Caught (Camren)

•25•

Before you read this, let me say something lol. A couple people commented on chapter 24 that they were confused, and that's exactly the way I intended to write it. If you remember in the very first chapter of the story, it starts with a present day account from Camila introducing herself and the story. You're literally reading the story from Camila's POV and seeing every incident just as she sees it. She was on drugs in the last chapter and it's explained later in this chapter that they were extremely dangerous drugs, which is why they affected everyone so much (not a spoiler, by the way). Obviously being on drugs, and especially the amount she consumed, nothing's going to be clear to her. She says that "everything happened in flashes," so you're reading it in the flashes that she's seeing it in. Everything is explained in this chapter, so don't worry, just realize that it was meant to be confusing in the last chapter because that's how Camila was seeing it lol. Enjoy!

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My head was pounding. My throat was dry. My back was flat on a hard surface. I slowly opened my eyes, the fluorescent lighting above nearly blinding me.

"Lauren..." I mumbled.

My voice came out just barely above a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again.

"Lauren," I said louder.

"I don't know who Lauren is, but you won't find her here," an unfamiliar voice told me from across the room.

I turned over on my side in an attempt to stand up, bearing all my weight on my wrist to push myself up and crying out in pain. I went to grab it as a natural reflex and felt a hard shell surrounding it. It was a cast. I sat up and focused on the sound in the corner of the room, adjusting my eyes until the light wasn't so harsh and I could see a small, middle aged woman propped up on the only bed in the room. She wore an orange jump suit and seemed to be covered head to toe in tattoos, her frizzy dark hair keeping the few tear drop drawings under her eye out of view. I looked around frantically, trying to make sense of where I was. The door that only locked from the outside, the tile floors and white walls, it all reminded me of a place I'd only ever seen in a dream. I was in jail.

"What...what happened?" I asked.

"I don't fucking know," the woman said impatiently. "I don't even know your name, kid."

"Camila," I told her.

"I don't care either."

"You don't know anything?" I pressed, ignoring her comment.

"I only know what I overheard the cops saying when they brought you in."

I stood up from the ground and wiped my hands on my pants, relieved to find that I was still in my own clothes.

"Well, tell me what you know," I begged.

"Who's Lauren?" she questioned instead.

"My girlfriend."

"Figures," she scoffed. "She's not here, I can tell you that."

"Listen," I said calmly. "I don't have time for games right now. I have no idea what happened or why I'm in jail or where my girlfriend is, so can you please just cut me some slack? I'm seventeen years old and scared out of my mind right now."

She sat forward on the bed and hung her legs over the side, shrugging her shoulders to depict a less guarded attitude.

"I asked the feds who you were because I've been here for three days and, you know, I want to know who's coming in and out of here," she explained. "Of course, they wouldn't tell me much besides the fact that you were pretty fucked up on some sort of synthetic drug, as if I couldn't see that for myself. As for your wrist and your girl, I don't know what happened, and I don't care."