When Cami moves in with the 2 most popular guys in school in a new foster home placement, she realizes that her tragic past just might make it so that she will stay lonely forever.
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Cami has...
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School was a blurry figment of daily monotony that could drive even the most stable person mad.
It was a wonder anyone ever escaped alive.
I almost didn't.
I was determined to make sure she survived, though.
Something had happened to Cami—something unspeakable that forced her to retreat into her mind and shut out the world.
She was a billowing tuft of sunshine in a broken cast—a fragile paper doll with the eyes carved out and shadows left to replace them.
She hasn't let me speak to her I'd gotten lost in her eyes; fuck.
Those damn eyes.
They haunted me even when I closed my own, following me down deep into the depths beneath my conscious thoughts.
She was there the night before in my dreams, laughing and talking with me like she had when I'd taken her to the lookout.
She was fiery and wild and argumentative and utterly uncaring about the way I dressed, the piercings, the attitude...
the scars, physical and otherwise.
She was unlike anyone I'd ever met—and maybe it was because some of our traumas matched like twin flames burning in a tunnel of malcontent, but she called to me in a way that had my grip on my surroundings fading and falling away.
We were in a deadly game that danced and sang to the tune of our pasts, and I didn't know what would happen once we reached the final note.
We had two classes together before lunch.
It didn't matter how hard I tried to pay attention to the class, though. My eyes were always on her.
Cheeks flushed and eyes wild, she drew mindless circles on her notebook with red ink—the lines so thick and stained it colored the page like scarlet blood against pale white skin.
Cami was staring off into space for the next class, hands clenched so hard her knuckles were white with the force of her stress.
Parker was staring holes into the side of my head, but I didn't care. I didn't give him a second thought as Cami's breathing increased and a lone tear slid down her cheek.
What was going on in that mind of hers, locked in a death-grip by her traumas and thoughts that must've been drowning her?
What had caused her so much pain, so much grief in her young life?
I knew the answer wasn't all that simple.
Most probably thought the same of me—what had happened to me that made me want to take my own life just a few short years ago?
The answer wasn't simple. It never was.
Sometimes, there were never really any answers, either.
Sometimes, the not knowing was knowing enough to make sure that what you were doing wasn't just for the pain of it all, but for the escape and the freedom that felt like flying when you finally fall asleep.
