“Oh my God.” Auggie shoved the clothes in the duffel and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at Orlando. “You are so fucking pathetic.”
“I care about you so much—”
“Stop. Just stop.”
“I do. I know you don’t believe me, but I do. You’re the only person I think about. You’re funny and you’re smart and you’re kind. You’re gorgeous. You’re this incredible person that I lucked into meeting, and I know I messed things up, but if you’d just let me show you—”
“You don’t know me.”
“Yes, I do.” Orlando was trying hard to firm his jaw. “I do. I know there are things about your life you don’t want everyone to—”
“Oh my God. That part’s over, Orlando. Everybody saw a dude kiss me. No matter what I say, that’s out there. You. Don’t. Know. Me.”
“I do know you.” His lip trembled. “And I love you.”
“You’re insane. You need to understand that. You are legitimately batshit insane.” Hopping off the bed, Auggie, opened the bottom drawer of the dresser. “I’m going to stay somewhere else the rest of the semester, so—”
“He’s a creepy old fuck,” Orlando shouted. “What the fuck is the deal with him? You don’t realize how weird that is?”
Auggie laughed again. “You’re jealous of Theo? Jesus. He told me he never wanted to see me again, Orlando, so don’t worry about that. But you know what? I’m feeling really fucking self-destructive right now, so I might as well go nuclear. Here’s the thing about Theo: he’s pretty fucked up, and I realized that early on, but at least he never wanted me to be anything but myself.”
“Neither do I. I want you to be you. I’ll do whatever you want. We can figure out a way to make better videos. We’ll find the right girls. There’s a girl in my chem class who’s really funny. We can make a joke out of the whole kiss thing.”
The idea was so tempting that Auggie felt it viscerally, a hook lodged in his gut. More videos. More jokes. More pictures and smiles and filters. And every day, becoming cardboard by inches.
“Please,” Orlando said, touching Auggie’s arm again, but softly. “Please. And we can . . . we can maybe give us a try, in secret, like we talked about. I can take care of you.”
Auggie shivered. He pressed the clothes firmly into the bag, but he left it open, not bothering to zip it shut. He turned and faced Orlando.
“Keys,” he said.
“What?”
“You want to see what you’re dealing with? Keys. We’re going to take a ride.”
After a moment, Orlando handed over the keys. They went downstairs; it was late afternoon, and the sun set early in January. Another half hour, and dusk would be settling over everything. Orlando gave directions until they found his car, a BMW 335i, slate gray, probably a year or two old. Auggie slid behind the wheel; the smell of leather made his heart pulse a little faster, and when the engine roared to life, the pounding in his ears drowned out everything else. He played with the radio until he found some sort of screeching death metal, and then he turned it up until Orlando winced. He found a way to turn off the automatic headlights, and then he stepped on the gas.
“Jesus,” Orlando yelped.
Ten miles over the speed limit, on a street bordering a college campus, felt like a lot. A pair of girls in ski caps backpedaled out of a crosswalk and shouted at Auggie as he blitzed past them. He dropped the pedal and slid around a bus idling ahead of them. The light at the intersection was yellow, and he slewed into the turn. When he spotted an elderly man in the crosswalk, Auggie just goosed the car into the oncoming lanes, which were clear for a moment, and zipped around him. Then they were shooting west out of the city.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Orlando screamed. “My dad will fucking kill me.”
Auggie hit the gas again. Fifty in a thirty. A massive, illuminated red sign for HAROLD’S FRIED CHICKEN screamed past them on the right. Half a mile ahead, the next traffic light flipped to red, and the road was empty. Auggie kept accelerating. Cars shot through the intersection on the cross street. He wondered if he had timed this correctly.
“Stop,” Orlando shouted. “Stop, you’re going to—”
The light winked green, and they shot through the intersection.
“I told Theo,” Auggie said, “that I liked to fuck things up every once in a while. I got tired of everybody seeing the same fucking cardboard cutout.”
Wahredua was dissolving around them. Seventy in a forty. It was like special effects in a tornado movie, everything coming unglued, particles whirling away in an updraft. Pretty soon there’d be nothing left but the dark.
“Slow down,” Orlando was shouting, “slow down, slow—”
“But here’s what I didn’t tell him,” Auggie said.
They were a rocket clearing the atmosphere: Wahredua had disintegrated behind them, and now they blasted into full dark. Ninety in a fifty. A hundred. A hundred and ten. Without the headlights, it was like driving in a world of silhouettes: the trees and hills clipped out of the relative lightness of the horizon; the moon; the snow; a barn, its white paint skeletal.
To their left, a steel cattle guard bridged the drainage ditch, and then six feet of gravel drive ended at a split-rail snake fence. Auggie cut left, hard. For a moment, the bars of the cattle guard sang under them, and he kept turning, the tires drifting over snow and gravel, still turning, the rear of the BMW connecting first with the fence, still turning, the car whipping around, knocking the rails into the air like matchsticks, still turning, the tires biting deep into the ground and chewing up thick, muddy strips, still turning, and Orlando screaming the whole time.
Then the car stopped. Auggie goosed the engine, and the tires spun in the mud, splattering the snow behind them. After another minute, when
