B 1 SCOTT efore I peel open an eyelid-which feels like it’s been super glued shut-I’m sure of two things. If you think you’re ready to tell me your tale, click here. Enjoy and live your life, insatiable reader. Who knows? You might be Dear Allie’s very next interview. Obviously, I changed the names, but my point is this: These things happen and they could happen to you. I base every word on someone’s real life experience. To help entice you to live out your own fantasies, here is one of their stories. People tell me the stories they can’t tell their best friends, because I welcome each and every tale without judgment. Sure, I get the occasional creep, but mostly I’m inundated with stories of inexplicable passion and unbridled desires. Add in my filthy imagination, two years of psychology classes, and hundreds of self-help books, and I have a talent for pulling out and then writing up strangers’ deepest and darkest secrets. What they don’t know is how my shyness melts away when hidden behind a computer monitor, armed with a keyboard, award-winning blog, and quick wit. Okay, maybe I’m not that bad, but my shyness is why everyone assumes I’m also naïve, inexperienced, and pure as freshly fallen snow. I’m sweet, dependable, and suffer from a damn near crippling shyness leaving me one step above an agoraphobic shut-in.

I organize pen pals for the elderly, stock the shelves after-hours at the library, and every other Thursday I run the dishwasher at the homeless shelter. The most requested house sitter in the neighborhood, because I don’t attend parties, much less throw them.

The girl asked to man the church bake sale, because I’d never skimmed from the till.

Behind The Mask by Kameron Claire