Page 47 of Freedom
Lunch was nearly silent, with some burgers that were too greasy even for Jake’s taste, but Tobias ate his without any complaints, faces, or changes in speed, and Jake couldn’t make himself ask how it had been, in case Tobias answered yes, it had tasted rancid, but he had eaten it anyway because it was food Jake bought him. Jake had never known all the ways he was a coward until Tobias.
And if he kept thinking cheery thoughts like that, the day was sure to take a swing for the better. He could always recognize a winning strategy, usually right before he blacked out for the night.
They had just gotten back on the highway after lunch when Jake spotted a roadside vendor and pulled over. He wanted something to wash the taste out of their mouths, and he was desperate for anything that might start a conversation, get a word out of Tobias, or earn him a smile.
The back of the truck was loaded with watermelons and cantaloupes—new to Tobias, but Jake didn’t feel like bringing out his machete and massacring fruit on the side of a public highway—but there were also baskets of strawberries. Tobias was still tight-lipped sometimes about what he liked, besides that one time he had said he liked sticking around Jake; Jake had to remember that now when a dark part of him wondered if they wouldn’t both be better off anywhere else. But the first time he’d bitten into a strawberry from a gas station fresh fruit cup, he hadn’t been able to hide his wide-eyed delight. And that strawberry had been a pale, preprocessed imitation of the ripe, red, irregular fruits the withered old fruit seller had to offer. Jake bought a couple cartons and took them back to the Eldorado, beckoning for Tobias to join him on the hood.
Tobias climbed up carefully, never planting his shoes directly on the metal, and Jake set the strawberries between them. “Dig in,” he said, then added with a valiant attempt at lightheartedness, “You better not make me eat more than half of these.”
A flicker of an almost smile flashed over Tobias’s face, and with thin fingers he plucked a small berry on top. Even the hint of a smile warmed Jake through far better than the sun; he hadn’t realized how much he’d braced for the worst, afraid he’d broken or damaged Tobias or what they had between them. A close call—too fucking close—and another chance Jake didn’t deserve.
Despite all Jake’s fuckups, Tobias was doing better. Almost three months since he’d pulled Tobias out, and his face had more color; his bones were still stark and protruding, but Toby looked overall less like a skeleton with skin. But most of all, he looked... calmer. Even happy some days. Jake caught that smile more often now, and Tobias was comfortable enough to lean back against the windshield instead of hunching forward. His eyes were raised and wandering easily over the fields, nervous only when another car pulled up to the fruit seller’s truck or when a semi barreled by.
“These are the real deal,” Jake said. His throat was a little dry from the silence, and his heart did a funny, nervous flip when Tobias’s hazel eyes flashed to him, but at least he could get words out again. He held up a berry. “No pesticides or hormones or any of that weird chemical crap. All-natural.” It didn’t matter what he rambled about; it could have been the history of dictionaries, and Tobias would have followed with the same rapt attention. But he liked to talk and have Tobias’s eyes on him. See him smile. Feel that they could talk again. “Not as pretty as the ones you get in the supermarket, but way more authentic.”
As he talked, Jake watched Tobias’s hands. They picked out a new strawberry, twisted off the leaves, and brought it to his mouth for two clean bites. Something about the gesture niggled at him, but it wasn’t until the third time that he realized what he was seeing: Tobias nudging aside the fat, bright strawberries as he dug out the smaller, bruised ones.
Jake stopped midword, and his hand fastened on Tobias’s wrist, catching him halfway over the carton. Tobias didn’t flinch this time, but he froze, his breath audibly hitching.
Jake’s heartbeat was making his ears ring, but he said quietly, “Stop that.”
Then he reached with his other hand, as gently as possible, to uncurl Tobias’s fingers. The malformed strawberry rolled down the hood, and Jake pressed the biggest fruit he could find into Tobias’s palm in its place. He looked up to Tobias’s eyes, praying he would see comprehension there instead of that awful blank confusion.
At first, he thought bewilderment was all he would get, but then he saw something light in Tobias’s eyes: it could have been acceptance, realization, understanding, but Jake didn’t get a chance to figure it out. The next second, Tobias turned his hand over, folding Jake’s hand over the strawberry, lifted it, and pressed his lips to the back of Jake’s hand.
Chapter Nine
Jake had only beento Sahuarita, Arizona once before, and it hadn’t been under the best personal circumstances. His father had just disowned him because Jake declared he was getting Tobias out of Freak Camp, and Roger had let him crash with him but hadn’t entirely managed to keep Jake from half drowning himself in liquor and bad decisions most nights. Finally, he had told Jake to go meet Alejandra Rodriguez to ask for help with his ASC application to save Tobias.
As a Hawthorne, he didn’t have much trust in anyone, but he’d gone because Roger asked him and because he was completely out of options. As a Hawthorne—or at least with the example Leon Hawthorne had set for him all his life—they didn’t hold onto many numbers.
Alex Rodriguez hadn’t at all been what he expected: a no-nonsense woman who preached to her own congregation, who listened to him like she heard more than what he was saying, and who most of all believed him when he told her Tobias wasn’t a freak.
As he and Tobias approached Iglesia de Gracia y Fe this time, he found himself compulsively glancing at Toby (still leaning against the door, gazing out lost in thought, but not huddled as miserably as he had for the first half of their drive out of New Mexico). Toby was here now, with him, no longer shut up in that government-sponsored hellhole.
They pulled up outside the single-story adobe building and were greeted with a small church sign—no pastor’s name, the service info underneath written in Spanish. Jake parked the Eldorado, then sat there without reaching for the door. Tobias might’ve looked less miserable than he had when they first left Roger’s, but he didn’t look any more eager than Jake to go and announce themselves.
