Ginny returned to the room she had chosen. Or perhaps more accurately, the room which had chosen her.
She had lost her way in the dark corridors yesterday. Never very good with directions, she'd gotten turned around. She'd thought she was looking for a bedroom on the lake side of the house. She found a small room with a large single bed (King or Queen single perhaps, she had no idea) with a crisp white coverlet and a golden metal headboard. The wallpaper was white with a pattern of pale blue flowers. The curtains were soft, flimsy white things, so sensitive that they wavered in the light breeze of her opening the door. Beyond them, she could see the road, finally realising she was not on the lake side of the house at all.
But that didn't matter, because there was something far more alluring in this room than a view of the lake.
A writing desk sat between the two windows. On it squatted a typewriter. What's more, beside it lay a stack of fresh paper, as if laid out just for her.
For her to begin something momentous.
This was the room Ginny came back to now, after having talked with Maika by the lake. She hadn't told anyone about the typewriter yet, though Maika had seen her typed pages from afar, and surely one or more of them would have heard the clickety-clack of the keys echoing down the wooden-floored corridors. After Kirsten had issued her challenge yesterday, Ginny had returned to this clean, white sanctuary of a room, determined to master the old technology. It had taken her a short while to remember how to use a typewriter, from younger days spent playing around on her grandmother's one. She'd searched on the internet to remind herself, ignoring all the notifications that came pouring through when she connected to the wifi. She was too filled with purpose to allow anyone or anything to disrupt her.
And then she had written and written and written, well into the night, despite the jetlag. Something had possessed her. It couldn't have been competitiveness. Although she was keen on Kirsten's challenge to the group, Ginny never entered into such things in a spirit of hoping to do better than others. And yet something was gripping her, channeling through her fingers with little input from her conscious mind, until the hour was much later than she had intended, and she fell on the bed not so much in exhaustion, but practically in a swoon.
Perhaps it was this room, and her sympathy with it, filling her with words. She felt too much a part of the four walls already, as if the room had presented itself in the perfect state for her to accept it. A dream room, the sort of light, airy, feminine space she'd ached to occupy in her teen years. A Room of One's Own, as her namesake put it once. As if the room knew all her secrets already, and invited her divulge them.
She relented once again, as she had the day before, and shed again the first secret the room had made her divulge. Off came the light-blue snuggie, which she folded at the end of the neatly-made bed. Underneath lay the secret she still hadn't revealed to her travel companions: a vintage dress, or at least one cleverly made enough to convince her it was genuine, circa 1910. The creamy silk hugged her slim figure with its elegant lines. Gentle frills skirted the demure neckline. A line of fine, fabric-coated buttons ran down the front. The waist came in under the bust, then the skirt flowed with delicate grace down to her ankles.
It was one of several such dresses she had filled her suitcase with. This was her newfound identity, at least in a fashion sense, though she was still trying it out, weathering the strange looks people gave her. Then again, there could be other reasons for their scrutiny. She was all too familiar with that. People had always looked at her oddly, even before her transition. Her life had always been one of reaching for some meaning which ever eluded her; feeling as if people could see how transparent she felt inside, how much of an empty shell of a person she truly was.
She'd sought to fill the void in a number of ways. In her teen years, it had been a consumption of video games and nerdy media. Her twenties were when her head finally cleared enough to realise her gender feelings had some serious weight to them, and it was transition which became the quest at that point. Now in her thirties, there was something beyong gender still which left her unfulfilled, but she was unable to put her finger on it. Aesthetics filled the gap somewhat, her current fashion discovery giving her a sliver of that same feeling as gender euphoria.
But still, there was something unnameable lying at the end of all of this. When would she find it? Her forties, fifties, later even than that? Did life ever become a quiet, placid lake like the one outside, or was it always to be this yearning ocean, reaching and withdrawing from the shore in constant tumult?
Perhaps, she reflected, it was odd to keep her recent obsession with vintage fashion from her friends. But much like Maika tentatively coming out to her this morning, Ginny was unsure of what the reception would be. Mainly from Chad and Kirsten, of course. Chad would probably laugh at her, call it some gothic Lolita thing. Which, to be fair, yes, she saw a similarity between her fashion choices and those of the Lolitas of Harajuku. But their clothes tended to be more frilly than this, more frou-frou - not that Chad would be able to tell the difference. Nor would it stop him having his fun.
And Kirsten? She might not say anything aloud, but Ginny would feel the familiar weight of judgement in her stare, she knew it.
