The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen

by R. T. Lowe

  The mattress shifted under him as Allison got up from the bed and padded across the room in her bare feet. A moment later, he felt the comforting weight of a quilted blanket spreading over him.

  “You haven’t lost your mind,” he heard Allison say from a million miles away. Then she leaned down and placed a light kiss on his cheek. Soft lips, he thought, before losing himself in the tunneling darkness.

  Chapter 29

  Validation

  Pain. So much pain. Everything hurt. Air. Felix needed air. It felt like every molecule of oxygen had been crushed out of his lungs. He caught a faint whiff of something acrid. Burning rubber? He heard sounds. The faraway sounds of… a voice. Someone was calling to him—calling his name.

  He lay on a hard surface. On his back. The floor? What the hell am I doing on the floor? His eyelids fluttered, but they were heavy, sealed shut, and his attempts to get them unstuck were unsuccessful.

  “Felix! Wake up! C’mon! Please. Wake up!”

  He felt hands on his chest, shaking him, and he was conscious of not having a shirt on. He drew in a deep breath of sweet, sweet air. Better. Images came rushing back to him in torrents. Bill. He remembered being in Bill’s office. The journal—he remembered that too. He also remembered the parking lot next to Stubbins, and the rain, and then someone chasing him back to the dorm.

  The voice was still saying his name, shouting at him. A girl’s voice. He tried to open his eyes. The world went white, then dark, and then white again, like he was on a train going through a series of tunnels on a sunny day. Light was filtering in through a window, listless and gray. Morning. He saw the girl’s face hovering over him. Pretty, dark hair, green eyes. Allison. She was on her knees, looking down at him, her hands on his bare chest. Allison’s room. That’s where I am. He remembered going up the stairs and finding Lucas hooking up with Piper—that’s why he’d come down here. But why was he lying on the floor? Didn’t he crash on Caitlin’s bed?

  “Allie,” he groaned. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Good question.” She got to her feet, her eyes dancing around the room.

  He sat up and noticed he was also missing his pants. He was about to ask her where she’d put his clothes when he realized the room was destroyed: Half of the room—Caitlin’s side—had been torched. The desk was gone. And aside from a few pieces of the metal frame (warped into odd curvey shapes) so was the bed. The wall and ceiling, charred and blistered from the heat, bubbled up like little volcanoes where the paint had melted. The floor looked like the catch basin of a charcoal grill after the embers die out. Some of the floorboards had completely burned away and disintegrated, leaving miniature fjords in the blackened landscape. Everything was smothered in ash. There had obviously been a fire. But nothing was smoldering. There was no smoke. It looked as though someone had extinguished it days ago.

  Felix jumped up, pointing numbly. “Fire. Fire.” Then it occurred to him that he should be checking to see if Allison was hurt. She seemed fine. Then he checked himself. No burns. Nothing unusual besides the fact that the back of his head was roaring with pain and he was in Allison’s room wearing only his underwear—again. He had also apparently slept through a fire.

  “Fire. Fire,” he kept mumbling.

  Allison glanced at him absently and nodded. She was pacing, her eyes filled with panic, like a hunted animal. Her movements were erratic and quick-twitched, almost bird-like. She stopped next to a pile of ash and knelt down, poking at it delicately with her finger. “It’s not even hot.” She stood and turned to Felix. “Weird. Do you remember anything?”

  “Why didn’t the fire alarm go off?” He rubbed the back of his head. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Allison blew the ash off her finger, sending a puff of fine dry dust into the air like a warm breath in the winter cold.

  “You don’t know?”

  She was taking fast irregular breaths, hugging her arms over her midsection. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. He took a step toward her and she stepped back, trembling. The color had drained from her face.

  “Allie?” he asked, wondering what the hell was going on.

  Her eyes misted, the tears welling up like water behind a failing dam.

  “What happened?”

  She shook her head sharply. “Sorry. I think I might be in shock.”

  “Shock? Why?”

