She always knows before it starts.
It's in the air, heavy and thick in her lungs as she runs lines with Lucy in one of the cabanas.
It's in the sky too, ominous clouds that gather above, alien objects in shades of grey amidst the all-too-familiar blue.
It's the smell of rain that Camille both loves and hates the most.
Her mother makes promises that she can't keep, tells stories that aren't quite true, has feelings that Camille just can't understand.
"No-one can," says her mother, who talks so often of all the pain she's ever felt, and how it bubbles and boils inside of her.
"But up there," she says to her daughter, on worn wooden boards and under bright and shining lights, all her pain and anguish and torment is nothing,
"It all just melts away."
…
"She's an actress," Camille's father, Christian, explains. But that's never what Camille's mother says.
Rose Porter was a performer, an artist, a gateway between reality and imagination.
She used to silence crowds with the purity of her voice.
She is simultaneously unreal and all-too real.
She was a star, brighter than any other.
And she loves Camille.
She says it quite often.
"She loves you in all the ways she possibly can," says her father.
Yet another thing Camille can't quite understand.
...
Camille is taken to a drama class at age 8. But the real drama kicks off the night before.
"She's talented!" Her mother shouts from somewhere in the tiny house, possibly the kitchen, due to the echo.
It's hard to tell from behind Camille's closed door.
"She's a kid!" Her Dad replies, not angry, but frustrated. Her Dad is always frustrated.
He says it's because of work, but Camille's fairly certain that's a lie. Her Mom laughs now, but it's different, cold somehow, which is not at all how a laugh should sound.
"It's just a bit of fun!" she says now, light and high, as though the words were stuck in her throat.
"Yes, but will you treat it that way?"
It continues for sometime. Enough time for Camille to sing through her entire Annie CD, volume loud and voice clear.
She falls asleep before they come to tuck her in.
The class itself, is fun, they play games and sing a little, and dance about to a ridiculous song about dragons.
Some parents stay to watch, talking and laughing away in a corner of the little Community Center, sipping coffee and tapping their feet to the music.
Camille's father drops her off, which was not at all the plan, and afterwards she goes to her friend Sophie's house, even though she'd rather go home and tell her mother all about her class.
She likes Sophie's house, but that wasn't the plan either.
"I'll take you," her mother had said, "and watch and be proud, and show all those gossipy hens who the true talent in this town is."
And then her mother would call Camille her 'Golden Star,' and they would go for ice-cream.
But her mother has a headache, and has taken to her bed, and her father has work to do.
Sophie's house doesn't even have icecream.
…
Camille's mother is incredibly generous with her time. At the end of the school day, they're almost always last to leave, as it takes a long time for Rose to smile and greet and laugh with every other mother and father at the school.
Well, that's how it feels at least.
She volunteers to chaperon excursions, and organise spelling bees and fundraisers and lunch order day.
Camille isn't sure how one person can do so many things.
It's as if her mother is magic somehow.
She doesn't quite know how to link her home-mother and her outside-mother, how the two can somehow meet in the middle.
At homes there are headaches and stomachaches and constant, never-ending tiredness, and promises to do it all tomorrow, when she's feeling better.
It's just that better never seems to come.
...
Camille once loved the rain. She loved the feel of it in her hair and on her skin, the way it could tickle or sting, the range of sounds from the lightest drops to the heaviest downpour.
She was lucky in many ways, living in Seattle, she saw plenty of it.
The sound of rain was a comfort, a familiar lullaby carrying her to sleep, a friend helping to hide her from the shouts echoing through the house.
But it was the smell of rain that Camille loved most, the freshness of it, the way it permeated everything as though it were the most powerful thing in the universe.
The smell of rain meant that everything would soon be washed and cleaned anew, fresh with the promise of new beginnings and clean slates.
The rain was beautiful, different every time it came.
And the rain would come, her reliable friend, a perpetually unbroken promise.
…
She's cold and (mostly) alone. Her singing teacher, Anna, is sitting on the bench next to the door of the community center. At first she was a comfort, assuring Camille that her parents were just stuck in traffic, that they would be here soon, that they couldn't possibly have forgotten her.
But Anna's a teenager, and Camille is no longer interesting now that she's stopped crying (she's become quite good at crying on cue) and so her phone is now her main focus.
Anna is furiously texting away as she hums along to the music played by the ballet teacher , just inside the doors.
Camille knows it's going to rain, the smell has been lingering for a while now, but Anna obviously isn't as in tune to the environment, and she shrieks as the first drops fall between the cracks in the roof, and onto her head.
"Come on," she says, trying to usher Camille inside, "That skank in the leotard can just deal with us being inside until your parents get here."
"No." Camille says, and she wont be budged.
Anna rolls her eyes and stomps inside, mumbling about wet hair and ruined evenings.
Rain falls. Camille waits.
She imagines her mother speeding through the downpour, screeching tires and a big green umbrella.
She thinks of warm arms thrown around her, her face clenched tight to her mother's chest as Rose whispers tearful apologies and pledges never to forgive herself.
After ten minutes, her dad arrives in a panic, drapes her shivering form in his heavy brown coat, and carries her back to the car.
On the way home Camille watches the droplets land on the window, meeting and separating in a constant dance across the glass.
She watches the rain fall.
She does not ask about her mother.
...
