Page 13 of Fear
Tobias moved back to the couch and settled in almost like he was really comfortable with his book in his lap, turning pages like each was made of gold. Jake hummed an Ozzy tune to himself, relieved to see Tobias happy and definitely doing something he liked.
Around noon—Jake didn’t bother asking Tobias, he was getting a little hungry—he pulled the last two pizzas out of the freezer, then realized that there was nothing left in the fridge besides breakfast stuff, a half-empty six-pack of beer, and a pack of cream cheese.
Yeah, this wasn’t going to cut it. This was only Tobias’s third day out of Freak Camp. Jake had to take better care of him than feeding him frozen pizzas every day. Sandwiches and hamburgers at least, he could do that. “Hey, Tobias!” He slid the first pizza onto the pizza tray (damn thing had been in his closet, no fucking idea how it had ended up there).
“Y-yes, Jake?”
Jake held his breath for five seconds before letting it out. It would get better. Tobias would not always sound like that. It was just going to take time, a little progress each day. “How about we head to the grocery store? We can pick up some stuff for dinner tonight. See what looks good.” Yeah, that was a good idea. Tobias would be able to look around, pick out what he wanted to try. This would help him get a sense of options. A change of scenery couldn’t hurt, either. Jake was already feeling the walls start to close in.
They ate and cleaned up the food quickly. Tobias stayed quiet, head down, on the way out of the apartment, but Jake tried not to read too much into it. He was already obsessing over every move Tobias made, and adding fuel to that fire would lead nowhere good.
He slid in a tape for the short drive to the market. Boulder was a real artsy-hippie kind of place, and everyone he’d talked to had raved about the farmers’ markets, but Jake felt more comfortable in a standard, run-of-the-mill grocery store. Safeway it was.
AS SOON AS JAKE SUGGESTED leaving the apartment, Tobias felt cords tightening around his chest, but he said nothing. If Jake wanted to go somewhere, that was what they would do. Surely just stepping outside, going somewhere else, couldn’t be as bad as things he had done in camp. But at least those had been familiar. Still, Jake had given no indication they’d be splitting up and he didn’t seem to think this would be any trouble for Tobias, so Tobias had to trust him.
All the same, he blocked out most of the drive, refusing to focus on anything going by. That was dangerous if Jake asked him later about something they passed, or if he had to remember their route, but until Jake made it clear that was what he expected, Tobias couldn’t focus on the buildings—each one filled with reals—flying by.
They pulled into the parking lot for one of the largest buildings, and Tobias could only blink at it. It was as big as—bigger?— than the Warehouse in Freak Camp, but with bright signs and multiple entrances.
“C’mon, Tobias.” Jake was watching him, and Tobias jumped for the door handle, hoping Jake wouldn’t notice his hands shaking. This was the first test. God, he couldn’t disappoint Jake, couldn’t let him think Tobias couldn’t handle what Jake thought was nothing.
The Eldorado was surrounded by hundreds of other cars—all empty. Which probably meant the reals who owned them were inside the massive building. Where they were also heading.
He broke it down to one simple task: follow Jake. If he stayed two steps behind, as they walked across the pavement and through the doors that slid open automatically before them, no one would question what he was doing. Even if he couldn’t help jumping a little when the doors moved.
He blocked out everything: the hard gust of cool air as they crossed the threshold, the tall shelves ahead, the squeaking and clattering carts and bustling people. They mattered as little as a guard standing on the periphery of a Director session. He focused on Jake like he was the Director, who was just waiting for a moment when Tobias was distracted to give him vital orders. Though Jake hadn’t used any hand signals yet, at least none that Tobias had noticed—and wasn’t that a nightmare thought, that he might have missed them and Jake was just waiting to get back to the apartment before punishing him—so he focused on the bottom of Jake’s jacket and kept two steps between them.
He almost panicked again when he realized that Jake had been talking to him and Tobias hadn’t noticed.
“. . . Tobias? Hey, Tobias, you with me?”
Tobias lifted his eyes to meet Jake’s, and the stark concern there took him aback, made him lose focus. He took a deep breath, then another. This could not be as bad as it felt.
“You sure you’re feeling all right?” Jake stepped closer. He started to raise his hand, and Tobias flinched hard before he could stop himself. Jake stopped and slowly withdrew his hand.
Ashamed and furious at his body’s lack of control, Tobias nodded quickly. “Y-yeah. I’m fine. This is fine. What—what did you say earlier? I’m sorry I didn’t. . .”
“’S fine. I just wanted to know if you wanted to try Pop-Tarts or these funny granola fruit things.” He held out two different boxes, cocking his head and grinning hopefully.
Tobias looked at them blankly. He couldn’t remember ever seeing or tasting either before. Had Jake given them to him before when they were kids? What did he want Tobias to say?
“I,” he began at last—he had to answer, even inadequate as it was, even as he was appalled to hear his voice quaver. “I don’t know, Jake. . .”
“Okay,” Jake said at once. “Okay, okay, Tobias, it’s fine.” He turned and placed both items on the shelf.
Only then did Tobias really look at the display and see dozens of similar packages in a line. And others on the rows above and below, stretching down endlessly around him on both sides.
Then his stupid brain put together what should have been obvious all along just from what Jake had said before they left the apartment: this was a store of food for reals. The gas station stores they’d visited during the drive away from Freak Camp had already been too much for him to grasp or think about (that reals could go in and have anything they wanted, at any time), but looking at hundreds of boxes of food, just sitting there, without anyone fighting for them—
He wasn’t even hungry. Jake was amazing—constantly giving him food, so many times a day, and insisting he eat, that Tobias hadn’t felt cramps for days. It wasn’t that he wanted any of the packages around him or that he couldn’t stop thinking about anything but how it might taste if he snatched one and tore it open. He didn’t know why the sight of so much food, sitting neatly as though no one had ever fought for it—never killed, clawed out someone’s eyes, or dropped to their knees for it—made him feel like Crusher had him by the throat and was fumbling at his belt buckle. Or like the Director was looking at him in that thoughtful, calculating way that meant he was about to test a new way to teach Tobias not to be so stupid.
So much food. Right there.
He wasn’t aware that his lungs had stopped pulling in air, that the world was spinning with black spots crawling over his vision until Jake grabbed his shoulders and Tobias heard him saying, “Shit, shit, shit. Breathe, Toby, breathe—” and then Jake was pushing, propelling him out of the aisle and farther, until Tobias’s shoes stumbled on pavement and the summer sunlight warmed his face while the roughness of a brick wall anchored him from behind.
When Jake’s hands on his shoulders guided him down, Tobias had a wild, sickening thought that it was the guard Victor again, that he had hallucinated the food, Boulder, Jake—but Jake’s words came through before he lost it, before he could try to fight off the guards because the contrast between that dream and the reality that he deserved hurt too damn much for any kind of sense and the rules he’d known all his life.
“Easy, easy.” Without pushing or forcing, Jake brought Tobias’s head down to his knees; there, with Jake’s hand warm on his shoulder, Tobias felt contained enough to remember how to breathe. Inhale followed exhale until he could regain some semblance of control, even as his reaction scared him almost as much as it had drained him. He’d never felt anything like that in camp, ever.
