Thanatophobia

At first I wasn’t sure anyone was going to answer. The line kept ringing, and no one picked up until what was supposed to be the final ring. There was static in my ear and then a deep, breathy voice on the other line.

“Can I help you?” he grunted quickly. I made a face and Lauren looked at me with confusion.

“Umm…” I stammered, “Can I talk to Cam?”

“Cam?” he mumbled.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Erm, Cameron?”

“Who is this? What do you want?” I could hear the faint noise of Sports Center in the background.

“Uh, my name’s Shelby, I’m Cam’s friend?” I said it more like a question. This guy sounded like a total wanker, and it was making me three different levels of uncomfortable.

He grunted again. “Well what do you want?” he asked in an irritated voice. I didn’t get it; how was someone related to Cam so rude? Sure, he was a pain in me ass, but at least he attempted to be pleasant.

On the other line, a door squeaked open and I hear the quiet voice of a woman. “Who’s on the phone, honey?” she asked timidly.

“None of your damn business,” the man belched. I made a face and Lauren looked like she was going to die from anticipation. She must have hated not knowing what was going on.

“Take it,” he said, and there was more static.

“Hello?” the woman’s voice came through the reciever.

“Hi,” I muttered. “Do you know if Cameron’s around?” Saying Cameron sounded weird to me…Everyone else called him that and it sounded fine, but I didn’t like the feeling of it.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, a little more cheery than before. It must have been his mom. “May I ask who this is?”

“My name’s Shelby,” I said again. “I’m friends with Cam.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she told me. “I’ll go see if he’s in his room.”

“Thanks.”

I waited while there was a little bit more static as she passed through the house. I heard knocking and she covered the reciever while saying, “Cam, there’s a girl on the phone.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “Okay, I’ll tell her.”

She took her hand away from the phone and said, “I’m sorry, Hun, he says he’s busy with school work. Do you mind calling back later?”

I said sure and we hung up. I turned to Lauren with a confused look on my face.

“That was the weirdest thing of my life,” I told her. “He has this weird dad or something- he sounds like a pedophile- but his mom’s nice.”

“Well, what about Cameron?” she asked.

I shrugged. “He said he couldn’t talk…but I think he was lying.”

“Why would he lie?”

I stood up and helped pull Lauren to her feet. “Because he’s pissed at me. Or he’s upset. I don’t know, I just think he’s lying.”

Lauren and I went downstairs, where the entire house was now clean and the maids gone. In the kitchen, I found a phonebook and started looking for his number.

“What are you doing?” Lauren asked, sitting at the table.

“I’m looking for his address,” I replied. “I’m going over to his house… aha! I found it.”

Lauren peeked over my shoulder. “He lives there?” she said mostly to herself.

“Where’s there?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s not that bad…” she muttered. “Let’s just say it’s not the nicest part of town.”

“Uh-huh…” I nodded. “Well, do you mind driving me there?”

♥♦♣♠

Lauren was right; the place was a dump. She drove slowly past tiny house after tiny house. The complex was completely unorganized; all the houses were really close together with tiny back yards surrounded by chain-link fences. Some of them had dogs in the back that I would not want to get anywhere near, and the driveways were short, only holding two cars at the most. Nobody was outside. It was like a ghost neighborhood.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Lauren asked unsurely, as if I would get raped somehow in broad daylight. She came to a stop in front of the house that was supposed to be Cam’s (I prayed to God that it was the right house) and kept the doors locked. “It’s kinda sketchy around here.”

I laughed, mostly to keep my wits. After all, I was a rich girl from a snobby boarding school. I’d never even imagined I’d step foot near one of these neighborhoods. Finally, I nodded before I could change my mind. “I need to figure out what’s up with him,” I said. “This definitely seems to be the place to start.”

“Good luck,” she said, and I stepped out of the car.

There was no doorbell, so I knocked on the metal part of the screen door, waiting anxiously. After a minute, the front door swung open and a tall, very skinny woman was standing in front of me. She had her hair in a messy bun and the hem of her shirt was stained with what looked like beer. She had heavy bags under her eyes, but smiled nonetheless. Her hollowed out eyes crinkled kind of like Cam’s did.

“Can I help you?” she asked in her soft voice that I recognized from over the phone.

I smiled as pleasantly as I could, feeling very out of place in my yellow sundress and strappy Gucci sandals. “Hi…” I started. “I’m Shelby. We talked on the phone a while ago, and I know you said Cam was really busy but do you think I could maybe talk to him for just a little bit?”

My heart was pounding, even though this lady wasn’t menacing at all. It was what was in the house that scared me.

As if on cue, a man yelled from inside, “Who the hell is at the door, Lynn?”

Cam’s mom (I’m guessing it was his mom) winced then stood erect. “It’s just one of Cam’s friends, Honey,” she called.

“The bitchy one from earlier?”

I tried not to look offended, but I didn’t know how well that worked out. Lynn’s eyes got wide and she shot me a look of apology. “I’ll be right there, okay?” she yelled behind her. “Come on in, sweetie.”

She opened the door wider and the first thing that hit me was the pungent smell of marijuana. Even though I used to smoke it, I never liked it. It smells terrible. Lynn put her hand on my shoulder and quickly steered me down a narrow, short hallway. “There’s his room,” she pointed out and knocked on the door. “Thanks for stopping by. It’s nice to meet you Shelby.”

She sounded rushed, smiling before whisking back down the hallway. I took a deep breath.

“Cam?” I said softly against the door. “Are you in there?”

Silence.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, a little louder. I waited, but there was still no reply. I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair, looking around the hallway. It was dark and there were no pictures on the walls, nothing that even indicated there was a family living here besides the stains on the carpet and the smell of pot and sour whiskey in the air.

