Hearing Camila’s voice was the feeling of being home. When she sang along to Lauren’s guitar, when Lauren played along to Camila’s words, when their voices created harmony for them alone, it felt like freedom. When Camila spoke to Lauren, words that made no sense or too much, it was comfortable, comforting. Camila hummed when she was happy and murmured annoyed things when she was upset.
After Camila had been so quiet for days, after she’d refused to speak at all, just hearing her voice brought Lauren the sense that all was right with the world. Lauren liked Camila’s voice.
Lauren woke to Camila’s voice.
She lay in bed, eyes still shut, half asleep and just listening. The rise and fall of Camila’s tone, pauses and drawn out sounds, thoughtful humming.
The sound wasn’t that of whispers in Lauren’s ear, like it used to be when they shared a bed. It wasn’t the melodious sound of Camila breaking into song. The longer Lauren listened, she realized it wasn’t the familiar tone Camila took with the paintings she picked up conversation with, either.
Eyes snapping open, Lauren sat up in bed with a jolt. Through her bedroom door, left a crack open, Lauren could hear Camila speaking. She couldn’t hear the words, but something about Camila’s tone was not quite right.
“Camz?” she called, already stepping out of bed. Camila did not call back, didn’t show up smiling at Lauren’s door, and Lauren quickly went to find her.
To Lauren’s relief, Camila had not invited a stranger into the house. She was sitting in the kitchen by herself, a bow on her head already.
She was talking into the phone.
“Yes,” Camila was saying. “To grow guitars, of course. Do they not have trees where you live? That must be very sad.”
Lauren gaped.
Camila’s face brightened immediately when she saw Lauren. “Good morning, Lolo!” she said right into the phone.
Lauren stood, speechless, and watched as Camila responded to something that had been said. She furrowed her eyebrows, looking a bit lost.
After a moment, she reached out and offered the phone to Lauren. “The phone wants to talk to you.”
Slowly, Lauren took the telephone from Camila’s fingers. On the display was her mother’s name.
“Lauren!” she could hear Clara saying without even holding the phone up to her ear. “What is wrong with that girl!”
Lauren hung up.
“The phone should mind her own business,” Lauren said at Camila’s curious look. “Was she bothering you?”
Clara had been calling annoyingly often in the last week, after she’d met Camila. She seemed only to call to ask about her, about what Lauren was ‘doing’ with her, like Lauren had some control over what Camila chose to do.
“I don’t think she likes me,” Camila said. Her tone was observant, not sounding hurt. Lauren still bristled.
Her mother didn’t like Camila, not that she had any right. She kept asking what was wrongwith Camila, asking who she was, asking why she was, how she was, asking.
Lauren didn’t have answers. She didn’t even understand the questions, really.
Where Camila came from, how she got there, Clara seemed to think they – she – needed to know everything. Lauren didn’t need to know anything. She just needed Camila to have gotten there and to be there still.
Clara had even talked about searching missing persons reports.
Lauren shuddered, reaching out to pat Camila’s hair. She didn’t like the idea.
If Camila was missing it meant someone was missing her. If someone was missing her, they were looking, they wanted her back.
Camila was for Lauren and Lauren didn’t want anyone else to have Camila back. Lauren needed her. Camila had said she was Lauren’s and it was only fair.
She traced her fingers down Camila’s bare neck, apologetic. “I’m sorry she’s like that. She’s always like that. She should like you—you’re awesome.”
“And pretty and cute,” Camila agreed, staring at the ceiling with faked disinterest. Lauren’s lips twitched upward. She didn’t disagree.
Camila had made breakfast. Two bowls of cereal were sitting on the kitchen table. When Lauren checked, the cats that usually waited on the porch had been fed as well and were joyfully digging through the entire ten pound bag of cat food Camila had given them.
Silly affection swelled in Lauren’s chest. She sat at the table, kicking Camila’s ankle lightly when Camila busied herself with sorting marshmallows from her cereal into color groups. Camila murmured and nudged Lauren’s foot with her own.
