"Alright mom, I'm leaving now!" Camilla calls out to her parents, her overnight bag on her shoulder as she skips down the stairs.
"Where is she going again?" Camilla's mom whispers to her dad, him responding with a shrug as he keeps his eyes on the football game on the tv. "Honey, can you come in here for a second?!" Her mom yells back to her, causing Camilla to exaggeratedly sigh and throw her head back, before placing the bag and her car keys down on the table and running back up the stairs to her parent's room.
"Yes, mother?"
"Where are you going again, honey?" Her mom asks sweetly, patting the bed, asking for Camilla to sit next to her. She glances at her dad, him giving her a smile and doing the same action as her mother.
Camilla squints her eyes at her parents, wondering why they were acting so suspicious. She walks to over to them, instead sitting at the end of the bed as she keeps her suspicious expression.
"Jessica's... what's going on guys? Why are you acting so weird?"
"Why don't you come sit over here, honey?" Camilla's dad tries to persuade her, patting the spot in between them with a hopeful smile on his face. "How about you guys tell me what you're hiding?"
Both her parents faces drop, finally dropping the act. "Listen.." Her dad begins with a sigh. "We're going on another.. vacation." Camilla scoffs, standing up off the bed and throwing her arms in the air. "Of course. Now it totally makes sense why you guys are acting like this."
"Cammy, this time is different. You can take care of yourself, and we can send you money every week to make sure of that." Camilla's mom tries to reassure her.
"Oh, so you guys can go and disappear for months like all the other vacations you took, and I'll be 'taken care of' because I'm being sent money? Wow, parents of the fucking year everybody." She says sarcastically, walking towards the door with her arms crossed.
"Hey, you stop right there young lady. You do not speak to us like that. We raised you better than that." Her dad says sternly, pointing a finger at her.
"You barely raised me at all. Remember? Because you took all those god damn all around the world vacations, and business trips, trying to forget you have a daughter back at home that needs you." "Now hold on, we didn't leave you completely alone, you had the nanny."
"The nanny?!" She scoffs, yelling loudly in disbelief. "Oh, you mean the stranger that took care of me everyday, and showed me more love than my own parents. Right."
"Why are you acting like a child?!" Her mom finally yelled back, Camilla laughing a humorless laugh. "Right, I'm always the fucking child. I'm going to Jess's. You guys won't be here when I come back tomorrow, I assume?"
Neither of her parents say a word, Camilla laughing again. "Right. See you whenever you decide to be parents again."
Camilla sighs, pulling up outside of her friends house. Montgomery had texted her he was sleeping at Bryce's, so she knew she wasn't going to be hearing from him for the night. She grabs her bag from the passenger seat, and walks towards the front door, knocking on it lightly and trying to stop the emotions from spilling out.
The door opens, a friendly familiar face greeting her with a hug. "How are you doing, Camilla? You look great sweetie." "I'm doing fine, Mrs. Atkins. Thank you for asking."
Jeff's mom takes her hand, gently pulling her inside and closing the door. "Jeff said you were staying the night. He spent the past couple of hours cleaning that messy room and trying to find stuff for you guys to eat and watch. Really had a whole bitch fit." His mom jokes, causing Camilla to laugh loudly.
"Mom, why would you tell her that!" Jeff yells from down the hall, both girls smirking at each other. "Have fun you two, don't let Jeff eat too much junk."
"No promises!" Jeff yells again from his room, both girls shaking their heads.
Camilla walks to Jeff's room, seeing indeed he did clean it up and had snacks and food waiting on his desk. Camilla whistles, looking around the room. Jeff turns around from the tv, an eyebrow raised at her and a smirk present on his face. "Honey, you gotta ask me out before you start whistling at me." Camilla rolls her eyes, putting her bag on the floor and plopping on the bed, Jeff's smug expression turning into a serious one.
He walks around the bed, plopping down next to her and placing the remote down.
