Maybe you've heard this one: Four writers on holiday enter a villa on the coast of a Swiss lake. When the time comes to leave, all but one of them will be dead.
The lake in question was not Lake Geneva, surrounded as it was now by civilization, nor the villa the famous Villa Diodati, which had in recent years been given over to luxury apartments. Nevertheless, Kirsten had tried to select a holiday house best suited to recreate the vibes of the infamous birthplace of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
"Gee, flash!" Maika exclaimed as their rental car pulled into the driveway of the Villa Delacroix.
Kirsten rolled the car into place and put on the parking brake before she allowed herself the thrill of looking up. Surrounded by light beech forest, a stately contrast to the rambling and dense bush back home, the three storey mansion was surrounded by a collonade on the ground floor. Above that sat two rows of four square windows with shutters painted a jaunty turquoise. The walls were cream, and caught the rays of the early morning sun in such a way that they were dyed peach by the light. A brown tiled roof topped the square house. Behind, the lawns rolled down to a private slice of pebbled lakeshore.
In the front passengers' seat, Chad whistled between his teeth. God. Kirsten had forgotten that was a habit of his. "This must have cost a pretty packet."
"Never you mind the cost," Kirsten scolded. Her tone was light, for now. If money kept coming up though, she would not be best pleased. It already had, too many times since she'd offered them this holiday.
"No comment, Ginny?" Chad looked over his shoulder at the sleepy woman in the back seat.
"It's beautiful," Ginny muttered. Kirsten didn't need to look at her to know; she could hear it in the muffle of Ginny's voice. Her lanky frame was folded up under the baby-blue hooded blanket, some sort of snuggly comfort thing with an impossible number of pockets which had relinquished an improbable number of distractions on the long chain of connecting flights: tablet, cellphone, headphones (cat-eared, like a walking stereotype), multiple small books and rolled-up magazines, sweets, fidget gadgets, notebook and pen, make-up for touch ups, pawpaw balm, medicines, deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, and even a sleep mask. It was a monstrosity - and yet it didn't smell offensive, and it wasn't unwashed or discoloured. Kirsten hadn't the heart to tell Ginny how mortified she was to be travelling through multiple international airports and airplanes with her (in first class, sure, but still, imagine if someone photographed them together?).
"Is that all you can say?" Chad dragged out the word 'all', rolling his eyes.
Maika kicked the back of Chad's seat. "Leave her be, man."
"Hey! This is a rental." Kirsten made an effort to lower her tone. She was far too wound up after so little. Classic jetlag. "Please treat it with respect, Maika?"
"Oh yeah, sorry." He pushed a hand through his lank black curls as he lowered his feet off the back of the seat. "All right, let's get in and see this place!"
Kirsten got to the trunk first, took her pristine chrome-pink shell suitcase out, and wheeled it closer to the house. She stood there for a moment, ignoring the shuffling and mumbling of the others behind her, listening instead to the rustle of the leaves and the hush of the water. Snowy peaks pointed up to the sky, and toward her in their reflections on the lake.
Sublime.
"Ow! My foot!" Maika cried.
"Maybe stand back while I pull my bags out then, dickhead," Chad replied.
Children! Closing her eyes, Kirsten expelled breath sharply through her nose, then sighed and let her shoulders return to a neutral position, away from her ears. Perhaps she could have allowed herself permission to come here alone. It had felt like it would be incredibly selfish to do so, especially after she'd had the idea of helping her friends. The money was no object.
She'd just be paying with her sanity instead.
No, no, this would be fun! She sighed again, and opened her eyes to fall in love with the view of the lake past the house.
Now that would make for some excellent Instablam posts.
"Rooms are finders keepers," she shot over her shoulder. With a click of the car key's lock button, she strode towards the villa's heavy wooden door. She located the key box beside the door easily, typed in the passcode - 1818#. The keybox yielded its prize, and Kirsten unlocked the door before the others were anywhere near.
So far, so good.
