They Told Me I Was Everything (The First Quarto Book 1) Page 2

  “Hi,” he said. “Dr. Stratford?”

  Theo nodded but said, “Mr. Stratford. Actually, just Theo, if you’re comfortable.” Wheeling over Dawson’s chair, Theo pointed to the seat. “What can I do for you?”

  “Thanks. This is kind of awkward, but—” He produced a pink slip. “Is there any way?”

  Taking the slip, Theo glanced at it. Robert Poulson, senior. Fall 2013. Civ 1: Shakespeare in the World. Theo raised his eyebrows. “It’s already full?”

  Robert’s eyes shot down to his hands, which he clasped between his knees. “Uh, yeah. Guess so. Everybody registers in the spring.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve never had people lining up to take Shakespeare in the World.”

  Now Robert released his hands, and he scrubbed at his shorts. That was it. Nothing else. But somehow, Theo knew it had to do with the fucking accident. Everything in his life had something to do with that fucking accident now.

  “Robert? Or Robbie?”

  “Robert’s fine.”

  “We’re not supposed to add students. They cap the class sizes for a reason.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m really sorry. I realized over the summer that I could graduate in December if I took this class, but then it was too late to register online, and when I called the secretaries, they told me I had to talk to you in person and get you to sign it.”

  Theo laid the pink slip on his desk.

  “So, um,” Robert said. “Mr. Stratford. I mean Theo. I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Sure,” Theo said.

  “Oh, man.” Robert grinned and looked up. “Thank you.”

  “As soon as you tell me what they’re saying about me.”

  “Mr. Stratford, I don’t—”

  “This is an easy deal. And I won’t hold it against you.”

  Robert named one of the most popular rate-the-professor sites; he was scrubbing his shorts again.

  “All right,” Theo said, signing the slip and passing it back. “Have a great day.”

  “Thanks, Mr.—um, Theo.” Robert paused in the doorway. “And, uh, I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  Theo logged on to the computer, navigated to the site Robert had mentioned, and found his profile. It had ratings for classes he’d taught before—as well as the highly sought-after fire emoji that meant he was hot—and a section for general comments. There it was, laid out in staggered time stamps from June and July.

  —nearly died—

  —boyfriend decapitated—

  —husband, dummy, not boyfriend—

  —little girl didn’t make it—

  —she did, actually, but she lost her legs, I think, or—

  —just saying I had a class once where the professor killed himself and we all got A’s—

  —total bullshit, you stupid troll—

  He closed the tab. His hand was sweaty against the mouse. His pulse beat in his fingertips. Then, for the first time since June, he opened his email.

  Hundreds of unread messages waited for him.

  He scrolled all the way down, opened it, and the words blurred together. He started typing the phrase he’d be using for the rest of his fucking life.

  Thank you. That really means a lot.

  3

  In the Sigma Sigma frat house, Auggie hammered back another shot of Milagro and blinked tears from his eyes. An upperclassman was roaring in his ear—words, but Auggie had no clue what the guy was saying—and slapped another glass into his hand. A fist pounded on his back, and Auggie screamed something and threw back the shot. This time, he sputtered, and the upperclassman pounded on his back again, and that seemed to settle something—whatever the hell they’d been trying to settle. The crowd split up into smaller groups, and the upperclassman wandered off, and Auggie, all by himself, coughed until he felt like one of his lungs had come loose. When he could breathe again, he did a selfie, flashing a peace sign. The filter helped him look not totally wasted, and that was the point: Auggie’s internet persona was fun but responsible, the cute boy you could bring home to the parents. Internet Auggie couldn’t be seen wasted after doing a line of cheap shots.

  The Sigma Sigma Bid-ness Party was overwhelming, but it was the perfect capstone—Saturday night of rush week. Carly Rae Jepsen blasted from a speaker system that ran through the house, although house was a loose term. The building was approximately the size of the elementary school Auggie had attended. On the main floor, small groups of people talked and drank and laugh. Couples grinded against each other in dark corners—and sometimes, in not-so-dark corners. In some of the bigger rooms, furniture had been pushed back to clear space for impromptu dance floors, where crowds of guys and girls swayed and humped and tried to figure out who was going home with whom. A toxic mixture of sweat and a hundred colognes and perfumes hung in the air; somebody had already puked in one of the main-floor bathrooms, and in the kitchen, carry-out five-dollar pizzas were stacked in their boxes. Auggie posed with the stack, pretended to drool, and put a hand on his belly. He snapped the picture and posted it.

