Cammie waited at the school gates, watching the cars pull out and the students walk by. She had long said goodbye to Gemma and Jace who had, surprise, surprise, gone home together.

She still couldn't believe they were back together. It was like she was trapped in a Greek tragedy and all she had left to do was wait for a fickle, vapid god to tell her she was doomed to marry her long lost brother.

Her father's car appeared at the gates. She breathed a sigh of relief as she rubbed her hands together and the car stopped in front of her.

"Sorry I'm late Sweetie, I just got caught up in this long-distance phone call and I couldn't-"

"It's fine" Cammie said as she opened the front door and climbed in "Where's Paisley?" she asked once she heard the click of the seat belt locking into place.

"We're just going to get her now, she stayed after school to try out for some team." He waved his hand about for a moment before returning it back to the steering wheel. Cammie nodded and looked out the window. "How was your day Sweetie?" George asked not taking his eyes off the road. He was a very diligent driver.

"Fine, well, yeah... fine." Cammie wanted to say something else to her dad so the car wouldn't fall silent, but she couldn't think of anything, nothing had really happened that day, so the silence descended anyway. There wasn't anything else said on the drive to the middle school. Paisley was stood outside, her phone in her hands, her eyes locked on the screen. She had tried out for the cheer team, even though they didn't find out till next week whether they had made it or not she was pretty sure she had made the team.

"Come on Paisley, we need to get home I need to have a Skype chat in 20 minutes with some very important businesspeople." George said out the car window as he pulled up to his youngest daughter.

"Coming," she hopped into the back seat "Hey Cam,"

"Hey Paisley, did you have a good day?" Paisley smiled brightly

"Yes, I did, I think I got on the cheer team, I did a pretty good try-out if I do say so myself."

"I didn't know that you had try-outs today." Cammie was surprised that Paisley wouldn't have brought something like that up; yes, she knew she had been practicing for the team, but she didn't know that it was so close.

"Well, I kept forgetting to tell you." Paisley said trying to close the conversation and Cammie was too tired to push for it.

"Well like I said I have a very important call to make so I need you girls to stay quiet and out of the way." Cammie and Paisley nodded, "Good, yes, well okay then." Why is my family so awkward? Cammie thought to herself. It hadn't been like this before her mom died. There wasn't silence in every car journey, her and her sister weren't as distant as they were now, and her father wanted to spend time with them and didn't just sit on the phone.

Cammie entered the house, Paisley and her dad not far behind.

"Like I said girls-"

"You have a business call," Paisley muttered "We know." She kicked off her shoes and headed down the hall to her room. George stared after her for a moment, while Cammie untied her boots and slipped them off her feet one by one, precariously bouncing about on one leg when she couldn't get the left one off.

"Cammie, if this goes on, there is pasta and a jar of-"

"Tomato sauce in the cupboard, yes I know." Then she too headed off to her room, leaving George alone. He felt an ache in his chest as he watched the two closed doors. He was missing them; he wasn't there for them very much and they seemed almost too used to it now. It was simply what they expected, and he didn't like that, but he wasn't going to change, he couldn't, he had to work, it was simply all he knew now. So, he headed off to the home office; where he seemed to spend all of his time.

Cammie shut the door to her room slowly, before letting out a sigh.

"What a relief." she said even though she still felt a different tension building in her chest, one of grief almost. It seemed that Senior year wasn't going to be any different than sophomore year and while it was what she had hoped for these past few days, it felt like it was the nail in the coffin of the dream she'd dreamed for years. The one where Jace and her finally got together, finally got to ride into the sunset together. She'd always wanted a high school sweetheart, like her parents were to each other. It seemed to her that such a hope had finally been squashed beneath the shoe of time. The only things that had changed this year was that the school had introduced a new lunch menu and she didn't see herself reminiscing fondly on that tidbit to her future children.

Cammie headed over to her desk, picked up the pile of papers on her desk and plopped them onto the floor, so she could have room to put her books. She glanced around the room looking for something else to do.

She should probably clean up, but she hadn't had someone tell her to clean her room since her mother had died six years ago.

