“Um, yeah. Right.”
When Orlando’s steps were ringing out on the metal stairs, Theo said, “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Don’t do that. If you’ve got a problem with me, tell me. Don’t pretend to be fine and then go out of your way to upset me.”
“Why would I want to upset you?”
Theo scratched his beard. Hard scratches. “One more chance.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did I do something wrong?”
“The other stuff I can let slide, Auggie. I said something dumb. I pissed you off. You came back at me. Fine. But this, this kind of thing. Just so you know, I don’t put up with it.”
Auggie opened his mouth, speechless, and held up his hands.
A truck blew past them, kicking up the cardboard sleeve from a Wendy’s five-pack of nuggets. It skittered across the asphalt.
“Ok,” Theo said, nodding. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”
“How what’s going to be?”
But Theo was already moving toward the stairs. Auggie waited, letting Theo get a head start, and tried not to be sick.
When they got to the apartment, Orlando had unlocked the door, and he was wiggling the knob. His expression was transparently relieved when he saw them. “Hey Augs, everything—”
“Yep,” Auggie said.
Theo didn’t even slow down; he just pushed past Orlando and headed toward the back of the apartment. Auggie followed with Orlando, and they found Theo in the second bedroom. It wasn’t much different from a lot of the rooms in the Sigma Sigma house, or from the rooms Auggie remembered from the dorm the year before. It had a twin bed with the sheets in a tangled mess, a dresser with chipped paint, a bong that looked like a baseball bat, socks and shirts and underwear in random piles on the floor. On the walls, posters of Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, and Maria Sharapova hung in an uneven line. At some point, at least one other poster had been displayed in that row, but now only a pair of tacks and a scrap of torn paper marked where it had been. Theo was already pulling out dresser drawers.
“This is Cal’s room?” Auggie asked.
“Yeah,” Orlando said.
“I’m searching in here,” Theo said as he pulled out another drawer and inspected the back and bottom. “You two go work somewhere else.”
“Ok,” Orlando said.
“We should probably all search in here,” Auggie said. “Since it’s Cal’s room, and we’re looking for Cal.”
“I don’t think so,” Theo said, yanking out another drawer so hard that the dresser rattled and the baseball-bat bong toppled over.
“Agree to disagree,” Auggie said, moving to the closet.
“Fine,” Theo said, tossing down the drawer. He pushed his hair behind his ears, took a deep breath, and said again, “Fine.” Then he walked out of the room.
When the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing came from the kitchen, Auggie said, “What’s his problem?”
Orlando just shook his head and began digging through the drawers Theo had pulled out.
Auggie opened the closet. A tennis racket stood in one corner. There was a hang rod and a single shelf. Auggie pawed through the clothes—two button-ups, a single polo, and the rest jerseys and t-shirts—and then began removing the shoeboxes that lined the shelf. Nike. Adidas. Saucony. A lone pair of Reeboks.
“I know he thinks he’s in charge because he’s older than us,” Auggie said. “But that’s not how this works. We’re partners. The three of us.”
“Augs?” Orlando said from the pile of clothes he was sorting.
Auggie made a questioning noise as he reached for the next box. He was on the back row now, and he was starting to wonder what Cal had needed with all these shoes.
“You’re kind of being a dick,” Orlando said.
“Jeez, everybody’s so—” Auggie began.
Then he stopped and stared at what he was pretty sure was a bag of cocaine.
10
“Theo,” Auggie shouted from Cal’s bedroom.
Theo ignored him, pulling out breakfast cereals, toaster pastries, individual packets of oatmeal—the kind with the dinosaur eggs that ‘opened’ in hot water. He had the vague idea that he would pull everything out of the cabinets first and then search each box more carefully. At that particular moment, though, he was mostly focused on slamming each cabinet door as hard as he could.
“Theo!”
Then footsteps.
“Theo,” Auggie said. He and Orlando stood at the edge of the kitchen’s tile. Auggie was holding a shoebox. “I think we found something.”
“What?”
“Drugs.”
Theo dropped a box of Honey Smacks and went to look. In the shoebox, a small plastic bag held off-white powder.
“Is it cocaine?” Auggie asked. “I think it’s cocaine.”
Orlando was pale under his scruff, his dark eyes huge.
Using the hem of his shirt, Theo opened the bag.
“What are you doing?” Auggie said.
Theo stuck a finger in the powder, smelled it—no odor that Theo could detect—and rubbed it on his gums.
“What are you doing?” Auggie shouted.
“It’s cocaine,” Theo said. The rush was barely anything, but it was there.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Theo raised his eyebrows.
“What the actual, living fuck,” Auggie said, “is wrong with you?”
“Do you have a chem lab?” Theo said.
“Do you have any idea how stupid that was?”
“Or were you going to call the police and ask them to test it?”
“I cannot even believe what I just saw you do.”
“Because I thought I remembered Orlando telling us he didn’t want to take this to the police precisely because Cal had drug problems.”
“Are you kidding me right now? What is going on with you?”
“Auggie, it was a tiny amount that I dabbed.” Theo paused, hovered on the precipice, and then it was too late. “Grow up.”
Auggie looked like Theo had slapped him.
“So,” Orlando said, “you guys are shouting really, really loudly, and I think maybe we shouldn’t, you know, shout so much. Not right now.”
Auggie was still staring at Theo.
“I’m going to talk to the neighbors,” Theo said.
He didn’t look back as he left; he didn’t think he could stand it.
The neighbor in 3G didn’t answer, although the lights were on and Sam Smith was playing inside. The neighbor in 3E kept the door on the chain. She was thin, with stringy gray hair, and she could have been any age between forty and seventy. When Theo mentioned Cal’s name, she shut the door, and he heard the bolt go home.
The day was impossibly hot, and sweat made Theo’s shirt stick to his back. He walked to the end of the corridor and leaned on the railing. Below him, heat shimmered up from the asphalt. Sunlight ran across the cars, gleaming back from chrome trim, warping along glass. The hot tar smell still hung in the air. Theo clutched the rail with both hands, his knuckles white, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.