“Can I—” Theo began.
Orlando stepped into the office and slammed the door. The sound was thunder clapping inside the small space. Then Orlando hesitated, sniffed, and said, “Are you fucking high?”
“What’s going on?” Theo said. “Who are you, and why are you here?”
“You know who I am.”
“What do you want?”
Orlando kept shifting back and forth. He had his hands buried in his coat pockets, and Theo wondered if the kid had a knife or a gun. He smelled like he hadn’t showered in a day or two, and now that the initial shock was wearing off, Theo noticed Orlando’s pallor, the dark circles under his eyes.
“I’m calling security,” Theo said.
“Do that. We’ll go over to their office and have a nice chat about what you’ve been doing with Auggie.”
“Get out of my office.”
Orlando was still rocking back and forth, his breathing getting harsher.
“Get out,” Theo said. “Right fucking now.”
“You stay away from him.”
“What?”
“Stay away from Auggie. Don’t go anywhere fucking near him again. Do you understand me?”
“You’re joking, right? This is some asshole jealousy bullshit?”
Orlando’s hand came out of his pocket, and he held up something small. Then he lunged forward, slapping it on Theo’s desk. “Stay away from him, or I will kill you. And after I fucking murder you, I will bury you in this fucking shit so that you’ll never work at a school again.”
Before Theo could respond, Orlando threw open the door. It crashed into the wall, and Orlando hurried out. Dawson was standing in the hall, playing with his man bun, eyes wide.
“Dude, what was—”
“Just give me a minute,” Theo said. “Close the door and just give me a minute.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Jesus Christ, Dawson, shut the fucking door.”
Dawson shut the door.
Picking up the flash drive that Orlando had left on his desk, Theo examined it for a moment before inserting it into the computer. Some tiny part of him was hoping this was the flash drive that Lender had been asking about, but he knew that wasn’t the case. This was just some bizarre coincidence.
The drive held only a single video: Auggie and Theo sitting in the parking lot outside the sheriff’s office, Theo leaning in and kissing Auggie. It was dusk, but you could still see enough to identify both people.
“Shit,” Theo said yanking the flash drive from the computer. He got to his feet. He limped a few paces until he came up against the far wall, and then he turned and paced the other way. “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”
He grabbed his cane and his satchel and left.
“Hey, man, are you—” Dawson asked.
Theo took the stairs this time, not caring how it would fuck up his leg, not caring about anything except getting out of this fucking place and away from all the fucking mistakes he’d made. When he got to the bottom of the steps, he had to rely almost totally on the cane to make his way out to the curb. He lucked out; a bus was just pulling up, and it was the one he took to Downing. It seemed like a sign. He heaved himself up onto the bus, flashed his pass, and dropped into the closest seat.
He thought he heard a voice shout his name before the bus doors closed. It didn’t matter; he closed his eyes and let his head fall back, and he tried to figure out why he’d let himself fuck things up so badly.
13
Standing outside Liversedge Hall, Auggie watched Theo board the bus. He called Theo’s name, but Theo didn’t look back. By the time Auggie got to the street, the bus had already pulled away and was too far for Auggie to catch. The decision only took an instant: Auggie opened the Uber app and requested a ride to the opposite side of town, and in less than two minutes, a silver Toyota Corolla was pulling up to the curb. Auggie jumped into the car.
“Afternoon,” a young black woman said as she eased the Corolla into traffic.
“Hey, can you follow that bus?”
“Sorry, what?”
“That bus up there. Can you follow it?”
“No, sorry. We’ve got to drive the route you requested.”
“Shit, never mind. I’ll figure something else out. Just let me out.”
“Hold on, hold on,” the girl said. “If you know where it’s going, you can put in the destination. That bus goes back to the main terminal near the government complex.”
“But it stops other places, right?”
“Well, yeah.” She eyed him in the rearview mirror. “What’s going on?”
“My friend got on that bus and I’ve got to talk to him.”
“He doesn’t have a phone?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
The girl made a skeptical noise in her throat, but all she said was, “If you put in the main terminal as your destination, the app figures out the best route. We probably wouldn’t follow the bus the whole way.”
“Hold on,” Auggie said. He tapped at his phone until he’d pulled up the Wahredua public transit webpage, and he found a map of the bus schedule. He checked it against the Uber map, and he began adding stops: not all of them, but every stop before the bus turned, so that the Uber route matched the bus’s path. “How about that?”
“I can’t go as slow as the bus,” the girl said. The Uber app told him her name was Imani J. “If it stops too much—”
“I’ll make it up to you with the tip,” Auggie said.
Imani hemmed.
“Please,” Auggie said.
“This is weird. Are you stalking this guy?”
“No. It’s just complicated.”
“You got that right,” she said, glancing at him once more in the mirror.
Imani kept her promise: she drove slowly behind the bus, following it, pausing when the bus stopped to load and unload passengers. Fortunately, it was early afternoon, and the bus passed many of its normal stops without slowing because no one was waiting, and presumably no
