Having a drug addicted father, dead by overdose, is most undoubtedly what got Camille addicted. It wasn’t like she knew it could happen to her. Camille thought, for reasons unknown, that she could control the oxycodone that once ruled her father, Aiden’s life. But, oh, was Camille wrong.

When Aiden had passed, she spiraled downward into a seven year old depression. For the duration of four years, Camille didn’t eat, sleep or play like the other normal children her age. Camille became an outcast, a reject. Nobody wanted to be there for her when she needed somebody to play with at recess, to sit with at lunch time and to have sleepovers with. The thought of that sent Camille deeper into her own dejection.

Camille, now eleven, stumbled upon a hand sized box in the cupboard under the sink of her mothers run down bathroom. What lay inside the box were five orange bottles. She picked one up, labeled oxycodone. Camille understood what she held in her hands. It was the object that had once made her father so happy, but what she didn’t realize is that theses pills were the culprits that lead to her fathers demise.

Holding these bottles in her hands felt exhilarating. To Camille, it meant an end to the current agony she was suffering. There was far to much clutter in their house for Camille’s mother to realize what had gone amiss. What’s it to her if a couple bottles of Aiden’s secret stash were now in Camille’s possession? Her mother probably didn’t even know about the oxycodone
tucked beneath all of the clutter.

Camille was fifteen years old now. She stood staring at her reflection in the ancient medicine cabinet mirror of the crudely designed bathroom. Her auburn hair messily piled into a wet clump on the top of her head and her jet black liquid eyeliner applied thick around her chestnut eyes. Camille was disgusted at the face glaring her back in the mirror. She wished, in some sense, that she could change her image, but she just couldn’t find it in her to care enough.

“Camille!” Lori, Camille’s mother, belated through the disheveled house, “What could you possibly be doing right now?! You’ll be late for school! Hurry up and get in the car!”

Camille hurriedly gulped down the five miniscule round white pills and chased them with a swig of water. Then rushed down the narrow hall that led to the garage door.

Her daily dose of oxycodone was going to get her through her first day of sophomore year, so instead of the usual two pills that Camille took; there was an additional three. After all, she would need it more today than any other day. Putting up with all of her peers that gave her grief was exceptionally harder on the first day, after having been free of it for three months during the summer vacation.

It wasn’t Camille’s first time taking an abnormally large (for her) amount of the preeminent pills. She had done it once or twice before, why should today be any different?

The door of the rusty 1995 Buick slammed behind Camille as she sat in the crumb stricken passenger seat. Lori flashed Camille a disconcerted expression. An expression that was filled with anguish and heartache. Lori only wore this face when she knew her daughter was high, and Camille couldn’t care less.

The car ventured for half an hour in the direction of an increasingly daunting high school.
Finally, they had made their destination and the Buick crawled its way to the front of the primordial school.

Camille took an unsteady step forward out of the car, and, without a word to her mothers departure, she walked. The pills Camille took earlier this morning were starting to take its toll and she mistook the bell to get to class for a ringing that took place within her head. The salvage teenaged kids were shoving through the buildings doors. Chaos buzzed around her, and it was too much.

Camille’s heart slowed to a tiny rhythmatic pace. Her eyes were seeing but uncomprehending. This couldn’t be happening, could it? Camille knew how to hold herself, when she took oxycodone. She could keep herself from shutting down, right? Camille panicked. She couldn’t breath. It felt as if someone had crammed a wad of cotton balls deep in her throat and it was the worst feeling in the world. Her arms and legs turned to Jell-O and went limp, causing her to collapse to the unyielding cement floor.

Im not going to end up like my father was Camille’s final thought, and then there was darkness.

Through clouded eyes, Camille saw a blinding white light. Could she be dead? Sure enough she wasn’t. Lori sat at her bedside. She had a look on her face like she had seen many moons. Camille’s mother opened her mouth to speak but her tears betrayed her. Having seen her mother like this sparked some sort of empathy in Camille. She hadn’t seen her mom like this since her father passed and she didn’t want to be the one to bring that emotion back up in her again but she was.

Lori cleared her eyes of water and when she was sure her tears wouldn’t betray her again,
she spoke. “I’m sending you to a rehabilitation,” Lori paused, waiting for her words to sink into her daughters mind but the idea didn’t seem all to unappealing to Camille. In fact, her near death experience had suddenly changed her outlook on life.

After seeing what drugs had, not only done to her, but her mother too, that was enough for her to want to make a change. She had always thought it was okay. That it would only effect her. Camille only had thought the things she thought, by her fathers example. But she was wrong.
Camille became so engulfed in the drug, that she no longer cared about her mother or even herself.

Now she was different. Life was changed. She was changed.

Camille nodded to her mother and her mother looked utterly stupefied. Lori expected a challenge from her daughter, but instead she got acceptance.