Exposed || Camren

Chapter Three: Rewrite

The greatest escape that Lauren could have was writing. When Lauren was younger, her father would always ask her help to create stories with him for her little siblings. Together, they would create grand tales of princesses and princes, dragons and warlocks, and fairies and elves. When Lauren was a bit older, she started to write down their stories and, with the help of Taylor and Chris, color pages of drawings to make books for themselves and future children. When Clara was pregnant with Kristina, Lauren had gifted the box of handmade books to her mother as a Christmas present. The books were still on Brandon's bookshelf, where one was taken down every night by Lauren when he needed to go to sleep.

It wasn't until middle school that Lauren started to create stories of her own while reading more and more. She would spend hours in the library during lunchtime, munching on some food while she read book after book. Her favorite stories always dealt with real life experiences, things that could happen to just about anyone. It didn't matter if Lauren herself had never gone through these life events, she enjoyed to read about them nonetheless. And when Lauren couldn't find anymore interesting books to read, she would write her own. Throughout middle school and the beginning of high school, Lauren had filled journals and web documents with content anywhere from death to coming of age to falling in love.

After Lauren's father and siblings had died, she started to become even more interested in the world of journalism. She read article after article about the car accident that she had seen firsthand. She was not only fascinated at the details provided within each article, but also disappointed by how little at the same time. Sometimes the articles about the crash were simply incorrect, in which case Lauren would email the author and let them know the facts. Lauren became obsessed with the real world and the chaos that inhabited it. She started to write her own blog posts about small things that happened throughout the day, like what people had for lunch that day or what she had learned in class.

Slowly, it felt like once again Lauren had a voice, even though she hadn't spoken a word. Her classmates had no idea what was ever going through Lauren's head, and she quite liked it that way. She especially was grateful that the peers who couldn't understand her the most were the ones who would also never seen inside her mind. Lauren was quite used to the bullying she faced, but was one ever quite okay with it? She didn't believe so, because even when she thought she could handle it, Lauren often spent her nights wondering why she was so alone.

When Lauren had become mute, the only people who were left to care were her siblings and her only friend, Ally Hernandez. Otherwise, Lauren had no one to turn to. It took her a few months of court-assigned therapy to finally speak to her family and friend again, but it wasn't like it mattered, anyways. She still couldn't talk to anyone else, and there were so many things she was still terrified to tell them. The most she could muster was writing her words down in the hopes someone out there was reading them, or she could sometimes get out a few stammers here and there. Mostly to her teachers and a few peers here and there.

Lauren loved her Journalism II class more than any of her other classes. She was mostly an artsy person, she loved her Creative Writing class from the semester before and even took an Art Portfolio I class at the local community college. It was part of the joy of being completely mute and alone, Lauren supposed, that she was incredibly good at her schoolwork and could graduate with taking less classes her senior year while she gained some college credits. Lauren wanted to one day leave Miami, Florida and go to school in New York City, where she was sure she could thrive. Despite the chaos and people that flooded the streets of New York City.

The only problem Lauren had faced was her public speaking skills. The required speech and debate classes she had taken before the accident, when she was still quite the loner but was nowhere near as quiet. In fact, before the accident, Lauren kind of enjoyed telling stories and speaking to a group of people. She had a friend group that enjoyed hearing her short stories. She was really good at debating her point, and had even looked into joining the debate team. After everything that had happened, though, Lauren hated being in front of a crowd. She always felt like people could see right through her, could see every single scar and bruise of the past that she just wanted to conceal. If Lauren could disappear and completely reinvent herself, she was sure she would in heartbeat. The words that she knew she had to say never wanted to go past her lips.