Home > They Told Me I Was Everything(6)

They Told Me I Was Everything(6)
Author: Gregory Ashe

 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.

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