You Look Different in Real Life

rests against the pillow. Misty! Rory’s horse. Rory’s horse, which I know so well, and the sight of it would fill me with a long unspooling of memories, if it weren’t looking at me suspiciously.
    “I guess I’m on top somewhere.” I look at Leslie. “Where are you sleeping?”
    “Down the hall, with Lance. I have to sleep on a top bunk too, if it makes you feel any better.”
    “Nate and Felix?”
    “Right there.” She points to the door across the hall.
    “Just the two of them?”
    “Uh-huh.” She looks at me nervously. So she knows how epically unhappy Felix will be about this. Then Leslie lights up with a smile, turned on like a switch, and chirps, “Can you believe Kenny gets a whole bunk room to himself?”
    I know it’s hard to screw up the process of taking a fresh loaf out of a bread maker and slicing it, but damn if this isn’t the best bread-slicing job I’ve ever done. The pieces are perfectly shaped. I’m not sure people are sufficiently appreciating that, as they grab theirs and dip them into the stew. The stew! That’s all we can talk about, because it keeps us from having to talk about anything else.
    “Exactly the kind of meal you should eat at a big wooden table,” says Felix. His dad’s pickup truck deposited him and his keyboard a few minutes before the food was ready, and Felix only had time to mumble apologies about a problem at the farm before sliding into a seat. He has not yet been upstairs.
    Lance, Leslie, and Kenny have postponed their stew enjoyment so they can shoot us eating.
    The table is round and, again, mammoth-sized. So much that we’re able to spread out and it feels like we’re not actually sitting next to anybody but just vaguely sharing a universe with them.
    “Usually, there’s more people eating here, right?” I ask Pam.
    “Yes. Our standard group is about a dozen. Then I have a coleader here.”
    Silence. This is where we’d all check our cell phones, if we had them. I’m already feeling the tug of something missing, like a phantom limb, and I’m sure everyone else is too. Keira keeps reaching for the front pocket of herjeans, then stopping herself. But there’s a decent chance the outside world is, in fact, still there and surviving without us.
    “This is a good time for me to go over what we’ll be doing during the next twelve hours or so. I don’t like to plan further than that.”
    More silence. We’re even chewing quietly. It’s driving me crazy and yet, I’m doing it too.
    “After dinner, we’ll wash up, then build a campfire out back for a facilitated activity. Then bedtime, because we’ll be up early for breakfast and an outdoor excursion.”
    “Outdoor excursion?” asks Nate. “Is that a fancy word for a hike?”
    “It’s a fancy word for bouldering, if you must know.”
    “Cool,” he says with a grin. “I like bouldering.” None of us agrees with him.
    “After that,” continues Pam, “well, we’ll cover it when the time comes.”
    “Aikya Lodge,” says Keira randomly. “It sounds Japanese.”
    “It’s Sanskrit,” says Rory, her mouth full of bread. “I looked it up.”
    “That’s right,” replies Pam. “It means unity .”
    Dead air again. Pam looks to Leslie.
    “Pam,” says Leslie, “why don’t you tell us about your background and how you started the retreats. This is a more natural setting than an interview later.”
    Pam nods and seems relieved. The story of her life is more detailed and less interesting than I imagined, but it fills up the rest of dinnertime. I play my part, listening carefully while wishing I were somewhere else—in the Bahamas, perhaps, or getting a root canal.
    When we’re all done eating, we clear our own plates and Pam asks Rory and me to do the dishes together at one sink, Felix and Keira at the other. Nate gets to wipe down and sweep up.
    The routine of the dishes task—she washes, I dry—keeps Rory and me focused on something other than the awkwardness between us, and I wonder if that’s part of the plan. We don’t even have to talk, but I can’t help myself.
    “You brought Misty,” I say, as she hands me a dish. I enfold it in a towel, gently, because these dishes look expensive. I don’t want her to think I’m making fun of her, so I add, “It was cool to see her again. She looks pretty good.”
    “She got restuffed recently,” says Rory in her deadpan. “And washed. And her eye fixed.” She stops washing for a moment, then glances sideways at me