“Gosh, it’s beautiful.” She runs a hand over her own smooth head. “You must be new here. Welcome to Wisewood. I’m Debbie. I prep all the food.”
Debbie is in her fifties with whiskey-brown eyes that droop at the corners like they’re weighted down by the shit they’ve seen.
“Natalie.” I reach for Debbie’s hand, but she keeps her arms at her sides. Awkwardly I gesture at the food. “The sauce smells delicious.”
Debbie avoids eye contact, says to the vat of red liquid, “Oh, it’s not. I’m a horrible cook. Not for a lack of trying.”
“I’m sure it’s fantastic.” I hand her my plate. “You work with Kit, right?”
She stiffens. “How do you know her?”
“Any idea where I can find her?”
Debbie clutches my dinner plate. I bet she looks fried even after ten hours of sleep. “What did you say your name was?”
I hesitate. “Natalie Collins.”
Debbie does a double take, then busies herself with filling my plate. I peer beyond her into the kitchen, hunting for my sister. Debbie hands the loaded plate back to me. “I don’t know where she is, but you won’t find her here. She’s too important for kitchen work.”
She twists her wrists, then strikes up a conversation with the next person in line, dismissing me.
I turn to the dining room, reeling. What the hell does “too important for kitchen work” mean? My plate shakes when I picture my sister as one of a dozen concubines, all belonging to this Teacher guy. If I can find him, I bet I’ll find her.
I scan the tables again and am relieved to spot Chloe sitting with a couple of young women.
“Mind if I join you?” I ask.
Chloe pats the chair next to her, much warmer now than she was on the boat. She introduces me to the two girls she’s sitting with, April and Georgina. They appear to be around Kit’s age （late twenties） and are well-dressed, clearly have money.
Chloe speaks again. “April and Georgina go home tomorrow.”
April （short, plump, cheerful, dressed like a store mannequin at Lululemon） nods and tosses her brown bob. “This place has been life changing, but I’m ready to go home.”
Georgina, lithe in a silk dress, with giant sunglasses perched on her head （a ridiculous getup in this weather）， says with a laugh, “I know this makes me sound terrible, but I think I’m almost as excited to get my phone back as I am to see my family.”
Finally, normal people.
“Why did you sign up?” I ask them.
They work in different industries but have similar stories. Georgina is an investment banker working eighty-hour weeks. April is an IP attorney doing the same. They both had panic attacks in the weeks leading to their applications.
Georgina fingers a thin silver hoop in her cartilage. “This is the first vacation I’ve taken since I joined the company six years ago. I resisted the time off at first; I knew it would fuck up my annual target. When my boss wouldn’t let it go, I pushed for one of those weeklong retreats, somewhere in Greece or Monaco, ideally with a gin and tonic in hand. She stared me dead in the eye and said, ‘George, you’ve been having panic attacks for six years. You think one week on a European beach is gonna fix this problem?’ She suggested Wisewood.” She lifts her arms. “Here I am.”
“I, on the other hand,” April says, “am a self-improvement junkie. I’ve read most of the self-help books and tried pretty much every variety of retreat. Silent, yoga, female empowerment, a couple of the luxury ones Georgina’s talking about. Even in the glamorous places, I’d get heartburn every time I reached for my phone. As long as I was tied to my everyday life, I kept getting stuck. I was kicking the anxiety can down the road but couldn’t reset.”
“Are you glad you came?”
They both nod enthusiastically.
“I haven’t had a panic attack since I got here. That alone was worth the money,” Georgina says. “Plus, I learned how to quit worrying about them.”
“To stop equating achievement with self-worth,” April says.
“And I made an okay friend.” Georgina winks at April.
“This was the most intense six months of my life.” April beams. “But a good intense. You’re trying to work through your own issues every day and help other people with theirs, but then you’re also doing all of this crazy stuff, like tree swinging and fire limbo.” Chloe’s eyes bulge. “Sounds nuts, I know. Every single one of my classmates said no to at least one challenge, yet every single one of us did them all. You don’t realize how much fear rules your decisions until you come here. The longer I’ve stayed, the more sure I’ve been that I can do anything.”