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“Dick,” the woman said, but not quite loud enough for Dalton to hear.
“What crawled up his ass?” the man said.
“Nothing he liked,” the woman said, and they both laughed.
“Didn’t they use a window in the movie version?” Auggie asked.
Theo was surprised to feel himself smile. “They did.”
“Not exactly his own artistic vision, then.”
“Not exactly.”
“Some creative genius.”
Theo laughed, and that surprised him too. “Honestly, I’m kind of grateful. It’s hard enough to get the kids to understand what’s going on. Doing it like this makes it easier for them to understand why Claudio would believe Hero is cheating on him. You stage it for them, and they get to be part of the process—they see Hero’s servant in the window, they think she’s Hero, they make the same mistake Claudio does because, of course, that’s the whole point.”
“Misunderstandings,” Auggie said as they pushed past a black curtain.
Dalton was a few yards ahead of them, elbowing open a door. He stepped out into the hall, and the door swung shut.
“Misunderstandings,” Theo said. “Claudio and Hero, of course. And Benedick and Beatrice; they’re the epitome of a misunderstanding—they even misunderstand themselves, the way they think they hate each other and don’t realize they’re actually in love.”
“I believe a certain someone once got an article published inShakespeare Quarterlyabout characters in Shakespeare coming to know themselves.”
“This is going to be hard for you to believe, but teenagers aren’t actually as impressed by that as you think.”
Auggie faked a gasp.
This time, Theo grinned.
Maybe it was a couple of hours of sleep. Maybe it was the sex—being able to touch Auggie again, be with him again. Maybe his body had finally recovered from the adrenaline purge. Maybe it was simply doing something again, instead of feeling helpless and afraid. Whatever it was, Theo felt like his head was clearer than it had been in a while. He caught Auggie looking at him, and their conversation from earlier echoed back to him, the things Theo had wanted to say.
Auggie was still looking at him, a question forming in his face, so Theo said, “And that article wasn’t aboutMuch Ado.”
It was a moment, nothing more. A pause. And then Auggie gave him that goofy grin and rolled his eyes, like everything could be normal again.
A shout from the hallway made Theo put an arm out to stop Auggie. Auggie made an annoyed noise. Theo inched forward, moving closer to the door, listening. Raised voices filtered through the steel, but Theo couldn’t make out the words. He nudged the crash bar, inching open the door, and paused as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the hallway.
Dalton stood facing a blond woman Theo recognized from earlier that day—he had seen Ambyr outside Leon Purdue’s home, where she had been arguing with Leon’s mother about something. She had changed clothes since the last time he’d seen her, and she now wore a black crop top and a leopard-print skirt worn low enough to expose what was clearly a G-string. Theo thought that might disqualify her, on technical grounds, from being called Leon’s stepmother—well, that and the fact that she couldn’t have been more than two years older than the boy. As Theo watched, she passed something to Dalton, and Dalton shoved it in a pocket.
“Don’t piss me off,” she said. “I’m sick of your bullshit.”
Dalton rubbed his cheek, and with a kind of retroactive shock, Theo realized that Dalton had been the one who had cried out, and that the shout he had heard through the door had been pain. Dalton looked on the brink of tears.
If Ambyr noticed, she didn’t seem to care. She pulled out her phone, already checking her hair, and tapped the screen a few times. Holding the phone at eye level, she said, “So, I just got some cash, and now I’m going to get crunk!” She gave a little scream and then laughed for the camera. “Oh my God, that’s so cringe, but I had to do it—”
As though on cue, the blond twink came down the hallway. The way he popped out from behind the corner of the next intersection, and the furious expression on his face, told Theo he’d been eavesdropping, and he hadn’t liked what he’d heard. He was carrying a paint tray that still held bright pink paint—Theo thought maybe he’d seen a similar color used for the flowers on the set pieces.
Ambyr was too busy laughing for her audience to notice that the twink was dead set on a collision course. He crashed into Ambyr, and the paint tray hit her in the belly. A few drops spattered the floor, but the twink’s aim had been true, and most of the paint went onto Ambyr.
She screamed.
At first, it was wordless outrage. And then it escalated, rising higher and louder as she processed what had happened.
“You ruined my stream!” Ambyr swung a fist at the boy. It wasn’t a serious attempt to hit him, more an outburst, maybe even a reaction. But it still caught Theo by surprise. “You ruined everything!”
She burst into tears, plucking at her ruined clothing with her free hand, spreading paint to her fingers. Theo had spent enough time around Auggie to know the light on her phone meant she was still live. Her crying turned into sobs, and then she shoved past the boy. She kicked the fallen paint tray with one sandaled foot, and it skittered across the hall with the sound of a tin can, leaving streaks of paint across the carpet. A moment later, the sound of Ambyr crashing into one of the doors echoed down the hall, and her weeping faded.
