What is life without pain? That was a question that I asked myself while I showered. A life without pain wasn't even possible in an alternate reality version of the world. Pain was everywhere and some would even argue that it was a necessary evil. I wouldn't be one of those people of course. I'd have preferred a vanilla kind of setting for my life.

All the real hardcore people thrived on pain, some even found ways to get rich off of theirs. Writers for example kicked their pain up a notch to reel in their readers and don't even get me started on those that chose to sing about their misfortunes. But what could I possibly do with my pain? It seemed like the only thing that it was useful for was keeping me up at night and then proceeding to make me miserable during the day. So, what's the point of all my woes?

I'm getting slightly off track here, so back to my original question. What is life without pain? After thinking about it long and hard, my answer is simple: there's no such thing as a life without pain. The only people who didn't have to feel pain were dead people and I don't know if that thought comforted me or further depressed me.

I toweled off and stood staring into my closet with my arms crossed, trying to pick my outfit for the day. Normally my preferred choice of clothing was a nice pair of jeans and a t-shirt of some kind but today was different. Today I was finally leaving the house after nearly two weeks of being cooped up with my new family.

"You've got ten more minutes and then I'm leaving without you!" Carter shouted from the other side of my bedroom door as I took a baby blue summer dress of its hanger and tossed it onto the bed. "Ten minutes!" he repeated before his footsteps faded away.

I rolled my eyes but got dressed way faster than usual and by the time I reached for the doorknob, Carter was back with another warning. "Seriously?" I asked as I stepped around him. "It hasn't even been that long."

"It took you two hours to get ready," he defended. "That's got to be a new record."

"Shut up!" I stuck my phone and purse in the pockets of my dress and gave him a smile. "I love dresses with pockets."

"Good for you," he replied distractedly, searching his own pockets for something.

"Don't tell me that after all the time you've spent yelling at me to hurry up, you can't find your keys." When he jiggled them in my face a few seconds later, I rolled my eyes. "Is your sister coming or what?"

"Or what."

I followed him out the door and let out a low whistle when he unlocked the doors of a sleek, silver BMW. "Damn, you sure know how to make a girl feel small," I joked.

He rolled his eyes. "Would you just get in?"

"So bossy," I grumbled as I got into the passenger side. I was barely even buckled in before I was lurched forward. I used my hands to shield my face from the impact that never came and unleased my best glare on Carter. "Are you crazy? There's no way that it's legal to take off with that much speed!"

"Are you afraid to die?" he asked with an innocent grin.

I rescinded my glare. "No, I'm not afraid to die. I'm just saving that particular event for a rainy day. If that's okay with you, of course."

"You need to learn to relax," he said in response with a simple smile before turning the radio up.

"Are you going to age with grace? Are you going to age without mistakes?" Bastille sang softly as Carter barely avoided hitting the car in front of us.

"At the rate you're going, I might not age at all," I muttered as Oblivion continued in the background. He chuckled and finally decided to go the speed limit. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

We parked a block away from our destination and continued our journey on foot. I contemplated complaining about this but thought better of it. I wasn't there yet in my friendship with my new bro and it might have come across as me being whiny and annoying, so I shut up and followed him.

"Okay, we're here," he said, pulling me close as we got in line to enter the restaurant. It had a huge banner strewn across the front that read: The Peach Pit, Grand Opening Today! in bold green letters.

"A new restaurant, huh?"

"No. A renovated one."

I couldn't decide whether he was being sarcastic or if it really was just a renovated building that housed the same restaurant, so I didn't respond until we were inside. "Wow, this is nice," I commented.

"You should've seen it before." He pushed me forward and pulled out his phone. "It used to look like something out of a 70's movie, cute but totally bleh."

"Hey, pretty thing," someone called behind us. I spun around and found myself facing Logan who wore a Nirvana t-shirt and a frown. "Took you guys forever to get here. What happened?"

"You can blame this one," Carter said, pointing at me.

"I don't deny it."

"Because you can't."

"Girls," Logan cut in. "Let's go."

