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7
“Do you trust me?” Camden asks, then instantly regrets it. “Stupid question… of course you don’t.” He thinks for a moment, then looks me dead in the eye. “If you want to know the answer to your question, then you’ll find it behind here.” He points to a large boulder at the base of the cliff face.
“Are you fucking nuts? I’m not going behind there with you.”
“I’ve already told you that I’m alone, but you don’t believe me…”
“Your word isn’t something I can trust.”
“But,” he says, pinning me with his topaz eyes, “If I’m beginning to understand you, Asia, then I think curiosity will trump everything else you’re feeling right now. Maybe once you see that there isn’t anyone back here wanting to hurt you, you’ll be able to trustmebetter? You’ll see that I’m not just full of the shit you accuse me of.”
I regard him as we stand facing each other in a battle of wills. He seems sincere, but then again he could just be a good actor. He certainly knows how to make me second guess everything I think I know about him. Usually if you’re on my shit list, that’s where you stay. You don’t hover between hate and… well, I can’t even say like. Hate and lust then. Alternating between hate and lust isn’t something I ever expected to feel. That’s not normally how I work. You wrong me, you stay on the other side of the line, you don’t walk it like a tightrope. Somehow that’s where Camden has found himself.
“Well, what’s it to be, Asia? Will you trust my word enough to see what’s hidden behind here?” he asks, jerking his thumb towards the boulder behind him, “or walk away without the knowledge.”
“I could always just come back at another time…” I test him.
“You could, but it might not be there next time.”
“What might not be there?”
“I guess you won’t find out unless you trust me.”
“Fine,” I snap suddenly, not liking how the tables have turned. I’m feeling well and truly played when I should be the one playing him. “You’ve got my attention, but I swear to God, if you’re screwing me, I’ll come for you first.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Camden nods tightly, then continues towards the boulder, disappearing behind it. I follow him, tension spreading through my muscles as I ready myself for attack. When I walk around the corner of the huge slab of rock, Camden is leaning against it, alone except for the huge painting of a girl with topaz eyes. Eyes just like his.
“This is Sapphire, my twin sister,” he says, resting his fingertips against the rock.
“Fuck, Camden. It’s incredible…” and it is. His talent isinsane. It’s a perfect illustration. Wait! I recognise that face.
“She loved gemstones,diamondsin particular,” he continues. “Not because they were worth anything, but because they’re beautiful. I used to call her Gem and she used to call me Bling because according to her I was the one who shone the brightest. But it wasn’t true. She was always the one who lit up the world. I just basked in her reflection.” His voice cracks on that admission and I can only stare at him and her image in shocked silence.
“I know her,” I whisper. This is the girl who appears in almost every piece of Bling’s graffiti art that’s scattered around London. Always smiling, always happy. Now here she is, emblazoned on the rock, hidden from prying eyes, and only visible to the people who know she’s here. Up until a moment ago, that had just been Camden. Now that includes me.
Except this time, she isn’t happy.
This time her face is a picture of sadness. Her lips are turned down in a frown. Her eyes are hollow. As hollow as Camden’s are now. There’s no life in her, nothing but an aching sense of loss. Though it isn’t her sadness I’m sensing, but Camden’s. His loss, his anguish is all too evident in every painstaking line. I know instantly that she’s dead. That this is a memorial for her. Thatthisis the truth inside Camden’s heart.
“What happened to her?” I ask softly, gently. Expecting a sad story of a life taken too soon by cancer or some other horrid illness. What I get instead shocks me to the core.
“Ford happened.”
It takes me a few seconds to absorb that statement. All the while Camden watches me with a heartbroken stare. I know that whatever the truth is surrounding his sister’s death that Camden truly believes Ford’s responsible. That’s a blow I’m finding hard to stomach, to reconcile with the boy I’ve become fond of.
“What do you mean, Ford happened? What are you saying?” My head snaps to look at him, not wanting to know and needing to at the same time.
“He killed my sister. I can’t make it any plainer than that.”
“What?!” I stumble back, cold dread rushing over my skin. “You’re lying! This is some sick twisted mind game. You’re trying to make me hate him. It won’t work!” My whole body is trembling with adrenaline as I fight the truth Camden has displayed so well in his artwork, that I can see written all over his face.
“I’m not lying. She loved him and he betrayed her. Her death ishisfault.”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
“I mean what I say. She made a mistake trusting him to keep her safe. I was her twin brother. I was the one who took care of her. Me. Not him. I should never have trusted him.” His eyes are wild, intense and the bright shade of topaz I’ve gotten so used to, dims. In her presence they’re void of any colour, drained of it somehow. Where once she might have made him shine, now her ghost only seems to rob him of his happiness, that special kind of sparkle that made him Bling.
“Camden, you’re not making any sense. Explain to me what you’re saying.”