Halfway through their meal the phone started to ring again.
“My God,” Lauren muttered. “Can’t she leave us alone?”
Camila looked half disturbed and half curious at the noise. Sighing, Lauren got up to unplug the phone from the wall, silencing it. She could still hear the irritating ringing from the phones in the rest of the house, itching at the back of her mind, annoying and uncomfortable.
Camila looked less disturbed by the noise than she usually would have, maybe because Lauren was more disturbed by it.
“Why did you answer the phone, before?” Lauren asked after a moment. She’d never seen Camila talk on the phone. She certainly didn’t seem to like them.
“It was making noise,” Camila explained from behind a mouthful of blue and pink marshmallows. “You were asleep.”
“Because it’s early. It’s too early to be awake,” Lauren frowned. “Why were you up, anyway?”
Worry tingled in Lauren’s head, uncertainty that was only worsened by the constant ringing of the phone, Clara’s questions on the other end. She shifted in her seat, fighting the irrational urge to hold on to Camila like Camila used to hold on to her.
“It’s noon,” Camila explained, flicking a piece of cereal that was not a marshmallow at Lauren’s forehead.
Lauren simply nodded, because, while Camila had been sticking to a more consistent schedule lately, she was still free to decide what day and time it was if she wanted to. If Camila wanted it to be noon, Lauren didn’t mind.
Then she looked at the clock.
“Oh crap,” said Lauren. “It’s noon.”
——-
Lauren’s boss was not pleased. Really, Lauren didn’t know why the man expected more out of her.
Normani was even less pleased at Lauren being late, mostly because she’d had to actually serve a customer.
“And then,” she said, waving a finger at Lauren without actually looking at her, her nose still buried in her magazine, “then he said he’d ordered decaf! Decaf. Who does that?”
“Uh huh,” said Lauren, staring out the open door of the cafe. The sky was blue and empty today. If Camila went chasing the stars, Lauren wondered how long she’d be gone.
Lauren was nervous without Camila beside her. Camila’s presence was always calming. When she wasn’t there to calm her, Lauren worried. She’d never worried so much before she met Camila. She’d never had anything to lose before she met Camila.
Lauren didn’t like having Camila out of her sight in case Camila never came back into it.
Clara’s abrupt entrance into her life was no help. She had so many questions, suffocating expectation, and Lauren didn’t have the answers.
She wasn’t sure what Camila was thinking lately either, her odd insistence that Lauren make a different friend.
“Lauren,” Normani said, her tone annoyed. “I had to make two coffees. Two. For the same guy!”
Camila hadn’t wandered in a long time. She hadn’t left for more than a day. She had a bed, she had a home, her cat curled up in the laundry basket and Lauren waiting for her. She still chased the stars, still sat on the roof, but she always came back, she was always Lauren’s.
Lauren didn’t know what she’d do if that was changing.
“Lauren!” Normani said, hitting her with her magazine. “We’re complaining about customers here.”
“Yeah.” Lauren shook the thoughts from her head. “Customers. Yeah. Bane of my existence. Starbucks is down the street. No, we don’t have sugar free sweetener, but there’s dirt in the planter.”
Normani looked unimpressed. She smoothed the cover of her magazine from its encounter with Lauren’s arm. “What’s up with you? That wasn’t nearly impassioned enough.”
Lauren sighed and stared at her hands.
Somehow, Normani interpreted this as an invitation to start a conversation about her personal life.
“Wait,” she said, grinning. “It’s a guy, right?”
Lauren gave her a dubious look. “No.”
“I knew it would happen one day,” Normani went on, as apparently ‘no’ actually meant ‘Yes, ask me about it!’ Lauren scoffed but Normani was undeterred. “Don’t look at me like that, I know these things. Besides, you’ve been missing work a lot lately, Jauregui. And when you do come, your mind is somewhere else.”
Lauren started playing with her apron.
“Shut up,” she muttered halfheartedly.
