Page 69 of Freedom
They stayed there, watching the sky, until the last drops of rain fell away, the rainbows faded into sunshine, and the gas station door was opened by a gruff, rickety old man who glared at them once and then pumped their gas tank full without a word.
Chapter Twelve
“You don’t think it’scheating?” Toby asked for the fifth time, and Jake pulled his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose, far enough to give him a look.
“Dude. Did you look up the answers when you were taking the test? Oh wait, I was right here beside you and no, you did not do that.”
“But shouldn’t I have waited longer or something? Between the last assignment and the test? It’s got to be harder for real kids in school, right? I’m missing something—”
“You are not missing a damn thing except how enormous your whole nerdy brain is, tiger. You got As in all your subjects according to the grading in the actual geeky teacher’s rubric that came with all of these. You’ve blown ninth grade out of the water. I think you’d kick any valedictorian’s ass already.”
“But no one actually judged my essays,” Toby protested. “We’re only talking about the multiple-choice answers or questions with only one right answer—”
“And you wrote the essays anyway, even though you got no one but me to read them. Do you know how many times I wrote a fucking essay, Toby? Fewer times than I’ve got fingers on one hand. Maybe even fewer essays than hands.”
Tobias glowered at him, though it looked like he was fighting a smile. “But do you think it’s—”
“If you saycheatingagain, I’m telling everyone we meet your actual name is Tobito and your middle name is Burrito. Tobito Burrito Hawthorne.”
Toby made a noise that sounded like a snort-laugh, though sadly he’d buried his face in his arms, so Jake couldn’t quite tell. But when he reappeared, his cheeks were a ridiculously cute pink.
“Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll just start on the tenth-grade books.”
Jake wagged a finger at him. “Uh-uh. We’re celebrating the end of the school year and enjoying a summer vacation first, and no, I don’t care that it’s November. We’re going to the beach. No more homework until we’ve had some fun.”
Toby’s eyes brightened. “The beach? Like, by the ocean?”
Another first for Tobias, something he should’ve had ages ago, something that should’ve been his without question. But Jake couldn’t quite be mad at himself about that because they’d been taking care of a bunch of other important firsts before now, after all.
“Yeah, the ocean,” he said, and grinned. “Just you wait.”
They had lunch at Talladega National Forest in Alabama with a fast food picnic, though honestly Jake thought that Whataburger was in a class of its own. He had made a point of stopping whenever they could at anything labeled a viewpoint or a state park. This one had seriously paid off with its deep blue reservoir, gentle rolling hills covered in pine and oak trees, and even some honest-to-God waterfalls. They’d seen a couple deer, to Toby’s delight, and Jake had made a mental note to find a zoo worth visiting.
After finishing their meal and balling all the trash together in the paper bag that Tobias would insist on carrying out with them, they found a couple massive smooth rocks by a running creek and stretched out side by side. It was November but still warm in the Alabama sun, especially with the radiating heat of the stone beneath them.
They lounged in comfortable silence. At some point, Tobias’s fingers found Jake’s, or the other way around, and they intertwined easily, natural as could be.
