The Writing Retreat(7)
The truth was, since everything with Wren, I hadn’t written a word.
* * *
That afternoon I ventured out for a bagel sandwich. The cold outside was a shocking, cleansing blast. A text dinged as I gave my order at the deli counter, inhaling the scent of garlic and coffee. I sat at one of the tiny metal tables and pulled out my phone. It was from Ursula.
Random: Which story did you send to the Roza contest? Was it the one about the two girls in the woods?
I’d shared that story in our writing group, many years ago.
No, I wrote back. I sent a newer one. It had been a bit of a Roza knockoff; maybe that’s why they hadn’t chosen it. I added: Why?
But in response, she just sent a smiley face.
I opened up Instagram with my fake account and, before I could stop myself, went to Wren’s profile. She’d blocked my personal account, so I’d started this other one to keep tabs. The most recent picture was of her from the night before, holding up a drink next to Ursula in the dark bar, glowing in the flash of the camera. Celebrating another incredible book from one of my oldest friends. Her head tilted slightly to the right; she knew all her best angles. At this point she had 32K followers.
When Wren and I had met, I wasn’t even on Instagram. I’d joined solely to connect with her. I’d sent my first DM to her—someone had posted the original cover for Devil’s Tongue.
Wren had not only responded but brought up Devil’s Tongue the next day.
We’d been in Madison Square Park, our new lunchtime spot. I remembered we were eating sushi and I was trying not to look like an idiot struggling with my chopsticks. Wren, in one of her storytelling moods, shared how she’d read Devil’s Tongue in junior high after one of the other cheerleaders gave it to her. (“Wait, you were a cheerleader?” “Al, there were thirty people in my grade; of course I was a cheerleader.”) Wren had read it secretly, under the covers with a flashlight, but her born-again Christian mother had still found it tangled in her bedsheets. This was the first time I heard about the many cruel and unusual punishments Wren’s mother had inflicted upon her, starting with locking her in a closet at three years old. This time her mother grounded her for two weeks and refused to serve her dinner. Wren would still have to show up for the meal and just watch her mom and dad and three siblings eat. Luckily, Wren’s friends at school brought her food—mostly cupcakes and chips—and she’d gorge on them after everyone else had gone to bed.
After hearing Wren’s story, I’d been speechless. As we watched a nearby man try to get a fat squirrel to eat out of his hand, I tried to come up with something to say. Damn. I thought I had it bad. But when I finally decided on “I’m so sorry,” she shrugged and even laughed. “My mom was and is a total cunt. How about your parents?”
So I told her. That my dad had left when I was eight and we’d never seen or heard from him again, at least to my knowledge. That Mom had dragged us from city to city, oftentimes to meet up with an “old friend” who always inevitably turned out to be male. That we’d stay with him or at a cheap weekly rental, and Mom would get a job at a drugstore or grocery store. And that just as I’d start to get comfortable at a new school, she’d get fed up with her boyfriend and would haul us to the next town, until it seemed easier to stop trying to make friends altogether.
“That sucks.” Wren’s voice was both soft and matter-of-fact.
And it had, but at least there hadn’t been any out-and-out abuse. While I never did much to be punished for, I had the feeling then that Mom wouldn’t have noticed even if I had tried to rebel: stayed out all night and come back stinking of whiskey and cigarette smoke.
“Did any of the guys try to do anything to you?” Wren asked.
Thankfully, no. I’d kept my distance, knowing that my very existence was likely an annoyance to them. I tried to be as neat and quiet as possible. Even hearing them having loud sex was weirdly comforting, knowing that they weren’t thinking of me, that I wasn’t getting in the way.
“Who gave you a copy of Devil’s Tongue?” Wren asked, popping her last piece of sashimi into her mouth. The squirrel man had succeeded in his quest. The woman sitting on the other side of his bench watched him, faintly grossed out. I already knew that most New Yorkers did their best to avoid touching squirrels, pigeons, and other city creatures.
“It was this woman at Barnes & Noble.” We’d just moved from Minneapolis to a suburb of Chicago to stay with Mom’s friend John, one of the nicer ones who would occasionally ask how I was doing. It was the summer before seventh grade, and while Mom worked, I spent most of my time at a mall where she would drop me off in the mornings. I’d hang out for hours in a stuffed leather chair by a window, reading. Leanne, one of the employees, couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, but she seemed so much older when she started chatting with me, impressed by my reading speed. She didn’t seem annoyed that I never bought anything, and she actually started bringing me recommendations after she found out I liked sci-fi and horror. One of those was Devil’s Tongue.
“Nice.” Wren smirked at me, squeezing my arm. “You should dedicate your first book to her!”
“Order forty-two!” The yell jolted me out of my reveries. I went to the counter to pick up the paper bag. My phone pinged again as I left. I pulled it out immediately, wondering if it’d be another cryptic text from Ursula.