Of course, they probably didn't come forearmed with the knowledge she had. She'd studied the photos of the house. The master bedroom was her quarry, the largest of all of the bedrooms, with its own ensuite with a huge bathtub, big enough for two people. This house was apparently quite the honeymoon destination, but it had more than enough room for four singletons. Her studies paid off: she had a decent idea of how to navigate through the gilt-wallpapered corridors with their dark parquet flooring, up the stairs with their single wall sconce of light to illuminate the landing, and over to the lake side of the house.
There.
Kirsten entered the room, wheeled her suitcase over to the side, then threw herself down on the crimson velvet quilt of the four-poster bed in the middle of the room.
She lay there, waiting to hear or see the other three, to stake her claim. Some ten minutes later, when she'd almost given up in boredom, Chad finally made his way past. His eyes lit up at the luxurious sight of the bedroom, and it seemed as if he was about to step in when he finally saw Kirsten lying there. His nose wrinkled. "Aw, damn. Thought you were a dead body for a sec. Nice digs." He moved on, taking him and his designer heavy-duty utility backpack elsewhere.
A few minutes later, Ginny drifted past, a fleecy ghost. Kirsten caught a single dark brown eye gazing at her, and then Ginny was gone, her metal hardcase luggage rolling behind her, bestickered to the point where no one could make out what colour it might be underneath.
Maika finally slouched by not long after. He poked his head in the room, looked all around, then nodded and grinned admiringly. His tongue clicked against his teeth. "Gee." He shrugged his old leather barrel bag further up his shoulder, and shuffled away, taking the tobacco smell with him.
Her territory having been marked, Kirsten felt it was safe to explore the rest of the house now. Where better to start than the kitchen and communal areas, where surely the hosts had left some information?
She retraced her steps back down the stairs to the road side of the house, only to find the front door wide open.
All the air went rushing out of her, stopping a hair short of becoming a shout. Who had left the bloody door open? No, she was not going to act like everyone's mum on this trip. She'd been called trip mum plenty of times during their uni days, she didn't need to hear it again.
But did no one else think of security? What if thieves, or even an axe-murderer came wandering by? They were ages from the nearest city. Would the local village constabulary be likely to have people who spoke English? What even was the emergency number in this country?
That would surely be in the guest information. Kirsten closed her eyes, breathed out, and walked towards the open door.
Surely this would only happen once. It's not that the others were lazy, it was just the jetlag and the excitement of arriving. It wouldn't happen again.
She shut the door. Not loudly, not angrily. Just firmly, enough that she was satisfied to hear the click of the lock.
Coffee. Her mood would be much improved by coffee. Likely, the moods of everyone else too. Kitchen; that was the next destination.
She walked in to a well-appointed kitchen, far more modern than many other parts of the house. The wall between it and the dining room had been taken out, in another nod to modern living. No more of this master-servant rubbish. It was almost a shame, really, except that it meant that whoever was cooking could see past the huge dining table to the lake.
On the marble-topped island in the middle of a sea of dark-grey tiles, Kirsten found the info booklet from the hosts. She picked it up, carrying it over with her to read as she flicked on the kettle and searched the cabinets for coffee. The text was rather impersonal - probably this place was maintained by a body corp, rather than an individual or family - and said all the standard things about the amenities. Boring reading, really, compared to what Kirsten's thumbs were itching for instead.
She relented to the urge, and fished her phone out of her jacket pocket.
As soon as Instablam was open and loaded, Kirsten was treated to a full splash of her own face from her latest photoshoot. She sighed. Dressed in red and gold, they really had managed to put her Chinese-ness front and centre, despite her repeated emphasis on the Kiwi part of Kiwi-Chinese. She pulled her black over-the-shoulder plait up to parallel with the ground and tried to catch the light with it, like the impossible silky gloss of her hair in the photo. And no way were her cheekbones that high. Either they'd photoshopped every inch of fat off her, or the contouring of the makeup had been even more severe under the photographer's light than she'd thought at the time.
