The Camera Loves You

By Asynca

I'd never asked Roth or Whitman exactly what the expedition had cost, but I knew roughly how much it probably was. Between stipends, salaries, equipment, insurance, exploration licenses… well, the costs were endless. I suppose if for some reason I really couldn't find anyone to fund exploration that I thought was essential I could always dip into the Croft trust. That was an absolute last resort, though, because that would make me Daddy's little trust fund archeologist who can't write a funding submission like a big girl. It would overshadow any findings I might make, and I didn't want other professionals to think that my proposals didn't have enough merit to get monetary support by themselves.

There was plenty of money swishing around in the industry so that I should never need to use my family's, and I just also happened to have a best friend whose father could look at everything and see dollar signs.

Sam was right, though, external support meant I had to put up with the real cost of funding: pandering to the funder's motive for giving me money. In this case, it was making me into a figure of speculation.

Now, every news channel was either analyzing in high detail or commenting on other channels' analysis of my private life. I tried to decide if I thought that was better or worse than the industry thinking I was Daddy's Little Archeologist… but I couldn't think clearly. My thoughts were a tangle, and between that and my throbbing stomach and stiff joints I just wanted to find an 'off' switch.

It was a shock when we pulled in through Sam's father's gate; I had expected The Gauntlet would be as bad as the scrum outside the hospital. I hadn't even noticed it!

When I looked over at Sam to comment, I discovered the reason she'd been silent was because she'd drifted off. It made me smile. I toyed with the idea of catching her at her own game and taking a photo of her but decided not to.

The driver quickly woke her up anyway. "Welcome home," he said as he pulled outside the front doors. Sam stirred and rubbed her eyes. When she realized she had been asleep, she quickly looked over at me.

I smirked at her.

She gave me a mock glare and lifted her handbag to put it on her lap. I got straight out of the car, but Sam waited for the driver to open her door. I'd forgotten that was generally how it worked.

When I straightened and my stomach pulled taut again, I had to put a hand to it. I must have been wincing, because Sam said, "I told you you should have let them give you that Codeine script."

I waved my other hand dismissively. It was nowhere near as bad as it had been when it was still bleeding on Yamatai – I could barely manage to stay conscious through that pain. This was alright. I didn't fancy taking anything that would make my brain any foggier than it already felt anyway, so I would have to manage.

As we walked up the short staircase, I noticed our bags had already arrived from the hospital and were waiting for us by the door. With some difficulty I managed to lift mine out of the bunch, full of clothes Sam had bought me.

The door was opened for us by another staff member, the Nishimura housekeeper. It was nice to be so cheerfully greeted every time we entered, but I could never get used to the idea of having staff. Sam hardly even noticed her, telling me about some renovations her father was thinking of making to the house.

Sam's father, just like Sam's grandmother, took great pride in his heritage and lived in a huge but otherwise traditional Japanese house. That meant that you could never tell what the interior of the house was going to look like because they'd constantly be moving the partitions around. The furniture was never in the same place and you had to always be very quiet because what happened down one end of the house could be clearly heard at the other. I'd lived most of my life in old stone buildings where you couldn't hear someone shouting in the kitchen from the bedroom, so I was never comfortable at Sam's father's house. The only place that was actually soundproof was the bathroom, and that was actually across an outdoor balcony in almost a separate building.

I did like all of the artwork that was hung on various walls, though, and their family shrine had the most beautiful singing bowls that were a thousand years old. I always agonized over not really being allowed to touch them, because my impulse was always to pick them up and turn them over in my hands.

Sam went straight to part of the house used for storing furniture. I followed her, wondering how she automatically knew where it was even though she'd not been to her father's house in at least a year. She took a couple of bedrolls and went off to decide where she would set up the bedroom. "You can put your clothes in one of the drawers in my cupboard," she told me as she pulled the partitions around in the next area. "I'm pretty sure there's space in one of them."

The cupboard was back in the storage room, so I labored back in there and opened it up to face the eight drawers. I slid open one that was full of winter clothes and recognised the coat that Sam used to wear everyday in first year uni. I took it out and held it up just to look at it. So many memories, I thought, and unexpectedly felt tearful. I blotted my eyes on my sleeve and put it back, opening another drawer.

This one was only half-full, so pushed the contents of it to one side with the intention of fitting my own clothes in bedside Sam's. My fingers brushed something solid, and before I realised what I was doing, I was holding it up in front of me.

It was a bright pink vibrator.

I stared at it, horrified. It had an anime-style smiley face on it, and cheerfully boasted in cartoon print around its base, "Let's play together in the bath, I'm waterproof!"

