A/N: I'm so sorry. I didn't realise that it was so long since I last updated. For the last couple of weeks everything's caught up on me. School just started again after a really long break, and I'm just getting used to a little thing called homework. I kept on saying to myself that I had only updated last week. Well we all know how wrong I was! Sorry for the delay, and here is the chapter (hopefully) you've all been waiting for. Oh, and this chapter is dedicated to Slam a Revolving Door, who managed to review ever single chapter in only a couple of days.
Not Knowing What To Do
Whenever I need a friend
It's you that I come round to seeing again
You know that I'll always be near
You're flesh and blood and you're my memory
Live on in my memory
I send you nothing but love
Just wait and see
I send you nothing but love
Just wait for me
wait and see...
wait and see...
Em
After seventy two. That's all the time they give before they give up and acknowledge that Cam's gone forever. The police will still try to find him of course. But they have other things to do, so soon, in a couple of weeks the case will be closed. Apparently that's what they always do, but for every single missing person, all the police do is search for them for seventy two hours, and then say that they have either left the world forever or they have gone at own will.
I can't believe either, and I won't until we find a body of some sort. I want Cam's family to do something, but they are mourning the death of Peter, and can't spend too much time on the case. They give up before the police. They all look ruined on the last day, Jack especially.
The case is finally put away, well away from us, and we organise a memorial service for him. Nothing is mentioned of death or never seeing him again.
I spend hours going through the family photo box, looking for photos for the slide show. I find it odd looking at Cam grow up with the people he loved around him. There's only one photo of him and me. It's the one the tourists took when we meet at Kensington gardens.
My CD player skips and I listen as the same notes flick from one to the other. I look at the timer and see it moving with the music. And then the music starts again, but faster, as though someone has pressed fast forward. As I watch it I wish my life would be like that, quickly moving through time until it comes to a period when it's all right. Not stuck in the same place, getting nowhere.
Right words, you know all the right words to say
You don't always mean them my way
You don't always mean what you say
Whenever I need a friend
It's you that I come round to seeing again
And everything that you do
Is everything I wouldn't ask of you
I never cry and mourn for the loss of Cam, because I don't really believe that he is truly gone. If he left at will, like the files say he did, then he'd do it for a reason, a good one. I just wish he had let me know. In ways he did, I think that he had planned it, and that's what I told them, that's why he broke it off with me, before it had properly started.
I lie. I did mourn for him. But only a night. I have shed too many tears; I have to be strong and brave. I'm sick of showing weakness, of showing that I really do care.
I sit and watch the ceremony and watch Cam's family mourn for him, for the loss of a person that I don't think is really gone. For the loss of a person that could never be gone.
I never used to really get why everyone substituted death with loss. I used to think that they meant it literally, like the person you had lost could be found, because a lost thing is just misplaced. But now I realise that it isn't the action of losing, but the feeling. You feel as though something is truly missing in your life, and in that way you have lost it.
I watch the slide show and my world gets turned upside down as it changes into a negative view. Like a negative photo. All I think is negative. Everywhere is negative. Nothing makes sense anymore. I feel amazed that I need the two people in the world who I can't find. Everything speeds up, making no sense.
But suddenly it all stops, and all I can see is the fading photo of Cam and me in the tree. There are no sounds. Nothing, all is quiet. No sound hits my ears. I watch the fading picture and gasp when I find it know longer there.
I sit there for a couple of moments, waiting for it to come back. But it doesn't, and suddenly, all I can hear is too loud noise. It ruins my delicate ears. My ears that have been sealed before now. I need to escape from the noise. I must look silly running from the room with my ears covered. But I don't care, the noise is too loud and each note that hits my ears makes me cringe.
I get outside and breath in, unclenching every part of my body, letting the silence envelopes me in its warm embrace.
Jack comes to me after the ceremony. He walks with me a little way before speaking.
'Cam really did love you, you know that don't you?'
I look up at him and frown.
'If he really did, then why wouldn't he give it a try?' I retort.
'Because he loves too much,' he replies, quick with a come back. 'He loves people too much so he doesn't get on with things, he does it because he thinks that it will protect them, he never thinks of himself first.'
With that thought he leaves me, walking away to his family.
You can ask me too…
I lie in my bed that night listening to the sounds around me. I feel a wave of sleep hit me and I let it take me. I let no thoughts catch on. I let them drift, taking me off to the place I go when I sleep.
