Page 20 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Waving a dismissive hand—so casual, like it was nothing , that was how amazing Jake was—Jake had set the bag in front of Tobias, saying he had some earlier.

Tobias had gotten his meals lately, but he still took each chip with the same slow reverence with which he always treated Jake’s food.

Even when he was hungry, he tried not to show it or do anything gross like a monster would.

It was amazing enough that Jake wanted to see him at all, and Tobias wasn’t going to do anything to make him reconsider.

Sometimes Jake asked what he liked more, or what he wanted Jake to bring next time, but Tobias usually shrugged or told him to bring whatever he wanted.

It was always good, and Tobias was both amazed and glad that Jake had access to good food like that, all the time.

Surely if he brought some to Tobias, that meant he ate plenty for himself too.

Tobias knew he could count on Jake to bring him something wonderful, and he didn’t care much past that.

He really didn’t want to ask for anything, like he expected Jake to go out of his way for a monster’s requests.

He remembered the last time he had complained to Becca about being hungry.

“We’re all hungry, Tobias,” she snapped.

“Monsters always are. It’s nothing special or different from anyone around you, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

No one wants to hear about it.” But later that day, she had brought him a hunk of bread half as big as his head, all for him to eat.

As Tobias ate the potato chips, Jake went on full-speed about their drive up the California coast after a rumored pair of djinn. Tobias liked to hear him talk, and Jake knew that Tobias didn’t have much news to tell him or anything cool to share, so he usually did all the talking.

But now, as Jake’s story wound down, Tobias took the opportunity to ask what he’d been hoping to for a while. “What’s it like—out there in the real world?”

Jake stopped completely, looking at him in surprise, but Tobias didn’t look away. He knew it was okay, safe, because Jake wanted Tobias to look him in the eye. He reminded Tobias every visit.

“It’s . . .” Jake trailed off, unusually lost for words. “What do you mean, Toby? What do you want to know?”

Tobias shrugged.

“I don’t know, it’s just—really big.” Jake waved his hands apart. “And people are mostly the same everywhere you go. They believe the same stories, anyway, even if they talk a little different place to place. But it’s mostly the same . . .”

Tobias waited patiently, but Jake looked more uncomfortable than he’d ever seen him.

He fidgeted with the peeling rubber on the edge of his tennis shoe, and Tobias’s confidence faded.

He was about to tell Jake not to worry about it, about to apologize for asking stupid questions, when Jake started talking.

***

J ake had seen more of the country than just about any kid his age, but now he had trouble fitting it into words.

It was hard to remember that Toby had seen nothing Jake had, had no frame of reference for comparison, didn’t know any of the TV or movie jokes.

No matter how hard Jake tried to describe the small towns he and Dad dropped into for a few days or weeks, or a Little League baseball game, or some idiots faking a haunting in an abandoned house—Tobias’s eyes never showed comprehension.

He gazed unwaveringly at Jake, listening to every word, but they weren’t getting anywhere.

It frustrated Jake more than he could say, made him almost want to punch something. Bringing Toby presents made him feel good, useful and important, more than anything else in his life did, and this was the first big thing Toby had asked him. It killed Jake that he couldn’t give it to him.

He bit off his words, realizing what he had been about to say: just wait, Toby, someday I’ll show you myself, I’ll take you there . He couldn’t promise Tobias that. Tobias was a monster in Freak Camp, and monsters didn’t leave. Not until they died.

Jake looked away, rubbing his palms on his knees as he tried to ignore the tight pressure building in his chest. It hurt the same way it did when he thought too much about Mom.

“Jake?” Tobias huddled closer, almost leaning against Jake’s side. “What’s the matter?”

Jake swallowed, throwing his arm around Toby’s shoulders. He couldn’t have said why it eased the pain inside, though he did notice how Tobias relaxed a fraction, leaning back into the touch.

“Nothing, Toby,” he said, though he wanted to say, This friggin’ sucks. I hate this . “I’ll bring you some pictures next time, okay?”

***

W hen they got back from their next trip to Mexico, Jake and Dad stopped at a motel outside El Paso and split up piles of newspapers.

Dad was hot on the trail of another monster, one that tended toward cattle mutilation but wasn’t above the occasional mysterious murder, and he wanted to check everything.

Jake had ended up with the older state papers.

Even though they weren’t likely to have anything about their case, research was important.

Dad had told him that, and even his gr—Elijah Dixon had told him that, which was almost like Mom telling him too.

So Jake read—okay, he skimmed, looking for any unusual deaths or mysterious disappearances.

He was about to skip all of The Oklahoman because it was a couple of weeks old and he was fairly sure Dad had gone through it already, when a smaller article on the front page caught his eye.

DIXONS, ASC LOOK AHEAD AFTER PATRIARCH’S DEATH

The nation mourns a hero this week with the death of Elijah Dixon, father of Sally Dixon-Hawthorne and longtime director of the Agency for Supernatural Control (ASC) and the Facility for Research, Elimination, and Containment of Supernaturals (FREACS).

