“You can just stop right there.”
It was a woman’s voice, and when he glanced over, at first he didn’t recognize her. She’d found time to get her hair done. She’d even taken care of her nails. But the hard eyes and the hard mouth were the same, and after a moment, he recognized Robert’s ex-girlfriend, Jessica, standing in the opening to the kitchen. She was holding a Bowie knife as long as her forearm. Behind her stood the woman with the swastika tattoo on her cheek—Mae, one of the thugs the Ozark Volunteers had sent to intimidate Theo and Auggie.
“Guess we should have asked you how long you were going to be in jail,” Theo said quietly.
“Trespassing in the first degree,” Jessica said. “Six months tops.” Waving the tip of the blade at the couch, she said, “Have a seat.”
“Why are you here?” Theo asked.
“Have a seat, Theo. We’re going to have a nice, long talk. Mae and her friends are going to make sure nobody interrupts us.”
As though that had been her cue, Mae nodded and left.
“Why are you here?” Theo asked.
“Sit down on the fucking couch.”
“No,” Theo said, and he eased himself up onto the first step.
“You are one dumb son of a bitch.”
“Ask just about any man in my life,” Theo said, easing himself up onto the next step. “Ask Ian, if you can. I think you’ll get a consensus.”
“I’ll cut you up. You don’t want that.”
Theo nodded. The hardest part was turning away from her so he could make a mad dash up the stairs.
“Shit,” Jessica shouted.
Ignoring her, Theo launched himself up the steps. His bad leg gave out on the second push-off, and he hit the steps hard, landing on his chest, his ribs creaking. He scrabbled at the next tread, trying to pull himself up, but his leg was ablaze with pain. After a few more frantic seconds, he managed to plant his other foot and push up with his good leg. He caught the railing, dragged himself another few feet, and his hand cleared the top of the stairs.
The first blow connected low in his back, and the pain was so shockingly crystalline that Theo could hear himself think, That bitch paralyzed me. But he wasn’t paralyzed, and he flopped over, trying to defend himself. She had picked up his cane, and she was swinging it like a baseball bat, big slugger swings that were ridiculous in the cramped stairwell, cracking him in the arm, the head, the legs. She kept hitting until he stopped moving. Taking him by the ankles, she dragged him downstairs. Theo’s head bumped on the steps. Fractals of light multiplied in his vision. He was in the hayloft. He was nudging aside the needle and the rubber tubing. He was trying to wave away the flies, so many damn flies he couldn’t hear anything for all their buzzing. He thought about how disappointed Luke would be; this was the second fight Theo had lost in two weeks.
Too late, he came back to himself and realized she had taped his hands behind his back. Then she kicked him until he rolled over. He blinked, trying to clear his eyes, realizing now that he was bleeding from a head wound.
Jessica stood over him, the knife drawing an S in the air.
“Now,” she said, “let’s talk about where you put Robert’s flash drive.”
19
By the end of Thursday, Orlando still hadn’t said a word to Auggie, and Auggie was fine with that. Orlando just played Xbox or messed with his phone, occasionally shooting looks at Auggie from under those thick eyebrows. He obviously was waiting for Auggie to break first. Auggie hoped he liked waiting.
Auggie was digging into a Com 2 assignment, an analysis of a social media platform’s success. He’d picked Chan’s thisisurex2 account. He knew about people who cut themselves; he’d never really understood it, but he’d known Christian Johnson had cut the inside of his thigh before every lacrosse game. But suddenly it all made sense. When everything hurt his much, when everything hurt everywhere, he could control this one thing and fine tune the pain, make it hurt exquisitely.
His phone buzzed. It was Theo.
Running his thumb along the aluminum frame, Auggie made himself release a slow breath. Then he answered.
“Where is it, fucktwat?” a woman’s voice said.
“What? Who is this?”
“This is your buddy Theo,” the woman said. “Where the fuck is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where’s Theo? Is he ok? Let me talk to him.”
After a moment, the woman said, “All right.”
The sound of the call changed slightly, as though she had set down the phone or moved away from it. In the background, Theo shouted, “The Volunteers are here, Auggie, don’t—” Then, from a distance, came muffled thuds cutting off Theo’s voice. More blows. And then, at the end, a wheezing grunt that sounded a lot like Theo.
“Did you hear that?” the woman asked when she came back, a little breathless. “He says hi.”
Auggie squeezed the phone so tightly that one of his knuckles popped. He forced the next words to be slow: “Please tell me what you want.”
“Well, you’re so polite. That’s just so nice and refreshing. I want Robert’s fucking flash drive. I know one of you two dongblowers has it. Where the fuck is it?”
“I don’t—”
“Now, I know Robert had that fucking flash drive when he went to the Sigma Sigma party. And I know he didn’t have it when I saw him later that night. In between, the only thing out of the ordinary were you two dickbags. So I want to know where that flash drive is.”
“I don’t know!”
“Let’s see if Theo has anything to say about it.”
“No,” Auggie shouted, but she had already moved away from the phone.
The distant sound of the blows resumed and went on longer. This time, when it ended, Auggie could hear Theo struggling not to sob,
