“Michael?”
The name formed on Lauren’s lips without thought. It was a name that had been lingering there for too long, poking at her curiosities and aggravating her worries.
The question hung in the air and the man’s eyes snapped to Lauren. It wasn’t a look of recognition on his face.
“Michael,” Lauren repeated uncertainly. “Your name. Is your name Michael?”
A muscle in the guy’s jaw jumped, his hands stiff at his sides. He looked to Camila, gaze too intense, and Lauren shifted over so she was shielding Camila again, even though the man in front of them was bigger and probably stronger than Lauren.
Camila was strangely silent. Lauren could hear her breathing against her neck, Camila’s hand fluttering in Lauren’s. Camila was usually so animated, always finding something to say. Now she was quiet and still. It wasn’t an encouraging sign.
Camila could talk about a discarded tin can for hours, but when she saw her brother – nothing.
“I’m not involved,” Camila’s brother finally said. His voice sounded harsh, rasping and odd, and Lauren held her ground in front of Camila. “I don’t know what is going on, but if you’ve come here for money, or—”
“We didn’t,” Lauren interrupted immediately. “We’re here for… for…”
“Answers,” Camila spoke up, moving so she was at Lauren’s side instead of protected behind her. Lauren didn’t like the change. She felt safer with Camila behind her. “For Lauren.”
Answers for Lauren. Lauren winced at the soft words.
They stood in a house where Camila may have once lived, in front of a member of her family. Not because Camila wanted to, not because Camila was ready, but because Lauren wanted it.
To satisfy Lauren’s curiosity, all of this.
Camila’s brother shook his head stiffly. “I won’t have anything to do with that. Don’t bring that here.”
“So you’re not…” Lauren trailed off. “Michael. You’re not him.”
This got Lauren a hard frown. “Ben Cabello. I had no relation to Michael. Whoever told you that, is mistaken.”
“The dead guy Ben?” Lauren asked stupidly. Ben, who was clearly not dead, looked confused.
“Ben,” Camila repeated, her tone distant and thoughtful. Lauren’s attention was immediately drawn to her. Camila looked warm and familiar in the foreign situation and Lauren squeezed her hand tighter. “I talk to Ben in the grass. He tells me about all the stars…” Camila shook his head, blinking hard. “You. You tell me about the stars.”
Ben swallowed thickly, taking a step back into the door frame. “This is unbelievable,” he breathed out.
Lauren had to agree.
“How are you here?” Ben asked, shaking his head. “How are you possibly… I thought you were gone. You were gone, Camila.”
Ben’s voice trailed off and the room was silent. Lauren expected Camila to say something insightful, even if it only made sense to her. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Instead, Camila said nothing.
Camila looked small. As lively as Camila usually was, her presence electrifying the air around her, she looked tiny and fragile here, like something Lauren should take very careful care of or it might shatter in her awkward hands, in Ben’s hands.
Camila didn’t look particularly comfortable with this man. Her brother.
Ben, who was not a body beneath the earth, not a gravestone, not the grass and the moss Camila talked to. Ben, who lived in a house not far from Lauren’s, with pictures of Camila on the wall.
Ben was clearly older than Camila, his hair short cropped and glasses balanced on his nose. At first glance they looked similar, familiar features on an unfamiliar face, but when Lauren looked closer she couldn’t say she saw the resemblance at all. Ben looked different in that he did not shine like Camila did. It was hard to see the similarity when the man before her was so ordinary.
It seemed wrong, incongruous. Lauren had been looking for something, but she was sure this wasn’t it.
Ben had been an entity in the grass and the stones and the sky. A friend of Camila’s. Someone Camila spoke of and Lauren listened. She had heard the name so many times.Ben is growing new friends and Ben likes my new shoes.
Now Ben was a man standing in front of them, someone with a stake in Camila’s life. A family member. Lauren had to fight down the irrational urge to claim ‘finders keepers,’ and run away with Camila to their deserted, fairytale island.
