by R. T. Lowe
“The tabloid?” Caitlin asked.
Quinn nodded.
“So you’re a paparazzi dirtbag?” Lucas said, seething.
“Paparazzo dirtbag,” Quinn corrected, putting his hat back on. “My editor assigned me to you. And my assignment is to get a photo of you doing drugs, getting in a fight or hooking up with some dirty little ho-bag. I’ve been following you for three months and I’ve gotten zilch. Not a single photo I can sell.”
“Good,” Lucas said.
“Good?” Quinn let out an exasperated huff. “Do you have any idea what it’s like out there in the real world? Do you think I want to do this? I graduated from Dartmouth. Now I’m pretending to be a student so I can get a picture of you. And you’re not cooperating. You go to the library a lot. When you hook up with chicks—and I know that you do—you do it discreetly. And your friends are pure vanilla. You’re the least interesting reality star in the world. I wish I’d been assigned to Cleopatra. Just the other day she got wasted and broke into someone’s apartment and passed out. The cat was bothering her so she threw it out the window.”
“It wasn’t her cat.” Caitlin cupped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. She glanced around, embarrassed. “Sorry. I read about that the other day.” Then she added quickly: “And the cat was fine. In case you’re wondering.”
“Cry me a river, douche bag,” Lucas said to Quinn.
Quinn’s eyes went to his broken camera. “Yeah. Right. I’m the douche bag. Now I have less than nothing. No photo. No camera. And my cover’s blown.” Then a smug smile crossed his boyish face. “But I do have one card left to play.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucas asked. “What card?”
“Well, you just assaulted me and damaged my property,” Quinn said quickly. “If I make a phone call, I’m sure my editor would be more than happy to bring a lawsuit against you on my behalf.”
“Is that right?” Allison said, raising an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure the dean would like to meet you. We’ll invite the cops. You’re not a student so that means you’re trespassing. I don’t think you’re cut out for jail. Your cell mate’s gonna love making you his little bitch.”
“But that still doesn’t justify your vicious assault,” Quinn responded like an experienced litigator. “You had no right to attack me and cause such grievous physical harm. My editor would seriously love nothing more than to sue you. All of you. It’s like free publicity for the paper. They live for that kind of shit.”
“Attack you?” Lucas yelled. “You can’t be serious! You fell ‘cause you have some kind of weird old man’s body. Nobody did anything to you.”
“I don’t really see it that way,” Quinn said coolly and brushed at a grass stain on his knee, wincing like his leg was shattered beyond repair. “I guess that’ll come down to who the jury believes.” Then he smiled slyly and said, “Or… we could make a deal.”
“A deal?” Lucas said skeptically.
“I still have my cell.” Quinn held it up like a detective showing his badge to an eyewitness. “If you let me take a few pictures with this”—he nodded at the phone—“I’ll agree not to sue.”
“Pictures of what?” Felix asked.
“Him”—Quinn tilted his cell at Lucas—“kissing someone.”
“Kissing?” Lucas said.
“Yeah,” Quinn replied. “You know, that thing people do with their lips and tongues.”
Harper made a gagging noise.
“Who?” Lucas asked, ignoring Quinn’s sarcastic tone. “Who would I kiss?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.” Quinn gestured disinterestedly at the girls. “They’ll all do. I’ve gotta hand it to you, Lucas Mayer. Your friends are all hot.”
Lucas turned to the girls. “What do you guys think?”
“He’s a disgusting asshole but he kind of has a point,” Allison said. “Do you really want a tabloid suing you? And it’s just a kiss. No big deal.”
Lucas looked at Felix for confirmation.
“Why not?” Felix said. “Do it and be done with this jackass.”
“Okay, asshole,” Lucas said to Quinn. “It’s a deal. But you have to promise that this is where it ends. I don’t want to see you again! Ever!”
“Oh, you won’t,” Quinn replied confidently. “I can’t escape from this disgusting college utopia fast enough. So if we have an understanding, then by all means, please get started.”
