disclaimer: I'm not really sure about this; I liked it until the middle, which is where things started to go haphazard, and then it started to get really choppy but overall, I really like Dylan and Cam together. Hope you like this, Nina, :) Happy birthday, again!

propmts: midsummer breeze, lemon popsicles, diamond earrings, a game of "tag"

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incomplete
dylan/cam

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"so it's not gonna be easy. it's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this every day, but i want to do that because i want you. i want all of you, forever, every day. you and me... every day."
—- the notebook

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Everybody has those kind of days.

Where their grades slip below the margin required for ivy league acceptance, or their tumultous relationships crash to an end, or even to go to the extremity of a death. Life goes on, someone said, and these people recoop from the deaths, never openly sinking into a depression or committing acts of violence against each other, at least not in a town such as this.

Dylan has these days everyday —she can't remember a moment where her life was perfect after the blooming age of six, where everything tends to go downhill.

She perches upon a cotton couch, eyes widened as her attention is caught by the moving pictures, blurs of a better reality, hands moving in a circular motion, entranced by the shouts and screams, the symphony of it all, whether it is a harsh sound of cacophony or the harsher realm, the calling of reality. For a moment, Dylan is five again and she watches herself become absorbed by the imagination of it all, the romantic montages of a happy ending fading into dreams and wonders with a call.

Her mother has arrived home, that much she is aware of; in a quick motion, she lunges for the remote, barely missing it, instead knocking herself into the fragile coffee table, glass shards splattering everywhere, but quickly picked up almost in a slow motion movement however. There are screams moment later, and for once, Dylan thinks that her mother cares about her, but the screams are not for that; her father acknowledges that she has been watching television for the past forty five minutes, when she knows perfectly well that it has been thirteen, no more and no less. He's lying, mother, she had screamed; her mother had fixed her with a stern glare, telling her that any respectable lady of her age should not be accusing her parents of such an act, as if it was murder or treason or of the same significance.

The parents move to the computer room and she relocates herself stealthily, walking to her own bedroom where she can finally slide to the floor, tears endlessly streaming down beaten cheeks, the crimson never being mistaken for blush. Dylan holds the bowl of cantaloupe carefully below her face, swallowing and stuffing her cheeks which bleed with hurt, watching the salt stains mix in with the bruised fingerprints, all slipping into the expanse of butterfly themed comforters.

"Butterflies," she murmurs, looking down at the floor; nevertheless, there is one thing that the Marvil family does best, which is of course pretending. Nobody's heard of the fights that have occurred at the Marvil household, when she was three years old, Dylan was convinced that her parents would divorce within a few hours while her mother was at the door, tears streaming down her plastic face as her father made weak attempts in order to pull his wife back into the mansion. After a while, Dylan had learned that her mother hadn't come back into the house only for her children, instead for the lure of being the perfect family; they were anything but that.

/

Dylan Marvil hates a lot of things —cherries, hangnails, bitter lemon popsicles; dandelions, speakers, Cameron Fisher.

But she soon learns that's hate kind of like a toothache minus novacain; you can't help but remind yourself that it's still there. It'll always be there, no matter how many wishes you use to send it away.

There's been some times where blood flows freely, a clot never to form, where it is only stopped by the time it is absorbed into carpets and soft folds of cellulite and other skin; there are other times when the blood doesn't come, and she must spend time, hours and hours, in her bedroom to get it to start flowing again, maniac laughter floating from a high pedestal, because it's her secret remedy. It's the only way that Dylan's able to escape everything, and engrave herself into beauty.

She lets out a simper weeks later, a simpering grimace or grin, and the never-ending fluttering of the eyelashes in order to win herself back into the good graces of her parents, into their good books, and then Dylan remembers that she was never there in the first place, so how could she get back into something she wasn't in, in the first place? There's these voids in time, almost as if they are cracks, and for a moment, all she's ever wanted to do is disappear. When the blood was flowing freely, when nothing could be stopped and when Dylan was in control of herself; that's when she felt at peace. But they find, and like everything that brings her joy, they take it away.

Basically, by sending her away to the Preserve —she's given up with the protests by the time she's in the limousine. Of course, it's an unmarked one and her parents wouldn't even come because if paparazzi spotted them, they would never hear the end of it, and it's like Ryan and Jamie are the only children they have, just because they're the perfect ones.

She's sitting in a circle when she meets him. Like everything at the Preserve, it's not perfect —more like an oval with holes here and there, a patchwork quilt torn apart. "Dylan," she introduces herself, feeling a little silly while she holds the golden rattle, giving her and only her permission to speak.

A girl sitting front and center pulls off her oversized Calvin Klein sunglasses, narrowly examining her with piercing violet eyes. "Do I know you?" Nikolette Dalton says with a condescending voice, lowering her gaze. Dylan takes a deep breath; her alternate breathing tactics for keeping calm wouldn't runs out of the room, moments later, because nevertheless, it doesn't matter where she goes because everywhere she goes, nobody listens and they probably never will.

"I-I can't," Dylan stammers, falling onto the floor and slamming the door, which opens moments later. ""Do you know where I am? At an insane school! I-this is very - they don't take me seriously, never. They want me out. I'm - there's no way they'll ever let me into their lives! Even kindness is completely out of the question...I'm sure that they've already made a rule that I can't join because I'm a girl; like they're not." And with that, Dylan huffed and fell back onto the floor, eyes rolled.

Casting a glance at the person next to her, she sighs with annoyance recognizing him to be no other than that annoying twit that two of her older best friends had spent the rest of seventh grade (and the beginning of eighth grade) pining over. Seriously, even if it wasn't for all the sighs and giggles that her friends had talked about him with, she still would have known who he was.

He was Cameron Fisher —the epitome of cool. "I'm Cam," he says, sitting on the folding chair next to the strawberry spreadsheet bed; some idiot decided that it would bring a "carefree, light" environment to the Preserve. How old were these kids? Apparently, three years young.

"You breathe cool," she blurted out, immediately regretting the words as the boy in front of her smiled, something that she hadn't expected in the first place.

Then again, she had barely expected to see him ever again; the questions lurking in her mind had no answers. Why was he here? She hadn't been lying when she had seen that he "breathed cool". Other than the fact that he was perhaps the worst copycat in the history, copying everything his older brother, Harris Fisher did, Cam was the guy that everybody wanted to be, and the guy that every girl wanted to be with —like the male version of Alison DiLaurentis.

"—let's start that again, shall we?" He says with a nervous smile, standing up and then pacing back and forth.

She takes a breath. "Second chances are always nice," she ponders, aloud; and, maybe this Preserve won't be ever so bad.

/

The next time they meet, Cam pulls her in for a kiss —it's a long one, and he tastes like liquor and bitter things that she hates, but it's saccharine and addicting in it's own way. He pulls back and walks down the hallways as though nothing had happened, with a faint blush still evident on his rosy cheeks, masked by winter things. The following day, he's seen in the company of that anorexic girl (because eating problems are the only "acceptable" way to be admitted into the Preserve) and they're snogging underneath the Christmas tree, and Dylan decides that second chances are rubbish.

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A midsummer's breeze floats through the air, high and low, but wherever shall she go? Dylan hops from trains to trains to skies to universes in her dreams, burning brightly in the sky. Bodies float into the dusk, intermingling with the all of the other lost souls in the sparkling skies. She's always wanted to be heard —and now, she will be.

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(autopsy report; dylan marvil. cause of death: train wreck)

fin.

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dylan likes cam, cam likes dylan, i like reviews, :)