I hurriedly hid it back in the drawer, peeking through the sliding doors to see if Sam had noticed. I couldn't see her at all, but I could hear furniture being moved.

Oh, my God. I mean, of course Sam was, well, Sam. She'd never been particularly shy about her high libido but I'd always… Well, I don't know what I'd always. Of course she wouldn't always use other people to help her with that. It was one thing to sort of assume what happened and to have actual hard evidence of how she got off when she wasn't shagging random men.

I put my face in my hands. Now, on top of this creepy American, the media following me around like a celebrity and everything that happened on Yamatai I had to imagine my friend masturbating in her bathtub.

"Bring on the codeine," I murmured to myself, stuffing my clothes into the space I'd created in the drawer.

"Yoko wants to know if you want something to eat," Sam called, not having heard me. "I asked her for those thick udon things she makes from scratch."

Leaving the storage room, I found her in the next area. "I'm not really hungry," I admitted.

"Oh, yeah, your stomach," she said, as if she'd forgotten. "It'll take her like an hour or two to make the noodles anyway. You want to have a bath? Dad just renovated the bathroom so it looks like a bathhouse."

The word was like a punch in my stomach. All I could think of was the cheerful vibrator. I knew I was blushing, but my blush must have been quite dramatic because Sam stopped dragging the low table across the floor and stared at me. "Sweetie, are you okay? You look…" she came over to me, putting a gentle hand on my back. "You look really sick. Maybe we should take you back to hospital."

I shook my head lightly. "Just had a moment, that's all."

It was a really uncomfortable feeling looking at her and knowing what she did. You never really want to think of your friends like that, you want to put a great bloody wall between that part of them and where you fit in. I had always rather thought of her as the sister I never had. She was practically family and now I was standing next to her looking are her pretty face and thinking about how many people had kissed it. Well, I had kissed it a couple of years ago. I wasn't really sure exactly how Sam thought of herself because I knew she'd had a couple of threesomes, but I hadn't. I'd had boyfriends.

God, and what the bloody telly would have to say about what I was thinking if they knew.

I wanted to reach up to my head and claw at it. I was going mad, I thought. Everything that has happened to me has actually driven me insane.

Sam still looked worried. "Maybe you should come and lie down."

I let her lead me over to where she'd laid out the beds, and I let her help me lower myself onto the bed. As she was doing it, her iPhone fell out of her jacket.

"Shit!" She abandoned me to chase it across the floor. Picking it up, she checked it to make sure it wasn't cracked and in the process automatically turned it on. It beeped, and then its beeps were interrupted by beeps.

Sam glanced up at me. "Uh, is this a bad time to mention there's fourteen messages?"

I lay back against the flat pillow. It wasn't very comfortable. "All from the American?"

She tabbed through them. "Well, there's also one from my Dad saying he'll be home at nine."

I made a resigned noise. "I don't suppose any of the messages include a link to a prospectus?"

She kept looking. As she was reading, I saw her take a deep breath. "He knows you want to go to Croatia."

"What?" I tried to sit up suddenly, and pulled my stitches. "How on earth would he know that?"

She shook her head as she kept reading. "He doesn't say. Just that they're doing some Ocean exploration in an undisclosed location and believe that you could be the expedition lead they're looking for."

That was a concern, because that was exactly what I had been thinking I would do in the Croatian isles. I hadn't told anyone that, though. Not even Sam knew.

"So he's in exploration." Suddenly, he didn't seem so creepy. "It could actually be a proper sponsorship."

Sam's expression could have belonged to a lost puppy. "But we're happy to keep sponsoring you," she said. "You don't need to talk to this guy." She handed the phone to me and I read over the messages myself. "What are you doing in Croatia, anyway?"

"Well, I've found one lost island. Maybe I should look for other lost places."

"What, like Atlantis?" she was joking. When I didn't laugh and correct her, a huge grin grew on her face. "Oh, my God, really? I got it right?" She made to high-five me. "Gold star for the camera girl!"

I let her slap my hand in victory. "No one's tried around there yet. Or at least, I didn't know they had started."

"Well, for something like that, Dad would totally be up for paying for it. Especially after you actually found Yamatai. This is going to be so awesome."

I kept my mouth shut, but I was really getting excited about the idea of actually being head-hunted for sponsorship. I'd have something new to keep me busy while I sorted my blasted head out.

Maybe I would agree to meet with this American after all, but I wasn't sure how to do it without hurting Sam's feelings. It felt absolutely awful to think of leaving her out of something, but she'd take it personally if I refused her family's money. This man's offer might not even be a good one, so there was no reason to upset her unnecessarily. But God, no media following me around; it sounded like a dream come true.

I would have to somehow meet him without her finding out.