Cameron

Nothing has really changed.

It feels wrong to say that. To think it even brings over a cloud of pessimism. But it certainly feels like it. A culmination of people banding together, screams about real injustice. And then protests and radical movements fall asleep under dizzy snow or cold nights, get swallowed by foggy promises. They end in prison cells and under foul-mouthed talk, and all the while up there fancy in their ivory towers, the real ones don't get locked up.

It never really ends, and it never really ends well. What more proof is there but the fact that she is on her way to drive to a prison?

She should be as nervous, or excited as she is. She hasn't seen her brother's face for so many months that it turns her stomach in hope and fear.

The backside of the car shakes as they drive over a loose stone on the road. Some streets are in bad shape and no one cares to repair them. Just as the posters about missing posters on trees fade out, the holes are neatly ordered flagpoles in the victory of neglect. And it isn't like the neglect doesn't continue. If it isn't this road, it is a house, a family, a new system set in place.

Cameron stares out of the window into the ditzy world and wonders if things will ever stop to gnaw on nerves. Life is like a day in the crooked house used to be. Lots of screaming, lots of commotion, with the tendency to lose a screw. It holds you warm but makes you freeze, and if one screw is tightened the next turns off loose again

It's a three-hour ride. At best. Having designated Nanny and Ada as her drivers and for brains in the front row of the borrowed old, huffing car, she keeps her eyes out on the street a moment longer. It rolls by too fast. She doesn't squeeze against the glass or mush her face into it, she just crosses her arms and lets her legs hand straight, old sneaker rubbed off in the fabric and shoelaces lost on the brightness in color.

No, Cameron doesn't smush herself against the glass, but she also doesn't lean over to the other person on the backseat pretending to stare out of the other window just the same. Maybe not as good. She catches a side-eye from Kilorn but doesn't feel like talking. She lets them do it. Kilorn and Ada and Nanny banter back and forth in a strange mixture of ostensible ease, but underneath they are all just waiting for her to tell them to bark and demand they shut it, she is pretty sure. They all keep giving her side-eyes.

The radio plashes a generic song in the background, the kind that's easy to get in your head with too many vocals in Lala's and Nana's. Breezy free in the good weather. The time of the rain in the gutters has turned to a reckoning of coming heat. An inch away in the between of spring and summer. Blooming flowers in soft pinks dominate the rearview on the window for a moment to accentuate the change in the seasons and the stagnation of the likes in everything else.

Another bump on the street, a honk, a sharp turn, and Cameron's head almost hits the car roof as she gets flung to the side. At the other side of the seat, the same thing has happened, so her dark head meets a blond one in the middle and they almost bump together again. Absurd. Gonging their heads is far from romantic and in the harsh environment of getting cut in traffic, it isn't really good timed. Every second in this car turns into the wrong idea.

By now, Cameron Cole has made peace that she will never ever date anyone, not even if she actually asks for it on someone that is easy to like and good to spend time with. Because nothing really changes, except to the bad, and people would give both of them flack for it anyway. It doesn't change the fact he is still here, and she didn't even really have to convince him. Just like their nights at a kitchen table or sitting together at a table chewing through letters and reprimanding words, just like days of her threatening him with a screwdriver to back up for making a lame joke. Or her thanking him for carrying something, or him thanking her for fixing something in his new home-

The list is expandable to endless by now. It's just like the way that she can perfectly smell him beside her, and it's a nice smell, mixing with the air slipping in through a window crack and a perfume from the front row.

"Fucking idiot," she mutters. It is unclear to herself if she talks about the car cutting them off, the world or someone in specific, maybe herself. Kilorn still giving her the side eye again as she turns back to her corner doesn't help. And then, she feels her fingers tocuh another warm hand, and he closes it slow, barely holding it, as if she will jsut hit him and jump out of the window if he dares to touch more than just her fingertips.

She blows out a stream of air. "Not you, sorry."

"No I know you didn't mean me."

Cameron makes a face.

"That'd be 'Fuck you , Fish Boy.' You address people when you insult them to their faces."

"Damn right I do."

Nanny frantically grabs the dashboard. "Turn around, Ada, she has apologized and agrees with him. This is serious."

She is nervous, but she doesn't want to talk about it. Never being the big talker in emotions, it isn't exactly now her style to garble out her deepest emotional scars. Not like everyone on this trip doesn't have the same or worse. So maybe this is welcome.

