My Favorite Camren One-Shots

Ditch Date

The 7th hour bell finally rang and I had never felt so liberated in my life. I almost ran out of the classroom, but I’ll be damned if I’m caught dead running to anything. Ok, that doesn’t make much sense, but you get the idea. I step out of Mrs. Fuckface’s class and got right into step with my best friend since the age of non-existence, Normani, as we head to our lockers.

“Jesus, are these days getting longer or are we ditching school later every day?”

“The former,” I open my locker and grab a few things. “I swear we ditch the same period. I even heard my last hour teacher thinks my name on her roster is a mistake since I’m never there.”

“Amen to that,” Mani agrees as she slams her own locker closed. “Honestly 7th hour is even becoming a stretch. Just knowing that the next bell’s the final one of the day for me makes it seem like it can’t come fast enough.”

“That’s what she said,” I slip out with a devilish smirk and Mani pushes me a bit.

“Shut up, asshole, I’m being serious. This seniority is getting to me. I could’ve sworn Mrs. Fuckface#2 just ended class with ‘Alright class, tomorrow we’ll be torturing Normani into a slow and painful death!’” she put on a funny voice to imitate her teacher.

I look at her disbelievingly. “Seriously?”

“Well she actually said something about a lab on electric fields or some shit, but I really don’t see the difference between that and what I just said, honestly.”

And this, my friend, is why I love Normani Kordei. She’s easily the funniest person I know and I lover her to bits. I would just never tell her that..it’s part of our dynamic.

As we exited the building and headed for my car, I really had a chance to get a feel for the day. It was beautiful. Even though it’s May and decent temperatures are to be expected, I live in Chicago. Here, you can’t expect much but the unexpected. Forecasts are even faulty sources sometimes. But today the cool streak had actually broken and it was easily a warm 70 degrees. Well, maybe a cool 70–the sun beating down on my leather jacket might skew my judgement. Normani must have noticed this too, but she was far more welcoming than I. 

“Lauren,” she grabbed my hand that’s preparing to unlock the doors, “It feels really good out, let’s just train downtown instead of wasting money driving and parking down there.“ 

"Awwww, Mani,” I whine, “it’s hooot!”

“Oh, stop being a pussy, we’re taking the train.”

——–

Whenever we ditch we head on over to Millennium Park downtown. It’s just a really cool place to be. Someone’s always selling something (drugs included), or we can laugh at the dumb ass tourists who stare at The Bean like they’ve never seen a mirror before or joke about how weird our faces would look blown up on the Wall of Faces. Really, we just walk around and create our own adventures every day. We always get into some shit.

Today was proving to be no different when Mani laughed so hard she backed into a hot dog cart and made 3 of them fall. The guy tried to get her to pay for them, but what the fuck do we look like? She walked away then I took a hot dog and walk away as well. About an hour later, after photo bombing some tourist photos and sitting in on some couple’s picnic, we settled on a little spot in the grass.

“Hey, I think that girl goes to our school, yeah?” Mani inquired, pointing across the busy courtyard.

Sure enough, sitting on the bench next to the same hot dog cart we terrorized was some girl I had never seen before with that bright ass green Amandla High lanyard signifying her being a junior. She was..pretty for lack of a better word. From what I could tell she was cute and petite. I couldn’t help but notice how small she looked from over here. Not physically, but if I wanted to be super meta, I’d explain how her slumped shoulders and surveying eyes created this defeated look about her. Still that couldn’t take away from the glow surrounding her. She’s beautiful, her aura told me so, despite her being seemingly 50 million miles away with her eyes on the concrete in front of her. But I’m totally not paying that much attention to some year 11, so I wouldn’t say any of that. I also wouldn’t say any of that because Normani, like the rest of the world, is unaware of my sexuality. Hell I was unaware of my own sexuality until about a month ago. So instead I just said, “Yeah, I guess so.”