The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (30 page)

“We’ve never met. I’m Bill Stout. The assistant groundskeeper. I make sure everything on campus looks nice so parents don’t feel so bad about paying the ridiculously high tuition.” He smiled and settled into the seat across from Felix.

Felix stared down at the table.

“Is that the kona blend you’re drinking?” The man nodded at Felix’s mug.

Oh God,
Felix thought with dismay. He wasn’t in the mood to discuss coffee (or anything else). “Uh-huh.”

“I’m more of a tea man myself. But I indulge in a cup of coffee every now and again. Good game yesterday. What was the final score?”

“The game?” The guy—did he say his name was Bill?—had a slight accent, but he couldn’t place it. He definitely wasn’t from around here. “Thirty-five to twenty-one.”

“And that was against Watsforde?”

“Uh-huh.” Felix glanced around, wondering why Bill was sitting at his table when every table, couch and chair in the place was unoccupied.

“So what’s this Rain Cup thing I keep hearing about?” Bill asked casually, like they’d known each other forever.

Felix groaned inwardly. He just wanted to have a cup of coffee in peace. He had a lot on his mind. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. Hell—just the thought of having a conversation exhausted him. And chatting with the assistant groundskeeper definitely didn’t interest him.

“I’m new here,” Bill explained. “I’m not very familiar with PC’s traditions.”

“Oh.” Felix swirled the coffee in his mug, trying to come up with a way to get out of this without appearing like a complete asshole. “If we win our next game we’ll win the South Division. And then we’ll play the winner of the North for the Rain Cup. It’s a trophy.”

“I see.” Bill smiled. “So the Rain Cup’s the PNFL’s version of the Lombardi trophy?”

Felix drank from his mug and set it down on the table a little harder than was necessary. If he kept his answers short, he thought, maybe Bill would get the hint and go away. “I guess,” he said finally.

“Hmmmm.” Bill leaned forward in his chair, regarding him thoughtfully. Felix moved back to maintain the distance between them. It was like they were dancing, with Bill doing the lead.

“You look like you’re worried about something,” Bill told him.

“Sorry?”

“I bet it’s midterms. Am I right?”

Felix stared back at him, wondering why on earth the groundskeeper would be talking to him about midterms. He couldn’t catch a break.
This was awful.
Felix had been planning to kick back and have two cups of coffee. Maybe three. Not anymore. Now he just wanted to go somewhere else. Somewhere far away from Bill the groundskeeper.

“Look around.” Bill flapped a hand at the empty bistro. “On the entire campus, there might be three other students who are conscious. Two haven’t gone to bed yet, and the third’s got his head in the toilet. You’re worrying about midterms.”

Felix thought about getting up and leaving. But that would be rude. “Not really,” he said tersely. He’d been studying harder than he’d ever studied in his life. He went to the library with Lucas and the girls almost every night, and they stayed for hours. The girls were stone-cold serious about their grades. After all this time, he still couldn’t get over how focused they were. He just had to follow their lead: if he studied when they studied, he should be golden—at least in theory.

“Can I offer you some advice?” Bill didn’t pause or wait for an answer. “When it comes to taking college exams there are a few tricks you can apply. Never be critical of your professor’s opinions. I know you and the other students view your professors as these great fountains of knowledge, but most of them are insecure cowards without an original idea in their heads. They’ve spent their entire lives hiding behind the work of others in their tenured towers. They’re too afraid and too weak to have experienced anything in the real world.

“If they were forced to work a regular nine-to-five job, they’d curl up like babies and cry their eyes out. Don’t challenge them. Flatter the egomaniacs whenever you can. Remember you can always appeal to the vanity of the weak-minded. And these people are as fragile as they come. Don’t make the mistake of thinking too much. If you regurgitate what they’ve been telling you in class, you should be fine. It couldn’t be any easier.”

Felix felt his eyes go wide. Bill didn’t talk like a groundskeeper, and Felix had nothing against the profession. From the time he was eleven, he’d been his neighborhood’s unofficial lawnmower, mulcher, weed puller and general provider of cheap manual labor. But the way Bill spoke reminded him of his professors; the same people he’d just thoroughly trashed. Finally, against his better judgment, he said, “You got a thing against profs?”