"What's wrong, Cammy? Tell therapist Atkins." Camilla snickers, it being muffled a little from her head being in the pillows but Jeff could still hear it clearly. She searches for his hand, and he notices, putting his hand out to help her find and she grabs it. She pulls herself a little closer to him, then putting his hand on her head to let him know to start running his hand through her hair.
"My parents are going on another 'vacation'." She mutters, now Jeff being the one to whistle, making Camilla smirk, lifting her head off the pillow to look at him. "That taking me out before you whistle thing applies to me too Jeff."
He smiles, shoving her head back down onto the pillow causing her to laugh.
"You'll be fine this time, Cammy. You can stay over here anytime you'd like, and I'm sure Monty will be more than happy to sleepover yours anytime also. I promise you won't be alone." He tries to reassure her, actually helping making her feel a little better. She responds with a hum, loving the feeling of her best friend's hands massaging her head.
"Speaking of Monty, where is he tonight?" "At Bryce's." Camilla responds sleepily.
"Does he know you're sleeping over mines?" Camilla responds with a hum, telling him no. He could sense her falling asleep, so he quickly takes his hand off her head, wrapping his arms around her body and pulling her up to sit next to him, arms still wrapped around her. "Oh no you don't." "Jeffff." Camilla groans.
"Nope. You're not falling asleep just yet. You heard my mom, I spent a lot of time preparing for our best friend sleepover and you are not going to ruin it by falling asleep yet."
"But Jeffy, I'm tired." She pouts, looking up at him, but he doesn't give in. "We can rest when we're dead." He responds, turning his attention back to the tv and leaving one arm slumped over her shoulder, the other using the remote and navigating through movies for them to watch.
"You couldn't keep it up, Marcus, huh?" Montgomery teases, causing Marcus to jokingly shove him. "Yeah, it was because I was looking at Hannah and not Camilla." He jokes back, Montgomery surprisingly laughing right along as they continued walking down the hall, continuing their discussion on how bad Marcus and Hannah's date went.
Marcus had showed up hours late, being told if a girl would sit around and wait that long then she was down for anything. But Marcus was wrong of course. Hannah only stayed out of the kindness of her heart and high hopes that Marcus wasn't like every other guy at Liberty High.
But Marcus had gotten too close, and tried to grope Hannah. It made her uncomfortable and she yelled at him, causing him to embarrassingly fall out of the booth.
"But nah, nah man look. She wants everybody to think she's DTF, man, but she just likes the attention dude. Hannah Baker is a cocktease man. Plus, she's like batshit crazy, too." He continues. As he spoke, Hannah just so happened to be walking down the stairs as they passed, hearing every word. Montgomery and Marcus lock eyes with her, Montgomery dying of laughter and Marcus becoming quiet.
Montgomery continued talking about her, mentioning that she asked Camilla to go to the winter formal with them. "Dude, I think she lowkey might be obsessed with Cam. I mean who knows, since she goes both ways maybe I can get a threesome."
Marcus laughs, shaking his head. "Yeah that's never gonna happen. Hannah Baker. Hannah 'Blue Balls'." "Hannah 'Big Butt'." Montgomery adds on with a smirk, glancing back at Hannah walking the opposite way and checking out her butt.
"Speaking of big butts, how'd last night with that Amy girl go?" Marcus asks lowly, glancing around and making sure Camilla nor her friends were anywhere in sight.
Montgomery sighs, a smirk on his face as he recalls the night before. "Bro, Camilla has an amazing ass, but that Amy girl.. just wow. Bro she did this thing with her tongue, and it fucking blew my mind." He responds, putting his hands around his head and signifying a blowing up motion.
Marcus laughs, shaking his head. "So who you tell Cam you were staying with this time?"
"Bryce. An easy lie." He responds, a proud grin on his face as they make their way to the cafeteria.
Camilla and Zach sat close to each other at the table, their knees slightly touching as they sat deep in conversation. Camilla's arm was on the table, leaning her head onto her hand so she could get a good look at Zach and let him know her full attention was on him. Neither of them wanted to tell the other about their dollar valentine survey's, thinking it was best to keep it to themselves and not create awkward tension.
