Cam Girl

by Leah Raeder

  We stared at each other through a haze of breath and steam. From far away came a soft roar, like the ocean rising. As I looked up at her, the wind tousling her short hair and that silly cape till she seemed almost regal, I didn’t see my best friend but some gamine tomboy prince. Someone I could run away with.

  Someone I already had.

  My right shoulder jerked suddenly, playing a muscle memory: gripping a drawing pencil, pushing it against paper. Capturing this moment. But it was only memory. My arm remained straitjacketed, a wire of pain twisting around the bone.

  “You were right,” I said. “I’m an asshole. You’re better off leaving.”

  Ellis sighed, a wall of white cloud cutting us off for a moment. “I’m not leaving when you’re hurt.”

  “Don’t stay out of pity.”

  “It’s not pity. It’s because you’re the most important person in my life. Even if it’s not mutual.”

  “What, the nurse? You’re mad I wouldn’t say some arbitrary word in front of some random woman?”

  “There you go again. Making me sound petty and unreasonable because I—”

  She fell silent as the faraway roar rose higher, and a haunting scream pierced it. I stood and a streamer of light rolled across the sky. At its apex it burst into a red chrysanthemum, a hundred fiery petals falling into the ocean. Fireworks.

  “It’s midnight,” I said. Elle’s eyes lowered, watching my mouth and then drifting back up. I went warm all over, little threads of heat shooting out to my fingertips, my lips. “If you start this new year with me, we’ll be stuck together.”

  “I never wanted to go. But you won’t give me a reason to stay.”

  “I’m your reason. Like you’re mine.” I brushed her cheek. “Everything’s new tonight. Let’s be new, too.”

  Our breath hung silkily in the space between us, a ghostly tissue spanning mouth to mouth. Something made from the two of us, knitting us together. Overhead another firework burst and then another, electric blue, shocking purple, as I leaned in to close this space, to share one breath.

  And then my fucking phone rang.

  I stepped back, dizzy. Sat in the wheelchair and glared at the screen. “Shit. Guess who?”

  Ellis laughed nervously. “Tu mamá.”

  “Let’s go before she melts down Maine.”

  We avoided each other’s eyes on the elevator. But she traced my jawline with one finger, and I took that hand and pressed it to my mouth, brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

  “Happy New Year, my prince.”

  Her hand stayed on my shoulder the whole way back.

  My mom met us in the room in full español mode. “Letting your beloved mother leave without a good-bye? What if the plane crashes?”

  I responded in Spanish, too. “Planes are safer than cars. And that’s really tasteless when we were just in an accident. Please speak English in front of Ellis.”

  “She understands more than you think.” Mamá gave me a strange look. “As do I.”

  I got out of the chair, shaking the tiara from my head. “So you’re going home?”

  “I booked an early flight from Boston. I have to be at work tomorrow.”

  “Well, thanks for dropping by.”

  “Vada.” My mother touched my arm as I headed for the bed. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Chicago.”

  Elle watched us with big unblinking eyes, probably not parsing more than every fifth word. But the name of that city alarmed her.

  “I can’t, Mamá.”

  “This is serious. You’re not playing house anymore. You’ll need months of further care.”

  My jaw tightened. “ ‘Playing house’?”

  “Transfer to a college back home. Ari’s fiancé will help us pay.”

  “Do you even understand how grad school works? I can’t transfer. I’d have to start over.” I snatched the tiara again and crushed it with my good hand. “And I’m not taking money from some stranger.”

  “Your future brother-in-law.”

  “I’ve heard that before.” To Elle I said, in English, “She wants me to come home.”

  “Maybe you should, Vada.”

  I gaped. “You’re taking her side?”

  “Do you know what kind of physical therapy you’ll need?”

  My meds were wearing off, pain rumbling in the marrow. Soon there would be lightning jags lancing along my nerves. I pretended the tension in my body was all anger.

