There is something about being a child. There's something about the whimsical bliss of the world that a child lives in that makes adults go insane searching for a way that they can access it. It is such a poignant emotion that it even has a word tied to the feeling: nostalgia.
The truth is simple. As a child you live in a world that seems so final. A child does not question whether or not one day they will look at a cardboard box and see garbage instead of a rocketship. A child does not fear that one day innocence will truly be gone, and they don't understand that once you know something, it is very hard to unknow it.
As you grow, this world slips away as quietly as a whisper. Most of time you cannot truly realize it's going away until there is nothing left, until it is too late. The sands of youth have slipped through your fingers, and there's nothing left to grasp.
And maybe that is just the way humans are. Maybe humans were wired to completely ignore what they have until it's gone, and that is the punishment — that children will live in ignorant bliss of the moments they have and adults will live in the desperation to get it back.
*
The third grade class was going on a fieldtrip to a museum about planes, and Camila Cabello was the epitome of enthusiasm. She had never been on a plane, much less been to museum completely dedicated to them, and she was well prepared with a list of questions to ask.
There was a very strict 'buddy' system in place during field trips. As long as you got paired with someone you actually liked, you were in luck, because you got to spend all day with them. But if you were unfortunate to be one of the extras, the leftovers from the already paired up people, you were going to be in for a highly unenjoyable time.
Camila wasn't going to have that problem. Her friend group was perfect, four people, so they could all have a partner and still hang out together. So, Camila paired up with Dinah, one of her best friends, and the group got in the line to go on the bus.
"Camila? Could you come here for a second?"
Ms. Morgan, the teacher, was standing with her arm around an unfamiliar girl. The newcomer had her long dark hair in pigtails and was wearing easily the cutest dress Camila had ever seen.
"This is Lauren," Ms. Morgan introduced the new girl. "She just moved to Miami, and I was wondering if you'd like to be her partner today for the trip?"
Camila stuck out her bottom lip. "But Ms. Morgan, I'm with Dinah. She won't have a partner if I go with Lauren."
"I'll put Dinah with Jack," Ms. Morgan assured the distressed third grader. Camila didn't want to be partners with the new girl. She had always been partners with Dinah, and now Dinah was going to be a leftover, and Camila was going to have to spend the day with a girl she didn't even know. Sometimes adults just didn't understand. All the same, she liked Ms. Morgan too much to argue. (Also, she really didn't have an argument to use.)
"Hi, Lauren," Camila finally said once they were settled on the bus.
Lauren didn't seem like a particularly shy girl, which was a relief, since Camila liked to chat and frankly, she didn't find much pleasure in talking to someone who didn't respond. As they started a conversation about what kind of books they liked to read, Camila started to think maybe it wasn't so bad being paired with the new girl.
*
Another thing about children: friendships are formed just as quickly as the weather changes, and broken very rarely.
It took maybe two hours for Camila to consider Lauren her new friend, whether Lauren agreed or not. The next day when everyone moved to their tables, Camila promptly took up an empty seat next to Lauren instead of next to Dinah like usual.
Lauren was interesting. She was very funny and knew a lot about a plethora of interesting things. But she didn't always show up for school, and on the days that she didn't, the teacher wouldn't let Camila bring Lauren her schoolwork home to her. She guessed that maybe Lauren's parents just liked to get it themselves, but when she asked her own parents about it, they didn't say anything.
So the years passed, as they do. And an impossibly long list of things changed, but there was one thing that never did. Lauren and Camila, the dynamic duo, the misfit pair of their five friends, didn't drift apart. If anything, they got closer as the awkward adolescent years set in.
Puberty made Camila as gangly as a baby deer and made Lauren blindingly gorgeous, a juxtapositioned pair of best friends if there ever was one. But their personalities stayed the same, and their love for each other was constant.
Camila knew that Lauren hated the color mustard yellow and that the smell of freshly blown out candles was her favorite scent in the whole world. Camila knew so many mundane and private things about Lauren, it would seem that such a major part of her life — like her home life — would come up easily in conversation.
Camila knew that Lauren still wore days of the week underwear on the wrong days, she was there when Lauren had her first kiss and knew the other girl's bra size more confidently than she knew her own. But she had never seen the inside of Lauren's house, and she didn't even know what her parents' names were, or if she had any siblings.
What was worse was that Camila's parents so clearly knew what was going on in Lauren's home life, which drove Camila crazy. "It isn't your business," Camila's mother would tell her. But it was her business. Lauren was her best friend and had been since third grade, and she couldn't think of any pair of best friends that hadn't seen the interior of the other person's house.
Whenever she brought it up, Lauren got aggressively defensive to the point where Camila just stopped asking. It wasn't worth ending the conversation in a screaming match.
It was impossibly frustrating.
But not as frustrating as the fact that there was nothing she could do to find out what was wrong.
*
It was eighth grade.
It seemed like such a normal week. But don't all of the days that turn out so badly start out so normally? It must be the universe laughing at the pathetic humans below, just waiting for the storm to hit.
