It had been almost two months since her last surgery and Cammie was sick of it. She finished up her second year of high school with honors despite the odds and made a friend, lost all her other friends but kept one. That should have been enough, should have shown her that her real friends weren't real friends, they didn't stick around when she needed them the most. But honors and Colton. That should have been enough for Cammie to not want to give up, right? That's what she kept telling herself. But as her grades were posted and Colton was going on a family vacation for the next week and a half after he finished finals she felt hopeless. Cammie had already taken her finals, but she needed to go to school and sign a form, it scared her to death having to face everyone. She would soon be surrounded by her peers, people that hated her. She felt alone, she felt like giving up. She decided to do homeschooling. Real homeschooling with an online program where she could finish high school early like her mom did. So she needed to go to school, real school, one last time.
"It's not your face, it's not your pain," Cameron said sternly. She was sick of her parents thinking they knew what she felt, what she went through. They didn't know. They had their own struggles and their own issues, but this was something they hadn't ever experienced.
"I thought of killing myself, a few times actually." Cammie's eyes went wide as her mother told her about her darkest moments.
"What?" Cammie couldn't believe it, her mother was so strong and now this.
"I thought that life would be better if I wasn't in it. So no I don't know how you feel exactly, but I know how it feels to lose everyone, how it feels to feel hopeless. I know more than you give me credit for." Scarlett told Cameron.
"You tried to kill yourself?" She questioned lightly.
"No I never tried, but I thought about it, a lot. More than any teenage girl should." Scarlett admitted. "I came up with a lot of different plans on how I could kill myself, what would be easiest, what would be quickest, what would allow me to have an open casket if that's what my parents chose." Scarlett went on and Cammie broke a little inside.
"I had no idea."
"I didn't want you to know that I ever hit rock bottom. I wanted you to see me as brave and not broken. But if it helps you see that I am here for you, that I am as broken as you... then I'm fine with being vulnerable."
"Mom," Cammie began and hugged Scarlett. "I'm so sorry."
"Your dad knows how it feels to have an outer... abnormality." She hesitated at the word. She no longer saw Evan as scarred she just Evan, it was the rest of the world that saw a disaster. Cammie looked to her Dad as well. She saw is scarred face and arm every day, she had grown accustomed to it, she didn't see what others did, not all the time at least. She grew up with that face smiling down at her, those arms holding her when she was scared, he wasn't a monster like people thought him to be... maybe her parents had a point, maybe they did understand.
Evan began telling Cameron about his past, and pain, and how it made him stronger in the end. It also lead him to Scarlett so he wouldn't change anything, not for the world. "You can't give up, you can't give up." He repeated and she stared blankly at them, wanting more. More of what she didn't know. They bared their souls to her and she still felt miserable, but they knew that she would. She just hoped the future would be little brighter, and a little less of the same pain she felt every day.
"Don't give up on us, on this. We have another appointment tomorrow. They have a plan for something and who knows maybe they found some sort of cure." Scarlett encouraged.
