The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (7 page)

Silence came crashing back.

Dust and gunsmoke stirred in the patches of sunlight.

He stepped over to her body and looked down at the mask of terror and confusion staring back at him. The public knew many things about him—but not everything. Most people thought he desecrated his victim’s faces because he either hated himself (and the faces he removed were thus a reflection of his self-loathing) or that he was simply a savage with a bloodlust craving. It was neither of those things. Most serial killers take something from their victims. A token of some kind: jewelry, a lock of hair, a finger, clothing. The Faceman took something else. He found inimitable beauty in death. The beauty of Angela’s face—her shoulder length auburn hair, light brown eyes, soft youthful skin tanned from the long hot summer—was enhanced a million times over because her entire life was etched into every single pore. It was all there—in the wondering eyes, the set of the mouth—an indelible imprint that said
everything that I am, and will ever be, is gone
. THAT WAS POWER.

But the Faceman was selfish. He wasn’t going to share that beauty with anyone. It was his. He’d made her this way. He’d created it. No one else would ever see it. So he gazed down on her face for a long time (trains passed by twice), until he’d absorbed every last detail and locked it away in his mind. He closed his eyes for a moment and smiled. The deed was done. The mental picture was taken. He would carry it with him and treasure it, forever. He pointed the gun at Angela’s face and pulled the trigger five times, eradicating it in a shower of blood.

He ducked out of the oppressive heat of the shed. Crisp afternoon sunshine and a gentle breeze greeted him as he approached a white cargo van parked next to a mountain of old tractor trailer tires. Stopping beside the van, he took a cell phone from his pocket, using the edge of his little finger to touch the screen which fit snugly within his palm. He waited patiently, watching a pair of geese making their way across a hazy blue sky.

“Yes,” a voice on the other end answered.

“She failed,” the Faceman said. “She was a Wisp.”

“I’ll let him know,” the voice replied. “Tucson. A girl. Gabriela Conseco. Call when you arrive.”

Felix was right. Orientation sucked—though he probably couldn’t get Allison to admit to it because she so badly wanted to like it. President Taylor turned out to be a total bore. His speech was tedious and punctuated with canned jokes he’d obviously been using forever. Just when it was becoming awkward and everyone in the enormous auditorium (maybe a third of the seats were in use) grew restless, Taylor murmured something that no one could hear and quickly exited the stage. A few kids clapped, but it sounded apologetic. Felix was slumped down in a theater-style seat next to Allison twenty or so rows back from the stage. He glanced over at her and tried to communicate ‘
I told you so’
with his eyes. Allison glared, then covered up her mouth to keep from bursting out in laughter.

The dean of students, Dr. Borakslovic, stepped up to the microphone next. Thin and reedy to the point of looking brittle, she spoke with such condescending assertiveness it was almost as if she was trying to challenge the freshman class to a fight. Felix didn’t like her. Not at all. Twenty minutes later, Dr. Borakslovic seemed satisfied that she’d sufficiently bored everyone in attendance with the
fundamental importance
of complying with the school’s code of conduct (which she actually compared at one point to the Constitution) and PC’s zero-tolerance public intoxication policy. She paused for a moment and looked out at her audience with a contented glint in her eyes. Then she cleared her throat primly and broke into a big smile as she introduced the president of the Student Union—Grayson Bentley. Felix was more concerned with picking off a scab on the back of his hand without making it bleed than whatever Borakslovic was talking about, but he did hear her say something about Grayson being the first freshman ever elected president.

Grayson had already taken the stage and was waving at the crowd and engaging in a little back-and-forth with the kids in the front rows with the polished grace of a seasoned politician. He was tall and blond and dressed like he wanted people to think he worked on Wall Street. Allison elbowed Felix in the arm. “Yum,” she purred.

“Who?” Felix said, rolling his eyes at her. “Borakslovic? Yeah, she’s hot.”

Allison smiled at Felix’s dumb joke, but her eyes stayed fixed on the stage.