Her eyes settled on her phone that was sat in her school bag. Cammie gnawed on her lip as she debated about picking it up and calling someone... it wasn't like it was that difficult a decision, there wasn't anything awkward between them, not really, not in his mind at least, for goodness' sake they had spent the whole day together, or most of it at least, with Gemma at their side of course. They were probably together, maybe that was why she was reluctant to give him a call, not if they were both coming over, Cammie knew she would just end up being the third wheel in her own home if they both came over.

Instead, she looked for the familiar worn spine of her diary. She didn't see and for a moment she grew worried till she realized she'd forgotten to take it out of her locker at the end of the day. So, she didn't call, she didn't write, she just went to the kitchen and started dinner.

The next day, Cammie woke up to a text from Jace asking if she wanted a ride to school and her stomach hurt a little less. Somehow it felt like a peace offering between them. Peace from the awkward, angsty tension that had lingered since her confession.

Slowly but surely the first two weeks of school passed by. And then another and things between her and Jace began to feel a little more normal. They never spoke about what had happened. She didn't ask him why he hadn't said anything about him and Gemma getting back together. Cammie buried that painful gnawing spur deep down and decided to focus on the relief she felt at not having lost both her best friends. Thankfully Gemma had remained blissfully unaware of the whole thing.

It was after third period, the third week of school that everything changed.

She'd had gym class that morning and Cammie's legs wobbled like jelly as she made her way up the stairs of the tower of the high school to the third floor for English. The fact that they still felt like they might fall off made her question her health and fitness not for the first time since school had restarted. So caught up in her own thoughts, Cammie barely noticed it at first. The brief flutter of a piece of paper as if fell down the center of the spiraling stairwell. It was crowded as hordes of students rushed to get to their next class.

One piece of paper was insignificant. That is, until another one followed it and the buzz of chatter grew louder and suddenly Cammie looked up in time to see the stairwell flooded in a cloud of paper like someone had dumped a bucket it of it from the top floor.

Cammie gasped as sheets upon sheets of paper rained down and students around her cheers and laughed as they reached out to catch anything that they could from the air. Cammie couldn't help the smile that rose to her face. The scene seemed so incredibly teenage dream-ish. Like the scene from her favorite movie 10 Things I Hate About You when they toss the party invites down the stairwell.

With her heart beating excitedly in her chest Cammie reached out to catch one of the papers herself. It circled in her fist as she snatched it out of the air. The back was blank but so she flipped it over to read, it said this:

Dear Reader,

Today at camp I got my period for the first time and thought I was going to die...

Cammie's smile dropped like a stone. Wait.

She dropped to the ground and snatched another paper off the floor, distantly aware that everyone around her were buzzing with laughter.

Dear Reader,

I can't stand Alana. Most of the time she ignores me, but I dread the days she decides to look my way...

She snatched another and another and another.

Dear Reader,

My dad went on a business trip today and left Paisley and I alone. Sometimes it feels like I'll always be alone...

Dear Reader,

Jace asked Gemma to his girlfriend yesterday and I think my heart broke like they say it does in the movies...

With an unimaginable amount of horror coursing through her veins, Cammie began to grab as many papers as she could from the stairs even though she knew in her heart that it was no use. Not unless she could snatch the papers out of the hands of the hundreds of students that stood around her. The bell rang for class but no one seemed to care as they all kept reading and laughing and looking at each other with wide eyes and Cheshire grins.

That's what it felt like. Like Cammie was Alice and had fallen through a rabbit hole into Wonderland. She's gone mad. Oh god she hoped she'd gone mad. Anything was better than this. Her diary pages, her deepest thoughts, desires, fears, and embarrassing stories splashed across the linoleum floors of the high school.

Finally, she began to hear her name on people's lips. It made sense because every page had her name at the bottom in her neat, cursive writing. If only she had Paisley's messy scrawl so people couldn't even read the dreaded words. people started to notice her. They noticed that the girl whose heart they were laughing at was amongst them. She was at their feet and their mercy and like all high schoolers they were merciless.

"That's her!" she heard someone yell and her face, which had become damp with tears during her meltdown froze in fear and dread.

"Cammie!" someone yelled, but she didn't stick around to see who it was, or hear anything else they had to say. She jumped to her feet and began to run back down the stairs, away from English class, away from her judgmental peers.