But I see a burst of light come through my window, behind my shut eyelids, and an urgent whisper follows it.
'Bella… Bella come back!'
I hear a tinkle of bells come as a reply so I crack my eyes open to see what's happening.
I see a boy crouched at the window and the bright light dancing around my room making patterns on the walls. The boy is beckoning with his hands to the light, but as soon as he sees me he stops and looks me straight in the eye. Everything stops, and the only noise is the sound of my gasp.
It's Cam. He breaks eye contact and slowly turns and jumps out the window, I scream, but not too loudly. I must be dreaming. But the light is still here, making very loud bell noises.
I see Cam's head appear again and I know that I'm definitely dreaming.
'Bella,' he says warningly, 'that is no way to speak in front of a lady,' he grins at her, and then realises that I am staring intently at him.
'Bella!' he says horrified, 'you said she was asleep!' I hear a small giggle. As the light flies around the room. It stops for just enough time for me to get a glimpse.
I gasp again. It's a fairy. I smile, and then look at Cam confused. This is one strange dream.
He heaves himself into the room; I can't help but notice his muscle's rippling under his light shirt. He walks in front of me. I slide out of bed and step back, unsure of what to do. My feet feel hot upon the cold floor. The window stays open, letting in a cold, dancing breeze.
'Pinch me,' I say. He looks at me quizzically.
'Pinch me,' I repeat. He gives me a slight pinch, but doesn't say a word.
'Harder Cam, I want to know if this is a dream, I'm not scarred of getting hurt.'
He pinches me again, hard. I gasp in shock and pull my arm back. I sigh disappointedly as I find that I am still here, and not waking up.
'So this isn't a dream?' I ask. He shakes his head.
'But I could have told you that.' He says, speaking for the first time.
I'm suddenly overcome with emotions and I fling my arms around him.
'Oh my god Cam, I was so worried about you!' He hugs me back and we stand there for a moment or so. He smells like himself, and of dirt when I come to think of it.
But as suddenly as I was overcome with emotions, I am suddenly repulsed by him. I push him away from me, and cover my arms around me, closing off my body as I had done once before. I release on of my arms and slap him… hard. He flinches, but does not wince, or move in any other sort of way.
'Where were you, you asshole. I been so fucking worried about you. Even your family think your dead.' Maybe that was a bit harsh, but my anger has been built up for too long, and now it's roaring out of me like a dragon. He winces and turns away from me. The colour is draining form his face. The only colour now left is the red mark my hand left. His face shows no emotion.
'I missed you so much Em.' This infuriates me. The dragon boils up again and comes spitting out of me.
'You missed me? Then why the hell did you leave, where did you go, is that what I think it is? Why did you leave me alone?' The dragon dies suddenly and it leaves me alone and defenceless bare like Wendy's white pages. My eyes start swimming with tears and I look away from him. I hear him sigh and sit on his bed. The bed creaks and it seems to swallow him up. In a low and quiet voice he answers me.
'I left because you were the only thing keeping me, and I stuffed that up. I went to Neverland. It is a fairy, her name's Bella by the way. And I had to leave, Peter asked me to.' He says it all so quietly, like he's asking me to forgive him. My brain has officially gone haywire. My brain just made me believe that he said that he went to Neverland. But he said that that was- is- a fairy, is that true or not.
'Cam, did you just say what I think you just said?' His head is hanging. He brings his hands up to his face and gingerly traces the mark I have made. Only then do I feel slightly guilty over what I did. He nods.
I slide onto the floor, feeling the soft floorboards beneath my feet. I don't know what to do, and I get the feeling that neither does he.
I send you nothing but love
Just wait and see
I send you nothing but love
Just wait for me
wait and see...
wait and see...
Right words, you know all the right words to say
You don't have to mean them my way
We don't have to mean all we say-Beth Orton: Whenever
A/N: I'd just like to say a couple of things about this chapter and the chapters to come. This chapter. I don't know whether it's true that they only wait 72 hours, I made that up, and anything else that doesn't make sense just say so. The next couple of chapters will be slow coming because they're the end chapters and I don't know what's going to happen in the end yet!
I'd like to thank all my reviewers, but I heard somewhere that you can't thank them in chapters. So I'd just like to say a very quick (but full of meaning) thankyou!