6:59

by Nonye Acholonu

  But I would never tell her any of that because that would be weird.

  “How cute,” Anjolie spoke up suddenly, startling the two of us from our trance. “I wonder how Cameron would feel about this.”

  Olive and I stared at Anjolie for a long second, wondering what she could possibly mean from her words. Was she trying to scare us or something?

  Anjolie yawned heavily. “He would just love to see that his own girlfriend was messing around with another guy.” She stretched her arms over her head and stretched out on my bed. “Cameron’s a good guy — a great guy, actually. And this is what he gets? I mean, he gets good grades, he volunteers at shelters — he plays music for his church for crying out loud! And now, his best friend who just so happens to be his girlfriend is being unfaithful. Why are you doing this, Olive?”

  Olive kept staring at Anjolie for a long time before finally opening her mouth. “Anjolie, why are you doing this? What have I ever done to you?” The tone in Olive’s voice actually surprised me. It sounded so sad and deflated, I didn’t even recognize it.

  “What has Cameron ever done to you? Why does he deserve this?” Anjolie retaliated.

  “You’re right. Cameron is a great guy. But you’re asking me these questions as if I’m doing something wrong. Clearly, I’m not. Why do you think that?”

  “Because you’re spending your precious time with this scum everyone calls ‘Cam’!” Anjolie screamed.

  Olive jumped back a fraction of an inch, startled with Anjolie’s anger. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Anjolie was already sitting up, drawing something in the air.

  My heart stopped. If Anjolie was doing what I thought she was doing, then clearly she had to be out of her mind. Without thinking, I grabbed Olive and placed her completely behind me, shielding her from Anjolie.

  When Anjolie finished drawing her bow and arrow, she held it up and pointed it directly at us. “I demand you to stop seeing Cam or I will kill you. I am not kidding!” she screeched at the top of her lungs. She propped herself up onto her knees.

  “Anjolie… You’re drunk… Cut it out,” I said slowly, stepping up from the couch and taking cautionary steps towards her. “Put your arrow down.”

  “Stop screwing up Cameron’s life, Cam!” Anjolie roared. She pointed the arrow at me. “Ever since Olive spotted you that day, you’ve just made living life miserable. This is all your fault, you know!”

  “I know that!” I cried, holding my hands up. “I know that. Just… just put the arrow down. Please.” Never in a million years did I think I’d have to talk a gunman out of shooting me, let alone having Anjolie be that gunman. The only thought going on in my mind was how to get that arrow out of her hands.

  Anjolie continued shaking her head, glaring at me. “Cameron didn’t ask for this life. All he wants is to be a normal guy. He wants normal friends, a normal family, and a normal girlfriend. But you just keep ruining that!” She looked me up and down slowly, disgust clouding over her gray eyes. “You trash his home every day. You mess with his own father! You steal his car and his friends! And now you’ve taken the only thing that makes him smile — his girlfriend.”

  “That’s not true!” Olive called out from the couch. I quickly turned to her, silencing her shrill words.

  I looked back at Anjolie. “You’re right,” I said, allowing her words to sink in. “I am ruining his life.” A sudden feeling of depression fell over me, surprising my stoic expressions. “If it weren’t for me, Cameron could see nighttime. He wouldn’t have to compromise living life and spending time with his friends for me.” Then I glanced at Olive, who was staring at Anjolie with a glare so fierce, it could kill a small animal. “He wouldn’t have to worry about me and his girlfriend spending time together.”

  I took another step towards her. “I am ruining his life. I treat my dad — his dad — like crap. I constantly run out the tank in my — his — car. And all his clothes and belongings are screwed up every morning. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t even be here. I don’t belong in his body, his life.”

  “But Cam, that’s not true!” Olive cried out again.

  I took another step towards Anjolie. “It is true. I shouldn’t be here. And… and I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.” I stared hard at Anjolie. “But I can’t do anything about it. No one can. I promise you, Anj — I would do whatever it takes to give Cameron the life he never had. But I can’t.”

