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“Is it—” Auggie stopped. “I mean, Shaniyah’s aunt and uncle. Does anyone care that they lied?”
“People care,” John-Henry said. “The question is what will happen to them.”
“What will happen to them?”
“Nothing,” Theo said, and his voice had a vacant quality.
“We’ll see,” John-Henry said. “It depends on what they actually knew, why they insisted she had gone home. For the love of God, as awful as it sounds, they might have believed they were telling the truth.”
An engine puttered on the next street over, and the sound faded to a buzz.
“Get some rest,” John-Henry said.
They went home. A groggy Tean waited on the couch. Jem, asleep, had his head in Tean’s lap.
“She slept all night,” Tean said. “Emery called. Are you ok?”
Auggie nodded. He got ice from the freezer, packed it in a plastic bag, and wrapped a towel around it. Theo floated behind him like a shadow, reaching out and pulling back. Theo, the awkward ghost, Auggie thought, and it was the kind of joke that left his ears ringing. He went into the bedroom and left the homemade ice pack on Theo’s side of the bed. He was undressing when Theo came into the room.
Their eyes met. Theo opened his mouth. And then he looked away, and he shut it again.
Auggie crawled under the covers. He thought he heard the rustle of plastic, the clink of ice, the rasp of the towel. He thought Theo said something like “Thank you.” He thought, maybe, the sun was coming up. Somewhere, was his last, fleeting thought. It’s coming up somewhere.
16
When Auggie woke, the room was full of indirect light—seeping past the blinds, filling up the empty space with a golden weightlessness that meant afternoon. His body ached, and he was still tired, but sleep was already miles off. Theo was gone, and lying there, Auggie considered the state of the bed, the shape of Theo’s pillows, and wondered if he had slept there.
He dragged himself to the shower, and without a garbage bag—or Theo to help him cover his arm—he had to settle for splashing around and doing his best to keep his bandage dry. The hot water still felt good, washing away some of the aches. He did his hair quickly, brushed his teeth, and decided he was eighty percent back to being human.
In the living room, Tean was sitting on the floor, playing Fashionista Fillies with Lana. He was, from what Auggie could deduce, trying to braid the mane of one of the fillies, which for some reason had Lana in helpless giggles. Jem lay on the couch in stockinged feet, reading a battered paperback that, when Auggie glimpsed the cover, he could have sworn was an oldGoosebumps.
“You’re up,” Tean said.
Lana saw him, squealed, “Papi!” and got to her feet with a steadying hand from Tean. She crashed into Auggie, and he scooped her up long enough to kiss her cheek.
As Lana started in on an explanation about their game—something to do with the fillies actually being unicorns, which she seemed insistent that Auggie understand and remember—Tean said, “Can I make you something to eat?”
“I got it,” Jem said a little too quickly. He bolted up from the sofa and shot toward the kitchen.
“I don’t mind.”
“No, no, no,” Jem said—and he actually waved a hand at Tean, like somehow that might stop him. “You’ve been playing with Lana all morning; it’s my turn to chip in.”
“Where was this attitude when the girls needed their soccer clothes washed?”
“Scipio and I were guarding the backyard!”
“We’ve got a widow on one side of us,” Tean told Auggie, “and a family with four little kids on the other.”
“Mrs. Drake is a holy terror. She tried to spank Scipio.” The outrage in Jem’s voice made Auggie smile in spite of himself, and he had to hide it when Jem turned to face them across the room. “And the Magleby boys are ruining my rhododendrons!”
“It’s a lilac bush,” Tean said in that same tone to Auggie. “And since when does guard duty involve beer and pretzels?”
“Teancum Leon!”
“Those soccer uniforms are disgusting.”
“The pretzels are for Scipio because he’s so vigilant!”