Easier to stay in the snuggie, and in the anime-catgirl terminally-online persona she'd crafted in her twenties instead, at least for the moment. All their jokes about that aspect of her had long been worn out.
Ginny clapped her hands before her face. The inner monologue had frozen her in the room, dragging her into places where thoughts would stultify her if she wasn't careful. She clapped again, and recalled the activity her therapist had given her.
"I can't dance," she said aloud.
After a minute of arm-flailing and twirling, her breath fast and her cheeks red with the sudden activity, Ginny laughed quietly at herself. Rejecting her brain's impulse towards negativity with disobedience and getting a short spell of exercise did wonders for her mood. Company, she decided, was called for, to avoid another slump. Not the physical company in the house, but the company of her sisterhood, who would understand. She lay on her belly on the bed, and cracked open her laptop.
As soon as Cacophony loaded, her laptop rang out with a string of electronic bells pealing. 73 notifications. All right, perhaps she should have opened this up sooner. Sighing her chagrin, she clicked the icon for her friends' private server.
Ginny: Hello!
Vix: Guuuuurl, where you been? It's been DAYS.
Artemisia: Ginnnnnnyyyyyyyy!!!
It was just the two of them online right now. They were on the eastern seaboard of the US, so it was early morning for them, pre-commute. The rest would come online in time, but Ginny planned to be gone before then. Those who had missed her would at least see the evidence that she was still alive.
Ginny: Well, it's a bit of a long story. I meant to log on yesterday but I got distracted by something super cool. Hang on, let me send a picture.
Ginny whipped her phone around the room, taking a picture in the panorama-style, and sent both that, and a panorama she'd taken of the lake earlier.
Vix: OMG Gin! Where is that? It's gorgeous!
Artemisia: Don't tell me, are you using that ~antique~ typewriter? That's so you, hahahaha
Ginny: I'm in Switzerland. And yes, I am using the typewriter. It still works really well and I feel like a real writer when I use it <(^_^)>
Vix: Get it gurl. Whatever works for you.
Vix: But anyway, deets! Why are you in Switzerland???
Ginny's hands froze up as she considered whether the truth was the best thing right now. These distant sisters of her knew some of the most intimate details of her life, and vice versa. They had been forged in the fire together, despite never having met in the flesh. But was talking about her connection with Kirsten Lee gauche?
On balance, she decided the truth was the truth, and if it came back to hurt her, that was a them-problem, not a her-problem.
Ginny: So I'm friends with a kinda famous author. I dunno if you've heard about her, Kirsten Lee? She's a big deal in NZ but I'm not so sure about worldwide. We went to uni together. Anyway, she invited me on an impromptu writers' retreat and so... here I am.
As the ellipses of her friends' responses formulating blipped across the bottom of the screen, Ginny's anxiety flared. Her teeth gritted. She fought against their instinctual clamp while she waited for the replies to come in.
Vix: GURL WHAT??? How could you hold out on me like this?! THE Kirsten Lee??? You KNOW I am Chinese-American, she's a big deal
Vix: in my community, at least
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Artemisia: Oh, I think I've heard about her...
Artemisia: Wait wait wait did she write Memories of the Goldfinch?
Ginny: Yup
Ginny was halfway through typing an addendum which started, 'I was one of her critique partners for that book,' when the response cut her short.
Artemisia: Ugh noooo, I hated that book. Sorry XD
Vix: LOL why tho???
Artemisia: Her depiction of the trans character in that. What was her name? Cherry something?
Ginny: Cherise
Artemisia: YES. UGH. Like... I dunno if you're friends like that, Gin, but tell your homegirl to stay in her lane XD
Vix: WHAT. You have to gimme the tea
Artemisia: Oh not much it was just that she focussed way too much on the medical side of Cherise's experience and like... stop me if I'm wrong GInny, it was so long ago I read it. But there was a whole botched surgery plotline. And to me it's just like... ugh, can we not have another story from a cis writer that focuses on the medicalization of transgender bodies? Why couldn't it have been a cis woman with a botched nose or boob job, you know?
