off camera.

chapter eleven

The thing is, it's not that she'd ever wanted to do that stuff with anybody else. The idea of being so touchy with someone like Dinah or Normani or Ally almost grosses her out, but with Lauren, it's the complete opposite. Her grip on the older girl tightens as she thinks about how much she's truly missed her, and how glad she is to have her back in her life.

2012

Camila doesn't know what's worse; having Lauren in her life, as toxic as she was, or losing her completely. Right now, it feels like the latter is worse, and she wants nothing more than to pick up the phone, call her and apologise for losing it. A few times, she'd almost done it.

She knows she can't. Not if she wants to be happy.

Lauren had been sucking the life out of her, and Camila needs to stick to her promise; she can't see her, talk to her, or even think about her. She needs to act like Lauren Jauregui doesn't exist, like she's never existed, but she finds herself looking back at old pictures, playing old videos of the two of them when they were kids, even if it makes her feel worse. She sees little Lauren, all bright eyed and smiling, and she wishes she could jump into the video just to warn her against what's going to happen, in the hopes that it would change things.

She knows there's nothing she can do. Lauren has made her choices, she's chosen her path, and Camila had chosen another. They don't fit in each other's lives anymore, and trying to keep Lauren there just because of who she used to be has proven to be toxic. Camila can't do it anymore; she looks at her, and all she is is a ghastly reminder that she lost her best friend a long time ago. The girl with the bright eyes and the soft smiles is dead and gone and she's never coming back. All that's left is an empty, toxic shell.

So, she spends her summer alone, working on her YouTube videos. She doesn't care that people at school laughed at her for it; it's something she's really enjoying, and the people who aren't trolls from her school are actually enjoying her videos. If she's being honest, when people were mocking her, she'd made a few dummy accounts and subscribed to herself, just so she didn't look like a total loser, but now real people are subscribing and telling her that they love the songs she writes, that she has a good voice. Some people compliment her videos where she sits down and talks, and she gets enough comments nowadays to do little Q and A videos.

(Her favourite comments are from a girl named Michelle, no last name given. They're always so sweet and encouraging, but since the start of August, she hadn't commented, and Camila can't understand why.)

She's a little sad when she starts school again and can't work on as many videos; she'd been posting twice weekly, but she'd had to drop it down to a single video on Fridays. Her viewers are okay with it, and she's noticed that the views on her videos are in the thousands, rather than the hundreds.

She's been back at school for three days when she realises she hasn't seen Lauren anywhere. Admittedly, seeing Lauren was the main reason she'd been dreading going back to school, but she's nowhere to be found. She's heard some rumours, and they're scaring her a little, things like Lauren had been arrested, that she'd died of a drug overdose, that she ran away from home, and it all scares Camila a little too much. For the first time since their argument, Camila pushes away her no Lauren policy and checks up on her social medias, but every single account is completely wiped and dead, except for her Instagram. She's inactive, but there's one post left up; a picture of the two of them.

She doesn't know what it means, and she doesn't know why Lauren would keep that picture up. She'd made it clear that she was also done with Camila. The friendship was over, so if she was going to delete all of her posts, why wouldn't she take that one down, too? It almost makes her want to check up on her, to go over to the Jauregui house and ask Clara or Mike where she is, but she brushes that thought off. She's not Lauren's friend anymore, so it shouldn't matter to her where she is.