Young Writers Society

Chapter Two

The next morning I sit in the driver’s seat of my car blasting some good old rockabilly music. It’s a mix of some more current stuff and some of the older stuff. Mostly female singers though. I grew up on this music, thanks to Camella.

Rain hits the windshield so hard and fast that I can hardly see out the window. The sky is dark and I can faintly hear thunder. Julien sits beside me in the passenger seat holding the door so tightly that his knuckles are turning white.

“Calm down,” I say. Although I am nervous myself. The only car accident I have ever been in was when it was storming, so as you can imagine I’m not too found of driving when it storms.

Julien, on the other hand, is a whole other story. He’s twenty three years old and doesn’t even have his license. Julien hates driving. He got into an accident when he was younger that left him so traumatized that he won’t even get into the driver’s seat. He isn’t nearly as bad as he used to be. Now the only time when he really gets nervous or anxious is when it’s raining like this.

“This reminds of an old horror movie. I bet something bad is going to happen,” I joke to Julien, but he’s so anxious to get out of the car that he doesn’t even acknowledge that I was joking.

I can tell that the drive to her house, which only takes ten minutes, is going to take twice as long. The traffic is a bit backed up, so I’m assuming there’s an accident somewhere up the road. That or someone hit an animal.

“So I had the most bizarre dream last night,” I start. I stay silent for a moment to see if Julien will be a smart ass like usual, but he doesn’t say anything, so I continue, “I dreamt about Camella when she was younger. Remember that picture I showed you once with that guy she was married to.”

Julien sighs, “Yes. Peter something or another. The guy that made movies.”

“Well I dreamt about him. It was real weird because I was with her and she kept talking like she knew it was me even though I wasn’t around at that time. They were working on this movie. A series of movies actually. And then Peter died. Someone killed him. After he died Camella kept yelling ‘I played him! I played him this whole time! I should’ve known!” I laugh. “Isn’t that weird.”

“Yeah. Freaky,” Julien agrees absentmindedly.

I sigh and go back to staring at the road. There’s no point in talking to him now, he’s not going to actually listen to a word.

After a while the traffic gets moving again and we make it to Camella’s house just before eleven. She’s sitting on her porch. I see her smile when we pull into her drive way but she doesn’t get up.

I cut the engine and look over at Julien. “Be nice,” I say sternly. The two of them like to go back and forth at each other. Camella likes to make fun of him for being a writer and Julien likes to take cheap shots at her.

He rolls his eyes and gets out of the car. I grab my bag and get out as well. We rush to the porch because the rain is still falling pretty hard and it’s cold. She stands up and greats me with open arms.

“Junie Baby!” She hugs me tightly for a long moment before letting go. “Oh, darling. Look at you!” I can’t help but to laugh. Every time she sees me she acts like we haven’t seen each other in a real long time.

“Well look at you!” I say back. Sometimes I just can’t get over how young looking she is for her age. She has aged well, that’s for certain.

She looks over at me and her smile drops. “Julie,” she grumbles before turning back to me. The second she looks back at me her smile comes back across her face, “Well, let’s go inside, shall we?”

Camella leads us into her old Victorian styled house. This is the only place she has lived for as long as I can remember even though this house is a bit big for just one person.

“Peter and I moved in when we first got together. We’ve lived here since before the beginning of time,” is what she would always tell me.

I notice as we walk into the kitchen that something about Camella is different. I just saw her last week, but something has changed since then. Something about her seems tired, which is something that Camella never is.

“So how are you?” She asks. I open my mouth to answer but stop myself when I notice that the question is aimed at Julien. I should’ve known at the tone of voice.

“Fine. And yourself?” Julien replied with a tone in his voice that almost sounds sarcastic.

“Oh, great. Got any new work? I know that for a while there you were out of the job,” she asks with a smirk on her face. She tilts her head to the side as she waits for an answer. Julien is a writer which Camella thinks is a complete dead end job.

“Actually, I might have something coming up soon for a magazine. It should pay well,” he tells her, but doesn’t say anything about the novel he’s working on. She already knows about it, but he also knows what she thinks about it.

“Well it’s about time. Finally putting that talent of yours to work.”

Julien glares at her, but doesn’t say anything. I’m glad for that. It’s usually tense when they’re around each other, but it’s even worse when the two of them get going. I still can’t figure out what it is about him that she doesn’t like.

Camella walks slowly to the table and sits herself down. “I am so tired lately! I think my age is finally starting to catch up with me.”

Julien snorts. I can tell there’s something that he wants to say, but he’s holding himself back. Camella glares are him. She doesn’t say anything to him either, which is good because the two of them can go back and forth at each other all day.

