Page 33 of Stop and Seek (Our Childish Games #1)

How broken was really fucking broken?

Theo’s poor phone, for one. Noah had managed to collect most of the pieces—including the SIM card—when everything exploded the other day.

Theo shoved the cracked remains around with his finger, the migraine blurring his already shit vision and turning colors into smears of white and blinking dots.

The clerk at the electronics store was busy with another customer and he’d been waiting for almost an hour. The wait wasn’t helping.

“The whole thing pisses me off,” Rachel said. She propped her chin on her hand. “I’ve half a mind to knock all of them stupid.”

“It’s not everyone’s fault. Max and Decker’s, mostly.”

“No surprise there but,” she looked over, slapping her free hand over his; the noise made him flinch. “You seriously don’t believe him, do you?”

“Who? Jag?”

“No, Teddy. Noah .”

The butterflies were still there.

Theo dropped his head onto the glass counter. “Kind of. ”

Rachel straightened and turned towards him.

“Kind of,” she repeated, like it was fucking blasphemy. “Alright, Theo. Sure. Okay . There is zero way that the guy involved with the people planning it had no clue.”

“Can you not? I feel like death warmed over.”

“I know…” she mumbled. “I know. I’m sorry. I hate seeing you suffer. Is Jagger still texting you?”

“Yep,” Theo popped the p. “I’ve blocked him, and it turns into this bigger deal.”

Rachel squeezed his hand gently. “You can’t let him keep ruining your life. We talked about this, Theo. Just—just meet him somewhere public and take someone with you. Hell, I’ll go. I have plenty to get off my chest.” Another squeeze. “That way you can move on. Be happy.”

If only it was that easy, Theo would’ve done it years ago.

Seeing Jagger at the high school was too much. How was he supposed to have an entire conversation? He’d end up sobbing.

No thank you.

She squeezed his hand one more time before she let go and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Oh, did you see this?” She scrolled through something, then turned the screen towards him.

Couldn’t she use dark mode? Holy shit .

Theo shielded his eyes and leaned back until the words came into focus. Some headline about a local who had been assaulted outside his place of employment.

“Who gives a flying fuck about a lawyer?” he asked.

“Keep reading. ”

“I’m going to puke all over your shorts if you make me do that.”

“It’s not ‘some lawyer’, that’s Aaron,” Rachel insisted. Theo stared at her until she raised her eyebrows, her chin jutting out. “ Aaron , Teddy. The hot piece of garbage. Senior year.”

Theo’s stomach rolled over. How was it fair that his entire fucking past was coming back to bite him in the ass? He’d considered himself well adjusted. He was just talking about Aaron, not even a couple days ago. And then the cameras, and Jagger contacting him more frequently—

Theo wanted off the goddamn merry-go-round.

His chest tightened and he kept swallowing until he felt less nauseous. He knew he should’ve felt bad for Aaron, or at least sympathetic, but the truth was uglier than that. He didn’t feel anything, except maybe a sense of screwed up satisfaction.

“It’s fucking Cleveland,” Theo muttered. “How are you shocked?”

“It’s a nice part, not the trashy places you hang out.”

“ We hang out,” Theo corrected, and Rachel flicked his arm. “Did they say who did it?”

Where should I address the thank you note?

God, that was crass even for him. His brain was always one step ahead in the worst ways.

Theo shuddered. Tucked his hair behind his ear.

It was fine.

Aaron wasn’t dead, so it wasn’t as if he was speaking ill but…

Fucked up nonetheless.

“It was a random mugging—no, don’t you dare smile,” Rachel hissed. “That doesn’t mean you’re right. ”

“How am I not right? Even if it’s the ‘nice’,” Theo lifted his fingers in quotation marks, “part, it’s still Cleveland. He was at the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

“We, you know, we knew him, though. It makes me feel sick thinking about it.”

“I say we move to Belgium.”

Rachel didn’t say anything. She stared at him like he had three heads.

“For the waffles,” he finished lamely.

Rachel laughed. “Do you think about anything other than food?”

“It’s the least cursed part of my brain.”

The new phone was a piece of shit. Not in the old I upgraded and I have no clue what the hell I’m doing sort of way, but it took him fifteen minutes to figure out how to take a fucking screenshot.

All he wanted to do was hold the same button he’d been holding for six years and have it work.

The swipe and gestures were pissing him off.

Theo chucked the phone onto the couch, eyeing at the re-runs of the reality show flashing across his television. He could quote most of it.

How sad was that?

How sad was his fucking life ?

It wasn’t doing it for him. He loved watching the luxury when it was onscreen, but after experiencing it up close?

