“I could totally pass for a freshman,” Aidan said, sitting back down.
“Relax, forty-year-old,” I said. “You may look all of nineteen, but I’ve got this one.”
The Inspectre clapped me on the shoulder. “See what you can find out,” he said, looking around the bar with caution. “And remember what I told you: err on the side of discretion.”
“Don’t worry,” Connor said from behind his beer, “Simon’s a master of erring.”
“Thanks, drunkie,” I said, and headed off toward the table of students farther off across the room. The group of them was crammed into one of the deep booths, the table crowded with an assortment of pitchers, mugs, glasses, and book bags. There were five of them altogether and they were animatedly laughing and talking to one another as they drank. At the back of the booth was a young brown-haired kid sandwiched between a heavier one with greasy black hair to his left and a goateed Hispanic guy with blond punk hair to his right. More recognizable to me were the two people sitting at the outermost seats of the booth, both of whom stuck out from my visions. One end of the booth held the tall black guy with the ear gauging who was busying himself with a beer in one hand and a net book in the other. The other far end of the booth seat was occupied by the blond girl I had first recognized. She had perfect dimples and bright eyes that screamed actress in training. If there was an entry point to talking to them, it was going to be her. It didn’t matter if I went in smooth approaching her. A lifetime of not being smooth around women had prepared me to go into this with the intent of crashing and burning.
As I walked toward the bar, I passed by their table at first, ignoring it, and then I did a double take.
“Hey,” I said, stopping and turning to the blond girl, “don’t I know you?”
She turned from her conversation with her friends and rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, brother,” she said. “Are you for real? Is that seriously your ‘A’ game?”
I resisted the urge to launch into her, but it would blow my cover even before I started, so I bit my lip and gestured to everyone in the booth.
“No,” I said. “I meant all of you.”
As one unit, the entire table stiffened, which was the opposite of what I wanted.
“NYU, right?” I asked.
The only one to relax was the youngest-looking kid sandwiched in at the back of the booth. “Oh, yeah,” he said, a little too eager, I thought. The tall guy with the ear gauging shot him a look that said he thought so, too.
“I graduated a year ago,” I said, starting in with my lie. “You probably wouldn’t remember me. I did a lot of geeky stuff for one of my mentors in the film department.”
“Who?” the girl asked, still wary.
“A bit of an eccentric,” I said. “Mason Redfield.”
The girl raised an eye at me. “Oh, really?” she asked. “Well, I knew the professor pretty well and I don’t remember you.”
I kept my eyes on her. “I kept to myself mostly. I did a lot of . . . special project work for him.”
“Really,” she said, her voice flat. “What classes did you take?”
There were some things I could bluff my way past and some things I definitely couldn’t. This was one of them. What classes? Specifically? I had no idea. My heart leapt into my throat as I thought about my options. I had to come up with something or they were about to learn how full of shit I was. I pointed at an extra seat at the end of their booth where most of the book bags were gathered on the table.
“May I?”
“Be our guest,” the girl said. I took my time sitting, but she didn’t stop staring at me. “So. . . what did you say you took with Professor Redfield?”
As I sat, I pulled off my gloves and set my hands down on the table, purposefully brushing my left one against her shoulder bag lying there. I had avoided using my powers, but I had to chance a flare-up now to get a quick reading. I pushed those worries to the side and pressed my power into the shoulder bag with one thought in my mind.
Schedule.
My mind’s eye opened up on Elyse taking out her printout of classes. I watched her as she programmed it into the calendar on her iPhone. I scanned them quickly, looking for signs in the class codes for something with a three or higher in it. Some of these students might have taken the advanced course load that a graduate like I was pretending to be had already, but I doubted all of them had. I needed enough information to sound credible.
Finding what I needed gave me an ounce of hope and I let down the guard I had put up against my worries of another flare-up. The second I did, the screen of the iPhone in the vision flickered like old-time television static, the face of the tattooist pressing forward out of it. My heart froze for a second, but rather than get caught up in the building rush of anger and jealousy that always accompanied her, I remained calm. I pulled out of the vision before it could fully take hold and shook off the disorientation. When I opened my eyes, the entire group of students was staring at me.
“You okay?” the heavy guy asked me.
I nodded, brushing it off. “Just a little drunk,” I said. “No worries.”
This seemed to satisfy everyone except the girl. “Your classes. . . ?” she asked, waiting.
“Let’s see,” I said. “Mason gave me a pass on the remedial levels of Monster Craft and bumped me up to his Harryhausen and Hollywood. Still made me take Bela, Lon, and Boris, though. Said I had a lot to learn about makeup still.”
The girl stared at me a moment longer before her face shifted to a welcoming smile. “Yeah, BL and B is a real bitch,” she said. “I was ready to give myself real facial scars instead of makeup by the time we got to finals.”
“I hear that,” I said, signaling for the guy working the bar. “You mind if I buy a round for the table?”
Elyse smiled. “We don’t mind at all, do we, boys?” she asked, offering me her hand. “I’m Elyse. Acting track.” As I expected, she had a strong, firm handshake but still kept it dainty enough. “Mr. Tall across from me there is Darryl. He edits things to make me look good in front of the camera. Chunky Monkey back there is Mike, who is the camera on the cinematography track. The chatty one at the back is Trent, and his fellow frosh with the soul patch and bleached-blond hair is George, the one crowding Darryl. We’re trying to paper-train those two. They’re undeclared still.”
I waved to the group of them, nodding as I looked them over. “I’m Simon,” I said.
Darryl was clacking away on his netbook in front of him on the table. “Do you have a last name?” he asked.
“Why? Are you taking notes?”
The big guy stopped typing and lowered the screen until it closed shut against the keyboard. “No,” he said, folding his hands over it.
“I thought maybe you were the party stenographer,” I said.
“Don’t mind Darryl,” Elyse said. “He’s our resident tech geek–slash–editing maven. A bit OCD, but otherwise socially functional.”
“Barely,” Mike said.
Darryl flipped him the bird in retaliation, and then turned to me. “I just wondered what your full name was, to see if I could recall you.”
“Oh, right,” I said, not really ready for the question. My brain froze and I went with the first thing that came to mind. “It’s Vanderous. Simon Vanderous.”
“Is that Dutch?” George asked, running one hand through his blond shock of punked-out hair.
“Only half,” I said, wondering if I was turning red. “Don’t ask me what the other half is. I’m a bit of a mutt.”
“Could you say that again for the camera?” Mike asked, and I looked over at him. Sure enough, his enormous hands were cradling a digital video camera.
“Are you. . . taping me?”
Mike looked at me from behind the camera like I was stupid. “We are film students,” he said, “and what better way to pay tribute to our recently deceased prof than by taping our mourning?”