Lucas looked at the girls. “Well? So, um, well… who wants to experience the lifestyle and mystery of Minnesota?”
“I’ll do it,” Caitlin said, and stepped forward before anyone else could answer, leaving Harper and Allison rooted in place, stunned. “What?” Caitlin said to them, glancing over her shoulder. “I have kissed guys before.”
“Good,” Quinn said. “You’re a little short, but you’ll do. Now just come over this way and—”
“Not my face!” Caitlin shouted. “My face better not be in your crappy paper. Just the back of my head. Got it?”
“Fine,” Quinn said. “No problem. Testy little thing, aren’t you?”
Lucas smiled at her. “Thanks Little C.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Lucas placed his hands on her tiny waist and glanced over at Quinn who was positioning himself so that only the back of Caitlin’s head would appear in the photo.
“Is this okay?” Lucas asked him.
Quinn held up his cell phone like a painter trying to get a sense of his subject’s scale. “You’re good. Whenever you’re ready.”
Caitlin smiled shyly.
“Are you prepared to experience the lifestyle and—”
“Just shut up and kiss me.”
They kissed. Their lips only touched for a second. Then they kissed again. This time the kiss lasted just a little longer than the first. Lucas’s head flinched back and he raised his eyebrows, looking like he’d opened a birthday card from the great aunt who sent him a crumpled five dollar bill every year to find that this year he was the recipient of ten crisp hundred dollar notes. Caitlin smiled and wrapped her arms gently around his neck. Her eyes closed, and then they kissed. They really kissed. Finally, she pulled herself away and tapped him on the chest.
“You owe me one, Minnesota.”
Felix felt his jaw drop. Harper and Allison were both smiling like bridal bouquets had just landed in their outstretched arms.
“That should do.” Quinn grinned, scrolling through the photos on his phone with his index finger. “It was nice meeting you all, but I sincerely hope I never see any of you ever again.”
“Where you going?” Felix asked him.
“L.A.” Quinn raised his phone above his head and shook it triumphantly. “Got my ticket right here, bitches!”
Chapter 42
The Garrote
Instructions. Bill was giving Felix instructions—telling him to do something. But what? Felix stood in front of one of the aircraft carrier length reading tables in the old library. It was late. Well past midnight. This was his second trip to the Old Campus today. Behind the table, pushed up against the wall, were metal gym lockers, wooden doors lined up like portals to nowhere, and filing cabinets stacked on top of each other three and four high. On the floor was an odd assortment of alarm clocks and locks. Bill had been busy.
“Do it,” Bill ordered.
“Okay.” Felix didn’t know what Bill wanted him to do, though it probably involved one of the locks on the table. He was flailing in deep space, completely out of it.
Felix only had one class on Thursday afternoons: Western Civ. With ten minutes left, his professor had grown bored with the Carolingians and went off on a tangent about an ancient Roman sect that called themselves the Nocturnists. The Nocturnists believed that our perception of reality—life—was really just a dream. Felix filtered out most of it. He’d heard this drivel before. It was mindless crap. Getting high and philosophizing about ‘what if this is all just a dream, dude?’ was a favorite pastime of every pothead on c
ampus. When the professor mentioned that the Nocturnists were known to consume huge amounts of mushrooms with hallucinogenic properties, everyone had a good laugh. Then she finished up her impromptu lecture with a line from a familiar song: Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Something clicked. His heart rate quickened, racing uncontrollably. The walls closed in on him like a monstrous trash compactor. As surreptitiously as possible, he did a Google search on his phone. He found what he was looking for at once. It was right there. One word. The meaning of a single word had succeeded in irreparably shaking the foundations of his strange new life. That’s all it took. The truth was there. It had been there all along.
“Felix? Hey! Did you hear me?”
“Yeah.” He blinked and rattled his head. He took a deep breath. The room was gloomier this time. More bulbs had died. The air was glacial and permeated with the scent of damp musty leather.
“You okay?” Bill came over to get a better look at Felix’s face. Bill was dressed like he was planning a home invasion: black pea coat, black boots, black hat and black gloves.
