Winter Jacket: Finding Home by Eliza Lentzski Page A

of the writing rats.”
     
     
    Walking into the writer’s trailer felt like the first day of school, only this time I wasn’t the teacher at the front of the classroom. The sounds of laughter wouldn’t quiet down when I walked in the room. The voices and the whispers and the curious looks would only intensify; I was the new kid in school. I wouldn’t experience the rush of power and the control that came with writing my name on the chalkboard. There would be no lecturing to a room full of students hastily scribbling down every word that I said. Whereas the classroom had always brought me calm, I now felt disequilibrium.
    I’d been in the writer’s room once before when I’d last visited Troian. Only because of her job title had I been allowed into the inner sanctum of the show’s workings. Typically no one except for the writers was allowed in the space: no spouses, no actors, no network executives.
    The walls were still covered with headshots of actors and drawings of the inside of space ships. Originally the program had been slated to be on a space station, but the network hadn’t been prepared to foot the bill for an elaborate set when they’d only guaranteed us four on-air episodes. The show now took place on a utopian planet, sometime in the distant future. If we were a success we could always blow up the planet later and move to a spaceship.
    A wooden table, long and functional, dominated the room. It was covered in pads of paper, pencils, script pages, and candy. Lots and lots of candy. Seated around the table were four others who looked vaguely familiar from the one time I’d been in this room. Troian hadn’t introduced me to any of them my first visit around, but now they were my new co-workers. They looked younger than I remembered, though. And more attractive. Sonja was in the room as well, setting up a laptop at a smaller table wedged against one wall. It was her job to record everything said in the writer’s room. One never knew when an unintentional moment of brilliance might happen.
    Troian strode confidently into the room with me following behind. My anxiety spiked when we walked through the door. Everyone in the room had been working together for months now, learning the strengths and weaknesses of each other’s writing styles, and meshing professionally and personally. I was replacing one of their colleagues at the table, and I had no idea what had been their relationship with this person. From what Troian had told me, the guy had been dead weight in the writer’s room, but maybe everyone had liked his personality. Moreover, I had no previous experience as a television writer. I hadn’t had an interview or an audition as a freelancer—I’d gotten the job because of Troian, based on the suggestion that the main character in her show be part alien.
    The chatter in the room settled down with Troian’s entrance. Apparently she was the teacher at the front of the classroom. “Guys, you remember Elle,” she said, thumbing in my direction.
    A murmur of hellos followed her brief introduction, but one clear voice rose among the mumbling: “Hiya, Elle.”
    The greeting came from a man in a sweater vest and a white Oxford shirt unbuttoned and rolled to his elbows. He had a mop of brown curls on his head and boyish dimples.
    “Hey,” I said back with a brief wave to the room.
    I sat down in the only available seat at the table, which was between a tall, angular man—the only person in the room who might have been older than me—and a short, round woman with a cascade of dark hair that ran down the center of her back. Even though she was sitting down I could tell she was close in height to Troian.
    I set my workbag, now heavy with unfinished scripts, on the floor and retrieved a yellow legal pad and pen from my bag. I placed them on the table in front of me, that feeling of being back in school coming over me again.
    The man in the chair next to me introduced himself. “I’m Edward,” he