They Told Me I Was Everything (The First Quarto Book 1) Page 3

  He closed his eyes and leaned left.

  Brakes screeched. A horn blared. The sound of tires fusing to pavement came with the hot stink of burning rubber, and then there was a loud crash. Theo hadn’t felt anything; part of his brain informed him that was shock. He wasn’t ever going to feel anything again. He could just drift away on that underwater current.

  But he didn’t drift away.

  He took a deep breath of burning rubber, now laced with exhaust and the hot, humid greenness of the trees.

  A door opened.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” a voice said. “What the fuck were you doing?”

  It took Theo a moment to realize someone was talking to him.

  Footsteps came closer, and Theo opened his eyes. The kid coming toward him wasn’t cute or hot or attractive or pretty. He was stunning. Gorgeous. And Theo felt shitty even through the Percocet and the beer for thinking something like that. Dark hair in a crew cut, lean and toned, soft brown eyes; it was hard to tell in the darkness if the kid was really tan or had light brown skin. Whatever it was, it was perfect on him.

  Then Theo’s eyes moved past him, to the Porsche 911 that had skidded to a halt in the drainage ditch. Another kid was climbing out, holding his head, and things started to become real again. Theo recognized the second kid as Robert Poulson, who had come to his office earlier that week.

  Then he saw the wreck, and in his mind, he was back on I-270, trapped in the car, Ian’s blood all over him.

  Some asshole driving too fast.

  Theo charged the driver. He was vaguely aware of his leg pinging, a hot electricity that made him sick, but he was so furious he didn’t register it completely.

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” the driver was saying. “You could have—”

  Theo punched him. “What the fuck were you doing?” Theo swung again, and the kid stumbled back and went down on his ass. “Driving like a fucking maniac, what the fuck do you think you were doing?” He punched again, but this time the kid pulled back, and Theo just grazed him. “People live out here.” Theo could hear himself screaming. He could hear the sobs stitching his words together. “Kids live out here.”

  “Hey,” Robert shouted, and he tackled Theo, forcing him away from the driver. Theo and Robert went down, rolling together on the highway. Robert was a surprisingly good grappler, and he got Theo pinned in a matter of moments. Broken pavement bit into Theo’s cheek; the cement was still hot from the September day. He could taste motor oil on each ragged breath.

  Sirens broke the stillness.

  “Shit,” Robert said, releasing Theo. He jogged to the edge of the road and glanced back. “Dude, come on.”

  The driver sat twenty yards down, near the Porsche, pressing the back of his hand to a bloody lip. He’d only moved far enough to grab a pack of smokes that had fallen out during the scuffle. After a moment, the driver just shook his head at Robert’s words; he was staring at Theo.

  Robert waited a moment and then ran off into the scrub.

  When the patrol car stopped, Theo was sitting on the gravel shoulder, massaging his bad leg. Theo studied the cruiser, hoping he’d get lucky this time, although he thought he’d stretched his luck pretty thin already. He recognized Peterson, the only black man on the force, getting out of the driver’s seat. And then he saw Peterson’s partner for the evening and groaned, dropping his chin to his chest.

  Howie Cartwright had been Ian’s best friend on the force. His boots crunched on the gravel. He dropped into a squat, shaking his head as he looked at Theo. And then he said, “For the love of God, Theo. What would Ian say about all this shit?”

  5

  Auggie got to class early because it was the first day, and no matter how he played it cool in snaps and posts, he had a minor case of nerves. Civ 1: Shakespeare in the World was a GE, and from the reviews Auggie had read about the instructor, it would likely be an easy A—either the guy would blow his brains out, or he’d have some sort of mental breakdown, and another professor would come in and give them all full points because he didn’t know what to do.