  She stared at him, her wide eyes searching and… scared?

  “Should we call someone?” Felix rolled his shoulders to unkink his neck.

  “No!” she shouted. “Don’t do that!”

  “Allie—?”

  “I saw it. I saw it.” Allison was breathing like she’d just returned from one of her pre-dawn runs.

  “Saw what?”

  She watched him, her jaw set in stiff resolve, then tears spilled from her eyes. He’d never seen her cry before, not like this anyway. What was happening? He reached out for her. For a second, he thought she was going to pull away, and then she collapsed into him, sobbing into his chest. He held her, waiting for an explanation, but she seemed content to bathe him in warm saline.

  Finally, she stepped back and looked up at him.

  “Can you please tell me what happened?” Felix said to her.

  “I’m either crazy or everything just got really interesting.”

  He waited.

  She looked over at Caitlin’s side of the room, clearing her eyes with the back of her hand. “Okay. It really happened. That really happened.” She jabbed a finger toward the spot where Caitlin’s bed had once stood. “So I’m not crazy.”

  “What really happened?” His stomach tightened as the anxiousness started to flare. “What happened? Can you just tell me what the hell happened? How’d I get—?”

  “You’re not gonna believe this.”

  “Allie!”

  “Okay. Okay. It’s just… I don’t know… what I… okay.” She paused, her cheeks wet with tears. “Here goes. And I swear on my life it’s true.”

  He cocked his head and said warily, “Okay.” Something told him this was going to be a doozy. His heart was fluttering somewhere in his throat, making it difficult to breathe.

  “You were floating above the bed and everything around you was exploding and turning to ash.” She planted her hands on her hips and looked at him fiercely, challenging him not to believe her.

  Felix stumbled back a step and choked on his own spit. He cleared his throat. “Floating?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then what happened?” He couldn’t keep his voice level.

  “That’s it. While you were hanging out by the ceiling, the bed and the desk and everything else was just kind of catching fire and melting. And everything—pieces of all this shit and all this gray stuff—was flying around you. Then the room got really hot, and I thought the whole thing was going up in flames. And then I screamed. It must’ve woken you up. Everything just hit the floor. And then you hit the floor. You were way up there. It must’ve hurt. You hit it pretty hard.”

  In his half-stunned state, his near nakedness suddenly concerned him more than the apparent fact that he could float and melt dorm furniture. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Huh? Oh. Closet.” She pointed at it.

  He went over to the closet and snatched up his sweatshirt (still sopping wet), then pulled it over his head. It was uncomfortably cold, but he didn’t notice because his mind was fixating on the bomb that had just gone off in his head: The journal! It wasn’t that everything he’d read had suddenly come flooding back into his awareness. It was already there, inside him. He knew that he’d read it. But now the words on the pages had context. Now they actually meant something—they actually felt real. The reality of his situation had chiseled its way down into his consciousness until it struck a nerve center of actual understanding. Now he got it. He knew what it meant. And that left him shell-shocked. Totally floored.

  “It’s all true,” he said in a whisper, an i
cy fear crystallizing in his brain.

  “What’s true?” she asked cautiously.

  “The whole thing.” He heaved his jeans over his legs and zipped them up.

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s all true.” Felix stared bleakly at the room, unable to grasp how he could have done this. But he did. He knew that he did.

  “What?”

  “The whole goddamn thing is true. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this is happening. Oh my God. It’s all true. The whole thing. Everything he told me. Shit! What am I gonna do now? What am I gonna do? What do I do? What do I—”

  “What are you talking about?” A thin flush of color had crept back over Allison’s face. Not much, but she was less pale than Piper. “What’s all true?” she demanded.

  “You’d never believe me.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” she shouted. “Seriously? After what I just saw! I’ll believe anything you tell me. Anything!”

  He ran his hands over his face and felt a small knot in the center of his forehead. He winced at the memory of colliding with the lamppost, and at the pain shooting through his head. He wandered over to the window. The sun was up, but still low in the sky, dull and coppery. The Freshman Yard was currently the exclusive play area for a pair of squirrels chasing each other around a big oak tree.

