“Her name’s Ellie!” Camden shouted back. The girl felt a shawl of pride wrap around her, loving his protectiveness.
There was a pause and she could see the man, Palm Valley’s Sheriff, hesitate in the doorway.
“Well I guess I should be happy you’re not the faggot I thought you were,” Camden’s father spat out before going back in the house and slamming the door behind him.
The girl’s face immediately went red over the father’s offensive choice of words. She swallowed hard and looked at Camden. His pale face looked even whiter in the darkness and his blue eyes looked down at his hands.
“Does your father think you’re gay?” she asked him.
“Who doesn’t?” he said with a laugh but kept his eyes away from hers. “You forget my nickname is The Dark Queen. If I’m not threatening to blow up the school, then I’m trying to rape young boys.”
The girl grimaced, feeling sorry for him. “Even if you were gay…”
“I’m not,” he said quickly.
She smiled softly. “I know. But even if you were, that’s a terrible way for your dad to act toward you.”
He sighed and lay back down on the trampoline. The moonlight glared in his thick glasses. “Yeah, well that’s my dad.”
The girl started running her hands over the trampoline’s gritty surface. “Have you ever thought about, you know, not dressing the way you do?”
She could hear his breath catch in his throat and knew she’d struck a chord.
“What’s wrong with the way I dress?”
“Well, nothing, to me. But maybe if you didn’t look so scary and wear makeup, the other kids wouldn’t make fun of you.”
“But then I wouldn’t be who I am. I don’t want to hide myself. I’m not ashamed of being Camden McQueen. Are you ashamed of being Ellie Watt?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
He sat up and leaned in close to her, his eyes searching her face. “You’re serious?”
She frowned. “Of course I am. You have a choice, Camden. You can start acting normal and not like a freak and you’ll be fine. I can’t hide who I am, even if I wanted to, even though I’m trying to. I can’t change the way I walk and I can’t get rid of the scars on my leg.”
Camden continued looking at her with fervent intensity. It started to make her a little bit uncomfortable and she wiped her hands on her jeans. “You’ve never shown me your scars.”
The girl swallowed hard. “And I’m not about to.”
“Can it be so bad?” he whispered. “How can someone as pretty as you have anything that would make her less?”
She glossed over the fact that he had called her pretty. “It can. I’d give anything to be normal, to live a normal life, to be like everyone else.”
“Would you really? Give everything just to fit in?” he asked, disbelieving.
She nodded. She would. She prayed for it every night as she lay in her bed, the tears leaking out from the corners of her tired eyes. She would do anything, give everything, just to be equal with everyone else. And if she was lucky, maybe she’d get to rise above them too. Maybe she’d be able to look down on them one day, the way that they looked down on her.
“If I believed in a god, I’d say you should be proud of the way he made you. You’re different, Ellie. Your scars, your injury, they make you who you are. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Yet the girl could. But before she could dwell on it anymore, Camden moved in closer, until his black shirt was brushed up against her. She froze from his closeness and still couldn’t move as she felt his long, cold hands on her face, tilting her chin toward him.
She’d never been kissed before, but she knew what was coming. It both excited and terrified her. She didn’t like Camden in that way and yet she was curious to see if that could change.
She closed her eyes as his lips met hers, surprisingly soft. She was glad he wasn’t wearing his black lipstick and almost laughed at the image of black lipstick marks on her face. Now that would confuse his father.
The kiss was gentle and brief, and as Camden pulled back and she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but sadness in his. Perhaps he could already tell that she was going to ruin him.
Now
By the time Camden had pulled the Jeep off the highway and down Palm Canyon Drive, he’d grown out of his mood and was back to being chatty.
“Ever heard of Guano Padano?” he asked me, reaching for his iPod. We bounced along the road, the sky black and star-strewn except near the mountain peaks where it glowed periwinkle blue.