She Hopped Over the Wall

Chapters 1 and 2

Chapter 1 – Red and Blue Lights in the Dark

Red and blue lights in the dark, shining through the blinds again. They woke her up if she was sleeping but it was the light more than the noise. The police never showed up regularly at anyone else's house in Newport Beach, CA. It just became a new millennium, she just turned fifteen years old, and she knew she might be leaving soon so she put on a sweat suit and running shoes and packed a small purse of toiletries. It was becoming routine. Tonight her preparedness would serve her.

One of the officers was the same as the one who busted the cheerleaders the beginning of the former semester for TPing the football players' houses. Camille did not belong in either world. She certainly wasn't Newport Beach material and despite her white trash upbringing, she herself wasn't that either. She always knew that she had never belonged anywhere she had ever been, but was still young enough to believe that the future held some geographical location of where one day she should be.

She spent the night at any girlfriends' house she could because she hated being at home. She didn't have many friends but teenagers hung out with other teenagers when bored. She usually snuck out whenever she went to her friends' houses, not to do anything in particular, but just because the rush of doing something in the middle of the night when you're not supposed to is fun. Not much would happen to you in Orange County. A combination of curiosity, fearlessness, and location sent her into the night unafraid and unharmed. Camille and her friends would put on makeup, say they were eighteen, and try to buy cigarettes just because they could. They might steal the occasional wine cooler from a mom and a cigar from a dad. It was fun.

Camille stopped defending her mother when she was twelve. She decided that it was as much her mother's fault she was getting beaten up as her stepfather's and that it was both their fault she lived this way and Camille got punished for it. She never got any sleep. They stayed up all night long fighting and Camille stayed up to spy to come in and make sure he didn't kill her mother. Camille heard things a child, or any human being, should never hear in those arguments. She stayed behind the door shaking all night with a baton that should've been used for a happy occasion, for the twirlers in the parade. Toys became weapons and the night was darker than night should be. She learned to see and hear in the dark. She knew every sound a hit could make and every word a whisper whispered.

At twelve she also bought dishes to move out. She spent all of her babysitting money on a purple martini glass from a department store because she thought it looked pretty. She kept it in a teal plastic basket in the back of her closet with an old radio with a long, unfolding antenna, and some other necessities. She would never use that glass and had much to learn about what one needed in life, but she tried. Camille was the only twelve year old to seriously plan her move out and was the first to move out, as she knew she would be.

Her mother got taken away in handcuffs that night and so did the bastard. The cops never took him away. He was a Fire Department employee and the sheriff's department protects government employees. The cops will come mediate, tell you not to beat your girlfriend because it looks bad on the department, and leave. And her mother stayed. Camille made it a goal in life to never live off of a man. And this one was poor! She would always have her own money and she would never be treated that way.

Since Camille was a minor she had to go with the police. She walked out with the police while her mother begged them not to put her in handcuffs in front of her kid. Camille gave a scoffing laugh. Her mother lost her shame long before the handcuffs. That was just jewelry she deserved at this point. Constantly embarrassed in front of the neighbors she didn't care for anyways. Like people didn't know. This was an apartment complex in Newport Beach.