  Anjolie just stared at me, the arms holding the arrow drooping slightly.

  “And you shouldn’t punish us for it,” I continued. “It’s a realization I’ll always have to live with and you killing me or Olive would just make it worse. You said so yourself; Cameron doesn’t deserve this. If you kill me, you’ll kill him. If you kill Olive, you’ll still kill him — inside. If you really love him, would you seriously hurt him?”

  Anjolie was quick to answer. “I would never hurt him,” she said firmly.

  “Then put the arrow down,” I said, placing my hand on the top of the contraption. “Put it down, and we’ll forget any of this ever happened.”

  Anjolie finally looked down, dropping her arms, the arrow pointed downward. Before she dropped it, she pointed it one more time at Olive. “She’s going to tell him all of this, isn’t she?” she asked, fear in her voice.

  Olive stood up and walked over to us. “Although I am dying to tell him how big of a freak you are when you’re drunk,” she pulled the bow and arrow away from Anjolie, “I promise you that I won’t do anything like that.”

  Anjolie nodded and plopped back down onto the bed. We all stood there silently, recovering from the intense situation we were just in. It was Anjolie who broke the silence. “You could make this all better if you stopped seeing Olive, Cam,” she said quietly.

  I sighed heavily, turning my gaze on Olive. Anjolie was right; I could end all of this by doing my own thing.

  Not seeing Olive again would feel as though I were drowning. Air was just a little distance away, but not being able to reach the surface — not being able to reach Olive — would be way too painful.

  I sighed again. “I can’t, Anjolie. I just can’t.”

  Olive looked up at me and smiled.

  ****

  “So you’ll just wake up around five-thirty to take her home so she could get ready for school and stuff?” I asked Olive as she pulled my blankets around Anjolie’s sleeping body. It had taken Anjolie just a few minutes to finally fall asleep after I’d dressed her in one of my old shirts and shorts. She was out cold as she snored on my pillow.

  Olive nodded and wrapped her dark hair into a ponytail. “Yeah, we’ll wake up, run across the street and clean ourselves up from there. I’ll take her to school after that.” She adjusted my baggy shirt she was wearing and pulled the strings tight on the shorts I let her wear for the night.

  “Good,” I said. Then I walked into the bathroom and got myself ready for bed, showering quickly and brushing my teeth. After drying off and shaving, I pulled on the jeans and sweater Cameron had asked me to wear, not bothering to jam gel into my hair. Cameron didn’t like the gel.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Olive was standing out there with a sleepy smile. She immediately pulled me into a tight hug, wrapping her arms around my neck. Just feeling her body pressed up to mine made me forget about the harsh realities of Gray Eyes and how she already had Cameron. All that was going through my mind was that… that I really cared about this girl. Just thinking that made me feel weird — I’d never cared about a girl before now. Ever.

  She pulled away after a long while, kissing me briefly on the cheek. “Do you really believe all that Anjolie said? Because it’s not true. Not at all.”

  I stared at her, into her eyes, searching for the right answer. When I recognized the concern on her face, I shook my head. “Nah,” I said nonchalantly. “I just agreed with her so I wouldn’t die.”

  She laughed and climbed into the bed next to Anjolie. After saying goodnight, she was out cold and
I was left on the couch staring into the night. I wished desperately that I didn’t believe a word that Anjolie had said — I mean, she was drunk for Pete’s sake! But, like Harper’s words about kissing another guy, Anjolie’s words about how I was ruining Cameron’s life wouldn’t escape me. They were eating away at me, at my heart. My mind was clouded, too busy to sleep. I couldn’t get away from them. I felt like a toddler lost in a carnival. I felt trapped.

  I had to get out of this body.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Cam

  Giving up on sleep altogether, I stood up from the couch and grabbed up Cameron’s video camera. Recently, he’d sent me a video recording asking me about a bunch of stuff and telling me about his friends and his life in general. In the video, he’d seemed normal but I recognized something else in him — confusion.

  His life was so messed up; no normal person could withstand it. He needed help figuring things out. And the only person that could set the record straight was me.

