Cameron
The streets are silent in the early morning, as they are always. Cars pass sometimes. A wooshing sound, wheels cracking over the asphalt. It gets more and more ruined the closer she gets to the crooked house.
When you have no reason to be out in bad weather, you don't do it. She fights against the mud on her boots, the wet , slick angry cold creeping everywhere.
Even though her nose is warm under the scarf she can feel it.
She could have taken a train. But she doesn't trust to step out alive, somehow. The words shared on a kitchen table in a shabby but lovable apartment are too present. If it snows next time it's going to stay again. Now, nothing of the drizzle and grainy rain is remaining.
It washes in small rivulets over the streets. Dirty and stained as the rest of it.
And then there's something else of a more personal nature she might need consider rethinking. If people really believe she's dating someone just because she likes spending time with him, something is off the mark.
Or is she just really oblivious?
She doesn't get it.
Follow your own advice, Cameron. She remembers the words. And it's really not that hard, is it? It's not supposed to be a ditzy drama. Who has time and energy for that shit? Right, everyone she knows.
Just got to talk it out. No big deal.
Her keys rattle a little as her stiff fingers try to open the door.
She's greeted with heat, warm air, at least. Means nothing malfunctioned in her absence. That is good.
She knows for sure her pants are dirty, her toes are frozen and her hair is a mess.
She still stands very silent, pressing her lips together and listening for a moment.
"Wouldn't that be better?" she hears Kilorn ask. "Oh, come on, you know I am right."
"If only I was younger," Nanny answers. "Maybe it'd fall for your charm. Try Ada."
Follow your own advice, Cameron.
Ugh, whatever. She sniffs, grimacing for a moment.
Then she decides to get it over with.
She decides to just waltz straight in.
"Look who's back." Nanny slurps on her tea with the grating decency of someone gladly taking in any warmth in their bones. "You could have called."
"No big deal, was with Thomas." She lies because she doesn't feel like buying a ticket for the drama train. And somehow she's sure the most important parts already made the round in some way or another. They always do. Because if a lot of people are perched in together they talk a lot.
There's a pair of amber eyes half hidden behind a phone and another green one glancing over from the other side.
"Hey," she takes the chair. It screeches over the tiles a moment.
"Yesterday was weird, I hear." Kilorn is really trying. Not his fault she is not sure what she wants to say. Their shoulders brush when she turns to his side.
Dammit Cameron, rocket science, come on.
"Yeah, Fish Boy." She answers, telling the truth. "Was a whole next level of weird."
"Want something to drink?" Nanny offers a lifeline.
They spent a while just chatting. Eventually, Cameron watches silently, taking in the weird kind of group they are. She just feels her toes coming back to live, wiggling them silently. Sipping from a mug, feeling the heat radiating into her palms holding tight. She doesn't look over again. Cameron just stays, making a face. Her social fifteen minutes are over. She didn't get through with what she was planning. Wasted time.
The ring of the door is high screeching and disruptive. Whatever friendliness existing is gone, vanishing. Cameron almost jumps up from the chair. She's not the only person in the room.
"You expect someone?"
Nanny gets up from her space by the stove. "I check. You know the drill."
Then she is gone from her usual space.
Cameron has already moved two or three steps before she stops herself.
„Ma'am," the man says, and Cameron watches very closely how his dark haired head pries into the frame of the door but isn't able to see more than the dim hallway. They can't see Cameron's tall frame unmoving. They don't see the towering shadows above the steps or Ada and Kilorn in the kitchen. Everyone is listening.
„Oh, officers," Nanny's voice is blatantly wrong for everyone that knows her a little. It sounds like she has aged, lost the sharp teeth. Chattering and friendly. She's bend a little over too. If Cameron could see her face she's sure she would only see a friendly old lady. Completely harmless. „What a nice surprise. What can I do for you?"
It has some sort of effect because the dark head disappears. Nanny opens the door the tiniest bit more, leaning against it. Not that they would see anything. But from the inside, Cameron gets a better peek.
„We have been told there were suspicious activities-„ the man starts but gets cut off by an older guy. Sneering face he doesn't hold a grain of sympathy or respect. They are red and they are dirt.
Everyone in the room and beyond is tense.
„Are you hiding terrorists and criminals?"
For a moment the air is too stale and hot. But one round of applause for Nanny, because she doesn't even need another breath to answer.
„I hide no one," Nanny says, keeping the grateful grandmother spot on. „Everyone is a guest in my house. But there were suspicious activities, I am so glad there's finally police around. I can show you, actually."
„Ma'am," Cameron hears the younger one say. „This is a matter of-„
Nanny doesn't let him get very far. „Really, so glad, some those young people from the neighborhood, you know, no manners? They didn't have such a fine upbringing as you. Hanging around the whole day, vandalizing. Look, over there, what does that word even mean? I hope it isn't something nasty. We don't like nasty around here, no we don't. And what they did to my neighbor's yard, that poor soul?"
She moves so weakly and frail Cameron supresses a snort. One foot , then the other, and next thing everyone knows she is out of the door, huddling the officers back. Clearly distracting them.
Cameron takes a breath. Moves a step back. The edge is still in the air. It doesn't leave like that. They all know the deal.
