering was gone, but Auggie could read the outline where it had been for many years: HARTFORD. On one side, someone had spray painted, HARTFORD BALL TUGGERS ANONYMOUS and a phone number.
“My friends and I climbed that,” Theo said.
“You’re part of the Hartford Ball Tuggers Anonymous?”
To Auggie’s surprise, Theo burst out laughing. It was a quiet laugh, but a nice one, and when it ended, Theo had one of those smiles hiding behind his beard. “I did get a tugger up there, actually, but the graffiti wasn’t there at the time.”
“Maybe you were inspiration.”
Theo laughed again.
“Maybe your boyfriend missed you and decided to write a tribute, like all those dumb sonnets you made us read.”
“He was not my boyfriend,” Theo said. “Believe it or not, he won the 4H sportfishing championship that year. He had this great girlfriend, Lou, and we both did a really good job convincing each other we were totally straight.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
Theo looked at him, and the tires thrummed beneath them.
Running an arm over his face, Auggie said, “I know it’s hot in here, but my feet are frozen solid. Sorry.”
“I’m not hot.”
The hiss of the heater filled the car.
“Do you want to talk—” Theo began.
“No, please, absolutely not.”
“—about what it was like for me to come out, I was going to say.”
“Oh. Um. I don’t know.”
“If you ever want to talk about that kind of stuff, I don’t mind. If it would help you—”
“Help me what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Help me come out?”
“I just meant, if it would help.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Good.”
“I am.”
Theo jerked on his seatbelt and stared straight ahead. “That’s great, Auggie.”
Ahead, a light marked the intersection where they hit Route 50, and Auggie slowed the car and signaled the turn. He had to swipe twice to turn off the signal, and then he had to run his arm over his face again.
“So,” he said, trying for a normal tone, “I was thinking maybe I could do this on the days you teach.”
“Go looking for a flash drive?”
“No, give you a ride. That’s a really bad stretch of road to walk or bike in the winter. I could come over, drive you in, and give you a ride home at the end of the day.”
Theo jerked on the seatbelt again. “That’s very thoughtful.”
“I guess that means no.”
“I think we can talk about it later.”
Once, when Auggie had been six or seven, Fer and Chuy had taken him to one of those indoor trampoline parks, and Fer had paid for it with the shit money he’d made mowing lawns. It had been awesome, just the three of them, and Fer and Chuy had known exactly how to time their jumps so that they shot Auggie extra high. The bottom of his gut would drop out. He would scream. And they’d catch him, every time. And at some point, Fer had gone to get slushies, and Chuy had gotten bored and wandered off, and Auggie had been alone, bouncing on the trampoline, thinking that everything smelled like feet. A bigger kid, maybe ten, had gotten on, and he’d made it his mission in life to knock Auggie down and keep Auggie down—never touching him, never hitting him, just bouncing at the wrong time, coming too close, doing everything he could to keep Auggie off balance and tumbling and scared. Fer had chased off the kid and screamed at Chuy for five minutes, and Auggie had sobbed on Fer’s shoulder until he finally could calm down and drink his slushee. He still remembered what it was like to feel the ground go out from under him, his stomach flip, the helplessness over and over again.
“Oh my God. You’re like—I don’t even know what to call it. You’re breaking up with me.”
“That’s an interesting choice of words.”
“You know what I mean. And you definitely are. As soon as we find this fucking flash drive, you’re going to cut me off or something.”
“I think you’re making a lot of conjectures right now.”
“Oh my God. Don’t you fucking dare talk to me like you’re my fucking professor anymore.”
“I think you need to take a step back from this and breathe.”
“I don’t need you to tell me what I should do. I don’t need you to be my fucking professor or my fucking college counselor or my fucking dad. Do you understand that?”
“Auggie, can we please focus? Somewhere out there, there’s a flash drive with something on it that a dirty cop wants and the Ozark Volunteers want. And that means it’s got something bad on it, something really bad. And we’re tied up in all of it for some reason I can’t understand. So let’s just focus on solving this problem first.”
“This problem?”
“Jesus Christ,” Theo muttered.
“So, what? I’m your other problem? The next problem?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s ok for you to want to kiss me when you’re wasted, is that it?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about this.”
“I want to talk about it right fucking now. It’s ok for
