Winter Jacket: Finding Home by Eliza Lentzski Page B

said, thrusting his right hand in my direction.
    “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”
    We shook hands and I could feel the bones of his hand shift beneath the skin. His lips were thin and his nose was long and narrow. He had the same build as a scarecrow and a hawkish look on his face.
    “And I’m Gloria,” the woman on the other side of me piped in.
    The first thing I noticed about Gloria was her eyelashes. They were long and lush, and if not for her equally impressive hair, I might have suspected they were fake. “Hi, Gloria. Glad to meet you.”
    “I thought you’d have an accent,” she said.
    “Sorry?”
    “I thought you were from Minnesota, like Troian.”
    “Oh,” I said, catching on. “Troian and I met when we were both living in Minnesota. But I’m originally from Michigan.”
    Gloria’s features crunched. “Isn’t that the Midwest, too?”
    “Geographically,” I confirmed. “But people in Michigan don’t usually have accents, especially if you’re from a city in the Lower Peninsula.”
    Gloria looked more confused than before. “The what?”
    At the head of the table, Troian cleared her throat. “Good morning, everyone,” she began, drawing everyone’s attention. Side conversations came to an end, phones were set out of view, and everyone turned in her direction. I was instantly impressed.
    “I trust you all had a nice weekend and are ready for a busy week,” Troian continued in a warm, but serious tone. “Sonja has e-mailed you the schedule for the week, so I’d like you all to familiarize yourself with that sometime this morning. Today we begin filming episode three, so once I get a call from Jackson that they’re ready for us, we’ll head over to the set.”
    Gloria tilted in my direction. “Jackson’s the director,” she said quietly.
    “Thanks,” I whispered back.
    Troian’s gaze flicked in my direction, and I stiffened like I’d been caught talking out of turn. Old habits die hard. “But before we go any further,” she continued. “I’d like to take a moment to formally introduce the new face in the room. As you know, I made the decision to let Derek go a few months ago.”
    “Good riddance,” Edward mumbled beside me. I sat up straighter in my chair. Maybe I didn’t have such big shoes to fill.
    “I sincerely appreciate all the hard work you’ve done to lessen the impact of his absence while we finalized the details in finding his replacement,” Troian continued. “Dr. Elle Graft is a tenured English and Composition university professor. But she’s not here to correct our spelling and run-on sentences,” she joked. “She’s also a published author who comes to us with high recommendations.”
    Troian’s introduction and the heavy gaze of my peers had me squirming uncomfortably. High recommendations? From whom? Troian herself?
    “I encourage you to introduce yourself to her throughout the day and to help her feel welcome.” Troian’s words were cut short by the buzz of her cell phone. She glanced at the screen. “That’s Jackson,” she announced. “Let’s head over to the set.”
    We gathered our things and followed Troian out of the writer’s trailer. Troian walked ahead of us, talking animatedly on her phone. I lingered behind with the other writers, knowing that I’d need to become acquainted with them if I wanted to eat lunch at the cool kids’ table.
    I fell into step with Gloria and Edward. Out of everyone in the room, first impression told me they seemed the most down to earth and the closest to me in age. “How do you like working on Troian’s staff?” I asked.
    “Troian’s a good head writer,” Gloria observed with a bob of her head. “You’d never be able to tell this is the first show she’s run.”
    “How about the other writers?” I questioned.
    “We get along well. When you spend as much time together as television writers do, it’s got to be collegial,” Edward observed.
    “Guillen—the guy in the sweater vest—thinks