All These Years | Camren

You're ten

Bumping into Camila happens on rare occasions. When you're 10, you see her sitting down in one of your kitchen's bar stools with both of her knees scrapped and dripping blood.

You just came here to grab a bottle of water from the fridge and now you're face to face with her. Her hair is shorter, her teeth gap is smaller. Her eyebrows are fuller and you don't know how you notice this but, she has more eyelashes than before. As soon as your eyes meet, you look the other way and practically sprint towards the fridge. You stall for a bit and you overhear Sinu tell Camila, "You can't keep riding that skateboard so recklessly! Today you scrapped your knees, but tomorrow you can break your arm or your leg!" You hear Camila let out a small whine when Sinu tries to clean up her knees with a small cloth towel.

"I'm going to get the first aid kit so I can disinfect this properly," Sinu walks away in search for the first aid kit and you know it's time for you to leave so you shut the refrigerator door and you turn around to walk away but she's already staring at you.

"Your hair is longer," she let's out and if you hadn't already thought about this, it would of taken you longer to answer, but you just did, so you immediately reply back,

"Yours is shorter."

You look at eachother and then, instead of walking away, letting it go, being a normal, egocentric, 10 year old, you decide to continue the conversation,

"I'm guessing you're not that good?" You ask as you point to the broken skateboard that's laying on the kitchen barstool next to Camila.

"I tried jumping down some stairs... the landing wasn't very graceful."

"Could've fooled me," you reply with a small chuckle and she instantly smiles wide, as if almost hearing you laugh makes her forget she's got both of her knees damaged.

"Do you ride?" She says gesturing to the broken skateboard next to her.

"I can't even ride a bike," you say as you lean on the wall thats behind you, keeping your body facing Camila.

"What do you mean? You have four bikes in the storage room!"

You raise an eyebrow at her, and she realizes that it's kind of sketchy that she knows exactly what you have in the storage room, "Mom needed my help moving some boxes while she was cleaning it last week."

You give her a small nod in response, "Yeah, dad was going to teach us last summer but he had to go to the company because of ...an emergency of some sort and well...yeah..." you feel weird talking about this and it's getting kind of hard to look at Camila so you drink a bit of your water as a distraction.

"Oh, well maybe I-"

"Honey, the alcohol is going to sting a little but it's necessary for-"

You don't listen to the last part of what Sinu says as she walks into the kitchen. As soon as you heard her coming your way, your paranoid instinct kicked in and you leave the room without looking at Camila. You couldn't look at her. Because, even though you're 10, you know she was about to offer to teach you how to ride a bike and everything in you wanted to say yes, but it's not about what you want. So you go to your dance room, you chug down the water and you release everything the only way you know how. Dancing.

You're still 10 when you see Camila again. But this time, she doesn't see you. You're with Alfred, he's driving you to school. Usually you're knocked out during the drive, you just get in the backseat of the car and you fall asleep instantly. But today you're wide awake because the school is taking your class to the Aquarium of the Pacific and you're extremely excited. You're fascinated by the Ocean and having the opportunity to see so many sea creatures on a day makes it feel like a day of freedom.

As soon as you take the first turn out of your house entrance, you see her. She's alone in the bus stop, with headphones on, moving her head to the beat of the music she's probably listening to. The street light is right there so you've stoped for a bit. You look at Alfred and he is not paying attention, just like Chris who currently looks like he's dead asleep. You cant help yourself and look at her. She has her hair all messy and it's practically covering her face, but you can still tell she's bitting her lip , maybe a nervous habit. She's wearing a bright yellow hoodie that says 'sunshine' with a small sun at the top left side of it...and you realize that... you had the exact same one. But you hate how yellow looks on you, so you never wore it, you're pretty sure you tossed it in the bin of clothes that is usually donated to charity-...wait...Sinu is in charge of the bin.

It hits you like an avalanche. That's your hoodie.

Yellow has always been your least favorite color. It reminds you of the minions, which annoy you. It also grabs a lot of attention and you usually like to lay low. Camila does look like sunshine itself and there's something weird going on in the pit of your stomach as you acknowledge that she's wearing your clothes.

It's weird because your emotions go everywhere in just a minute. From panic to curios, from interested to surprised, from thoughtful to, now, irritated.

You're irritated because some girl, who's abnormally tall and has blonde hair and an annoying big grin on her face, walks behind Camila and shakes her a bit just to startle her. Camila seems to let out a small squeek and then, when she sees who it is , she just starts laughing and opens her arms for a hug. You don't look away, not for a second, and the car starts moving away just as Camila and the girl pull back from the hug. They're laughing hysterically and theres only one thing on your mind.

You kind of like the color yellow.