Page 21 of Freak Camp
“Not a scratch on me, see.”Jake stepped forward and nudged Tobias’s arm with his knuckles.He wanted to say something, but he wasn’t used to talking about feelings and stuff like that.
Tobias jumped like Jake had just given him a static shock.He stared up at him, straight in the eyes for the first time that visit.He looked terrified for a split second.Then whatever he saw in Jake’s face made him break into a huge smile.
“Good,” Tobias said.“That’s really good.”
They moved away from the guards, and Jake crouched by one of the walls, where the wind whipping through Freak Camp couldn’t cut quite so easily through the seams in his jacket.
“Wanna play cards?”Jake asked, holding up the deck.It was chilly out, and he could see his breath, but cards were always helpful to fall back on.“And ...”He dug in his pockets.The new coat Dad had gotten him was awesome.It had tons of pockets; he could always find something interesting in them that he had forgotten.Like today.“And I have M&Ms!”
Tobias brightened and knelt down with Jake as he shuffled the cards and started dealing out seven.After the deal, Jake swept up his pile and frowned at the fives in his hand, but Tobias fumbled picking up his cards, fingertips working to catch the edge under the dirt.He got a few of them up, but half of them slid out of his hand.
“You got it, Toby?”
Tobias hunched one shoulder up, frowning as he tried to keep hold of the cards.“Y-yeah.”He didn’t look okay, though.His small hands were red, and his blue jacket barely covered his wrists.
Jake put down his cards and held out his hands.It had been a weird day, but there was no way in hell he was just going to let Tobias shiver like that.Tobias had waited for him.He’d been worried that Jake had been with Elijah.Dad might never know, and the other hunters didn’t give a crap, but Tobias ...“C’mere.”
Tobias looked up in surprise, glancing at Jake’s hands, and hesitantly put out his own.Jake trapped Tobias’s hands between his to rub them vigorously, like Dad did when Jake had forgotten his gloves.Tobias looked astonished, but he didn’t move until Jake let go.
“That better?”
He tentatively curled and wiggled his fingers, then smiled.“Yeah.Thanks.”
Jake would do a lot for one of those smiles.He suspected he might’ve had a doofus grin of his own on his face.He picked his cards back up and held them close to his chest.
Four games later, Jake was feeling better.Toby always made him feel better.Maybe that was his monster power.
“Come on, let’s walk around.”Jake got to his feet and shoved the cards into his pocket.
Tobias jumped up after him, and they started around the edges of the yard, passing the bag of M&Ms back and forth as they went.
It was too cold to walk around in the open for long.Jake didn’t know how Tobias managed it in his thin coat.He felt a little bad about his nice warm jacket, but he didn’t think that the guards would let him bring Toby a coat, even assuming that he could find or snatch one without Dad noticing.Tobias didn’t complain, though, and Jake hoped that he was the kind of monster who didn’t feel the cold, even if his hands had been stiff earlier.
They ended up on one of the external air conditioning units attached to the back of Administration, munching through the rest of the M&Ms.Tobias was small enough to sit on the air conditioner with a boost up, but Jake opted to lean against it, arms crossed.He decided that he looked very cool in his new jacket.And Tobias was cool because he was with Jake.
They were scraping the bottom of the bag, arguing about who should eat the last M&M—Jake always made Tobias eat it if he remembered, but Tobias would never take the last one if he could help it—when Jake heard a sharp “Tobias!”and snapped his head up.If this was some guard, Jake was going to give them theglare, because the last thing he wanted right now was to have to deal with another stupid adult.
Instead of a guard coming to check on the Hawthorne kid and his monster, a woman in a thin blue jacket and baggy gray pants had rounded the corner and stopped short at the sight of them sitting together.
Jake’s hand went to his knife, but Tobias brightened, straightening up on his perch.“Hey, Becca!”
Jake blinked.This was Toby’s mom?He looked her over dubiously.He didn’t pay a lot of attention to girls—while girls could be hunters, of course, like Mom or Tina, they weren’t inherentlyinteresting—but he could tell that she wasn’t nearly as pretty as Jake’s mom had been.Becca was bony-thin, with a haggard, pinched face and matted blond hair tied back.Like every monster Jake had seen in the camp, after a first startled, nervous glance, she kept her eyes on the ground.She stayed a good six feet back from them, even though she had seemed before in a rush to talk to Toby.
If Tobias noticed her hesitance, he gave no sign.He swung his legs back and forth, as openly happy and lively as Jake had ever seen him, but he didn’t move to get off the air conditioner.“Becca, look, this is Jake, the real boy I told you about.”He grabbed Jake’s jacket sleeve, as though afraid that Becca wouldn’t believe him unless he had the physical evidence in his hands.
“Hey,” Jake said, awkward.It was cool that Tobias had just grabbed him like that—hell, it counted as a major win, as it had been a struggle at first for Tobias to get close to him at all—but Tobias was the only monster he had ever talked to, and he felt uneasy all over again facing another one, even if she was Tobias’s mom.
Becca took a couple of steps closer, keeping her eyes on Tobias.They flickered to Toby’s hand on his sleeve and then up over Jake, just for a second before dropping again.“Hello,” she said, voice soft.
Tobias held up the empty bag of M&Ms between them.“Look, Becca, he brought me candy.”
The ghost of a smile tugged her lips.“That’s very kind of him.Did you say thank you?”
She sounded more like a mom now, Jake thought.
“Yep.”Tobias bounced on the air conditioner.
“I brought you something too.”She extended her hand, showing a small apple peeking out from beneath her sleeve.When Tobias reached out with both hands to take it, she added, “Be sure to offer some to Jake.”
