Chapter 19 Cam
Chapter 19
Cam
Fifteen Years Ago
W hen I was in private school, I loved spring break. I didn’t really have anything from school to miss back then, but now, I did. I had friends—well, I had Chloe. We stayed pretty close after soccer season was over, and, of course, I had Dusty.
I was counting down the days until school started, so I could see him.
“You seem distracted, Camille,” my mom said from the other side of the dining table. It was the last Saturday morning of the break. I’d go back to school on Monday—thank god. The two of us were eating breakfast together. It was the one day out of the entire year that we ever did so. My dad was working. Yup, on Saturday. He always seemed to find a reason to work on the weekends, yet he was always miraculously done when it was time for him and my mom to go to a fancy party with their fancy friends while I stayed home.
“Just tired,” I responded while I speared a strawberry off my plate. We had the same breakfast every Saturday and Sunday. My mom had a lot of stupid rules about food, so fruit, two eggs, and wheat toast it was. During the week, it was yogurt.
“Why could you possibly be tired?” she asked, but I knew she didn’t need an answer to chastise me for something—going to bed too late, drinking too much caffeine, snoozing my alarm because she read somewhere that actually made you more tired—so I stayed quiet and kept picking at my breakfast.
“Your father got the phone bill a few days ago,” Lillian said after a few beats. “He wanted me to ask you why you seem to be sending so many more texts.”
Of course, my dad couldn’t ask me that himself. It seemed like the novelty of having a daughter wore off for him a little more each year, and so his investment in our relationship wore off as well.
“Don’t we have unlimited texts?”
“That’s not the point. The point is that I’ve noticed your grades slipped a little this semester. At a public school,” she said with disgust. I got an A minus in AP Calculus. “And now apparently you’ve sent more than ten thousand texts per month since October. I’m seeing a pattern.”
I shrugged. “I send a lot of texts for soccer.”
My mother pursed her lips, like she didn’t believe me. “I certainly hope you’re not getting distracted, Camille. By anything…or anyone.” She raised her eyebrows, and the image of my mother banging on Dusty’s window flashed through my mind.
I’d never seen her like that before. After I got out of the car, she yanked me into the house by the top of my arm, and when the front door shut behind us, I expected her to yell.
She didn’t. She did something worse. She went deathly calm and said, “You are so disappointing.”
Later, I had to have a talk with both her and my father, where both of them were sure to tell me exactly how disappointing I was and how they didn’t know how I could be so reckless. They informed me I was to keep my distance (as if I could ever do that with Dusty), or else there’d be consequences, their threat vague enough to be darkly ominous. I almost wished for my mom to get angry again—to show she cared or something—but she didn’t. And my dad? Well, he looked bored and disgusted.
I’d never felt so small.
My mother’s voice broke through the memory. “You’re a senior. You need to have an unwavering eye on your future.”
“I do,” I said. I had an “unwavering eye” toward school being back in session.
“I hope so,” she said. “Because in order for us to continue supporting your decisions to live out this silly Meadowlark…fantasy, not to mention financing your life, we have standards that we expect you to meet.”
The closer I got to graduating, the more my parents liked to remind me of my trust fund. They dangled it in front of me like a carrot—like it was the only reason I would do anything. They didn’t know I would do anything just to feel like they were proud of me. I wanted my dad to read the paper I wrote for AP English that I left on his desk. I wanted my mom to take me dress shopping to go to a school dance. I wanted to eat breakfast with both of them on a Saturday and have a pleasant conversation about our favorite parts of the week and make fun plans for the weekend.
“I understand,” I said after a second.
“And I’m serious about that boy,” Lillian said. “You’re better than him, Camille—even if you don’t know how to act like it yet.”
My food turned to ash in my mouth.
After breakfast, I spent most of the day in my room watching movies. I texted Dusty, but he was at work. I hoped someday I wouldn’t have to spend so much time alone.