  “Pledge,” a scrawny guy screamed as he sprinted past Auggie, tugging on the sequined sash that Auggie was wearing. An even scrawnier girl came next, and she squealed, “Pledge” too and tried to rip the sash free. Auggie spun drunkenly into her pull, and then she released him and stumbled off down the hall. Auggie was laughing; he laughed so hard he crashed into a doorway, and the next thing he knew, he was sitting on his ass.

  “Jesus, you are a serious lightweight.”

  Orlando’s face—thick brows, heavy scruff, lantern jaw—floated into view, and then hands caught Auggie under the arms and lifted.

  “Oh, shit,” Auggie said, his stomach flipping.

  Just as quickly, Orlando released him, letting him slide down the jamb to rest on the floor.

  “Ok,” Orlando said. “I guess you’re staying here for a minute.”

  “Hey, man,” Auggie said.

  “Hey,” Orlando said.

  “Pledge,” Auggie said, tugging on the sash Orlando was wearing. Then he displayed his own. “Same.”

  “Holy shit,” Orlando said with a laugh. “Is it, like, my roommate duty to get you home or something?”

  “M’fine,” Auggie said. “You are really cool.”

  “How many shots did those guys make you do?”

  Auggie tried to hold up eleventeen fingers, which he was pretty sure was the right number, but he couldn’t seem to keep them all up. Then he started giggling.

  “All right,” Orlando said. “You’ve definitely had enough.”

  “M’fine,” Auggie said. “Les take a picture.”

  “Yeah?” Orlando said. “You going to make me a YouTube star too?”

  “Not a star,” Auggie said, tapping at his phone, trying to unlock it as the booze hit harder now. “Internet pers—internet pers—internet personality.” He crowed as he got past the passcode and showed the screen in triumph. “Come on.”

  Shrugging, Orlando crouched at Auggie’s side. Auggie couldn’t get the right angle—Orlando had a massive chest, a tiny waist, biceps the size of bowling balls, and it all deserved to be on display.

  “No, man,” Auggie said, grabbing Orlando’s arm and tugging. “You gotta—Jesus, have you never taken a picture before. And spread your legs. No.” He got his hand between Orlando’s knees to adjust his pose; when he bent closer, he could smell his own breath, the Milagro fumes thick enough to burn. “Back straight, chest out. Chin. Yeah, all right. Fuck yeah.”

  He took the shot. He slapped on a filter, scrawled bros on the bottom, and posted it.

  “You’re really good at that,” Orlando said.

  Heat rushed into Auggie’s face. His hand was still on Orlando’s knee.

  Orlando’s dark eyes were glassy; he was drunk too, Auggie realized distantly.

  “How trashed are you?” Orlando asked quietly, his breath whiskering against Auggie’s cheek. br />
  Before Auggie could answer, a trio of upperclassmen staggered into the hallway, two of them supporting the one in the middle, who was dry heaving like crazy.

  “Out of the fucking way, pledge,” one shouted, and Orlando scrambled away from Auggie.

  Right when the guys got even with Auggie, the one with the heaves bent at the waist and started to gag. Auggie felt his own stomach contract in response; he squeezed his eyes shut, fought a wave of cold sweat, and managed, just barely, not to puke. By the time he was back in control of himself, the upperclassmen had moved on. Orlando was gone.

  Auggie got to his feet. He wandered through a few of the rooms, looking for Orlando. Then the music was too loud. The burn of the tequila at the back of his throat was making him sick. His head was pounding in time with Rihanna, who was pulsing through the speakers now, and he staggered outside for some fresh air.