“You met someone.” Normani laughed. “You. You hardly ever leave that house. You won’t even go out to lunch with me!”
Lauren grumbled but said nothing. It was true, after all.
“What’s he like?” Normani asked, leaning her hip against the counter and looking more interested in Lauren than she had in the last year they’d worked together. “Hot?”
“Insane,” Lauren responded, thinking of Camila. Sitting on the roof with Camila, trying to climb a tree just to be among the leaves. Camila and her charm, her mystique, her ability to be completely baffling and comforting at the same time. “Aggravating. Confusing. Magic. Perfect.”
“No one is perfect,” Normani disagreed.
“Camila is.”
Normani raised an eyebrow. “Camila? Like the girls’ name Camila?”
Lauren shook her head, suppressing an incredulous laugh. “Believe me, that’s the least of my problems.”
“Oh.” Normani frowned, cocking her head. She looked like she was considering putting down her magazine but didn’t. “So, what’s the problem then?”
Sometimes Lauren wondered that too.
“She’s not your average girl.” Camila was a lot of things. Average certainly wasn’t one of them.
“What’s wrong with her?” Normani asked.
Lauren sighed.
——-
Clara had said it, Normani had. Neither of them knew Camila, but still, it planted the thought in Lauren’s head and she couldn’t get rid of it.
Was there really something wrong with Camila? Everyone else seemed to think so.
Camila was different. Lauren liked different, she’d never liked normal and so it made sense. Camila was special, she thought in new ways and talked in odd rhythms. She wasn’t easy to understand and she didn’t understand things most people might.
Lauren understood Camila. Camila understood her. It was just different.
Lauren had never really thought of there being something wrong with Camila, not in the way her mother said the words. She thought Camila was sort of crazy, still thought that. Butwrong, like maybe there was something missing in Camila’s head, Lauren had always seen Camila as having too much rather than not enough. She figured that Camila had a head of so many thoughts and ideas and words and songs that she just couldn’t always find the right ones, got confused or distracted. Lauren had never considered that maybe there weren’t enough thoughts there to being with.
She wondered if all along when she was seeing different, magic, special, if anyone else would have just seen someone smaller than themselves, below them.
Lauren felt more inadequate herself, when Camila understood so much, so many different things, and Lauren didn’t. The stars never spoke to Lauren, she couldn’t see the trees growing in the garden.
How could something be wrong with Camila when it was everyone else seeing the world in flat, lifeless grays, and Camila was seeing it through a kaleidoscope?
If there was something wrong with any of them, something missing, something small, Lauren thought it had to be her.
But Clara’s questions still echoed in Lauren’s head, her doubts, louder and louder. Why and where and how.
The thought lingered.
——-
Camila was standing under the garage light, gazing up into its yellow glow when Lauren drove up.
“Hello, light,” she greeted as Lauren got out of the car. “Hello, stars. Hello, sky. Hello, monsters and aliens and pretty green leaf.”
Camila reached up to touch a leaf of ivy and Lauren moved behind her, wrapping her hand around Camila’s arm to catch her wandering attention. “Hello, Camila.”
Camila tilted her head back. “Hello, Lauren.”
A smile graced Lauren’s lips, the first one since she’d last seen Camila. Camila’s eyes were large and curious in the dying light, dancing and happy. She didn’t look far away like she usually did before she went wandering. She didn’t look like she was leaving Lauren. Lauren gave a sigh of relief.
“You didn’t leave,” she mumbled, grabbing Camila’s hand, standing under the light with her.
“Why would I go?” Camila wondered, eyes flicking from the beloved leaf of ivy to Lauren’s face. “Are we going somewhere?”
They were still a ‘we,’ Lauren comforted herself. Maybe Camila’s insistence that Lauren make another friend had been nothing, a whim.
Camila was smiling at her now, a look that was quietly knowing, though Lauren wasn’t sure what exactly Camila knew. Swinging Lauren’s hand in hers, Camila only said, “Don’t worry.”
