AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But North dragged him toward the front of the house. Shaw’s giggles came back to them for a moment, and then the door shut them off.
Emery rubbed his face. “God fucking damn it.”
Laughing, John-Henry rubbed his shoulder. “Don’t worry; they’ll be back when they can.”
Emery dropped his hands to give him a betrayed look.
“We need to get going too,” Auggie said. “Listen, I’ll ask Shaniyah why she wanted to talk to you, but in the meantime, is there something we can do? I mean, the class ring?”
John-Henry shook his head, but Emery was the one who answered. “We’re working on the Cottonmouth Club, trying to figure out who’s operating out of there. Tean and Jem are taking the animal angle, and North and Shaw are going to see if they can get a line on anything moving through St. Louis. There’s nothing you can do right now without getting in the way.”
“We didn’t get in the way last week—” Auggie began.
“That’s fine,” Theo said. “We’ll let the professionals handle it.”
When they were in the Audi, driving away from the house, Auggie had to wrestle with the argument he wanted to start. Finally, he managed to swallow it, and as they drove toward Moulin Vert, he managed to say, instead, “Lana’s going to have so much fun.”
Theo nodded. He was staring straight out the windshield.
“She’s going to be fine, Theo. Evie adores her, and she’s got a house full of people who are going to make sure nothing happens to her. Colt and Ashley might need a three-day weekend to recover after this, but everyone’s going to be fine.”
“I know.” Then Theo’s mouth softened, and he said again, “I know. I’m sorry; it’s hard to turn it off sometimes.”
Auggie nodded and rubbed Theo’s knee.
“They’re going to have fun,” Theo said.
“She loves other kids,” Auggie said. “And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her run like that.”
“She has to be careful—” Theo stopped.
Auggie rubbed his knee some more while they drove.
He didn’t mean anything by it, not really. It just came out. “It’s cute, isn’t it? The—I don’t know, the dynamic, I guess. At Emery and John-Henry’s house.”
“Cute like an insane asylum.”
Auggie slapped his knee lightly. “It’s busy, sure. But it’s…warm. It’s—” Full, he wanted to say, although that sounded like he was pitching a ’90s sitcom. But it was the right word, that sense of fullness, of a house brimming with life. “It’s happy.”
Theo made a noise that could have meant anything.
“Didn’t you think it was cute, watching Evie and Lana together? Or, God, Colt with his little sister?”
It was the wrong thing to say; Auggie felt it as soon as it left him. Theo pushed his hair back with both hands and looked out the windshield. He didn’t knock Auggie’s hand off his knee. He didn’t do anything dramatic. He didn’t need to.
“That’s not what I meant,” Auggie said.
Theo nodded.
“I was just saying.”
“I know what you were saying,” Theo said. The sunset caught his eyes and turned them into hard little mirrors. “I thought we weren’t having this conversation again.”
2
The end of the first day of school always found Theo exhausted. The transition from the peace and quiet—relatively speaking, anyway—of summer to the demands of performing for a live audience for seven and a half hours every day wasn’t an easy one. His throat had that mild burn that would last for the first week, and his body ached in new places from being on his feet. Even the classroom smells of whiteboard markers and Axe body spray and Clorox wipes were threatening to turn that little pinprick of discomfort into a full-on headache. On top of all that, the beginning of the school year had been unusually stressful—a few months before, on the last day of school, an active shooter had entered the building. Which meant this year began with extra nerves, extra wariness, and extra assemblies.
By the time Theo made it to his final class period—which was, by some twist of fate, also his plan period—all he could do was sit and readThe Cardinal NationandBleacher Reportand pretend he was going to get back to work in a couple of minutes.
