Chapter 8
Three Years Later
“I’m sorry, can I get your name again?”
“Tobias Hawthorne.” He smiled at the librarian, who was updating his member card for the new system installed last year.
Of all the many libraries across the country Tobias had visited, the one in Boulder was the only one that felt like home.
It hadn’t changed much since Tobias had first entered it nearly five years ago: the same natural light flooding through the glass ceiling, the scattered armchairs, and most importantly, the two floors of aisles and aisles of books.
Admittedly, noticing those details had come later, after his first time inside.
What he mostly remembered from that first visit was the diamond pattern of the carpet and the color of the librarian’s desk.
“And your birthday?” she asked. She had long hair gone slightly gray and wore a vest with tiny winged books flying across it.
“April 11, 1984.”
“That’s right around the corner, isn’t it!” She glanced up at him, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening as she smiled. “Got big plans for your twenty-first?”
“A few,” Tobias said. His birthday was the reason they were back in Boulder for more than a pit stop, after all.
New library card in his wallet and books (a couple on cooking, one on wilderness first aid, and Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything) under his arm, Tobias left the library and headed down the street to Moe’s Broadway Bagels.
The spring sun lit the street and warmed Tobias’s skin.
He felt he knew these roads and belonged.
Once, this familiarity had been unnerving rather than comforting.
Neither Janet nor Maryann (Tobias’s “bagel ladies,” as Jake always referred to them) were behind the counter.
Instead a morose-looking teenager slouched over the glass display, long dyed black hair concealing one eye.
He kept blowing his hair out of his face, and it kept falling back down immediately, even as he rang up Tobias’s dozen assorted bagels and stored them in a large brown paper bag.
The only other person in the shop was a young woman about Tobias’s age, who had half a chocolate bagel with cream cheese on a small plate by her elbow. All her attention was on the laptop in front of her, a chemistry textbook open beside it.
Tobias took his bagels to a window seat and texted Jake that he was ready to be picked up. While he waited, he opened the Bryson book, but he’d only gotten a page in when the doorbell chimed, and he looked up.
The man’s thin gray hair hung limply from under a ratty ball cap, and he had a suspicious, mistrustful gaze.
He stood with a slight hunch, as though protecting himself from a cold wind that hadn’t followed him into the bagel shop.
Layers of clothes hung loose on his frame.
His hand bounced on his leg in an irregular pattern that made Tobias tense.
This man was no freak, at least not that Tobias could see, but that kind of energy always found an outlet.
Tobias shifted to the edge of his seat, keeping his movement slow and relaxed.
The man glanced toward Tobias out of the corner of his eye and flinched away.
He took in the counter where the bored employee fiddled with the espresso machine, then turned toward the woman sitting at the table in the back corner.
He blinked, stared at her for a minute too long, and then shuffled toward her.
When he took hold of the back of the chair across the table from her, she looked up and froze.
“I’ve seen you here before,” he said, loud in the quiet shop. “You’re a student. I know where you study, you study at the university.”
The woman sat up straight in her chair. “Yes, but I don’t think—”
“You’re always alone. And you’re real pretty to be alone.” He spoke aggressively, without pausing for her to answer. “Can you buy me a coffee? You always get the good stuff, so you could buy me a coffee. I don’t think you have a boyfriend.” He was blocking her path to the door.
She had taken hold of her laptop, her other hand extended toward her bag like she wanted to grab it and bolt but didn’t dare to make any sudden moves. “Listen, I don’t know you, and I’d just like to get back to—”
“What, what, that’s too much to ask—you won’t get me a fucking cup of coffee? What’s wrong with you?” the man shouted, and Tobias was on his feet.
He didn’t want to be another body blocking the woman’s exit, but he needed to redirect the man’s attention. He leaned over the table between them, breaking into the man’s line of sight.
“You need to back off,” Tobias told him, in a calm but implacable tone. The man jerked back a step, his gaze flinching.
“I’m not talking to you,” he said. “I was talking to—”
Tobias took a step in, forcing the man back between two tables and opening the space behind him. To his side, he heard the snap of the laptop shutting and a rustle. The woman was out of her seat, then out of the shop with her bag, laptop and textbook clutched under her arm.
Tobias took a step back when she was safely outside, but he kept his gaze locked on the man, who was glaring at the floor somewhere to his right. “Don’t do that again,” Tobias warned him. “Don’t go looking for someone weaker than you are.”