Ginny's fingers arched over the keyboard, frozen in her indecision. She didn't want to admit that she had kinda sorta okayed the plotline with Kirsten. Yes, it was about a trans woman and surgeries and that was tired old news, but Ginny had thought Kirsten had handled the story with so much nuance, and also it played into the wider themes of what every character in the book was experiencing. All of them had things they were striving for go horribly wrong, with consequences far outweighing the good that could have resulted. But of course, the community response to the book was also correct - trans characters were always getting this sort of treatment from cis writers, and yes of course it was possible that Kirsten Lee should probably have stayed in her lane; after all she herself was keyed into enough angles of being a minority that she could write from genuine experience without crowbarring in a cringeworthy stereotype. Kirsten was a big girl. She would have survived if Ginny had come back with a pickier critique, maybe suggested that the trans character could go through a trauma unrelated to being trans - after all, there was another character who had lost a child. Plenty of trans people had children. But Ginny had to admit, perhaps she was too soft on Kirsten sometimes. Or had it been bad solidarity on her part: a blindspot in her own reading, that she had let this slip? It was hard to pick apart all her motivations now in hindsight; Ginny had gotten very personally involved after the book came out and the controversy dropped, wanting to defend Kirsten because the discourse actually got quite disgustingly toxic against her - not so much from trans people but from chuds wanting to get in on the pile-on - and that urge to defend her had absolutely nothing to do with the flame Ginny had kept burning for Kirsten all these years (despite the fact that Kirsten was straight and Ginny might have actually had a chance with her if she hadn't been true to herself, but the less she thought about that, the better); and so much for dancing the anxiety away because it was all flooding back right now anyway...
All Ginny could say was:
Ginny: Hahaha yeah
She crossed her fingers that Artemisia wouldn't ever read the acknowledgements page of Goldfinch, and see the name Virginia Black credited as 'a key critique partner and good friend'.
Vix: ANYWAY let's leave that there, shall we?
Vix: Tell us moooooooore about this whole trip thing, GIn. Who are you with, just Kirsten?
Ginny: Actually no, she also invited two other friends. We've kinda been a unit since university. Maika and Chad. Maika just came out to me as non-binary, bless them!
Vix: Aw xx
GInny: I'm actually quite grateful they did. I was a little daunted at first about spending such a long holiday with these three. The last time we spent so long together, I was in my default setting.
Artemisia: But they're cool right? Obviously you wouldn't put yourself in that situation if not.
Artemisia: Right, Gin?
Ginny tossed her head side to side in real life, but in the chat all she said was:
Ginny: Yep. Anyway I just wanted to pop in and let you know I'm alive. I actually want to shut this machine off and get back to the writing. Cos this is actually a writing retreat ^_^ and oddly, this lovely place is really inspirational and the words are just flowing, and I don't want that feeling to go away!
Artemisia: *gasp* is this the end of the dreaded writer's block?!
Ginny: I don't want to jinx it, but... maybe.
Vix: Get it gurl! K bye, go do your thing!
Artemisia: Go happy for you GIn. I hope it goes well!
Artemisia: *so happy
Ginny: Thank you ladies xx <(^_^<) <(^_^)> (>^_^)>
Ginny shut the laptop lid and sat up. In the past, perhaps she would have laid there in a daze. But not today. She rocked up to her feet, and decided that she would finally set aside the five minutes it took to unpack a little more. As opposed to yesterday when she had launched into writing as soon as she could.
After hanging her other dresses up in the closet and putting her underclothes in the drawers, she took out her slim stack of inspirational books. She liked to take all of these with her whenever she went somewhere for any great length of time, especially when writing was going to be part of the trip. A volume of select short stories of Katherine Mansfield occupied the space reserved for her favourite author from New Zealand; her actual favourite author of all time, Virginia Woolf, came in the form of Orlando: A Biography (cliche? perhaps, and yet nevertheless, a favourite was a favourite, no matter how expected); the quintessential Sylvia Plath inclusion in The Bell Jar; these and a few other slim novels she placed to the side and behind the typewriter, within easy reach when she needed a word from her idols.
The buzz of her phone jarred her. She picked it up off the wooden desk, determined to throw it onto the bed where its nagging vibrations would be more easily muffled. But on a whim, she checked what the message had been. The preview on the lock screen read: KIRSTEN: Dining room 7pm, dinner and read what we've got?
Mention of the dining room set Ginny's teeth to clamping shut again. What was it about that room? Was it what she had written last night? No, don't be stupid. That was a product of her imagination. She shouldn't be so silly about it. If not that, was it the fact that the whole kitchen-dining room annex reminded her too much of Chad, perpetually sitting at the kitchen island like the world's most annoying landmark? As uncharitable as that thought was, Ginny couldn't deny it; his presence, after his comments yesterday, had her on edge. Intuition was not to be ignored. (She felt especially strongly about that, given how she'd once had to defend her right to the phrase 'a woman's intuition' from a transphobe. She was a woman; this was her intuition.)