I was about to turn around when the door swung open and Cam appeared in front of me, looking twice as exhausted as he did this morning.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, shocked.

“I needed to apologize,” I admitted, “and you wouldn’t let me talk to you on the phone, and—“

He glanced over my shoulder then pulled me into the room, shutting the door behind us. “Apologize for what? I’m the one who hit you.”

The first thing that I noticed was the smell of the room- it was so much different than the rest of the house (in other words, it didn’t wreak of illegal drugs). Cam’s room was painted blue, with a twin-sized bed in the corner and a desk under the window. It was a tiny room that smelled like Downy laundry detergent, and the window was propped open with a brick so that light poured inside and fresh air filtered out the smell of pot.

I sat on the edge of his bed. “Cam, you barely hit me,” I told him sincerely. It was weird- this was the first time I had ever greeted him without an insult. “I was being an asshole. I have been since I got here.”

He took a seat next to me. “I’ve been treated a lot worse than you treat me, honestly.”

“Well, I’m still sorry,” I sighed. “I’m just a messy person. I’m resentful and stressed out and you just drive me crazy because you’re the reason I’m alive, you know?”

“Why do you resent that?” he asked.

“Why do you think? I wanted to die. You took that away from me. I don’t know, I’m just sick of being depressed all the time. It’s like I’m being followed constantly by someone who wants to kill me, like they know all my secrets and they’ll get out somehow. It’s like my own conscience is out to get me.”

He stared at his palms in his lap. “I just didn’t want you to die.”

I furrowed my brow. “You didn’t even know me.”

Suddenly, there was a crash that came from the living room. “What do you mean, they’re alone?” the man’s voice rang through the house. Cam looked at me with tired eyes.

“That’s my stepdad,” he muttered. “He’s an ass.”

“Sounds like it,” I agreed. Just then, the bedroom door burst open.

“What the hell is this?” Cam’s stepdad yelled. He was balding and had the biggest ears I’d even seen. His face was all scrunched up and too tiny compared to the rest of his head. He had beady little eyes and a fat lower lip, and his beer belly was hanging out of his stained wifebeater. My heart did a somersault and Cam stood up. His expression was vacant; like he was living in a dream.

“Get out of my room,” Cam hissed. “I don’t want you in here.”

“You act like I give a flying fuck,” he snapped back. “What the hell are you two doing in here? Making out? You’re gonna get her pregnant, you son of a—“

“Get the hell out of my room, Phil.”

“Or is she already pregnant?” he looked me in the eyes and I got goosebumps. “What are you doing here, blondie? You here to get some from your baby-daddy?”

“Phil!” Cam yelled.

“You can do so much better, princess,” he told me. He wreaked like weed. “This kids an asshole, all he does is lay around. He can’t support you, what makes you think he can support a kid?”

“Don’t call her that!” Cam growled, clenching his fists. “She’s not pregnant, now go shoot up or something, you’re a lot more sociable when you’re trashed.”

I sat frozen on the edge of the bed, afraid that if I moved the tension in the room would break.

Phil took a step closer to us and grabbed Cam’s collar. “Apologize.”

This guy was the biggest asshole I’d ever seen. He made my parents look like saints, and that was saying something.

Cam rolled his eyes and kneed his stepdad in the crotch, making the troll double over, screaming.

“You fucking cunt!” he wheezed, and Cam grabbed my hand, pulling me out of the room.

We ran down the tiny hallway, across the living room (where there were empty cans of beer and a bunch of tacky animal heads on the wall) and out of the house. “Go, go, go!” he shouted, propelling us faster down the driveway and across the street.

I looked back and Phil was standing in the doorway waving a baseball bat, making my stomach drop. “Holy shit, Cam,” I yelled.

I wasn’t sure he would catch us, because he was still staggering from Cam’s hit, but I was still scared to the point where I might pee myself. Cam just ran faster, which made it harder to catch up because I was wearing those strappy sandals, but I kept going. We hopped someone’s fence and took a sharp turn down the street.

“What if he catches us?” I gasped.

“He won’t.” He sounded sure enough of himself. We ran past an empty playground and behind it was a bunch of dense bushes. He let go of my hand, diving in. I followed suit, scraping my knees and ripping my dress a little, but we were hidden. I knelt down, untangling my hair from the branches and breathing heavily.

I glanced at Cam, who looked terrified. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered, closing his eyes and tilting his face up to the sky. “I’m so sorry.”

We heard heavy, dragging footsteps and I froze, holding my breath. Cam was shaking, and I grabbed his hand. We sat silently, waiting for Phil to leave and dying of anticipation. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and tried my hardest not to make a sound while I let out a puff of air.

Finally, the footsteps took up into a run and became fainter as Phil disappeared past the bushes. I glanced at Cam and fell onto my back, breathing hard. “How does your mom love him?” I asked bluntly.

Cam’s eyes were still alert, but when he spoke his voice was constricted. “She hates him.”

I gave him a questioning glance and he sighed, leaning back, too. I held tight onto his hand, because I was sure that if I let go I’d break down. “He wasn’t always an ass,” Cam said. “I mean, he kind of was, but then he started doing weed. Now he’s a drunk and a meth-head, too.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

He shook his head. “Not like it’s your fault.”

“Do you think he would have used it? The bat, anyway?”

He stared up past the leaves of the bushes. “Have you ever seen a meth-head?”

I shook my head.

Cam just sighed. “He probably would have used it.”

I waited for a moment, thinking. “Does he hit your mom?” I asked quietly.

He nodded.