Chapter Four: Boys and Girls

Janine's words kept playing through Cacie's mind. He'd been distant, colder, so many different adjectives. Looking back, Cacie could see it. She could tell that he'd been different since California. Since the night he fell off the wagon and back onto the trail littered with cocaine. But that was just one night, he wouldn't get back into that. She knew Cameron. He would never get back into cocaine after all the hard work. It was like her grandmother. After a lot of sobriety, she could have a beer. Cacie firmly believed that Cameron's cocaine addiction was like that. But she still had to check, and that's why right after school, instead of going to spirit squad practice, she was driving across town to the University of Toronto.

She made her way quickly through the hallways to the room she'd helped Cameron move into just a few days prior. She tried the door, it was locked. She pulled out the key he'd given her (in case things got too rough at home) and opened the door.

Cameron Michalchuk hated himself in this moment, and the moments preceding this one. He knew it was giving into weakness, that he'd hate himself when he came down. He always did. Yet he couldn't give into the cold cries of the White Lady. No matter where he hid his vial of demons, he could hear it. He could nearly taste it. So he found himself, once again, sitting Indian style on the floor with a line of white powder on a mirror. A twenty dollar bill rolled tight lay to his right. He picked it up and brought it to his nose, inhaling the powder.

When he looked up, there she was, sitting in front of him. He had been caught. I really should learn to blockade doors. Or just do it in my nifty private bathroom. I'm such a damn idiot.

Cacie didn't know what to expect when she opened the door, but certainly not that. Certainly not Cameron bent over a mirror and inhaling cocaine into his system. She oddly though was not mad. She looked at him before sitting Indian style across from him. There were feelings torn inside of her as she watched him with his poison. A part of her wanted to partake of his chosen poison, the way she'd done once. Another part of her was disappointed that he'd fallen once again off the wagon. And then there was the guilty part, the part that blamed herself, because if she hadn't wanted to while they were in California, he never would've felt the need to baby-sit her, never would've done that line at her going away party. That's stupid. You can blame yourself all you want but he's the one with the money to his nose.

"Hey."

One simple word. One simple word from the mouth of the girl he was in love with and the guilt hit him faster than the drugs he had just taken. Hey. Just hey? No are you crazy? No what were you thinking? Just hey. I really wish I knew what the girl thought sometimes. He looked over at Cacie, his gray eyes connecting with his amber ones. His eyes weren't normally gray, only when he did a line or two.

"Hey. What are you here for?"

"Janine said you'd been different. I guess I know why."

He couldn't figure out if her voice was disappointed or just casual. He never could figure out what was going on in the mind of Cacie Cameron.

The conversation was almost as though nothing odd were happening, almost as though she hadn't just walked in on him inhaling the drug he had been addicted to, inhaling once more the reason he'd moved to Toronto. Cacie looked at him, almost jealous of the escape he'd built for himself.

I wish it were that easy to escape. I wish that I could just pack a line and fall into a world where I don't have to feel anything.

"May I?"

Her request only half shocked Cameron. Asking if she could partake of the drugs in between the both of them. He didn't know what to say. He wanted to deliver a speech that would make her take another path, veer away from the wild world of drugs he'd lived most of his adolescence in. But then he also wanted her to join him, get high; that way they could talk without her running away. She was so good at running from her feelings. He could remember vividly every time he told her about his feelings. Every time he told her that there was a chance that he could love her. And every time, without fail, he found his words shot down and his heart shattered on the floor between the two.

He didn't say anything. Instead, he just passed the mirror to Cacie, allowing her to once again make up her own mind. He just watched, wishing he'd been stronger, as she inhaled one of his perfectly sized lines.

They both lay on the floor, touching in minimal places but still touching. Elbow to elbow, toes to toes, but nothing else. The ceiling had never looked quite as fascinating as it did in that moment. Nothing had looked quite as interesting as it did right then. Cameron would look at Cacie, and then direct his eyes back to the ceiling. Cacie would look at him in alternating seconds so that they never once connected eyes. Neither had a clue how long they'd been sitting there, dancing with their eyes. Just that they were sitting there.

Finally, they looked at the same time, connected eyes. Something strange happened just then. Cacie's hand found his, or maybe his hand found hers, but they ended up interlocking fingers and clinging as if for dear life. Holding onto something that neither would hold onto sober. Cameron wouldn't hold on for fear that she wouldn't let him. Cacie just wouldn't hold on for fear of being hurt.

Silence filled the room as electricity flowed between each connected pore on their bodies. Finally, Cameron spoke. Looking over at Cacie. "Do you ever fear getting old?"

Cacie blinked, once, twice, three times before answering. Her voice was so pensive, so thoughtful. "All the time. Even though, I think I'm more afraid of being stuck. Why? Do you fear getting old?"

Cameron nodded a slow deliberate nod. "Every day. Think about it Cace, look at me right now. Where do you think I'll be in ten years? If I'm even alive in ten years."

Cacie didn't know what to say to that. She took a slow sigh and shook her head. "I'm sorry. It's kind of my fault that you're doing this again. I never… I never should've suggested it this summer."

