Seven
Helen opts to drive herself to the cabin—it turns out everyone else lives on the east side or in the Valley, and she doesn’t feel like driving forty-five minutes across town for a stifling carpool. Besides, she likes driving alone. Listening to music without worrying about what other people think of her secondhand playlists, switching to podcasts when she gets bored of her own thoughts, she feels more like herself than she has the entire time she’s been in LA. The two-hour drive from Santa Monica to Forest Falls goes fast, the San Bernardino Mountains in the distance growing larger and larger until they finally disappear because she’s driving in them.
The first person she sees is Grant, sitting in a lawn chair on the wraparound deck of a large A-frame cabin. He stands as she parks.
“Hi,” she says uncertainly. They haven’t had any one-on-one interactions outside the writers room since that first week in the parking lot. Have you ever willingly spoken to Grant Shepard outside of official classroom time? No, of course not, Your Honor. “Who else is here?”
“Everyone else left fifteen minutes late and got stuck in traffic,” Grant says.
She walks around to the trunk to grab her bag.
“I can get that—”
“No thanks,” she says, hefting her weekender bag out.
“Don’t be stupid,” Grant says, and takes it anyway.
The inside of the cabin isn’t what she expected—there’s really only one room. It’s an open floor plan with two large pullout couches downstairs and four bunk beds in the loft area upstairs. There’s a large chandelier made of antlers that throws ghoulish shadows on the wooden walls, which are covered from inch to inch by framed landscape paintings.
Grant follows her in, her baggage in tow. “The downstairs bathroom is definitely haunted,” he says. “By spiders. I’m in one of the bunk beds upstairs. Where do you want to sleep?”
“I’ll take one of the pullout couches. I can share with Saskia,” she says.
Grant tosses her bag down and they both realize at the same time that there’s nothing to do now but wait for everyone else to arrive. It occurs to her that she might be overdressed for the setting, in a black turtleneck and leggings. He’s wearing a faded gray sweatshirt and sweatpants and he looks like—someone’s boyfriend. The thought comes unbidden, and she scrambles for an excuse to look anywhere else.
“Is there tea?” she asks, and moves to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
She opens cabinet doors at random and finds mugs and tea but no kettle. She feels the sudden, solid warmth of his body behind her as he reaches above her to grab a tarnished silver kettle from the top shelf.
“Here,” he says, holding it out to her.
She takes it and turns to the sink. She hesitates, then—“Do you want some?”
He looks up, surprised. “Sure.”
She fills the kettle and sets it on the gas range and, after a few seconds of struggle, manages to get a fire going.
“Suraya thinks you don’t trust us,” Grant says.
Helen doesn’t turn around. “So she did tell you that.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Helen exhales. “Not with you.”
Grant shakes his head. “Why are you always like this?”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” she says.
“You make things harder for yourself. You’re prickly and defensive when you don’t have to be.”
“What, should I try to be like you and campaign to be everyone’s favorite person in the whole entire world all the time instead?” she asks dryly, as the kettle starts to whistle.
“Don’t be a dick,” he says, and the door opens.
It’s Tom and Eve, looking travel-worn and smelling of In-N-Out burgers.
“Traffic was insane. I almost made us turn around and call in with food poisoning but it would have taken longer to get home,” Eve says. “Oh, this place is weird.”
“I feel like I’m at summer camp in the seventies and this is the sexy, haunted counselors’ cabin,” Tom says. He jogs up the stairs. “There’s actual bunk beds up here!”
Eve rolls her eyes at Grant and Helen. “He’s going to want to sleep in one.”
“I’m totally sleeping in one!” Tom shouts from above them.
Suraya arrives just before sunset, equipped with apologies, tales of traffic nemeses, and booze. Grant is slightly resentful about their fearless leader arriving so late to her own mandatory trip; he’s spent the better part of the day playing host against his will, as her second-in-command. Part of him suspects she did it on purpose. Suraya is the type who would—some Machiavellian calculation about people getting more socially acclimated without the boss around, and how many of them would arrive late due to traffic. He’s helped Tom and Eve set up their side-by-side bunk beds (“We can role-play sexy camp counselors,” Tom said suggestively, and Eve smacked him with her pillow), pushed the couches around upon request for Saskia and Nicole to compare their witchy arsenals of tarot cards and crystals and sage, and hunted down his iPhone charger for Owen, who forgot his own.