Suddenly, Ben strode across the room, right past Lauren and into Camila’s space. He cupped Camila’s cheek with a large hand, tilting Camila’s chin so she was forced to stare into Ben’s eyes. Ben’s touch wasn’t harsh but it wasn’t affectionate, either.
Something inside of Lauren clenched; a snarling, desperate thing.
“I thought you were gone, Camila. One night you just… I was trying to help you. I was going to help you and you just disappeared.”
“I don’t need help,” Camila responded immediately. Her voice was louder than Lauren was expecting, sure of herself and bold. The response was automatic and it felt practiced, like an argument they’d had so many times Camila knew her response without even having to think.
It was weird to think Camila had a history here.
Ben’s gaze darkened. “You’re so—God, Camila, you think you can just come here out of nowhere and…”
Camila made a soft noise of surprise as Ben’s fingers tightened around her jaw and suddenly Lauren found her own fingers wrapped crushingly around Ben’s wrist.
Ben’s brown eyes flicked to hers, surprised like he’d forgotten Lauren was there at all. Lauren stared back fiercely, tightening her grip until Ben released Camila, letting his hand drop with Lauren’s fingers still curled around it.
The two of them stood in silence. Slowly, Lauren pulled her hand away.
Ben made a hopeless, frustrated noise. “I suppose you should sit down.”
——-
They sat in the front room with the lamp, casting shadows through the window that no one would see.
Lauren sat close to Camila on a squeaky leather couch, trying to explain something she didn’t quite understand herself to someone she didn’t understand at all. The relationship she’d formed with Camila defied any words Lauren could form, string together in some clumsy semblance of an explanation for any of this.
Ben sat across from them, getting more tense the longer Lauren talked.
“This is insanity,” Ben said after Lauren had gone silent, no words left except she thought you’d know if we asked you. Ben kept glancing to Camila and away again like he didn’t even know where to look, adjusting his glasses like he might see things differently through them. “This is all insane. I have a lecture to give today, I was planning to do laundry, I rented a movie. My life is simple now, and… you…. I thought you were gone, Camila. You can’t just leave and then…” Ben’s gaze flicked to Lauren, quietly accusing. “And you, I still don’t understand who you are.”
“Lolo,” Camila provided helpfully.
Lauren said nothing because, really, she couldn’t think of a better way to describe herself than that. Lolo.
Ben sighed, pressing his fingers to his temple. “You’ve established that. Who is Lolo, besides someone you moved in with for a reason that is inconceivable to me? What is she—what are you doing here?”
Lauren shifted closer to Camila on the couch, bumping their shoulders together. She bit her lip, eyes flitting around the room nervously.
Lauren wanted to ask herself why they were here, too.
Maybe she’d wanted someone to look at Camila and assure Lauren that there really was nothing wrong with her, that Camila was okay, that it was okay, that they could be okay.
Maybe she’d wanted someone to tell her what to do. Maybe she’d wanted someone to tell her who Camila was. Someone to take all the questions away so everything was as simple as Lauren and Camila, together.
Lauren couldn’t help thinking things had been a lot simpler before she’d gone trying to fix it.
“I told you, Camila doesn’t remember,” Lauren spoke up, clearing her throat when her voice came out weak. “She needs—we need to know… a lot of things. Everything. Anything. Anything you can tell us. That’s why we’re here.”
Lauren nodded at her own words, stroking a finger over Camila’s wrist absently. She wasn’t sure exactly what to ask—explain Camila to me. Like anyone really could.
Lauren could see the framed family photos on the wall above Ben’s head. The tiny Camila there looked less and less like the one sitting next to her. Camila was humming a familiar tune softly, loud enough that Lauren knew it was for her to hear.
“Pay attention, Camila,” Ben said, his voice irritated now. He made a vague reaching motion for Camila but the couch was too far away from his chair, Ben’s hand hanging in the air. Lauren wasn’t ashamed to admit she was relieved, pressing closer against Camila’s side.
“The stars here are so pretty,” Camila said, tilting her head towards the ceiling like she could see them, her hair fluttering against Lauren’s cheek. “The first stars. All the other stars grew from here, covering the whole world, everything. Now they have the whole sky.”
