Thinking of You

by Rachel Kane

  “Will they keep paying me money for them, though?” I said. “Or am I going to be totally ruined? A laughingstock? Actually, no. You know what? I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I need a distraction, not more discussion. All right, Eli, you’re up: You have to feed me tales of the outside world, calculated to take my mind off my troubles.”

  He laughed. “You know what I do when I feel bad?”

  “Ah, so you’ve gone with advice rather than distraction.”

  “I clean. The whole house, top to bottom. It focuses the mind, keeps it off your troubles, and then by the end, you have a clean place and a clear mind.”

  I looked around my apartment. There was a rumpled shirt on the floor. An open newspaper from last week was open on the coffee table. The place was a mess.

  “Not sure I have the energy to do that,” I said.

  Maybe it was something in my voice that made Eli’s face fall. He put down the food, came around the table, and gave me a big hug.

  “Dude, it’s going to be okay,” he said.

  Do not cry, I told myself. I order you not to cry. Only drama queens cry.

  Call me a drama queen. Tears welled up in my eyes, splashed down my cheeks, and I collapsed against my friend. “It sucks so bad,” I said. “I’ve been having nightmares, I can’t eat anything, all I do all day is sit in front of the computer and wait for the next scary thing to happen. And the worst part is, there’s no help.”

  “Wait, why not? I thought Jane was hooking you up with a lawyer?”

  I shook my head. “They had some asshole image consultant talk to me. He treated me like I was guilty as sin. Didn’t even want to hear my side of the story. Not interested at all. Nobody cares about this, Eli. Nobody sees what it’s doing to me.”

  “I see. All your friends do.”

  “Look. Come look at this.”

  I led him to the computer. He started to object, but I needed someone to agree with me, that what was going on was truly frightening. I brought up my recent mentions, and turned the screen to face him.

  > I don’t know what cameron carlyle thinks he’s doing but he’s going to get what he deserves

  > does anybody know what he copied? I want to be sure never to buy another cameron carlyle book

  > when does secret reader come out with the next installment?

  > I always thought there was something fishy about those books, they’re all the same—I bet all of them are copied from somewhere else

  > you notice how he hasn’t said anything to defend himself—classic guilty conscience!

  Eli didn’t take his eyes off the screen. He reached for my mouse and began scrolling. Page after page. “How… Cam, how much of this is there?”

  “It doesn’t stop,” I said. “Every few minutes, somebody else says something. I’ve got to respond, I’ve got to tell them. But I can’t figure out how.”

  “This is crazy. Don’t they have lives? How can they spend so much time tearing you apart? Damn, do you want me to go on there and defend you?”

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you. They’ll rip you up.”

  He scowled and closed the laptop. “Well, you’ve got to do something.”

  “I do. I can’t have people thinking these things about me.”

  Eli stared down at the closed laptop for a long moment. “Cam, let me ask—”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I mean, I won’t judge you—”

  “I swear to god, Eli, don’t even say it.”

  “Is it true? Did you copy someone else’s book?”

  To hear one of my own friends ask the question was devastating. I turned away from him and walked to my bookshelves. Reaching up, I touched the spines of the mysteries that lined the shelf. “Did I? Not consciously, no. But that’s what worries me. I’ve read so many of these—I’ve been reading them all my life. What if some passage stuck in my head, in my memory, and then when it came time to write my own books, I accidentally quoted it, without realizing?”

  “Surely an editor would catch that,” he said.

  “Maybe. But what if they didn’t? That’s what I keep worrying about. One of the many things I keep worrying about, I should say. This could destroy my career when it’s just getting off the ground, and I don’t even know what I did wrong.”

  “And this image consultant guy, he didn’t have any advice? No research team to go over your books to see if they could find a problematic passage—”

  “No! Nothing! He offered me nothing but a sneering disdain. God, Eli, he was so stuck on himself. You could tell he thought he was God’s gift. Enjoying being the one with all the answers, all the power. Ugh, I hate men like that!”