  His first class was in Tether-Marfitt, which from the outside made him think of Notre Dame with its flying buttresses and elaborate stonework and stained-glass windows. One of Mom’s boyfriends—Perry? Terry? Larry?—had flown them to Paris for a weekend, and the bozo had given Fer a wad of cash and told him to keep Chuy and Auggie busy—and away from the hotel. They’d walked around a lot. Fer had been pretty free with the money, probably because it wasn’t his, buying Chuy eclairs and splitting a bottle of wine with them. They’d seen Notre Dame, just the outside. When they’d gotten back to the hotel late that night, the bozo had told them their mom wasn’t feeling well, and they hadn’t seen her until the flight home.

  On the inside, Tether-Marfitt still had stonework and dark wood and brass finishings that were worn and softly glowing, but it also had a student newspaper rack and a payphone and those industrial all-weather mats near the front door. The classroom, when Auggie found it, was just an ordinary room, not the grand lecture hall he’d imagined. It had high-traffic carpeting, tablet-arm seats, and it smelled faintly like curry. Auggie glanced at the blackboard, which was covered in curling script about the history of jazz, and took a seat in the back.

  His phone buzzed, and he passed the minutes before class posting a selfie, his face exaggeratedly serious and thoughtful, making sure to capture the desk in the background. Responses popped up almost immediately—oh my god, ur face! what happened?—but he ignored them for the moment. He scrolled through his feed. Lots of congratulations from the bid party at Sigma Sigma—you deserve it, honey, and oh my god, ur so perfect, and, they are lucky to have u i love u, and on and on like that. A lot of new followers, too, which was great. And thinking about followers made him pull up his list. He wanted to find Robert and block him. Unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t use their real names, and based on a quick scan, he didn’t see which one might belong to the asshole who had almost gotten Auggie arrested on Saturday night.

  It could have gone so much worse. If Auggie hadn’t been just sober enough to lie. If the asshole in the middle of the road hadn’t, for some reason, backed up Auggie’s story that Robert, who had run off, had been driving. If Auggie hadn’t been quick enough to explain that Robert had said the car belonged to him.

  The drunken haze of the night made it hard for Auggie fully to trace his thinking. He remembered the surge of pleasure at Orlando complimenting him, the prickling heat in his gut that told him something was happening between them, and then the disappointment when Orlando vanished. He remembered wanting to fuck things up after a week of pretending to be someone else—after a week of rush, trying to be the human equivalent of a cardboard cutout. And of course, for Auggie, fucking things up always involved a car.

  He remembered Robert suggesting stealing a car, and Robert coming back from the Sigma Sigma house with a pair of keys. Auggie had been driving like a total dick, determined to mess things up somehow. He’d spotted the asshole on the road at the last minute, swerved, and crashed in the drainage ditch. The asshole had hit him a few times and left him on the ground. And then—this was the part where things got messy—Auggie had realized he didn’t want to keep fucking up his life.

  Maybe those punches had knocked something straight in his head. Maybe it was the very real possibility of having to face his mom so soon again. Maybe—this felt the strongest, plucking a chord deep in Auggie’s gut—maybe it had been the genuine terror in the asshole’s voice, the realization that Auggie had scared him past reason, maybe even past sanity. Whatever the reason, Auggie, drunk and hurting, had wanted not to be himself anymore. He had wanted something new. So when the cops asked him about the car, he had lied, instead of embracing the shit show he had gone looking for. And for some reason, the asshole had backed him.

  Sober, on a Monday, he could explain to himself that he was starting fresh, that he was done with that kind of stuff, that he was finished with what his mother called making a scene. He just needed to watch the tequila. Even the stuff with Orlando had been a one-off mistake; Orlando had been out of the dorm most of Sunday, and the few times they had crossed paths, he was polite and distant, so Auggie must have imagined whatever had happened at the Sigma Sigma house.

  Today, moving forward, no more mess ups. Auggie was on track again. He had a chance to fix everything. A year here, and he could go wherever he wanted. He’d have the money he needed. He’d have the life he wanted. No stupid stuff with cars. No stupid stuff with . . . well, with anyone.

  Students were making their way into the class, navigating the competing demands for personal space while still fitting everyone into the room. Auggie got one more picture, this time of his hand holding a pen above a page where he’d written Notes on Being A Genius, tagged himself, and posted it.