At least her eyes looked nice. Though were they really that dark? Or was that a filter?
She pulled away from the budgie-distraction of her photo and opened the caption below. It was filled with praise for her latest novel, Miner Minor Mynah, released two months ago. The comments underneath were all similarly laudatory. She recognised a few of the publisher's plant accounts spouting particularly effusive acclaim: one such read 'LOVED IT! A shame it came out a week too late for this year's Tomer Prize nominations. Fingers crossed for next year!'
The smile was impossible to resist, even if it was a sock puppet account. A Tomer Prize was Kirsten's dream. Maybe Miner Minor Mynah would be the one. Still, she was only thirty-six. Plenty more time to reach the pinnacle of her career.
"Why the big grin?"
Kirsten put her phone face down on the counter as Chad walked in. "Hey. Coffee?"
"Cheers. That got the wifi password?"
"Yeah." She passed the guest information over and went to make him a cup of coffee, taking her phone with her. Chad sat down on a stool at the kitchen island and opened up his oversized, serious-business-looking laptop with a matte black finish and an alien's head logo. Now that his judging gaze had passed her over, she went back to her Instablam.
The next post down was a photo of her guru, with a meditation mantra for the day: "I am the rock jutting out of the river. I let the water flow around me." Kirsten muttered it under her breath a few times, and let her smile leak through to the rest of her body. Yes, she could be that rock. She could let the furious rapids of her three oldest friends rush around her, and be unaffected.
She scrolled down. The next post made her swear under her breath. She shut off Instablam and opened up a search engine instead. "Oh, damn it."
Chad hissed and rocked away from his laptop, hands behind his tall brown hair. He had to have re-gelled his hair since they'd arrived; it had well deflated on the plane rides before this. "Well... I guess we both saw the same news just now?"
"Bird flu?"
"Yep. They're taking the world into lockdown again."
Kirsten ignored him and kept searching, looking for the Swiss government's English language press release on what was to come. New Zealand's response was already up - all the mostly successful infrastructure clicking back into place once again - but she didn't know where to look straight away for the Swiss government's directives.
"What are we going to do?" Chad asked.
Kirsten rolled her eyes at him. "What am I, trip mum again?"
His face lit up and he pointed at her. "Trip Mum! I forgot that!"
Kirsten facepalmed, then went back to searching for information. "Anyway, let's just keep our minds open. I can charter us a plane back home at any time. Or I can bankroll us staying here for several months. Years, even. I'm not concerned. It's not going to be like 2020 again. At least, not for us."
"Geez, all right, Moneybags." He tapped away at his keyboard for a bit, presumably searching like she was, if the quick dashes of keystrokes were anything to go by. "Man, wouldn't it be better if we could all just live in computers? None of this meat-based weakness?"
Kirsten was astounded enough to look past her phone for more than a second. "Chad! You can't be serious."
"What? We're basically attached to the things all day every day anyway. What would be so wrong with computer-based immortality?"
Kirsten shook her shoulders square and raised her chin. "Computers will never truly replace us, or capture us. There's something about the synthesis of... of meat, as you so crudely put it, and electricity going on in our brains which mere machines can't replicate, unfortunately. A machine can't cry, or love, or fear."
"I dunno, Kirst. They're getting pretty good at fooling us these days."
Kirsten folded her arms and scowled into her phone screen. No machine had ever fooled her.
This was his problem, just as she'd suspected. This was why he hadn't soared to the heights she'd expected him to after uni. He was shallow, utterly shallow.
Still, his trashy self-published thrillers sold well enough that he could probably share the bankrolling of this trip easily, if she felt he needed to. She could hardly sneeze at what he'd accomplished on his own.
Even if she considered it all a bit beneath him.
Ginny slipped into the room, a cross between a giant teddy bear and an ambulatory mop. At least now her pockets looked emptied, and she'd taken down the hood, freeing her straight mousy blonde hair from its fluffy confines.
