ghost of you // interracial

002. memory

It felt like déjà vu; sitting on the edge of an uncomfortable bed and staring at cracked walls stained with God knows what while that inescapable feeling of dread ate at him. The only difference between this cheap hotel room and the prison cell he called home for the past eight months was that Camron was alone. There was no cellmate to bother him, there were no guards patrolling about; nothing but his own thoughts taunting him over the mistakes he had made.

Why did he go that night? He should've just stayed home like he promised Rebecca that he would. Why did she have to go to her class?

They were tight on money, the rent was due, and the water company had been calling with threats of shutting their water off because of how behind they were in payments. On top of that, Adelina's daycare payment was coming up and childcare's no cheap expense. There was no way Camron and Rebecca could pay for all of that on their seven dollars an hour salary at the local grocery store as a cashier and produce clerk.

 Desperate didn't even begin to explain their circumstances.

When the opportunity came for Camron to make some extra cash, he didn't hesitate. It wasn't like he was new to the game. After all, dealing was how he made his cash when he was younger when his mother wasn't capable of providing for him like a mother should.

He was confident that night. 

He knew all the side roads where his customers would be waiting thanks to his cousin, Nico, who filled him in on all that he needed to know for that night. It was supposed to be a quick job; no more than a few hours standing on the side roads, hidden by the overgrown foliage. He was supposed to be selling to repeat customers, but he'd never done work for Nico before, so he wasn't one-hundred percent on who exactly the people were. 

Never would he have suspected that they were undercover cops.

Sitting in that police department, wrists sore and rubbed raw from the tight handcuffs, Camron knew that he had messed up more than ever before. He wanted to break down and cry, and Lord know that if he hadn't had been in so much pain from being tackled to the ground by a cop twice his size, he would've.

That's when he learned that his cousin Nico had set him up. The police had been looking for him for months and when the heat became a little too much for him, he threw Camron into the line of fire.

Camron was no stranger when it came to being disappointed and heartbroken by his own family. 

His mother was an emotionally stunted woman with a broken spirit. 

She was so young when she started having children and coming from a toxic home herself didn't prove well in providing a decent life for Camron and his siblings. His father had never really been around much. He'd been in and out of prison for most of Camron's life and what Camron did know about his father wasn't all that good; a drunk, abusive, a womanizing cheater.

Maybe that's where he got it from; it was painfully obvious that Camron was like a magnet when it came to trouble and drama. Wherever he went, some sort of bullshit followed him. Maybe it was genetic, maybe he was just copying what he saw growing up; nature versus nurture, they Caml it.

Hell, for all of his life Camron had proven himself to be incompetent when it came to following rules and using his common sense. Time and time again, he would find himself in trouble over silly things that he knew weren't worth it. He went from skipping classes in middle school to full on vandalizing public property; he had a rap sheet as long as his forearm before the age of seventeen.

So, it wasn't much of a surprise when his mother decided to kick him out of her home for being such a disobedient burden. 

That day was forever engrained into Camron's mind; it was the last week of school before the Summer break and he had taken it upon himself to skip every single one of his exams to run around the streets and cause absolute havoc with his best friend, Matthew. When he had gotten home around ten o'clock that night, his things where stuffed into black trash bags and tossed onto the front porch waiting for him.