Lauren did worry. She worried and she wondered. Lauren wondered if wherever Camila had come from, if one day she’d simply gotten in a wandering mood, followed the stars, and never come back.
Lauren wondered if someone like herself was waiting, sitting in their cold, Camila-less house and counting the seconds, counting the cobwebs, counting the raindrops. Waiting for Camila.
“I wonder where you were, you know, before you came here,” Lauren said, tucking Camila’s hair behind her ear in the shadowed light.
Camila tilted her head into Lauren’s touch, making a small sound like a purring cat. She didn’t say anything and Lauren didn’t expect her to. When Lauren pulled her hand away, though, Camila met her eyes.
“I was somewhere else,” she said, leaning towards Lauren, probably in hopes Lauren would return the touch. “Now I’m here.”
It should have been a good enough answer. It used to be. Camila was there, with Lauren, and it should have been good enough.
Clara’s questions echoed in Lauren’s head, all the curious things she didn’t understand.
“Lolo.” Camila tapped Lauren’s arm to get her attention. She looked at Lauren with honest, open eyes. “Now I’m here.”
“I know you are,” Lauren said. “I just don’t know where you were before.”
Camila sighed. She looked entirely unimpressed with Lauren and her preoccupation. Turning her attention back to the ivy, Camila whispered conspiring things to it. Lauren was sure she heard her name in there somewhere, probably accompanied by a dramatic roll of Camila’s eyes.
Shaking her head, Lauren tugged on Camila’s hand. “Let’s go inside. Which movie do you want tonight?”
“Oh,” said Camila, not looking away from the ivy. “I’m not supposed to.”
Lauren blinked. “You’re not supposed to what?”
“Yes,” agreed Camila.
That hadn’t changed, Lauren mused. Camila was still as frustrating, as confusing, and as mysterious as always. Lauren still felt foolishly affectionate of her, the way Camila was, even when the questions were lingering in her head.
“Let’s go inside anyway,” she said, resting her hand on Camila’s back to lead her away from the plants she was growing overly fond of.
Camila allowed herself to be led docilely, but when they reached the front door she stopped short.
“I’m not supposed to be in the house,” Camila said, looking apprehensive. “The phone will be upset.”
“The phone,” Lauren repeated. “You answered the phone again?”
“We’re going to be friends,” Camila said, sounded assured of herself even though the phone had apparently kicked her out of the house.
Lauren’s mother had kicked her out of the house.
Lauren groaned. “Oh God, Camz,” she said, cupping Camila’s face with her hands. “We have to talk about this thing where you keep speaking to my mother, it’s just not good. She’s the witch, remember?”
If Lauren could just remember that Clara was the witch for herself, things would have been a lot easier.
“She could be a good witch,” Camila insisted, ever the optimist. She nuzzled Lauren’s hand on her cheek and Lauren stepped back.
“She’s not good,” she said. A fire inside her was quietly fuming. She shouldn’t have expected more from her, but still, still, Lauren hated the thought of Clara getting to Camila, getting anywhere near Camila.
A cold wind fluttered past and Camila shivered. She wasn’t wearing shoes, her shoulders bare in a black tank top. Lauren resisted the urge to pull Camila into a warming hug and instead took her hand, tugging her towards the door again.
Camila looked uncertain. “It’s not my house. The phone said, I think it’s not… Are we lost, Lolo?”
Lauren stomach swirled, cold and dizzying. She did wonder, sometimes, if Camila was lost.
Even if she was, she was still home.
“This is your house,” Lauren told her firmly, opening the door for them. The light was on in the hall, reflecting warmly, a contrast to the night. “Your home. It’s always going to be yours, and no one has the right to kick you out. You belong here, with me, okay?”
As much as Lauren worried and wondered about Camila, she knew that would always be true.
With an odd hesitance, Camila took Lauren’s hand. She allowed herself to be led over the threshold and Lauren squeezed her fingers, knowing this was right, if nothing else. “I don’t know where you came from, but I know you belong here.”