Up from a past rooted in pain, I rise
—maya angelou
▬▬▬ ♫ : ▬▬▬
Buzzcut Season - Lorde
▬▬▬ ✦ ▬▬▬
CAMERON
The sky was melting into a hazy shade of lilac as we drove back. I was at ease with the comfortable silence that hovered between us, and Audrey seemed to be as well. I snuck a glance at her. At my girlfriend.
Half asleep, she rested her cheek against the window, her knees pulled up to her chest and all bundled up snugly in her hoodie. She looked so peaceful. So calm. And so freaking adorable. I couldn't help the warmth that was spreading in my chest.
I switched the radio on, testing the chances to stumble upon a song that would complement the romantic feel of the day. And I think I succeeded. I lost myself in the tune for a while.
We ride the bus with the knees pulled in
People should see how we're living
My uncontrallable eyes returned to her again. Followed the shape of her face in the evening glow. The curve of her rose-pink lips. Her petite nose. The golden hue her eyes glinted with in the twilight, kissed by the shadow of her eyelashes.
Shut my eyes to the song that plays
Sometimes this has a hot, sweet taste
Just looking at her like this felt like all I wanted. All I needed. She was beauty. My beauty.
I had to draw my gaze off her after a while though, and pay at least some attention to the road in front. Even though the streets were nearly completely empty. As if we really were the only two people in this ghost town, the way it felt.
"Cam," she drawled in a sweet, sleepy voice, when the song ended.
"Hmm?"
"Can I drive?"
I blinked, not expecting that. "I don't know, can you?"
She stretched. "Well, I don't have an actual license," she squeezed out of herself, "but my sister taught me ages ago. So yeah, I can."
I raised my eyebrows, not exactly convinced. "What? You don't believe me?"
I chuckled in response. "Are you feeling this dauntless cause of the skateboarding?"
"Dauntless? Oh, come on. It's just driving. Besides, there're no cars." That I had to agree with. But I still didn't slow down.
"Who's the killjoy now, huh?" She threw her final card at me with a smirk but a quiet tone. Then turned away, thinking she'd lost this game of convincing me.
I thought so too until I found myself stopping the car. "Okay then, princesa. You can show off."
"Wait, are you sure? Cause I wasn't insisting." Somehow, I was. After all, what's the worst that could happen? The streets were empty. And I couldn't live hiding under my fear forever.
"It's okay," I stepped out of the car and we switched seats.
She hadn't lied. She did know how to drive. And pretty well too, may I remark. She was confident behind the wheel. Something I wish I had.
"See? It's no big deal," she chirped, content and airy.
"Don't go so fast," I couldn't hold back the disquiet in my tone. "Why don't you just get the license?"
"Uhhhhh. . . it's one of those things you constantly plan on doing but never really get to it, you know what I mean?" She turned her head at me directly, her attention totally slipping from the road.
I glanced forward. My pulse leaped.
"Watch out!" I yelled, grabbing hold of the wheel desperately and pulling us to the roadside. The heavy sound of our breathing filled the car.
It had been a cyclist. Or more like a suicidal madman. Sure, the streets were empty but that didn't mean he had to cycle through the middle of the road, like he freaking owned it. I caught a glimpse of him waving an apologetic hand at us as he disappeared in the rearview mirror, just like that.
For him, it was that easy.
For me, it wasn't.
My heart hammered into my ribcage turbulently—desperate to spring out of it. With shaky hands, I threw myself out of the car. I sank to my knees and collapsed right there, on the grassy road verge, leaning against some tree trunk. My legs felt weak and unstable. My breath was rapid and irregular. My head was spinning, this nauseating dizziness building up inside of me. I felt my throat clogging up, my eyes burning.
No. Please not this again.
I was out of control. I couldn't calm myself down. I tried to breathe, to just breathe, slowly and deeply, like all of those blasted therapists had told me to in the past. I gasped for it.
Breathe. Come on!!! Breathe, you idiot!
It wasn't working. No matter how hard I tried, no air would make it through my untraversable windpipe.
I clenched my eyes shut. It was a deja vu. The memory flashed into my mind in pieces— in shards. In broken, sharp shards of glass that jabbed mercilessly right into my heart, in turn.
My mother's solid but loving tone of voice was one of those stinging pieces. The flaring auburn of her hair another. The rest poured uncontrollably: The thunderous crash. The pain of the impact. The warmness of blood trickling down my icy skin. The feeling of panic and fear grinding at my guts. The blaring sirens, the blinding white of the hospital walls, the bleeping of the life support machine, the way it got more and more irregular until. . .
It was cascading back at me all over again, like an avalanche. That crushing feeling of remorse. Of guilt.
