The Retreat, page 5
She still skimmed the release of liability waiver and signed it anyway. She planned on backing out at the last minute to avoid Katie’s inevitable wheedling that would last the entire weekend. Carmen’s contract specifically stated she not partake in any drugs or alcohol, yet she couldn’t deny her interest was piqued. She’d love to drink some magical tea, morph into her spirit animal or whatever, and gallop around in some rainbow-drenched, unicorn-laden alternate universe for an hour or eight. Her life was hard. It’d be nice to sink into oblivion for a while. It was what she’d always liked about Katie; she brought out Carmen’s risk-taking side. She slayed her type A. Got her to loosen up, drink too much, have fun, take off her glasses, let her hair fall loose like the schoolmarm in some old-school rock video who suddenly gave in to all her seething impulses. Katie was her bad influence. Someone she could blame for doing what she really wanted to do.
KATIE
After the orientation, Naomi led them on a tour of the grounds and pointed out all the pleasant nooks and crannies where guests could sit and reflect. Or stretch. Or breathe. There was going to be a whole lot of stretching and breathing going down this weekend.
She showed off her healing room, which had the humid atmosphere of an evil botanist’s lair with a massage table. She led them outside to the barn, which still looked like a barn from the outside, but it had been converted into a spa. There was a hot tub just outside of it, flanked by two large frond plants. “This holds the same ancient medicinal formulas found in healing springs worldwide.” Naomi gestured to what appeared to be an ordinary hot tub to Katie.
Inside, the stalls had been converted into treatment rooms and guests could choose treatments ranging from stone massages to mud scrubs to full oxidation with Himalayan salts. None of which sounded too appealing to Katie. The place smelled heavily of essential oils that all seemed to blend into something that reminded her of cough syrup, or maybe it was Vicks VapoRub, and it made her a little queasy. It was always AJ and rarely Lucy who made sure to apply a glaze of the stuff on her chest back when she was sick.
“The sign-up sheet is here.” Naomi made a reaching motion and on cue, a young female staff member dressed in a starchy white outfit much like scrubs worn at a psychiatric hospital stepped out from one of the “stalls” holding a clipboard with a tethered pen swinging like a pendulum. The clipboard was passed around, and then returned to the girl, who retreated back into the treatment room.
The tour ended with the group shuffling into the kitchen, where Naomi listed all the forbidden foods on the opposite side of a long butcher-block island, the top of her head almost grazing the pots and pans dangling from the exposed rack—something to do with MAOI inhibiters and gluten and how it interfered with the tea—with big-eyed zeal. “Absolutely nothing pickled.” She held up a jar of sauerkraut. The lecture seemed so pointless considering the retreat provided meals for its guests but Naomi used it as an opportunity to sell her online integrative nutrition courses (only $599 per course and a lifetime of good health!).
Katie’s eyes glazed over until Naomi said there was no alcohol or caffeine anywhere on the premises, and then she felt zapped back awake. Katie struggled with her sleep; she badly needed a drink before bed. It was medicinal.
She hadn’t read a ban on alcohol anywhere on the site, which she was now realizing was more than a little misleading. Katie had thought everything preceding the tea was going to be an extension of Keep Calm and Carry On, with umbrella drinks. Not this free-labor, boot-camp vibe.
“Are you kidding me?” Katie groaned, and Ariel echoed her. Ellie shot Katie one of her fixed little smiles that meant she felt sorry for her lack of self-discipline. It’s only three days. Katie got that cuntish smile from Ellie a lot.
“I know, I know.” Naomi put her hands up.
“Once upon a time, I would have felt the same way, but trust me when I tell you it will all be worth it. You will all be leaving here Monday morning as the beautiful warriors you are meant to be, ready to create the lives you’ve always wanted. You will remember this weekend as nothing short of epic.” She pressed her hands together into prayer mode, her muscles popping in her ridiculously sculpted arms.
