The Writing Retreat(41)

Drinks rolled into dinner, which rolled into after-dinner drinks back in the parlor. By this time we were full, stuffed with food and wine, but when Roza poured the familiar Unicum into small glasses, no one refused.

“Well.” Roza settled herself into the same chair, tucking her bare feet underneath her. “Tonight we will play our first game.”

The wine had made me feel almost obscenely relaxed, but now I tensed up. I was not a game person. It tended to bring out my insecurities, especially when I had to do something like perform. Wren had often pushed charades at parties when she was drunk and restless.

“Awesome.” Taylor rubbed her hands together. She, Keira, and I had returned to our same spots on the couch, while Poppy and Wren were on the love seat. Wren and I had successfully ignored each other throughout dinner, sitting as far away from each other as possible.

“It’s not for the faint of heart.” Roza’s eyes glinted. “It’s a parlor game from Japan. Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, or A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales. Beautiful name, isn’t it? There will be one winner, who will get to have a nightcap with me.”

A slight edge entered the room. Taylor started twisting the golden rabbit at the end of the chain. She’d continued to wear her necklace over the past two days, though it looked discordant against her loose sweatshirts.

“This will take creativity and nerves,” Roza went on. “And it will go like this. You will tell a ghost story. You can make it up completely or tell one that happened to you or someone you know. We will guess whether or not it was ‘real,’ at least to the person who experienced it. I trust that you will all be honest. If we guess wrong, you will get to carry a candle in the next phase. If we are right, you will have to go in darkness.”

“What’s the next phase?” Keira asked, pushing up her red glasses.

Roza just smiled. “You’ll see, darling. Of those who complete the task, I’ll choose the best story.”

Ghost stories: they reminded me of long-ago sleepovers, whispered tales in the dark, the delicious fear that would climb up your spine as you snuggled in your sleeping bag.

Still, I felt nervous. Normally I’d tell my best story—the story of going into the woods with my best friend and what we’d seen there. But I’d turned that into an actual story and Ursula had sent it to Roza, who’d said she loved it. So that one was out…

“Who would like to go first?” Roza set her drink on her knee. “Trust me, it’s better to go earlier rather than later.”

“I’ll go,” Wren said. She glanced at me. “But Alex has heard it.”

“Good point.” Roza gestured at me. “Alex, you sit this one out. Okay?”

“Sure.” Wren’s confidence had given me a tingle of nervousness.

“So I was a kid,” Wren started. “Nine years old. And at the time my family was living across from this giant forest.”

The words took a second to sink in. Wren had grown up in Manhattan. Central Park wasn’t giant, at least compared to natural forests. So she must be making this story up.

“I used to be friends with this girl down the street named Christina,” Wren went on. “She had this beautiful long, wavy hair that went all the way down to her butt. I was so jealous of it.”

I stiffened, staring at Wren with amazement. This was my story. Wren was telling my story as if it was hers. I looked at Roza, but she was smiling, just taking it in.

“On the Fourth of July one year, her parents were having a barbecue. She and I got bored and decided to go for a walk. We hung out in the woods all the time, but we’d never gone at night before. We weren’t allowed to. But with the party happening and with the adults getting tipsy and setting off fireworks, we didn’t think anyone would notice. So we grabbed a flashlight and took off.”

Roza had to know, didn’t she? She’d said she liked my story. But then again, was it so hard to believe that she’d never actually read it? That she’d just said that because she wanted to make me feel better after humiliating me in front of the group the first night?

“There was a large path; I think it used to be a tractor path,” Wren went on. “One that we always followed. But somehow we found ourselves on this little trail. And the strangest part was that we couldn’t hear the fireworks anymore. We couldn’t see the flashes. The woods were completely silent. We said how weird it was, that there weren’t even any crickets. I had this feeling that we were on a movie set, that everything was fake. The trail opened up, and we were relieved, because we thought we were back on the main path. But then it just stopped. We were in a small clearing. It was a warm night and we were just wearing tank tops and shorts. But in this clearing, it was cold.”

A dark fury gripped my spine. How dare she? She was telling my story, in almost my exact words. And with every sentence it was like she was stealing it: my memory. My experience. Using me, taking from me, as she’d always done.

I wanted to run at her, covering her mouth, tackling her to the floor.

But I couldn’t. Because then I’d be the crazy one.

“And then,” Wren continued, her eyes wide, “when we turned around and decided to go back, we couldn’t find the path.”

Poppy gasped and then laughed at her reaction.

“We walked around the whole perimeter of the clearing, but the path was gone. And we were just starting to freak out when we heard something. It was Christina’s mom calling to us, and we heard sounds like she was walking towards us. We went in that direction and started yelling for her. I remember we were clinging to each other, we were so relieved. But then the sound of her voice came from further away. It got fainter and fainter. We just stood there. And Christina turned to me, and I’ll never forget what she said. She whispered: ‘I think it’s trying to trick us.’?”