As Grayson approached the podium, Dr. Borakslovic’s smile grew even wider, and she shouted excitedly into the microphone: “Grayson Bentley, everybody!” She started clapping (way too enthusiastically; Felix thought she might snap a wrist), then she gave the crowd an exasperated eye-bulging stare when she realized no one was joining in. Just about everyone stared back at her in blank-faced confusion, but a few overly-eager kids eventually returned the applause.

“Weird,” Felix said to Allison and snickered. “You think they’re dating? Like boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“You know who he is, don’t you?” Allison’s tone suggested that he should.

“Grayson Bentley.”

“Smartass,” she replied quietly. “
Bentley
. His dad’s Dell Bentley. You know—the Governor of California.”

“No shit!” Felix said, louder than he’d intended.

The kid sitting in the seat in front of him turned around and scowled darkly at him.

A sudden rage flashed over Felix. He leaned forward until his face was just inches from the kid’s, who drew back, wide-eyed. “What?” Felix rasped softly. “This look like a church to you? You gotta problem?” The kid’s head snapped back around in a hurry and he slouched down in his chair like he was trying to hide.

Shit
, Felix thought regretfully, instantly feeling terrible.

Allison stared at him, her worried eyes traveling over his face. “You all right?”

He nodded, embarrassed. It wasn’t like him to do something like that.

“Anyway,” she said in a low voice, “that’s why Grayson’s the first freshman to be president. The administration kisses his ass and lets him run the school. He’s only a sophomore now, so he’s gonna be here for a while, so whatever you do, don’t make enemies with him.”

Felix shrugged. He wasn’t planning to make enemies with anyone. Then again, the kid he’d growled at probably wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

Grayson placed his hands on the podium and began speaking into the microphone without even a hint of nervousness. He oozed confidence, and clearly relished the opportunity to speak to such a large and captive audience. He made a few jokes (the quality of the cafeteria food got the brunt), and spoke about community involvement, philanthropy, and the importance of appreciating PC’s academic traditions. Felix caught some of it. But mostly he was beating himself up for snapping at the poor kid in front of him who hadn’t moved a muscle in ten minutes; maybe he figured Felix couldn’t see him if he kept perfectly still.

“In conclusion,” Grayson said, and Felix’s ears perked up. Then Grayson raised one arm over his head, made a fist and shouted: “Once a Sturgeon, forever a Sturgeon!”

That got the biggest laugh of the day.

PC’s mascot, the Sturgeon, was unquestionably the lamest school mascot in the entire country. And the unofficial school motto—
Once a Sturgeon, forever a Sturgeon
—was too ridiculous for anyone to take seriously. It reminded Felix of the
Monty Python
movies his dad made him watch to prove that his sense of humor was still, as his dad used to say, ‘with it’.

And so ended freshman orientation.

“Heroin?” the man with the soft, sunburned face complained to Dirk. “If I’d known there was going to be heroin in the room I wouldn’t have signed up for this. I definitely wouldn’t have called the police.”

“You signed up for this, David,” Dirk told the man, “because I’m making you rich.” David was Dirk’s agent. David’s agency had signed Dirk right out of high school and landed him the role—‘Scab’ in
Alien Armageddonator
—that launched his career. Now he was David’s biggest client. By any measure, Dirk was enormously successful. Sprawling symbols of that success could be found in Maui, New York City, Italy, and in Malibu where Dirk was presently sitting with his agent beside the infinity pool at a palm tree shaded table on the lower terrace of his oceanfront retreat.

David said nothing, reclining uncomfortably in his chair, appearing stiff, as if his back was bothering him.

“Lighten up,” Dirk said, nodding at a bottle of bourbon and two glasses with ice cubes floating like clouds of crystal in an amber sea. “You’ll feel better about this after you have a drink. C’mon. Humor me. It’s a beautiful day.”

David’s face remained tense as he looked out at the whitecapped waters shimmering beneath the glowing warmth of the sun. “I’ll grant you that. Every day’s beautiful here. But just for the record, I was rich long before I discovered you brewing cappuccinos at Starbucks. Salud.” He smiled thinly and tipped his glass to Dirk, then let the smoky liquid slide down his throat. “God that’s good! You know your bourbons. Pappy?”

