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CUPCAKE
So funny to think of that first Workshop. How fucking scared I was as we entered the so-called Cave. Like you, I'd pictured a literal cave, Bunny. Ancient, oozing walls. A primal, womb-like darkness. Maybe Ursula standing there, backlit and in bell sleeves, like in a Stevie Nicks video. But it was just a boring black box theater, remember? In the middle of the space: a hollow square of tables with chairs around all sides. The table was lit from above by a single spotlight, like this was a theater and we were the central act. Something comforting about that. I knew that world, of course, Bunny, all too well, from my stage/throw-up days. Vik was already there, wearing another shirt of another gross plaid. She hadn't brushed her wavy auburn hair in what looked like two years. She had no pen in front of her, nor paper, no laptop, not even a phone. Instead she was sitting on a backward-facing chair like she was fucking it. Chest pressed into the backrest, legs manspreading sexily, talking in French to the girl with the silver hair, who turned to look at us—our shoes made such echoing clicks. The silver-haired girl smiled. Hi, she said with her mouth but not her voice. I was certain she'd gone to some illustrious overseas academy, like in Switzerland maybe, a school so elite that I hadn't even heard of it, Bunny, a castle nestled in snowcapped mountains and mirror lakes.
Hi, Kyra and I both mouthed, awestruck.
Quickly we took seats beside them.
There was another girl there too, of course, Bunny. You. Remember? Sitting there with your head down, your long dark hair like a curtain drawn over half your face. Wearing some sort of sad-girl T-shirt. A wolf barking winsomely at a moon or something. A black cardigan to drown in. We could see your one eye peeking out of the hair curtain, and that was all. You stared at us so darkly, and then you looked back down at the table and that's where you kept your eye. We could not say hello to you or even smile at you because you were hiding in your hair, Bunny, like Cousin Itt. Please remember that the next time you call me a bitch in your mind. Or in print, k? That you didn't make it easy for us, socially, from the very beginning.
Now, the chair beside you was empty, and that chair was just a little bit bigger than the other chairs. So we assumed, of course we assumed, that this was the teacher chair. Soon to be filled with the one and only Ursula. In fact, I could hear, in the dark just now, a clicking like footsteps. As you know, Bunny, when you're in the Circle (which, yes, I know is literally a square, but metaphorically it is a circle, just like the classroom is metaphorically a cave), you can't see beyond it at all. The circumference of spotlight does not extend beyond the Circle, suggesting the process of Creation, how we are always mostly in the dark, in a state of either un- or half knowing. So at the sound of the footsteps, I filled with such excitement. I made a small sound of glee, like a hiccup. The silver-haired girl smiled at me again, her jewel eyes burning brightly. I was expecting Ursula to appear out of the black at any moment. To point at me and smile. To say, Hello, Coraline. You are exceptional. You will write the book club book to end all book clubs, and I will help you find this book inside yourself and I will help you birth it from your mind's vagina. From your soul's vagina, rather. Into a living entity of double-spaced pages beautifully screaming.
I was expecting to smell her, Bunny. Her author photo suggested a very specific incense. Myrrh laced with fir trees. I expected her iridescence, her brilliance, to blind me a little. I was nearly crying in anticipation as the footsteps inched ever closer.
And then?
We saw it was someone else. Not Ursula at all.
A fucking man.
Very tall, with sleeve tattoos of birds and trees. He had wild, leonine hair, and he was wearing a black T-shirt advertising some sort of Swedish metal band like my older brother and his friends sometimes wore. Um. Who the fuck was this, please?
I glanced at Kyra, whose face looked as confused and afraid as I felt.
The man half smiled at us. He told us hello, his name was Allan.
Allan?!