  The party was still going strong; from the outside, the frat house was a blaze of light, the building seeming to thump with the bassline. In California, the night would have been pleasantly cool now, all the heat dissipating once the sun went down. Here, though, the heat seemed just as dense, just as sticky. It was like a spiderweb clinging to his face; he took deep breaths, and the air smelled like hot tar and gasoline and trampled wild onions. The frat house had a low wall near the sidewalk, and he sat there, grateful for the chill of the stone through his jeans. He lay down. He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but after a while, his head was clearer.

  “Bum a smoke?”

  The voice was quiet and confident; when Auggie glanced up, he saw another pledge wearing the same sash. This guy looked a little older, like maybe he’d taken a gap year, and he grinned at Auggie’s expression and tapped his sleeve. “Cigarette? I left mine in the dorm, and I’m wasted. I always smoke when I’m wasted.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Auggie worked the pack free from where he’d rolled it in his sleeve, got out a smoke, and passed it over.

  The guy lit his and then asked, “You don’t want one?”

  “Nah. I already feel like I’m going to puke.”

  Blowing out a stream of smoke, the guy nodded. “Auggie, right?”

  “Yeah. Uh . . .”

  “It’s ok. Robert.”

  “Yeah, ok. Sorry. Lots of new people.”

  “No problem.”

  “Hey, Robert, not trying to be a dick, but could you just fuck off? I feel like shit.”

  “Yeah. Like, you need an ambulance?”

  “No, just—shit night.”

  “You got a bid from Sigma Sigma. I saw you blasting it all over Instagram. You got, like, a million likes on it.” Robert grinned around the cigarette and said, “Ok, so I follow you. You’re fucking hilarious. Anyway, what’s so shitty about tonight?”

  Auggie thought of his hand on Orlando’s knee, the soft, warm breath on his cheek, the question that had a kind of invitation in it: How trashed are you?

  Be careful, he told himself. Be careful. You’ve worked really hard, and you can’t just throw it all away. Not again. And it wasn’t just Orlando that worried him; it was the dark anger blossoming in his chest. The need to be seen. Really seen. And he told himself again, be really, really careful.

  But the Milagro was talking for him now.

  “Cock blocked,” Auggie said with a shrug.

  “Yeah, well, trust me: there are plenty of girls in there that’ll do you. You want me to introduce you to some?”

  Auggie stared out at the street. The asphalt was a black river.

  “I want to fuck some shit up,” Auggie said.

  Robert drew hard on the cigarette; the tip flared into a star and then dimmed. “Fuck,” he said. “That’s fucked up. Like, you want to fight somebody? I guess we could go find some dive-bar assholes.”

  Auggie couldn’t look away from the black ripple of asphalt. He was thinking about November, thinking about making another fucking video for the same fucking people, hearing Rihanna, and then the collision, the force whipping his body, the shriek of metal, the shattering glass.

  “I want to drive,” Auggie said.

  “You have a car?”

  Wiping his face, Auggie said, “No. That’s the whole point.”

  The cigarette’s ember glowed again, painting Robert’s face in red. Then Robert shrugged and said, “So let’s steal one.”

  4

  Booze and pills didn’t mix, Theo had learned, but since June, he had also learned that knowing something in his head had very little connection to the stupid shit he kept doing. But it had been a long week of prepping lectures, recycling slides, and digging himself every day out of the bullshit hole of sympathy only to find himself neck deep again the next. Long days of biking to campus at dawn, taking the bus to Downing, then hopping a second bus back to campus, and then biking home long after Liversedge emptied. Long days of trying to figure out what the hell he was doing. Plus, classes started on Monday, and that was a good reason to drink on a Saturday night. A good reason, but not the top of the list.

  Theo was sitting in the kitchen of the little house he and Ian had bought west of campus, practically at the city limits. They’d had to stay inside the city for Ian’s job—if you worked on the Wahredua police force, you’d better live in Wahredua—but Ian had been even more of a country boy than Theo. They’d found a spot in what Ian called the boonies, even though it was five minutes to a CVS and seven minutes to the Piggly Wiggly. It wasn’t a trendy house. It wasn’t old in a fashionable way—no mid-century design, no period craftsman detail. The tuckpointing needed work, the chimney was on its way down, and in May, Ian had stripped the floors and sanded them and now, of course, they were never going to get finished. Now when Theo walked around the house, he picked up wood dust on his socks, the cotton sticking occasionally where something—whatever Ian had used to strip the stain, maybe—left the boards tacky.

