Through Her Eyes (Camren)

Chapter 13: Don't Fall, Jump

After Camila’s first night sleeping in Lauren’s bed, she seemed to have made the decision that they were ready for the next step in their cuddling relationship.

Camila clung like a limpet.

Lauren breathed into her skin and tried not to cling back.

——-

It took Lauren all of two days to lose Camila.

Camila had taken Lauren’s invitation to move into her house as an invitation to move into Lauren’s space as well. If Lauren was in a room Camila was there too – cuddling up to Lauren in the bedroom and eating all of the corn chips in the kitchen and laughing at the television in the living room when no one had made a joke. She was constant noise, even when she was silent, and Lauren sort of really liked it that way. On the rare occasion that Camila wandered off Lauren found herself following Camila.

Lauren had been living alone since she’d moved out of her parents house over a year ago. Strangely, she couldn’t say she minded sharing her space with Camila, she couldn’t even say she didn’t like it. Camila made the air electric, she made the walls interesting, she made the warmth comfortable.

So when Lauren stepped out of the shower and Camila did not come wandering over from conversing with the portraits or reorganizing the furniture – to give the room flow, as she said – Lauren worried.

“Camz,” she called into the sudden silence. Camila did not call back from anywhere in the house, no doors banged open, no floorboards creaked. “Camila?”

Lauren’s heart thudded painfully in her chest, blood rushing loudly through her ears. She walked through the house, resisting the urge to call Camila’s name constantly like the worried owner of a lost pet. Lauren stopped short before the door to her grandmother’s old bedroom, staring hard at its cold surface and wondering if Camila really would have wandered in there, if the house would be so silent if she had.

She reached hesitantly for the doorknob, biting her bottom lip nervously. Her fingers touched the cold metal, flinching slightly as they did.

Something creaked above and Lauren jerked back from the door abruptly. She spun around too quickly, deciding to check outside instead. Maybe Camila had gone to commune with the sky or the trees.

Camila wasn’t in the backyard and at first glance she wasn’t in the front, either. Lauren couldn’t stop herself from breathing too harshly, suddenly dizzy, as she wandered across the lawn, standing under the lone tree in the front yard and looking up through its branches, wondering if Camila liked to climb trees. It seemed like something she would do.

Camila wasn’t in the tree. Lauren kicked at an exposed root lamely to punish it.

“I keep losing you,” Lauren said to no one, because Camila was not there.

“You shouldn’t kick trees,” Camila called. “They have feelings too.”

Lauren laughed, startled, and let her shoulders sag in relief as she spun around. “What are you, protector of tree rights? And – and oh God, get down from there!”

Camila had not climbed the tree. Camila had climbed the house.

She was sitting quite contently on the roof, her hands planted behind her so she could lean back and watch Lauren with an indulgent smile. Her legs were spread out before her and her converse were almost close enough to the edge of the roof to hang off.

“You should come up,” Camila offered instead, completely missing the point, or perhaps ignoring it like only Camila could.

“I always knew you were a crazy person,” Lauren said, unable to control her panic. “But I did not know you were a suicidal crazy person!”