“Okay,” says Sienna with another yawn. “We’re just down the hall. Knock if you need us.”
Millie bites her lip. “Yeah. Thanks.”
They leave her in her well-lit room and step back into the darkened hall.
Cate trudges back toward the other wing, wrapped in her tartan shawl, and Sienna yawns yet again as she turns, the brief surge of adrenaline retreating like a tide, sleep dragging in its wake. A tide... it reminds her, she’d been having such a nice dream. She was sitting on a beach somewhere, a blank expanse of sand and shore and sun, not a soul in sight. She was stretched on a beach chair beneath a bright-blue canopy, laptop open, and she was writing.
It was good, too, whatever she was writing. She knew that much, even though she couldn’t see the screen. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, the idea tumbling out the way it used to, when she was first starting out, when there was no pressure, no one to impress but herself.
She reaches their room, Malcolm muttering something about ungodly hours and piss-poor pranks, but she isn’t listening. No, she’s closing her eyes and crawling back into bed, convinced that maybe, just maybe, if she tries hard enough, she can get back there, to that empty beach, to that waiting chair, to that blinking cursor.
Maybe, just maybe, she’ll be able to see what she’d written on the screen.
Interstitial
Dear [insert name of dean],
My name is Millicent Mitchell, and attached you will find my application to the fiction program there at [insert university], along with a sample of my current novel-in-progress,The Weight of Dreams, a semi-autobiographical work of literary fiction, inspired by my experiences growing up in a deeply religious household.
For as long as I can remember, writing has been an escape, both from the confines of a restrictive childhood and from the challenges of being a young adult thrust into the world. Putting pen to paper has been an act of both catharsis and imagination, and it is my fervent dream that one day I will be able to consider it my profession as well.
To that end, I believe this program will not only help me hone my sense of craft and structure but help me find my voice, and my place in the narrative.
Thank you in advance for both your time and consideration,
Millicent Mitchell
Cover letter intended for Millie’s MFA application, found on old laptop, finished but unsent
Chapter Two
TAT.
Tat-tat-tat-tat.
Tat-tat-tat.
Crrrch.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Ding!
Sienna lurches up in bed, the sound of the typewriter echoing in her ears.
Beside her, Malcolm rolls over, without fully waking. Lucky bastard. She cocks her head, listening, is just beginning to think the noise was part of a dream, one she can’t remember, when—
Tat-tat-tat, it starts again, devolving into a harsh flurry of keys, and Sienna finds herself flinging back the covers. Arthur Fletch might have found the typewriter a fun affect, but the sound is jarring, traveling through wood and bouncing against stone, a painful reminder that one of her competitors is already up.
Alreadywriting.
She tugs on a pair of sweats and her soft old hoodie, the one she always packs because it feels like comfort, the one she’d never dream of wearing around other people, thanks to the hole in the pocket, the bleach stain like a drip down the front. But it’s the first thing in reach, and in that moment all she wants to is to get into the hall—shehasto get into the hall—and find out where the sound is coming from.
Of course, by the time she stumbles to the door and tugs it open, the typing has stopped. She holds her breath, cocks her head, and listens, listens.
Nothing.
Then it starts again.
