Camden knocked on my door on a Tuesday morning.

That whole sentence is a contradiction.

Cam doesn't knock on my door, and if he did he wouldn't on a Tuesday. And certainly not in the morning.

But he did.

He knocked.

So naturally I opened the door. What can I say? I was curious. And it's not like I hated him; we just... we weren't... things change. A lot.

When I opened the door, I saw a very different Cam than I was expecting. This Cam looked broken, and his face was bruised and bloody. He seemed like he'd been rolled down a muddy hill while fighting for his life. His usually clean t-shirt was covered in dirt and blood and his light wash jeans would've passed for dark. I stared at him

"Cam?" I asked.

He looked at me and I could see the pain in his eyes. He gave me a very, very faint smile, but I could see something else in his eyes. Camden was scared.

"You always said..."

I smiled back-- more a reflex than anything. No one could resist Cam's smile.

"Can I come in?"

"Of course!" He just looked at me and raised his eyebrows. And I realized that I was standing in the doorway, blocking it. I felt my cheeks turn pink as I stepped back to let him in.

He stepped through, then stumbled and landed hard against the wall, where he slid down to the floor, leaving me just enough space to close the door. I knelt in front of Cam's slumped form, beyond concerned. Cam wasn't one to give up, ever. He didn't fall; he didn't get hurt...and I was seeing both at once. Clearly, something was more wrong than I'd thought.

"Cam.

"Cam.

"Camden.

"Camden Adams Jameson. You need to talk to me right now. Or I'm calling Charlene."

That got his attention.

"Charlene has to work tonight; even if she didn't, she gave up on me a long time ago and she hasn't taken me back. So maybe calling her isn't the best id-"

Camden, your mother loves me. She'll answer. Start talking."

Cam opened his mouth and took a shuddering breath...sliding sideways and landing on his elbow. His whole body started shaking.

"Cammy?" I asked, alarmed. He shook his head as vehemently as his broken form could handle. "Cammy, I need to do something."

What I said must've scared him a helluva lot, because he seemed to get a sudden burst of strength and he reached toward me, sitting up just a little as he did so. "Avi, you can't. No one can find out about this."

"Cammy, please! I can't- I can't just let you be like this! I --"

"You have to!"

Cammy doesn't yell at me.

But he did.

I stood up. "I'm calling Ren, Cam. And then you're telling me what's going on." I stepped back and sat down opposite him, leaning against the opposite wall of my hallway. I hit Ren's name on my phone, and when I put the phone to my ear I looked up to see Cam staring blankly at the floor in front of him.

"Hey-oh," came the voice from the phone.

"Ren?"

"Yeah, babe, what's happenin'?"

"Renny, I need you to come over right now."

"Hey, now, Av." I could hear the smile in his voice. "Slow down, girl! I don't roll that way."

Ren could always make me smile. The smile,though, didn't last long. I could still see, sitting in front of me, a Cam that wasn't... my Cam. No, not my Cam - the Cam that used to be mine. But maybe he'd changed since then.

"Please, Ren."

"What's wrong, baby girl?"

"Renny…." My voice choked as I held back sudden tears. Under no circumstances was I going to cry.

"Heh, hon, I'll be right there, okay? Seven minutes." He clicked off. I let my phone slide from m ear and looked up. Camden was looking at me and I met his eyes; there was something in them that I hadn't seen in a long time. I saw the Camden that I'd known when we were little, the one that I'd slowly lost as we got older, the one I'd thought was gone for good. Until now.

We sat on the floor of my apartment like that, staring into each other's eyes, until Renny knocked on my door.

"It's open," Cam rasped from the floor, not taking his hazel eyes away from mine

Renny whipped the door open with a great deal of pomp and flair and leaned in, left hand on the doorknob, right hand on the right doorframe, breathing heavily as if he had run from his apartment across town. And he was sweating, so he had run.

"New record?" I asked.

"Damn straight."