“Not like that; you’re wasting half the apple,” Naomi suddenly snapped at her kitchen staff peeling apples next to the country sink. Katie had hardly noticed her. She was in the same white outfit as the staff in the spa. Both were young women, very early twenties with pretty, averted faces. “Like this, remember?” Naomi corrected the girl’s apple-coring technique, and the girl practically curtseyed and went back to work. “Sorry about that. Now please follow me.” Naomi led the group out the garden doors, into an outdoor dining area covered with a pergola coated in flowery vines, then down the steps of the deck. “We’re going to play a game of garden bingo.” She made a sweeping gesture toward a patch of land enclosed with rabbit-wire fencing.
“Garden bingo? What is that?” Anthony asked, his hand raised.
Naomi looked around, amused at everyone’s confusion. “Come on, no one’s played it before?” She did a mock dropped-chin look of surprise. “It’s when you go outside and randomly unearth some veggies in the garden and then we come up with tomorrow night’s dinner plan using what you picked.” Naomi clapped twice, then rubbed her hands together. “It’s so fun. Now go on. I can’t wait to see what you bring back—what you excavate is so telling about your personalities.” Naomi slid back through the garden doors and into the kitchen. “Of course it is, Naomi,” Katie quipped under her breath and got a smile out of her friends. Katie now felt bad for roping Ariel and Carmen into this—she’d had to practically beg Carmen—but only for a second, because she couldn’t imagine being there without them. It’d be twice as boring.
Ellie said she wanted to get some vegan menu ideas for the wedding, and followed Naomi inside. Yet another part of the wedding plans that Katie was cut out of.
Katie wasn’t going to wait for her, instead ushering her friends down the steps and away from the house.
* * *
“This is all so, um, different,” Ariel said as they made their way toward a huge garden.
Katie took this as Ariel’s polite way of saying that the weekend was going to suck, and she suddenly felt the need to loosen things up. Get everyone back in a good mood. At her core, Katie was a people pleaser. A performer. She was not above fake-tripping over something to get a laugh, to put the room at ease. She was always at the ready to sacrifice herself to some stupid act.
“C’mon, Ariel. We’ll have fun; at the very least, this is something we’ll be able to laugh at for like a decade.”
“There’s no caffeine or vodka here. How are we going to have any fun?”
“That’s the point. Like, it’ll be remember that weekend when we remembered everything about the weekend. Ha! We’re going to have some good, clean-living fun. Don’t you want to be transformed?”
Ariel’s nose scrunched, and her head wobbled. “Are you saying I need to be transformed?”
Katie gave Ariel an exaggerated eye roll. “Noooo. I’m not saying that at all. I didn’t want to come here alone, with just her. This place was her idea, and my brother wants me and his fiancée to be friends, so here I am.” Not exactly the whole story, but Katie didn’t want to reveal she’d wanted to come to the retreat—not now. “I need some kind of advent calendar, counting down to my brother’s divorce. Whiskey instead of chocolate, of course.”
“They’re not even married yet,” Ariel was quick to point out. And again, Katie thought it was too bad her brother didn’t want Ariel. She’d pushed Ariel so hard on Nate, and nothing. Just a single night of drunken sex that made Ariel turn into a stalker for five straight weeks until finally she dropped it. Katie knew Ariel probably still wanted her brother. Maybe not actively, but it was like a dormant virus lurking in her somewhere.
“Maybe you can stop it? Tell her that Nate has a dark side.” Carmen grinned.
Katie flashed to some rom-com scenario that had her planting ideas in Ellie’s head. “Good idea. I’ll tell her that Nate once killed a kitten ‘just to see how it feels.’”
“Or say he has a rare skin condition called ‘disappearing penis’ in which his junk hibernates for months in folds of his skin,” Carmen added.
“Ew, good one, but let’s not talk about my brother’s junk.” Katie laughed.
“All right, but I do have to say, I’m surprised too, Katie. This place just doesn’t really seem like you,” Carmen added.
“I know. I know.” Katie sucked in her bottom lip. “But what if it does work? The tea?”
“What do you want it to do? The tea?” Carmen visored her eyes and gave her a look of concern, but it wasn’t as sincere as it could have been. Katie suspected Carmen was still resentful about the tweet. A tweet she didn’t even remember sending, and was deeply embarrassed about, but come on. She wasn’t a bad person. Carmen knew her better than that.