"Wassup, Vince -" The mistake played out across Chad's face - from cheerful, to shocked, to aghast. "Shite. Virginia, I mean. Dude, I'm sorry for deadnaming you... oh flip, is 'dude' misgendering? Fuck..."
Ginny sat at the counter beside him, from the looks of things, barely restraining an eye roll. "For me, I don't mind 'dude'. But not every trans woman feels the same, so maybe practice not using it with me?"
Kirsten waved an empty mug from her side of the bench. "Coffee, Ginny?"
"Thanks."
The sound of the front door slamming shut made her jump and drop the mug. The further shock of that made her stumble back, and onto a sharp shard of broken ceramic which sliced into her big toe.
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"Ow! Fuh... far out..."
"You all right, Kirst?" Chad hadn't moved from his seat, smirking at her overreaction.
"You're bleeding," Ginny said, and moved towards Kirsten.
"Who cares about me?" Kirsten yelled, unable to hold her volume back with everything happening. She gestured furiously in the direction of the front hall. "Who the hell just slammed the door?"
Ginny shrank back at the strength of her shout, but eventually answered, "It was just Maika. I saw him talking to someone at the door."
"Who the hell could Maika be talking to? Here?"
Ginny shrugged, all her body language telling Kirsten she wanted to curl up and hide. Her voice was no more than a mutter. "Some guy. They seemed friendly. Like they knew each other."
Kirsten grabbed a paper towel from the bench and wrapped it around her toe, then grabbed more and knelt to clean up the shattered mug and traces of blood. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell," she said as she faced the tiles. "It's just my sore foot making me overreact."
"Mmhmm," Chad hummed, and Kirsten was glad she wasn't facing him so he couldn't see her answering sneer.
By the time she'd cleaned the floor and her cut toe, found the first aid kit and bandaged it up, Maika came waltzing in. His black, curly bob of hair was dishevelled as usual - obviously he hadn't freshened up before joining them - and he wore a baggy cardigan made of patchwork, like something worn by a hideous mix of clown and grandma. "Who was that at the door?" Kirsten demanded.
"Oh, just a mate of mine."
"A mate? You have a mate here, in Switzerland?"
Chad looked up from his laptop again. "Geez, Kirst, you sure you need coffee right now, and not, like, a tranquilizer?"
"I wasn't asking you." Kirsten managed to temper her tone just short of snappish.
Maika put his hands in front of them, waving to calm the room. "Hey, hey, it's all chill, you guys. Yeah, I made some friends when I was backpacking through Europe after uni. That was Christian." The fact that Maika said it properly, like a French name, and not like the religion, convinced Kirsten and soothed some of her ill temper. "I told him we were coming here a while back. With the whole lockdown thing coming, he knows we probably can't catch up properly, so he wanted to deliver a care package."
"Oh, that's nice. So where is it?"
"Up in my room."
Kirsten was taken aback. She wore it on her face; after all, had she not just treated him to an all-expenses overseas writers' retreat? "Oh... ok... bit weird of you not to share, but ok..."
"Oh." After a pause, he chuckled under his breath. "It's uh... you guys wouldn't really... He uh... he brought me the supplies to set up my own little uh... hydroponics situation somewhere, since we're probably going to be stuck in here for months -"
Kirsten's hands slammed down on the kitchen island. It was a good thing she hadn't picked up another mug yet. "I'm sorry, what? You told a drug dealer where we are living, and got him to deliver drugs to you? Maika, we are visitors in a foreign country! Do you even know the laws around these things?"
"Geez, when did you become such a control freak, Kirst?" Chad needled.
"Seriously, Chad?" Beside Chad, Ginny was frozen, huddled, flinching at every outburst.
Maika was making the peace-hands again. "Guys, guys, it's okay. He's not a drug dealer, all right? Just a friendly normal guy who grows his own as a hobby. The guy works in IT. You couldn't get more normal or square. He makes Kirsten look like, I dunno, Paris Hilton or something."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you're just... a bit of a normie. Compared to him, you're practically a party girl, but compared to like... me..."