Zach had already filled her in on his crush on Hannah, and Camilla was trying her best to encourage him to go and talk to her, sensing his nervousness.
"Um, hey babe." Montgomery says, trying to cut their conversation short and pull Camilla closer to him as he sits down besides her. But she only turns back and gives him a kiss, before returning her attention to Zach and scooting a little closer to continue their conversation, both of them smirking at each other. The people at their table give each other curious glances before going back to their own conversations, but still eavesdropping.
"Zach, just go talk to her." "What if she doesn't like me or-or I freeze up while talking to her and she thinks I'm dumb." Camilla smiles softly at Zach, putting her hand on his to sooth him while looking him in the eyes, which catches the attention of everyone at the table and they now don't even try to look away.
"You're Zach Dempsey. The smartest, funniest, sweetest guy I know," Montgomery coughs a little to let her know he's still there, "besides Monty." Causing Montgomery and Zach to laugh as Camilla continues in a whisper. "If she doesn't like you, then that means that there is something wrong with her. Not you. Any girl would be lucky to have you." And with those words of encouragement, Zach got up and went over to Hannah to talk to her.
"What was that about baby?" Montgomery slowly pulls his girlfriend on his lap, wrapping his arms around her. "Your friend Zach needed help with talking to a girl." Camilla says nonchalantly. "And that girl being Hannah Baker?" Montgomery asks in disbelief. "Yup."
Montgomery and Camilla watched as it seemed like the conversation was going well at first. But then Camilla notices as Zach's body stiffens, something he only did when something was going wrong.
All of a sudden Hannah yells at him "leave me alone!", causing half the cafeteria including Zach's friends to look at them before Zach stood up, embarrassed. Camilla stood up quickly also, unwrapping Montgomery's arms from her to go and rescue her friend.
She didn't know what was happening in the conversation, but she did know Zach did not deserve to get yelled at like that.
"Babe, where are you going?" Montgomery calls after her, starting to stand up to follow her to make sure she doesn't try and start a fight with Hannah Baker.
As Camilla approaches and stands next to Zach, she could sense how angry he was. "This shit that happens to you.. I think some of it you bring on yourself." "C'mon Zach, let's go." Camilla tries to pull his arm, but Zach stays put. "Thanks for the insight genius." Hannah replies sarcastically. "I was just trying to be nice." Zach states.
"Yeah well you failed."
"Well fuck you." Zach finally says angrily before walking away.
Montgomery goes to follow his friend to make sure he's okay while Camilla stays, staring at Hannah feeling like she was going to kick her ass herself. She couldn't believe that Hannah talked to Zach like that.
"What?" Hannah asks with attitude, realizing Camilla was still standing there.
Justin comes up from behind Camilla, pulling her hand to bring her back to the table. "Just leave it alone, Cammy."
As Justin starts pulling Camilla away, she stops and turns around, looking at Hannah again. "You know what Hannah? You're a real fucking bitch. Zach was right. You do bring some of this shit on yourself, and I don't feel bad for you."
Hannah rolls her eyes as she looks down, trying to hold back tears caused by her friends hurtful words.
Camilla walks closer to her, slamming her hand loudly and threateningly on the table to make sure Hannah's attention was back on her. The whole cafeteria silencing as they all hoped to see a fight.
"And if you ever talk to Zach or any of my other friends like that again, I will end you myself. You got that?"
She intensely stares into Hannah's eyes to let her know she wasn't messing around, before walking away with Justin. Hannah felt embarrassed, looking around and seeing the whole cafeteria staring at her. Standing up and grabbing her things quickly, she glances once more at Camilla before leaving the cafeteria, as Camilla's friends laugh.
"Wow Cam, looks like Montgomery's rubbing off on you. You got the girl running scared." Bryce laughs, patting his friend's back proudly.