“Yeah.” Dirk poured three fingers for David and three for himself. “Michael sends me a case every year. Look—I didn’t know about the heroin until I was in their room. I swear. But it’s actually working in my favor. Now the media thinks I’m not only a beast in bed—thanks to your concerned citizen’s call about women in the next room over screaming for their lives—but that I’m also addicted to heroin.” He paused for a moment to consider the irony of his good fortune, breathing in the warm ocean air.

“You went to jail, Dirk,” David pointed out grimly.

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Dirk admitted. “But Declan got me out in an hour, and I spent most of that doing cop selfies and signing autographs. And did you happen to turn on your TV last night?”

David gave him a grudging smile. “One of your finer performances. On the steps of the precinct looking suitably contrite. Right up until you parted the sea of paparazzi and sped off in a black, tinted-windowed Escalade. It was very Hollywood of you.”

“I couldn’t have scripted it any better. They’re playing it on every station.
GMA
ran the whole thing this morning.”

“But heroin?”
David said, shaking his head in frustration. “Jesus Christ! I don’t even want to think about—”

“I know. But it wasn’t my hotel room—it was
theirs
. And the models—Savannah, Dakota, Eddison or Addison or whatever the fuck her name is—already fessed up to it, and I’m sure they’re working something out with the DA. I had no knowledge that there was any heroin in the room. I’ve already been cleared.
Officially
cleared. Hell—I consented to a drug test at the station. I pissed in a cup. I’m clear.”

“But all this—” David began, then looked up and blew out a sigh. He finished half his drink and started over: “All this, all this insanity—and it is insanity, you know! If that heroin was tied to you, not even Declan could save your ass. We’re talking prison, Dirk.
Prison!
And not the minimum security country club bullshit for hedge fund guys who forget to pay their taxes. Prison! And for what? Why on God’s green earth would you fucking risk everything for a little publicity? Because that’s what this is about, right? Publicity?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Right,” David said wearily. He held his glass up to his nose, giving it a deep appreciative sniff. “The plan—and let me know if I’m getting this right—is to garner as much attention as you can. But nothing good. Only the shit that sane people try to avoid.” He groaned, then added sarcastically, “Makes perfect sense.”

Dirk could almost picture the acid in his agent’s stomach spouting up like seawater form a whale’s blowhole. “We went over this, David. I need to hit bottom—
rock bottom.”
He drank from his glass, staring off at a yellow lab fetching a piece of driftwood for an elderly woman walking the beach. “The public needs to think I’m out of control. Lost. In a spiral. Charlie Sheen a few years back—but much, much worse.”

David smiled, but his eyes were nervous and he was white-knuckling the armrests. “I get the relevance angle here. It’s funny—all those times I got on you for not promoting yourself. I think I even accused you of living like an accountant once. But this”—he grimaced and glanced down, shuffling his loafers along the stone tiles—“this is
extreme
. I only wanted you to interview more and do the talk show circuit. Not this. This is… guerrilla marketing. And let’s be honest—do you really need this?
You’re Dirk Rathman.
No one’s more relevant than you. I mean look at you.” He waved a hand at Dirk like his appearance offended him. “It’s not fair that you look the way you do. You make guys like me look like a different species. And by
different
, I mean uglier, fatter, hairier and just all-around less appealing to the other seven billion people we’re sharing the planet with. I don’t think it’s a coincidence my wife only has sex with me after you stop by the house. And how about your career: Six of the top twenty highest grossing films in the last five years. So this—this
plan
of yours, I just don’t—”

“What were they talking about before the cops arrested me?” Dirk interrupted, then drained his glass, holding the whiskey in his mouth for a second or two before swallowing it down. He poured himself another, his eyes on his agent. “Who was generating buzz? Who were the kids talking about at school? Me? Were they talking about me?”

David looked down at his drink guiltily and tilted his glass, making the ice cubes rattle.

Dirk waited until David’s eyes had moved back to him. “Do you realize Kim Kardashian has four times as many Twitter followers as me? Can you explain that?”

“Well, you know how it is, Dirk.” David coughed into his fist and removed his sunglasses. “She’s a shameless media whore.” He held them up, checking for prints. “And you’re, well, a decent self-respecting person who values his privacy. You’ve always kept your distance from the… people.”