"Well, sorry if it's normal to follow the law. Besides, compared to you, I think the rest of the world is stone cold sober." A flash of hurt in his eyes, hidden behind Maika's smile, made Kirsten regret her words. She took a breath and took a turn at doing her own peace-hands in front of her. "Look, please, just be careful about where you smoke that stuff, ok? I don't want the police around here, and I don't want the hosts suing me for a weird smell or anything."
Maika gave a double thumbs up. "I got you."
Chad muttered under his breath, "Don't tell her about how half of your luggage is duty free alcohol then, I guess."
Kirsten waved her hands above her head and went back to putting mugs out and dishing granules of instant into each. "Alcohol is legal. So long as you don't need to go to hospital for alcohol poisoning in the middle of a damn lockdown, I'm fine. My ignorance is bliss."
"I'm practicing moderation these days," Maika declared from the other side of the kitchen, turning away from the open cupboards with a deep, appealingly-round breakfast bowl in hand. "Not exactly a 12-step program sort of thing, but I'm taking it easier. I promise."
Kirsten resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but Ginny beamed, the first honest smile Kirsten had seen from her yet this whole trip. "That's really great, Maika. I believe in you, and I'm proud of you for making good changes in your life."
Maika bowed his head deeply. "Thanks, Ginny. That means a lot." He'd found some cereal in the pantry, and poured himself a bowl.
Kirsten sighed, turned back to pour the jug, and smiled. She had almost forgotten this about Ginny. Amongst all the frustration of her particular quirks, and her obvious non-normativity, it was easy to forget that, actually, she was a total sweetheart. Behind all that extreme introversion was someone wise and calm, who at moments could say something so perceptive and incisive that it had the power to change someone's trajectory for the better.
Certainly, her intervention had been the saving grace of two or three manuscipts of Kirsten's in the past. And maybe she'd just managed to defuse a Day-One blow-up.
Maybe Chad was right about the coffee. Still, Kirsten's veins craved sweet caffeine. She could sleep after a cup. One wouldn't hurt.
Chad sidled up to Ginny, wearing a cheeky grin. "He said 'guys' before. Is 'guys' misgendering, Ginny?"
Kirsten shared a look with Ginny. The whole thing before with the deadnaming, and the misgendering with 'dude', that was borderline, but in the moment it had felt genuine. This time, it felt like Chad was shit-stirring. Kirsten had always had a feeling about Chad, one she didn't want to interrogate too hard, because it would mean discarding one of her best, most dedicated beta readers, if he was what she suspected. But times like this, she couldn't help but suspect... was Chad one of those online far-right devil's-advocate trolling types?
Ginny sat straighter. Kirsten couldn't help but think perhaps Ginny had gained some strength in the moment from their shared glance. "Again, I personally don't mind 'guys'. I feel like in Kiwi parlance, it's pretty gender neutral. But there are plenty of people who would take offence to it. After all, would you feel okay if I walked into the room and said, 'Hey ladies'?"
Maika, head down in a bowl of cereal fast disappearing under his ravenous maw, called out, "I wouldn't mind! Gender's a construct, babyeeee."
Chad, however, had folded his arms. "But I guess I would. Thanks, Ginny, I think I get it now."
Kirsten dished out the coffee mugs to the other three, then leaned back against the counter, mug held in both hands. "Right, so. Now that I have you all here, at my mercy, it's time to reveal the actual purpose of our little trip."
"You mean you're not just rewarding your favourite and most loyal minions with an all-expenses paid trip around the world, Ms Lee?" Chad asked, fluttering his eyelashes and cupping his chin in both hands.
"I am, but there's more to it than that. Yes, you are the most loyal 'minions' if you want to call it that - personally, I prefer to think of you as my most honest and incisive peers, who both get where I'm coming from because of our days in Creative Writing 201 -"
"Class of '09, whoop whoop!" Maika called out sotto voce, pumping his fist.
