We Need Help

If walls could talk, I’d ask for a window. And maybe a bulldozer. Someone else needed to see everything I saw, but at this point, I'm trapped. Walls are supposed to make people claustrophobic, not the other way around. A girl named Cameron was the bane of my existence. I have love for her, the frustrating kind that comes with time and proximity to a person. The kind of love some family members had for each other, only in those cases, they have a chance to get away to let the fondness grow. If you can’t get away from someone like that, you suffocate.

I first met Cameron when her parents divorced. She sat in the darkness of her closet with the accordion door closed straight, finally able to breathe in the small space. Her brother Jack came into the room and wanted to talk. She let him under the circumstances that he talk and she listen.

Cameron let Jack push the door open and he sat cross legged on the other side. She straightened, pulling her knees into her chest with one arm but keeping the other on a bend in the door. Jack talked, and she listened. Sometimes, he’d mess up. He asked, “Did you see any signs this was going to happen?” She was silent, then pushed forward on the bend in the door. Jack’s landscape view of his sister became portrait set against the unorganized darkness behind her as the wood creaked and folded amongst itself. He kept talking, explaining that he should have known because Dad always complained about Mom on the car rides home from school. Then Jack asked, “Are you doing okay?” And the faded, white, wooden blinds stretched all the way across the closet. He said, “I’m not,” then unfolded his legs and Cameron listened to his retreat across the carpeted floor, only knowing he was outside of her room when she heard the familiar creak of the spot which made it impossible to sneak out of her room all of these years.

Cameron was a strong young woman, and I watched her put herself back together. It was still just me at that point, and even still I’m the one closest to her. Of course, she had two best friends like any other girl going into her freshman year of high school. She, Kayla, and Melanie had been inseparable since the sixth grade, and they counted themselves fortunate to have each other to walk in those formidable doors on the first day of school. It was a big blow to learn Kayla didn’t share the same lunch period as them, but they all promised each other it wouldn’t change anything. The girls decided to go out for cross-country together so nobody would feel too left out.

I’ll never forget the day she brought home her boyfriend Cory. Scratch that, I’ll never forget when she first started crushing on Cory. He smiled at her on a rainy Tuesday in the hallway. He was a sophomore. Cameron's hair was soaked and she was speed-walking to class while wringing out her long brown hair. She had straightened it before school and it was quickly gaining back its curl. He walked past and said, “I like your hair,” and that was it. She started wearing it natural three days out of the school week.

Cameron and Cory started dating shortly after. He would come over after school, though Cameron’s mother didn’t allow them in the bedroom. Of course, when Cameron’s mother was getting happy hour drinks on one Thursday evening that was “absolutely not a date,” Cameron had Cory over and they took each other’s virginities. She was in a lot of pain and didn’t necessarily fall in love after, but it got easier with practice. Most of the time they would practice in his car, usually in a vacant Church parking lot. They practiced until he was ready for someone else, and then he cheated on her. That’s when I gained some company.

Cameron’s mother’s heart ached for her child. She saw her daughter was hurting, but every time she asked, the answer was always the same. “I’m fine.” So, Cameron’s mom would hug her daughter at random times: when she walked in the door, when she was peeling a banana at breakfast. And every time, Cameron’s shoulders would shudder and she tried to hold back tears. She’d wipe them away roughly with the back of her hand and insist she was “fine.” This is when I started to suffocate.

Then came the day Cameron got the worst news she would receive in her high school career. Compared to life, it’s nothing, but these things do tend to shape us when we’re young. Cameron was sitting next to Melanie in their 4A lunchblock. Melanie’s phone vibrated incessantly. She was on her phone often at lunch, but Cameron never paid it much attention. This time, Melanie peeked at her phone then kept it flipped over on the table without responding to whoever it was. Curiosity got the best of Cameron when Melanie said she was grabbing extra napkins. I pushed with everything in me to tell her not to do it. She did hesitate, and I think she felt me, but in the end, she flipped over Melanie’s phone and saw all of the notifications from Cory.

She went off the deep end after that. She stopped hanging out with both Melanie and Kayla, but Kayla stopped hanging out with Melanie too. Cameron stopped raising her hand in class, she quit the cross-country team, and she muted out the world with tiny headphones that blared angry music.

Cameron slowly muted my world too. Though, I did gain in company the labyrinth of walls she built, all of us waiting in vain to be put down.