  “No, I don’t. I’ve been trying not to focus on the nightmare ahead of me. I’ve been trying to stay fucking positive.”

  Ellis raised an eyebrow, and I heard how ridiculous I sounded and almost laughed. She always brought me back to earth.

  “I’m staying,” I told my mother, still in English. “My life is here now. My school, my friends.” I swallowed. “And Elle is here. I won’t leave her.”

  “I made a reservation for her, too.”

  Now we both gaped.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Bergen, but I can’t—”

  “Unbelievable,” I interrupted. “Still controlling my life. Thinking you know better. My choices are never good enough for you, Mamá. I’m never good enough.”

  “I won’t hold this against you,” she said icily. “You’re in pain, and upset. Let’s go home.”

  “I am home.”

  I half shouted it. Because I couldn’t explain, not in words. Only with lines on paper, tides of color. This place, this new life we’d started, away from my mother’s meddling and Elle’s awful parents, where we could finally be our real selves—this was home. This was ours.

  In the last painting I started before the crash, two silhouettes ran into the night ocean. The water was so thick with stars it looked like liquid glitter. Spray kicked up from their heels, shimmering trails of galaxies. Rising on the horizon, instead of the moon, was Earth: a deep-blue pearl wrapped in tatters of white mist. One silhouette’s hair was long and the other’s short, but nothing else indicated what they were—young or old, girls or boys. One pulled the other onward by the hand, but a trick of perspective made it different each time you looked: Sometimes the long-haired one was leading, sometimes the other. Sometimes, as you looked, it switched right before your eyes. The only certainty was that they were going in together.

  (—Bergen, Vada. Follow Me into Forever. Unfinished; oil on canvas.)

  My mother’s gaze flicked between me and Elle.

  “What is really going on here?” she said in a hushed voice. “Is there something I should know?”

  “No. I told you. I’m still in school. I have a life here.”

  “I should go,” Ellis said. “I’ll give you two some priv—”

  I gripped her shoulder, firmly. “Stay.”

  My mother watched us, her eyes glinting with sharp thoughts.

  “Chiquita, tell her to come home.”

  Ellis bit her lip.

  “Don’t drag her into it,” I said. “Just let me live my life, Mamá.”

  “What kind of life?”

  “My own.”

  “Your own. I see.” She breathed deeply through her nose. “A life you have to hide from your mother. From everybody. What kind of life is that?”

  “Don’t you dare judge me.” Ellis put a hand on my spine, stroked softly, soothingly, and my fury fell but my voice remained bitter. “You know why I keep things from you? Because everything I do is wrong in your eyes. I’m not perfect like Ariana. I’m the black sheep. The fuckup. The disappointment.”

  My mother stood to her full height. Her voice struck like a slap. “I’ve never been disappointed in you. If I have high expectations, it’s because I would expect no less from myself. The world looks down on you, expects nothing from you because of the color of your skin and your mother’s family name. They don’t want you to fail. They want you to not even try. If you try, you will never disappoint me.”

  At that moment I wanted nothing more than to grab Elle’s hand. “There are thing
s about me that would disappoint you. Things I can’t change.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not having this discussion now.”

  Mamá snorted. “You’ve made mistakes? Who hasn’t? I never liked the boys you chose, but I never stopped you from seeing them. I still run into Raoul. He asks about—”

  “I’m not talking about fucking Raoul.”

  Her gaze refocused, cold sun burning suddenly through fog. “You think I don’t know what you’re talking about? Do you really think I’m that blind?”

  Elle’s hand left the small of my back, but I sensed her heart smashing hard, inches behind mine.

  “Why do you hide this from me? Both of you, why? Chiquita, I have known you as long as mija has. I love you like my own blood.”

  “Leave her out of it,” I snapped.

  “You think I don’t understand? You spend all your time together, alone. It is one thing to be best friends, but the lines are becoming blurred. Come home. Be around other people. You’ll grow out of it. It’s not healthy, what you’re doing. Either of you.”