"- but also know where I'm trying to go because you've bothered to keep up with your craft after leaving uni. You lot have had a lot to do with my success, as I hope you understand, and I shall be eternally grateful to all three of you. And because of that..." She narrowed her eyes and scanned over their faces, making sure she had their attention. "I had an ulterior motive in bringing you here.
"I would like for us to evoke the spirit of that summer of 1816, when four writers were shut in the Villa Diodati - also here in Switzerland, though at a different lakeshore - and they each decided to write ghost stories to pass the time. Now, I did not orchestrate the new lockdowns, I promise you. That is not within my power. They're just a convenient, albeit very spookily-timed conincidence... but I intend to make full use of them.
"I think each of you is a really talented writer, and I wanted to give you the gift of time and space to really let your gift shine. So... what do you say? Are you up for the challenge? Let's rest up, and then maybe write a bit, and later tonight we could all share an excerpt... sound good?"
Kirsten peered into each blank face, waiting for reaction. Chad was the first.
He threw his hands behind his head and leaned back in his stool (a stupid, childish thing to do - if the stool slipped, he'd crack his skull!). "Typical Lee. Trust you to turn a holiday into homework."
Kirsten gaped at him, and looked to the other two for backup.
Ginny had a small grin on her lips, but a haunted look in her eyes. "I had a feeling you were trying to evoke that fateful getaway," she murmured. "I'm in. But can we make our first sharing session be tomorrow night instead, please? I'd prefer to resist the jetlag during daylight hours, and then sleep early tonight. I'll be in a better place to do spooky hours tomorrow."
"Yeah, that's fine by me." Kirsten glanced finally at Maika. "Your thoughts?"
"Love it," Maika shrugged, smiling. "Look, I'm just here enjoying the company. Chill out, throw down some words? Hard out. Though I thought there were five people in that OG writers' holiday?"
A chill settled over the four of them. Maika had said the wrong thing. No one met anyone else's eyes for a long moment. The slurping of coffee was loud in Kirsten's ears, only to be broken by Chad's obnoxious interjection: "Yeah, but I think the fifth person was just Lord Byron's fuckbuddy."
"Chad!" Kirsten scolded. "Her name was Claire Clairmont and she was Mary Shelley's stepsister."
He let that roll off his back and asked instead, practically jumping in his seat, "Ooh, ooh, which writer is which, do you think?"
Maika waved a hand flippantly. "Ginny's Mary Shelley obviously."
Kirsten was disappointed. Sure, Ginny was the most goth-chic adjacent of any of them, so like, aesthetically, maybe. But Mary Shelley was also the one who wrote an amazing first draft which would later become one of the seminal gothic horror texts, Frankenstein. So surely Kirsten herself fit that mould better, right? The one who actually got stuff done, unlike Ginny, who was constantly dithering, pushing the same words around in different orders year after year, never satisfied, her fantasy epic reaching doorstoper proportions which no sane publisher would ever even glance at...
Sipping her coffee, Kirsten breathed slowly out and reminded herself to be kinder.
"I mean," Ginny started, blushing, "obviously she is one of my idols, so I would love that."
Before Kirsten could even comment, Chad pointed straight at her. "Which one of them was the most uptight? That's got to be Kirsten."
"How very dare," she gasped, only mildly offended, but trying to sound like she was joking.
"I think I would be the most likely Lord Byron," Chad boasted, raising his profile, nose in the air.
Kirsten smirked behind her coffee mug. No, Chad was far more like that hack, Polidori. Yes, he wrote The Vampyre and actually completed it. But his writing, compared to the other three? Amateurish. Just like some of the utterly pedestrian prose in Chad's popular thrillers. Not that she would ever tell him so.
She pursed her lips and swallowed back her bitter thoughts with another bitter swig of coffee. These thoughts were not helpful, and she needed to cut them out. She was here to try to help Chad and the others. Looking down on them all the time was only going to get in the way of that.
