A door opened.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” a voice said. “What the fuck were you doing?”
It took Theo a moment to realize someone was talking to him.
Footsteps came closer, and Theo opened his eyes. The kid coming toward him wasn’t cute or hot or attractive or pretty. He was stunning. Gorgeous. And Theo felt shitty even through the Percocet and the beer for thinking something like that. Dark hair in a crew cut, lean and toned, soft brown eyes; it was hard to tell in the darkness if the kid was really tan or had light brown skin. Whatever it was, it was perfect on him.
Then Theo’s eyes moved past him, to the Porsche 911 that had skidded to a halt in the drainage ditch. Another kid was climbing out, holding his head, and things started to become real again. Theo recognized the second kid as Robert Poulson, who had come to his office earlier that week.
Then he saw the wreck, and in his mind, he was back on I-270, trapped in the car, Ian’s blood all over him.
Some asshole driving too fast.
Theo charged the driver. He was vaguely aware of his leg pinging, a hot electricity that made him sick, but he was so furious he didn’t register it completely.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” the driver was saying. “You could have—”
Theo punched him. “What the fuck were you doing?” Theo swung again, and the kid stumbled back and went down on his ass. “Driving like a fucking maniac, what the fuck do you think you were doing?” He punched again, but this time the kid pulled back, and Theo just grazed him. “People live out here.” Theo could hear himself screaming. He could hear the sobs stitching his words together. “Kids live out here.”
“Hey,” Robert shouted, and he tackled Theo, forcing him away from the driver. Theo and Robert went down, rolling together on the highway. Robert was a surprisingly good grappler, and he got Theo pinned in a matter of moments. Broken pavement bit into Theo’s cheek; the cement was still hot from the September day. He could taste motor oil on each ragged breath.
Sirens broke the stillness.
“Shit,” Robert said, releasing Theo. He jogged to the edge of the road and glanced back. “Dude, come on.”
The driver sat twenty yards down, near the Porsche, pressing the back of his hand to a bloody lip. He’d only moved far enough to grab a pack of smokes that had fallen out during the scuffle. After a moment, the driver just shook his head at Robert’s words; he was staring at Theo.
Robert waited a moment and then ran off into the scrub.
When the patrol car stopped, Theo was sitting on the gravel shoulder, massaging his bad leg. Theo studied the cruiser, hoping he’d get lucky this time, although he thought he’d stretched his luck pretty thin already. He recognized Peterson, the only black man on the force, getting out of the driver’s seat. And then he saw Peterson’s partner for the evening and groaned, dropping his chin to his chest.
Howie Cartwright had been Ian’s best friend on the force. His boots crunched on the gravel. He dropped into a squat, shaking his head as he looked at Theo. And then he said, “For the love of God, Theo. What would Ian say about all this shit?”
5
Auggie got to class early because it was the first day, and no matter how he played it cool in snaps and posts, he had a minor case of nerves. Civ 1: Shakespeare in the World was a GE, and from the reviews Auggie had read about the instructor, it would likely be an easy A—either the guy would blow his brains out, or he’d have some sort of mental breakdown, and another professor would come in and give them all full points because he didn’t know what to do.
His first class was in Tether-Marfitt, which from the outside made him think of Notre Dame with its flying buttresses and elaborate stonework and stained-glass windows. One of Mom’s boyfriends—Perry? Terry? Larry?—had flown them to Paris for a weekend, and the bozo had given Fer a wad of cash and told him to keep Chuy and Auggie busy—and away from the hotel. They’d walked around a lot. Fer had been pretty free with the money, probably because it wasn’t his, buying Chuy eclairs and splitting a bottle of wine with them. They’d seen Notre Dame, just the outside. When they’d gotten back to the hotel late that night, the bozo had told them their mom wasn’t feeling well, and they hadn’t seen her until the flight home.
On the inside, Tether-Marfitt still had stonework and dark wood and brass finishings that were worn and softly glowing, but it also had a student newspaper rack and a payphone and those industrial all-weather mats near the front door. The classroom, when Auggie found it, was just an ordinary room, not the grand lecture hall he’d imagined. It had high-traffic carpeting, tablet-arm seats, and it smelled faintly like curry. Auggie glanced at the blackboard, which was covered in curling script about the history of jazz, and took a seat in the back.
His phone buzzed, and he passed the minutes before class posting a selfie, his face exaggeratedly serious and thoughtful, making sure to capture the desk in the background. Responses popped up almost immediately—oh my god, ur face! what happened?—but he ignored them for the moment. He scrolled through his feed. Lots of congratulations from the bid party at Sigma Sigma—you deserve it, honey, and oh my god, ur so perfect, and, they are lucky to have u i love u, and on and on like that. A lot of new followers, too, which was great. And thinking about followers made him pull up his list. He wanted to find Robert and block him. Unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t use their real names,