She pushed through the students that still lingered on the lower levels of the stairs.

She burst out into the hallway and saw her nightmare extend before her down senior hallway. Papers were scattered all along the hall, slapped against lockers and poster boards.

She wasn't in 10 Things I Hate About You anymore, she was in Mean Girls. Had Regina George walked down this hall?

She wondered down the empty hall taking it all in. No one was here. It was empty, people had likely gotten into the classrooms before the posters were dropped here, but it would be the stairway all over again when everyone emerged.

She heard the door she had just burst through bang against the wall behind her and she jumped, but didn't turn around. Too ashamed to face whoever it was, too ashamed of her words and her tears that still fell in steady rivulets of shock.

"Cammie."

She knew that voice.

Dear Reader,

I don't think anyone could be more insufferable than Ramsey Stone. I want to smack that smirk off his face anytime he shoots it my way...

Slowly she turned around and saw him. He was just stood there, his backpack slung over his should, his chest heaving slightly like he had been running and maybe he had. Had he been running after her?

Cammie's mind didn't wonder on the thought long. Her eyes snagged on one of the dreaded pieces of paper he had in his hand. She wondered if it was one of the pages about him. Another thing to be ashamed about, Ramsey's name was scattered throughout her diary. At one point he'd been in it a lot. Less so now, maybe it was because she didn't have many nice things to say about him anymore, maybe it was because didn't have much to say at all.

"What is this?" his words shocked her.

She just stared at him as though he were an idiot. She probably looked worse than Anne Boleyn the day her husband chopped her head off.

"I-" the singular word was watery and pathetic on her lips. It tasted salty. Wait, that was just the tears that slipped in.

Ramsey looked down at the paper in his hand, "Ramsey Stone probably swallowed the handbook on how to be a cliché high school asshole-"

"Stop." she whispered, but he didn't seem to hear her.

"Because I don't know how else he could come up with stupid stuff he says all day. I saw him with Alana, and I finally thought that they deserved each other—"

"Stop!" Cammie shouted this time, her hands itched to cover her ears like a toddler, but somehow, she resisted.

Silence settled around them again. Years and years of writing blanketed them. Almost all of them driven by passionate moments. These were things she'd never say to anyone and they made her look angry, and pathetic, and sad. She was aware that she'd probably said terrible things in her journal, admitted who she loved and who she hated. What she loved and what she feared.

"Is this really what you think of me?" he asked, and she shook her head instinctively but then she stopped. She did think it. She didn't always think it, but she thought it now. She thought Ramsey Stone to be a shallow boy, one who'd let popularity get in the way of what used to matter to him.

She eventually settled on, "Why do you care what I think?"

"I don't." he said as his jaw clenched.

"Then, if you don't mind I have more important things to deal with than your lack of care of what I thought about you two years ago."

"What?"

"The date. Look at it. I wrote that like two years ago." She knew because it was when he started dating Alana. When she knew for sure that they'd never be friends again.

Ramsey did look and she the tension ease from his shoulders a little bit. It made her angry, that her life was tumbling down around her and all he cared about was harassing her about one of her entries about him. She couldn't believe that for a moment she'd thought he was going to ask her if she was okay. Then shame swallowed her. She had written things about him that may hurt the average person. She wouldn't apologize for writing them, he was never meant to see them, but she couldn't blame him for being upset about it. She couldn't blame anyone for-

Oh shit. Oh god she had wrote so many things about Jace in her diary. So many things about Gemma.

The realization slammed into her like a semitruck.

She turned from Ramsey and ran down the hall to her locker. She twisted the dial on the lock, entering her birthday and then ripping it open. Her diary wasn't resting where it always was, next to her mother's worn-out copy of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. She stared at the empty space for a moment. Someone had touched it, someone had stolen it and read it and photocopied every page hundreds of times.

She tried to remember if it had been there that morning before gym. She'd forgotten it yesterday afterschool again and had left it overnight. It wasn't an uncommon thing for her to do. She always figured it was safer in her locker than in her school bag, but now she knew that had been a mistake.

She snatched the Classic, worn book off the shelf and pressed it to her chest for a moment before she shoved it into her bag. Ramsey was saying something to her, but she wasn't listening. She just had to get out of here. Out of the hallway, the school, the goddamn town.