Cam shook his head. "No, it's not your fault. I made my own decision." He sighed and then looked at her, one of those long lingering looks that seem to make everything both better and worse at the same time. "'I'd rather die young than get old.' I heard that lyric once in a song and I remembered it. And right now, it really seems to fit, y'know? I think about that lyric a lot."

Cacie didn't think anything of how symbolic that lyric could be, instead scanned her inner music library and cocked her head to the side. "Boys and Girls by Kill Hannah, right?"

Cameron just let out a small chuckle before leaning in to kiss Cacie gently on her lips. Cacie kissed him back for just one moment before pulling away. As good as his chapped lips felt on her soft ones, she couldn't let this happen. Not again. "What was that for?" Her voice was demanding. Demanding an explanation.

"It was just a kiss."

"Just a kiss? How many times have I heard that?" She was once again demanding, trying to keep her mind in the now. But it wasn't working. She could hear him saying those words on a beach in Malibu, telling her that it was just a kiss, no big deal. They both woke up naked. She could vaguely remember those words escaping his mouth on prom night, vague only due to the drunken haze that still surrounded her junior prom, or lack there of. Once again, they'd both ended up naked, and in one of the biggest fights in the history of the world. "Let's just have a guesstimate, both times that we… both times that we messed around."

"It was just an innocent kiss. Can't I just kiss you sometimes?" Cameron's voice held a challenge, a challenge that Cacie met. Her lips found his, soft on chapped. Tongues battled it out and a few minutes later, his shirt came off of his body, revealing the remnants of abs, ravaged by cocaine.

"You're a masochist."

"What?"

"You're a masochist," Cacie repeated to a very confused, and very naked, Cameron.

"Why am I a masochist?" Cameron asked.

"Because you keep letting that happen."

"I can do no strings."

"I can't."

"Since when?"

"And I can't be attached."

"Answer the question."

"What question?"

"Since when?"

"Since when what?"

"Since when can you not do this without strings?"

"It's not important. What's important is that you're a masochist."

"No I'm not."

"Yes. You are."

Pillow talk was never pillow talk with the two of them. Yet they both dropped the subject and laid there in the comfort of one another's arms for a few minutes longer. A few minutes until Cameron looked over at Cacie and opened his mouth. Both of them had long since lost the buzzes from just an hour earlier.

"I've been doing this with strings for a long time." He couldn't help it.

"Well that's because you're a masochist." Cacie kept insisting that he was a masochist.

"And you're a scaredy-cat." Only Cameron Michalchuk could call someone a scaredy-cat past the age of seven and get away with it. He was just that kind of a guy.

"Why am I a scaredy-cat?" The words sounded foreign coming from Cacie's mouth.

"Because. You let people like Christian Hellsend keep you from being happy."

Cacie sat up, her eyes piercing into his flesh, burning holes into his forehead. "I do not let Christian Hellsend keep me from anything."

"Then why won't you let yourself be happy? I could make you happy Cacie."

She shook her head, looking at Cameron. He looked so small laying down there. He looked nearly emaciated from the cocaine, despite the fact that he was always eating. His eyes, now back to the blue they normally were, were filled with an honesty that Cacie had never known. An honesty that scared her more than life itself, more than love even. Though she had a hunch that love was what hid in those honest eyes of his.

"No, you wouldn't. And if you did, it'd just be for a minute or two before you ended up crushing my heart like everyone else."

"I would never hurt you Cacie," Cameron sat up and tried to reach over. Cacie stood up and reached over for her underwear.

"Not intentionally but you would. Everyone always does."

"Stop being so damn scared." Cameron stood up and grabbed his boxers off of his bed. Somehow, they'd been thrown there despite the position the two held on the floor. He looked over at Cacie, whose back was facing him. Then he turned around. He didn't want her to see the sadness in his eyes, the sadness he could never disguise.

"I'm not scared Cameron! I'm realistic!" She was nearly shouting at him, quiet shouts that didn't even go louder than the annoying emo music penetrating the walls to their left. "I know how this works. You fall in love, you get hurt! I'm just not letting it happen to me!"

"No, you are running scared!"

"I am not running scared!" Cacie turned to face him, only to see his back turned to hers. "Why can't you just see that I can't fall in love? I'm physically, emotionally, and psychologically unable to fall in love!"

"I think you're just too scared to fall in love damn it! I think you're just scared that you'll be happy. You say I'm a masochist, look in a mirror babe."

"This isn't news Cam. I'm a masochist. Which would explain Christian wouldn't it."

"Don't mention that ass hat in my dorm!"

"Then don't be an ass hat!"

"Get out!"

Cameron Michalchuk had never once told Cacie to leave. But there was always a first time for everything. Cacie pulled her shirt over her head and left, not once looking back. After the door slammed, Cam turned to his now empty room, tears streaking down his face. He'd already broken his word to the girl. He'd hurt her.

He noticed something on the floor and picked it up. Cacie's favorite necklace, something Serena had bought her for her seventh birthday, lay on the floor. He picked it up and held it between his fingers, carefully stroking the pale pink 'C' as he lay on his bed. He already wished that he hadn't hurt her, wished there was a rewind button on his life. Because Cacie didn't deserve to have those harsh words spoken to her. You destroy everything.