  “Did you tell Jane about it? Maybe she could have a word—”

  “Of course I did. She was the first person I spoke to after I left the meeting. But what can she do? All they keep telling me is, don’t do anything. Wait. Don’t respond.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Eli. “This is your reputation on the line. You have to respond.”

  “That’s what I think too. But Mr. Manly-Man Alex in his stupid denim disagrees.”

  “Alex? Is that the consultant? But he’s not taking your case. He’s not offering you anything. So you have to make some decisions on your own.”

  “But how?” I asked. I sank into my chair. “I’m not the expert. It makes me so mad, Eli. How could he sit there calling me a liar, when he knows nothing about me? What gives him the right to say these slanderous things? He made me feel two inches tall, with all his pretense, his assurance, his certainty that he had me all figured out!”

  Nothing was more frightening than someone thinking they knew me.

  It wasn’t something I could explain to Eli…or to anyone. I’ve been through a lot in my life, more than most people. I’ve seen things other people never have to see. And I think I’m very good at boxing it all up, putting it in the closet where I never have to think about it. Keeping the past in the past. But there’s always the fear that it will come flooding back. That someone will know. That someone will see.

  Once upon a time, I had written it all down, to try to make sense of my past. A therapist had recommended it. A memoir, to set everything in place, so it could be thought about clearly.

  It took my three days to type it all in, and afterward I’d been horrified, seeing it all glowing on the computer screen. I’d tucked the file away inside a folder, and then that folder into another folder, then another, so deep in my computer I’d never be able to find it again, never be able to see it. As though I could hide my past from myself as well.

  That’s what had me so rattled by all of this. Everyone acted like they could see me. The real me. The secret history lurking behind my facade.

  Oh god, did you just use the phrase ‘secret history’? Snap the fuck out of it, Cam, you’re about to be crowned Empress of Drama, instead of merely the queen.

  Eli knew it was time to stop talking to me. My friends all knew there was a point where I’d just get worked up, and had to be brought back down. I’d reached that point now. He made me leave my desk, made me sit on the couch with the TV on. He showed me one of his favorite old movies, one where dinosaurs walked the earth. I ate the noodles without tasting them. Watched the show without really seeing it. But at least I wasn’t thinking. Every once in a while I would glance at the computer with a stab of fear: Was someone writing about me? Was Secret Reader about to reveal more?

  Then I would turn my eyes back to the screen. If TV is good for anything, it’s for going numb, without any drugs or alcohol.

  When Eli left a couple of hours later, it was with promises to check in on me tomorrow. In return, I had to promise not to open the computer again.

  I kept my promise. All night, staring at the ceiling, staring at the walls, rolling in bed until my blankets were coiled around me like thick flannel pythons, strangling me, squeezing my chest, squeezing every last breath—

  With a gasp, I sat up in bed. I blinked, my pulse pounding so
fast, at first I thought I was having a heart attack.

  The clock said it was six in the morning.

  The most exhausting sleep I’d ever had.

  In the dim morning light, I went to the bookshelf I’d reserved for my own books. I pulled down the first Miss Katie Clemmons, Creme de la Scream. Clicking on my desk light, I sat down to read words I’d read a dozen times before, words I’d pored over before sending to my agent, before sending to an editor. But reading with a new eye. Looking for the secret sin. The flaw that everyone was talking about.

  I could always tell when something was bothering Roger, began the first chapter, because everything in his kitchen was sticky. When your best friend is a pastry chef, you get used to being surrounded by flour and sugar. But today was different. Pastry bags littered the counter, pans of burned caramel were stacked in the sink, and instead of dough, Roger had something else in his fingers…an invitation.

  My smile was lopsided. I’d loved writing Roger so much. I remember hoping someone would read this book and wonder if Roger was really me. His flair for the dramatic, his big moods, always being brought back to earth by his best friend Katie. She was the brains, he was the heart, and it would take both of them to solve the mystery.

