Mess of a life

1- Charles

"Camille, viens s'il te plaît" (come here camille, please)

I stood up without a word, my body stiff. My lips were dry and chapped, and as I dug my teeth into the skin, I felt the taste of blood. My nails were no longer long and well filed, but bitten, the skin around them swollen. My hair fell, shapeless, around my face. Dull, as lifeless as I felt. I didn't spare a glance at my surroundings. The two nights I had spent here, unable to sleep, had been enough for me to memorise to the tiniest corner. And sufficient also to know I didn't want to stay here one more second. It was a sort of huge dormitory, filled with tiny beds. Right now it was fairly empty, as it was nearly noon; but in the evening, it would be crowded, and so loud... The atmosphere filled with shouts, and the joyless laughs of the desperate kids that lived under that roof. This was no place to grow up, and the time I had been here made me realise how lucky I was to have had a loving home, and happy childhood. It wasn't until I didn't have it anymore that I realised how much I had.

It was the same social worker that brought me here that had called me. She didn't look as full of pity as in our first encounter, at my high school. When she had announced that my whole family had been involved in a car crash and didn't survive. My parents. My sisters. Dead. Actually, there was a tiny smile on her lips, and a sparkle in her eyes. Three days ago, I wouldn't have paid attention to that. Today, I wasn't sure I would be able to smile if I tried to. There was nothing to smile about, that I was sure.

She motioned for me to follow her, and I did so silently. We walked down a staircase, me looking at my feet, trying not to trip over the broken stairs and not to look too much at the mold stained walls. Then she guided me through a corridor I didn't recognize -- I barely left the dorms during my stay there, but even if I had been in this corridor, I wouldn't remember. The memories were blurred together in a discontinued beam of black and grey, emptiness and sorrow. We entered a room, quite simply furnished, with a desk and a few chairs in front of it. The lady walked behind it, and I didn't move. I was so tired, and felt so dull... I couldn't get myself to care for anything right now. All I wanted was to curl up and be left alone. Forget, or go back to one week ago, when my life was still perfectly normal.

The voice of the social worker brought me back to reality. "Camille", she called softly. I raised my eyes in her direction and she continued. "Assieds-toi" (sit down), she motioned towards one of the chairs. Only then did I see that there was someone else in the room.

It was a young man, sitting on the chair next to the one I was supposed to take. He was already looking towards me, his face void of emotion, not hostile nor nice. Just neutral. He was wearing a suit, and my distracted mind thought that he must be crazy to wear that much clothes given the heat of the start of July. My normal self would have felt shy in the close presence of such an intimidating person. But my normal self didn't exist anymore, pushed far away inside my mind, or dead. Instead, when we made eye contact, I didn't look away. His eyes were light, nearly translucent with their splendid green color. For the first time in almost seventy two hours, I felt something. An emotion. He didn't smile at me, but strangely, I felt grateful for that. I couldn't stand another look of sympathy, and somehow, I felt like he knew that.

"Camille"

Another time, the voice of the woman pulled me out of my thoughts, and I hesitantly stepped towards the spare chair. The atmosphere quickly became awkward in the thick silence that followed, but I was beyond caring and the man seemed unfazed by it. The social worker cleared her throat.

"Donc, Camille, voici Charles King." (so, camille, this is Charles King)

She pronounced his name strangely, as if she tried to put in the English accent but stayed stuck with her french. However the said Charles didn't seem bothered as he turned towards me, and to my surprise spoke to me in English.