“Theo says he thinks you have it. Did you hear him?”
“Please,” Auggie said. “I don’t—”
“I’ll ask Theo again.”
“No, no. Don’t. Ok. I have it. Yes. I’ve got it. But it’s not here. It’s going to take me time to get it.”
“Auggie,” she said, and suddenly he recognized the voice, a sliver of clarity in the chaos: Jessica Wallen, Robert’s ex-girlfriend, whom they had spoken to in prison. “Time is about the only thing I don’t have. You’ve got an hour. And don’t do anything stupid like call the police, sweetheart. Theo’s right: my friends are here.”
“No, I need more time, I need—”
The call disconnected.
“Shit,” Auggie screamed, hammering the phone against his leg. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“What did that asshole get you into?” Orlando said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “It’s him, isn’t it? I knew he was going to be trouble for you.”
“Shut up,” Auggie said.
“This is what I was trying to keep from happening. I only ever wanted to—”
“Shut the fuck up, Orlando. I am trying to figure out where the fuck this fucking murdered asshole lost his fucking magical flash drive, and I can’t do it while you’re patting yourself on the fucking back for being a psycho stalker.”
Orlando pulled his knees to his chest and wiped his eyes.
Auggie screamed again, getting off the bed so he could pace.
Orlando sniffled.
“Stop,” Auggie snapped.
“I just wanted to help.”
Auggie ignored him and tried to think. The room was too small for really good pacing; by the time Auggie got going, he had to turn and start over again. So he tried to compensate by going faster. He was wearing a tank and gym shorts, and he chafed his arms, cold even though the dorm was always roasting. Where had Robert hidden the flash drive?
Smart, thorough, lucky. Wasn’t that what Theo had said about solving difficult problems? Start by being smart. Ok. So, assume that Jessica is telling the truth. Robert had the flash drive with him when he went to the Sigma Sigma party. And he didn’t have it when she saw him again later that night. Auggie considered the problem again and tried to be a little smarter. He only had an hour, so he had to snip off even more of the timeline. In theory, Robert could have hidden or lost the flash drive inside the Sigma Sigma house, but Auggie would never have time to search the frat house thoroughly. The same logic applied to the end of Robert’s night: after Robert ran away from the crashed Porsche, Auggie had no idea where he had gone or what he had done. Searching the stretch of woods near the crash would be pointless, especially in the dark, with less than an hour.
“Can I please help?” Orlando said, sniffling some more.
Auggie wanted to say something brittle and cutting about big, butch wrestlers who haunted his life and ruined everything and then cried too much, but instead he just said, “Call the Sigma Sigma house and see if they have a lost and found.”
Orlando looked pathetically grateful, offering Auggie a huge, teary smile as he placed the call.
Auggie considered what he remembered from the one night he had known Robert. Auggie had sat on a low wall outside the Sigma Sigma house. Robert had approached him. They had talked. Auggie had offered a cigarette. He’d said something about wanting to fuck things up. Robert had suggested stealing a car. Robert had come back from the Sigma Sigma house with the keys, and they’d taken the Porsche. Then Auggie had almost hit Theo, driven off into a ditch, and Robert had run away. It was probably twenty minutes total. Thirty minutes at the outside. And what were the odds that Robert had lost the flash drive in those thirty minutes?
“They’ve got a lost and found,” Orlando said. “What did you lose?”
“A flash drive.”
Orlando repeated the item, then shook his head. “They’ve got a spindle of blank CDs.”
Auggie spread his hands.
“You’re sure?” Orlando asked into the phone. Then he shook his head again. “Ok, thanks.”
Auggie started pacing again.
“You know what they say,” Orlando said. “It’s always in the last place you look.”
“How is that supposed to help me?”
“You just jump ahead and look in the last place. Where’s the last place you’d ever think to look?”
“I don’t know, Orlando,” Auggie said through gritted teeth. “That’s why it’s the last place I’d ever think of.”
“I’m just trying to help,” Orlando said, a new variation on his phrase of the day.
“Stop trying.”
“People say you should retrace your steps. What about that? Where was the last place you know you had it?”
Auggie shook his head.
“Well,” Orlando said, “you’re just pacing, so we might as well try it.”
Auggie decided to accept his earlier premise: if Robert had lost or hidden the flash drive either before or after he’d been with Auggie, then Auggie wouldn’t be able to find it in an hour, and he needed to come up with a backup plan. Blowing out a breath, Auggie said, “Outside the Sigma Sigma house.”
“Ok, good. And then what did you do?”
Trying imagine the night’s events from Robert’s perspective, Auggie said, “I walked down to the wall and talked to this guy.”
“Who?” Orlando said a little too quickly. “What was his name?”
Auggie pointed a finger at him.
“I’m just saying maybe he has it.”
“No,” Auggie said. “He doesn’t.”
“Ok, then what?”
“We talked. I asked for a cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“But I was acting like a fucking poser back then,” Auggie could hear himself mixing his point of view with Robert’s, but he couldn’t slow down, “and I had that pack rolled in my sleeve.”
“Ok. Then what?”
“We talked. I said we should steal a car.”
“Wait, what?”
“I went back inside the house. I grabbed somebody’s keys. I came back outside, and we took the car.”
“It could have fallen out of your pocket,” Orlando said. “My keys fall out sometimes when I’m driving.”
Auggie nodded, a sick heat clenching his stomach. The car presented