That was scary. The high life wasn’t all about lunches and shopping and petty drama with a camera crew discreetly documenting it.

There were a lot of people everywhere, watching what he did at all times.

If he wanted to live under a microscope, he would’ve considered becoming a scientist.

Alyssa had invited him out. He kept thinking about the text, her anime GIF taking up sparkly space on the screen.

Did his mood have to do with the fact he texted Noah and got no response?

No.

Maybe.

Probably.

Yes. Yes it did.

God. I miss him. What the fuck.

Theo wasn’t going to do this again. He wasn’t going to die on his couch, waiting for a guy to text him back. He wasn’t this sad, little kid anymore.

He was an adult.

Theo

ill go w/ u

Alyssa’s response was instant.

Alyssa

Hell yes!!!

Of all the nights for Alyssa to pick a new damn place, this was probably the only time he wasn’t going to tear into her. Theo sat frozen in her car, staring up at the sign he did not recognize in a part of Cleveland he did not recognize until she dragged him out.

The weed they’d smoked—going seventy miles an hour down the highway—was probably messing with his perception, but it looked a hell of a lot bigger than their usual haunts.

“It’s packed,” Theo said, eyeing the mess of people in the endless goddamn line.

“Yeah, it’s kinda fun, right?” She grinned up at him and looped her arm through his. “Come on. You sounded so like, sad in your texts, and I counted six death threats on the way here. You need this.”

“But it’s—it’s packed ,” Theo repeated. He knew Alyssa heard him the first time, but he couldn’t get past it. Suddenly, this didn’t feel like such a good idea anymore. He assumed they’d be at The Rat’s Nest, or a different dive bar, not the busiest club in the city.

He checked his phone and—low and behold—three messages from Noah.

Finally.

Theo chewed on the inside of his cheek, tapping out a few lines. Deleted them. They sounded too clingy.

“Theo. Earth to Theo!” Alyssa snapped her fingers in his face. “You lightweight. I don’t see you for two days and now you can’t handle some Mary Jane?”

“No, no. I’m good,” he mumbled.

“Who’re you talking to?”

“Noah.”

One word, and Alyssa snatched the phone from his hand. “Are we inviting Golden Boy?”

The heat crawled up Theo’s neck. He glanced at the line, back to Alyssa.

“Do you… would you mind?”

“You are literally like, the cutest.” Alyssa shot him a grin, long nails clicking against his phone screen. After a minute, she handed it back. “Say, thank you, Lyssa. I love you. You’re my favorite friend.”

Theo laughed, real and hard, and it felt like part of him relaxed a little. “Yeah, yeah. I love you and everything else.”

Everything after that blurred—cars, his phone, bodies pressing in. Alyssa kept pulling him forward, guiding him through the chaos until they finally got past the bouncer.

The second they stepped inside, the panic started. The deafening music, vibrating through his bones. Air thick with sweat and cologne. All of it was fucking overwhelming , and Theo wasn’t high enough to shut it out.

Squinting against the flashing strobe lights, he scanned the inside, hoping to find the bar before his senses overloaded and he dropped dead from heart failure.

“Dance with me!” Alyssa shrieked, already tugging him toward the floor .

Theo groaned but let her pull him along, praying he wouldn’t pass out from the pressure building in his chest.

This was what he wanted, right? He was being an adult, trying to be happy. Hell, Noah was even meeting them. This should’ve been one of the best nights of his life.

Pills would help. They fixed everything.

Alyssa didn’t have pills.

She had stamps. Lickable, glue-tasting pieces of shit that tried to be grape flavored and failed miserably. She told him to take one. That he owed her a hundred bucks.

Theo took two.

All he wanted to do was feel better faster. Normal. Stable .

Instead, his brain was peeling open.

At first it was subtle. The bass stopped sounding like music and more like something else breathing. Something massive, maybe asleep just under the floorboards, exhaling with every pulse of the speaker. Theo flinched when it dropped again.

The lights strobed too fast and too slow all at once.

They smeared behind his eyes—neon blue bled into pink bled into yellow.

Every face turned into a melted wax mask if he looked too long.

He couldn’t tell if people were moving toward him or away.

Couldn’t tell if Alyssa was still talking, or if she’d been swallowed by the sea of bodies.

Where the hell was Alyssa ?

Everything was fucking alive —too many limbs, too much heat.

He tried to breathe. One inhale. Two. The air tasted fake; plastic and old copper coins.

When someone else—someone blond and grinning—tugged him onto the dance floor again, he wasn’t sure what he should do.

It took him a minute too long to figure out it wasn’t Noah.