Telling Tales. Charlotte Stein
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falling asleep thinking about the students he must have loved, and then just one day never waking up.
I wish we’d known. I wish I’d known. I miss him, standing in this plush room, with everything about him all around me and the best memories I’ve got swamping my mind. He gave me those memories, after all. He made me come to this place, and he made me write, and he was the one who said to me: Don’t ever give up.
Real sorry about that, Professor.
I swipe at my eyes and shake myself, suddenly bristling with a new kind of discomfort because is that another set of bags, by the bureau? Those are definitely someone else’s bags, and if the unlocked door wasn’t enough of a clue to my ridiculous brain, this sure is.
There’s another person here already. And judging by the assortment of sports bags and rucksacks, it isn’t Kitty. Kitty works as a model now, I know she does, and she was always one for the finer things anyway. She’ll be carrying Louis Vuitton, and if I’ve got my Kitty right, she’ll have bagged a room already. No dumping her stuff in the living room for her.
So that just leaves Wade or Cameron. And odds on it’s Wade. Wade was always the sloppiest one, the one who never packed properly and wound up having to borrow some socks from Cameron that resolutely would not fit him because Cameron’s feet were the size of boats.
Which means that any second I’m going to bump into him. I’m just going to turn a corner and see him, and then the bottom of my stomach is going to drop out of me and find the floor. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if it found the basement. I feel sick just thinking about him awkwardly hugging me or even worse – what if he goes for the equally awkward handshake? What if I’m not worth a hug?
What if I throw up on his shoes?
It’s then that I know why it was Cameron’s voice that persuaded me to come. It’s because Cameron is calming, his very being is calming, and I’m never scared of what he’s going to do next because he’s as steady as a rock. He doesn’t do wild, unexpected things. He’s insular and strange and silent, whereas Wade is big and funny and never without a wisecrack. I can’t predict him, and that’s a hard thing to realise when most of me was sure I knew him so well.
Still, I take the hallway past the staircase – the one that still has the stepping stones set into the glossy floor – and make my way to my favourite room. Wade will be in the study if I do actually know anything about him at all, and I’m building up to it.
First, the boathouse room. The one that has nothing in it – not even a carpet – except for the one round window with the glass like melting butter, and the light coming in to fill it up in a way that no other place in the house does. Everything is dark here, everything is heavy and plush and like burying your face in crushed velvet.
But not this room. This room is like suddenly being on a boat in the middle of a golden ocean, and when I press my face to the heavy glass it’s just the same. I can see almost nothing and imagine it’s almost anything, out there. A whole world of high seas that I get to explore.
Though more typically it was Hamin-Ra I got to, through this portal to another world. I wrote about it a thousand times – me lifting the latch, and pushing against the glass, and then the golden beauty of my sand-strewn land would spread before me and –
‘Allie?’
My heart hits my mouth. It chokes me – and weirdly it’s not because I know it’s Wade. It isn’t Wade, and my heart wants to kill me anyway. Apparently, all four of my once-were-friends have the same effect on me, which is to say they make me want to run and hide.
Maybe by pushing through a portal to another world.
I brace myself and turn, and sure enough it’s Cameron. Of course I knew anyway – that voice – but it’s still a kind of electric shock to see him so close after all these years. He doesn’t even look any different, either! God, how I must seem to him, with this cardigan on that I shouldn’t have worn and my hair all massive and curly like this and the glasses, oh no the glasses, oh no I totally forgot how much of a dork Cameron makes me feel, with his bigness and his jockish hair and his smooth, perfect face.
And then I remember that he’s a complete nerd – one who fumbles over his words on a daily basis – and it’s OK. It’s OK.
‘Hey,’ I say, only it has about four extra syllables. And I can feel my face cracking, like it’s made of clay and he’s just set a hairdryer on it.
It’s just Cameron, it’s just Cameron, I think, over and over, but my brain can’t remember him being this…immense. Was he this big before? I think I kind of knew he was, but with him filling the doorway like that it’s a different matter. He looks like a giant. He looks like he killed the beast that ate Jack, then devoured the beanstalk too.
And he looks a lot more jockish than I remember too – though maybe that’s just because I’m seeing him fresh. He hasn’t spoken yet, or spent hours not speaking, or bored some girl to death at a party he didn’t want to go to. I vividly recall putting a baseball cap on him before we went to the Christmas blow-out over at Missy Taylor’s, when he’d asked me how he could at least seem cool and approachable.
Smile more, I’d told him, because he’d always appeared to find it a strain. His parents had been very don’t-smile-old-money-be-composed sorts of people, and though I always knew he didn’t want them to, those qualities had rubbed off on him.
They’re all over him now as he stands in the doorway, obviously wanting to hug me or something like it, but completely unable to. I can see the hint of a smile peeking through too, but it’s only because of those neat little incisors of his.
‘Can I give you a hug?’ I ask, and it’s weird how easy it comes. By God, I’d never ask Wade. I’d never ask Wade anything. Pass the peas seems like too much, with him, but with Cameron it’s suddenly and oddly easy.
I try to think back – were we close, Cameron and I? So close that I didn’t mind being the one who suggested, asked, persuaded? I don’t think we were, and yet I can picture a lot of me putting hats on his head or shaking his big body back and forth to loosen him up or asking him if I could read stories he’d hidden somewhere.
Usually he rolled them up and stuffed them down the back of his trousers. I have no clue why. Why bother to bring them to class or to the house if you were just going to pretend they weren’t there?
Until I found them, of course. I always winkled him out.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, yeah – sure.’
And I guess maybe then I know why it’s easier with Cameron. Because although he’s probably better looking than Wade – he’s so good looking that it’s blinding, for a moment – I somehow have this weird little inkling…this little feeling that he won’t say no. Like maybe he understands that I don’t ever expect anything to happen between us, so he can be open with me. Or maybe he just…maybe he’s just like that. He just wants to be hugged, probably.
Even though I’m sure I’ve seen him bend away from a pat on the shoulder, before today.
He doesn’t bend away from a pat this time, however. I put my arms around his middle – just like that, easy as anything – and I feel his huge hands spanning my back, so warm and good after all this time. He even smells the same, like that airy aftershave he always used to wear, and then all I can think is how odd it is that I can remember Cameron’s scent.
‘It’s so good to see you, Allie,’ he says, almost directly into the top of my head. Mainly because he’s six-five and I barely graze the PEMBROKE on his old and very worn university hoodie – but then it’s not his height I’m thinking about.
Instead I’m flooding with heat, remembering when I last heard him say something like that. On my answering machine, as I…did stuff. With my legs all over the place and my hand inside my knickers and ohhhh, there it is. There’s discomfort and embarrassment, my old friends!
I pull away