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 shoulders, 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.