The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen

by R. T. Lowe

  “Hey! Your face?” Allison shouted after him. She sounded like she was twenty or thirty yards back. Felix didn’t answer. He didn’t understand what she was saying. He just kept running.

  Allison chased after him. “Wait! Wait! What happened?”

  Felix slowed, letting her catch up. “I think he killed him!”

  “What?”

  There was no time to talk. No time to explain.

  Allison matched him pace for pace. They raced past the Freshman Yard and cut through Downey’s lobby, dodging a group of students waiting for the elevators, then up the four flights to Felix’s room. He turned the knob. It was locked. He took the key from his pocket with fumbling fingers, stabbing futilely at the keyhole before finally finding it. The lock sprung back. Felix held his breath. He turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  Lucas was lounging on his bed, listening to music on his earphones, looking down at an issue of Maxim spread across his lap. His head was bobbing up and down, his lips moving, mouthing the words to some song.

  “Thank God!” Felix dove on top of Lucas like he was recreating his Bradline College touchdown leap and gripped him in a ferocious hug. Overwhelmed by an avalanche of elation and relief, he closed his eyes and squeezed Lucas’s shoulders. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.

  “What the?” Lucas yelped in a startled half squeal, like a boy in the throes of puberty, scared at first, and then quickly transitioning to complete bewilderment when he realized it was Felix who was mauling him. He pushed him away, then gasped audibly at the sight of Felix’s face. “Whoa! What the hell happened to you, dude?” Then he looked down at his shirt. “You bled on me! What the hell? I like this shirt.”

  Felix sat next to Lucas, breathing heavily, staring at him, relieved, surprised and overjoyed that he was alive. Lucas stared back at him with an expression of poorly concealed revulsion.

  “Thank God,” Felix panted. “I thought you were dead. Thank God. Thank God.”

  “Dead? What are you talking about? Dude, your face is a mess.”

  “Felix,” Allison said, warning him with a firm shake of her head.

  “There he is,” Caitlin said, as she stepped into the room with Harper. “Hey Lucas. These guys”—she pointed at Allison—“were starting to worry us.”

  “Oh my God!” Harper exclaimed when she saw Felix. “What happened to you?”

  Caitlin looked over at him and promptly let loose an operatic shriek.

  Felix stood up, absently running a hand over his face. There were layers of scabrous caked-on blood, like a thick veneer of char on a piece of bread left in the toaster too long. He’d forgotten all about his nose. He knew that he must look like a disaster. He glanced down at himself. The disaster wasn’t just confined to his face. The front of his jacket, his jeans, even his sneakers, were streaked and spotted with bloodstains. Shit. Harper was staring at him, waiting for a response. He mumbled a few incoherent words, gibberish, trying to come up with something.

  “It’s huge!” Caitlin squawked. “It’s gotta be broken. You should go to the emergency room.”

  “I’m fine,” Felix said and tried to give them an embarrassed I’m-sorry-for-making-you-worry smile. “It’s nothing.”

  Lucas got up from his bed and came over to him. “That’s definitely broken. Let’s get you to the hospital. C’mon.”

  “I’m fine,” Felix protested. “Seriously. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “What happened?” Harper asked, worried.

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. “Why’d you think I was dead?”

  “Dead?” Caitlin echoed, bulging her eyes at Lucas. “Who’s dead?”

  “I went for a walk and this homeless guy attacked me.” Felix was thinking quickly. “He was pretty big and I didn’t see him coming. He um… he hit me with a tennis racket. And then he said something about Lucas. He said something about having your phone. I don’t know.” He thought that wasn’t such a horrendous lie. “Maybe I was just all woozy after the guy hit me.”

  “My phone’s right there.” Lucas pointed at his bed, eyeing Felix cautiously. The phone was on his pillow.

  “Your poor nose!” Harper looked deeply sympathetic. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

  “Yeah,” Felix said. “I’m good. I just need to clean up a little bit.”

  “Good idea.” Allison urged him toward the door with her eyes. “I’ll give you a hand.”

