Play Practice (Camren)

Part 3

Auditions go on the next day like everything is fine because everything is fine. Dinah's fine. Shawn and Ally and Troye are all fine. Everyone is fine.

Lauren is fine.

So Camila tries to be fine. Don't get her wrong– every breath she takes is a sting to her freshly wounded heart, but she's finding that if you act like something's fine for long enough, it starts to feel fine. So she's not fine. But she's okay and she's working on it.

So auditions go on. And it's a great thing that Camila's desired role lacks any feeling or compassion for the better part of the play, because the only way she can get through this day is if she shuts off all of her emotions. She thinks her monologue sucks, but everyone tells her differently. So she has that going for her, at least.

The last day of official auditions wrap up, and Lauren announces that the callback list will be posted the next morning.

The air is filled with stress and worried whispers– Was I good? Did I mess up that one line? I can't remember what I did with my hands– but Camila finds it hard to care about this at all. She's been considering dropping out of the play for the past twelve hours. She even imagined herself going up to Lauren and saying 'I quit, theatre isn't really for me,' but that would require her to actually speak to Lauren, and that was something she wasn't supposed to be doing.

She's packing up her things again, for the third time, and she's doing it really slowly, for the third time. She doesn't really mean to, and when she's one of the last people left in there, she knows she didn't really want to, but yeah. Habit.

There's a loud sigh behind her. One that screams for attention but is also heavy with nerves.

Camila hears the familiar sound of a clipboard being set down on the edge of the stage. The sound that let's her know she should prepare herself for Lauren.

"Hey, I'm sorry about– about yesterday. That was dumb."

Camila doesn't say anything. Because, yeah, it was dumb. And she's dumb, and Lauren's dumb, and the whole situation is just dumb.

The older girl goes on after Camila says nothing. "I didn't mean to push you away like that."

This is something Lauren shouldn't have said, because it gives Camila a slice of hope. A tiny, but dangerous, slice of hope. "You didn't?"

"Yeah, I mean, I like hanging out with you."

Camila feels something brewing in her stomach because she doesn't think she's gonna like where this is going.

Lauren clears her throat. "I mean– I don't want, like," she scrunches up her face. Like it's really that painful to get out. "This can't be anything more than what it is."

"Than what what is, Lauren? I thought nothing was happening here."

"I'm sorry." It kind of sounds like a question.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

Camila shrugs. "If you want to hang out, we can hang out. If you don't want to put a label on this, then fine. We won't."

Lauren seems pretty satisfied with that. She then asks Camila if she wants to meet at her place after this, and Camila says yes.

See, Camila's logic is that if she has semi-control over the situation, nothing will be able to hurt her. What she doesn't realize is that it doesn't hurt as much because Lauren is just giving her too much hope. And what she doesn't realize is that she doesn't have much control over anything. Not when it comes to Lauren.