And Auggie told him—about break, about how things had been getting worse.
“It’s not your fault,” Theo said, “and you can’t carry it. I know you’re going to think it’s easy for me to say, but you’ve got to let it go.”
“Let it go? Theo, he’s my brother, and he’s going to OD one time and nobody will have Narcan, and then he’ll be dead.”
“I’m not saying you can’t love him or care about him or worry about him. But the thing you’ve got to understand about addicts is that they’ll always be addicts, and they’re the only ones who can make the choice to get clean. Fer can bail him out as many times as he wants. You guys can send him to rehab. You could lock him up in a box. I did all of it with Luke. I’m not lying, Auggie. I locked him in the cellar at the end. I thought he was going to have a come-to-Jesus moment. I mean, I’m not a monster—he was comfortable, he had everything he needed. We got through the detox and all the puking. He looked and sounded like Luke again. God, I really thought I’d figured it out. He cried. We both cried. My parents cried. My brothers came by, and they cried. And Luke knew all the right things to say. I opened the door, and he went upstairs, and it was like I had a brother again. That night, he went to bed, and he was still there in the morning. And the next day. And then the third day, I found him in the loft. The dumbshit hadn’t used in weeks, and his tolerance had dropped.”
Auggie was crying again. “That’ll kill Fer. You don’t know him. It’ll kill him.”
“It just about killed me.”
“But I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you: you can’t do anything. That’s hard to hear, but it’s the truth, and I wish I could tell you something else.”
“Ok,” Auggie said. “Ok, but that doesn’t mean I have to stop trying.”
His cheeks were red. His nose was a little snotty. But his eyes were bright, and there was a hardness in his face, a determination in the way he compressed his lips, that Theo had noticed once or twice before.
“No,” Theo said. “But you’re going to get hurt. That’s probably all you’ll get.”
“If it were Jacob or Abel or Meshie, would you just shrug and say, ‘Eh, I learned my lesson with Luke, I’m going to stay out of this one’?”
Theo shook his head. “But I’m a dumbass hoosier, as Cart likes to point out.”
“You’re not,” Auggie said. “You’re the smartest man I know.”
“Not smart enough,” Theo said with a smile, “to handle my own shit, apparently. Do you want to talk about Fer?”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m this huge drain on him: his money, his time, his energy. It’s not fair to him. He’s never gotten to have his own life because he’s spent it taking care of me, and that’s not right, but I’m still making him do it. I’m a fucking adult, but I swipe his credit card when I go out to eat, I send the tuition bills to his house, I drive a car he paid for.”
Something kicked on in the car, and a belt in the Civic whined in agreement.
“You know, there are a lot of ways to do college on your own,” Theo said carefully. “I’m trying really hard not to dad out on you, but there are scholarships, student loans.” Then, testing the ice, “You could get a job.”
Auggie flopped back in the seat, arms and legs akimbo, and groaned. “Oh my God, you’re going to make me work at Frozen King, and I’ll have to wear one of those paper crowns.”
“That’s not the worst option.”
“I’d honestly rather be dead.”
Theo caught himself before responding to that. The whumping sound in the Civic had gotten louder, even though they were still parked, and the smell of something burning was filling the car.
“Auggie, I think you might need a mechanic to look at this. Don’t be mad.”
Sitting up, Auggie grinned and shifted into drive. “You don’t have to say, ‘Don’t be mad,’ after everything. And it’s fine; the car always makes the smell.”
“Ok, but in my experience, dealing with anything like this early on is better than waiting until it’s too late—”
“Dad,” Auggie coughed into his fist.
Sighing, Theo sat back and raised his hands, silent. Then he glanced at his watch. “Shit, when was Sadie supposed to leave her house? I know you said we had to hurry.”
“Oh, um. I kind of made that up.”
Theo let the tires thrum for a moment.
“Just the part about her leaving her house,” Auggie said in a rush. “Because you were so mad at me, and I thought if we could start working together again, maybe you’d forget about being mad.” Hesitating, Auggie offered a weak smile. “Don’t be mad.”
After the Civic had limped another mile, Theo trusted his voice enough to say, “Why don’t you tell me how you found her and why you think she’s Cal’s dealer?”
“Oh, that was easy once Chuy explained how it works. It’s all about knowing the right person, which I kind of knew, but I didn’t realize you had to, um, know them. Like, I thought it’d be the way I do stuff, where you can connect online, but I guess drug dealing is still stuck back with the dinosaurs.”
“God,” Theo said, “how awful.”
“Right? Anyway, I did get Orlando to talk to his parents, and they let me sign into Cal’s account on Facebook—they have access to his account now. I just worked my way through his pictures, checked it against his friends, made a list of everyone who I could see partying in the pictures or who bragged about partying in their feed. Then I took that list and ran it through Missouri’s online court records. Lots of them had some sort of criminal record, but Sadie was the only one who’d been busted for possession with intent to distribute, so I decided to start with her.”
When Theo had digested this, he said, “That’s amazing.”
Auggie’s shoulders relaxed, his chest came up, and he smiled.
“So she doesn’t know we’re coming?”
Shaking his head, Auggie said, “I thought it’d be best if we took her by surprise.”
“And what were you going to do if I refused to go with you?”
“I’m going to spare you the embarrassment of pretending that was a real question.”
When they got to the house, it looked like yet another of the 1950s-era homes that had weathered the intervening decades without much assistance. The asphalt shingles were hairy and green with algae, and in many places the shingles were missing, and the tarpaper underneath looked waterlogged and saggy. More of the same green algae stained the siding, which had once been white. Several tall trees shaded the house, and the grass had killed the lawn and left bare earth and patches of moss. When Auggie stopped the Civic, the breeze that rushed into the car through the open window was cold and smelled like half-frozen soil. Theo buttoned his flannel shirt again, then stopped when he saw Auggie shivering and tugging on his tee.