mute ➺ camren

Chapter Eleven

Lauren woke up at around 5am. Camila wasn't there. Lauren felt extremely disorientated as she sat up, lifting the unusual blue blanket from her body, wondering whose it was, and why it had appeared on top of her. She tapped the space bar on her laptop, but it had run out of battery. She wondered if Camila had been back all night, and if she'd seen what was on it. Lauren pushed the blanket off of her legs, revealing her memory box on the other side of her, still in the same position it was when she had put it there. The room looked like no one had been here since Lauren got home. But that didn't explain how the blanket appeared. She pushed herself up properly and ran a hand through her hair, sending it tumbling down her back in waves. She exhaled and picked up her laptop, closing it and putting it under the other pillow, then closed her memory box and got up off her bed, heading to her closet and putting it back where she kept it. Lauren knew she needed to shower before school, since she didn't last night having passed out beforehand, but she knew she couldn't shower on the girls floor, not when Ally was sleeping at the other end of the hall. She'd wake up. But there was also no way she was showering in the boys bathroom, so she had to get all the way downstairs without waking anybody. She grabbed a new set of clothes from her drawers and closet, and carefully opened the trap door, lowering herself down the stairs, then gently letting the door down above her.

Lauren managed to get downstairs without disturbing anyone. Not a surprise, she had mastered the art of silence. But the question of Camila's whereabouts remained. Her bed had looked untouched, and she hadn't noticed any signs of her anywhere. As Lauren hopped down the last few steps into the dining room, she heard the flush of a toilet and the bathroom door open. She panicked, and ran into the kitchen, hiding behind the wall, and peeking ever so slightly around it into the dining room to see who it was. By no surprise, it was Camila, and by the looks of her, she hadn't slept all night. The smaller girl dragged her seemingly lifeless body up the stairs with her arms wrapped around her stomach. She was probably expecting Lauren to be in bed when she got upstairs. Good job Lauren couldn't explain herself. Trying to shake off the awkwardness of the entire situation, Lauren headed to the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her. She turned the shower on and got the temperature, then took off yesterdays clothes, and got in the shower.

-

Camila walked back up the stairs. She had spent most of the night sat up on the roof with a tatty old notebook. She had a lot of feelings, feelings about her family, her old life, those perfect few days between Sofia being born and them both being snatched away from home. Feelings about her sister, a care so deep she never could have imagined. She was very maternal, especially when it came to her sister, but even spending time with Sofia and Victoria, she felt a need to protect them from anything bad. Feelings about herself, wondering if she was ever going to be good enough, considering her background, and poor upbringing, considering she had absolutely no control over anything in her life. Apart from one thing. Feelings about her secrets, about the one thing she was controlling. Feelings about people. Writing songs had been her way of expressing her feelings since as long as she could remember. She used to make up songs about her and her sister, the butterfly queens. But then it became more serious, and it's been the same since. As she headed back to her room, she heard the downstairs bathroom door close, the one she had just been in. Despite how extremely exhausted she was, she was worried that someone had been there while she was in the bathroom, so she went back downstairs.

The bathroom door remained closed for about half an hour, maybe forty minutes, but Camila waited, sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest. She knew that whoever came out of the bathroom eventually and questioned why she was up at this time, she could just say she couldn't sleep. Camila switched the TV on, and muted the sound, and just stared at the screen, some program about trees. The shower had been running for the entire time Camila sat alone. Who could be showering at this time? She wondered to herself. When the shower shut off, no one came out of the bathroom for a further ten minutes. All Camila could hear was some shuffling sounds. Camila jumped a little when the bathroom door opened, and the silhouette stood frozen in the door frame for a while.
"Lauren?" Camila asked, already knowing it was her just by her body frame. Lauren shut off the bathroom light and walked forward, letting the glow of the TV light up her face. She had a small towel in her hand, squeezing the water out of her hair. Lauren gave an apologetic smile once she had recovered from the frighten of Camila's presence.
"I heard someone go in there after me, I wanted to see who it was." Camila explained herself, before leaning on her hands to push herself up off the couch, but Lauren took a step forward to stop her. Camila stopped and sat back down again, at the far end of the couch. Lauren wrapped the towel over her shoulders and let her hair fall down onto it. She then sat down at the other end of the couch, and let her eyes wander from Camila, to the TV screen. Both of them sat in silence watching a man mime words about leaves. Until Camila spoke.
"I put that blanket over you, in case you were wondering." She confessed. Lauren nodded. "I didn't touch your stuff, I actually pretended it wasn't even there." She further confessed. Lauren looked over to the girl, who seemed really uncomfortable. She held her stare until Camila looked at her back. Lauren gave a 'thank you' smile. Camila looked away again. Lauren tried to think of a way to ask Camila where she was all night, she assumed she hadn't just been in the bathroom. She couldn't think of any hand motions that would say what she needed to. So she got up, and headed over to the computer against the wall behind the couch. She took a sheet of paper from the printer and picked up a pen from the pot on the desk. She sat back down and leaned forward, resting on the coffee table.