“Auggie, enough,” Theo said. “Wayne, just walk it off. He’s saying stupid, kiddy stuff, and you’re going to do something really stupid because of it.”
“I bet you stay home nights, playing with your dried-up Twizzler, thinking about Orlando’s giant dick.”
The sound Wayne made was somewhere between a scream and a roar. Theo was ready for him when he charged. There wasn’t any finesse behind Wayne’s attack, just rage and force. He clubbed at Theo’s head, and Theo pulled back. The punch still clipped him, a low heat on the side of his head, and then he moved. Shifting his weight, he reached for Wayne’s other arm, intending to swing him around and lock his arm behind his back.
Instead, Auggie shoved Theo out of the way, screaming, “Come on, motherfucker. Come on. I’ll show you a fucking kid.”
Theo stumbled. He landed on his ass, and his head cracked against the wall. For one crazy moment, he felt like he had front-row seats, right at the ropes.
Auggie took a swing. A total whiff. Wayne saw the opening; Theo saw it too, how Auggie overextended the punch, his whole body carried in a quarter circle by the force he had put behind the blow. It was a stupid, showoff way to try to hit a guy. The way, Theo thought in the bizarrely distanced clarity of the moment, kids fight in a high-school hall.
Wayne took the opening. His first punch was a jab that almost looked like a love tap. Auggie’s head rocked back. Blood sprayed from his nose. The second was a hook, Wayne’s knees and hips generating the power behind the blow. He caught Auggie on the side of the head, just above the ear. Auggie’s eyes rolled up in his head. For a moment, he stayed on his feet, his body unconsciously attempting to keep its balance with a drunken sideways step. Then he went down.
Wayne loomed over the boy and hit him again.
Theo’s world went white. He was vaguely aware of regaining his feet. He came up behind Wayne. He fought the way he’d learned logging, the way he’d learned in barrooms and in blacked-out alleys where the weapons were knives and broken bottles, and men meant to kill because their lives had narrowed to that single, pointed moment of hate and fury. Part of him was still there, still in one of a dozen shitty bars where he’d saved Luke’s ass, still in one of a dozen filthy cribs he had to drag Luke out of, still in the flophouses and roadside motels where he’d had to stand up and keep standing up, no matter how many times he went down, because he was the only thing between them and Luke.
His first punch took Wayne in the kidney. Wayne tried to scream, but his whole body locked up with pain. Theo hit him again, adding more power this time. Before Wayne could recover, Theo caught him by the hair and dragged him backward. Wayne fell; some of the hair ripped free from his scalp, and his blood was hot against Theo’s fingers, but he was still clutching enough of Wayne’s hair to drag him toward the dresser. He smashed Wayne’s face against the painted pine—once, twice, until he felt his nose break. He released him; his hand came away covered with dark curly hairs and blood.
Wayne’s eyes were glassy, no longer tracking anything. Blood covered his face, dripped from his chin, spattered the Blues jersey he was wearing. He fell, but Theo grabbed his hand. He opened one of the drawers, lined up Wayne’s fingers, and kicked. The force of the kick drove the drawer along its tracks. Wayne screamed as his fingers broke, and then he passed out. Theo repeated his move with the other hand. Then he kicked Wayne. Belly. Ribs. Ass. He moved up to Wayne’s head, ready to finish things, but the sound of sirens snapped him out of the frenzy.
He knelt next to Auggie, checked his breathing, and then lay on the floor. He kept his hands behind his head and waited. He knew how the next scene would play out.
17
The first twenty-four hours, Auggie had a hard time staying awake. Some of that was the head injury. Some of that was the strangeness of the hospital: the antiseptic smell, the sound of footsteps at irregular intervals, a stranger’s laughter, light when there should have been dark. Men and women kept coming in and asking him questions, and when they’d leave, he’d tumble into another fitful sleep. And some of it, he knew, was whatever they’d give him. And a small part was that he didn’t want to deal with whatever was coming down the road.
He knew he didn’t have an option when the lights came on and he heard a familiar voice.
“Get up, dickcheese. Right fucking now. I know you’re faking.”
Squinting against the sudden brightness in the room, Auggie said, “Hi, Fer.”
Fer looked terrible. His eyes were so shadowed that it looked like he’d gotten punched. His hair was lank and greasy. He was wearing an old LA Ram’s sweatshirt and an ancient pair of blue jeans, his comfort clothes.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Fer said.
That was the tip of the iceberg. Fer shouted for a solid forty-five minutes. A female nurse came and asked him to keep it down, and he shouted at her until she left, crying. A male nurse came. That poor guy was actually sobbing by the time Fer was done with him. In between bouts with the staff, Fer gave it to Auggie with both barrels, and Auggie got smaller and smaller in the bed.
“And if you weren’t such an actual, living example of the stupidest cock-gobbling cunthole that any human being has ever been saddled with, if you weren’t such a fuckup and facing criminal fucking charges, August, I would drag your ass out of this bed right now. You’re done here. Do you understand me? You’re done. If they throw your ass in jail, fine. But as soon as your asslips stop dripping your cellmate’s cum, you’re coming home.” Fer drew himself up. He hesitated. And then his voice broke as he said, “I am so disappointed in you. I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
Auggie started to cry.
Fer shouted for another half an hour, which was strangely comforting, and then he sat on the hospital bed and hugged Auggie until Auggie’s snot and tears had soaked through the sweatshirt. Fer scratched his scalp and neck, alternating between brisk and gentle.
“Tell me all of it, Augustus. And for the love of God, help me understand why.”
So Auggie told him. Not all of it, although he tried. He kept to the clearest reasons: Orlando’s plea for help last semester, and then Auggie’s own involvement once he had raced after the shooter at Nia’s demonstration. The fear that he and Theo were both targets, and the need to find the shooter before the shooter found them.
“Why the hell would you get involved in something like this?” Fer asked.
“It just happened.”
“I know that line, Augustus. That’s what you’re going to tell me when you’re squirting babies out of your little boy pussy. But nothing just happens. You let a guy put a dick up there, cause and effect.”
Auggie shoved him off the bed and wiped his face. “You’re such a homophobe.”
“Christ knows I’m not going to put your little bastards in diapers and formula. They can suck on your tits until the milk runs dry.”
“What happened to you when you were a kid? What messed you up so severely in the head?”
“You,” Fer said, and his grin appeared and vanished like a card trick.