Maneuvering Landmines (Converted Camren)

7/14

Leaving Miami for Los Angeles was quite possibly the best decision she could have ever made for herself. She was far enough away from Lima and everyone and everything she came from that she finally felt herself mellow out. Within the first two months of college, she made new friends, met a girl she liked and found that living in LA suited her, despite the fact that it was occasionally terrifying.

"It's nice to have you back, friend," Dinah said. "Were the aliens who abducted you nice to you?"

Dinah and Normani were living in Berkeley, so they were only an hour away by plane. They hadn't visited each other yet, but they'd talked regularly since they all moved to California.

Lauren was confused. "What?" she asked blankly.

"Well, you're back to your old self. Kinda. I thought maybe you just got abducted by aliens and they left a pod person who looked like you behind."

"Whatever, Dinah."

But she kind of did feel like herself again.

Then Thanksgiving came around. She didn't want to go home for Thanksgiving-- it was so far away for just a long weekend, but it was important to her mother and so Lauren braved the airport and the crowds.

Her father picked her up. "We have to wait for your sister, her flight comes in an hour after yours."

"She's coming home?"

From what she heard from her mother, Normani and Dinah, Camila seemed pretty set on not coming home.

"You may be 18, but your sister isn't yet. She didn't have a choice."

Lauren nodded. "Oh."

They waited together and Lauren answered a few perfunctory questions about school and her life in LA. She had to withhold some of the details from him, like the belly piercing she got the first week she moved to LA and the fact she was dating a girl with a suspicious resemblance to her adopted sister, but she tried to be as honest as she could.

But trying to sort out what she could and could not tell her father was precisely why she didn't want to come home to Miami. She was just so tired of hiding and suppressing the truth. And while she would never tell anyone I'm in love with my adopted sister and I don't think I'll ever get over the fact I'll never get to be with her because of everything I did to her and I'm pretty sure she hates me anyway, now that she was in LA, she was finally living a life that felt more honest.

She wasn't one of those people who felt like she should be able to tell her parents everything-- she had boundaries for God's sake, and there were stories a person shouldn't tell her parents. But the things she felt she had to keep from her father, from both her parents, really, weren't risqué stories of adolescent debauchery, they were basic facts about her life like the fact that she was pretty sure she was always gay and now she was dating agirl. She didn't want to come back to Lima and start lying again-- it was just too hard after experiencing freedom.

But she loved her family as screwed up as it was, and if her mother wanted her home for Thanksgiving, she'd come home.

"There's your sister."

Lauren's eyes snapped up and she searched for Camila. It was hard at first-- Camila was a small figure trying to shove her way through the crowd, but finally Lauren spotted her.

"Hi Dad," Camila greeted, standing on tip toe to give him a kiss on the cheek when she finally reached them.

It was an eerie repeat of Lauren's greeting to him, though Lauren addressed him as 'Daddy,' and it hit Lauren again how similar they were in some respects because they'd grown up together. They were sisters, no matter how much Lauren wished they weren't and little things like the fact they both greeted their father the same way were proof they truly were related. She couldn't outrun that.