It wasn’t just Auggie’s hands that were trembling; the kid was shaking all over.
“Auggie,” Theo said quietly. “Get your finger off the trigger, please.”
The whoosh of Theo’s heartbeat made it hard to hear; he felt like they were in a vacuum, just the two of them, and nothing he was saying was reaching Auggie. Theo let his fingers slide down Auggie’s arm, bump over his wrist, and wrap around his hand. Then he freed the gun from Auggie’s grip.
“That’s good, Auggie. You did really good.”
The woman had stopped screaming, and now she crouched on the floor. One hand was over her face, covering where Theo had struck her with the cane. The other hand hung at her side; several fingers were obviously broken. On the floor of the office, the big guy had stopped pinwheeling, but he still had both hands over his broken nose, and blood streamed between his fingers.
“I’m calling security,” Theo told the woman.
She stared at him for a moment. Then she stood. “Jerome,” she said. “Jerome, get your fucking ass off the fucking floor. Right now, Jerome.”
Somehow, the big man got to his knees. He crawled to the doorway, past Theo and Auggie, and the woman helped him to his feet.
“You stupid fucks don’t have any idea—” she shouted.
Theo slammed the door and locked it. Then he grabbed the phone on Grace’s desk and dialed campus security. The dispatcher promised to send someone over right away and told Theo to stay in the office. When the dispatcher asked if Theo wanted to stay on the line, he said no and hung up. Then he finally got his first good look at Auggie.
Something bad had happened to the kid. A bruise was darkening on his jawline, and his lip was split again—Theo felt a flash of guilt for that—but mostly it was the terror in his face. The kind of scared look Luke had worn too many times for Theo to count: when he’d dealt bad weed in high school and had Billy Schoening and his gang hunting him down; when he’d gotten Tammy Kluth pregnant, and the Kluth boys were hunting him down; when he’d cut baggies of crystal meth with Pop Rocks and had the Ozark Volunteers hunting him down.
“Sit down,” Theo said, touching Auggie’s arm, intending to steer him toward a seat. “You look like you’re—”
And then, before Theo knew what was happening, Auggie was stepping forward, obviously having mistaken the movement as the beginning of a hug. He wrapped his arms around Theo and buried his face in Theo’s shoulder as he shook.
“Ok,” Theo said. He stood there with no idea what to do. Luke had never wanted a hug. Luke had never wanted anything but for Theo to fix it. After a moment, Theo felt stupid standing with his arms out to the side, so he patted Auggie’s back. “Hey, it’s ok. You did good. You handled yourself really well.”
Auggie started to sob.
“All right,” Theo said. It sounded very stupid, but he had no idea what else to say. “It’s going to be all right.”
They stood like that for a few more minutes, Auggie crying, Theo alternating between patting his back and rubbing slow circles.
“I’m so stupid,” Auggie said, pulling away. “Oh my God, I’m so fucking stupid. I’m sorry. There was this guy, and he—I don’t know, and then they were waiting outside, and they started yelling, and I just ran. I . . . I don’t even know why I came here, I just didn’t know where else to go.”
“Auggie.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten you involved, I shouldn’t have come here. I’m so sorry. Please don’t tell anyone about this.”
“Auggie—”
“Please, oh my God, my mom will kill me. Please. You cannot tell anyone.”
“Your mom? This is way more serious. Anyway, it’s too late for that, ok? I called campus security. They’re on their way.”
“Oh my God,” Auggie said, his voice rising with panic. “He’s going to kill me. He said if I went to the police he’d kill me.”
It was Luke all over again. Theo wanted to scream. He knew every line in this fucking performance by heart.
He had found Luke in the hayloft, shot up with enough heroin to kill a horse. What Theo remembered, when he remembered that day, were the flies crawling on Luke’s eyes.
Auggie’s eyes were very brown and very wide. Helpless eyes.
Theo said, “Sit down. I need you to tell me everything, but first we have to get our story straight.”
9
When campus security left, Auggie was alone with Theo in the office; a girl with a cloud of brown curls had stopped by briefly to pick up the microwaved meal on her desk. She’d tried to hang around until one of the security guards asked her to leave. Now, Auggie sat next to Theo’s desk, replaying snatches of the day—the Community theme song, the pile of pillows squished behind him, the fragrance of Orlando’s soap, the sun hot on his neck as he ran across campus, the weight of the gun in his hand. His eyes moved to Theo’s desk.
Theo seemed to sense his thoughts because he put a hand on the drawer.
“Why did you lie to them?” Auggie asked. Theo had spun a story about meth heads trying to steal the computers. He hadn’t said anything about the distinguishing tattoos. He hadn’t said anything about the gun. Now that the guards had left, from time to time he rubbed his head, and Auggie remembered the sudden, brutal viciousness of the headbutt. Theo wasn’t excessively tall or big, but he was definitely strong, and he also apparently knew how to beat the shit out of white supremacist gang bangers. Not exactly what Auggie had expected from his Shakespeare professor.
“You told me this couldn’t go to the police,” Theo said. “If I tell campus security that two white trash assholes with a gun broke into my office to abduct a student, they’re going to take it to the police.”
“I mean, why are you helping me?”
“I’m part of a freshman transition-to-success program,” Theo said. “We’re supposed to handle this kind of stuff.”
“Oh,” Auggie said.
“That was a joke.”
“Oh,” Auggie said again.
Theo sat back; his chair bumped a banker’s box on the floor behind him, and he flinched without seeming to realize it. “You gave me the reader’s digest version while security was on the way over. I want to hear the whole thing.”
So Auggie told him. When he’d finished, he said, “And now this asshole is going to kill me, or those people he sicced on me, they’re going to kill me, or Christ, I don’t know. I am in such deep shit.”
Theo said, “It’s not the same group.”
“What?”
“The guy who was in your dorm room, he works for someone else.”
“Those guys were literally waiting outside my building after he finished knocking me around.”
“Exactly,” Theo said. “If they were working for that guy, why wouldn’t they have come upstairs with him and really put a scare in you? Why wait outside and do the whole show a second time?”