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The boy smiled. It was a good smile, with straight, white teeth, and none of the usual adolescent uncertainty. “Keelan Vasquez-Mendoza. It’s got a hyphen.”
Theo glanced at the skinny kid.
“Trevor Cohen.” He looked like he was about to cry. “Please don’t tell my dad.”
And the worst part was that he looked genuinely terrified. After a moment of silent deliberation, Theo jerked his head toward the hallway. “Next time, it’s a phone call.”
Trevor sprinted away, but Keelan was slower, sliding off the desk, adjusting himself again, straightening his t-shirt. None of it was anything Theo could point to as insubordination or disrespect, but none of it was accidental either. All the alpha bro arsenal of movements telescoped onto a teenage boy. He’d learned it from his father, Theo guessed. Maybe an older brother. Keelan made eye contact as he passed Theo on his way to the hall. Not a challenge, not exactly. A statement. It was a surprisingly adult move, as though this were his decision, and he were still in the process of assessing Theo. It was the kind of thing, in Theo’s opinion, that made people wonder why teachers didn’t murder students more often.
Theo trailed Keelan until the boy stepped into a classroom, and Theo made a note of the number; he planned on talking to Ms. Singleton about her wandering student after school.
And still no sign of Shaniyah. He continued his search. He couldn’t check the girls’ bathrooms—he wasn’t dumb enough to try that without a female staff member accompanying him—but he did call through each doorway, asking if Shaniyah Johnson was in there. His next stop was the theater, which had a separate exit from the building where students often came and went—went was the more popular choice—without being noticed. In theory, the exit was fire-alarmed, but the school was old, and the alarm on the door had a mysterious way of not working as it should.
When he reached the vestibule, Theo stopped and listened—it was another favorite place for kids wanting to sneak a moment together, and the memory of stumbling onto Trevor and Keelan was fresh in Theo’s mind. But he heard nothing, and after a moment, he tried the doors. Locked. His key let him inside.
The theater itself was cool and dark, with only the footlights and LED strips on the aisles to keep him from total blindness. He listened again, but still nothing. When he turned on his flashlight, he waited for movement, the sounds of escape. Nothing came. He made his way across the theater and checked the fire door, which appeared to have made it through the first day of school intact. Then he hopped up onto the stage and headed behind the curtains. The backstage hallway—with the dressing rooms, the prop storage, the access to the catwalk, the stairs to the orchestra pit—was another favorite of wanderers and skulkers. Nominally, it was supervised by the theater teacher, whose classroom had a door onto the backstage hall, but—
Through the lite set into the classroom door, Theo had a direct line of sight to the teacher’s desk. Dalton Weber, the theater teacher, sat there, looking out through the same lite Theo was looking in.
Theo and Dalton had never hit it off, even though they worked in the same department, even though they were both gay in a small, conservative town. Even though, for that matter, Dalton was good at his job—he was a talented director, and outside of school, he often directed productions at the community theater, including the upcoming staging ofMuch Ado about Nothing. Theo wasn’t sure why they’d never clicked. Part of it was that he found Dalton’s appearance off-putting. When Dalton was standing, he was too tall to pass for Pat Sajak, but they shared a look—shrunken, almost gremlinish features; a hint (more than a hint) that he did a lot of upkeep with creams and masks and peels. His hair dye looked like the color that had rubbed off an old belt, and Theo remembered, in a staff meeting, the way Dalton had moved his hands—a kind of Bruce Vilanch-esque campiness that was so stereotyped that it had the ring of authenticity. And part was that something had always felt off to him about Dalton, although he couldn’t point to anything in particular.
Right then, Dalton had his hand to his mouth, and, in his other hand, a prescription vial. There shouldn’t have been anything strange about the encounter. Maybe a slight awkwardness, both of them a little surprised. But Dalton froze. It lasted only a moment, and then he shoved the prescription vial into a pocket, and he dry-swallowed the pill in his mouth before looking back at Theo. Under the fluorescent lights, his face was bloodless.
Theo turned, following the backstage hall away from the classroom. An odd, secondhand embarrassment attached itself to him, and he found himself walking with his head down, his shoulders hunched. He had grown up around people who hid their pills when you walked in on them, people who startled when you came into a room unannounced, people who thought—at the beginning, while there was still hope—if they could act normally, naturally, everything might be all right. Theo had been one of those people himself, and he knew the tricks, and he knew the way the mind twisted and contorted and tried to protect itself.
He might have hurt his back, Theo thought as he walked faster. He might have had surgery over the summer. It might not be a painkiller at all; maybe it’s for high blood pressure, or maybe it’s cholesterol. Hell, maybe he’s got a headache and a sore throat like you do. But Theo walked faster because he knew it wasn’t any of those things, the way you knew yourself—and didn’t—in a mirror. And he walked faster because something inside him was waking up from a long sleep, stretching tight muscles, raising its head. The first one was the best, when it had been so long, when the rush was something your body still remembered and it was like thirst, when you knew you needed it—
Theo hit the crash bar at the end of the backstage corridor and emerged into one of the school’s main hallways. Sunlight flattened him, and he had to blink. For a moment, it was almost like vertigo. Then shouting made him turn, still trying to adjust to the brightness of the dusty, summer-lit hall.
“I heard you the first time!” It was a woman’s voice, the tone riding a knife’s edge between frustration and aggression. “And I’m telling you, she’s here!”
A man spoke in a hushed voice: “It’s been a long weekend.”
“She’s doing this to embarrass me! Shaniyah, get your butt out here!”
A man and woman came into view, trailed by Principal Wieberdink, who wasn’t quite unprofessional enough to wring her hands, but was sliding a bangle up and down her forearm instead. The woman was tall, built large, her Afro gathered in a hibiscus-print wrap. The man was big too, his hair in waves, with a well-trimmed beard.
“Shaniyah!” the woman shouted.
“Please,” Principal Wieberdink said, “classes are still in session—”
Theo changed course, heading toward the new arrivals; already, the shock, the rippling echo, the spike of need—they were fading, like something he’d forgotten. In an hour, he’d probably be able to laugh about it.
Before he could take more than a few steps, though, his phone buzzed. Auggie’s name showed on the screen, which was strange; Auggie never called during the school day. Messages, yes. Sometimes, when he was bored, an unending stream of them, often with GIFs and memes Theo could only partially decipher. But not calls.
“Hey, uh, this is weird—” Auggie sounded out of breath, his voice wound tight. “—but did you borrow my laptop?”
“No. Why?”
“You didn’t move it or anything?”
“Of course not. Auggie, what’s going on?”
“Shaniyah!” the woman shouted. “Get out here this minute!”
“Listen, we’ve got kind of a situation here. Shaniyah’s missing. Can I call you—”
“I think we’ve been robbed.” Auggie stopped like he was hearing himself. “My laptop’s gone, Theo. I think somebody stole it.”