Ariel stopped walking, turned, and grabbed Katie’s hands in a motherly gesture. “Are you okay, Katie? You’d tell me if you weren’t okay?” Ariel’s eyes searched her face. Katie shook her off.
“So we’re all skeptics. It actually makes this whole weekend more fun. We should actually take bets right now on who comes out of this a crystal-loving, gluten-free, spiritual person.” Katie air-quoted spiritual. “I am going to put my money on Carmen, because lesbians are known to—”
Carmen gave her a tight smile. “Don’t. Just don’t.”
“Too soon?” Katie asked her, and Carmen nodded. So it was definitely not her imagination; the tweet still dangled there between them. Katie could no longer tease her with lesbian stereotypes; something was now off-limits between them.
“Seriously, Katie. I just … I can’t believe you of all people want to—” Ariel cut herself off.
“Want to what? Better myself? Not party so much? I’m kind of floundering, if you haven’t noticed.” Her voice came out too loud, too sad even. Ariel and Carmen gave her sympathetic looks, but neither tried to argue with her. Katie wanted to hear, “Whaddya talking about? Nooo. You’re doing great.”
Instead, Ariel clicked her tongue and started to say something about coming to stay with her for a little while, so Katie cut her off. Being pitied made her gut swirl with acid.
Fun. They needed to start having some fun. Her inner director started commanding her to loosen up, smile. Flash those dimples. “So I want to transform like Optimus freakin’ Prime.” Katie stopped walking, did a goofy robot dance. Let her forearm dangle from her elbow.
Her reference to a child’s toy was pathetic and cheesy, but her friends gave her a gratuitous round of laughs anyway.
Sweet release.
God, it was so nice to just be with them again, Ariel and Carmen. They were like a cross between an old comfortable sweater and an all-star improv group. She was glad Ellie was still talking to Naomi. It was so much easier without her. They could just let themselves go.
* * *
Next to the garden’s entrance was an oversize tub with a sign that read GARDEN TOOLS, which was a tad insulting. They each grabbed something from the tub, picked out their little plots of land, and started jabbing at the dirt.
Katie was plucking out a carrot when a shadow crept over her, cooling her skin. She looked up to see Lily standing above her, hands out like she was about touch Katie’s hair. “I knew it was you! I knew it.” A girlish squeal. She snatched back her hand and beamed a toothy smile so big it looked like it hurt. “Shelby Spade. Holy shit! I can’t believe I’m here with Shelby Spade. Like, that’s so crazy. I was your biggest fan.” So the heart-fingers were aimed at Katie, or really, Shelby Spade.
“Oh, why, thank you. I appreciate that.” Katie had mixed feelings about being recognized. Most of the time, she was annoyed when people didn’t know who she was, but lately, she couldn’t stand the inevitable question of what she was up to now when she had nothing to offer. Sometimes she’d lie and say she was doing a lot of voice-over work, because it would be harder to prove she wasn’t. But it did make her feel like a washed-up D-lister.
“No, seriously, I had the Shelby Spade comforter, lunch box, the doll. Actually, I had two dolls, one for playing with—” Lily took a big, sputtering gasp of breath “—and another I kept in the package in case it became a collectible.”
The Spade dolls never ended up being worth much. Katie shifted uncomfortably, glanced at Lily’s bare legs, and noticed she had some kind of skin condition: splotches of round scabs the size of cigar burns peppered her legs.
“It’s always so great to meet a fan of Shelby Spade,” Katie said again, catching amused looks from her friends, hoping to wrap it up, but Lily lingered.
“I headed an official fan club. Once you wrote me back. Do you remember that?”
Katie thought about the piles of fan letters, so lovingly decorated and stuffed with glitter, tossed unopened into a recycling bin. Only the return addresses were recorded by whoever did those things for her, and then the fan would receive a form letter on what looked like personal stationery and a printed signature. Of course, Katie claimed to have read every single letter. I love my fans so much; they mean everything to me. The novelty of opening those huge piles of mail lasted two seasons, then Katie lost interest and fan mail became an administrative burden someone else dealt with.
