Denial

Chapter 5

NASH'S POV

I couldn't tell if Cam's, 'Where are you going?' was accusatory or if he was actally genuinely curious, so I cautiously replied, "Um, uh, I'm just taking my little sister to school." 

Cam dropped his cigarette and put it out under his worn black converse before asking, "Can I come with you?" I replied, "Sure," as cooly as possible before mentally freaking out. Just be cool, I repeated to myself over and over to try to calm myself down. Don't screw this up. Don't be weird. Oh my god. Don't screw this up.

I pretended to be extremely focused on driving to make the unbearably awkward silence a little more bearable and waited for Cam to say something, anything, to ease the tension. At a stoplight I clicked on the radio to at least hear something making noise, but some god awful rap song was on and I was too busy pretending to be busy with driving again to change it. Plus I didn't know anything about Cam, what if that was his favorite song? What if I screwed this up even more?

The song came to an end a few seconds later, thank God. IV Sweatpants by Childish Gambino came on and it was difficult to contain my horribly white dance moves and rapping from countless hours of jamming to oscure rap. Cam laughed and quietly said, "Oh my god this is my biggest guilty pleasure..." "Seriously?!" I replied, amazed that someone else that shared my guilty rap obsession actually existed . Cam turned it up on full blast and we both belted out the so-terrible-they're-so-good lyrics.

After the song ended and we were still dancing horribly, we both laughed and Cam said, "Now that was worth missing the rest of Chemistry over. This is the longest 'batroom break' I've ever taken, I bet Mrs. Wilson is beginning to suspect something." I cackled remembering all the times I had a 'batroom break' to get some last minute cramming in before all my tests in Chemistry. "I used the bathroom break excuse at least twice every Chemistry class last year to study or get away from Mrs. Wilson for like five minutes," I laughed, "I was soooo bad at Chemistry, I barely passed." We laughed for a few minutes still trying to recover from the hilarity of our dance moves. "You actually passed Chemistry?! How?! I have a 56!!" Cam cackled.

Then Cam asked the question I was hoping he would avoid, "Why do you have to take your sister to school?" I tried to mask the hurt look on my face before brushing off the question. "Oh, my mom's sick, she got food poisoning the other night from some sketchy sushi place and she can't even move without throwing up," I lied. "That sucks," Cameron said, but I could tell he didn't believe me at all.

As we pulled into my quiet neighborhood I forgot to slow down for a speed bump, and the car jolted as I ran over it going 40. Cam's bag flew out of his lap and a few books and all of his binders fell out onto his feet. Stop screwing this up, I repeated to myself over and over in my head. He quickly picked up his binders and a book and shoved them into his black bag.

He bent down to pick up the last book that fell, and I saw it was my favorite, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. "Oh my god! That's my favorite book! Have you gotten to the twist yet?" I exclaimed. "What? There's a twist?! I didn't even know there was a twist! I'm almost done with it, now I need to finish it!" Cam said excitedly. "It's probably like the greatest twist of all time," I responded. "Oh my god I have to finish it today. I would be probably be completely ignoring you and reading it right now if I didn't get car sick when I read," Cam laughed as we pulled up in front of my house. "Be right back," I hurriedly said as I hopped out of the car and jogged up to my house.

I walked inside and saw my mom passed out asleep on the couch in the living room still wearing a cocktail dress and heels from wherever she went last night, and pulled a blanket over her and took her shoes off. I walked into my little sister Skylynn's room and turned on the light and sang, "WAAAAAKE UUUUP!" in the most abnoxious voice possible. She rubbed her eyes and looked up at me. "NAAAASHHHH!!!" she screamed with way more energy than you'd expect someone who'd just woken up to have. "It's time for schooool! We're going to schoooool!" I said in my most enthusiastic talking-to-a-little-kid voice.