The stand that had been erected had obviously been done quickly and without any regard for longevity. The wood was particleboard painted black, and judging by the dust, the scuffs, the sticky residue, and the strip of old green tape, Auggie guessed that this had come from somewhere in the theater department. Wires and cables snaked through the snow, connecting the microphone on the stand with speakers placed at various locations throughout the crowd. Auggie wasn’t sure how long this event had been in the planning, but it definitely showed an attention to detail and a care in execution that made him realize the people behind it were more than angry kids. There were brains at work here. Serious brains.
As though summoned by the thought, a group of young black men and women emerged from the crowd and mounted the stand. All of them were wearing long-sleeved black shirts with white letters that said Justice for Deja. They had sacrificed their coats in spite of the cold so that the shirts could be seen. Several of them were shivering and chafing their arms as they huddled together on the stand in a last-minute conversation.
“I didn’t know you were going to come to this,” Theo said. “I wish I had. We could’ve come together.”
“Yeah,” Auggie said. “Social justice is really important to me.”
“Is that how you met Dylan?”
Auggie shook his head. Before he had to explain how he had met Dylan—he could imagine the look on Theo’s face if he ever learned that they’d met at the Sigma Sigma move-in—a young woman approached the microphone.
She was tall and muscular, her skin very dark and her hair in a tight fade. In that moment, Auggie thought she might be a lesbian. He couldn’t have said why, but the thought came to him, and it wouldn’t go.
“My name is Nia,” the girl said. “Deja was my sister. Thank you for coming.” She stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was thick with emotion. “It’s hard for me to believe that if things had been different, my sister would be here right now. She was an excellent student. She was an amazing athlete. She had committed to come to Wroxall,” at this point, she waved a piece of paper as evidence, “and I was looking forward to being her teammate as well as her sister and her best friend.” She paused again, this time to wipe her eyes. “I want you to know how much tonight means to me and my family. Deja would be so proud to know that each and every one of you is not willing to look the other way in the face of injustice. I know that together we can—”
The crack of a gun interrupted.
Nia stumbled back, one hand to her chest. Then she fell.
The crowd dissolved into chaos. More shots followed. Snow puffed up from the quad only a few feet from where Auggie stood. Screaming, pushing, shoving, fighting. Everyone surged toward the exits. Someone must have hit the podium because it toppled off the stand, and feedback from the mic exploded over the speakers. A young guy in an enormous, puffy jacket crashed into Auggie. Auggie stumbled, and he would have gone down except Theo caught his arm.
Auggie!”
The shout came from Dylan, somewhere behind Auggie. He glanced around, darting aside when a mother carrying a small child almost checked him with her shoulder. Then he saw movement along the balcony of a building at the far end of the quad. Tall, narrow windows were full of light, and framed by them, the shooter carried a rifle as he ran.
“There!”
Theo was still holding his arm.
“Auggie!”
“Dylan’s trying to get to you,” Theo said. “I think we should—”
Auggie broke away from Theo, racing toward the far end of the quad where he’d seen movement on the balcony.
8
For the first ten yards, Theo kept up with Auggie. Then the crowd was too thick, and Theo began to fall behind. Auggie, with his slim frame, slid between clumps of frantic people. Theo tried to copy him, but a massive guy in a Cardinals hat got in his way. Something must have triggered the guy’s fight mode because he threw an elbow at Theo and almost caught him in the throat. Theo dodged, but the elbow still connected with the side of his head, and he stumbled. A woman leading two girls by the hands circled past him; one of the girls had wet herself, and the smell of urine followed her.
“Auggie!” Theo shouted, righting himself and taking a staggering step. “Slow down!”
A hand grabbed Theo’s shoulder. He spun, already trying to shake off the hold, when a voice stopped him.
“Where the fuck is he?” Dylan’s face was red with cold and exertion. He shook Theo and said again, “Where is he?”
Turning back, Theo scanned the dissolving crowd. Auggie had disappeared. “I don’t know.” Then, pointing at one of the quad’s exits, he said, “You go that way. I’ll go this way.”
“What the hell was he thinking?” Dylan shouted over the cries of panic and distress. “He was running into the worst of it.”
Less than ten yards away, a man howled, hands over his face, and stumbled back. A girl in a biker’s jacket held a can of pepper gel. Even from a distance, Theo could see her hand shaking, but she got enough of the gel on the man’s face to make him scream and stagger away.
“Fuck this,” Dylan said. “I’m out of here.”
“Auggie needs us—”
Shaking his head, Dylan turned and ran for the closest exit. Burger and Smash—Theo did a mental headshake at the names—followed, and then Theo was on his own, facing down a crazed, broken rabble that was desperate to get out of the packed quad.
Theo had never been in a riot before, had never been in a panicked mass of people like this one. But he had been in plenty of bar fights, and he applied some of the same principles here: move purposefully, put a wall at your back, and hit the other guy first. Rather than trying again to duplicate Auggie’s weaving through the crowd, Theo cut across the stream of people at an angle. He wasn’t huge like Dylan, but he was big enough, and plenty of people did last-second calculations and decided to go around him rather than trying to knock him down. Cardinals-hat guy appeared in Theo’s path again, looking like he’d gotten turned around, and he took an angry step toward Theo. This time, Theo didn’t hesitate; he popped the guy once in the face. The Cardinals hat flew off to be trampled by a pair of bros in sweatbands and trucker’s jackets, and the big guy sat on his ass in the mud and snow.
After that, Theo had pretty smooth sailing. He stuck close to the buildings that lined the quad, moving around the perimeter instead of plunging into the milling chaos. The last thing Auggie had done before breaking away was point at Eveleigh, the robotics building. Eveleigh was one of the oldest structures on campus. It had the same faux Gothic details as the other original buildings: the stonework, the leaded glass, and the tall, swooping frame with vestigial buttresses. It also had a large balcony that faced the quad. Whatever Auggie had seen, Theo guessed that it involved the balcony.
To clear the quad, Theo had to merge with the press of bodies funneling out of the exit. For a handful of heartbeats, he was carried along by the current. Bodies jostled him. Fingernails clawed at his sleeve. He caught a whiff of cotton-candy perfume, and then a stronger whiff of coffee. When someone checked him at the hip, he stumbled, envisioned himself going down, the flood of bodies flattening him against the pavement. Instead, though, he stumbled free, caught a breath of the jaggedly cold air—clean air—and realized he was out.