“Something like that.”

Felix swirled the dregs, then took long, rushed gulps. Bill was staring at him, watching him closely. He needed to get out of here. Now.

“This wasn’t an accident,” Bill said to him.

“Huh?” Felix gaped in surprise.

“My being here. It wasn’t by chance. And I didn’t come here to talk about football. Or midterms.”

Felix looked around and wondered if he might need some help. He wasn’t the paranoid type, but if this guy had a gun or a knife, he could be in trouble.

“And I’m not a stalker,” Bill said with a subtle edge to his voice, taking note of Felix’s reaction. “So stop acting like you’re on the verge of dialing nine-one-one. I came here to tell you something.” He paused. “I came here to tell you that I… knew your mother.”

“You what?”

“I met your mom a very long time ago.”

“
My
mom?” Bill’s words struck Felix like a blow to the chin.

“Yes. Patricia August. She was your mom, right?”

Felix nodded, more out of habit than anything else.
Patricia August.
That
was
his mom’s name. Just hearing it made his insides contract with pain. His chest tightened and he felt himself slipping into a dark well of depression.

“By the way,” Bill said softly. “I’m really sorry about what happened to your mother. And your father—of course. Such a terrible thing.”

Bill’s condolences turned Felix’s pain to hot anger. He looked Bill in the face and said bitterly, “I’m not talking about it.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.

“That’s not why I’m here,” Bill said quickly, holding out his hands for Felix to stay. “Just wait a minute. Your mom gave me something. She wanted me to give it to you when the time was right. I promised her I would.”

“She… she what?” Felix stammered out, remaining at the table.

There was a clatter behind them.

Bill glanced over at the counter where a kid wearing a green apron was filling the display case with muffins.

“She what?” Felix said again, gritting his teeth, resisting the impulse to snap his fingers in Bill’s face. “Why would she do that?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Go ahead.” Felix sat back down.

Bill stood up from the table. It was like they were on a teeter totter. “I wish I could, but I really have to be on my way. I have a pressing appointment.”

“What?”
Felix’s anger was surging. “What is it? What’d she give you?”

“It’s hard to explain.” Bill’s eyes narrowed as he ran a hand over his face. “Let’s just say it’s a small personal object you should really experience for yourself. I think you’ll find it fascinating.”

Felix hesitated. Was this guy bullshitting him? If he was bluffing, now was the time to find out. “Then give it to me.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have it with me,” Bill said sympathetically. “It’s in storage out of state, but I expect to have it in a few weeks. I’ll contact you when I do.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding! Seriously? Then why would you…” he started to say, then let himself trail off.

“Sorry. I’ll be in touch soon.” Bill took his nearly-full mug over to the bar and set it down on the counter.

“Hey wait!” Felix called after him. “I’ll give you my number.”

“I’ve got it,” Bill said as the door shut behind him.

The Gold Digger had recently been voted one of the worst restaurants in Orange County. Dirk Rathman sat in a back booth of the diner staring bemusedly at a ladybug doing laps around the rim of his water glass. The broad-shouldered waitress that brought him his coffee hadn’t recognized him. The baseball hat, aviator sunglasses and thick beard seemed an impenetrable disguise.

A man in tan slacks and a pink polo shirt approached Dirk’s table. In his mid-forties, he was short and slight with a sunburned face and no hair except for a thin ring that ran from the back of his head to his ears
.

“Hello David,” Dirk said, glancing up.

“Dirk.” David took a seat across from him, letting out a weary groan. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that beard. When do you think you’ll be shaving it off?”

“Are you seriously asking me about my facial hair?”

“Of course not.” David tapped his fingers nervously on the table. “You know what I’m asking.”

“And I think you know why I asked you to come here.”

“I thought you were just trying to poison me,” David said sourly. He turned around for a moment, wrinkling his nose at a long line of truckers silently shoveling down their lard-laden lunches at the counter. “It doesn’t even smell like food in here.” He sniffed the air. “It smells like… I can’t quite place it. Maybe vinegar, baby shit and taco meat? How’s the coffee?”