“Oh, of course you don’t.” Lily gave a croaky laugh. Her eyes slid over Katie’s scar.
“Thank you. Really. I appreciate it,” Katie repeated in an even more heartfelt way, clasping her hands together to show how grateful she was for the praise. She picked up her garden shovel, hoping Lily would move on, but Lily kept talking.
“I made my mom take me all the way to Portland for one of your mall appearances. Actually, I made her take me to a few, it was, like, the highlight of my middle school experience. It’s so weird; I just always felt if you met me, we’d be friends,” Lily said and took a small step toward her. Now Katie was catching a hard whiff of mental instability.
“Huh,” Katie said, heard her friends swallow down laughter. Again Katie was going to offer up another conclusive “nice to meet you” statement, but Lily was now motormouthing along, not blinking.
“Lacey Evans was the worst. I had someone like her, the typical mean girl in my school; she did something really horrible to me. I actually had to leave eighth grade but I soooo got her back—”
Katie caught sight of Ellie making her way down to the garden, and because she couldn’t figure out a way to end Lily’s relentless chatter, she turned her back on her, grabbed a rogue baby potato, yelled, “Yo, Ellie, think fast!” and flung it at her.
The potato nailed Ellie in the chest and left a muddy streak over her left boob.
“Oh no, I am so sorry, Ellie! I thought you’d catch it.” Katie put her hand over her mouth because it was funny and she couldn’t help laughing out loud. See, this is why your brother’s fiancée doesn’t like you. Ellie wiped at the mud, then looked at Katie and her friends, who were also laughing, and kept the potato in her hand when she should be hurling it back at Katie. That was how these things worked. It was what a good-natured person would do. Katie looked back over her shoulder; Lily was still standing there.
“Funny,” Ellie said with that impenetrable smile.
“Heeee-il-ar-ious!” Lily folded over at the hips and let out a hee-haw that erupted into a rattling cough. Katie ignored her.
“You can hit me back; seriously, just fastball that thing right at my head. I won’t even duck. Organic food fight?” Katie waved her arms jokingly and moved farther away from Lily. But Ellie just shook her head as if that was an unthinkable response and placed the potato in one of the wicker baskets, knelt at some sprouts, and started to unearth them with her bare hands. Okay, then. Katie felt something stiffen in her chest. Ariel lobbed a clump of roots at her to be nice, but it fell short of hitting her and the moment passed. Now Lily was in her spot, using the spade she’d just been using to jab where Katie had just been digging.
Katie shuffled over to Carmen’s plot and crouched down next to her. “Dig up anything interesting?”
“Seems like you made a new friend.” Carmen flicked her eyes at Lily and made an amused face. “The treachery of fame, huh?”
“It’s like I had one last superfan, and she just happened to be here,” Katie whispered. Lily tossed her a hopeful pet me look.
“Well, when you have a houseful of people who all have something they want to purge, someone is bound to be unstable,” Carmen said.
“Hey, can anyone tell me what this is?” It was Max, the PTSD paramedic, cradling something in two hands like it was a newborn. He lifted it up, a flesh-colored thing with an antenna sprouting up the top.
“I think it’s a ham,” Katie called out, snorting at her own joke.
Max laughed. “So you’re sayin’ I just dug up a dead pig?”
“It’s a turnip,” Ellie corrected Katie. Max smiled at her, and turned to dump his turnip into the community basket they were supposed to bring back to Naomi.
“Oh, wait, do you mind taking a picture of us?” Katie handed her phone to Max. “I know I’m asking you to handle contraband here, but I just couldn’t part with my baby. It’s still breastfeeding.”
Max scrunched up his nose, laughed. Dimples flashing. “Hey, I’m not telling on you, funny girl.”
Lily sprang up and rushed over, crushing a row of greeny shoots.
“I can do it. I would love to get a picture with you. I was just thinking how badly I wish I had my phone—”
“That’s okay, Lily. Max can do it,” Katie said with more snap in her voice than she intended, but this girl just wasn’t taking a hint. Lily made a wounded “Oh,” but still hung about watching.