  Felix grabbed a towel from his closet and stepped out into the hallway with Allison. She shut the door behind them and they started down the hall, keeping their voices pitched low. “What the hell happened?” she asked him.

  “I… I killed the Faceman.”

  “You what?”

  “Yeah. He was a tester. He tested kids to see if they were Sourcerors. I think he was building an army for Lofton. You know, the Drestianites.”

  “The Drestianites?” She stopped, too stunned to walk. “Seriously? Like from the journal?”

  Felix nodded, taking her by the elbow to help her along. “The Faceman said if I passed the test I could serve him.”

  “That’s insane. So does that mean…?” Allison’s eyes grew wide. “Do you think Lofton knows? Does he know who you are?”

  “I don’t know.” Felix hadn’t had time to think about any of that. “I um… I killed him pretty quick.” It felt so strange to say that, to say that he’d killed someone. “And he didn’t know I’m… you know… different. That’s why he was testing me to begin with. I didn’t like give him any time to tell Lofton I passed his test or anything.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Allison asked.

  “Yeah.” He felt his nose. It hurt, but the pain wasn’t as bad as before. “I should tell Bill.”

  “No!” she snapped suddenly. “I don’t trust him.”

  Her reaction surprised him, but he was too tired to argue with her. He was totally drained. “Okay.” They’d arrived at the men’s room. “Can you tell the guys I’m fine and I’ll be back in a minute? And can you ask Lucas to bring me some clothes?”

  “Sure.”

  He turned to go into the bathroom.

  “Felix,” she whispered after him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  He paused, unsure of the right answer. “I think so.”

  “Um… hey… good job. I mean, that guy was a total psychopath. He deserved to die.”

  They stood there for a moment in silence.

  “He killed eighty-five kids,” Felix said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “He told me that.”

  “Jesus,” she said softly. “That fucking monster. At least there won’t be an eighty-six.”

  Felix looked down at the floor and said wearily, “There are others. He wasn’t the only one.”

  Chapter 47

  Breaking News

  Lucas sat in a chair across from Allison with his tray piled high with carnivore-appropriate food. Allison had been playing with her dinner, waiting to see if Felix was going to show. She’d wanted to stop by his room, or call him, to see how he was holding up, but he was throwing off a vibe like he wanted to be alone. Killing the Faceman had rattled him to the bone, and instead of talking to her about it, he’d gone back to his old habit of retreating into his gloom and suffering alone like a penitent monk.

  Harper looked up when she saw Lucas. “Felix coming?”

  “No. He’s in our room resting his nose. Says he’s not hungry.”

  That answers that question, Allison thought, disappointed.

  “Is he okay?” Harper asked anxiously.

  “His face is wrecked, but he still won’t let anyone look at it.” Lucas glanced around the cafeteria. Most of the tables were empty. “Where is everyone?”

  “Watching the news.” Caitlin sniffed. “Didn’t you notice there’s like a million people in the common room?”

  “I guess,” Lucas said with a shrug. “This is crazy. The most notorious mass murderer in American history
was found dead just down the street. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. My mom won’t stop calling. Says she wants me to transfer to a nice safe school back home.”

  Allison grunted, watching everyone carefully, looking for signs that one of them was drawing a connection between the Faceman’s death and Felix’s broken nose. The link was tenuous at best, yet Allison had been running at a heightened state of alertness ever since the story broke a few hours ago.

  Caitlin sniffed again. Her nose was painfully red from a cold. “Anything new? All the stations are running the same story on a loop. ‘Faceman found dead in Portland, Oregon. Details to follow. How’s the weekend weather looking, Jim?’ I’m going to be saying that in my sleep.”

  Lucas was staring at his food, not touching it. “So you don’t know?”

  “Know what?” Allison asked, suddenly nervous. She bit down on the side of her lip.

  “You’re not gonna believe this. Hold on.” Lucas took his phone from his pocket, tapped the screen, scrolled down and tapped it again. “Okay. Here it is. So this is from the Associated Press. According to this, the story was posted”—he checked his watch—“twenty minutes ago.”