"I'm sorry I have to go." She managed to choke out and then she sprinted out the front doors.

When the door to the Haveryard residence burst open George almost jumped out of swivel chair.

George called for his daughter but she couldn't hear him. Her brain was temporarily dead. This was Cammie's worst fear and it was happening. She wiped her face with the palm of her hand and sat down on her bed. Her dad was stood in her doorway

"Sweetie, you're home early. Is everything alright? "

"No, no it's not and never will be again." George looked at his daughter's panic, tear stained face with confusion and concern. This wasn't like her. Cammie was not his dramatic daughter. She was his calm, collected, quiet daughter. She reminded him so much of her mother that way.

"Sweetheart, I don't know what -"

She hadn't craved the touch of her mother more since she'd gone than she did in that moment on her bed with her father standing helplessly in the doorway. He wouldn't understand, and for some reason she just couldn't even get herself to try to explain it to him. Her situation was helpless, or was it hopeless? She wasn't sure, but either way it paved the way for a very bleak senior year.

Cammie covered her mouth with her hand squeezed her eyes shut "I just don't feel well, Daddy. I'm sorry. Please just go." She whispered and her father complied because he was helpless without her mother too, because he didn't know what to do with his daughters any more than he knew how to fly a plane. He shut the door behind him gently and Cammie let the sob that had been threatening to erupt since the moment she'd read the first piece of paper she'd plucked from the air.

"You put your feeling in writing Cammie, that's what's going to happen." She mumbled to herself making another tear slid down her face. Cammie would have been so upset if it was just one entry, but all of them? How could she ever recover from that?

Jace was going to read what she had said about him and so would Gemma. They'd both hate her. She and Jace had barely survived her first confession, but this? These were years worth of love and longing. She was going to lose the only two people in the world who keeps her above the water. She had to fix her stupid mistake yet again. She had to think of something.

Hours later, Cammie felt much the same as before, but drier.

She sat with her legs crossed on her bed, staring at her reflection in her wardrobe mirror. She had removed her boots and bags and placed them at the foot of her bed on the floor. Cammie's face was tear stained. The little makeup she had put on that morning had been smudged off and was almost non-existence by now. School would probably be ending by now; the students filing out chatting and climbing into buses and cars. Her friends were probably kissing each other goodbye as Jace started on his way home... to the house next door to her's. Probably hating her. There were so many things that could 'probably' be happening that Cammie felt numb.

The door opened and closed, and Paisley entered the quite house. Cammie hadn't been waiting at the corner of Darling Street for her like she usually did when they walked home together.

"Dad! Cam! I'm home!" Cammie heard her shout. George shouted something back to her, but he was, surprise, surprise, locked away in his office. Cammie didn't reply when she heard a knock on her bedroom door.

"Cam you home? You didn't meet me-"

"I've had a bad day Paisley." Cammie's muffled voice was hard to hear from behind the closed door, so Paisley just took a step back. Her sister sounded tired and irritable. Paisley bit her lip, a habit she had picked up from Cammie. Apparently, Cammie got it from their mother, but Paisley couldn't really remember her enough to know if that was true. She didn't like to think about her mother it made her bitter and angry. Even worse it made her look at Cammie differently and she didn't like that. It wasn't Cammie's fault, Paisley had figured that out a long time ago, she never really thought that it had been her fault, but she had needed someone to blame, and Cammie had been an easy target. She turned away and headed to her own room.

Cammie's phone started ringing and she looked at the image on the screen. Gemma's face was covered in a mud mask, her white teeth shining through as she smiled wildly at the camera. Cammie remembered taking the picture, it wasn't very flattering, but she loved it because Gemma was who she was when no one could see her. Cammie usually couldn't stop herself from smiling when she saw it, but the corners over mouth didn't even twitch, instead her eyes started to tear up again. Her finger hovered over the ignore button for a few seconds before it hit the red key and the ringing stopped. It started again almost immediately so she just turned her phone off.

"You can face everything tomorrow. You can think of something tomorrow." Cammie laid her head on her pillow. "Everything will be better in be morning."

She was very, very wrong. 

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A/N: Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying Fake Dating Ramsey so far, please support by voting <3