The Writing Retreat(71)

At first, all I could see was that the charm was now just a lump of gold, mangled beyond recognition. Then Keira picked it up and pulled something from it.

The rabbit’s diamond eye hung out of its socket, connected by a tiny, hairlike wire.





Chapter 26




The decision of who should search Roza’s room came down to Taylor and me.

Wren was too sick. Keira had offered, but Taylor thought she should try to mend things with Roza to keep her unsuspecting. Showing up to dinner would be a start.

We were sitting on my bed with Keira’s phone in between us, loudly playing pop. It was hard to concentrate, but Keira said if there were other cameras around—which there almost certainly were, even if we hadn’t been able to find them—we needed to cover up our conversation.

And if there were other cameras? If they’d caught us snooping in the basement, library, and office?

“Nothing has happened to us yet,” Keira told us over the tinny, pounding bass. “I think there’s a chance Roza hasn’t been watching us that closely. And even if she has—she doesn’t bring a phone to dinner. So she won’t know we’re breaking into her room as it’s happening. By the time she finds out, maybe we’ll have found the secret room.”

That’s what it came down to, now. In the absence of truth, and in our inability to leave, we became hyperfocused on the one question we knew would give us an answer: a hidden room.

Taylor raised her hand to her chest, the fingers feeling for a necklace that was no longer there. Keira and I had buried our necklaces in the bottoms of our suitcases. But Taylor been wearing hers regularly; I could imagine she was the most disturbed.

Or: A new thought was taking root. What if she was in on all of this? What if she’d worn the necklace because she was supposed to transmit as much as she could to Roza?

Or: What if it was Keira? What if she was meant to shake things up on the retreat by arguing with Roza? Wasn’t it suspicious that she’d known how to pick a lock and search for hidden cameras?

The new uncertainties were making me feel hot and prickly, like I had a full-body sunburn. But nothing was what it seemed in Blackbriar. For all I knew, Wren and I were the only ones who weren’t a part of this, some kind of sick Roza reality show.

A new determination took hold of me. Wren was down for the count. If anyone was going to figure this out, it had to be me.

“I’ll go.”

They both turned to me.

“I’ll search Roza’s room,” I continued.

“Are you sure?” Taylor’s brows furrowed.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I tried to smile. “Be sure to save me a plate.”



* * *



Once we had a plan, Keira and Taylor returned to their rooms. We decided all of us should try to write—even Keira—to keep up appearances as much as possible. My new wariness extended to Keira and Taylor: I had to keep up appearances with them too.

And it hurt. I’d only been there a little over two and a half weeks, but I felt like I’d known Taylor and Keira much longer. I’d bonded with both of them. I thought I had, at least. The last few days had thrown everything into a new, ambiguous light.

I opened my laptop, not expecting much to happen. But as soon as I touched the keyboard, the words started to flow.

Two hours later, Taylor strolled into my room. “Hey! Ready for dinner?”

“I don’t feel well.” This was the plan: acting things out as much as possible, given the possibility of surveillance. “I feel kind of nauseous, actually.”

“Sorry to hear.” Taylor leaned on the edge of my desk and winked. “I’ll let Roza know.”

“Thanks.” I forced a smile.

“Hey.” Taylor reached down. “Where’d you get this? I was looking for it.”

She picked up a tube of lip balm—the one I’d found in the basement.

“Oh.” My mind raced. “It was in the dining room. Sorry. I forgot to give it back to you.”

“No prob.” She popped it open and ran it over her lips. “I get so dry in the winter.”

I stared as she walked to the door.

She turned and smiled. “Feel better.”



* * *



We’d agreed that I’d give them ten minutes to get settled at dinner, and in that time I stared out the window, calculating.

Had Taylor been with me that night? Was it possible that I hadn’t just hallucinated a sexual encounter? Had we actually hooked up?

I thought of that moment on the bed, days before, when we’d been sharing the cheese plate. We’d shared those intense few seconds of eye contact. I’d felt something in that moment, some attraction, and it had scared the shit out of me, to the point where I’d pushed it from my mind. So maybe it wasn’t out of the question to imagine that we’d been drawn to each other in our altered states.

But then, why hadn’t she said anything? Had she been taking my lead? Had she been that out of it too?

There were also other possibilities. Taylor could’ve dropped the lip balm during the ghost story–telling game. Or she could’ve gone down there another time; there was no rule against exploring.

I heaved a sigh as I checked my phone and left the room. Too many unanswerable questions. And this was what happened here: more and more, the thick walls of practical reality crumbled down, leaving you stranded in a fog.