  “What’s it say?” Harper asked, annoyed that Lucas was taking so long. She hadn’t touched her food either. No one seemed very hungry.

  Lucas started reading: “’The Portland police department has confirmed that the body discovered this afternoon in west Portland near the campus of Portland College is that of Nick Blair, better known by his moniker, the Faceman, a suspect in the murder of at least sixty people. The cause of Blair’s death is not known at this time. Blair’s body was found in an area of Portland known as no-man’s-land at a private residence leased to Quinn Traynor, an employee of Hollywood Reality Bites, a celebrity news and gossip publication headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Traynor was reportedly in Portland on assignment.’”

  “Quinn Traynor?” Caitlin said, eyes wide. “Isn’t that the guy who—”

  “Yeah,” Lucas interrupted. “My stalker. The guy we posed for a few weeks back. That might explain why our picture never ran in his paper.”

  A shimmer of panic squirmed around in Allison’s gut and her feet began jittering under the table. The connection between Felix and the Faceman just got a whole lot less tenuous. She had to talk to Felix, but she couldn’t just get up and leave the table without raising suspicions.

  Caitlin flushed crimson, staring at her bottle of water. If anyone brought up The Kiss—its official title—she blushed and looked like she was going to die from embarrassment. Normally, Allison would have had a good laugh at Caitlin’s expense. But not today.

  “That’s where the Faceman died?” Harper asked. “At that guy’s house? At Quinn’s house?”

  “Yeah, but it gets better.” Lucas looked down at his phone and started reading again: “’According to sources, Mr. Traynor’s parents reported him missing ten days ago after he missed his flight to Los Angeles and could not be reached. The Portland police department would not confirm such reports, but did confirm that Mr. Traynor’s whereabouts are currently not known. Mr. Traynor, twenty-seven years old, is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and a resident of Los Angeles. Anyone with information regarding Mr. Traynor’s whereabouts should contact the Portland police department immediately.’”

  “Oh my God!” Harper said in a voice loud enough to snare the attention of the students at the next table over. “Should we, I don’t know, call the police… or… something?”

  “And tell them what?” Allison demanded. She realized she was nail drumming on her tray and stopped herself. She didn’t like where this was going.

  Harper looked around the table, clearly determined to draw Caitlin and Lucas to her side. “I don’t know. But if he went missing ten days ago, then maybe we were the last people to see him. Isn’t that something the police might want to know?”

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Allison said firmly. Probably too firmly.

  Harper cocked her head back and exhaled upward, fluttering a long strand of hair that had dipped beneath her eyebrow. She narrowed her eyes at Allison for a second, then went back to picking at her salad. Lucas put his phone away. He still hadn’t eaten anything.

  “So Traynor was following me around for months,” Lucas said distantly, almost like he was talking to himself. “Then on maybe the same day we have our little rendezvous with him at the dead campus, he disappears. Then the Faceman gets killed at Traynor’s house.” He stared down at his plate, deep in thought.

  “What is it?” Caitlin asked him. “What’s wrong?”

  Allison felt a surge of panic. She didn’t think anyone could possibly piece together what had actually happened to the Faceman, but the connection to the photographer had changed everything, and the look on Lucas’s face was causing her to second-guess herself.

  “I know what happened.” Lucas stood up.

  Allison blinked.

  “What are you talking about?” Harper said, still red-faced from her exchange with Allison. “You mean to that Quinn guy?”

  Lucas snatched an apple from Caitlin’s tray and a bag of chips from Allison’s. “I gotta go.” And just like that, he headed out of the cafeteria at a jog.

  Allison started to stand, then caught herself and quickly sat back down before anyone took notice. She knew where Lucas was going. But there was nothing she could do about it. Hopefully he was on the wrong track, and if he wasn’t, it was up to Felix to convince him otherwise.