Mine and Cam's longstanding best friend was not a runner. He was built like a dancer and he ran like one too, as if every step were precisely choreographed. And he had this crazy notion to run with me in a marathon next month; he wouldn't settle for the half either. He was determined to run the whole damn thing. So running was a common discussion topic between us. I knew next to nothing about his current relationship with Cam. Until now, I hadn't cared.

Ren looked down then and saw his friend on the floor who hadn't moved when our visitor burst through the door.

Ren glanced at me. I shrugged, at a loss for words to explain the situation.

"He came in here like this."

Ren knelt down before Cam and tried to look him in the eyes, but Cam refused. Ren tried  again, holding Cam's chin, gently forcing his head to move, but Cam's eyes still looked down. Ren gave Cammy a little shake. 

"Cam."

When Cam still wouldn't respond, Ren sighed and took an inventory of Cam's injuries. It was then that we noticed the blood slowly seeping into my carpet.

"Towels, Avi, now. And call someone, for God's sake. You should've done that already!"

"He told me I couldn't!

Ren just looked at me and I saw something sink in his face as he slowly turned back to face Cam, who met Ren's eyes this time.

Cam spoke. "We can't."

Ren and Cam looked at each other, but it seemed that I wasn't to be privy to their silent conversation.

"Avi?"

"Yeah, Ren?"

"How 'bout them towels?" He was still looking Cam in the eyes.

I sped around the corner and ducked into the bathroom, pulling towels out of the linen closet. I was about to go back out when I heard the talking.

"This is bad, Cam. I thought you got out." 

"I did."

"I thought I told you not to go back."

Cammy didn't answer that comment. They were silent after that.

As an afterthought, I grabbed the gauze, antibacterial cream, and bandages from my medicine cabinet and was on my way out when, again, I heard talking. But this time, a very concerned and, if I wasn't mistaken, frightened, Ren was talking to me.

"Avi? Avi! Avi!"

"Hey, whoa, Ren! I'm right here! What's going-- oh, shit."

Cammy was unconscious. Corpse white. Lying in a pool of blood. Ren was still holding on to Cam, using both hands and a knee in an attempt to stanch the bleeding. 

"Avi, phone. Phone now."

Ren was speaking very quickly.

"Ren, what's happeni--"

"Phone, Avi, now!"

"Okay, just a second! The ambulance can probably be here in five so if you just hold on while I call…"

"NO. WE CAN'T!" 

"WHY THE HELL NOT, REN? I'M TRYING TO SAVE HIS LIFE!"

"If you want to save him, don't call them. Call Zain instead."

"How's he gonna help?"

"Just call him, Avi! Cam ain't gonna make it much longer!"

I called.

We put Cam in my bed that night. I mean, what else could we do? We could hardly drag an unconscious and bloody boy down my hallway. Even in my unfussy dorm, that would've raised a few eyebrows.

Cam didn't move all night. We stayed with him the whole time. The bandages had to be changed and his fever watched.

As I sat, watching Cam sleep, years seemed to meld together and I was nine years old again and scared to death of losing my best friend.

"Avril."

I shot up, startled. Zain gave me an amused look. 

"Maybe you should sleep."

I opened my mouth to speak, looked at Cam, and looked back at Zain. "I don't think I can."

He smiled sadly. "You won't do him any good if you're too tired to help him."

I took another look down at Cammy and moved to get up -- very slowly; I hadn't moved in hours. As my weight left the bed, something caught hold of my wrist. Cammy's weak hand, gripping me as hard as his feeble strength could manage, holding me there, not wanting me to leave. Zain moved forward to check on Cam, to discover that he was still asleep. Somewhere in his subconscious he had noticed that I was leaving him… maybe he was back to the only time that I left him; maybe he was back to the time he pushed me away… or maybe he was in the same memory that I'd been in, that time when we were nine and our bubble that was just us two was shattered and for the first time there was the possibility that I could lose my Cammy forever.