He led the way to the very back of the crowded restaurant and stopped at a booth that was already occupied by a group of teens. I immediately clammed up. Somehow, I had less to say around strangers. Funny how that worked.

"Guys and gals, this is Camille," Carter introduced me to the group. I smiled and waved in a non-specified direction before taking a seat beside him. Logan got in on the other side and nudged me to scoot down a bit. "Alright, so this is Pauley and that's Matt and Diane," he said while gesturing to two guys and a pink haired girl sitting on the other side of the booth. "And then there's Casey." The redhead who was sitting beside him smiled at me at the mention of her name. "And frick and frack over there are Brianna and Joanne."

"Nice to meet y'all," I mumbled, suddenly unable to raise my voice above a whisper.

"You know, nobody's going to notice you unless you let them," Carter whispered to me. "Use your words."

That was a solid piece of advice but little did he know, I didn't want to be noticed. I was more than happy to just blend in with the background which unfortunately was too eye catching at the moment to be ignored.

"Camille, was it?" the pink haired girl asked. I nodded and she smiled. "How are you liking New York so far?"

I shrugged and received a kick under the table from someone. "Ouch," I hissed. Logan patted my hand and I slapped it away. "I haven't gotten the chance to see much of it," I confessed. "This is pretty much my first outing since I got here."

Hey, would you look at that? I was using my words.

"Seriously?" Either frick or frack asked, clearly in disbelief. "There's one more week before school starts, you should let us take you out. It'll be so much fun."

Before I could decline her generous offer, the redhead spoke up. "Hold up there, Joanne, I doubt that Camille's idea of fun is whatever you have in mind. Not everyone likes spending their Saturdays at football practice staring at the guys, you know."

Her cheeks blushed the color of a smoky rose. "I might like that," I found myself saying and received a round of laughter as though I couldn't possibly be serious. But I didn't like denying myself the simple pleasure of looking at cute guys if I could help it, so maybe I was.

"Why don't you come with me to order our pizzas," the redhead asked me with a smile too kind to say no to. "I'm Casey," she reintroduced herself as we walked towards the front. She wore a white collared shirt with ruffled pink shorts and thigh hi stockings and I smiled as I took in her attire.

"I like your style," I told her.

"Thank you, and I love that your dress has pockets."

I smiled and a chuckle slipped out. "So, are you a Senior like Carter and Logan?"

She shook her head. "Nah, I'm a Junior like Caitlyn. That means that you're in my year too, right?"

I nodded. It didn't occur to me until right then that the fact that Caitlyn and I were in the same grade meant that we'd probably have a few classes together and I shuddered at the thought.

"I'm sorry about your dad," Casey said, completely blowing me away. I didn't expect anyone to know about that, but I was slowly realizing that everyone probably already knew. It was probably sent out in a mass text. Okay, fine maybe I'm exaggerating but still, damn.

"Thanks," I mumbled. "I'll take mine with pineapple," I said turning the conversation back to the task at hand.

She nodded. "Weird but okay."

"I'm not having this debate," I said with a forced smile. The mention of my dad completely ruined the moment for me but I wasn't about to let my sadness ruin everyone else's too, so if that meant that I'd have to fake a smile or two, well I could be that girl for an hour or so. "There's nothing wrong with pineapples being on pizza and that's all I'm going to say."

"Fine, weirdo, we'll get you your pineapples." She smiled good naturedly at me and I rolled my eyes.

When we made it back to the group with the pizzas in hand, a cheer rang out. "Finally," one of the guys sighed. "Matt was beginning to fret."

"Oh, Matt was, huh?" Casey asked with a teasing smile, placing the boxes on the table.

This time Casey ended up beside me when we took our seats. "Me and my friends are going back to school shopping on Saturday, wanna come with?"

I shook my head. "I don't know if shopping is my idea of a fun time."

"Well, the shopping bit aside, it might be a great opportunity for you to make some friends too," she said, further selling her point. "And I'm sure you need a new outfit for your first day anyway, right?"

"I'm new, so therefore to you guys all of my outfits are too."

She looked upwards. "Dammit, you're good."

I chuckled and handed her my phone. "Here, give me your number and I'll text you if I change my mind." She entered her number and then called it. "Or you can text me, I guess."

