stars are raining down

one-sided camille/jo

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"Everything turned around and now the sky is falling down…"

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"She's a wreck." Pause. "Yeah, I know, I thought she would go far. But life just got the best of her. Craziness was always in her ge-" Pause. Laughter. Hushed whispers. "What's she doing now? I don't know, what she always does."

The conversation drifts from there and Camille licks her lips, head still spinning. There's still drugs drifting under her skin and stars dancing in her mind. She wants to scream maybe, to release the inner frustration. She can't suck in air, and it takes air to breathe. She can't move.

She's a wreck. Camille can hear the words in her mind again and again, like an echo of something. Like maybe blonde hair and vanilla-

No! She refuses to go back to those memories. That's what brought her to the edge of destruction. Those love-filled nights and sweet days is what brought that catastrophe under her fingers. It's what shattered her, broke her determination.

She stumbles off her seat. She's wobbly and unsteady in her heels. She's way too high to be able to walk a straight line and she doesn't say sorry when she bumps into people. They just shake their head at her and continue along. No one really pays attention to the drowning drama queen; they can't tell the difference from her acting and her cries of help, her pleas of the old times when-

No, she tells herself as the room spins, she can't go back. That's what the crystal white powder does. It takes away the memories and the scent of skin and the blonde hair, beautiful oh so beautiful-

She faintly hears a voice, a sad pathetic voice babbling. Wait, she knows that voice. It's her. She's mumbling one name over and over again, the person who she could never hold onto.

Wreck. She's a wreck.

Maybe I should just kill myself, she thinks as people cringe away from her. The world is unsteady under her shoes and she can feel her hair lying limp against her shoulder blades. The air is cold but her skin is on fire. She's sweating.

The world spins slightly, twisting and turning under her feet, and all of the sudden all she can see is the pool, big and blue and something that can is so close and so far away. If she just laid down in the pool, body limp and non-fighting, what would happen? Would she just suck in chlorine water and go to sleep?

Lights are flashing now and she can still hear the faint beat of the bass in her mind, pounding off the base of her skull. She wants to cry from desperation but she's still babbling one name. If she wasn't already a wreck, then maybe that one word in replay would kill her. She thinks that maybe it might.

Her heels hesitate for one second on the edge of the pool before she opens her mouth slightly and falls in.

She can hear people talking and a few screaming but Camille shakes it off. The water's so pretty, she thinks. She opens her eyes wide, body sinking to the ground. The water wraps around her like silk scarves and cradles her. Her breath escapes her in a gasp, little tiny bubbles reaching high, high, higher to the surface of the water where they break the current and float up, up, up.

She sinks down, her dress swirling around her legs. Her heels click to the bottom of the pool and she just lays, body limp. Water swirls around her in thick currents. She can see sparkles of light above her head, little glimmers of white and blue and dark red. She opens her mouth a little more. Chlorine, thick and salty and oh-so-terrible, enters her lungs. It clogs her windpipe and swirls in her stomach painfully.

Her ears ring like an abandoned telephone. She can hear the faint scream of people and bustle of those who gave her nasty looks. She traces her tongue against her teeth as her lungs ache for air. She won't give in; she'll deny it.

This is the only way for the memory to go away, she thinks as the world starts to get dark around the edges. The colors start to disappear and the world starts to swim ( no pun intended, of course ). Everything starts to fade away as her chest demands air, dammit, I need to breathe you bitch let me have air!

She smiles and just stares up, up, up as everything starts to go black. Just as she's on the edge of sleepiness, of making the blonde hair and smell of vanilla go away, someone grabs onto her waist.

She's tugged up by her dress violently. The stranger is pushing them towards the surface, breaking the air and she gasps unwantedly. I was so close, she wants to say, but the words stick in the back of her throat like peanut butter.

She's taking in as much air as she can now. The world begins to get back into focus.

There's lips on hers and blond hair in her sight and she wants to call out their name, but her throat is still clogged with water.

There's hands on her chest, pressing onetwothree and then the lips return again. She splutters and gags, water escaping her lungs. She coughs all over the ground. She barely has time to turn her head before she's puking on the cement. Her dress sticks to her and her head spin and she's still trying to get air into her aching lungs.

Her eyes start to swim with tears because her chest burns so badly. The stranger, who she can faintly see is a blond-haired boy with large eyebrows, is staring down at her angrily.

Kendall. It's Kendall. It's Kendall Knight who just saved her life. It's also the same boy who almost killed Camille. He took everything she had. It's her fault she almost died. His fault.

Get off me, she tries to say but her lips won't form words. She looks up at Kendall's face. His eyes blaze like a raging wildfire and his lips are moving as he shakes her shoulders but her ears are still filled with water so she doesn't know what he's saying.

She shakes her head. People are gathered around her, their lips moving silently. Some look concerened. If she wasn't so freaking scared and conflicted, she thinks that maybe she would laugh. Who knows, there's a lot of 'maybes' in her world now since she let the scent of vanilla escape her-

Kendall. He's staring right at her, shaking her shoulders frantically. His face looks vulnerable in the florescent lights. She wants to push him on the concrete so hard that his head splits open. She can't move though. Her limbs are filled with lead and her head is still down in the pool, swimming.

After a while, the water comes out of her ears and she can hear Kendall saying, "So fucking stupid, why!"

She opens her mouth and croaks out, "Get off me."

He blinks like he doesn't know what she's saying. "W-What?"

Camille's hands are shaking against her side as she whispers, "Get away from me."

She can feel the power coarsing back through her body and whether it's from the adreneline of just dying or maybe the drugs, she doesn't know. But she follows the sound, pushing off the concrete and rising on her elbows. The lights hurt her eyes.

"Don't touch me! You took everything else from me, why couldn't you let me die? Why?"

Kendall lips part and he shakes his head from side to side real slow. "I don't understand," he says and there are tears in his eyes. She takes a sick kind of pleasure from that.

"You took her away from me!" Camille's screaming now. She's in full actress mode again, only this is the worst role she's ever been in. People around her hold their ears. "I had her first! I loved her, I still love her. But you had to waltz in here and take her! How could you?"

"What are you talking about?" Kendall asks. His face is scared and exposed, like she's a wild tiger and could attack him at any moment.

"You!" She pauses and coughs. She holds her hands to her mouth and is surprised to see blood on her fingers. She wipes them off on her dress and looks up at Kendall. "You took Jo away from me! I love her! But no, she dumped me from you. I love her, I love her. I-I-"

Her voice breaks at the end of the sentence and her shoulders are shaking. She's crying. She's sobbing so hard that her lungs should be bursting but oxygen is still scarce so she's only making little hiccup-y noises.

The crowd is becoming sparce now. They don't want to be seen with the crazy, psycho lesbian actress who just tried to drown herself. They slowly disappear like nothing ever happened until it's just them. Camille and Kendall.

Her body is convulsing and she's still coughing. Blood stains her dress red. The world swims in front of her eyes. She feels dizzy.

"I'm sorry," Kendall says sincerely. "I didn't know."

His breaks pathetically and then he's gathering Camille up in his lap, holding them close. She's shaking. She's cold and her skin is still hot and her lungs ache. She's babbling one word over and over again: Jo, Jo, Jo.

She's freaking out now. She can faintly hear Kendall whispering, "I'm sorry it had to end this way."

The pain in her chest is getting worse. The world swims. She's still gagging up blood. Her dress is wet. Her head is still spinning and she's dizzy and just wants to sleep.

She rests her head on Kendall's collar bone where she can faintly smell vanilla-- Jo's scent, from where they were probably hugging or kissing this morning-- and closes her eyes. She goes to sleep.