And there’s Helen, who retreats further inside herself with every new arrival.
“Hot toddy,” he says gruffly, handing her a new mug. “Suraya’s special recipe.”
She looks up at him from her spot bundled on the deck chair, the one he sat on for half an hour before anyone else arrived. “Thanks,” she murmurs.
Everyone else is inside, enjoying the last of the homemade dessert Nicole brought. Helen had excused herself for some air, and he caught the disappointed look in Suraya’s eyes before she nodded.
Grant wishes there was some way to break down Helen’s defenses. If she were anyone else, he’s pretty sure he could. He’d say something funny and a little stupid; he’d find a way to show that he was paying attention to the jokes she said in the room, always too quietly and self-consciously for anyone else to hear them.
She wraps a throw blanket around herself tightly, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone so badly in need of a hug in his life.
“You hate this,” he says finally.
“It’s so much time being around people, all the time,” she says. “I don’t know how you can stand it.”
“Easy, I like people,” Grant says simply. “You don’t.”
Helen scowls.
“There’s a reason some people become celebrated, New York Times bestselling authors, and other people become screenwriters,” he says. “You’re a writer, you write for a living. I’m a Hollywood hack. I’m just good at talking in rooms.”
Helen lets out a short, dismissive exhale.
“You are good at that,” she says finally.
He sits down across from her. “I tried to write a novel once,” he offers.
She doesn’t respond.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what it’s about?”
She scoffs. “Everyone’s tried writing a novel once—my dad’s fishing buddy tried writing a novel once. Trust me, it’s better if I don’t know what it’s about. If it’s good, you’ll be afraid I’ll steal it. And if it’s bad, I have no poker face.”
“I know,” Grant says. “I can tell by the way you glare at me over lunch every day.”
“You’re very annoying at lunch,” she says, tetchy in a way he almost finds endearing in its familiarity. Almost. “It’s the part of the day where you campaign your hardest to be everyone’s favorite writer-man.”
“Well, the election’s coming up soon, so.”
Helen gives a derisive snort-exhale that sounds not unlike a laugh.
“I never should have come here,” she says finally. “I’m not built for this kind of—Hollywood thing.”
“Sure you are,” Grant says. “Everyone’s jealous of everyone here. You thrive on thinking people hate you. I remember high school.”
She meets his gaze evenly. “I remember high school too.”
It makes Grant uncomfortable, how her stare seems to cut through all his layers of hard-won polish to the raw grit inside.
“I have context for you,” he clarifies, trying to find his footing again. “That’s what I meant.”
“I wish you’d stop bringing it up. I don’t like the context you have for me.”
He exhales shortly. He doesn’t like the context she has for him either, but it seems counterproductive to bring that up now.
“Fine,” he says finally. Remembering why he came out here, he adds, “You have to make more of an effort with everyone else, though. For the sake of the room, or for your books, if you don’t care about the rest of us.”
He turns on his heel and leaves her alone to sulk.
Owen brings out a Ouija board after everyone’s in their pajamas.
“Who wants to talk to some ghosts?” he asks. He’s had a few hot toddies and an alcoholic hot chocolate too. They all have. “I got this in a discount bin after Halloween.”
There was a period of time a few years after her sister’s death when Helen was consumed with wondering whether it was possible to communicate with the dead. Her parents were scientists who held the scientific method more sacred than the smattering of Sunday school classes she and Michelle attended (for concerns of socialization and assimilation, rather than their immortal souls). So Helen wrote a college research paper on the subject to exorcise herself of the obsessive wondering, and she now recalls a paragraph on Ouija boards.
She’d found the concept of them silly, like a slow phone connection to the afterlife.
Make more of an effort.
“You know, Ouija boards were created as a Victorian parlor game so people could flirt,” she says, tentative.
“Why would we know that,” Nicole says.
Helen wants to shrink down until she disappears into the cracks of the floorboards, but next to her, Tom says, “I knew that, because I’m not uncultured swine.”
Nicole barks out a laugh. “Fine, then I want to flirt with a Victorian ghost.”
Grant stokes the fire as the rest of them kneel around the floor, the Ouija board laid out in the middle of the coffee table.
“Grant, get over here, we’re gonna booty-call a ghost for Nicole,” Owen shouts.