She still doesn't flee from his hand but she leans away and groans. "I fucking swear, I apologize sometimes, it's not my fault you don't hear it because you're old, Nanny!"

"That's more like it."

"Order restored."

Ada doesn't even look in the rearview mirror. She just drives off into the broad road with less bumps and more lanes in some silent meditation.

One hour later, the backseat has turned less stiff while they are getting caught in traffic, they stretch their leg and pull together. Spending so much time makes it easier to figure out who puts their bodyparts where to not interrupt the other person. Cameron is scrolling through some text and stops deliberately, reading slow and zooming in on the words, just because the green eyes behind her that read along after an offer need a while to adjust. Sometimes she just asks him obvious questions. It's strange. All her life, Cameron has pretended to be rude and harsh to just keep herself in her shell, and it isn't so different from someone that is illiterate but pretends to be fine on reading to go through life unbothered. Sometiems people just learn things earlier or later in their lives.

Another hour later, they are still stuck in the traffic. They move so slow, if Cameron got up and just ran along the street she would pass any car. She falls asleep in the dust that dances along the seats and the loud sirring of the motor. That always happens. She just leans up against him and she sleeps while the sunshine paints the inside of her eyelids red. It's a thing between them. Maybe he doesn't complain because she is less bristling asleep. Who knows.

When it's finally done, there's a limited timeframe still intact for the visit. The keys to Sara Skonos' house clink in Cameron's pocket when she gets up and smoothes over her braid.

White and grey concrete. Fences and barbed wire.

The usb stick with the stamped in word comes back to her in some cold sweat. That discussion on the dinner table in another much less sunny , drama loaded night.

Nanny looks less than smitten at the idea of being near a prison now. Everyone in the car does. They all have turned a shade paler matching the bright concrete more.

"You just stay here." She has her phone and her backpack at the ready. "I'm meeting up with the lawyer and then I get to visit my brother."

Her hand clenches to a fist at her side, but no one disagrees when they drop her off, cautiously watching. She doesn't blame them. When everything is crooked, from the houses to the justice system, you sometimes narrow your eyes in an attempt to imagine it straight.

The whole world gets more crooked as it spins a little in nervous energy around her. Without a lawyer, this whole deal would probably take longer, be more strenous and break some legs with the beaurocracy. Paper, paper, paper, until it gets washed away like the poster on the rainy day at the gutter.

"Miss Cole," the voice is polite. And for a moment in the suits and laws and mindboggling painfully slow apparitions, Cameron imagines another face. Who wanted to be a lawyer. And sits in behind bars herself now.

The second it is over in the waiting room, the moment it goes on in actually being able to visit , the time for visits is almost over. She has like what, five minute, ten, twenty? Not enough.

It doesn't matter though because she sees his living, breathing face. He has shorter hair, he is even thinner, but it glows in her chest the moment he recognizes her.

For all of Cameron's life, she was a part of two. That is what twins are. She was a sister to a brother, an accomplice to a crime, she was a builder to ideas and she was never alone.

Her fingers curls together to fists again. She can't even hug her brother now. She is not a hugger, but she would have never let him go now.

The keys press hard against her leg as she sits down.

"I'm getting you out," she says.

"I'm already getting out soon," Morrey answers.

Not soon enough. The light is wrong, the wrong is full , the eyes are staring her down and sometimes she wants to turn and fight something that isn't assaulting her yet.

"I'd break you out right now if you wanted."

"Yeah , I know."

The goodbye is jarring, but it isn't as hopeless as Cameron thought it would be.

The car still waits on her in the parking lot. The sky turns black as they drive off.

"I missed him," She says in the glimmering darkness split by stripes of light just between Kilorn and her, because sharing secrets is easier that way. The car engine is so loud it overtones her whisper. "I miss him so much."

She doesn't add anything else. No name, nothing.

"I know. You can just say it, sometimes. I'll keep it a secret."

She almost laughs.

"I'm bad at it. So fucking bad. But you know. If this is over. We really need to do something nice together."

"Yeah." He agrees low. "What's nice to Cameron Cole? You decide."

"I don't - You're nice," she says and feels like an idiot. She feels less like and idiot knowing that beside her ear, he isn't judging her at all. She can almost feel his look and his smile. Before she can change her mind, she leans over and presses a kiss on his cheek.

The problem is, that he isn't the only one looking.

The front row of the car has turned into spectator again. Especially noisy old women.

"Keep your eyes on the fucking road!"