"You guessed correctly, new friend."

***

Later that night, I called April and Jason. Although it had already been two weeks, I missed them even more tonight than I did those first few days. "Hey, how's everything?" April asked. Her head was wrapped in a bandana and she wore a face-mask that made her look green.

"Oh, well, you know," I sighed, rolling onto my back with my phone in my hand. "A little more depressing than usual."

"That sounds about right," Jason said, stuffing a piece of pie into his mouth. "I'd be more concerned if you'd said that things were great."

I sighed again. "Yeah." Then after a minute, "Why does this have to be so hard?"

"Oh, love," April cooed. "It'll get easier with time. Just be patient and try not to lose too much of yourself in the process, you know?"

"Yeah," I repeated. I hated being such a Debbie Downer but for the time being my grief was the only thing that I wanted to feel and being forced to deal with my mommy issues only added fuel to the already ignited fire that was my shitty life.

"How are things going with Tori?" Jason asked.

I shrugged. "It's not. We mostly skirt around each other and these days I try to never be in a room alone with her because I honestly just want to hurt her."

"You can't even hurt a fly," April pointed out.

I gave her a flat look. "Not physically hurt her, stupid. But every time that we're near each other, I just want to go off on her for all those years of silence. I mean, come on, why'd it have to take Daddy dying for her to step up, huh? Why couldn't she just swallow her stupid pride and pick up the phone?"

Jason nodded in understanding and April pressed her fingers to her temples. "I know that this isn't going to be helpful, but in all honesty, I never even knew that her absence affected you that much before all this happened. So, what changed?"

"I guess... seeing her did. Before that day, she was just the woman that we never spoke about. You guys remember how even the word Mom used to put Dad in a bad mood, so that was all that she ever was― a bad freakin' mood. But now, it's like so unbelievable that she's real and that she gets to be my savior. How is that fair? Why does she get to have it so easy?"

"Don't hate me for saying this, but it's probably hard for her too," Jason said with a tight smile. "Think about it, how'd you feel knowing that you'll have to carry the weight of a decision that you made when you were too young to know any better, for the rest of your life? And then to top it all off, you've got this pissed off, unforgiving teenager to deal with? All I'm saying is that it probably sucks for her too."

I scoffed. "Probably not."

Just then Caitlyn barged in. "What the hell is the matter with you?" she demanded with as unpleasant a look as she could muster.

Now so wasn't the time to deal with her shit, so I ignored her. When she persisted, I groaned. "Lots of things. Why?"

"It's not enough that you've taken everything else from me, huh? Now you want my friends too?"

I raised my hand to stop her. "Wait, you have friends?"

"Don't try to be smart you little troll," she growled. "My friends are off-limits to you, got it?"

This situation warranted an eye roll but I resisted in the name of getting to the bottom of her craziness. "What are you even talking about?"

"Your little outing today? Those were my friends that you latched yourself on to!"

I smiled. "Oh. I see what's happening here, and it's okay, really."

She put her hands on her hips. "What?"

"You can admit to being insecure. It's no biggie, lots of people are," I said in a calm voice. "You're not alone."

"Shut up," she snarled. "I'm not insecure. I'm just saying to stay the hell away from my friends or else."

I raised my brow. "Or else what?" When she didn't respond right away, I rolled my eyes. "That's what I thought. Now get out of my room."

I didn't need to be paying attention to know that she'd left. The slamming of my bedroom door was enough of an indication. I rubbed my temples and groaned.

"That was so intense," Jason said, startling me. I had completely forgotten about them being on the phone.

I sighed and closed my eyes. "She makes me so mad."

April chortled. "I bet."

I stared up at the ceiling, imagining what it would be like to just not have to deal with any of this. "Yeah," I said softly. "I think that we should call it a night."

After the call ended, I plugged my phone in and grabbed my towel. I felt like I needed a long shower to wash away my confrontation with Caitlyn. 

I wasn't someone like her, someone who picked on people just because they felt like it, but I was no doormat either and I sure as hell had no intention of obeying her little order.