Helen suddenly wonders if Grant Shepard believes in ghosts.
“You guys have fun with that,” he says. “I’m gonna sit this one out.”
He swings his long legs onto a love seat and pulls out his Kindle.
“Lame,” Eve heckles him.
“Everyone, put a finger on the planchette,” Owen says, reading the instructions. “Then we ask a simple question, like ‘Are you friendly?’ or ‘How many spirits are with us tonight?’”
“Are you friendly?” Saskia asks the antler chandelier.
Helen glances in Grant’s direction. He doesn’t look back at her and she can’t remember the last time their eyes met without some awful thing passing between them.
The planchette beneath their fingers moves slowly, slowly, to the Yes on the upper left corner.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Saskia says. “Hi, ghost . . . ghosts? How many are there?”
They look at each other as the planchette travels across the board.
“I’m not moving it,” Tom says.
“It’s a psychological thing,” says Eve. “Everyone unconsciously moves it a little toward the answer they want.”
“Stop being so logical,” Suraya says. “Ghosts are talking.”
The planchette lands between 2 and 3.
“So there’s . . . two and a half ghosts here? Or twenty-three?” Helen frowns.
“I like two and a half,” Nicole says. “Which half? The bottom?”
The planchette stays still.
“I don’t think the ghosts liked that question,” Saskia says.
“Did you die here?” Tom asks.
The planchette moves to the Yes.
“Spooky,” Owen says.
“Were you hot?” asks Nicole.
The planchette stays on the Yes.
“So we’ve got two and a half hot ghosts who all died here,” Nicole says. “I feel like a ghost orgy is the way to go.”
“We should ask them about dead people we actually know,” Owen says.
Helen glances up at Grant. She could have sworn she felt the prickling heat of his gaze, but he’s determinedly reading his Kindle.
“Do you know my grandma Ruth?” Nicole asks. “She died last year.”
The planchette moves to the No.
“Well, that makes sense. There’s probably a lot of ghosts in the spirit realm,” Nicole adds. “Anyone else wanna try?”
“Helen, do you have any ghosts you want to talk to?” Suraya asks.
Helen swallows. She’s reminded suddenly of those awful hours spent in the school counselor’s office her last few weeks of senior year, when she’d heard whispers follow her every step—can’t believe she’s even here, her little sister, I know I wouldn’t be coming to school like normal if it was me. She remembers the adults trying to help her, asking her so patiently, so condescendingly, “And what would you say if you could talk to your sister now?”
You have to make more of an effort, Helen thinks to herself miserably.
“I’ve got a ghost,” Grant says abruptly. “Move over.”
He squeezes between Suraya and Owen and puts his finger on the planchette. Helen looks up at him, which is a mistake because Grant’s brown eyes are instantly on hers. She registers the stirring of some raw, terrible, unspoken thing clawing up inside him, before he snaps his gaze away. Come back here, she wants to say. I want a better look at you.
Grant clears his throat. “My uncle died last December. Fred Shepard. He’s got a bunch of boxes in the basement we still have to go through, and I think we should just throw them out. That cool?”
The planchette moves to G . . . E . . . T . . .
Owen yanks his hand off. “Nope, nope, nope. This is getting too spooky for me.”
“Get is too spooky for you?” Grant laughs.
“We don’t need to know how that sentence finishes,” Owen insists. “I’m done, I’m sleepy. Let’s bless this mess and go to bed.”
Saskia insists on burning some sage in the room before they clean off the board. Helen has the strange feeling that she should thank Grant for some reason, but he heads off to bed without a backward glance at her. So she stays to help clear the room of stray mugs and empty bottles of alcohol instead.
“We drank a lot more of this stuff than I thought,” she says, a warm and spicy feeling in her belly as she examines an empty bottle of Southern Comfort.
“Suraya’s special recipe,” Saskia mumbles.
A thunk upstairs catches their attention. “Ow,” Grant’s familiar rumble sounds.
Saskia giggles. “He’s too tall for the top bunk.”
Grant appears before them a few moments later, bundled in his comforter. “I’m sleeping out there,” he grumbles, moving toward the door.
Helen blinks. “You can’t sleep out there. There are—bears and shit,” she says.
Grant looks sleepily amused. “Bears and shit,” he murmurs.
Helen jerks her head toward the love seat between the two pullout couches. “Sleep there.”