  “Felix…?”

  “Okay.” He turned away from the window and hesitated, unsure of what—or how much—he should tell her. But why shouldn’t he tell her everything? There was no one he trusted more than Allison. He trusted her with his life. Besides, he thought, glancing at the drifts of ash that were once Caitlin’s bed, the truth was probably less ridiculous than any lie he could possibly spin.

  “Well?” she said impatiently.

  “So I told you about Bill, right?”

  She nodded. “The groundskeeper.”

  “So a while back, he told me he had something from my mom. So I went to his office last night to see what it was. It was a journal. But it wasn’t from my mom. Not… you know… uh… Patricia. The journal was from my real mom. It was my real mom’s sister’s journal. She’d sent it to my mom, then my mom gave it to Bill. That’s why he had it. I guess that he… uh… before she died he promised her he’d show it to me.”

  “You said something about a journal last night. So you… you really were adopted? Seriously? And your mom… your real mom… she’s… dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.” Allison’s eyes filled with tears.

  “It’s not like I knew her.” Felix was struck by her reaction. He didn’t know what to think. His real mom. How could he have a real mom? Should he be sad? But how could he feel sad—or feel anything—for someone he couldn’t remember? Someone who died so long ago?

  “I know, but still…” She wiped the corners of her eyes. “So what’s it say? The journal. You read it?”

  “Yeah. That’s what made me crazy last night. I think it’s why I thought I was being chased. Anyway, it’s… cursed.”

  “Cursed?”

  “Yep. I swear.”

  “Cursed how?”

  “It’s beyond weird. You feel my aunt’s emotions when you read it. It’s like getting on a roller coaster that won’t let you off. I pretty much puked up my guts all over campus.”

  “So what’s in it?” she asked eagerly. “What’d it say?”

  Felix spoke rapidly: “’Elissa, time is short. I have only minutes before Lyndsey comes for this. She will find you. Six months before your twenty—’”

  “How are you doing that?” she interrupted, looking at him as if he had suddenly started speaking in fluent German. “It’s like you’re reading it.”

  He was more surprised than Allison. “I have no idea. I just… I just know what it says. I mean, I know the whole thing. I think I could tell you the whole journal word-for-word. It’s like it’s burned into my brain or something.”

  “Weird. So who’s Elissa?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He paused. “My mom.” He dropped his head and studied his toes. “It sounds so strange to say that. My mom.”

  “Got it. Okay. Keep going.”

  Felix recited the journal from the beginning. Allison listened in rapt silence, hanging on his every word, exhibiting nearly every possible facial expression, biting her tongue every ten seconds or so. When he reached the part where Eve decided to keep her baby, she couldn’t restrain herself any longer.

  “Lofton?” she shouted, causing him to pause. “Lofton Ashfield? The Lofton Ashfield? No Way! Say that part again.”

  “’I had the baby. A boy. We named him Lofton.’” Felix was still amazed—and impressed with himself—that he knew the journal by heart. He didn’t even have to go back to the start. He could stop and pick it up from any point in the story.

  “Wow! Unreal! Lofton Ashfield’s the Drestian. And you’re the Belus!”

  Felix didn’t know what to say so he just shrugged. “I’m not done yet.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t help it. This is unbelievable! Lofton Ashfield’s like the most powerful guy in the state. Maybe the entire country. Probably the most popular too. But he’s really the Drestian? Crazy! And you’re the Belus? You? Felix August? You’re the Belus? This is totally unreal. I can’t believe this. Do you realize how cool this is?”

  “Cool?”