  Another phone dinged in the room. Auggie looked up; a girl with pigtails was checking her phone, and then she glanced around, locked eyes with Auggie, and stared. He smiled and gave a small wave. Her face turned bright pink, and she jumped back on the phone and started typing like mad.

  A comment showed up on his Notes on Being A Genius post: oh my god it’s u.

  Auggie sent a thumbs up, and then he sent the emoji with nerdy glasses.

  The girl giggled, looked at him, and went back to the phone.

  oh my god, the next comment said. i'm in the same class as @aplolz.

  Comments poured in—expressions of envy from other followers, a show of excitement, and demands for details. By the time Auggie noticed that the class had gotten quiet, the professor was already at the board, writing his name and email.

  The guy looked distractingly cute from behind. Great ass filling out chinos, nice should
ers, the sleeves of his gingham shirt rolled up to hint at some quality biceps. He had a bro flow of strawberry blond hair, the strands tucked behind his ears, and Auggie could see in profile the thick beard.

  An alarm bell started inside him.

  “I’m Mr. Stratford,” the man was saying as he wrote. “You can call me Theo; that’s what I prefer. Here’s my email, and if you need—”

  As the professor turned around, Auggie said, “Oh, shit.”

  The other students had already been silent. Now, Auggie didn’t think anyone was even breathing.

  It was the asshole. The asshole who Auggie had almost hit with the car.

  Mr. Stratford—Theo—was staring back at Auggie. Then he crooked a finger and stepped out into the hall. Auggie wormed out of his seat, stumbled over his backpack, and made his way to the door. He heard the shutter sound of a camera app, and when he glanced back, Pigtails was blushing even harder and trying not to look at him.

  When he got into the hall, Theo shut the door. The professor crossed his arms. Auggie’s first impression had been right: really nice arms. His eyes moved up: the thick beard, the prominent cheekbones, the bro flow of strawberry blond with just the tiniest wave to it.

  “Get your stuff,” Theo said. “You’re dropping this class.”

  It wasn’t just the words. It wasn’t just the tone, clipped and assured. It wasn’t just the fact that this guy belonged in the same age bracket that Gabby Lopez drew all her new boyfriends and husbands from.

  “Nah,” Auggie said, reaching for the door. “I don’t think so.”

  “There’s nothing to think about.” Theo planted a hand on the door. “There’s a conflict here; we have a previous relationship. You need to be in another class. I’ll transfer you out myself if I have to.”

  “Conflict?” Auggie said, tugging on the door. He couldn’t even budge it. “What conflict?”

  “Grab your backpack and go. Add/drop runs through the third week. You have plenty of time to find another class.”

  “Oh, conflict. You’re probably talking about this.” Auggie touched his split lip. “And this.” The bruises near his hairline. “And the fact that you were walking in the middle of the road and just about got me killed.”

  “You were driving a stolen car.”

  Auggie raised his chin.

  “You were drunk,” Theo said.

  “So were you. I wonder what your supervisor or administrator or whatever they’re called will think when I tell them about how I almost hit you because you were trashed in the middle of the road. And then you attacked me. Do they keep guys like that on faculty here? It’d make a great news story.”

  “Wow,” Theo said. “I felt bad for you. Bad about what happened. I lied to the police for you so you wouldn’t get your ass hauled off to jail. And now you show up here and you’re going to blackmail me?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Fuck. You. Go tell your fucking story to whoever you fucking want.”

  “I’m not trying to blackmail you,” Auggie said, his chest tingling, and then the tingle moving up into his neck, into his face. “Ok, I guess—I didn’t—I just want to stay in the class, ok? I’ve got my whole schedule the way I want it. I’ll earn my grade. I won’t say anything about the other night.”

  “You’re making a mistake. You’ll do better in another class, with an instructor where there isn’t a . . . history.”

  Auggie met his eyes and waited.

  “Fine,” Theo said, dropping his hand from the door. “For your information, this is one of the many reasons I hate freshmen: you think the whole world revolves around you.”