“And wake up a human accordion? No thanks,” he says, and moves forward.
“We’ll take the bunk beds, then,” Saskia says. “You can have our pullout couch. Right?”
She nudges Helen.
“Right,” Helen says.
Grant yawns. “I’m too tired for chivalry. There’s two empty bunks up there,” he says, and drops onto the nearest mattress.
Saskia and Helen head up the stairs. Only two top bunks are left, and Saskia takes the one closest to the bathroom. Helen turns off the light and clambers up her own, careful not to wake a gently snoring Owen on the bottom bunk. She realizes her mistake as soon as she gets there—it’s Grant’s, and he brought the comforter with him downstairs.
“Grant Fucking Shepard,” she mutters to herself.
She climbs back down using her cell phone as a flashlight and tiptoes downstairs. She shuffles through the furniture in the darkness, until she finds the pullout couch. Grant’s breathing is shallow; his eyes are closed and his features relaxed. He’s already asleep.
Helen shines her flashlight nearby and finds spare sheets piled near the discarded couch cushions. She creeps past him to retrieve them, when strong fingers suddenly catch her wrist and pull her forward.
She throws up her free hand to stop her fall, it lands on bare skin, and her pulse stutters.
Grant sits up, radiating heat, very much awake.
“What are you doing?” he asks in a low rasp.
“The bedsheets,” she manages. “You took the comforter with you.”
She is painfully aware that her right hand is still pressed to his chest, and if anyone were to throw on the lights, they would look like a tawdry pantomime of a romance novel cover.
He looks down, as if just waking up to their surroundings. He laughs to himself. “Right. Sorry. Give me a second.”
He releases her and she feels the cold air rushing back to her body in his absence.
“I can just take the sheets,” she murmurs, moving for them.
“No, it’s fine, just—take the comforter.” He throws it at her.
She catches it and drops the bedsheets onto his mattress.
She pauses at the foot of the bed. “Um, good night,” she says.
Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and she can see his eyes glinting in the blue shadows.
“Night,” he says back finally.
Helen turns and runs upstairs. She can’t help but feel like she’s fleeing the scene of a crime, which is ridiculous. She spreads her looted comforter onto the top bunk, crawls beneath it, and—
She’s instantly wrapped in the scent of Grant Fucking Shepard.
Her breath catches—it feels too intimate to breathe in; she feels too exposed even in the dark. She pulls the duvet over her head, creating a full cocoon as her senses are flooded by Grant. She can smell the wood from the burning fire he stoked downstairs, the salt of his sweat mixed with his aftershave—something spicy and woodsy at the same time.
Her mind replays the millisecond of him asking, “What are you doing?” on an insistent loop, a mental record skip as her wrist feels the phantom sensation of his grip. In her mind’s eye, he seems to pull her just a hair closer each time.
I’m a pervert, she thinks as she takes a final deep inhale of his comforter before pulling it down below her shoulders.
If she’s careful, if she doesn’t sink into her pillow too much, if she turns and keeps from burying her nose in the fabric surrounding her (why does every instinct in her body tell her to do it?), she can avoid him.
After a few slow breaths, she becomes either too sleepy or too used to it to notice the woodsy, intimate smell of Grant Shepard in her bed anymore and drifts out of consciousness.
She dreams of warmth and a solid chest and a strong body surrounding hers, overwhelming her senses.
“What are you doing?” she asks in her dream.
“What do you think?” he answers, as he moves against her, mouth covering flushed skin, every touch a fevered kind of promise.
She wakes up with a jolt, on the brink of an orgasm, and bites her lip to stop from weeping in frustration. It’s early morning and she can hear creaking downstairs as people get dressed. She exhales shakily, inhales, and steadies her breathing before she sits up.
She comes downstairs and finds Grant sitting up sleepily on the pullout couch, his brown hair still tousled with sleep, as Tom and Eve bustle in the kitchen.
“Morning,” she says, hoping her face isn’t as red as it feels.
“Sleep well?” he asks casually.
“Mm,” she says, as if any more syllables would betray her.
She glances at the bathroom door behind her. “Do you need . . .”
“You go first,” he says, glancing down quickly. “I need a minute.”
“Oh. Okay.” She rushes into the bathroom as her brain flashes a neon sign advertising the sudden pressing knowledge: Grant Shepard has an erection right now.