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CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

FELIX GOFFMAN

Felix sits in the back of the U-Haul, listening to the hum of the spinning tires. His hands and ankles are still bound, but Blane managed to help remove the tape covering their mouths, their eyes. It doesn’t matter much because it’s dark in the windowless cabin and Felix has barely spoken in the seeming hours they’ve been trapped in the truck. Even now, he’s the quiet one. He’s always been that way. He barely spoke well into elementary school. He doesn’t remember why, it was just who he was. But when the kids started calling him Quiet Boy and his teachers expressed concern, his poor mom stayed up nights worrying. She’d asked one of the professors at SCU if he had any advice, and he helped her find specialists and therapists for Felix. SCU gradually became a safe haven for Felix and his mom.

The professionals never put their finger on it. Felix did well on standardized tests, seemed otherwise physically and emotionally healthy. He just didn’t talk. Until one day, out of nowhere, he did. He remembers this because his mom let out a scream.

But the legacy of Quiet Boy carried over to middle school, where kids can be particularly cruel. The words freak and creeper were recurrent.

Mom thought high school would be better. He’d shot up in height and he was what some might call conventionally handsome. But it’s a strange thing, a reputation. Once you get one, it’s like a tin can tied to your leg, rattling after you. In the cruel politics of high school, he made few friends, usually new kids or other loners who dropped him as soon as someone better came along.

He entered college with low expectations. By then, he was used to being alone. But then he met his capstone group. Blane and Mark would joke around with him and bring him to frat parties and make him laugh. Stella would hop on him for piggyback rides and play drinking games and make him feel like one of the cool kids. And Libby looked at him in that earnest way of hers and somehow made him feel wanted.

They didn’t ditch him when the Creep Lists came out, when someone called him a stalker. Stella even said, “I’d love for you to stalk me,” and traced her finger under his chin, which gave him goose bumps.

Blane and Mark, who were also on the list, laughed it all off, though he wasn’t sure it was genuine.

And Libby said she was contacting Rizz and demanding they take it down. He didn’t know what she said, but the post miraculously disappeared. Though nothing ever really disappears.

The four were his first true friends. And they were worth protecting.

Which is why he did what he did.