Time is sticky and thick, like a spoon stuck stirring syrup.
Minutes go by without much actual events. They feel like hours.
Kilorn and Ada stand in waiting, tense back and expecting the worst.
Cameron shares that sentiment. She has strangely enough very much trust for Nanny. But one can never know what's going to happen.
There's a fistful of anger in her stomach. The crooked house is the first stable roof she has had for a while, the very first in this town. Without her brother, this place still somehow provides some weird reliability.
It's the closest thing to home she has.
The guys snoring, leaving dirt, laughing in the evening on the table. Ada sitting on the bed, reading words she'll never forget or tinkering, Nanny on the stove.
And even this little bit of warmth. This hard earned old house with the pipes leaking, heating and electricity failing and being repaired by her and many other hands. Even that is too much. They want to take it away. Because all they can is punishment and taking things away. Making lives miserable.
"She got this." She suddenly hears a voice whisper next to her.
All Cameron can do is give him a nod. And they wait. And finally the door closes.
Nanny's tousled hair appears. She doesn't walk bend anymore.
"Close call."
"It's good for now. Younger one is enthusiastically trying to find the teenagers loitering around and smoking the devils lettuce."
"Devils lettuce?" Ada repeats.
"Nanny, you are one mean old lady."
"Why, thank you," she leans against her usual spot, patting Cameron's arm on one side , Kilorns on the other. "Good thing you didn't listen to me when I asked if Mare wanted to stay here."
" We need to find a new place," Cameron finds it difficult to ask. She still does. "right?"
"Maybe." Nanny just answers. "Maybe. Not today. But soon enough."
The day runs by, somehow. Her hands keep her busy. It doesn't help so much. But it has to do.
Late at night, with her little belongings stacked in the backpack, it'd be easy to leave. People would probably worry, some few. But not too many. Of course, she doesn't leave. Things hold her in place. Obligations, perhaps. Or just very personal connections. And she doesn't have to be anywhere.
She doesn't have to be anywhere.
Because her family is either locked up or dead.
Instead she sneaks out of the room again. Ada breathes silent, a huddled form under a blanket illuminated by the faintest of light that breaks through the closed panels over the window.
She can blindly move down the stairs. One foot in a sock, then the other, quietly. She also finds the switch in the kitchen easy enough.
The light bulb flickers again. Electricity always hums. It's a sound so familiar she can almost count down the heartbeats between the flickers and buzzes.
If her brother was here he'd listen closely, the more socially adept sibling. She's always the one blowing punches in the background.
It just proves the point. It just proves it all and she hates it.
With some hesitation she takes the nightly routine to the chair and slumps down. Head resting on the table. Brow feeling the scratched cold surface under her cheek. She pulls an arm over her head.
For a long time it is only her thoughts and the house.
Then the stairs creak and she can hear footsteps.
"Not now, Fish Boy," she whispers, the arms tighter over her head. Because he's the only person that would even talk to her on her nightly adventures through the house.
There's a hand touching her, warm and not very strong. ItIt takes a moment of silence to realize her mistake. When she looks up she sees a very familiar face.
Go back to bed, Nanny's eyes say when her mouth doesn't need to.
"Give me a second, I almost got it." Cameron says, taking a long breath.
She expects a question, or maybe even a demand, telling her to go back to her room.
"It's alright to miss your family, you know." Is the almost gentle answer instead.
Nanny takes the seat next to her.
"I know what you will say." She feels the hard gritted expression on her face. Nanny doesn't deserve her wrath, but she still gets it. "You only want to reassure me, but it doesn't help, it's fucking empty. So stop wasting both our times."
"Your rudeness always has something very honest, Cameron."
"This is such a shitshow." Cameron whispers. There's always that image unwanted in her head. A silver flash drive with the word Corros stamped in it. One little thing with so much impact.
Nanny looks sharp for a second, lost somewhere along a road that's without a doubt plastered with loss and hate and sorrow. "It's always been this way. But maybe you'll get to see it change."
"Don't talk like you'll drop fucking dead any second." Cameron huffs out because the thought sends an unwelcome wave of worry down her spine.
That little woman is the only glue holding them together in this place.
Nanny gives her a mirthless smile, wrinkles around her eyes. "I'm old, Cameron, no way to talk around it. Only thing that is left to do is go out with a fight, isn't that what you would say?"
That's a depressing thought. It is true, of course. It's almost pragmatic. Everyone dies. People die all the time. One more or one less, there's nothing special about it.
One goes, one comes, and the wheel keeps spinning.
Nanny's pep talks don't really help. But they aren't unwelcome either.
"Need to talk." She says later when she's sure she has it all together. Not night anymore. But the horror still being forced to leave won't retreat until they actually do leave, she wagers.
She caught him halfway in the door, ready to leave.
"Never did anything good start with that sentence." he answers.
She stares at him a while, takes in his face, his green eyes. Really no wonder there's a lot of girl that would fall if he is smooth. Cause he can be really smooth. Not stumbling goofy like Thomas. And not as slimy or arrogant as other people she's met.
It's really not rocket science. She's just going to prove it.
"Why are you looking like that?" He looks genuinely worried now.
"Let's not make a drama out of it." she starts. "I guess I wanna date you. You interested?"
