Page 16 of Freedom
“Yes, Jake. You promised.”
“Good, and here’s another promise. Doing this will make things easier. This will help. This is gonna give you what you need to protect yourself until I come for you. I don’t want them to come for you, I’ll fight them down to my last breath, but if that can’t happen, youdohave power. You survived them, Tobias. And every day reminds me that you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Do you believe me?”
Tobias nodded sharply. And still didn’t look up.
“Okay. Let’s do something different. Just look at the camera, okay? And try not to look like you think the camera’s gonna knife you.”
Tobias didn’t look happy. There was still that depthless fear in his eyes, dark circles underneath them. But the photos were good enough that after another fifteen minutes of Jake moving around and talking aimlessly to try to get him to loosen up, he called it a night.
The pictures, when they came back, worked for what he needed—it wasn’t like he was forging a passport or anything, just a couple IDs. It was only then he realized with a gut-deep jerk that he had forgotten about the scarring on Tobias’s neck from the goddamn collar he’d worn all his life in Freak Camp. That rough circle embedded in the skin around his neck seemed starker and more condemnatory in the photo beneath Tobias’s dark eyes.
Jake had to crop the photos he was using, but he kept some of the duplicates just to remind himself.
~*~
Standing for the photohad been stupidly hard for Toby, even though it wasn’t painful at all. He couldn’t stop thinking how he didn’t look like a real—too thin, too pale, toofreak—and the photo would just give it away and all Jake’s hard work would be for nothing because you could take the monster out of FREACS but that would never change what he really was. It was a huge relief when Jake said they’d had enough and put down the camera and Tobias could push all those thoughts from his mind.
He’d watched Jake get the ID ready, of course. Jake had put it together on the hotel table, and Tobias had glanced over every once in a while as he brushed up on the notes—he was still getting the street address for the Nebraska safe house mixed up with the Florida one, even though he’d gone over the notes twice before recopying them from memory—but then it disappeared, and they drove on, swinging through Tennessee. Jake didn’t say anything more about it, so Tobias thought he’d given up on the idea after realizing how pointless it was to try to pass Tobias off as a real. He tried not to think about it or feel anything like disappointment.
Jake took him to one of his nearby PO boxes to show him how they worked. They stopped that night in a small motel—one that Jake had said had character—just over the Georgia border, and Tobias stretched out on the bed, lost in the middle ofWatership Down, until he heard Jake clear his throat.
“Got something for you, Toby.”
Tobias sat up, eyes falling on what Jake held out halfway between them, from where he was sitting on the other bed. It was a wallet, Tobias recognized, similar to Jake’s, but shinier and creaseless.
He knew that Jake would never pass him anything that might hurt him without warning him first, but he still reached for the billfold with a thrill of inexplicable apprehension.
“We still got a few months before Christmas, and we’re only halfway to your next birthday,” Jake said in the tone that told Tobias he was trying to be cheerful even when he didn’t feel that way. “But this can count for one of the ones I missed. Got a lot of catching up to do.”
Tobias heard the words, but he didn’t quite process them because the wallet was in his hands now, and the weight told him it wasn’t empty. He couldn’t hold this unmistakable mark of a real with power, let alone open it. It didn’t belong anywhere near him.
“Go on, open it,” Jake said in a rush, without even the pretense of patience, and Tobias did as he was told.
Three cards were tucked into the pockets, and Tobias’s hands were remarkably steady until he pulled the top one out.
It was a driver’s license from the state of Colorado, the same design as Jake’s. But the name in bold capitals said Tobias Hawthorne, eighteen, from Boulder, CO. Brown hair, hazel eyes, 5’10” tall, 120 pounds.
Tobias couldn’t get his lungs to expand. It was like the library card all over again, but this was so much more. This was his name and Jake’s, his picture staring at him with dark, sad eyes, and his description laid over glinting, real-looking holographs, with no place left for his Freak Camp ID 89UI6703.
“Thank you.” He didn’t raise his head because Jake might see how watery his eyes were and think that he was sad, and that was so far from Tobias’s emotions that he couldn’t let Jake think that for a moment. It was all he could do to keep his shaking hand from dropping the small, precious card that fit so easily in his palm.
Jake reached over and, as he had with the phone, curled Tobias’s fingers over the card. “Anytime, Toby.” He sounded happy again, with the easy confidence Tobias knew so well. “Check out the other ones.”
The second was a credit card for James Plant, but the third, a debit card for a Boulder bank, boreTobias Hawthorneat the bottom too, in raised letters he could trace.
“Sometimes the credit cards fuck up and quit working—it happens,” Jake said. “But the debit card is legit, goes right to my ASC direct deposit account, so if you ever need some quick cash, it’ll work at any ATM. We’ll try one of those out sometime soon so you can get the hang of punching in the PIN and stuff. It ain’t a bottomless account, but it should put at least a few hundred bucks in your pocket if you need it.” He sounded smug now. “Go on, keep looking, there’s more in there.”
Tobias was already reeling, a thousand thoughts and feelings clashing within him, and he didn’t know where to start with which ones he should utter; but he had been given another direction, so his fingers moved on, sliding under the pockets, feeling the soft, supple material. Then two crisp green notes peeked out, and Tobias’s stomach pitched forward again.
This was too much. Wonder, disbelief, and consternation had warred within him, but the battle was abruptly over, one side sweeping over the others. Tobias couldn’t drop Jake’s impossible, priceless gift to the floor, but he let it fall to his knees. He clasped his hands together over it in an effort to get them to stop shaking, but he had no such luck with his voice. “I can’t.”
Crossing the space between them, Jake sat close beside him and rubbed his back with the heel of his hand until Tobias found it easier to breathe and could bring the room back to proper focus. Then Jake asked quietly, “Why can’t you, Toby?”
Tobias gestured once with his hands helplessly before clenching them together again. “I can’t, I can’t carry all that. I can’t p-pass well enough, they’ll c-catchme eventually, and they’ll be so angry, Jake, so angry that I was carrying—that I pretended to be—”
“Toby.” Jake covered his hands with one of his own, and Tobias let himself drop his forehead to rest atop it, over his knees, fighting for deeper breaths. “No one’s gonna catch you. Gimme a little credit, okay—I’ve made IDs for just about every government agency there is, and no one’s ever called me a fraud.”
“Because you’reJake,” Tobias said, unable to stop himself.
