Our Deepest Scars

Chapter 33

Without realizing that she had spent an entire minute simply looking at the food in front of her, Camila picked up the spoon. The three girls next to her grinned simultaneously in delight. Maybe last night had just been a tiny bump in the road, rather than the hill that they had expected it to be.

However, to their dismay, Camila let out a long sigh and let the spoon clatter back down again. "I can't do it," she breathed, gazing up anxiously to Dinah, who was sat beside her.

Dinah replied quietly, determined to impress upon the smaller girl that she had to eat something. "Yes you can. You've done it before, Walz. Nothing bad happened, did it? Bad things only happen when you don't eat." Her tone was solacing, telling the brunette the truth. Although Dinah was younger than Camila, she often felt like the elder out of the two. The Latina was just so...breakable. And Dinah felt a fierce protectiveness over her that she couldn't quite explain.

Camila, for the second time, lifted the spoon again. It had only one Cheerio on the rounded metal surface, but she managed to bring it up to her mouth. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she ate the spoonful slowly. The other girls could see the pain on the brunette's face as she swallowed the cereal, but they knew she had to finish the majority of the bowl.

"Keep going, Mila," Normani whispered, seeing a tear spill over onto Camila's cheek. Dinah reached to brush it away as the small girl gathered some more cereal onto her spoon and placed it into her mouth.

After a few more spoonfuls she stopped, her hands coming up to cover her face.

"No, Mila—" Ally said softly, leaning over to embrace the younger girl. She could feel Camila's body trembling.

"I can't do anymore," the Latina let out shakily, allowing the bowl to fall to the ground and spill its contents all over the floor. It didn't matter. Nothing felt as if it mattered anymore.

"You did good, Walz," Dinah said carefully, her heart breaking at the sight of Camila crying softly before her. "We're proud of you for at least eating something." She stopped, pulling the small girl close to her body and whispering hesitantly in her ear. "Is it starting again? Does it feel the same as before?"

Camila nodded after a long pause, and then shook her head. "It never really went away," she croaked, "I just got better at ignoring it. Lauren helped me to ignore it," she said, a sharp gasp escaping her lips. "I-I can't...I don't want to feel like this again." Her voice was utterly broken, making all three of the other girls tear up.

Before, when she had actually eaten something, it had been mainly for others, but at least partially for herself. Now she just felt the same draining numbness that she had become so accustomed to, and when she had eaten the cereal it had been completely for the benefit of the girls. Not for herself. She didn't care enough to do it for herself. It scared her that Lauren had so much power over her, but she realized that this would ultimately have happened anyway. This was her coping mechanism; her way of dealing with the problems life aimed at her. And since Camila's life seemed to think that she was a target in a bizarre form of target practice, it aimed a lot of problems at her. This was her way of solving them.

"Mila?" Ally asked, after a long period of silence. Camila simply stared blankly at the floor, watching the milk from the discarded bowl spread slowly into cracks and crevices.

She said nothing.

~

Several weeks passed, and Lauren felt herself slipping further and further away from her girlfriend. She still talked to the other girls, who treated her with a cold caution due to how badly she was affecting her smaller girlfriend, but she felt a sense of overwhelming loneliness creeping in upon her.