  “Stop, Mamá. Just stop.” I moved away from Ellis. If I was taking arrows to the chest, I didn’t want one piercing me and hitting her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Whose fault is that? This is the first time you’ve spoken to me in months.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “You are ashamed.”

  “Because of you. You taught me shame. You always said making art was pointless. You spent all that money on my stupid Confirmation dress instead of buying me some cheap paint like I begged for. You’re pushing me to get married before I finish school. That’s not me. I don’t want to relive your fucking life for you and fix your mistakes. I want to live my own.”

  Mamá’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. I’d gone too far.

  “Vada,” Ellis said. “I’ll just go, okay? You should talk. Without me here.”

  “I have nothing else to say to her.”

  My mother’s eyes ricocheted between us. I expected wrath, but instead she said, quietly, “There is a seat waiting for each of you, mijas queridas.”

  My beloved daughters.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Bergen,” Elle said.

  “Take care of her, chiquita.”

  Then she kissed our cheeks and was gone.

  I reeled backward into a chair, as if some great weight had just vanished and I’d lost my balance.

  “Vada.” Ellis tugged my arm, startlingly rough. “Go after her.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell her you love her.”

  My jaw clenched. “She knows.”

  “What if you never see her again? What if those were the last words she hears?”

  I have nothing else to say to her.

  I caught my mother at the elevator doors. She heard my footsteps, or sensed me. When she whirled around I crashed into her chest and she seized me in strong arms. My injured one was crushed between us, but I didn’t care.

  “Te quiero,” I mumbled into her shoulder. “Te quiero, Mamá. Y yo también la amo.”

  She held me for a long, long time. The elevator dinged and shuttled past over and over. She didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure how to take that. But when she finally left, I knew my last words had come straight from my heart.

  I love you, I’d said. I love you, Mom. And I love her, too.

  Querer. Amar.

  Two different words. Two different loves.

  * * *

  Her hands.

  I obsessed over them. Drew them in all their moods. Deft and nervous, fluttering quick as the flick of birds’ wings, her fingers a blur of white feathers—or slow and tantalizing as they lifted my shirt, unhooked my bra, brushed the skin over my hammering heart. With one nail she’d trace the knot of fire in my chest to the place it came undone just below my navel. I sketched her hands a thousand times in my notebooks, and in my dreams her hands sketched my skin a thousand more.

  New Year’s morning I woke in a wash of watery blue light. Ellis sprawled awkwardly in an armchair, one coltish leg flung across the floor. My shoulder shifted in small, abortive orbits, drawing her in my head. Miming the movements hurt but I didn’t stop. Here’s the truth: every line you agonize over is etched into your memory. Onlookers see the finished result, polished and prettified, but all the artist remembers is the labor. The grueling, gloriously bloody becoming.

  “What are you looking at?” Elle said, catching me staring.

  “Nothing.”

  The sky turned shades of cold metal, tin and zinc, and when she wheeled me outside into the thick stillness we both glanced up, searching for the first snowflakes. A pinprick of ice touched my tongue. When I lowered my head, Ellis was watching me with a wistful expression.

  “What are you looking at?” I said.

  “You.” She shrugged shyly. “It’s just nice to see you happy.”

  Something warm ran down my spine, a droplet of sun.

  The hospital garden looked spray-painted with winter, a silver powdercoat of frost laying atop everything. Other patients passed with their attendants, smiling benignly. We meandered down stone paths lined with witch hazel. I plucked a frond, idly broke off the ice whiskers. Ellis knelt suddenly before a bank of snowdrops.

  “Oh my god,” she said.

  “What?”

  “This. Doesn’t it belong to you?”

  She turned on her heel and held it up in both hands: a crown of woven witch hazel, spidery threads of red and gold, with snowdrops tucked into the braids like gems.

  My mouth hung open. “Ellis.”

