Page 3 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Tobias shrugged his small shoulders, eyes back on the ground. “I don’t remember.”

It must’ve been really horrible if Tobias couldn’t even remember what it was. Maybe he had woken covered in blood and screaming. Maybe every stuffed animal in an arcade had caught fire all at once when he was around, or he’d stabbed someone, or something.

But every time Jake tried to picture Tobias in those scenes, it didn’t work.

It was impossible to imagine this shy, jumpy kid doing anything monsterlike.

It didn’t help that the longer Jake thought about it and didn’t say anything else, the smaller and more dejected Tobias looked, like the conversation had been as cool and unusual for him as it had been for Jake and he didn’t want it to be over.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jake said at last. “It’s fine if you don’t remember. Do you have a lot of friends? I mean, monster friends?”

Tobias shook his head. “I have Becca. But a lot of the others . . . We’re all freaks, but I’m really . . .” He trailed off and shrugged. “Becca says they don’t know what to make of me. Are you a hunter?”

Jake puffed out his chest and put his hand on his knife. Tobias cringed back, ducking his head lower. “Of course I . . . hey, wait, it’s okay, I ain’t gonna hurt you. I mean, you’re a contained monster, right?”

Tobias nodded.

“And you don’t want to hurt anyone, right?”

Tobias nodded again, so hard and fast that Jake could see the collar around his throat rubbing over his ear.

“So we’re good.” There he went again, saying something totally ordinary that filled Tobias’s face with surprise and a hint of wonder.

Jake was used to thinking that he was a pretty cool kid, but that was an opinion shared mainly by himself and no one else.

But every time he said something that was even moderately nice, he got one of those looks that made him want to keep being friendly.

Jake glanced back at the guard, but Victor wasn’t paying attention to him, focused instead on a few monsters in a corner standing close together.

“Let’s sit down,” Jake said, and that smile on Tobias’s face caused some pretty awesome feelings.

“What do you do here all day?” Jake asked when they were settled against a wall, still in sight of the guard but far enough away that Victor couldn’t listen in on their conversation. “Do you have to learn and stuff, or do you just walk around all day and, like, play cards?”

“I learn!” Tobias sounded almost defensive, if someone could be defensive without raising their voice. “I can read anything.”

“Whoa, really?” Jake wasn’t a big reader. He could read, he wasn’t an idiot, but this kid might’ve been in first grade if he wasn’t a monster, and Jake had a feeling that reading hadn’t been his strong suit when he was that age. “What kinds of stuff do you read?”

Everything, apparently. Biology, geography, and folklore.

General history, as well as specifics on monster attacks leading up to the Liberty Wolf Massacre.

Tobias even had some knowledge of non-supernatural animals.

Tobias had started cautiously, listing off books and subjects in a monotone, but as Jake sat and listened, he talked more rapidly, more eagerly.

“Do all the monster kids learn this stuff?” Jake asked.

Tobias shook his head. “I help Becca in the library. That’s where we’re assigned.

She used to be a librarian before she got caught and came here, so they tell her to do research for the scientists.

She’s really good at it, and she’s teaching me too.

” He glanced at Jake, who could almost see the proud smile in Tobias’s eyes, though it hadn’t quite made it onto his face yet.

“The library’s where they keep all the books,” he whispered, as though that was a secret that shouldn’t be passed around to just anyone.

Jake laughed. Tobias looked nervous for a second, then relaxed.

Jake wasn’t laughing at him , but in amazement that he was hanging out with a six-year-old monster boy who was explaining libraries, and he wasn’t actually bored out of his skull.

Talking to Tobias made him almost want to go check out a library himself.

“Could I get some of these books?” Jake asked.

Tobias nodded. “Sure you could, you’re a hunter.

Hunters get whatever they want. But . . .

” He bit his lip. “If you take them away, then I won’t get to finish them.

So if you could wait a little . . .” Tobias abruptly looked horrified.

“N-n-not that I’m t-t-telling you what to do, I’m just saying that I would m-m-miss them—do what you want.

I’m just a monster, don’t listen to me.”

“Don’t worry, Toby, I’m not gonna take your books.

I’m sure there’s other copies at some of the libraries I’ve been to.

” Though Jake wasn’t sure of that. Some of the books that Tobias had listed sounded pretty rare, and Jake didn’t know that most public schools would carry them.