“I’m tired, I’m dizzy and my hands are always swollen. I hate this aging thing,” Camella complains before standing up again. I watch her for a moment as she walks past Julien and I. She stands in the door way, holding onto the threshold, looking like she’s balancing herself. I bite my lip, starting to feel nervous. These kind of things don’t happen to Camella.

“Anyhow, I’ve got something for you. I need you to come up stairs with me... Julien, you can wait down here.”

Julien sits himself down at the kitchen table and I follow Camella out of the room and up the stairs. Camella walks slowly up the stairs, holding tightly onto the railing of the stairs. I’ve never seen her walk so cautiously or slowly. About half way up the stairs she stops walking altogether.

“You alright, Camella?” I ask, resting my hand on her shoulder.

She shakes her head. “Oh, yes. I’m quite alright.” She glances at me. The expression she’s wearing on her face and the way she said it isn’t so reassuring, but I drop it for now. I decide that I’ll just keep a close eye on her.

She leads me down the hall, to her room and into her oversized closet. She reaches to the top shelf pushes a few things out of the way.

“You’ve got to be careful,” Camella says as she walks out of the closet with a small box. She sits down on the edge of her bed a waves me over. “You’ve got to be careful and you can’t let anyone see this.”

I look her Camella with an eyebrow raised. “What are you talking about?”

She opens the box and removes red tissue paper that is covering over the contents of the book. There are several things that sit in the old cigar box. The first thing she pulls out is a single piece of blue paper with her messy, cursive hand writing with the four letters ‘UYKU’ written across the top of the folded paper.

I glance down at the paper in her hand and look back up at her. “This is important. You’ll need this. Not yet, but you will.”

“What does u-y-k-u mean?”

I try to take the paper from her, but she swats my hands away. “That’s not for now!” she scolds me and puts the paper away.

She pulls out a wallet sized photo. The picture is black and white with her handwriting on the back. She turns my hand palm side up and places the picture in my hand. Before I can get a good look at the picture she puts her hand on top of mine.

“This is a picture of your father when he was younger. I took it with my first film camera. It was taken the day before he left for the marines.” She removes her hand and I look down at the photo. Her first film camera she got when she was seventeen in 1957. I remember her using it even when I was a little kid.

When I look back up, she’s waiting for my attention to go back to her. She’s holding a role of film container in her hand. “These are pictures that were also taken the day before your father left for the marines. I only have the negatives, which I keep in this film container. You can have this when you can have the note.”

I bite my lip, finding it hard to pay attention to her now. I didn’t even know that she knew my dad, so why would she have a picture of him? I suddenly feel as if there is a great deal of information that I am being held out on.

“Camella, why do-”

“And this is important,” she cuts me off and holds up a necklace. On the chain is what looks like a class ring and a key. “This key goes to a safety deposit box in the bank. The only issue is the bank is in Florida. The ring-”

“Florida?! What the hell is it doing there?”

“The class ring is from when your dad graduated from high school in 1982. You can have this with the note.”

“What is this about?”

She puts the necklace in the box and covers the stuff up with the red tissue paper. She dismisses all of what I’ve said and puts the box back where it came from.

“How do you know my dad? I thought he died before my mother knew you.”

She smiles at me, “Let’s go back downstairs.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you know him? And what’s with the safety deposit box? Camella, tell me what’s going on.”

She walks slowly down the stairs and stopping half way again. This time she turns around. “Junie Baby, go ahead down stairs. I forget something in my room.”

I groan and we go our ways. I walk into the kitchen and sit beside Julien at the kitchen table. He takes a sip from a can of coke.

“You alright, June?”

“Peachy.”

He sighs but doesn’t press it. He knows better than to do that. “So, when is everyone else going to be here.”

“They should be here any moment.”

He gently squeezes my forearm and then just leaves me alone. We sit in the living room, my angry vibes making the silence a bit uncomfortable.

Camella walks down stairs and straight out the front door. Knowing that there is no way she’ll hear me because it’s too cold in here for the windows to be open.

“She knew my dad!” I whisper yell at Julien. He looks at me with an eyebrow raised.

“What are you talking about?” Julien knows as well as I do that there is no way she could no my dad. My dad was in the marines and had died before Camella and my mother even met each other.

“I don’t know how, but she did. She gave me a picture. She told me that she took it the day before he left for the marines with the first film camera that she has ever been given. As far as I know the only time she ever saw him in person was at his damn funeral!”

By the time I finish talking we’re standing up because from the outside I hear my brother’s voice. Julien stops walking and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Breath, Juniper. I’m sure you’ll know soon enough.”

I glare at him for a moment. He ignores it and takes my hand in his and leads me outside.