Page 33 of Freak Camp

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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.

***

Tobias didn’t lookfor 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 abest daywith 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 hecouldn’tbecause 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.