It wasn't a rare occurrence for Lauren to miss a day or two of school. On the contrary, it was something Camila had become accustomed to.
Missing a week, however, was a little more concerning. Lauren hadn't shown up for school in exactly five days, and whenever Camila called her house, the phone went directly to the robotic voicemail message.
"Camila."
It was a voice dripping with the remorse of having to deliver bad news, and Camila knew what was coming before the words even came out of her mother's mouth.
"She's gone, Camila."
They meant something. She was sure that the words meant something. But her mind was rubber, it was numb. All content collided with it and was immediately swung back into the sea of all other forgotten thoughts, where it was doomed to drown with the rest of them.
"I am so sorry, baby."
*
She supposed that her parents only told her because it no longer made sense to keep it a secret now that Lauren was gone. Maybe it was because they thought that she finally deserved to know. Maybe it was pity, or regret, or an endless list of reasons.
The answer was simple. Camila had never seen Lauren's parents because she didn't have any.
Lauren Jauregui was the daughter of tragedy and tribulation. When she was born, she took the breath of her mother with her and didn't give it back. Her father was no one more than a name on a document, a face that couldn't be found. She was the result of a one night stand, and that one night led to the death of a young woman and the birth of a mistake.
She was passed from family member to family member like an heirloom that no one really wanted. She looked too much like her mother, and every cry felt like a knife being twisted in their chests. At the age of six, she was surrendered to a foster care program. There, no one would see blood in her brilliant green eyes. There, someone could love her properly as the innocent child she was.
According to Camila's mother, the first family Lauren lived with was wonderful. That fact made Camila's heart lift a little. But the couple was very old, and by the time Lauren was eight, they also had to give up the child they loved so dearly.
And thus brings the story around to Lauren's move to Miami, where she was moved to a home with six other children under the strict control of a husband and wife couple. Camila's mother was recruited by the school as someone to keep a careful eye on Lauren, due to this family's infamous reputation for producing reckless, troublesome children in their time under their roof.
"Why did they leave?" Camila asked. She could barely get the words out without letting the tears build in her eyes.
Camila's mother wrapped her arms around Camila's shoulders.
"They were terrible people, baby. For all I know, they left just so they could make the children upset. I think that really, they were starting to get paranoid that they were going to get in huge trouble after all the criticism, and just ran away from it."
Camila couldn't fathom how much suffering Lauren must have gone through. Her heart squeezed violently with regret and the pain of losing her best friend in the entire world. She should have pushed harder. Why did she give up so easily?
*
You don't forget someone who leaves. Not really. The pain of remembering might fade and the grip of losing them might loosen around your still beating heart, but they don't go away.
Tenth grade, Camila finally grew into her gangly body and awkward features. It was a relief, but it also brought along a whole new wave of adolescent problems that she dealt with just as badly as any sixteen year old would.
Eleventh grade, she finally got her first boyfriend. Instead of telling Dinah, Normani, and Ally right away, she wrote a letter to Lauren. It felt right, having Lauren know before anyone else, even if she couldn't read it. The relationship itself lasted about two months. It was nothing but another moment that would eventually fade into nothing except the laughter over slobbery kisses and false confessions of love. The act of writing letter to Lauren, however, stuck.
She wrote them often. It was more out of habit than actual hope that someday Lauren might read them.
One night Camila stepped outside on her balcony to grab some fresh air. The night air was shockingly warm. The breeze pleasantly tickled her exposed skin, and Camila felt like if she spread out her arms and stood on the railing, she could fly. It was a comfort to know that somewhere out there Lauren was breathing the same air as her. Maybe she was even looking at the same stars, wherever she was.
*
Senior year brought Camila an amount of stress unrivalled by any year before. There was university applications to look at, prom dresses to buy, and an entire future to plan out.
"Mila, you've been reading that book for hours. Let's go shopping, okay?"
Camila swatted Normani's eager hand away. "It isn't just a book, it's my textbook. I have a test on Monday."
Normani groaned impatiently. "Booooooooring. You need a break, and the fun isn't around here. So let's close that book—" she tugged the book from under Camila's unwilling hands, "—and go out for a shopping spree, okay?"
"You are so frustrating," Camila complained, grudgingly pulling herself to her feet.
"And this is the library," Camila could hear someone talking outside the door. "If you'll just come in here for a moment..."
Normani's eyebrow raised in obvious curiosity. She leaned around the bookcase that was obscuring their view of who was being given a tour of the school. All of a sudden Normani's body jerked backwards, the momentum of the sudden movement causing her chair to dangerously tip in one direction.
"Holy fucking damn shit," was all Normani could say.
"What? What?" Camila was on edge, especially since Normani very rarely had such extreme reactions to anything.
"We gotta go fast." Normani was on her feet in seconds, pulling Camila off her chair with surprising force. "We have to get out here before —"
"Okay, Chris, Lauren. This is the library, which is open to all students at any time between six in the morning and five in the evening...oh, hello, Miss Cabello, Miss Kordei. I didn't know there were still students around."