  Auggie shrugged, opened the door, and slipped into the classroom. The other students were still silent and watching, all except Pigtails, who was tapping like mad on her phone.

  “No phones,” Theo snapped as he took his place at the front of the room. He grabbed a stack of papers and began handing them out while Pigtails shoved her phone in her bag. When Theo reached Auggie, he didn’t even look at him, just thrust the packet in his direction and kept moving.

  After handing out the syllabus, Theo stood at the front of the room and read through it. All of it. After about a minute, Auggie’s eyes were drooping; the adrenaline from confronting Theo was dripping out of him, and the morning class meant he’d been up way earlier than he wanted. He was fighting to keep his head off the desk when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

  It was loud enough in the quiet room that Theo paused in his reading and glanced up, locking eyes with Auggie.

  “Sorry,” Auggie whispered.

  But his phone buzzed again. And then again. And then again.

  Theo lowered the pages, resting them against one muscled thigh.

  “I’ll turn it off,” Auggie said.

  “Please.”

  Auggie fumbled with the phone and saw that someone he didn’t recognize had tagged him in a post. It was getting comments. A lot of comments.

  “Mr.—” Theo paused. “What’s your name?”

  Auggie opened the app and saw a video he’d been tagged in. A flutter of dread ran through his stomach. Was it something from the Bid-ness Party? Him doing shots? Him and Orlando? Christ, anything like that could have major fallout for his internet persona. Could it be something with the car and Theo? Nobody could have seen that, right?

  “Auggie Lopez,” Pigtail offered. Auggie looked up long enough to give her the snake eye, and she blushed again.

  “Auggie,” Theo said, moving down the aisle now. “No phones in the classroom. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, yeah, I’m putting it away.”

  The video had finally loaded, and now it played. Auggie stared, not quite believing what he was seeing in the montage: first, a wobbly shot of him behind the wheel of the stolen car from Saturday, obviously drunk, screaming, “I fucking hate you,” at the windshield; then a cut to another clip, with Auggie and Theo standing close together on the road, Theo shouting something indistinguishable on the video; and then a third clip that showed someone being dragged by the arms, a bag over his head, and strangled cry of, “Help!” The final part of the video was just white text on a black background: you just saw a murder.

  Auggie was tagged in the comments with his business account, @aplolz. The poster had also tagged @theouponavon, which Augge guessed was Theo Stratford. The post had been made by wroxall_deepthroat. It was the only post from that account.

  The comment feed was exploding.

  “No phones,” Theo said, taking the phone from Auggie, locking the screen, and putting it in his pocket. “You can have it back at the end of class.”

  He held Auggie’s gaze; Auggie stared back, barely seeing him.

  you just saw a murder

  “As I was saying about revisions,” Theo continued, moving back to the desk at the front of the room.

  Auggie didn’t hear anything for the rest of the fifty minutes. When it was over, he took his phone and stumbled out of the room. He thought he should talk to Theo, try to figure out what the hell was going on, but he knew it didn’t matter. The video had already been posted. All he could do now was damage control.

  6

  Theo got home to find Howie Cartwright on the steps.

  “Risers are rotted out,” Cart said. He was out of uniform, wearing athletic shorts and a Budweiser t-shirt with the frogs from that one commercial. With his heel, he tapped the steps. “These things are going to go, and they’re going to go bad.”

  “I’ll get around to them.”

  “You could break your neck.”

  Taking out his keys, Theo moved past Cart and unlocked the front door. He turned on the window unit, and wisps of lukewarm air stirred the dense, sticky heat of the closed-up house. Cart had followed him in uninvited, and now Cart came after him into the kitchen, where Theo ditched his satchel and helmet. He opened the refrigerator, took out the last two Southside Blondes, opened one for himself and held out the other for Cart. Cart took it but just held it. He was one of those skinny country boys who stayed skinny forever, kind of like Ian. His hair was perpetually buzzed at a zero, and when he wiped the can with his shirt, he had those crazy, skinny-boy abs with a dusting of dark brown hair.