Bobby/Jackal emerged from a darkened classroom. He’d shaved his head and painted his face black. He looked like a burned mannequin. The Freaks all seemed very impressed by Bobby’s latest look. They smiled wickedly and stared at Will as if they were expecting him to faint at the sight of their leader. Bobby wove his way through the Freaks.
“What is that?” he said, tilting his black head. “A parent?”
“You’re never gonna believe it,” the Freak in front of Will said.
The whites of Bobby’s eyes encircled his corneas when he recognized Will.
Bobby smiled, and it looked like his mouth was full of blood. As he approached, Will could see it wasn’t blood. Bobby had slathered his teeth with glossy red nail polish.
He’d also gotten kind of fat. Will remembered laughing with Gates at Bobby’s list of desirables that he’d delivered to the Saints, to request from the parents. Almost everything he’d asked for had peanut butter in it—bulk packs of Reese’s cups, jumbo boxes of peanut butter Puffins, jars of all-in-one PB&J. Black might have been slimming, but it didn’t do much for Bobby’s new double chin. It looked like he’d been doing his suffering on the couch with corn dogs.
“What the fuck? Didn’t you get out?” Bobby said. “What kind of dumb prick would come walking back into McKinley?”
Bobby turned to the rest of his gang and started laughing. It was a screeching giggle, and he held his belly as he did it. The rest of the hallway joined in, but at least the others sounded normal. Bobby sounded like a dying eagle.
Bobby grabbed the cylinders on Will’s mask and shook his whole head with them.
“What is this?” Bobby said. “This is supposed to keep you safe?”
Will jerked his head away, but other Freaks grabbed his head and cranked it back until he faced Bobby.
“I mean, anyone who wanted to could pull this thing right off you.” Bobby stared at him in disbelief. “I knew you were a stupid moron, but this is a whole new level.”
Bobby rapped his knuckles on Will’s head.
“Anything in there?” he said.
Will wished he could spit on him.
“You are completely powerless,” Bobby said. He licked his red teeth.
“You are completely fat,” Will said.
Bobby’s smile shrunk to a pinched frown, like a bomb exploding in reverse.
“Bring him home,” Bobby said with a sneer, “I’ve always wanted a pet.”
“Always wanted a cookie,” Will said.
Bobby worked a finger under one of the rubber straps that secured Will’s mask to his head. He slid his finger closer to the mask, coming dangerously close to lifting up the rubber by Will’s temple. Bobby gently blew on Will’s temple.
“Got any more jokes?”
Will shook his head. He wanted so badly to say something mean, but he had to get a hold of himself. This was real. He could die. Bobby was practically blowing death into his face.
He shut up, and the Freaks took him home. They kept a firm grip on his arms and never gave him a moment to make a break for it. They carried him through the halls, hands wedged under his armpits, the toes of his boots barely scraping the floor.
“What are the chances you’d end up my prisoner after you graduated?” Bobby said from behind him, as the Freaks pushed him down the hall. “Guess good things really do happen in McKinley.”
This was bad. Very bad. Will and Bobby had always hated each other, but in the past Will had almost always gotten the better of Bobby. He’d stolen from Bobby, injured him in food drops, mocked him publicly, and had spread multiple rumors about him that had driven Bobby crazy. That Bobby had constant diarrhea and had to wear a cloth diaper under his pants. That he played with dolls. That he got an erection whenever he cried. Bobby had a lot to want payback for.
The Freaks shoved Will through an archway that had been smashed through a hall wall. Will had never ventured this deep into the Freak base. He’d stolen a TV from them, but it had been from one of the rooms on the outskirts of their territory. There were so many holes in the walls, and walls that had been completely destroyed, that Will was afraid the ceiling would cave in. The place was like a beehive. The Freaks’ destructive power was something to marvel at.
The Freaks had laid claim to most of the A/V equipment early in the quarantine and Will was finally getting to see what they did with it. He was led through a room that glowed with blue light. Bedsheets hung from the ceiling all around the room at different angles to each other, with blue images projected on them by old overhead projectors and new digital ones. Fans on the floor made the sheets dance. Will saw a fluttering blue video of Bobby sacrificing a naked Freak girl with a ceremonial knife like it was a pagan ritual—you could tell the knife was painted cardboard. Wobbling blue images were everywhere. A microscopic image of blood cells, an old anatomical etching of a skinless man whose muscles were unraveling from his bones, a close-up photo of a bare breast blotched and speckled with scabs.
In the next room, they’d rubbed soot all over the walls and ceiling, nearly blacking them out, and had carved images of screaming skulls and smiling demons into the walls. The carvings revealed the white of the drywall’s core, turning the room into a black-and-white nightmare factory. A blue-haired girl was piercing her boyfriend’s nipple with a sharpened bobby pin. Some Freaks were applying ghoulish makeup to their faces. Others were competing with each other over who could slump the most tragically in their chair. An atonal Freak band banged on desks in the corner. The singer’s voice sounded like a garbage disposal full of phlegm, and they all wore black T-shirts with the words Old Pervert written in dripped bleach.
They walked him into a lecture hall. There was a twelve-foot pentagram burned into the floor. The walls were lined with televisions, and they all played the same footage of a crackling fireplace, surrounding everyone in the hall with a rectangle of fire. It bathed the room and all the Freaks in a warm, sweet-potato-colored light. A projection screen on the far wall showed camcorder footage of an old food drop in which the Freaks were dominating. Based on the angle of the video, the kid that had shot it must have been watching from a third-floor classroom. He did play-by-play commentary like it was a baseball game, and he cheered when Freaks snatched more than the other gangs or won fights on the battlefield. Freaks sat in chairs and watched the video and chatted with each other.