"H-hi," Normani stammered out a reply. "We were just leaving, actually. Camila?" When she received no answer except for a blank stare, Normani sharply pulled on Camila's arm again, forcing her to her feet in a dazed rush.
Camila was sure that something had blocked her air passage, because she could breathe. It wasn't a panic, it was a shock. She felt like she was completely naked in front of a crowd, or that she had just stuck a fork into an electric socket. Her chest was rising and falling more rapidly as she struggled to get air into her lungs. It was job, something she had to work at just to keep herself conscious.
It was her. It was Lauren. There was no arguing that fact. Her already pretty face had grown even more attractive, as if that were possible. Her features were sharper and more striking than they ever had been. She most certainly was not that same girl in pigtails and a dress on that day in grade three. She looked like danger in red lips and a beat up leather jacket, and Camila felt faint.
"Have a good weekend, girls," the principal told Normani and Camila.
"Oh, we will," Normani told him with an edge to her voice.
Camila twisted her head as Normani dragged her toward the doors, unable to resist taking one last look at the girl who had, for so long, been the main aspect of her dreams.
Lauren was unabashedly looking straight at Camila. Those eyes were so distinct. Of all the things on her face, her eyes were the constant factor, the one thing that had not changed. They were still the same green and gold as fresh spring grass, and they were burrowing deep into Camila's skin, making her feel so unnaturally vulnerable.
*
"She doesn't look like someone we'd hang out with anymore," Normani was telling the group while Camila sat in the corner, unable to contribute. "She was wearing the tightest pair of black jeans I've ever seen in my life, and you should have seen the way she was looking at Camila. Like she wanted to ravage her, or something."
Ally shook her head. "Do you think it happened to her, Camila? Do you think those people turned her into a troubled kid, like you said they would?"
Camila suddenly felt very irritated. "You guys haven't even spoken to her yet."
Normani shrugged. "I'm just saying, she looks like trouble."
Camila suffered the rest of her annoyance in silence as the conversation moved toward other issues, far away from the return of Lauren.
As much as she didn't want to admit it to herself, they were right. They were so right. The Lauren who looked at her at the library was not the same Lauren who left her in eighth grade. She couldn't care, though. It was all she had ever wanted, for Lauren to come back to her, and she hated hearing anyone talk about Lauren like she was an outdated piece of clothing to be thrown away.
*
"Camila?"
Camila was standing in front of the dirty bathroom mirror in the school washroom when she heard Lauren's voice. In her dreams the reunion was always tearful and involved long, extended hugging and then a long talk about everything they had missed in the years they had lost. She had not planned or fantasized about an awkward question in a disgusting girl's bathroom with lipstick on the mirror and confessions scrawled on the walls.
"Uh, yeah, that's me." Obviously. She turned toward her old best friend, who was standing with her back pressed against one of the stall doors. It was clear that even through her confident exterior, Lauren was feeling uncomfortable.
"It's nice to see you again."
"You too." An awkward pause surrounded the two. "I missed you."
Oh, she could have punched herself. Lauren's eyes turned from the softness of sponge to the sharpness of diamond in seconds. Camila felt a surge of fearlessness course through her. She had one chance to say what she wanted to, and damn it if she was going to pass it up.
"Why did you come back?" Camila asked.
Lauren's mouth twitched. "I didn't have a choice."
"So you still live with them?" Camila didn't mean for the question to come out so accusatory, and braced for the familiar backlash of Lauren's anger. Instead, she got a bitter laugh. It was almost worse than screaming, which she could prepare for. This was equivalent to a slap across
the face.
"I missed you too, Camila."
She hated that she liked the way her name sounded wrapped around Lauren's red lips.
Camila watched as Lauren's back turned toward her.
*
Camila was playing with fire.
Lauren might have lived with the same strict parents that once controlled her entire life, but that stopped her from nothing. She smoked between classes, she flirted with teachers, and there were always stories circulating of what she did when she snuck out at night.
That didn't stop Camila from talking to Lauren whenever she got a chance. Lauren still wasn't allowed to have a cell phone, but only two weeks into her arrival to the city, she managed to land herself a rich boyfriend who completely paid for a phone so her could text her whenever he wanted...and she could text whoever she wanted.
Lauren was wickedly smart. So intelligent that it terrified Camila to a point where she was almost afraid that just talking to the other brunette would put her further under the Lauren spell.
Oh, Camila was playing with fire. But she'd be lying if she had flirting with the flame didn't give her a high that made her feel like she was invincible.
And doesn't everyone want to be invincible?
*
Tick, tick, tick.
There was an unyielding tapping sound at Camila's window that jolted her from her restless sleep. At her side, her phone screen light was cutting through the darkness of the room.
Lauren: it's me
Lauren: get dressed and come outside.
Lauren: I'm bored as hell, and I have David's motorcycle
YOU ARE READING
My Favorite Camren One-Shots (Part 3)
Fanfictioni do not own any of these stories. these are my favorite camren one-shots from 5hfanfiction and other sources.
