12

                                    

                                          
"Oh, my God, we've been so stupid! How did I not think of this?! We can simply write them something!"
                          
They were sitting in Camilas room, this time around, and Lauren was still not used to it. Everything here was Camila, from her dog–eared map of the world and her koala obsession, to her butterfly collection and the thick volumes on influential women of the past. Her pillows, arranged by shape and size on her tiny bed, most of them peach–colored or baby blue. Her curtains, white, with little pink ribbons drawn on them, clashing horribly with the rest of the room.
                          
Her desk, where her guitar lay abandoned, watching her reproachfully.
                          
"Here, let me show you," she said, getting up quickly and running to her desk.
                          
She grabbed a pen and started writing on a piece of paper.
                          
Lauren is in a coma, this is Camila.
                          
"There! We'll just write a message and leave it for Dina or Normani or someone. God, we were idiots for not thinking about this before."
                          
Lauren didn't have the heart to tell her she had thought about this before, had even tried.
                          
Camila would find out on her own soon enough.
                          
"No. No, no, no. What's happening? Why is it vanishing?"
                          
Lauren winced.
                          
"Lauren, it's gone! What I wrote is gone!"
                          
"I saw."
                          
"You knew?"
                          
"Camila, a dead person is writing on a piece of paper. Think about it. It's a paradox. If the person writing doesn't exist, the message doesn't either."
                          
Camila shook her head.
                          
"It can't be the only way. What if one of us wrote on the mirror in the bathroom with some lipstick or soap and you know, leave a message for Ally or Shawn that way?"
                          
Lauren made a face. "Come on, Camila. You know what would happen."
                          
"Then why can we pick up objects and use them? Isn't that a paradox, too?"
                          
Lauren shrugged.
                          
"I don't get spirit world, either, Camila, but I bet that if you hold out this piece of paper to anyone else but me, they won't even see the piece of pa–"
                          
Camila sighed. Lauren was gone.
                          
Her mood quickly faltering as she took steps to her bed.
                          
It was becoming harder and harder to bear these absences.
                          
2/2

                          
"Your ceiling is nice," Lauren observed blandly.
                          
Camila chuckled.
                          
"You've seen so many ceilings."
                          
"I have."
                          
They were lying on Camilas bed, watching the progress of a small insect on the ceiling.
                          
"Do you realize that thing is alive and we aren't?" Camila asked.
                          
"Better dead than a fly, if you ask me."
                          
She laughed, hitting Laurens shoulder.
                          
"You're insane."
                          
"Look who's talking."
                          
"I guess I wouldn't want to be fly. Unless I was a spy, that would come in handy. For getting information."
                          
"A fly spy? I think you've stumbled upon a movie idea."
                          
"Spy Fly–the Real Spy."
                          
"Wow, that's a terrible tagline."
                          
"I'm not very creative right now. Still getting over this whole "dead" thing."
                          
"Spy Fly, the Spy that Flew Me."
                          
Camila snorted. "That's even more terrible."
                          
"Spy Fly–You Never Know What Will Fly."
                          
"Stop," Camila said, through fits of laughter.
                          
"Spy Fly–The World's Biggest Small Danger."
                          
"Oh, God, you're not even trying," 
                          
"Spy Fly–" Lauren started again, but her words got stuck on their way out.
                          
For a moment, Camila thought she had disappeared.
                          
But no, Lauren was still there, watching her.
                          
"What?"
                          
"Your face when you laugh, it's just always–"
                          
She was gone again. 
                          
Camila reached out and touched the empty spot next to her.