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She turned. The knife came out. It streaked through the air, catching the sun, a bright line.
He was moving too fast. He’d put on all that speed, and now he couldn’t hit the brakes hard enough.
When it sliced open his face, it felt like a tug—hot, and then cold, and then nothing. The knife continued past him.
How bad? The thought was immediate. It was almost overpowering, forcing its way to the front of Auggie’s brain, demanding all his attention. My face, he thought. My face. How bad is it?
But he forced the thoughts down. Ambyr was shaking, her lips pulled back in a silent snarl as she stared at him, but she still had the knife. His blood was dark in contrast to the steel’s glow. My face, he thought.
She didn’t know what she was doing; he could see that. Not just the murder, the bizarre attempt at a hostage and an escape. Not even her laughable attempts to establish herself as an influencer. This, right now. The knife.
Ambyr screeched and lunged. As soon as she moved, Auggie recognized the half-hearted effort, knew that she wouldn’t actually reach him. All those kickboxing classes. All the self-defense workshops. Hell, even the Street Queen videos from years ago, the ones Fer had loved sending him. All the ways he’d trained himself and his body never to be weak again, never to be a victim. And he was correct; the move had been a feint or a threat, and before the knife reached Auggie, Ambyr began to draw back, already shifting her weight onto those ridiculous heels again.
Auggie had done the kick so many times, his body flowed into the movement without him having to think about it. A lead kick, which meant with his front leg. One of the three basic kicks in kickboxing. He’d done how many of these at this point? Hundreds? Thousands? All the power he generated with his back leg and his core traveled the length of his body and exploded out of him when one (in Theo’s unfair opinion, very expensive) sneaker connected with the side of Ambyr’s head.
She made a weird, ducklike noise, almost a quack, and rocked against the Impala. The knife fell from her hand, her legs folded, and she lost her balance on the heels. As Ambyr fell, Auggie kicked the knife away. Then he dropped down, flipped her over, and pinned her to the concrete. She was shaking really bad, he thought. And then another part of him noticed the blood dripping onto his arms, and he realized, no, the shaking was him.
“Auggie!” Theo’s shout. “Auggie! Aug—”
Glancing over his shoulder, Auggie spotted Theo. And he saw it, the moment Theo saw the cut.
“Oh Jesus, Auggie,” Theo said, crouching next to him.
“I’m fine.”
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck.”
“Theo, I’m fine.” He tried to smile, but his face didn’t seem to know how to do that anymore. “Help me hold her until the police get here.” He was going to say something else, but then the world tore free of its moorings, and Auggie found himself leaning against the Impala, trying to keep himself upright against the backwash of dizziness. “I’m fine,” he mumbled. Hands. Theo’s hands, keeping him upright, holding him here, in the last spot of solid ground. Which, of course, was with Theo. It would always be with Theo. “I’m fine.”
30
The police. The hospital. The police again. Finally, when the police had completed their interview, when they had confirmed they had Ambyr’s phone and the recording Auggie had made of their conversation, they released Theo. He had a scrape on his hand from the fall he’d taken, trying to get to the baby carrier before it went under that truck.
Auggie was with a plastic surgeon.
He wasn’t sure how long he spent pacing corridors. The thing inside him, the thing eating him from the inside out, had a name, Theo knew, but giving a thing a name—in this case, at least—didn’t make it any better.
Jem, of all people, kept him company. The other men had all shown up at the hospital, but when that thing gnawing at Theo drove him out of the waiting room, Jem was the one who came with him. Theo knew he said something. Something like,I’m fineorYou can go back to the waiting room. Maybe more. But Jem just tagged along, a paperback folded open in one hand, reading as they walked.
And then that thing inside him, the thing eating him up bite by bite, broke through some internal dam, and Theo started to sob. He ducked into a stairwell, and then he couldn’t move anymore, could barely stay there, hands on his knees, shaking as sobs tore him apart. Jem was there for that too. He stood there and rubbed Theo’s back. And then, when the flood had drained out of Theo, they sat on the top step, and Jem slung an arm around Theo’s shoulders and read his book while Theo held his head in his hands.
After a while, eyes burning, Theo managed to sit up a little straighter. He tried to knock some of the roughness out of his throat. Then he said, “Goosebumps?”
“Night of the Living Dummy,” Jem said and turned a well-worn page. “It’s the best one.”
Hand on the rail, Theo stood. He was vaguely aware, under the strata of other emotions, that he was embarrassed, and he said, “Thank you. For, you know.”
Jem nodded. He stood and tucked the book into the pocket of some ridiculous vintage shorts—some sort of iridescent purple with pink trim, which went nicely, Theo guessed, with the pink font on his t-shirt. It said, PATRICK SWAYZE, and sure enough, there was a picture of Swayze himself below the words.
“You know something Tean had to teach me? I mean, I guess he’s still teaching me, since we agreed I’m technically still feral.”
The words meant something, but Theo’s exhausted brain couldn’t track them.
Jem smiled. His front teeth were slightly crooked, and it made him look younger. And, of course, like he’d be a hell of a lot of trouble—which, Theo supposed, was correct. “You’re not in this on your own.”
Theo nodded.
“Want to go find a snack?” Jem asked. “Do you think they have pretzels? The soft ones, not the gross hard ones.”