“Hey,” Ben said, snapping his fingers in the air. “Don’t go all weird when I’m talking to you. I thought you were dead, Camila.”
Camila looked over, finally meeting Ben’s gaze. She tilted her head, and Lauren could tell she was analyzing, curious.
“Are you my friend?” Camila asked after a moment.
Lauren wondered too.
Was this man someone good? Lauren wasn’t sure. He appeared to be Camila’s brother, had been trying to help her with something. But he didn’t talk in a way that was affectionate; he didn’t reach out and hug Camila.
If Lauren had thought Camila was dead and miraculously gotten her back, Lauren didn’t think she’d ever let go of her again. She shivered just at the thought of it, stomach sick.
Ben just looked angry. “I’m your brother. What’s the matter with you?”
“No,” Camila said, sounding thoughtful. “I don’t know you.”
Ben shook his head, leaning back. He looked lost, pale and dizzy like Lauren felt. He also looked annoyed, which Lauren couldn’t understand at all.
“I used to know you,” Camila said. Her voice was a little hollow, her gaze vacant the way it got. “The world before this one. I knew you there.”
“I don’t understand,” Ben said, face blank.
Camila offered no explanation, as Camila rarely did, and Ben shifted his gaze to Lauren, expectant.
It took a few moments of uncomfortable silence before Lauren realized Ben expected answers from her.
Camila spoke her own language, one that twisted around itself, dropped off in places and picked up in others and could leave you dizzy and wondering what exactly a spider web had to do with hair care and why it made Camila so happy.
Lauren could remember, a lifetime ago, meeting Camila outside her house and not understanding a word from her lips, like they really were speaking separate languages. She’d learned since then. She’d become fluent in Camila’s language, began to like it more than the one everyone else spoke.
As Ben stared at them blankly, Lauren realized it was a language he didn’t understand.
When Lauren offered him no simple translation Ben sighed, removing his glasses to rub a tired hand over his eyes. “I warned you that you you’d fry your brain. You really did. I warned you about Michael. You never did listen to me.”
“Who is he?” Lauren asked, the first question of many, even though she was having a hard time grasping them all now. She should ask, she thought. They were here now, Camila had brought her here because Lauren wanted it, and she should ask them now.
“You really didn’t know him?” Ben raised his eyebrow in a familiar motion. “And Camila hasn’t told you about him? You live together, don’t you?”
“She doesn’t tell me much.” It was a lie, Lauren knew it the moment the words escaped her lips. Camila told her a lot, just not in the way other people told each other things.
“Michael,” Ben said. A name to put to a face Lauren had never seen. “He got my sister involved in things she didn’t understand.” Camila huffed. “And Camila left with him like eight months ago. To have her fairytale romance, fairytale life. I told her it didn’t work that way.”
The name meant nothing.
Michael, who was apparently a person and not a lamppost Camila had grown fond of. A person who Camila had wanted to be with? A tiny, ugly part of Lauren shuddered at that and she beat it down, annoyed with herself.
It wasn’t the time for her own problems, Lauren reminded herself severely, bumping her knee against Camila’s. She’d already screwed up enough by making it about herself – answers for Lauren – and Camila deserved more than that.
Lauren cleared her throat, blindly grasping for information she didn’t know she even wanted. “So Michael is…”
“Was,” Ben said. “He died a month after Camila left with him. You really didn’t know.”
Lauren shook her head, tongue frozen and clumsy in her mouth. In the paradox that was Camila’s world, somehow it was Ben, the tombstone, who was alive, and Michael, who was coming on Monday, who was dead.
Camila was gazing at her manicured nails, tapping rhythms against the material of her jeans. She didn’t look as upset as Lauren would have expected her to be at the news. Despite her confusion, Lauren was relieved.
Maybe Camila didn’t understand it, what death meant, losing someone like they’d never been there at all. Maybe Camila had known Michael was dead all along, and Lauren just hadn’t asked her the right questions to find out.
