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Not this one. The attacking boy kept coming, screaming—not words, not as far as Theo could tell, but a kind of preverbal fury—and throwing giant haymakers and roundhouses that looked great but weren’t worth shit when you didn’t have any control over them. The retreating boy kept trying to get away, but then he stepped on something, and he slipped. He lost his balance and fell, and the other boy threw himself on top of him, and even over the excited babble of the crowd, the sound of meat striking meat carried clearly. Theo had just long enough for two observations: the retreating boy had been blond and skinny, dressed in black; his attacker had been muscular, with a good base tan, and a face Theo recognized. He was the same boy Theo had run into while looking for Shaniyah—the kid who had been playing patty-cake in the stairwell, the one who had called himself Keelan.
Before Theo could process that fact, though, the clip ended, and another one began—a compilation, Theo realized; they were watching several different videos that Shaniyah had edited together, probably so they would be easier to share in a single social media post. In the second video, the light was so low that for a moment, Theo couldn’t tell what he was looking at. Then the camera panned, and he realized he was inside a theater—not the school theater, but clearly a theater. The stage was lit from overhead, and he got the impression of a set, complete with a balcony. Someone was screaming, “—the fuck is wrong with you? Get back here you little shit! You’re going to pay for that!” A blond boy dressed in black ran out from behind the set, sprinting toward the wing. He disappeared behind the stage curtains, and a man let out a scream of rage. The camera followed in a mad chase, the video wobbling and bouncing. Then the video stopped in front of a door, and Theo had just long enough to read the plaque next to it: TRAP ROOM.
The video ended as abruptly as the first one, and a third began. This one, like the others, appeared to have been recorded on a phone, and it was clearly a party: music pounded, and the lights were low, and Theo guessed he was looking at the infamous back forty, the field (and woods) where Wahredua teenagers had thrown parties since Theo had been in high school. He knew because he’d been to a few of them, back in the day. A flickering bonfire sent light and dark rippling over everything, giving them tiger-stripe glimpses of the party—isolated slashes of visibility before shadows closed in again. A boy in a Cardinals jersey was trying to set up a beer bong. A girl in Daisy Dukes and a white sports bra was trying to do a Jell-O shot off another girl’s breasts. A boy and a girl were grinding together to the pulse of the song. In the background, a girl, clearly drunk, was trying to do what looked like a dance. As Theo watched, she lost her balance, took a stumbling step, and almost fell. Her cutoffs slid off her hips, and she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Then, if Theo wasn’t mistaken, she farted and fell over.
He decided, once and for all, if he ever got caught up in any sort ofFreaky Fridaysituation, he would kill himself rather than be a teenager again.
Yelling cut through the music, and once again, the camera spun toward the source of the noise. For a moment, Theo couldn’t see anything as the camera tried to adjust to the movement and the shifting light. The man in the tiger-stripe light was short—maybe even shorter than Auggie, Theo thought, which felt a little like a betrayal—and white, with dark hair. He was waving his arms, a can in one hand. Beer sloshed and arced; where it caught the light, it looked like a spray of glitter. The tiger-stripes shifted again, and Theo could make out more details: the strong jaw, the wavy hair. It wasn’t just the light, Theo realized; the camera was moving closer.
“—fucking faggot—” the man shouted.
“Who the fuck are you?” That voice didn’t sound familiar, but Theo recognized the skinny blond boy from the previous two clips. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re nobody, you’re a fucking nobody!”
The man launched himself at the boy, and the boy leaped back. The man fell short, tripped, and went down, but he got his arms around the boy’s feet. The boy screamed, kicking and thrashing. Then the tiger stripes moved again, and the video ended.
A black screen showed, and then Shaniyah’s voice spoke: “Today, we’re finally going to learn the truth about what happened to Leon Purdue.”
Then nothing but the black screen. A second passed. Then another. Auggie wrapped a hand around the mouse.
And then a final image appeared: a screenshot, this one of a message thread from a phone. The contact information said PIECE OF SHIT, and a string of texts were displayed. They were all from the sender, without any replies.Don’t you dare post that video.And,Give me that video. And,You’d better fucking delete that video. More like that, on and on. And then one final message:I’m going to kill you, you bitch.
7
They tried Shaniyah’s house first, but nobody was home. Or, Auggie thought as they waited on the porch, nobody wanted to come to the door. Empty houses had a feel, and this one didn’t feel empty. Someone’s in there, Auggie thought, watching the sidelites for a hint of movement. Someone’s watching us.
Eventually, though they retreated to the Audi.
“We’ve got to turn it over to John-Henry,” Theo said. “All of that stuff.”
Auggie nodded. “And tell him what?”
“I was hoping to avoid the part about impersonating Shaniyah so we could access her private files, if that’s all right with you.”
“No, I mean, what are we going to tell him about the Cottonmouth Club?”
Theo shut his mouth. Then he said, “We don’t have to tell him anything.”
Auggie nodded.
“What’s there to tell?” Theo asked. “We didn’t learn anything. Gid didn’t react to Shaniyah’s name. It’s not like it was an exhaustive investigation, and they already have that place on their radar.”
Auggie nodded again.
“I don’t know,” Theo said. “What do you think we should tell him?”
“Honestly? I have no idea.”
When they called, though, it went to voicemail.
Auggie left the message. He did his best to keep it short and sweet, laying out the conversation with Colt and Ashley and their mention of Leon Purdue, as well as the dead-end visit to the club. He didn’t fib, not exactly, when he got to the part about Shaniyah’s videos, but he did…glide over the details. If John-Henry wanted to assume that Auggie had come across those files in a shared cloud drive, that was perfectly all right with Auggie. He ended the message with a request for John-Henry to call him back. Then, in his personal cloud drive—where he’d stored copies of all of Shaniyah’s files—he created a share link and emailed it to John-Henry’s personal address.
“Ok,” Auggie said. “Our duty is done.”
Theo slumped in the passenger seat, staring out the window.
“Theo?”
“It’s not a priority.”
