Page 31 of Freedom
Tobias’s breath stopped. This wasn’t the first time someone had said something about that, about what he should be doing if he were a real, but he completely froze up yet again. He couldn’t even remember what Jake had said before in these situations.
But Jake was still there across from him, knocking their feet together before leaning in to catch sight of the waitress’s name tag. “Hey, Darla, can I get a refill?”
She looked down her nose at him, then at his half-empty coffee cup, her heavy blue beaded earrings swaying gently. “No problem, hon. You want decaf?”
“Nah, regular’s fine.”
“It’s your brain cells.” Even when she walked away, even when Jake pressed his foot along Tobias’s shin, he couldn’t relax. When she came back, carrying the coffee thermos half-braced against her hip, he couldn’t stop his hands from clenching under the table and couldn’t force himself to raise his eyes.
Darla poured for Jake and then stood there. Tobias could feel her gaze, an almost tangible heat across the table. Or maybe that was the panic running just under his skin, the fear he’d thought he could handle but couldn’t. Once again, someone had proven that no matter how safe he thought he was, there was always another reason he couldn’t pass as a real. No matter how hard he strove to strip away the appearance and mannerisms of a monster, there was another inevitable reminder that he was and always would be a fool and a freak.
“Really, hon, your friend over here oughta be sleeping if he’s got school tomorrow. Sleep deprivation can be as bad as alcohol. Or drinking too much coffee.”
Tobias kept his head down and watched through his bangs. Jake smiled, but it was more a baring of teeth than his usual open grin. “Tobias’s older than he looks, and I like my coffee as black as my soul, thanks.”
“Decaf comes in black,” she pointed out.
“I like to live dangerously. And it’s not like there’s nothing else out there to watch out for. Speaking of which, you hear about the drowning near South Enola Road?”
Darla nodded slowly. “Yes, I did. Good man. Not the first mighty strange happening around here either. My cousin’s girl had a flat tire by the Harvey Taylor Bridge, and out of nowhere she got jumped by some crazy bastard wearing a rug.”
“She okay?”
“Good thing she’s a fire-eater. She took a swing at that hobo with her tire iron, and he took off like a bat out of hell. Still hasn’t been caught. It’s enough to make an honest woman bring a shotgun to bed.”
Jake took a sip of his coffee. “You know anyone else had a scare like that? Maybe somebody walking along the river that same night or thereabouts?”
She glared. “You one of those boys that looks up freaky crap just for giggles?”
“No, ma’am. Just concerned about my kid brother here.” Jake gestured vaguely toward Tobias, and Tobias had to remind himself (before he bit his fingernails into his arms, which he knew would make Jake upset, and besides, it was a Rule) that Jake didn’t necessarily mean that Tobias wasn’t capable of protecting himself. He didn’t think that Tobias would go wild and start attacking people. He was just talking to a civilian to get intel, making small talk. Except for the fact that Tobias was there now and would be there for this hunt, the conversation had nothing to do with him.
“Well, there’s Joanne Boswell, whose brother-in-law ended up dead over by Fort Hunter, and Mark Burns. He swore up and down this time last month that he saw a wild dog or some such, but he’s been known to drink—and not coffee—so we ain’t paid him much mind, at least not until my cousin’s girl, Lorie, got jumped. Weird things have been happening around here and all the way up by Marysville. There’s been rumors the sheriff might call up them damn monster hunters if it keeps up this way, even though no one wants one of them government types tramping around, least of all at old Bosco.”
Jake’s voice was completely sincere. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, ma’am. Probably just some dog, shouldn’t be a problem to take care of without calling in the ASC.”
The waitress nodded. “Hon, I hope so, but I’m not much on believing that anymore.”
Tobias hoped so too. He hoped so very much.
~*~
Later that night, Tobiaswas stretched on his stomach over the worn hotel bed, spinning his cell phone on the bedspread, when Jake came out of the shower. A book lay closed on one corner of the bed, a slip of paper marking his place in the middle.
Dropping the towel he had been using to rub his hair dry, Jake sat down next to Tobias. “Hey, Toby. What’s bugging you?”
He expected something about the latest murders (no way anyone could convince him that nine lunar-cycle drownings were anything but supernatural) or maybe another talk about what made a monster, but instead Tobias rolled on his side to look up at him, forehead knit above his hazel eyes, and asked, “If... if I were a real... what kind of school would I be in?”
Jake took a moment to absorb that question, working out in his head what Tobias was getting at. This... this was important. He answered with deliberation, as he did all of Tobias’s important questions. “You’d, uh... be in high school. A sophomore, or maybe a junior, I guess. Maybe a couple years left to go.”
Tobias pondered that, tapping his phone against the bed. The next time he spoke, his voice was even softer, more hesitant, making Jake’s gut clench in memory of that first cata-fucking-strophic week in Boulder. “Could you... tell me more about high school? What I’m supposed to know, what I would be doing. Just in case someone asks again?”
Jake touched Tobias’s hair, brushing it slowly, carefully back from his temple—an automatic gesture to buy himself time, a moment when Tobias wouldn’t worry or try to backtrack, apologize for asking the wrong question, or tell Jake to never mind, it wasn’t important. But if Tobias wanted to learn about those things, it was important, and he had every right to know. Tobias shouldn’t have to ask at all. Jake just didn’t know where to start, not when Tobias deserved to know everything and Jake was pretty much the worst person to cover any of that, at least in the way that it should be explained.
But there wasn’t anyone else. Jake wouldn’t waste time wishing on a star for a fucking Jiminy Cricket.
He began, awkward and fumbling—bad as his first time trying to unhook a girl’s bra—to tell Tobias about high school. He’d been in enough schools in his time to have a fairly sweeping idea of how it worked all across the country, but that generalized knowledge didn’t exactly help him compress four years of girls (and guys), fights, and half-assed classes. How was he supposed to describe teachers and cliques that were the same no matter where you went, no matter what school you ended up in anywhere in the country? So he moved on to a play-by-play description of periods and semesters, first days and finals, gym classes and lunch hour posturing. He tried to make it cut-and-dried, leave out the shit of being wrapped up in the whole racket. But like always, it was no good trying to keep anything from Tobias and his quiet, watchful eyes.
“What do you mean, ‘or something like that’?”
