Page 30 of Freak Camp
He was weak and he was a monster.But beneath that broken look that was so familiar, Tobias could still see the early cockiness and youth and well-fedness that had first reminded him of Jake.
He hoped he never saw Jake looking the way Marco did now.But in spite of telling himself he didn’t care, he was glad to see Marco back.
“You survived,” Tobias whispered, while roll call continued.He didn’t look at Marco.He tried very hard not to move his mouth at all and didn’t raise his eyes from his toes, didn’t even glance up from the earth.
Marco didn’t look at him.“Don’t talk.”
Tobias smiled briefly, then emptied his mind and focused on the roll call again.But at least no one whose name he knew had died today.
***
The twenty-second dayafter Jake’s last visit was definitely the worst day.
Breakfast was the decent kind of bread (only stale) and gruel (tasteless and filling), but Tobias had slipped up and not watched his bowl closely enough, so it got swiped by a skinwalker and was empty before Tobias could even think about snatching it back.
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 wasnothis 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 saidHawthorne, 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 fuckingeasy.”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.”