  “Are you kidding? You’ll probably think I’m crazy, but after I read the last Harry Potter book, you know what I did? I cried. I literally cried for like two whole days. The adventure was over. Harry had won. Voldemort was dead. And Harry was all grown up. The boy wizard. The boy who saved the entire wizarding world was some middle-aged guy. He had kids, and a wife, and a pot belly. He wasn’t searching for horcruxes. He was shuffling folders at some stupid normal job and gossiping at the water cooler about whether some intern was having an affair with her loser boss. The magic was dead. Harry was like everyone else in this boring world. But now we get to live our own adventure. Don’t you see?” She was meandering around the room in little circles and figure eights as though she had to keep moving to bottle up her excitement. “The fate of the world is at stake, and only you can save it! I knew there had to be more to life than mindless paper pushing jobs. I didn’t think it’d be this. But…” Allison gave him an embarrased smile. “Sorry. I guess I got carried away.”

  How could she be so amped? he wondered. He wasn’t amped at all. More than anything, he was floundering in some higher realm of confusion that he hadn’t known existed. And the small part of him that wasn’t confused was just flat-out scared. And if there was any emotional machinery not saturated with confusion and fear, a drowning layer of doubt submerged it. He still wasn’t sure what to believe. Despite the proof—the room was staring him in the face—he doubted. Strongly doubted.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure if they got the right kid for this job. How can I be the Belus?”

  “It’s fate,” she said confidently, like she actually knew what she was talking about. “And I think it’s incredible! Sorry. Okay. I’ll stop. Tell me the rest.”

  Felix waded back in right where he’d left off, and when he was finally finished, Allison blurted out: “That’s it? That’s it?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, confused.

  “Mid-sentence? It ends mid-sentence?”

  Felix nodded slowly.

  “Why?” She gave him a long curious look. “What happened?”

  He shrugged and said vaguely, “Bill didn’t say anything. Or maybe he did and I don’t remember.”

  Her troubled expression faded and she smiled at him, her eyes burning with excitement. “You realize this is the most amazing story ever! Do you have any idea what’ll happen if we tell people about this?”

  “They’ll think we’re insane,” Felix said flatly. “Then I think Lofton—the Drestian—will kill us. That’s part of the adventure you’re forgetting.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Well… yeah, I suppose you’re right. But there’s no adventur
e without a little danger, right?”

  “I still can’t believe this is happening,” Felix said. “We’re from some little dive town on the coast. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen to people like us.”

  “Says who? And I think it’s cool.” She paused, her eyes fixing on his in a measuring stare. “So how do you plan on saving the world from dictatorship and enslavement?”

  Felix stared back at her and blinked, wondering if she was being serious. Her face gave nothing away. Then she broke out in a big smile and started laughing. He joined in. The notion of Felix saving the world was inherently ridiculous, and when you said it out loud, it was even more ridiculous. It was funny, hilarious even. The punch line of a joke, a comedian’s closing flourish, the grand finale. How could you not laugh? The whole thing was a monumental lark; at any second, someone was almost certainly going to pop into the room to tell them this was just an elaborate hoax. Or maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe the cosmic forces—whoever was responsible for that Source thing—had screwed up. Maybe they had the wrong kid. Sorry Felix, there was a clerical error. We meant to pick a sophomore at Ohio State. Wrong school. Wrong year. Wrong kid. Oops. Sorry.

  “I guess I should probably tell Bill about this,” Felix said.

  “This guy Bill. He’s a groundskeeper? Are you sure that’s all he is?”

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Alright. Well, we need to figure out what to do about this.” She cocked her thumb at Caitlin’s side of the room. “She’s gonna stroke out when she sees this. And you have a game, you know?”

  “Shit!” He’d totally forgotten about it. “What time is it? It’s an early kickoff.”

  She checked the clock next to her bed. “Seven thirty.”

  “I’m already late for pre-game breakfast! I gotta go.” He started toward the door.

  “Hold on!” She snared his arm before he could get past her. “Here’s what you’re going to do first.” Allison had snapped back into let’s-get-shit-done mode. “Go to your room. I’m sure Lucas is still sleeping. Then—oh! You didn’t say anything to him last night, did you?”