Telling Tales by Charlotte Stein

is, because he’s written Tenar on the back and I didn’t know. I had no idea.
    God, why didn’t he ever say anything? Why did he have to be so quiet and strange and unknowable?
    The question makes me furious, suddenly, and before I know what I’m doing I’m flicking through the pages of his other books, looking for answers. And I don’t even feel bad about it, either, because he went through my stuff. He went through my bags and read stories I never intended people to see, and he deserves this. He deserves me riffling through his drawers, finding only socks and more computer manuals and other stupid stuff, because he’s stupid, he’s an idiot, I hate Cameron Lindhurst.
    I hate him even more when I find his stash of handwritten stories, underneath a mess of meaningless paperwork and folders full of nothing. My heart is kind of rattling in my chest by this point and I really have no idea what I’m thinking, but I remove the elastic band he’s put around this great green hardback writing pad anyway.
    I have to. He said he’d stopped writing, but he was lying. This thing is new, I can tell. I’ve filled enough books with my own writing to be able to tell. And then my palms tingle and my armpits do that prickly thing again, because I realize something a little disturbing. Or maybe not disturbing, exactly…more like…not quite right.
    Because he’s this big computer guy, he’s so much of a computer guy that he’s worn the “A” off his keyboard, and yet he’s filled this nice green hardback book with handwriting. He’s used a pen, with good, thick blue ink, as though he wanted to really feel the words coming out of him.
    I realize with a little a start that I can hardly wait to see what he’s written. It’s prying and it’s wrong and of course I know it, but all I can think of is that word mystery again, and then I’m flicking through the pages like some sort of furtive maniac.
    Certain words jump out at me immediately. Mainly because his “Cs” are these massive scything things, so it’s hard to avoid the “cocks” and the “clits” and the “cunts.” And he hasn’t skimped on them, either, no matter what he tried to claim—the books are filled with nothing but.
    It’s the second revelation I’ve had about Cam that I don’t know how to deal with, and all in the last half hour. I look up at the bedroom door and see myself coming in here only a short while ago, with one completely formed notion of Cameron in my head. Sexless, distant Cameron who did not take pictures of his friends and keep them forever, and who did not write dirty stories that I feel almost too embarrassed to read.
    Though I know I’m going to do it anyway. I couldn’t resist watching him and I can’t resist this here, now. It really is like an episode of Poirot —like unraveling a thread I didn’t know existed, and on the end is some sort of mythical beast. A unicorn, maybe. A dragon, perhaps. Or possibly some kind of unearthly hybrid of both, because the first story is called “Bad Girls” and it is so the opposite of the Cameron I thought I knew I don’t know what to say.
    A secret crush on me was shocking. This is…unbelievable.
    But they like him enough to pin him down and fuck him like some loose little slut , I read, and then I have to stop. I stop, and close the book, and try to pretend it doesn’t exist. Did he really write the words pin and fuck and slut ? About a guy ?
    Though really when I think about it, those words aren’t the most shocking part. No, the most shocking part is that this story he’s written, this apparently filthy story—far filthier than I’ve ever got down on paper—is actually really, really good. Far better than anything he ever read out in class. The robotic weirdness is almost completely gone, and what’s left behind is this:
    They smell like summer when they walk through the door, and he can just make out a hint of the lake too. As though they’d been swimming in the