  She rose to set it on my head. I grabbed the dangling end of her scarf.

  “When did you do this?” I breathed.

  “It was stolen long ago, Your Highness. We’ve been searching for many years. What a great irony, to find it here in our own kingdom.”

  I laughed, a little wildly. “You are so ridiculous. I love you.”

  She was trying not to laugh, too, and she blushed and lowered her eyes. My bashful prince.

  Something hot stung my cheek.

  “Oh, no. Vada. Don’t.”

  Great. I was totally crying.

  “I’m just—this is really nice,” I said. “Being happy again.”

  With you.

  I scrubbed my tears on her scarf, which earned a laugh. We got up to walk. Ellis hovered at my side and after a while I took her hand, walking close and slow, arm in arm. We circled a pond where thin glass leaves of ice floated atop dark water. On a bench across from us, a man in a beanie watched. Instinctively I turned around.

  “What’s wrong?” Ellis said.

  “Let’s go this way.”

  We walked into a copse of spruce, the air spiced with balsam and menthol. The path bent and the civilized world disappeared and for a moment, we could’ve been in some forest deep in the heart of Maine, utterly lost. I started to relax, wrapped my arm around Elle’s waist. Then I heard footsteps crunching up the path.

  I stepped away from her. “Want to head back? I’m kinda tired.”

  “Okay.”

  When she reached for my hand again I drifted a step farther off.

  “Vada, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you avoiding people?”

  “Just look at me.” I gestured at my ragged ponytail, the goofy crown, the wrinkled pajamas. “I’m not fit to be seen in public.”

  “You’re not fit to be seen?” She moved closer, grasped my hand. “Or this isn’t?”

  Again, instinct: I recoiled, shook her off.

  Then immediately did a double take and said, “Ellis, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  But she was already stalking down the path, leaving.

  “Fuck,” I growled.

  She must have taken off running, because by the time I got out of the trees she was nowhere in sight. Fucking track star. No way could I catch up.

  I trudged back to the wheelchair and tried
to push it one-handed, but it kept veering off into the snow. So I started kicking it instead, which was a lot more satisfying.

  Goddammit, Ellis. What did you expect?

  Seeing my mom always put me in a bad headspace. Seeing the way other people saw us. When it was just us in our little fantasy world it was fine, but Mamá had to remind me how childish and unhealthy it was.

  The lines are becoming blurred.

  Come home. Be around other people.

  You’ll grow out of it.

  Like we were kids playing make-believe.

  I ripped the crown from my head, but I couldn’t shred it with one hand. So I pressed it to my mouth to hold in a sob, because fuck emotional stability, apparently.

  “Excuse me,” a man said.

  I jumped. Beanie Guy stood beside me. Blond scruff, broad-shouldered. Ruggedly handsome. Fortyish.

  “Need some help?”

  For a bizarre moment I thought he was talking about the crown. I looked pitifully at the chair.

  “Oh. No. Thanks.”

  “Please,” he said, cracking a smile. “I won’t make you sit. But let me help.”

  I really just wanted him to go away, but if I tried to tell him off I might burst into tears. Then he’d definitely go all Good Samaritan.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  He kept pace with me on the path back. I clutched the crown in a fist, and he glanced at it.

  “Is she your girlfriend?” he said. “The redhead?”

  I almost tripped. “What?”

  “I saw you together. You looked happy.”

  My fist furled tighter. Then I tossed the mangled vines into the snow. “She’s a friend. Not that it’s any of your business. Are you a patient?”

  “No. My son was.”

  “Oh.”

  We walked in silence another half minute. I felt his eyes on me. Too avid, too interested.

  “Was?” I said.

  “He passed away.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” The man’s eyes defocused. “It’s comforting, to see other people his age. Reminds me that life goes on.”

  Beanie Guy was making me feel like a sublime shitheel. “What happened to your son?”

  “He was in a car accident.”

  I stumbled.