“Worse than it smells. But probably the safest thing on the menu.”

“It’d probably burn a hole in my colon,” David said. “So what’s the—?”

“First tell me about
Mesmerizer
. Everyone’s saying I’m Phillip. Everyone but you.”

“Not having a cell makes it a little tricky to have a private conversation with you,” David replied. “But I can confirm the rumors. Done deal. And I have the signed contract to prove it. I have no idea what a
Demongel
is. I’ll have to ask my daughter about that.” He stared at Dirk and a self-satisfied grin fell over his face. “Twenty-two million and a percentage of the gross. We’re talking Downey’s
Iron Man
money—almost.”

“I would have done it for free,” Dirk told him.

“Well then it’s a damn good thing you have me for an agent. You know it’s going to be an absolute monster franchise. Everyone had their hat in the ring. You name ‘em: Pine. The Hemsworth brothers. Tatum. Efron. Some moptop from
One Direction
. There’ll be at least four movies, and they’ll probably stretch it to five—even six. Ten or twelve years before it’s done.”

Dirk watched a waitress in a grease-stained apron taking an order from a man sitting next to a display case filled with meringue-topped pies that looked like they could double as masonry supplies. “For the next decade,
Mesmerizer
will be jammed down the throats of every teenager and twenty-something in the country.” He smiled. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

“Relieved?”
David replied, apparently surprised at Dirk’s choice of words. “That you got the part or that your crazy plan actually worked? I’ll be the first to admit I had my reservations. But I’ve gotta hand it to you. You knew what you were doing. You can’t turn on the TV or the radio or anything else without hearing about Dirk Rathman. They run that clip all the time of you falling off your house. And the footage at that restaurant is like HD quality. There was so much video taken from so many different angles it looks like Ang Lee directed it. Over ten million mentions on Facebook in the first thirty minutes after the story broke. The kids in my office were very impressed by that. And the speculation’s out of control. You’ve been MIA for seven weeks in case you don’t have a calendar wherever it is you’re hiding. My office has been denying all the usual rumors: you don’t have a drug problem; you don’t have an eating disorder; you didn’t have a psychotic break; you’re not living off the land in the wilderness; you’re not suffering from exhaustion; you’re not a sex addict; you’re not possessed by the devil.” He laughed. “If it wasn’t for your daily tweets, we’d be buried with death rumors.”

“Part of the plan,” Dirk said coolly.

“Which reminds me.” David leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “When I was negotiating
Mesmerizer
,
the team there was impressed by your
presence
. It seems that being the center of scandal and controversy makes people very happy these days. And I’m talking about important people here. The empire makers. The guys who lube the gears of the Hollywood machine. The guys whose asses get kissed by Presidents in election years. Your Twitter count is exploding. You left Kim Kardashian’s gigantic caboose in your rearview mirror a long time ago. What are you—halfway to Katy Perry now? Taylor Swift?”

“Getting there.”

“Well,” David said, “without your plan, you don’t get the part. I’m sure of that. But there’s still one thing I don’t understand. Why
negative
publicity? Why do you want everyone to think you’re a disaster?”

Dirk sat silently for a moment, a trace of a smile on his face as he looked around to make sure no one was watching. Then he rolled his sleeve back to his elbow and held out his arm, nodding for David to look at it. “Because you can’t be saved unless you’ve fallen,” he said slowly, his voice thick with meaning.

David’s eyes followed Dirk’s prompt. Then he flinched back against his seat, his arms unsticking themselves from the butter and gravy-crusted table. Startled, one hand went to his mouth as he stared down at the tattoo on Dirk’s arm; it was a tiger—a snarling tiger—with one heavy paw raised high as if it was about to decapitate its prey, and it stretched across Dirk’s forearm from the lower part of his bicep to his wrist. It almost appeared three-dimensional, like it was preparing to jump across the table to take a swipe at him.

“I should’ve known it was something like this,” David said softly, after he’d collected himself. “Some of your tweets are clearly political. But the
ERA
? I know you’re a smart guy with a social conscience, but I guess I never thought you’d join something like that. I mean, I know how you feel about the Scientologists.”