Page 19 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Then he’d been assigned away from the library, on cleaning duty in the barracks, Reception, and Administration—backbreaking work not made easier by the stuffy, airless confines everywhere except Administration.

But Tobias hated going in there more than anywhere else, because it was the Dixons’ headquarters, and while monsters didn’t disappear there like they did in Special Research .

. . no monster wanted to be called inside.

He was relieved to escape at dusk, hurrying across the deserted yard to the mess hall, praying dinner would be something digestible, at least—

“Hey, Pretty Freak!”

Tobias jerked to a stop, catching his breath. That wasn’t his name—that most definitely was not his name—but he was the only monster in the yard, and Crusher had called it. He stayed perfectly still.

“C’mere, freak.”

Tobias turned and walked mechanically, but not slowly, over to where Crusher and Victor stood smoking outside the break room ( bitch room , monsters called it). He kept his eyes on the packed ground and the guards’ steel-tipped boots.

“Stand there,” Crusher said, and Tobias’s eyes flickered up enough to see him waving toward the wall, directly under the floodlight.

Tobias put his back to it, trying to keep his hands still and chest moving normally, wondering if he’d missed something in one of the bathrooms. He hadn’t done anything like that shifter, though—

Crusher’s boots moved in front of him, less than a foot between them, and Tobias focused on breathing in and out at exactly the same pace, two seconds for each.

A hand settled on the back of his head, gripping his hair painfully and without an inch of slack, then jerked his head back and chin up. The fierce white light pierced his eyelids, and Tobias lost control over the pace of his breathing.

“So you’re Pretty Freak, huh?”

Victor barked out a laugh. “No, man, that’s Baby Freak. Where’d you get that—no, you know what, I don’t want to know.”

“Baby Freak, fine,” Crusher said. “That’s what they call you, ain’t it?”

Tobias tried to swallow and failed.

“Still got your tongue, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” he gasped out.

“Good,” Crusher said, and twisted Tobias’s head to the side.

“That’s good. Don’t use it much, though, do you?

You’re a quiet freak. Think we can’t see you?

” Something hard and blunt pressed into Tobias’s cheek—Crusher’s club, he realized, and he couldn’t make his mouth work to answer.

“I see you,” Crusher said softly, and jabbed the club harder into his cheek.

“Hey,” Victor said. “Just so you know—Pretty, Baby, whatever you want to call him, but that’s Hawthorne’s freak.”

“I don’t see his name anywhere.” Crusher jerked Tobias’s head back and forth, as though looking for a mark somewhere that said Hawthorne , but at least the club dropped away.

“Yeah, well, that’s why his kid’s always bringing him out. Guess they’re keeping an eye on him for some long-term project, maybe waiting for him to get big enough to swing on a hook. Maybe Hawthorne’s hook.” He chuckled nervously.

Tobias didn’t listen. He didn’t care what they said, and they knew nothing about Jake. They couldn’t begin to understand, because Jake was nothing like them.

“Well,” Crusher said, twisting Tobias’s head to the side, “if he wants him, he better hurry up and get him. Freak Camp is a dangerous place for freaks.” He leaned close.

“And I like this one—look, he’s so fucking easy .

” He shook Tobias’s head back and forth again.

“Like a fucking doll. Look at that face . . .”

Victor waved his cigarette. “Yeah, yeah, I see freak faces every fucking day, Elmer-my-man.”

Crusher turned. “What the fuck did you call me?”

“What? Crusher, of course.” Victor raised his eyebrows innocently, smoke from the burning cigarette curling up from his nose. “Dude, seriously, that’s Hawthorne’s monster. You don’t fuck with Hawthorne. Even the old man knew that.”

“The Director?” Crusher snorted, letting go of Tobias’s hair, letting it fall through his fingers, and moving away with a last caress across Tobias’s face with the backs of his knuckles.

“What do I care that that old idiot was afraid of his son-in-law? New blood now, better that way. Anyway, it’s a fucking crime that Hawthorne can just reserve a monster, you know, a young one, and everyone just bows before him like he’s a fucking god.

