The Writing Retreat(29)
“That is the most absurd request I have heard in my entire life.” Wren could make statements like these sound sarcastic, but it was clear that she was determined to win Poppy over. From Poppy’s adoring gaze, it seemed like she’d already succeeded.
“Are y’all ready for this?” Taylor grinned, tapping a drumbeat on the table.
“We’ll see.” Avoiding eye contact with me, Wren sat across from Taylor. She wore what had to be a designer cashmere sweatsuit in teal, and her dark hair was pulled into a bun. Poppy settled across from Keira, looking cute in a nubby pink sweater. Now they were all clustered around the far end of the table. What the hell? An empty chair separated Poppy and me. I was the outlier, the little trail of the comet, flying off into oblivion.
“How was the walk?” Taylor asked Wren and Poppy. “Run into any wild animals?”
Their chatter and laughter filled my ears and suddenly I was back in middle school, sitting on a bench during recess, pretending to be absorbed in my book. The other kids didn’t care enough to make fun of me or even feel bad for me. They didn’t see me at all.
What did people on reality shows say? I’m not here to make friends. And that was true. But I still felt a nudge of shame. Should I move closer to Poppy?
Why should I? The thought contained a fiery petulance. After all, I’d been the first person in the goddamn room.
Roza strode in, coughing and paging through a notebook, reading glasses perched on her nose. Her hair was loose, and she wore a red sweater, slouchy jeans, and fur-lined slippers. She walked closer and I expected her to sit at the head of the table by the others. But she swerved and settled by me instead.
She looked up with consternation. “Move closer, please? I don’t want to shout.” The others obediently got up, moving to our end of the table. I felt a low buzz of relief and, yes, smugness.
“So.” Roza pulled off her glasses with an expectant smile. “How’d it go?”
We looked at each other in silence.
“Great!” Taylor finally shouted, and we all laughed.
“Good.” Roza smirked. “Don’t be nervous, girls. The worst I can do is rip it to shreds, right?” She squeezed my forearm, and the sudden intimacy made me jump. “Just kidding. I know this is the hardest part. But I’m confident that after this meeting you’ll walk away excited to get down to business.”
I felt a flush of hopefulness. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.
“Keira?” Roza gestured. “Pass out your synopsis, dear. I’ll read it aloud and then we’ll provide feedback.”
Keira did so, her lips pressed in a grim smile. It comforted me that even she, with all her poise, had struggled to come up with something.
The synopsis described a young woman who had gone through her recently deceased mother’s things and found a letter her mother had written decades before but never sent. The letter indicated that her mother had almost left her family to reunite with a woman who’d been doing mysterious research on Goree Island, a former slave-trading hub off the coast of Senegal. The protagonist decided to track down the woman and find out more about her, the research, and the secrets her mother had kept from her.
“Well.” Roza slammed down the paper. “I’ll start. I think it’s brilliant. Anyone else?”
Keira’s face softened with relief as Poppy and then Taylor both echoed the sentiment.
“Just don’t make it too heart-warming,” Roza said. “Make it difficult, okay? All right. That was easy. Let’s move on to the next. Taylor?”
Taylor offered to read it herself, which impressed me. Her idea concerned an American woman in France who met a female bartender who promised to lead her on an unauthorized tour of the catacombs beneath the city. While at first they enjoyed their time—“Ahem, lots of sex”—they eventually came across a masked group performing a sacrificial ritual. The rest of the story involved them trying to get away from the group, who wanted to kill them.
“Oh my god, how does it end?” Poppy’s eyes were wide.
Taylor shrugged. “Betrayal. The bartender was part of the cult all along.”
“I knew it!” Roza banged a hand on the table and we all laughed.
After a few more questions and suggestions from Roza, we moved on to Poppy. (“Ladies, we’ll be done quite early today if everyone’s ideas are as good as these two.”) Poppy’s proposal was about a young woman who traveled to the Cayman Islands, where she got caught up with a group convinced they could access God in a certain remote cave.
“Islands and cults!” Roza raised her hands. “It seems we have a theme.”
Something about the story pulled at me, a thread of recognition. I felt like I’d heard of this story before, though I couldn’t remember where.
But no story was completely new. Maybe I was thinking of another book, maybe even something Poppy was using for inspiration.
Wren went next and she read in a clear, precise voice. Her story concerned an actress invited to work with a famous director she’d admired since childhood. When the actress arrived on the remote set, she was unsettled to find that the group comprised only her, one other male actor, and a skeleton crew. As they filmed, the project got more bizarre, until the actress wondered if the director had gone mad—and if she was in mortal danger.