He passed away at the age of 64 from heart failure.

Those closest to Dixon admitted that he had been having health trouble for some time, but he had been unwilling to let down the country or weaken the ASC by stepping down from his extensive duties.

“While we are all grieved by this loss, we will move forward,” said Jonah Dixon, nephew of the deceased and presumed successor for the directorship of the ASC and FREACS.

“The ASC will not stop because Elijah has left us, and we would disgrace his memory by faltering in our mission now. You may expect the ASC to strengthen, grow more vigilant, and take new measures to protect our country from the supernatural menace.”

“Hey, Dad.” Jake slid the paper onto Leon’s pile. “Did you see this?”

Leon glanced at the newspaper. “Yeah, I saw it.”

“Did they . . . invite us to the funeral or anything? I mean, you didn’t like each other, but . . .” He was my grandfather.

Leon shrugged. “Haven’t heard anything. Not like we would go anyway.”

Jake nodded. “Course.”

“Find any incidents in your papers?”

“Yeah, but only a few.” He told Dad about the handful of mutilations he’d found in the national papers, and they agreed those probably weren’t significant.

Leon turned back to his papers, and Jake was left with the Oklahoma paper. After checking to make sure Dad was absorbed in his research, he read the article again. It was short and said almost nothing about the life of the man he really hadn’t known.

Jake put the paper down, unsatisfied. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react.

On the one hand, Elijah Dixon had been his grandfather.

On the other, Jake had only met him once, and even that meeting seemed blurry and uncertain in his head.

Dad hated him, and the nation loved him, and Jake wondered if there was something wrong with him that he felt very little at all.

Elijah Dixon was just a stranger he’d had a conversation with once, and that didn’t mean much at all.

***

T obias didn’t look for Marco, knowing it was better for both of them if they kept apart, but he took note whenever he saw him.

Despite himself—maybe because Marco had made him think of Jake, however briefly—Tobias found himself hoping Marco would learn to adapt and adjust even to whatever happened during the full moon.

Tobias knew there was no actual point in learning to survive—there wasn’t any reward for it—except even with one worst day after another (so many before he could be granted a best day with Jake), he still knew this was infinitely better than Special Research.

No price was too high to avoid that, which was what he reminded himself when he was scrubbing out the monsters’ toilets, enduring assemblies, or being punished for just being a monster.

He was a monster, so he couldn’t hope to be anywhere other than Freak Camp, but if he remembered everything Becca taught him and stuck to the system, they wouldn’t take him to Special Research.

Even though Marco was a jerk at times, Tobias didn’t want him to go there either.

That was why when Tobias had a chance—when he knew no one would overhear them or notice, like when they were sent together to collect the laundry from the Workhouse—he would give Marco a small piece of advice, like how to always think that this would be the worst day, or how to avoid the guards’ attention in the showers.

Marco didn’t respond much, but he usually did what Tobias said.

A few days before the lunar monsters were taken away again for the full moon, Marco and Tobias were together in the library again.

Marco was distracted, shuffling his papers around without reading, twitching at any sound from the door where the guards would come through, occasionally burying his face in his hands.

At last, he turned to Tobias. “How’d you last this long?”

Tobias shrugged. Becca taught me .

Marco watched him. “They say it’s because you’re Hawthorne’s pet. They’ve got dibs on you. That right? That why Hawthorne’s kid always comes to see you?”

Tobias bent his head over his books and didn’t answer.

Marco grabbed him by the shoulder. Tobias jerked away, but Marco’s grip tightened, pulled him closer so that Tobias could see his bloodshot eyes and feel how his hand was shaking. “Tobias, how did you get him? You gotta tell me. I’ll do anything, but I won’t—come on, Tobias, I’m begging . . .”

Tobias jumped up from the table, wrenching out of his grip, and Marco didn’t follow. “I don’t know. I don’t know why. It just . . .”

Jake was the inexplicable light in his life, the one good thing that had ever happened to him, the paradox within Freak Camp.

Tobias didn’t deserve him, and he didn’t understand why he’d gotten Jake, but it was what kept him going: the hope that Jake would return, and for a few minutes, maybe an hour, Tobias wouldn’t have to be afraid.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Marco turned back to his books, but his hands still shook. “Yeah, whatever. Shouldn’t have expected a lucky bastard like you to give a shit.”

Tobias watched him for a second. It wasn’t that. If Jake were a skill, or a piece of information, he would share it with Marco, even if it wouldn’t work as well for the older boy. But he couldn’t because he didn’t understand it himself, and he didn’t want to think about it too hard.

They worked in silence for the rest of the day, and after Marco left, Tobias checked all his work and fixed the errors. He didn’t want Marco to get into more trouble than he was already.

When the werewolves returned at the end of the next full moon, Marco was not among them.