Bully or friend (Camren)

Chapter fifteen

The guilt was going to kill her. She couldn't stop repeating it in her head, she couldn't shake the poisonous words she had spat out, she couldn't believe how she stepped into the role of a monster and fitted it so well and familiarly. Time had crept slowly forwards. A month felt so long when she was missing someone terribly.

Every weekend, even some weekdays, Lauren had drunk and drunk and drunk until she passed out and woke up with her head screaming in agony or swimming in her own puke. She was aware that this behaviour was self-destructive and she was too young to even start drinking but it was her only escape. There was a one-way exit from the misery she had created and that exit was the entrance to a bar with the devil as the bartender. What had worried her the most was Camila hadn't attended school ever since the dreaded day. She would linger around her locker longer than normal to see if she'd catch her, she would come up with excuses to go into Camila's classes to see if she was in and she would even walk pass Camila's house and wait to see if she would leave for school. She had considered the fact she had moved school, it would make sense but she hoped she didn't. Even if she couldn't talk, touch or acknowledge Camila, Lauren still wanted to see her, regardless if it was for a split-second. She feared the brunette fully leaving her life but she feared the brunette being in her life and it was always the fear that ruined Lauren.

For Lauren's mother, she had noticed an entire shift in her daughter. First, it was the absence of Camila and the replacement of new friends. She never got to meet them but Lauren would reference them from time to time. She felt as though her daughter was falling into the wrong crowd and she had no idea what to do to prevent it. She tried to encourage her friendship with Camila but every time she even dared mention her daughter's longest best friend, she turned into a whirlwind of rage. Her motherly instincts took over and had instantly picked up on the fact Lauren and Camila had fallen out. She knew it was inevitable. Every pair of friends have their feuds, Clara just hoped that they would make up soon before Lauren fell into a hole of peer pressure and toxic, fake friends. Although there was a hopeful, yet naive, part of her that always believed that their friendship would survive no matter what and that part still thrived now.

Early on a Saturday morning, Clara had made pancakes for her husband before he went to work because she knew his hangover would be worse than normal. She also knew the smell of the delicious breakfast would resurrect Lauren from her tomb upstairs. Once Michael had left, Lauren stumbled into the kitchen with messy hair and a grouchy mood her mother could instantly sense. Delicately, she poured Lauren a glass of orange juice and slid two painkillers to her. She knew her daughter had been out later than she should have been last night. Her only response to her Clara's kindness was a weak smile before she picked up pancakes from the middle of the table and drowned them in syrup. Once she indulged on the breakfast, Clara seated herself opposite with a warm mug clenched in her fist and an intense look staring at Lauren.

"What?" Lauren asked confusingly with her mouth full of chewed pancakes.

"Something's happened," she replied, her face staying neutral. "I want to know, Laur, I want to know what's happened with Camila."

"It's nothing," the youngling dismissed, returning back to her feast whilst keeping her head lowered.

"I'm not a fool, darling," Clara scoffed smugly, sipping the warm liquid from her mug but her face gradually dropped into a serious expression. "I want to help you, Lauren, I'm... so worried about you."

Within hearing those words, Lauren's heart broke. To hear the desperation in her mother's tone made her realise that she wasn't only hurting herself but she was hurting the people around her. As she placed down the fork on her plate and shamefully stared into her mother's glazed eyes, she just nodded. That's all she could do for the time being.