Page 66 of Freak Camp
Jake dug in his jacket pockets while Toby shuffled the cards almost as fast as a Vegas dealer.
“Crazy eights?”Toby asked, already dealing five.
“Yeah.Aha!”Jake pulled the squashed sandwich from his pocket and ceremoniously presented it to Toby.“For you.”
Toby froze at the sight of the sandwich, cards fluttering from his hands.
Jake frowned.“Hey, are you okay?I know it’s fish patty, but you never said you had a shellfish allergy ...Toby?”
Tobias shook himself.“Sorry.”His voice was a little hoarse.“I’ve been ...eating better lately, and I just ...”
Jake looked down at the sandwich.He loved bringing Toby food, and he really was happy that Toby had actually been getting enough to eat for a change—but something about Toby’s response felt weird.“Well ...you still want it, maybe save it for later?”
“Yes, I want it, s—” Tobias said the words by rote, without emotion, until he cut himself off by jerking his head to the side.He curled in on himself, shrinking his shoulders down with his chin to his chest, and clenched his hands over his knee.He didn’t seem to notice his grip crushing the queen of hearts, despite how appalled he’d been the last time he thought he’d bent the corner of one of Jake’s cards.
This whole visit was weirding Jake out.Something had happened, and he had no fucking clue what it was.He didn’t know how to ask, and he wasn’t sure what he could do even if Toby gave him an answer.
So he settled for what he knew how to do.He shoved the sandwich into Toby’s lap and shifted a little closer to him.“It has tartar sauce on it.I hope that’s cool.I was going to stop at a burger joint like usual, but I was coming from the other direction and there was this fish shack and I figured, ‘Hey, never got Toby a sandwich from here before,’ so I pulled over, and this chick at the counter asks why I never called her back last week, and I tell her I’ve never even been here before, and she says yeah I was and I ordered, like, twenty double-fish sandwiches, which I didn’t, and why would anybody need twenty of ‘em, and she ...”
Jake talked, and Toby slowly opened the sandwich, took a bite, and smiled.Jake talked until Toby had eaten, until he had dealt out the cards—not poker, Jake didn’t feel up to poker, and he didn’t want to bluff to Toby right now—and they played war until the sun had moved a couple of hours in the sky.Toby was smiling at him, laughing a little with him, and telling him about books he had read and work he had done around the camp.One book about altering engines sounded like it would make the Eldorado purr, and Jake thought, once again, how amazing it was that Toby could stay here, never leaving, and still be the smartest kid Jake knew.
I’m getting you out of here, Toby.He just didn’t know when.It was time to give Leah another follow-up call.
***
Tobias watched Jakeleave, one hand tracing his arm where Jake had touched him, over and over again, the taste of tartar sauce on his tongue.Only when he couldn’t see Jake any more, when the guards started to notice a monster standing suspiciously out alone—monsters had been killed for that during the raids —did he return to the shade.
Kayla was waiting for him.She shoved a werewolf out of the shade and bared her teeth at him when he made a move back to the place that Tobias had taken.Few knew that Kayla could talk, but everyone knew that she could bite.
When Tobias slid down next to her, the cool of the shade compensating for the heat of too many bodies close together, she turned her head slightly, eyes watching everything.Her lips moved—her lips often moved soundlessly, Tobias had heard some of the guards say they thought she was brain damaged, probably from being under Crusher—but he heard the word.
“Unfucked,” she said.
He gave a short nod, a jerk of his head downward.
Eight weeks, and Jake had still come back to him.Tobias had lived through the raid and the new interrogations of all monsters—after the scare with the outside attack, the Director suspected that someone on the inside could be feeding information out—and Jake had come back, just to play cards, to give him a sandwich Tobias had paid nothing for.To smile at him.
It never made any sense, but Tobias was still the luckiest son of a bitch in Freak Camp.
