Page 39 of Freedom
For now, while he couldn’t meet Jake’s eyes, he could watch Jake’s hands without being caught, so he knew to lift the corn with his hands, bite down to the stalk. He didn’t dare look as far as Hunter Harper’s plate. The idea of catching sight of his face, seeing the contempt and disgust there, was as unendurable as the thought of looking the Director in the face.
He wasn’t hungry at all. If he had thought about his stomach, he’d have said it was twisted into some unrecognizable shape that wasn’t equipped for the challenge of food, but not eating wasn’t an option. Seizing any opportunity to eat was too ingrained a survival instinct, and it overrode any other physical condition, no matter how sick or sore or exhausted the monster was or what kind of food was available.
So he cleaned his plate, stopping once to pour a small amount of dark brown sauce onto his plate from the bottle Jake nudged toward him and scoop it up with his neat bites of meat. No one spoke to him during the meal, and Tobias’s attention was too wholeheartedly focused on managing the food to listen to a conversation not intended for him. Jake’s knees bumped steadily against his—once or twice a minute, though Tobias didn’t think Jake would want him counting—and occasionally rested his arm over the back of Tobias’s chair to touch his fingertips to Tobias’s shoulder. Tobias was indescribably grateful for those touches; the moment of contact temporarily washed out the panic, the fear, the acidic thoughts, and left him nothing but the relief that Jake still touched him kindly, even in front of Hunter Harper.
Like Jake, he left only the bare cob of corn and the steak bones. He assumed the meal had been very good, but he hadn’t tasted any of it.
Jake cleared his throat and pushed his chair back. “Me and Toby got the dishes, Roger.”
The Director had said it differently, but Tobias understood the suggestion under the words. When Jake grabbed the big serving dishes, Tobias took both their plates and followed. After Jake pulled out the trash can, Tobias scraped in the leftovers and then took the sponge Jake passed him. This was better. Small, simple tasks he could focus on individually, and cleaning was a familiar, safe activity for a freak.
Tobias almost wished that Jake would just leave the dishes with him. The way Jake was washing them—water barely hot enough to feel and only a tiny amount of bland detergent—couldn’t possibly sterilize enough for Hunter Harper. After all, a monster had been eating off one of those plates.
If Jake went back to drink or talk or whatever he wanted to do with Hunter Harper—talk about Tobias, probably, and Tobias understood that, it was good for them to make sure Tobias wasn’t doing anything wrong, wasn’t hurting Jake without noticing it—then Tobias could crank the water hot enough to raise blisters on his hands, and this mess he’d brought to Hunter Harper’s home just bybeingwould be cleared up. He could pretend, at least for a few days, that he was a useful monster.
The hunter’s chair scraped across the floor, and Tobias’s whole body stiffened from his shoulders down, hands freezing in the act of drying a plate. Jake paused in his washing too, fingers twitching once as though he would touch Tobias, but he didn’t.
“Here, Jake,” Hunter Harper said, and Jake turned slightly, a moment later setting the third plate and glass in Tobias’s side of the sink. Hunter Harper’s heavy footsteps moved out of the kitchen, and Tobias realized he should breathe again. There was no reason for his hands to be shaking. Jake was right beside him.
“You’re doing fine,” Jake said, but it didn’t sound like even he believed it anymore.
When they finished, Tobias followed Jake to the living room, where Hunter Harper sat behind his desk with a glass of amber liquid. He looked up as they approached.
“Hey, you boys look pretty beat,” he said. “I only got the one guest room, but one of you want to bed down on the couch?”
“Nah, I’m gonna move us into the guest room, we’ll both crash out later.” Tobias saw tension stiffen Jake’s shoulders, had to shuffle backward to maintain a proper distance when Jake shifted his weight. “I mean, if that’s cool with you, it’s just a lot more... The bed’s better, and it’s big, you know, and nothing’s gonna... We’re good, but thanks, Roger.”
Hunter Harper narrowed his eyes, and Tobias dropped his own quickly, wishing equally that sharing the room wouldn’t be a problem and that Jake had just let him sleep in the car. “All right. I’ve got some notes to finish up, so why don’t you show the kid around, Jake? You know where the TV and DVD stash are if you want to watch something.”
“Uh, thanks, but I think we’re good. Might bring some books in from the car.”
Hunter Harper’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve traded in your DVDs for literature?”
“Nah, not for me. They’re Toby’s.”
Tobias couldn’t keep from flinching. There was a distant ringing in his ears, and he tried to focus on that instead of the dizzy feeling that Jake had buried his fist in his gut. How could he just give away something so important? The books weren’t Tobias’s, nothing belonged to the freak, but now Hunter Harper knew something Tobias cared about, something Jake had been kind enough to give him, and soon, much sooner than Tobias had thought, that gift would be taken away.
But Jake was still talking, his jaunty tone familiar from when things were so close to falling apart but he refused to let Tobias hit the ground. “Or we might just get a deck of cards. Toby beats me at poker all the time, we could play a game.”
“We’ll see.” Hunter Harper’s tone was guarded. Tobias closed his eyes, hoping the floor would hold steady under his feet if he couldn’t see the room. “Maybe once I get a working translation out of these texts.”
Jake grinned. “Feudal Japanese?”
Hunter Harper snorted. “No, it’s Greek.”
“You know it’s all—”
“Don’t strain your brain, moron. Don’t you have tours to give and bags to carry?”
“Sure do,” Jake agreed cheerfully. Then he glanced at Tobias, and the worry returned like a noose slipping over his neck. “Come on, Toby.”
They got their duffels from the Eldorado. Jake left his weapons in the car but nodded toward Tobias’s books, so he carefully picked two he’d read already (he hadn’t had time to memorize them, but then again, he hadn’t known he’d lose them so soon) and clutched them to his chest, his duffel slung over one arm. This was the first time Jake was presenting him to someone, and Tobias was disappointing him. He was a good monster, and he was under control, and he didn’t want to do anything wrong, but he did again and again, and he couldn’t even apologize any more, his tongue tied into knots, because just being in Hunter Harper’s home was the most effective gag he’d ever choked on.
And what would be the point? Jake didn’t want to hear it, Hunter Harper hadn’t asked for it, and he shouldn’t be such a stupid monster as to believe he had a place other than in the corner, on his knees, waiting for instructions.
He wanted that. He wanted to be out of the way (forgotten, ignored, safe) so badly that at times the desire to kneel seared almost like a physical pain. But then Jake would be sad, and Hunter Harper would look at him with that same blank stare as though he had yet to figure Tobias out, and hecould not do it, not if he really wanted to be the quiet, obedient monster he had been trained to be.
Jake hesitated before the porch steps, turning to Tobias. He lifted his hand briefly but dropped it before touching him. “You doing okay?”
