Telling Tales (7 page)

Of course, there are a million things this could mean. There are a million things catching him jerking off to my story could mean. There are a million things standing in front of an oncoming train could mean, but really, when you think about it, only one possible answer makes sense.

I just don’t want it to make sense. I want the person to be standing in front of the oncoming train because they accidentally superglued their feet to the tracks. Not because of the obvious, reasonable answer like
Cameron
is
totally
in
love
with
you—you’re the Tenar to his Ged
. Because that would just be weird and it’s making my armpits all prickly and so I just close the book with the picture inside and put it back on his desk, underneath several manuals.

It seems like the best plan for everyone. After all, the idea that Cameron likes me enough to keep a picture of me in a book I loved is just too impossible to comprehend. I’m probably imagining it. My head is full of Wade and it’s making me drift on a sea of nonsensical love thoughts—so much so that I have to get the book back out again and just check that the picture is really me.

Yeah, it’s really me all right. I think it was taken when we all went to Whitby that one time, and the wind on top of the cliff had blown my hair into an untangle-able mess. It’s all crammed in a curly heap on one side of my head, and I’m laughing as though I know it, and by God I can’t think why anyone would want to keep a picture of something like that.

I look ridiculous. I look…happy. Lord, was I ever that happy? My eyes are as bright as buttons and I’m wearing something of Wade’s I think—a big black cable-knit jumper sort of thing that can’t possibly have been mine.

And then I realize with a start that it was
Cameron’s
. It was his jumper—the one with the hole in—and he gave it to me after I got soaked by a wave, walking by the insane ocean. After we’d bought fish and chips and eaten them in a hurry under the shelter of some shop awning, and then I remember being filled with a burning warmth when Wade put an arm around me and rubbed my shoulder, as though sensible of how cold I must be.

Of course it occurs to me then that Cameron has very different memories of this day than I do. I think of Wade and how he made me feel, but Cameron obviously thought about his jumper, me laughing, me running away down over the grass toward the old church. I can see it all now so clear, like a video-recorded version of real events. Everything hyper-real and too bright, me looking back at the person filming, hair flying. Sleeves too long for my arms.

Jesus Christ, I think I’m crying. I don’t even know why, either, because it’s not as though there’s something particularly sad about finding an obviously well-loved picture of yourself in a friend’s book. Only there is, there 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 barely-there clothes they’ve got on, though he knows they haven’t. They’ve been swimming in no clothes at all, because the ones they’re wearing are hardly damp and now they’re in here, giggling and murmuring things he can’t quite hear.

Like
let’s
and
fuck
and
with Ben.

Only
it’s the strangest thing, because the more he thinks about them fucking with him, the more he can’t focus on anything else. His mind fills with elaborate scenarios before they’ve even gotten anywhere near the couch he’s pretending to sleep on, and when they finally walk over it’s almost like a relief. As though he knew it was going to come to this sooner or later, and now that it has he can breathe out.

“I think he’s hard,” one of them says, and he knows it’s Lydia. Lydia with her mess of dark hair and her almost-green eyes, gazing down at him like he’s something that needs devouring.

He
wonders, idly, if she knows he wants to be devoured.

“Definitely hard,” the other one says, and when she giggles he feels an odd little trickle of fear run down his spine. As though cool, indifferent Lydia could be cruel, but her little blonde friend could be crueler.

Much
crueler.

“Touch him,” the blonde one—Mindy—says, and he hears Lydia make a soft, noncommittal sound. As though she can’t decide what’s best, in this sort of situation. Should she wake him, and ask him if any of this is OK? Or should they just plunge right into whatever dirty things they feel like doing?

For
one
wild, unbearably free second, he hopes they’re going to go with the latter. Go the whole hog he thinks at them, but then a hand goes around his obviously stiff cock, quite suddenly, and he wishes he hadn’t been so rash with his thoughts.

He
isn’t wearing much—just a thin pair of shorts—and the hand is rough and jolting. Whoever it is squeezes, hard, and yet another delirious thought shoots through his mind—the hope that it is Lydia rather than Mindy, grasping and groping him through his clothes.

But
then
Mindy
squeals
that
he’s really big and stiff, and that strange and unwanted hope is dashed. It’s Mindy squeezing him, and then Mindy stroking him, and finally it’s Mindy actually jerking him off through his shorts.

Although
when
he
finally
dares
open
his
eyes, it’s Lydia he sees. And it’s the sight of her—eyes burning down at him, breasts almost visible through the thin material of her vest, skirt showing too much creamy thigh—that sends a strong current of pleasure through his body.

“Have you been dreaming dirty dreams, Ben?” she says, and it’s almost a kind question, really. Not half so cruel as Mindy’s tugging, working hand on his cock or the sight of Lydia’s body through her clothes, like something he’s always wanted but ever out of reach.

Only
then
she
turns
to
Mindy
and
tells
her
to
unzip
his
shorts
and
get
it
out, so really he doesn’t know what to think.

At
the
very
least
he
has
to
protest, but when he tries to she claps a sudden hand down over his mouth, as though he’s the woman and she’s the man and this is all some very different sort of scenario altogether.

“I’ll hold him down,” she says. “You do it.”

However, when she speaks she doesn’t address Mindy. She looks down at him, that same devilish delight in her eyes, and something inside him veers left when it should be going right. He should be telling her to stop, now. He should be throwing her off—he is, after all, far bigger and stronger than both of them put together—but somehow he doesn’t seem to be doing anything like it.

Instead, his body thrums and thrums, and a sound comes out of his mouth. It’s an embarrassing one too—a real low and deep down groan—but he can’t stop it. Mindy has gotten his shorts open and he can feel air on his bare and humiliatingly stiff cock, but more importantly Lydia has still got her hand over his mouth. And after a moment she puts a knee against his shoulder, as though she suspects he’s about to struggle and try bucking them off.

“That’s good, baby,” she says. “Just stay still and take it.” He has absolutely no clue what they expect him to just stay still and take, but God, those words. His body trembles all over, minutely, just hearing them. Lydia—sweet little Lydia—behaving like this, being this fucking dirty, fucking
making
him…it’s unreal.

Even
though
he
sort
of
knew
it
would
come
to
this, all along. He could see it in her—this need to tease and torment, this desire for games he can barely fathom—only now that they’re being actualized he finds himself on uncertain ground. How far is she going to go exactly?

Take it
implies
something
very
specific, he knows it does.
Like
maybe
they’re going to do the kind of things that only girls usually get. Maybe they’re going to lube their fingers and fuck his body in a way he’s never thought of before, no, God, no, he’s never thought of anything like that before, not ever.

And
he’s certainly never thought of other things, like maybe something bigger and thicker, sliding into him.

He
thinks
of
those
words
again—take it—and bucks beneath their restraining hands, but then something hot and slick brushes the head of his cock and it’s like a relief. It’s like one, but maybe not quite all the way to being one.

Still, it feels good. And it feels even better when he manages to push himself against the bonds of Lydia’s hand and sees Mindy with her skirt all the way up around her waist, the hair between her legs so fluffy and fine it’s barely there, sinking down onto his cock as though it meant nothing at all to do something like that.

“Ohhhh God,” she moans, and there’s something thrilling about that. Something that makes him want to be smug, because she has her eyes closed and it obviously feels good to slide down on his cock like that. It must, because she starts rocking almost immediately, and when he glances up at Lydia she’s biting her lip.