Page 54 of Freedom
Tobias dreamed thatnight of open skies, soft wind on his skin, and endless vistas of land with no walls or fences in sight. He woke only once to feel the smooth, cool quilt under his arms and to listen to Jake’s soft breathing from where he slept close by on the air mattress.
He didn’t know why it was so much easier to be here than at Roger’s. Maybe it was because nothing about Alex screamedhunterto him the way Roger had, with every inch of his skin knowing what hunters did to freaks like him.
But Alex knew what he was, and she wasn’t afraid to look at him or talk to him. She’d even left him in her church with the nice old ladies—abuelitas—to make food, like he could be trusted around them and to prepare meals for other reals to eat. He would’ve felt guilty for lying to them, for exposing them to an ASC-certified freak without their knowledge, but Alex knew. He could trust her judgment, especially when it came to the safety of her people.
Tobias had never made any kind of food like that before. In Freak Camp, he’d been on rotation in the mess hall many times, but preparing meals for freaks was nothing more than shaking out bags of stale, moldy bread or pouring into bowls some kind of half-liquid thing he’d learned in the real world might’ve been called a stew or soup, though with no ingredients he’d yet recognized. On the best days, it wouldn’t have any taste at all.
But today there had been so many ingredients, every one of them lovingly chosen. Each step was like a sacred ritual that was part of the church next door, steps they knew so well they didn’t need to look or think about them, but they wanted to teach them to him. They’d had him taste everything, smiling as they askedBueno?like they wanted his approval, like it meant anything.
In the morning after breakfast, Alex requested Jake to run over to a mechanic she knew to pick up the part needed for the car job he’d worked on yesterday, and then she turned to him and asked if he’d help her out in the garden. Tobias agreed and only realized a few minutes later he hadn’t even needed to check with Jake first.
He liked being outside, working in the ground, learning the names of the plants that were grown on purpose and others that intruded and needed to be pulled out. Alex had given him a worn, baggy pair of gardening gloves, and he knelt across from her on the other side of the small garden plot.
They worked in easy silence for several minutes, and then Alex asked without looking up, “Do you like traveling and hunting with Jake?”
He glanced up in surprise, then returned to the weeds. “Yes, I do.” Maybe he should have been afraid to admit that, but he wasn’t afraid of Alex. He didn’t think she could take him away from Jake, and he was almost as sure she wouldn’t try. Not unless she thought Tobias was harming him.
“Good,” she said simply. “Has it all been getting easier?”
“Yes. Jake teaches me a l-lot. He’s sh-shown me... so much, in the world. He’s very, very good to me.” He kept himself from addingI know I don’t deserve it, but I try to. I try to do better, to be better.
“Jake’s a brave kid,” Alex said quietly, and Tobias bent his head closer to the earth. Jake was the bravest and most wonderful person in the world, he’d known that all his life, but he knew it in a different way now, the way Alex meant it. Jake was brave enough to take a monster out of Freak Camp and let him act like a real. “And determined too. Stubborn like his father, I hear, though with more sense.”
Tobias said nothing to that. It wasn’t for him to comment on Hawthornes, even if Jake had named him one. The thought of Jake giving him his name, as always, sent a thrill through him, filling his chest with warmth. He barely kept his smile to himself.
“Do you remember anything from your life before the camp?”
His smile dropped, and he shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
Alex sighed. “This world’s a big, complicated place. I wish I could tell you all of it will be better than what you’ve known, but the truth is, some parts and people aren’t so kind. There’s good and evil everywhere, though I pray that nothing comes close to that camp.”
Tobias hoped so too. After all, there were more reals than monsters in the world, and hunters worked tirelessly to remove the monsters there were. They were sent to places like Freak Camp, just as Tobias had been (because that was where he belonged, but he told that voice to shut up because Jake had taken him out and Jake knew best), and that was why there was so much evil in Freak Camp: so there would be less everywhere else.
“Do you know the difference between good and evil, Tobias?”
Tobias’s hands stopped over the soil. The Director had never asked a question like that, and he wasn’t sure how to answer it. At last, he reached for another weed and said slowly, “Evil is what m-monsters do. Hurting people. Good is”—what Jake does—“taking c-care of people, giving them f-food. Making them w-warm and safe.”
“That’s a pretty good definition,” Alex said. “Have you ever wanted to hurt people?”
She voiced it like any other question, including that morning when she’d asked Tobias if he wanted a second helping of eggs, but Tobias caught his breath in horror. “No,” he said, and couldn’t keep that same horror out of his voice. “N-no, n-never.” His hands clenched around a plant, failing at what they should be doing, forgetting what they had been taught.
“Good,” Alex said, and she didn’t sound surprised or like she’d expected to hear anything else. She hadn’t stopped digging in her side of the garden. “Then I don’t believe you’re a monster, just as Jake doesn’t. A supernatural ability doesn’t make you a monster. Being accused of being supernatural doesn’t make you a monster. Even wanting to hurt people who’ve done bad things doesn’t make you a monster,” she added. “Jake’s hurt people, and I imagine he wants to—and will—hurt quite a few more who are doing evil things in the world. I’d tell him to stop first and use wisdom and restraint, but that doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.”
Tobias wasn’t entirely sure he understood all of that. He needed time to think, to parse everything Alex had said and what she meant, but she seemed content to give him that. She kept his eyes on her own work, not where he’d frozen. Tobias’s hands slowly remembered their task, and he started searching out the weeds again.
“I would also define evil,” Alex continued, “as any harm done to a child or anyone defenseless. Any act of violence, manipulation, or withholding basic needs—such as food, water, and shelter—is evil. There isneverany excuse.”
Tobias wondered at the emphasis. The premise seemed true, even obvious, as far as it went, but monster children didn’t count as children. And even if he fell under Alex’s and Jake’s definition of supernatural without being a monster (which seemed more and more likely), that still didn’t qualify him as a real. He wasn’t and would never be pure, clean, and whole the way reals were. Not after the choices he had made in camp, and not after the Director had explained it so carefully, burned the knowledge into his skin.
A phone rang inside the house, making Tobias jump, and Alex muttered to herself as she got to her feet. “All right, I think that’s good enough for today. Come inside for some iced tea and a snack.”
~*~
“Do you believe?”
Back in Madera Canyon, Jake and Tobias walked down a wooden bridge that ran through a section of the park. It led them through a maze of trees that alternated between the white bark of sycamores and the brown ponderosa pines and silverleaf oaks. Jake was learning more about trees than he’d ever known in his life, thanks to Toby’s enthusiasm for stopping and reading every single nature plaque.
Jake kicked at a pebble on the bridge, trying to think of some non-God-related way Toby might have meant the question.