It’s not right, you know, special treatment like that. ”

Tobias moved away slowly, not so fast that he would attract attention, not even so far that they would be sure that he had moved. But even the smallest distance between himself and Crusher helped him remember how to breathe. If he could just get far enough away . . .

“Yeah,” Victor agreed. “And the fact that you’ve laid claim to that puppy and we all keep our hands off while you’re having your fun don’t mean a thing.” He took a drag. “Completely different situation, right?”

“Fuck yourself, Todd,” Crusher said.

Victor laughed. “Why should I? I’ve got freaks to do that for me.”

They chuckled, but Tobias didn’t stick around to see if they would turn back to him.

He had made it to the corner, and from there he bolted, feet quiet on the dirt of the compound, listening hard for signs they were following him.

If they came around the corner, he would have to stop.

Monsters didn’t run in front of guards unless they had a good reason to be going somewhere fast. And monsters definitely didn’t run from guards if they wanted to survive and remain intact.

When he reached the door of the mess hall, he could still hear them distantly. He stopped and panted at the door, straining his ears for a clue of the kind of trouble he had brought on himself for that move.

“Fuck, where’d he go?” That was Crusher, voice husky with a hint of anger.

“Leave it, man, he’s Hawthorne’s. And hell, the puppy should keep you occupied for a week or so at least.”

Tobias ducked into the mess hall and grabbed a seat as fast and as quietly as possible. The guard patrolling saw him enter and came over, slapping his club into his hand. “Where the fuck you been, freak?”

Tobias wet his lips. “Crusher, sir.” It was true. But if the guard didn’t believe him . . .

The guard stared at him and then shook his head. “Goddamn pervert,” he said, almost to himself. And then, sneering down at Tobias: “You don’t fucking get up to eat. You stay right there or maybe I let Crusher play with you after dinner too. You got that?”

Tobias kept his eyes locked on the table. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The guard walked away.

Tobias let out a sigh of relief and glanced around.

Moldy bread and green porridge. No big loss. There’d been plenty of days he hadn’t gotten anything to eat, and a number of times he’d gone without for two days. So that wasn’t a good reason for why his whole body was shaking, as much as he tried to hide it by huddling over the table.

His name had always been Baby Freak. Except to Becca, long ago, and on those best days when Jake visited. Then he was Toby. But all the guards and other freaks knew him as Baby Freak, and he hadn’t realized until now how much armor that name was.

The guards weren’t that creative, so nicknames got recycled as freaks came through the loading gate and eventually left through the incinerator. Marco wasn’t the first Puppy, and every witch was usually some version of Handy.

Pretty Freaks were different. Bad things happened to them. Things Becca had told him not to watch. Those freaks never lasted long.

That wasn’t him, though. Victor had told Crusher—he was Baby , Baby Freak. And Hawthorne’s. That was even more important.

Hawthorne’s , Tobias thought, over and over, making it one with his breath ( Haw when inhaling, thorne when exhaling), until the monsters were permitted to put away their spotlessly cleaned plates and return to the barracks. Hawthorne’s .

He would never know it himself, but he was glad there was another world outside Freak Camp for Jake. There had to be more than fear, pain, hunger, and nicknames that predicted how long a freak’s pathetic life would last.

Suddenly—shivering with hunger and fear in his bunk—he needed to know that the rest existed.

Even if he would never see it because he was a monster, even if he didn’t deserve anything better than these walls in his life, he knew that that other world had to exist because sometimes he had Jake.

He needed to know that it was out there, or he didn’t know that he would be able to keep sitting down to the same nothingness and still believe that this was any better than Special Research and the incinerator.

There had to be more to the world than pain and fear and monsters screaming on the full moon and disappearing in the night. Maybe Jake would tell him about it if he asked.

***

J ake brought a half -crushed bag of potato chips the next time he came. They made Tobias’s mouth intensely thirsty in the hot summer day, but he still savored them as he chewed, because he’d never had anything quite so overpoweringly . . . salty.