  At the kitchen table—thirty-eight dollars at the flea market outside St. Elizabeth, chairs included, everything the color of Pepto-Bismol until Ian had refinished them—Theo swallowed a Percocet because his leg never really stopped hurting and then cracked open a can of Southside Blonde. They’d been in St. Louis, stopped at Perennial, and picked up a few four-packs of the beer. Ian had wanted the IPA.

  If history were a roadmap, Theo thought, you could see exactly where your life went off course. Exit 2 when you were supposed to take Exit 1. Left instead of right. Highway instead of surface streets. If history were a roadmap, you could take a pencil and trace a new route: jink back at the next intersection, cut up this alley, merge onto the ramp, and you’re back on track.

  For example, instead of telling Ian that you didn’t have time to go back and pick up some four-packs of Hurry On Daylight, you shut your fucking mouth, let him take the McCausland exit, and flip around. Then you’re not hitting I-270 at rush hour. Then you’re not right in the path of that semi when it blows a tire, the trailer slews, and however many fucking tons of steel hit you like a slapshot.

  He drank two of the Southside Blondes; his mouth tasted like sweet malt and lemon and hops, and it seemed like a good idea to be outside. What did he have inside? Inside was the unfinished floors, the flea-market table, Lana’s plastic train that he stumbled over on the way to the door, and it flashed its red lights and made electronic chugging noises. Inside was a fucking tomb.

  The September night was sticky and warm; they didn’t have streetlights in the boonies, but the light pollution from Wahredua dissolved into a haze, particles overhead like huge grains of pollen drifting in the blackness. Theo made his way down the front steps, stumbled again, and fell. He was wearing a Blues t-shirt and mesh shorts; he scraped his knee on the cement walk. From inside the house, the train’s cheery little song chased after him. He used the Malibu to get to his feet—the only thing the car, new in 2010 and with fewer than thirty thousand miles on it—was good for now that Theo refused to drive. As he limped down the street, he realized he’d forgotten his ca
ne. By the end of the block, his hip would be screaming at him. Who cared, though? Let it scream.

  When Theo got to the end of the street, his prediction was right: his hip was on fire, his whole leg ablaze. He stopped at the state highway, glanced left, glanced right. No headlights. He had this vision of hobbling out into traffic, lights, the blare of a horn. He knew, firsthand, the momentum behind a tractor-trailer. A lot of times out at the farm, they had to shovel up roadkill—deer occasionally, but more often raccoons or possums or skunks. Shovel was the right verb; usually, what was left was a mess of bones and flesh and organs, some of it already mashed into a paste. If you used a snow shovel, those had the best edge on the blade, you could get some of them in one go.

  He turned and headed toward the city, toward Wroxall, toward the light. A pair of headlights appeared, racing toward him. He was on the right-hand shoulder, walking with traffic, and now he took a step up, toeing the white line on the asphalt. A second later, the truck blew past him, a wall of air rattling sticks and leaves across the highway, the receipt from a Conoco sticking to his sweaty calf. He kept going. He was on the white line now.

  When the next pair of headlights came into view, he staggered a few steps to the left. He was winded now, out of shape after barely more than a month, his leg bitching like crazy. He was in the middle of the lane, his gait uneven. The sedan was lime green; the windows were down, and Kanye was pumping steadily out of the speakers. Somebody shouted, “Get off the road, asshole,” and laughter chased the sedan into the night.

  Theo trudged on. The world was underwater now; part of his brain knew that was from his homemade cocktail. Everything was undulating, flexible, pulsing closer and then retreating. Light, when it appeared on the horizon, shimmered. Two lights. Headlights, the edges of the beams marked by iridescent cones. The thrum of the wheels transferred through the asphalt and vibrated in Theo’s ankles.