It was a drunk driver that hit us. Not my fault, the therapists would insist again and again. Not my fault at all.
But it was my fault. I knew it.
If my whiny twelve-year-old self wouldn't have been arguing with her over a stupid field trip she wasn't allowing me to go to, she would've been more alert towards the traffic. Maybe even alert enough to have spotted a drunk driver. And to have reacted.
"It was my fault," I noticed my mouth render over and over, my head shaking feverishly.
It could have been an hour that passed, or maybe a single minute when I finally heard someone from the outside world. A world that seemed so distant to me right then.
There were two hands shaking my shoulders. Two small hands. I opened my eyes.
Audrey was kneeling before me. She was blurry. Too blurry. I blinked a few times. Better.
Her eyes reflected the biggest concern and unrest I've ever seen in her. I suddenly wanted to erase anything and everything that dared to cause this distress to my girl. Then I realized.
It was me.
Her mouth was moving and I forced myself to focus on the sounds coming out of it. She was saying my name. Over and over again. "Cameron! Can you hear me?!"
I nodded. "Listen to me. Everything's okay. You're okay. Nothing's your fault." Her tone was softer this time. She was stroking my back soothingly. "Shhh, Cam. Shhh."
"Relax. Just breathe." Just breathe. That phrase that didn't manage to help me for years, coming out from all the specialists.
But for some reason, when coming out of her dulcet mouth, it hit me different. It worked. I let the air into my lungs. I relaxed.
She was holding my head in her hands and staring right into me when I came back. I pulled her close to me, burying my face into her chestnut hair, breathing in her habitual floral fragrance. Her small body was in my arms, and that was all I wanted to care and think about. I wanted to stay like this for hours, for days, but she pulled back. "How are you feeling?"
"Better." I eventually remembered how to speak again, soon realizing the heck of the explanation that I owed to her.
"Sorry I didn't tell you about it earlier," I started.
"About what?"
"This. . .they called it a mild form of PTSD. . .but I-. . . It's been a long time since the last one. I thought they were over for good."
There was earnestness and kindness in the way her supportive eyes and hands held mine.
"I got into a car accident when I was twelve. The car had me and my mother in it. Only I survived."
The stiff pause that followed was uncomfortable in every way possible. "I'm so sorry," her words were so quiet I could as well have imagined them.
I was realizing how this was needed not so much by her but by me. I needed to let go of this secret. It was killing me from the inside. I needed somebody to tell it to.
"My dad moved us to New York straight after. I'd been suffering from these panic attacks for years but. . .I've never really told anyone the real reason. The whole truth."
I took a breath and dived headfirst, wanting to lay it out plain. "I had been arguing with her in that car, Audrey. Over an idiotic trip I wanted to go to. She was distracted from the road because of that. There was the drunk driver that hit us but I know that if it weren't for me. . .she may have been alive today," my last clause came out quietly—weightlessly, as if it wasn't me who said it.
She was reflective for some seconds. "No, Cam. You can't possibly be doing this to yourself. You can't—"
"But that's the truth, Audrey. I'm the reason for my mother's death—"
"No no no no no. No. Don't say that. You're not right." Shaking my head, I began to reply but she silenced me with serious but benign words.
"Listen to me," she gripped my head in her hands, forcing me to face her. "I won't let you do this to yourself. I know what this is. You've made yourself believe something untrue a long time ago, and created this guilt-trip that has been. . .that has been destroying you for how many years?"
If only she knew how right she was. Destroying. That was the word.
"Please just believe me. It's not your fault, Cameron. You had no control over that driver's car. You have to stop hurting yourself. You have to let go."
All those years, all those appointments, all those therapists who tried to assure me of that had all been in vain. Yet some mystic way, when Audrey spoke, my ears listened. And not only my ears. My heart. My brain.
"Promise me you'll try?"
It was something in her eyes. A feeling of pain. It was a look I wanted to wipe off her face forever. I couldn't stand it. She wasn't going to feel pain because of me. No freaking way.
So I had to try. For me. For her.
"I promise you," the words were weighty ones, but they fell out of my mouth like feathers.
Our foreheads pressed together and we sat like that for a while, listening to each other's heartbeats, drowning in silence. If it weren't for the darkening sky above us, I wouldn't have been conscious of the fact that time had been moving, after all. That it hadn't stopped.
"You'll be a great psychologist," I told her when we stood up. I watched my comment shatter the shell of distress from her face, and reveal the happy look I adored seeing on her so much. The only true look for her.
I was going to make sure for it to always stay on her beautiful face.
▬▬▬ ✦ ▬▬▬
hi hello! so i know this was a little sad but literally, the most exciting parts of this book will start now.
u ready? ;)
please tap the star if you liked this chapter :)