  I pressed record.

  “Hey, Cameron, it’s me, Cam,” I said quietly into the camera, not wanting to disturb the sleeping girls on the bed. “I guess what we’re doing is talking to each other via camera now, huh? That seems cool to me. Now I can actually see the guy I make fun of.” I laughed. Even though Cameron and I shared the same body, everything about us — down to our looks — was different. How nobody realized that was beyond me.

  “I got your last video,” I said, placing the camera on the desk and staring into it. “Well, I guess your first video. I realized you talk a lot, way more than I do. Let’s try not to do that anymore, alright? If you talk too much, you seem fruity.” I couldn’t believe I was giving him advice on how to act right. What was I turning into?

  “So, anyway, I could get down to it and start telling you crap about my favorite color or a place I want to visit and all that. But I don’t want to. That stuff’s not important. You and I both know that. What’s important is what’s going on in our lives. Here and now.

  “Everyone keeps telling me stuff about you — how you’re this straight-laced kid with aspirations and stuff. I admire that. I mean, I wish I had aspirations like that. The only thing I hope for in life is, well, freedom, I guess. To you, you’ve got a great dad and Mila seems pretty nice from the way you described her. You’ve also got some awesome friends and a really great house. That’s living, dude,” I said, grinning at the camera as if it were Cameron.

  “I know you may think your life sucks and all, but it doesn’t. I mean, think about it. Are you suffering from any illnesses? Are you homeless? Are you going hungry, dude? No, you’re not. You’re just fine. Remember that.

  “Ever since I was a baby, I would treat everyone like crap. I don’t know why I did, but I did it. I’m sure your dad has told you all about that stuff. I didn’t appreciate what I had, who I had. It was all about me and nothing could change that.” I felt as if I were talking to a therapist, just spilling out my mind without holding anything back. Why I was doing this was beyond me.

  “It was when I turned sixteen that my life changed,” I said, staring down at my twiddling fingers. I looked back up at the camera, placing my head on my hand. “That’s when I had to do missions. I remember the call. It freaked the crap out of me.” I laughed, shaking my head. “Believe it or not, the call was from El Rey himself. It was the first and only time I’d ever spoken to him. He was all, ‘You’re a Gray Eyes now so you must do missions.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Then Anjolie showed up at my house. I remember thinking how beautiful she was — that I was unworthy of being in her presence. She’d told me to crawl out of bed and follow her.” I grinned at the camera as the memories came flooding back. “She was so pretty; I didn’t care where I was going, just as long as I was with her. But here’s the weird thing; I was never once attracted to her in that way. I mean, she was attractive and all, but there was nothing about her that made me want to be with her.

  “So anyways we went to some museum. On the whole drive, she’d told me about Gray Eyes and what that meant for me. I wasn’t going to act all stubborn like all the idiots on those movies I’d seen — I immediately believed every word she’d said. When we’d gotten to the museum, she’d told me that I would have to do illegal things to get my ‘offerings’ or whatever. I was on board, dude. I loved acting reckless. This Gray Eyes thing was just getting better and better.

  “She’d done the mission and I’d watched. We’d ended up running like crazy when they caught us, but we’d gotten away. It was the most exhilarating feeling in my entire life. Afterwards, she’d even gotten me some free food.” I looked over at Anjolie suddenly, hoping that she wasn’t witnessing my confessional. That would be the worst thing to happen to me right about now.

  But she and Olive were still dead with sleep.

  I gazed back at the camera. “We talked all night. We talked about random stuff, too, not just about Gray Eyes. That night I’d learned about my telekinesis. Do you know what that is? Well, it’s like this mind power thing that all Gray Eyes have. It helps when we do missions and stuff, but goes away when we reach a certain age. I like using it to find things in your organized room.” I laughed, looking around.

  “After that night, I went home and stared in the mirror. I’m sure you were as surprised as I was when I realized I’d gone from the Hunchback of Notre Dame to Superman! Anjolie had told me that I would look like this after I did my first mission. I fell in love with my looks, man.