Rose is drunk, falling down in Christian's arms as they crash through the front door.
They're fresh from a fundraising dinner for the local theatre company. Camille's in the junior production, her first lead role, and it's the most exiting thing in the world.
She's thirteen, and more aware of exatly what her mother is and isn't.
It's clear that Rose isn't some grand shining star now, that she's falling apart a little more every day.
She's beautiful in her fragility, a mix of hopes and wishes and tiny broken pieces.
It's more evident tonight than ever, as she alternates between begging her husband for forgiveness and squawking obscenities in his direction.
This has been coming for some time, since her mother decided to join the board at the theatre in an attempt to connect with her roots, to go back to the days where she shone like a star for all the world to see.
It hasn't been as she's expected.
Camille hears things at rehearsal, and at school, whispers like secrets that weave and creep around their town. Breakdowns and pills and hospitals, and a man named Thomas who may or may not be the Music Director of the theatre company.
Tom's name is coming up again tonight, but it's the first time Camille's heard the name fall from her father's lips. His words are poison, an accusation that draws an earth-shattering wail from her mother, an animal desperate, caught in a trap.
Tonight Camille's door is open, there is no desperate hopeful singing, no soothing rain to hide her from her parent's toxic cries.
The front door is opened, her father shouts, the door is slammed once more.
She finds him on the couch, small and quiet in a room painted in reds and golds.
So much her mother, so little of her father.
"I'm sorry." He says, and his daughter sits beside him.
"Was she a good actress?" Camille asks, and her father turns to face her, looking at her in silence as if he's seeing her for the first time.
"She could have been." He says softly, "but her father never let her perform."
"But she-"
"Your mother loved the stage. She loved the feel of slipping into the skin of someone else, escaping her own sadness. She constantly craved the freedom of it all. But your grandfather thought she should be doing something more worthwhile."
The word falls bitterly from her father's lips and hangs between them.
Camille has only ever been told that being a star is something wonderful, something to aspire to.
"She lied to me." Camille says quietly, hands in her lap, thinking of her mother's recollections of shows and parties and curtain calls.
"She protected you," her Dad corrects, taking her hands in his, "All your mother has ever wanted is your happiness, and sometimes that meant she tried too hard to give you all the things she wanted, without regarding what you wanted."
"But that is what I want."
Her Dad smiles, but his eyes shine with tears.
"And you will. You have the very best parts of her, including her talent."
"What happens now?"
"Your mother will come back in the morning, we'll have pancakes, and we'll get you ready for your big debut."
"And you?"
"I will love you. Just like I do every other day."
...
The open casting call is nerve-wracking, and Camille feels totally overwhelmed.
This is real. A real live television show that people will actually watch.
It's mind-boggling.
She gets it, a small part, but a part none the less, and Hollywood is suddenly calling.
It's been a year since the truth about her mother's affair came out, and Rose has seen three doctors since then, each with new ideas for treatment plans, and encouraging words about gluing back together Camille's broken family.
Her parents are still together, but it's distant and cold in the place that was once their home, and Camille feels and fears it every day.
…
"It's a new beginning," her mother says from her hospital bed. They're far from home, her mother's one provision if this plan were to go through, and one she's released, they'll move, actually MOVE to Los Angeles.
It's Camille's dream come true.
Her mother smiles and takes her husbands hand, and all three of them break into giggles.
"I can't believe this is happening," her mother says.
"I can," says her dad, smiling fondly at both of them.
...
The stench of rain is in the air, thick and suffocating, a distant threat that comes closer to Camille by the minute.
They're late, the taxi packed, the house locked up, all in waiting for the ride to the airport.
Her mother is late, having disappeared early in the morning, fidgety and flighty, full of words and nerves and darting eyes.
Camille's father is apologizing to the cab driver every few minutes, looking at his watch every few seconds.
He's not quite looking at Camille.
As the rain starts to fall, her Dad hurries her into the taxi, once last glance around the street before he slides in beside her.
Camille watches the drops on the window, streaky and slick today, tiny crossing roads and capillaries of crystal blood.
Her mother is dressed in red and running towards them, laughing as she pulls open the door and clambers in, hair a wet and tangled mess that sticks to her face.
"Hi," she says and Camille laughs.
Her father looks uneasy, and says nothing.
...
They've been at the Palmwoods Hotel, Home of the Future Famous for 3 months.
It's amazing.
There's so much to do and see, so many people who share her passions and her goals, so many cute boys to flirt and run lines with.
Her mother hates it.
They try to bring her out into the sun, to line readings at the studio, to shows around the area, to the tiny sing-alongs by the fire pit.
But nothing works.
Her mother locks herself away, curtains drawn, shielding herself form the California sun.
Camille wakes up one morning to find a pile of bags by the door. Her dad is at the table in the tiny kitchenette, face sober and grey.
"Your mother has to go home." He says with no precursor.
Camille only nods.
It rains, only the second time since they've come to California, large drops that splat gloomily on the ground, without shape or form or pretty patterns.
It's just there, the falling rain, a reminder of everything her Mother is and isn't.
They wave goodbye, and all three cry, but Camille understands now.
Her mother loves her as much as she can, the only way she knows how.
The smell of rain lingers, long after the pavement dries.
The smell of promises kept and broken, of beginnings springing from endings.
The smell of her mother, beautiful and sad and broken, a thousand things in one.
…