  “What are we supposed to do with this?” Caitlin frowned in disgust, shaking her head at the mound of meat on Lucas’s plate. “What a waste.” Then her face brightened. “I just had an amazing idea—you think I could start a program to donate uneaten food to the hungry?”

  Chapter 48

  Sleuth

  I killed a man, Felix thought darkly. I killed a man and I feel absolutely nothing. I. Killed. A. Man. The words sounded so strange. So surreal.

  I killed a man. I killed a man.

  He skipped the song he was listening to on his phone—Fall Out Boy’s “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark” seemed appropriate, and not in a good way. He hoped the next one would do a better job of calming his nerves. “Death Valley” was, improbably, worse. He lay on his bed, trying to relax, trying to make sense of what he was feeling. Only his desk lamp was on. The blinds were shut. But his cocoon of soft light and thundering guitars wasn’t helping.

  I killed a man. I killed a man.

  He had to kill the Faceman. He didn’t have a choice. He knew all that. But he didn’t just kill him—he’d wanted to kill him. Killing someone and wanting to kill someone are different things, right? Intent’s important. Isn’t it? But there was more to it than that; he’d wanted to make him suffer. But if anyone deserved to suffer, if anyone deserved to die a terrible death, it was the Faceman. But still…

  I killed a man. I killed a man.

  Felix didn’t feel guilt. He didn’t feel regret or remorse. He felt nothing. And this wasn’t the first time he’d experienced a complete absence of emotion. He’d felt the same dark void, the same sense of emotional nothingness when he learned that his real mom had died in a mental hospital. Even now, he didn’t feel any sadness or loss or anything else when he thought about her. Shouldn’t he be feeling something? Was something wrong with him? He touched the screen, skipping to the next song.

  I killed a man. I killed a man.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door swing open and Lucas step into the room. He closed it behind him and flipped on the light. Then he turned and lobbed over an apple underhanded. Felix reached up and snatched it out of the air with one hand.

  Lucas’s expression changed all at once. “What happened to your face?” he gasped.

  His cocoon shattered, Felix plucked the buds from his ears, squinting against the bright overhead lights. “Huh?”

  “Your face!” Lucas was pointing at him with a look of disbelief.

  “Tennis racket. Reme
mber?”

  “Look in the mirror, dude.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Felix set the phone aside and went over to the wall mirror next to his closet. He looked at his reflection. His face was completely healed: no swelling, no gash across the bridge, no redness anywhere, and no dark circles under his eyes. He was shocked. He blinked. Nothing changed. Still perfectly uninjured. Still the same nose he’d been looking at his whole life. He couldn’t believe it. But he couldn’t let Lucas know that he was surprised. He quickly pulled himself together and went stone-faced. This was completely mind-bending. He was stunned, just as stunned as Lucas—or at least as stunned as Lucas appeared to be with his eyes going wide and his jaw slack. Then Felix had a strange realization: This wasn’t the first occasion that he’d recovered from an injury in startlingly little time. He recalled the lump on his forehead from colliding with a lamppost; the contusion on the back of his head the night he firebombed Allison’s room; the bruised solar plexus from Jimmy Clay’s ferocious blow to his stomach; the irrigation ditches Quinn Traynor’s fingernails had left on his hand; and sundry bumps and bruises and twisted ankles from playing football. None had left a mark or lingered for more than a day.

  “How the hell…?” Lucas came over to get a better look at him.

  “Funny, right?” Felix said lightly, smiling. He ran a finger over his nose. “It looked a lot worse than it actually was. After I got all the blood and everything off, it wasn’t that bad. And then I iced it for a while. I guess that took care of the swelling.”

  Lucas shook his head, staring at him.

  “It was just a bloody nose,” Felix told him. “No biggie.”

  “It was broken, dude,” Lucas insisted, regaining his voice. “I’ve seen a broken nose before and yours was broken. My brother broke his in high school and he had raccoon eyes for like a month.”

  Felix fell onto his bed, leaning against the wall, his legs out straight and hanging off the edge of the mattress. “I was trying to tell you guys I was fine, but you didn’t wanna believe me.”