Auggie dumped out the rest of his water and went upstairs. His thoughts kept pace with him. Other guys played board games. Other guys chased each other with towels. Other guys didn’t worry about keeping up Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and, now, Snapchat. Other guys didn’t spend fifteen minutes getting the lighting perfect for one selfie before they even went to take a leak in the morning. Other guys didn’t think about murders.
Did other guys think, if I could hold his hand, if I could kiss him, if I could make things better for him somehow, if he didn’t think of me as such a kid, if I were smarter, braver, stronger older, maybe he’d finally see me, see me the way I see him (everywhere, every time I turn around)? If they did, they didn’t talk about it. If they did, it was probably somebody their own age, somebody they actually had a chance with.
In his room, Auggie locked the door, crawled into bed, and pulled the pillow over his face. After a while, he got out his phone and texted Theo: Are you ok? I’m worried about you.
He fell asleep waiting for an answer.
When he woke, the thud of a bass line reverberated through the house, and the smell of weed filtered under the door. Guys were laughing, shouting, running through the halls. A voice that sounded like Miller Benitez crowed, “Dude, she is going to suck the fucking root tonight, I swear to God.” Auggie groaned into the pillow, now sticky with drool, and pulled it away from his face.
He’d forgotten about the Sigma Sigma back-to-school party. It was a tradition—everything was a tradition—and since this was his first year as a full brother, it was his first chance to attend. Auggie scrubbed his eyes clear and made his way to the showers. Someone was in the stall next to Auggie, making outrageously loud fapping noises and moaning intermittently. Then somebody else picked up on it, and then another guy, and then somebody let out a sharp cry and everything was silent. Whether it was real or not, Auggie had no idea, but a chorus of laughter followed. Auggie laughed along with the rest of them until he remembered Theo, the expression on his face, his tone as he asked, You like it here? He rinsed off and left the showers; the other guys were screaming fake orgasms, but it wasn’t funny anymore.
Snapping his way through the process, Auggie picked out clothes for the party—a tank that said I’M THE COOL KIND OF BRO and his skinniest jeans, paired with the ridiculously expensive Jordans that Fer had bought him last Christmas. He was pulling on his pants when he got a snap back from dylan_j199. It was a picture of Dylan’s face, his eyes huge; judging from the background, Auggie thought Dylan was already downstairs at the party. Dylan had scribbled something—a drawing that might have been a dog. A second snap immediately followed, this time only half of Dylan’s face, and he was covering his eyes. The text said, thats a fox. ur a fox. dont judge me, i immediately regretted it.
Grinning, Auggie finished dressing and headed downstairs. The party was going full force, guys and girls wandering the halls with red plastic cups in their hands, someone in the kitchen asking if they were going to order pizza, another guy selling drink bracelets. Auggie paid and put on the bracelet, and then he got himself a shot, which he did first, and a beer, which he carried with him.
Then he wandered the party. He wasn’t looking for Dylan. He was just wandering. He just wanted to get a feel for the night. That’s what he told himself every time he disengaged from a conversation, broke away from a group, pretended not to see someone flagging him down. The nice thing about the main-floor layout was that most of the rooms had multiple entrances: he could cut through the kitchen, wave at somebody in the serving area, pretend to spot someone in the dining room, and loop back through the mud room and into the gallery. He cut across the foyer, with its seating area that was only ever used by parents, the upholstery finely patterned with the Sigma Sigma emblem. He worked his way through the massive living room, where a grand piano and an enormous river-stone hearth competed with clusters of seating and flatscreen TVs. When he left through the other side of the living room, he passed the public restrooms.
No Dylan.
Not that it mattered. Not that he was looking.
He made his way downstairs. The frat had invested in a speaker system for the public areas, and a steady selection of recent music accompanied Auggie: Macklemore, Ciara, Pharrell. He could still taste some of the Milagro, even through the beer, and a stripe of heat licked its way from his collarbone to his navel. A blond girl passed him, leading her friend by the hand, and when Auggie looked over his shoulder at her, they were whispering and staring at him. The girls burst out laughing when they realized they’d been caught, and both of them blushed bright red. They ran up the stairs.
In the lower lounge, people crowded the sofas, the coffee tables, even the corners of the room. Some were small groups of guys and girls, laughing and drinking. Some were couples—swaying, dancing, kissing. Theo’s beard, when he and Auggie had kissed, had been scratchy, but in a wonderful way, rasping against Auggie’s skin until he was about to burst into flames. Auggie drank some more of the beer. He was sweating.
The basement wasn’t as easy to loop through; he had to check the rooms one by one. The study—a threesome, two girls and a guy, were making out on the table. The gym—the door locked, empty and dark on the other side of the glass. The mechanical room—the door locked, the strip under the door dark. He skipped the bathrooms, went back to the lounge, and tried the multipurpose room. A blacklight had been set up, making Auggie’s Jordans shine as a mob danced and grinded on each other. If Dylan was in there—not that it mattered—Auggie didn’t have much of a chance of finding him. He kept going.
In the game room, people were sitting around card tables, heads close together as they shouted over the music. A group of guys was playing pool. Dylan had on a white t-shirt that was so tight Auggie could see his nipples, and he was wearing blue polka-dot shorts that only came to the middle of his thighs. Seeing him in person like this was always so different than the snaps. His hair was darker in the pictures, and tonight, the curls had been given more shape and definition with some sort of product. His face seemed less perfect, although familiar because of the smirk he wore without seeming to realize it. But mostly it was his size that shocked Auggie: he was just so damn big, something that Auggie had internalized from all the hours in the gym but that still managed to surprise him. Auggie, always sensitive about his own height, felt like a kid next to Dylan, but it was more than that. Dylan was built with muscle. He was huge. And he had an adult’s definition to his body, not the rangy, stripling growth that many guys carried through most of college. He was chalking a cue, laughing, when his eyes cut to Auggie. He kept laughing, but now the smirk was there again, and he raised one eyebrow.
Auggie sat on the arm of a couch, sipped his beer, and pretended to watch the game.
It wasn’t going well for the other guys. Auggie didn’t know much about pool—in fact, he wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t some other game that also used a pool table—but he knew a little bit about people. Six guys were playing, split across two teams, and every time Dylan or one of his friends took a shot, the other guys muttered and growled and traded looks. Dylan’s little smirk kept getting bigger. Then Auggie saw the cash neatly stacked on the edge of the table.