Maybe Lauren should have been asking Camila the questions all along.
“I thought you died with him,” Ben said. Camila didn’t look up but Ben kept talking anyway, words falling over each other in a rush to get out. “I thought you would have been with him. If you’d been alive, I thought you’d swallow your pride and come home. You didn’t.”
“I did,” Camila said. Her hand moved to Lauren’s chest, an affectionate touch over her heart. “I am home.”
Ben looked away. “You’re right,” he said stiffly. “Your home isn’t here anymore. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why either of you are here.”
“Because you’re her family,” Lauren snapped, fists clenching in her lap.
Camila was so accepting of all of this, quiet and undisturbed when Ben didn’t reach out and accept her like he should have. Lauren felt angrier for it. One of them had to be upset. Camila deserved for one of them to be upset.
How could this man, Camila’s brother, abandon her so easily? Let her go like she’d never belonged at all, let her live where she had, alone. Lauren didn’t have any siblings, but she knew if she did, she wouldn’t treat them like this guy treated Camila.
“I’m not her anything,” Ben said. Lauren was stuck in an uncomfortable place between wanting to yell at Ben for discarding his own sister and wanting to agree with him, that Ben was nothing to Camila. “Not anymore. She made her bed, let her lay in it.”
Lauren seethed. “She didn’t have a bed! She slept on the floor of an abandoned building. She was squatting when I met her. She doesn’t talk in a way people understand. I thought she had no one, but you’re her—”
“She chose that,” Ben snapped. He didn’t look sympathetic. “She had a place to live, she had a family, even if it was just us. She chose to leave—you chose to leave, Camila. You chose that life.”
“I like it,” Camila said. Camila looked serene, unafraid now. She was smiling at Lauren. “I like living with Lauren. I don’t need help.”
Ben hung his head, rubbing the back of his neck like it ached.
“She’s my soul mate,” Camila added, watching Ben closely as Ben stared at nothing. When Ben didn’t react Camila turned to Lauren, eyes honest. “You’re my soul mate.”
Lauren offered her a small smile in return. “Soul mates,” she said softly. A promise, maybe.
Ben scoffed and Lauren turned to him. “We’re soul mates,” she proclaimed loudly, in case Ben hadn’t heard well enough.
“You think you know anything?” Ben said, his face twisting into an ugly thing. “I was here for her. I was her only family left. And she left to have her little storybook romance with some delinquent she didn’t even know, who promised her the sky.” Ben snorted. “Look how well that worked out. She’s crazier than before.”
Lauren didn’t think Ben meant ‘crazy’ in the same affectionate, gentle way the word connected to Camila in her head.
“She talks to you in the graveyard,” Lauren said meanly, wanting to hurt Ben with anything she could, make the man react like Lauren thought he should have. “A crumbling grave. She calls it Ben. She tells it everything.”
“He talks to me in a graveyard? You think that’s normal?” Ben’s features pulled tight, his voice hard with some mix of emotions Lauren didn’t really understand. “I was trying to get her help, psychiatric evaluation, medication. Mom and Dad were gone and she was so distant and I was just… I was trying to help her. She left. She chose to leave. It was what she wanted. Now she has it.”
What Camila had wanted.
Even then, before Camila had been who she was now, she’s wanted and needed and done things without thought for consequences. She didn’t worry, Camila just chose the things she wanted and went with them even if the thing she wanted was to stick her hand into the fire of a burning stove.
And she didn’t regret it. Camila’s hip rubbed against Lauren’s as they sat close on the couch of a home where Camila had once lived, and Lauren knew Camila didn’t regret it.
Even when Camila wasn’t getting what she needed, wanted, what she deserved, Camila was pleased with the world in a way Lauren never had been, in a way a lot of people wouldn’t be even if they got everything they wanted in life.
If Camila didn’t regret it, why should Lauren regret it for her?
In a cold rush of emptiness, like a weight being lifted, her chest and her vision light, Lauren was realizing it didn’t really matter. Camila’s family, Ben or Michael or anyone else she had once known, they weren’t there now.