  Maybe that was my problem. There was no one in my life who could be the head, while I was the heart. I mean, I had friends of course. Eli visiting last night meant the world to me. Dexter and Gabe and Lawrence had all left me messages of support, invitations to come over and talk. I had friends.

  Yet I still felt so alone. So incomplete.

  I’m not saying I’m irrational. I knew plenty of people who saw me that way, who thought I was too flighty, too crisis-prone, always demanding the spotlight. I don’t think that’s true, though. When I’m out in the world, I play a part. The real world isn’t allowed to see the real me. They get Happy Cam, Dramatic Cam, the Cam that is carefully constructed to hide me.

  I needed someone who could see through that. Someone who could see the real me, without judgment, without shock.

  Someone who could let me feel things, while they took care of the practical matters. I didn’t know how to do both things at once, I didn’t know how to think and feel at the same time.

  Sighing, I shook my head. This was a ridiculous line of thinking. If I hadn’t been able to find a man before, I definitely wouldn’t be able to find one once my career was ruined, once I was cast out of polite society forever.

  Time to put my attention back on the book. Time to find the problematic passages, before Secret Reader could reveal them. It was the only way I was going to get out of this.

  But oh, what I would’ve done to have someone to help me.

  6

  Alex

  It was the colon that did it. Two little dots, one on top of the other. One mark of punctuation. Seemed appropriate, for a case involving a writer.

  Over coffee that morning, I saw a red notification bubble on my computer. I set down the newspaper and shook my head. Damn it, I’d missed clearing out one of the searches I’d done on Cam. I’d excised him from my phone, and from most of the tabs on my computer. Most, not all.

  It’s not that I was unsympathetic. When I opened the tab, and saw Secret Reader’s newest message, I felt that familiar worry somewhere in my belly, that creeping sensation that things were about to go even more wrong, as though it were happening to me instead of Cam.

  Today is THE DAY!!!, said the message on the screen. Secret Reader wants YOU to know the TRUTH about CAMERON CARLYLE or should I say: CAMERON CAR-LIAR? A count-down was just under the message. Eight hours.

  Interesting. Secret Reader didn’t want to reveal the next bit of gossip in the morning. Waiting for people to get off work, get done with school? Waiting for the maximum audience?

  I closed the tab. Not my business. Not my case.

  Going back to my newspaper, I settled in for a quiet morning. In a while I’d go outside and water the plants, make sure no bugs or voles were attacking them.

  But I couldn’t get that message out of my head. Or should I say: CAMERON CAR-LIAR?

  It was such a random bit of nastiness. I saw that Cam hadn’t responded to anything, which was good.

  You really are lying about something, I said to him in my thoughts. If not this, then about something else.

  I shook my head. I had to stop thinking about it. The last thing I needed was to get caught up in a case that wasn’t mine. Whatever happened to Cam, it was his own fault. He’d done something to bring this on.

  Micah would probably laugh at me right now, saying it was a symptom of loneliness that I kept thinking about the case. Proof that I needed to get out into the world, renew old friendships, go to the damn lake with him and his crew. He didn’t understand that sometimes you had to be alone. Alone for a really long time. To purify yourself.

  Besides, this wasn’t loneliness. Something else was bugging me. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. I reopened the tab and looked at Secret Reader’s last message.

  Unbidden came the memory of the church last night. That sign. You reap what you sow. No, that’s not the part that bothered me, I realized. The quote itself wasn’t the issue. That part was straightforward, cause and effect. Of course you reap what you sow.

  The colon. That’s what finally clicked. The little punctuation separating chapter and verse. Now I couldn’t remember where that verse on the sign had come from, but that didn’t matter.

  What mattered was the spray paint on Cam’s door.

  My notebook was next to the computer. Call me old-fashioned; I still wrote things down. Even though I’d had no intention of working with Cam, I’d still taken down all the details.

