Admit It

1; memories turn into empty tears

Camila watched through the back of the car as the familiar town grew smaller behind her, her joyful memories at the place falling down her cheeks in the form of salty tears. Her mother's rambling words rattled in her ear, but she couldn't understand a thing. For days now, Mama had been trying to convince Camila that moving away from the trauma would help her, but no convincing would make her want to leave the last place her brother had ever lived.

Her mother tried to tell her how she had been through the same thing with her late husband, and how moving away from the city where it happened helped her a lot. Camila wanted to tell her mother how they were different people and how she wanted to stay there, but she didn't really tell much of anything to anyone these days.

Once Mama realized that Camila wasn't ever going to want to move, she turned to the reason that there was 'a great therapist' there who would 'help her'. Yeah right.

But after all of the bickering and arguing, at least from Mama's part, they ended up buying an apartment in a new town four hours from their old home. The past week had been filled with crying and packing boxes, and today was moving day.

The only thing that Camila saw good in this situation was being able to leave her old school. She knew the new school had a very good chance of being worse than this one, but it would take a lot. Before the accident, she was able to pass as a normal high schooler, but ever since she stopped talking people acted weird around her. They would stay away from her in the hallways, but that made sense. Who would want to talk to someone if they couldn't talk back?

But there was that one instance. She hated to think about it- the feeling of their hands on her, the cold wall against her back, the elastic around her wrists.

That was the only reason why Camila tolerated the move. Two months had passed since the incident, and out of those two months she had been to school one day. It was almost one and a half months after the incident, and with how shortly she stayed it could barely be considered one day. She had stalled in the parking lot for the first two hours, but as soon as she set foot in the door, students that she'd never even seen before piled around her like some sort of army, hands grabbing her arms and sympathetic words and questions covering her like a thick blanket. They knew she couldn't reply! So why would they even ask?

The army escorted her to her first two classes without leaving her side, but suddenly during lunch, the people broke up and two darkly dressed boys pushed their way to Camila's side. She could barely hear any of their screams as she sprinted as far away from them as possible.

But she'd rather be going to school with those two every day than be as far away from her brother as Mama was taking her.

Mama wouldn't even let her take any of Lucas's old guitars to their new apartment. 

"You'll never learn to grow from it if you keep him so close to you," Mama had said. "You'll become delusional, tricking yourself into thinking that he's still here. Just listen to me, and soon you'll be completely over this!"

She wouldn't even tell Camila where she had put the guitars, for all Camila knew she could've put them up online for 10x less than they were worth.

"Camila, stop putting your head out the window and get some sleep," her mother suddenly ordered. "Just close your eyes and we'll be there."

Camila rolled her eyes from where Mama couldn't see her in the backseat and kept staring out the window. She was tired, of course, she hadn't gotten a blink of sleep last night, but she didn't want to close her eyes for a second and miss seeing the graveyard where her brother lay for the last time.

Plus, she never wanted to do something just because Mama told her to.

Soon, the coffee shop where Camila and Lucas used to hang out when they needed to get time away from their mother passed by the car, but it wasn't the same coffee shop- Camila remembered that there were flowers in front. And then the grocery store parking lot that she and Lucas used to drive to late at night and push each other around in shopping carts passed, but the neon sign wasn't missing the 'E'. Every store seemed new, and nothing looked as it had been before.

Camila convinced herself she must've been making things up. Surely they would pass by the graveyard soon. She leaned her head over Mama's shoulder at the GPS, but she didn't recognize the blue lines and green background at all. The highway was completely different.

Camila's back met the chair with a thud, delicate fingers curling into a tight fist, and for one of many times she wished she could open her mouth and scream curses at her mother until her vocal cords split in two. She knew I wanted to see Lucas one last time, and she took a different route!

But speaking wasn't an option. At first, it really wasn't- the incident left Camila with a broken jaw and a rock-like cast, and the amount of sobbing she'd done for weeks afterward left her voice shot as well. But soon, she found comfort in silence, found safety in not speaking. No opportunity equaled no action, and by not speaking, she didn't give herself another chance to make a mistake like the one she'd made that night.

As the anger dissipated away from her mind, anxiety quickly came to take its place. Camila's arms wrapped around her like a restrictive cage as she thought about how Lucas was alone, how her sweet angel of a little brother had no one to visit him on the weekends and bring him a freshly picked daisy like she'd always done.

A tear silently fell down her cheek, bringing with it the last thoughts of her mind, fading into blackness.

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it's here... i'm gonna try to do updates like every other day bc these will be short chapters (but don't hold me to it)

sept 13, 2022 (so you can hold me accountable when i don't update LOL)