“You’re right. You’re not her family,” Lauren said after a moment. “I’m her family.”
Camila was watching her, silent, and Lauren reached out blindly, Camila grabbing her hand in air. “You’re mine,” Lauren added, just in case Camila hadn’t already been sure. “You’re my family, too.”
“Yes,” Camila said simply. “I know.”
“Yeah,” Lauren said, a smile pulling at her lips. “Thought you might. You’re always waiting for me to catch up.”
Always waiting. Waiting for Lauren, most of the time. At least she was catching on. She felt like she was catching on.
Ben was watching them both with an unreadable expression. “Just go,” she said finally. “Just ask your questions and leave. I don’t want you here. Either of you.”
Lauren did have questions. There was a part of her that wanted to know everything about Camila, her parents’ names and her first word, what had happened to her parents and why she had needed ‘help.’ She wanted to know useless things and important things and she wanted to know that it was okay, that they could be okay.
But Ben couldn’t give her what she wanted.
Lauren wanted the answers from Camila. Answers Camila could give her, answers Camila knew herself, answers Camila wanted her to know, was offering to her because she wanted to share them with Lauren.
Maybe Ben could have given her answers, but they weren’t what Lauren needed.
This man didn’t know Camila. He may have been Camila’s brother, but he’d never really met her. Lauren knew Camila, Camila knew herself. That was it. The two of them. There had never been anyone else and there wasn’t now.
“No. You don’t have anything we need,” Lauren said. A moment passed in silence and Lauren glanced to Camila, suddenly unsure. Ben was, after all, Camila’s brother, even if it was Lauren who had brought them here, Lauren who had wanted this. “Um, I mean, does he?”
Ben looked up, face tight and unreadable. Camila was watching him curiously, tilting her head to see from a new direction. Lauren watched and wondered if Camila saw anything there, anything familiar. Or, if like Lauren, she only saw a stranger.
“You’re a shadow,” Camila decreed after awhile, her eyes dark and thoughtful. She said it as if she wasn’t quite sure if that was good or bad.
It made sense. To Lauren it made sense. Ben was the shadow. Ben was the shadow that Camila had been watching in the window, for months perhaps. Even standing right in front of them, he was still just a shadow.
Ben didn’t look like he understood at all. “What happened to you? You hardly remember me and you’re acting… wrong. What’s wrong with you?”
Wrong, because everyone thought she was.
The expression on Ben’s face was pitying, like Camila was a small, broken thing.
Camila was far from broken. She was magic and passion and joy and curiously. She was everything Lauren wanted to be, everything Lauren hadn’t known she wanted to be. Everything Lauren wanted to hold, to keep, to be with.
Camila was humming to herself and Ben turned to Lauren, looking for answers there. “What’s wrong with her?”
This time, Lauren knew the answer. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
This time, Lauren could believe it.
She was sure there was something wrong with Ben, but there wasn’t anything wrong with Camila.
“Thanks,” Lauren said after a moment. Ben looked puzzled but Lauren didn’t feel the need to elaborate.
Camila stood first. She tugged on Lauren’s hand once, indicating for Lauren to follow. She didn’t look upset as she walked to the door, waiting for Lauren. Ben looked after her, not saying anything.
Camila had no attachment to this place, nothing here she wanted to keep. Ben wasn’t her family, this wasn’t her home.
Lauren stepped forward, past the man, past the shadow, past him and towards Camila.
Lauren turned as Camila opened the door, catching a last glance of Ben – who looked nothing like Camila, only like a stranger – his head hung low beneath family photos of two-dimensional people.
Camila didn’t say goodbye, but she didn’t say good morning either.
The door clicked shut and Camila curled a strand of Lauren’s hair in her fingers, tugging. Lauren’s body felt warm and comfortable. They’d go home together because that was where Camila belonged, where they belonged. Whoever Camila was before, whoever her family was, things had changed. There was no going back. Camila didn’t want to go back.
As they walked back towards home, Lauren looked back at the house. It was dark, and she couldn’t see any shadows through the window.