  “So every day after that — except Wednesdays — I had to do a mission. Some were tough, others easy as pie. I met a few others like me, my friends Aspen and Harper. Don’t worry, they don’t live around here. In fact, I don’t even think they live anywhere. They travel around a lot, avoiding school and all that. Anjolie could do the same thing, but she actually wants to go to school. From what I’ve seen on TV, school apparently sucks.

  “Aside from the four of us, I don’t think there are any more of us I know here in L.A. And now that I think about it, I’d like to keep it that way. Too many of us would cause the city to bounce around.”

  Then I shook my head, rolling my eyes. “Look at me, I’m rambling. Just like you. Talking to this camera does that to you, I guess.” I rubbed my eyes, sighing slowly as I reorganized my thoughts, my reasons for doing this. “Listen, Cameron, I need to tell you some stuff so you could understand what’s really going on here. I already know you got Anjolie and Hudson and Armando talking crap on Olive, but you have to hear both sides of the story, alright?

  “I’ve known Olive for about a month now. Not saying I’ve hung out with her for that long, but I’ve actually known her for that long. I’ve met Olive once or twice before when I was younger but I remembered completely secluding myself after I’d turned sixteen. It was only now that we’ve started talking — really talking — in two years. Cameron, you’ve got to believe me when I say this. Olive is probably the most downright genuine person you will ever meet.” I quickly glanced onto the bed, wondering if Olive was awake or not. When I saw that she was still sleeping, I continued pouring my heart out.

  “Everyone sees her as someone else, someone who’s one-sided. But she’s not. She has more sides than one and you are refusing to see that, Cameron. And now that she’s finally shown her other side to you all, you guys now want to alienate her. What’s up with that? Is there a problem with her being territorial, dude? She sees through Anjolie’s crap and all you do is shut her up. That’s not what boyfriends are supposed to do, Cameron.

  “And when has it ever been okay for you to spend ninety percent of your time with another girl, man? You take Anj to school, you spend time with her after school in the music room for your presentation or whatever, and then you take her home. Olive told me once that you even met Anjolie’s family. Have you even stopped to realize once that Olive’s own grandmother is angry at you? I mean, yeah, it’s my fault. But you haven’t even taken the time to visit Abby once since you guys have s
tarted going out.

  “And I know that guys are extremely territorial about their ladies. Believe me, I know. But why is it fair that you can tell her not to see me because I’m dangerous, but you can hang out with Anjolie who is far more dangerous than I am? Dude, she’s the boss for crying out loud! She can make lethal weapons appear out of nowhere! Does that mean anything to you? If anyone would be a threat, it would be her.

  “I also get that you’re a nice guy with the whole driving-Anjolie-to-school-every-day thing. That’s great of you. But Olive’s got a crappy Slug Bug in her driveway, Cameron. She doesn’t want to roll in with that! Especially when her boyfriend is driving up to school every day with a hot car and an even hotter chick in the passenger seat. What is that saying to people? ‘Oh, hey everyone, I’ve got a hot girl and car! Screw my girlfriend!’ That’s what it’s saying. I don’t even think anyone at your school thinks you and Olive are a couple. In fact, I think everyone thinks you and Anjolie are a couple.

  “You have to understand that Anjolie is one of the strongest girls I’ve ever met. She wouldn’t be the boss for no reason. So her acting helpless could just be a charade. One to get you to drive her to school and spend more time with her. Have you ever stopped to think about that? I bet you haven’t.” I suddenly realized that my voice was way too loud since the girls on the bed suddenly stirred.

  I quieted my voice. “Here’s what I think, dude. I think that you’re afraid to admit the truth here. I know you’re not stupid — you master Beethoven songs in one sitting. I know that you’re masking all your true feelings inside because whatever you’re really feeling could not only hurt you, but everyone else around you. I just want you to realize something — pretending is only going to make life harder. You have to do what you feel is right, what’s in your heart. Make life easier, man. Change it.”