“Just tired,” Felix sighed. “Long day.”
“You sure?”
Felix nodded.
“So get to it.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t—”
“I noticed.” Bill clapped his hands together and a puff of dust burst from his gloves, glimmering in the gray light. “The small lock. Start with that. Come on. I need you to rally.”
“What am I…?”
“Shit.” Bill waved the dust away, giving Felix a sharp look. “Break it. Don’t move it. Got it?”
“Right.” Felix stared at the lock, waiting for the heavy feeling in his stomach to make an appearance. When it did, he raised his hand, which was pink and stiff with cold. The lock scooted across the rutted surface in fits and starts, like a toy car with a missing wheel or two. It settled itself and took off on a straight path, gaining speed as it neared the end. Then it exploded in a fiery tempest, spraying the wall with needle-sharp metal fragments.
Felix jumped back and fell to his knees, ducking for cover. Bill didn’t move.
“Not bad.” Bill stepped over to the table and examined the jagged black hole on top. The lock had disintegrated. “But if you’d been listening, you would’ve heard me tell you not to move it.”
“Not bad?” Felix thought that was way better than not bad. He couldn’t believe he’d just done that. He pushed himself up to his feet, numb from the cold. “Seriously? I just blew the shit out of it! On the first try!”
Bill turned to face him. “You beat up a little lock. What are you looking for? A pat on the back?”
Felix’s startled expression was met with silence.
“I just thought… that it was pretty good that I—”
“You’re not getting the big picture!” Bill shouted at him. “You’re not some pathetic character in a movie. You’re not some kid learning how to wax on and wax off. You don’t need tights or a wand or a utility belt!” He was gesturing wildly, his face contorted in a sudden fury. “You blew up a Walmart trinket! Hooray!”
Felix was stunned. What happened? What did he do wrong? “What the hell?” he muttered, staring off sullenly at the table. “I did what you asked.”
“I’m sorry.” Bill squeezed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb and exhaled slowly. “That wasn’t fair. I apologize. Shit. It’s just that… time isn’t on our side, Felix. In the very near future, I’m going to ask you to do something you can’t even imagine. And if you’re not prepared then…” He shook his head, hesitating. “Look, there are things out there that… well… I just want you to be ready. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I get it.” Felix tugged on his ski hat, pulling it down over his ears. He felt more alert now. Bill’s outburst had jolted the lethargy right out of him. “You don’t have to freak out on me though. I don’t want anything to happen to me either. What’s next?”
Felix spent the next hour destroying things with assembly-line efficiency: Bill pointed at objects—alarm clocks, locks, doors, old office furniture—and Felix blew them to smithereens. After a while, the room began to look like a junkyard. The lockers and filing cabinets (twisted and unrecognizable), and pieces of metal, wood, plastic, and even some stiff strands of wire, were scattered across the floor and embedded in the walls and ceiling.
“Had enough?” Bill asked, coming up beside him.
“Yeah.” He was exhausted. He wanted to go to bed. A memory cracked through his fatigue and he managed a light laugh. “When I was little, I used to make these buildings and skyscrapers—whole towns—out of Legos. Then I’d wreck ‘em.”
Bill smiled. “Well I’ve got one more thing for you to wreck. Then we’ll call it a night. I want you to work on your control.”
“That didn’t go too well last time,” Felix said in a tired voice.
“It’s all about focus.” Bill reached into his jacket pocket and came away with a shiny chrome-plated combination lock. He placed it on the table. “Explode it, but contain the damage. I don’t want to see any pieces flying around or any shrapnel in my ass. Okay?”
It had to be really late. Felix was on the verge of falling asleep on his feet. He wanted to tell Bill to explode it himself, but he didn’t want him going ballistic again. He took a deep breath and stared at the lock. Blowing it up would be easy. But blowing it up while trying to control the collateral damage was impossible; it was like adjusting the volume on a TV to go up and down at the same time—you had to pick one, right?