But he wasn’t going to tell that to Tobias, who had looked so upset at the thought of Jake taking away his books.

“You’ve been to other libraries?” Tobias gaped. “You mean there’s more than the one in Administration?”

“Toby, there’s hundreds of libraries. One in every school I’ve ever been to—and I’ve been to a lot of schools—and at least one in every town.

” Jake told him about his last school, where he had hung out in the library just because the kids were all dumb and not worth talking to.

He had read eight Goosebumps books because there had been nothing much else to do.

He had pretended that it was research, but most of the stories sounded made up.

No way civilian kids would ever be that smart and badass around monsters.

“I mean, I’ve never been to summer camp, but no way it’s anything like Freak Camp, and the cops never help like that.” In real life, Jake knew, cops only ever got in the way or got there too late to help. That’s what his dad said.

Tobias tilted his head. “What’s a summer camp?”

Jake groped for an explanation. “It’s a camp you go to, but only like, for the summer.

You stay with other kids in a cabin and tell ghost stories, and during the day they make you do arts and crafts and sh-stuff.

” Even though Toby was a monster, it felt weird to swear in front of him.

Toby didn’t look like a monster, he just looked like a little kid, like the ones Jake saw sometimes being pushed by their parents on the swing set across the street from his school.

Toby blinked at him. “And then where do you go?”

“Back home. And to school. Um.” Jake realized this might not be as easy to explain to a monster kid as he’d first thought. As smart as Toby was, he didn’t know about libraries. Maybe he’d never even seen a TV show. “Anyway, you gotta know there’s no such thing as monster counselors.”

“What’s a counselor?”

“It’s . . . um . . .” Jake glanced at the guard outside the chain-link fence. “Never mind, forget it. It’s not like I’ve been to summer camp either. So yeah, that library wasn’t half as big as the one at my third-grade school in Amherst . . .”

Tobias listened like he’d never heard anything half as cool in his life. At one point he rocked back and looked up at the sky, too amazed to sit still any longer. That was when Jake really noticed the collar, imprinted with the 89UI6703 ID number in iron figures.

“Does that hurt?” Jake motioned toward his own neck.

Tobias blinked at him. His eyes looked even bigger and more innocent up close. Jake didn’t think monsters’ eyes were supposed to look like that. “Does what hurt?”

“That.” Jake reached toward him but stopped before touching the leather. Tobias hadn’t reacted, just watched his hand.

“Oh.” He dropped his gaze and scratched at the collar. “Sometimes. I’ve had it for a while, so I don’t feel it much anymore.”

Jake frowned. “Does it ever come off?”

Tobias shook his head.

“Not even when you shower? Or sleep?”

He shook his head again.

“Huh.” Jake picked at the ground, not sure what else to say.

“Jake!”

Jake jumped to his feet, seeing Dad on the other side of the fence, waiting for him. He hastily brushed off his knees. “Sorry, gotta go.”

Tobias looked up then, gazing straight into his eyes. “Will you be back?”

Jake stopped, startled. “Yeah,” he said, with a rush of certainty. “Yeah, I’ll be back. I’m old enough now, and Dad said we’ll probably have to come back here now that he’s found something. I’ll come back and see you, Toby.”

For the first time, Tobias smiled. It was a small, hesitant thing that vanished almost as soon as it appeared, but it made Jake feel oddly proud.

“ Jake!”

Without another word, Jake turned and ran back to his father.

“Sorry, Dad,” he said when he reached the gate, breathless more from surprise than the short run. “I lost track of time. How did Special Research go?”

Dad glanced at Victor, frowning. The guard scanned the yard, looking anywhere but at the Hawthornes.

“Fine,” Dad said. “It went fine. What were you doing, talking with that monster?”

Jake blanked. He had no idea what he had been doing with Tobias.

But he had liked it, and it had made him feel better and more useful than anything since his last hunt.

But there was no way he was telling Dad that.

“I’m researching too. Getting to know monsters so I can recognize them later, you know? ”

Dad frowned, but Jake could tell that his mind wasn’t on their conversation. It was probably on whatever he had been doing in Special Research, whatever new clue he had gotten about Mom’s death.

Jake didn’t really know why Dad was still obsessed with Mom’s death.

Sure, it still hurt Jake, still hurt like blessed salt in an open wound to think about how she wasn’t there anymore and would never come back, but she had been gone most of his life, and everyone in the country knew the monster that had done it was dead.