"No, sorry Chad," Ginny said from behind her coffee mug. "Maika's Byron. He's the reckless romantic. You've got your shit way too together, and you just... don't have the natural charm. Sorry. I mean look, his hair can go swish. Your hair can't do that."
Chad sneered as Maika demonstrated for everyone that his hair did indeed go swish. Though when it did, Kirsten caught the distinct whiff of tobacco, which dampened her mood as it always did.
What a waste of life.
Maika straightened up and shook his head. "I mean, who was the biggest success in their day? Was it Mary or Percy Shelley, or was it Byron? Cos like, Kirsten probably would be that one. The natural genius -"
Kirsten put her cup down. "Look, no, I have said this time and time again. I'm not some natural creative genius. It's all about diligence and a workmanlike disposition. You guys know I was hardly ever the one called on to read my work in class. The professors never thought I'd amount to much. They had zeroed in on their favourites - not even any of us, really, though I know Perkins had a thing for you at one point, Chad - and the rest of us were just the plebs watching the virtuosos, just... non-player characters, extras in the crowd shot."
"Yeah, yeah, easy for a genius to say," Chad cut in. "She's the perfect little marketable package, our Miss Lee. A person of colour - but she speaks and writes perfect English. She writes touching, poignant historical fiction, so all the olds love her, she's a hit on the writer's festival circuits - really, could you have had it handed to you any more than that, Kirsten?"
His expression told her he was teasing, but there was a edge to his eyes as if he really meant it all. It was rich of him to be putting her on the spot like this, when he knew damn well these stereotypes weren't true, and she knew his secret about using ghostwriters. But she had promised she wouldn't tell, and she was a woman of her word. Even if he was hitting her right in the impostor syndrome - both as a writer, and as a Kiwi-Chinese woman who could barely speak a word of her ancestors' tongue and knew far less about the culture than she thought she should. She could make his life hell if she wanted, but she would never stoop so low.
"Think that if you want, Chad Woodham." As soon as she'd said it, a little deflationary, conflict-avoidant tactic, she regretted it. Someone needed to put Chad in his place before he got even more unbearable. Letting him basically win the argument could lead to losing more and more ground over time.
Was it just her, or was he being extra dickish lately?
Her phone lit up with a notification on the counter between her and Ginny. Ginny's eyes flicked down, and she winced. "Ugh, you're still subscribed to that yogi guy?"
Kirsten yanked her phone off the bench and put it back in her pocket. "Yeah, my guru. What about him?"
"You know he's a scammer, right? He's not even Indian."
"Can you just leave it?"
"Sorry," Ginny said, her eyes not meeting Kirsten's. Then a beat later: "But I'm just trying to look out for you, and make sure he doesn't use your name and make you look bad."
"Look, is it such a sin to want to seek something higher than this existence?" Chad snorted into his coffee. "What?" she snapped.
"It's just, if you were a white lady, everyone would be pointing and laughing about this fake spirituality crap, you know? Like, you're a Chinese Gywneth Paltrow -"
"Kiwi-Chinese, thank you Chad."
Maika called out from across the kitchen, as he sought more food. "Yeah, Chad. Stop bringing her race up anyway, bro." Kirsten deflated a touch. It was nice that the other person of colour in the room had her back. Then came the knife twist. "You're in prestigious company now, my friends. Next year, our spiritually enlightened senpai might have won the Tomer - first Tomer of several, I'm sure - and then you'll be lucky if you ever breath the same rarefied air as her ever again."
Okay, now he really wasn't helping.
To make matters worse, Ginny chimed in, "Damn, I hope you're going to be okay being an international superstar, Kirsten. The way you were green around the gills the whole time on the plane. Maybe you'll find the jet-setting life difficult -"
"Maybe she can astral project to awards ceremonies -" Maika layered over the top, drowning out Ginny's next comment, and then Chad spoke over the top too.
"Nauseous isn't really a good look on Instablam -"
Kirsten clamped her hands over her ears and screamed.