The man pushed past Tobias to head for the exit, muttering under his breath. Tobias followed him outside to watch him go, but the woman was out of sight.
Re-entering the shop, Tobias smiled apologetically at the employee, who was staring open-mouthed, phone to his ear.
“Did you call the cops?” Tobias asked, voice even as the blood and adrenaline starting to pound in his veins.
“No, I didn’t—dude, that was so cool. You just . . .” The teenager made a gesture that seemed to encompass the confrontation, the retreat, and everything in the last five minutes.
“Some people do that, try to bully people,” Tobias said. “Can’t let them get away with it.”
It had taken a long time for him to believe that normal people didn’t shout, hurt, or size up and target the weakest people in a room. Even more difficult had been recognizing his own ability to stop it, to fight the monsters in the world who were not supernatural.
Five years out of Freak Camp. Some days Tobias thought about how far he had come, how terror had once been his daily paralysis, and he couldn’t wrap his head around it. Who in the camp would have ever bet a single bite of food that he’d make twenty-one?
There was a reason to celebrate every breath, every moment he made eye contact without quailing inside, every sweet spring day. He just wasn’t sure he was on board with how Jake wanted to celebrate.
Feeling the employee’s eyes on the back of his head, Tobias returned to his seat by the window. He left his book shut, watching the street for the Eldorado.
* * *
On Friday, the Boulder art museum was nearly deserted, which provided Toby and Jake a welcome measure of privacy as they wandered the exhibits, keeping their voices low only so their discussion wouldn’t echo in the cavernous rooms.
“I’m just saying, if we do go out for my birthday, there’s going to be some rules.”
Jake grinned. He didn’t usually love to be reminded of their first days in Boulder, but hell yes to this rule-based role reversal. “Lay it on me.”
Toby gave Jake a mock-exasperated look, though the corner of his mouth hinting at a smile gave him away. He turned away from the abstract blue vase that looked halfway between a woman and a threshing machine. “One, I get to choose the place.”
“Fair enough.”
“And I want to go to that trendy new place downtown. The Velvet Vine.”
Jake choked a little. He’d made fun of that swanky, upscale place for pencil-pushing suits since it had its big grand opening a few day after they returned to Boulder.
The food looked fancy, sure, but he was positive that the portions were abysmal and there’d probably be a dress code.
Dammit, he’d do it, but his neck already itched from the dress-shirt collar.
“Like you said, I only turn twenty-one once,” Toby pointed out, and Jake managed a nod. “Two, no making fun of whatever I order.”
Jake groaned. He’d been looking forward to that. “You’re no fun.”
Toby smirked, leading him through the rest of the weird-ass pottery display. The next room was all about landscapes and paintings of fruit. While Jake didn’t necessarily like them better, he felt like he at least got their deal.
“Three,” Toby continued, “you’re the DD for the night.”
“Well, yeah. I figured.”
Toby gave him a long, narrow look, then went on. “Four, we’re going to the opera afterwards. In tuxedos. I’ve already rented them.”
“Dude.”
Toby’s face broke into a delighted grin, blindingly beautiful to Jake. “Fine. I couldn’t get tickets. You lucked out. Last rule—” He sobered, his smile dwindling. “You take me home the minute anything weird starts happening.”
Jake cocked an eyebrow at him. “What’re you talking about?”
Toby shrugged. “I don’t know what I’ll be like intoxicated. I don’t want to take any chances. I’m only going to do this if you promise, Jake.” He turned to face a painting of a gloomy naked dude sitting on a rock, staring out over a stormy sea.
Jake took a second to follow Toby's gaze, wondering what the guy did to get that ripped and why he was so damned unhappy. “Sure thing, tiger, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
They stopped next before a life-sized painting of some well-formed naked dudes having what looked like a rollicking good time, swinging some kind of jugs—the jar-type jugs—around.
“Now those dudes know how to party. Maybe it’s that dude’s twenty-first.” Jake pointed at the scrawniest of the naked dudes, and Toby snorted under his breath.
They stared at the painting together, longer than it deserved in Jake’s opinion, and then Toby asked, “You swear you’ll stay sober the whole time?”
“Like you even gotta ask.”
“Mmm. I kinda do, though.”