He concentrated on the lock. It quivered. And then it did something completely unexpected: with an audible wha-whuff it burst into flames. It burned and crackled, the fire laying low, covering the lock in a suffocating layer of deep red flames. Then it changed from blood red to white and a pillar of fire shot up like a geyser, reaching for the ceiling.
Felix just stood there, staring at it, more incredulous than panicked. This wasn’t possible. He had to be seeing things. But the fire was real enough. It was hot. Intensely hot. Waves of heat were pouring from the swirling column, distorting the air around it.
“Bill!” He stepped away, shielding his face from the heat.
Bill was already in motion. He’d grabbed a ratty-looking blanket from the far corner of the room and was sprinting toward the fire. He hurdled a chair and threw the blanket, spreading it out like he was making a bed. His aim wasn’t very good. One corner just nicked the tall column of flames, and with a thundering roar, the blanket instantly ignited in a fireball. One second later, it had turned to ash. Smoke billowed up in choking clouds.
Bill jumped back. “I can’t put it out! You have to do it!”
“How?” Felix coughed and gagged.
“Just do it!” Bill screamed. “Now!”
The fire was spreading, pooling across the tabletop, creeping down the legs and onto the floor, devouring the wood. Felix’s lungs were filling with smoke. They burned. He lifted his hand to the table and turned his mind toward extinguishing the flames, wishing them away. “Stop! Stop!” he heard himself say.
To his surprise, it actually worked. The towering pillar went flat and the flames shrank, receding from the edges of the table, withering like they were watching a film clip of the last thirty seconds run in reverse. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the fire was gone. He lowered his hand, icy sweat trickling down his pale face. Relief swept over him.
“What the hell was that?” Felix coughed out, feeling stunned, disoriented. The room was white with smoke.
Bill was covering his mouth with his upturned collar. He stepped over to the table and pulled off his gloves, holding his hands just above the lock (the loop had melted and merged into the body of the lock and now it looked like a silver divotless golf ball) like he was warming them at a campfire. He gave it a brisk pat then plucked it up and brought it to Felix.
“It’s not even warm.” Bill held it out for Felix to inspect. “It’s like it nev
er caught fire. Here, touch it.”
Felix poked it with his finger. It was cool, but not quite cold. “Just like Allison’s room.”
“Do you think you could do that again?”
Felix didn’t pause to think about it. He concentrated, recreating what he’d felt just a moment before. He closed his eyes and imagined the sensation, stretching out his arm, palm facing up. He opened his eyes. Flames erupted from his outstretched hand. He felt the heat. But it didn’t burn. It didn’t hurt. He watched the column of flames (just like the one that had nearly set the library ablaze), making it go higher, then lower. He smiled. He couldn’t help it. I can control fire. It was undoubtedly the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. But he didn’t let out a barbaric battle cry. He didn’t go into shock. All things considered, he stayed surprisingly calm. This was off-the-charts strange. Completely mind-blowing. No doubt about that. But this was just another drop in his bucket of supernatural weirdness. Just a few weeks ago, he didn’t know that he could make books fly with his mind or turn a metal gym locker into abstract art simply because he wanted to. The weird and the fantastic were quickly becoming as mundane as having coffee at the Caffeine Hut and studying in Woodrow’s Room. He was getting used to it. So now he could make fire shoot from his hands. Add it to the list.
He wanted the fire to go out. In his head, he uttered the word “Stop,” and the flames listened. The fire disappeared, closing in on itself in the thick gloom of the library like it was never there. He looked at Bill, expecting him to be amazed or impressed or awe-struck—or all of the above.
Bill just looked pissed.
“See what you can do when you actually focus! If you burn Inverness to the ground where will you train? Do you have any idea what I went through to secure this building? Just to set up this room? You come here like you have someplace better to be, and then you act surprised when you screw things up. This isn’t a goddamn game! You can’t half-ass this, Felix! Why the hell aren’t you taking this seriously? What you did was piss poor and grossly irresponsible. Get your head on…”