The silence that followed was too hollow. Not even the lake, or the wind in the trees, or bugs or birds cut through it. Just the hum of the fridge and other appliances.
Kirsten hadn't done that since she was a kid. Overwhelmed by her two older brothers' playfighting until she broke - that had happened a few times, she wasn't sure how often, but often enough that it had been muscle memory when it had happened just now. Didn't these three see they were all putting her on the spot? It was not fair! Yes, this was her idea to come here, but she had paid for everything, so did they have to tease her so hard? None of them could even begin to understand how fucking hard it was to juggle everyone's expectations all at once!
Chad was the first to break his silence.
"So, she's already freaking out, huh?"
Ginny's head was in her hands. "This is going to go well." Her mutter was light, but in her gaze, directed away, there was a distance already, a disassociation.
Kirsten sighed and lowered her hands. "No, I'm fine. You know me, just... being dramatic."
Maika laughed. There was perhaps a tinge of nervousness to the sound. "Watch out, or we might never leave this house alive."
Chad sniggered. "Yeah, we know what you're like. I wonder what other people would think if they saw the real Kirsten, rather than your manicured, curated Instablam self?"
So much for being the rock in the river. Kirsten sighed again, if only to stop the tears that wanted to come out, then she poked her tongue at Chad.
If only they could just see why she'd gathered them all here, really, past the walls of ego and defensiveness. She wanted to inspire them to write their masterpieces by taking them away from their mundane lives. Even Chad - especially Chad, actually! He could write far better than the claptrap he'd gotten famous for writing. She knew from his feedback over the years - cutting, but unfailingly accurate - that he could do way better than he had been. And Maika, Maika needed a kick up the butt, needed someone to discipline him into a routine. Kirsten was sure she could be that influence. And Ginny needed encouragement to come out of her shell.
Kirsten was determined: she would be the one to fix her friends.
After all, after what they'd been through fifteen years ago, she was stuck with them for life.
She shook her hands out, then picked up her coffee mug, rinsed it out, and left it to drain on the side of the sink. "Look, I'm going back to my room. Obviously jetlag has me on edge. We all need to think about what we're going to want regarding the impending lockdown. If anyone wants to go home, I can arrange it. Or, so long as the hosts say it's okay, I'm happy for us to stay for the whole time. Now, the hosts said they'd left a bunch of microwave meals for us to make use of if we were too tired after arriving, so I say we help ourselves to lunch and dinner or whatever, and we can reconvene tomorrow to organise our living situation." She was slipping into the role of trip mum, yet again. She hated it, but someone had to be the sensible one. "I'll be in my room if anyone needs me. But unless it's urgent... maybe let's just not interact for the rest of the day, okay? Thanks all. Love ya."
"Love you," Maika and Ginny echoed. Kirsten didn't hear Chad's voice in the chorus, but such affectionate cues weren't really his bag.
Well. That was a fine start to the writers' retreat. Kirsten threw herself down on the bed again, this time with more bitter regret than the first time.
After ten minutes with eyes shut, but unable to sleep, she got up and paced over to the window.
In the time since she had last looked outside, a mist had rolled in across the lake. She could barely see the silvery waves beneath the cool puffs of fog. Shivering, she fetched her scarf from her handbag, then her writing tablet and stylus.
If she couldn't sleep, she might as well write.
She took her phone out, turned all notifications to silent, but left the media volume on high. Flicking through until she found her guru's meditation app, she placed it on the table facing the window, then sat with her tablet before her, the white-grey air pressing on the windowpanes and glaring into her eyes until she shut them.
Usually she would start her writing sessions with a guided meditation. But it just wasn't working today. Instead of the commanding voice holding her attention for the five minute practice, behind her closed eyes, the figure of a woman in an old-fashioned white dress wandered through the mists by the lakeshore, outside this very same house.
Kirsten suffered through the last few minutes of the meditation, determined to see it out. As soon as it wound to a close, she snatched up her stylus, and began her story.