With a sigh, Ginny unlocked her phone and typed a response on the group chat: Actually, how about the drawing room on the other side of the house? The one with the fireplace? The vibes are -immaculate-
Kirsten responded quickly: Deal. See you then. Hope you're working hard on that writing!
Ginny locked her phone again and threw it on the bed, perhaps a little harder than she otherwise might have. It bounced inoffensively to a stop in the middle of the soft white bedspread.
Why did Kirsten have to put it like that? Yeeeesssss, she was working hard. There was no need to snipe at her, or push her. She hated being pushed.
Almost out of spite, Ginny unpacked the latest version of her other manuscript, her main project for the last fifteen years, Sir Britomart and the Faerie Queene. For the next half hour, she read over the latest chapter in her revision schedule, staring at the hateful words on the page with growing spite.
Over the years, the whole damn novel had become entwined with bitterness towards Kirsten, the inspiration for the taunting and alluring Faerie Queen. At first it had all been fun and games: inspired by their English literature class, where first-year-students Kirsten and would-be-Ginny studied Spencer's Faerie Queene, the novel had started as a joint response to the text, and then Ginny had kept running with it, channeling her feelings for Kirsten into it through the guise of the lesbian knight - not realising of course how much her subconscious had been trying to tell her the truth even then with that particular choice of viewpoint character - only for the various drafts of the over-revised manuscript to become tainted over the years with heavy-handed responses to Kirsten's criticisms of the piece, detours and u-turns aplenty muddying the original intent and turning it into a labyrinth of many years' labour. It was half-her, half-Ginny now, a twisted baby which sucked not life-giving milk from Ginny but the very life-energy from her the more time she spent on it.
No. She put it aside.
The typewriter, and the stack of freshly-typed pages, called to her. Better to lose herself in this new story from last night, which seemed to be going so well. She was tentatively confident about it being the best thing she had ever written.
With the reverence of a lover, she stroked the pile of typed pages, trapped as they were under a time-polished blue-grey stone from the lakeshore.
She turned to the pile of blank pages on the opposite side, picked up the topmost, and rolled it into the typewriter. A breath to gather herself, then she began.
----------------------------------------
It felt as if no time at all had passed. Ginny raised her eyes past the page - grown dim enough that she almost could not read her own writing - and saw that the sun was setting on her side of the house. She picked up her phone from the bed: 6.55pm. Scurrying down to the drawing room, she realised as she stepped inside that in her haste she had completely forgotten her snuggie.
The other three gazed at her. Maika's smile grew slowly over their lips, and then they nodded in acknowledgement. Kirsten blinked in confusion, then tilted her head. "What a beautiful dress," she said, her smile still confused, eyebrows puckered together.
Chad whistled through his teeth. Ginny fought the urge to cringe. God, she hated that sound.
"You cosplaying as the lady of the house, Gin?"
Ginny was frozen in place, waiting for the familiar jangle of laughter to commence. But instead, Maika sneered and tutted at Chad (who for his part looked wounded and chastised), and Kirsten rolled her eyes and moved on.
"Come and grab your plate, it's just under the uh..." Kirsten gestured vaguely at the cloche over the tray on the table between their chairs. "Sorry, I tried to call you down for dinner but when I looked for you, I couldn't find your bedroom."
"Thank you." Ginny hurried to join their meal. Kirsten had cooked a wholesome and delicious basic pasta. Knowing her, she'd probably made this tomato-based sauce from raw ingredients (the freshness of the whole basil leaves were a dead giveaway), and this conchiglie pasta was probably organic and locally-made. Ginny tried to appreciate it as best as her present mood would allow. She wanted the eating to be over soon so she could get to the reading aloud part. The text was calling to her. If not for food and friends, she would still be upstairs writing. But in the moment, she would settle for reading aloud. It would serve as a revision tool in its own way; to hear the words trip off her tongue, to taste their rhythm and judge their weight in the response of their audience.
Strangely, her friends seemed off a mind, and as one, all four ate in hurried silence. Ginny was, to her surprise, the first to break it. "May I read first?"
Maika gaped. Yes, Ginny supposed this was a little out of character for her, usually. Chad looked affronted, and as if he would speak, but Kirsten cut in, "I'd love that. By all means, Ginny."
As she stood before the others, with the unlit fireplace behind her, her chosen excerpt in hand, Ginny found she was not trembling as she might usually have in front of an audience.
No, this was right and correct. This was where she was meant to be.
This story was filling her with a rush of euphoria, such that had been missing from her life for a while now.
She opened her mouth and the words spoke themselves.