  32:23.

  I’d thought it was a random tag, some teenager’s idea of identifying himself. But what if it were referring to a bible verse?

  So what if it is? You’ve got no business looking any further into this. Cam will be fine. You gave him the advice, and he has Jane and Micah to look out for him.

  Okay. Yes, that was true. But neither of them had figured out the source of the spray paint. We’d all agreed it was unrelated to Secret Reader. But if we were wrong…

  Enough. I’d just look it up.

  I had a box of my grandfather’s belongings upstairs. Just some things to remember him by, that my mother had thought I would like. His old round glasses with their thick lenses, his bow-tie, things I could take out and look at when I was feeling nostalgic, which was rarer and rarer these days. But there was also his Bible, a thick leather-bound one with its gilt edges faded by decades of thumbing through, fat with bookmarks and family pictures stuck between pages.

  When I opened the box, the mustiness was like stepping back into the distant past. I spared a moment to touch that bow-tie. He’d always looked so dapper, my grandpa.

  The leather of the Bible was old and cracked, and I opened it carefully, fearful that I’d ruin it somehow.

  Might as well start at the beginning.

  Genesis. I flipped pages until I reached chapter 32. The twenty-third verse said, And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had.

  Huh. Not very threatening. Maybe I was on the wrong track. I scanned the page to make sure I was on the right verse.

  I flipped ahead to the next book, Exodus. No luck here either. For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

  I sighed. How many books were in the Bible again? Sixty-something? This was going to take a while.

  The next was Leviticus, but it didn’t have thirty-two chapters, so I kept flipping.

  Numbers was the next book. Chapter 32, verse 23: But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out.

  I suddenly felt very, very cold. As though the morning had grown dark, as though something had covered up the sun.

  Be sure your sin will find yo
u out.

  There were more books to check. I couldn’t be sure…at least, that’s what I told myself.

  I still had my instincts, honed by years of studying threats.

  Those instincts said this was the one.

  Secret Reader knew Cam’s address. Had gone to his house to spray this thinly-veiled threat on his door.

  Your sin will find you out.

  I had to tell him. He was right, this wasn’t just a random internet stalker.

  It was something much worse.

  “I haven’t been able to reach him,” said Jane. “Honestly, I’m starting to get worried. I know you aren’t taking the case, but have you seen the things they’re saying about him?”

  I’d called Micah, asking for Cam’s number, but he was in court this morning, so I’d called Jane next.

  “Yeah,” I told her. “I’ve seen. I need to talk to him.”

  She gave me his phone and address, but sure enough, he wouldn’t pick up when I called.

  So I headed for his neighborhood.

  Ten years ago this part of downtown had been a disaster. Neglect had seen businesses fleeing, houses abandoned. Block after block, nothing but empty buildings and broken glass.

  You’d never know it, looking at it now. The street bustled with young couples pushing strollers, professionals hurrying down the sidewalk on their phones, the windows of storefronts gleaming, and a general sense of rebirth filled the air. Critics had complained about gentrification, but at least now you could walk down the streets at night, without fear.

  It made the red numbers on Cam’s building that much more visible. The only graffiti on the street. When I arrived, a man was out front, scrubbing at the door. Red soapsuds dripped down, giving the door an unwholesome, gory appearance.

  “Kids,” he muttered, when he saw me watching.

  If only you knew.

  I pressed Cam’s buzzer, and it took a minute before he answered.

  “Yeah,” came his voice over the tinny speaker.

  “It’s Alex. I need to talk.”

  When he let me in, I was shocked by his apartment. Paper was everywhere. Books were destroyed on his floor, pages ripped out, piled up, covers tossed aside. It looked like the place had been trashed, and at first all I could think was that someone had broken in…but there was something about the way he slumped, the way he leaned against the wall, staring at the mess, that told me he’d done it himself.