Day 12: 21,503 Words

After yesterday's uninspired writing session, I decided to run—not walk—to the Celebrity Feud Support Group retreat. This is not currently advancing the plot in any way, but it's amusing me so it's getting the job done. 

Right now Isla is observing what she can of the retreat. The celebrities are sequestered in a room, airing their grievances. 

Once in a while she heard shouts. She heard some screaming about chicken grease, which was as confusing as it was off-putting. “You’re the dust of the league, you belong on the bench riding the pine!” and “Hey shit teeth, you know that jersey tuck belongs to Wayner, and no one else!” could also be heard intermittently. Isla was certain that she heard The Rock, whose inimitable voice has the gravitas of a god— chime in with “The only thing worse than your chirps are your hands!” Isla did not hear anything else for the rest of the morning.

At one point James van der Beek emerged from the room, looking overwhelmed and sweaty. Isla gave him a sympathetic look as he appeared to be hyping himself up to get back into the room. Those blistering celebrity feuds were not going down without a fight.

As much as Isla was not supposed to be listening in on the sessions—she had, in fact, signed a non-disclosure agreement—she was transfixed by the proceedings. She had to pretend to be busy when the men stepped out of the drawing room for lunch, which was served in the large dining room. Chicken was not permitted to be served.

That was when she first saw him, in person. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. 

However large he appears on screen, he was even bigger in person. He was wearing a tiny muscle shirt and athletic shorts. His large tattooed arms, which were about the size of Isla’s legs, could not have possibly been contained by sleeves . Isla could count about five bulging muscles in each of his legs. If he didn’t have a smile and charisma that rivalled the great P.K. Subban, he might have been terrifying. Instead, he just commanded the room—by taking up most of it with both his body and bright personality.

The group mostly ate in silence. Vin Diesel and The Rock did not appear to have made any progress in their feud. They were sitting at opposite ends of the room, glowering at each other. Diesel was muttering something about the dining room as a liminoid space, while The Rock moaned about how he was using the term incorrectly, again. It was true. Diesel really looked the fool. Isla thought she heard something about “candy asses,” but she couldn’t be sure. 

Isla was happy to see that James was smiling alongside Richard Gere and Sylvester Stallone, who appeared to have reached something of a détente. He was patting their shoulders in a fatherly manner, and they were shaking hands. Another wonderful breakthrough.

James’ smile faded, however, when he saw that instead of attending the lunch as planned, David Boreanaz and Taylor Kitsch appeared to have gone out to the driveway to play an extremely aggressive game of mini sticks. They were hunched over awkwardly, using their tiny hockey sticks to cross check one another and move a puck ineffectually toward the net that had somehow appeared. Boreanaz was attempting to jersey Kitsch, who was initially fighting it but then realized that getting jerseyed would allow him to be shirtless. Boreanaz ultimately gave up in disgust. 

“No!” cried James, rushing towards them. “We agreed from the beginning: no hockey!”

“But you never said no mini sticks,” David Boreanaz smirked, as if he had really shown James what was what.

“I didn’t think I needed to!” James cried in exasperation. “You’re not in grade three, passing time during recess!”

If that remark was meant to shame the grown men, it did not work. It appeared to only drive them further towards madness. 

After Taylor Kitsch scored on an exhausted and sweaty looking David Boreanaz, apparently ending the game whose rules were only known to the pair of them, he shouted at his fallen opponent: “You’re not going to the O, you’re going to the scrapyard, bro!”

Kitsch looked incredibly triumphant. He had procured a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and was in the process of shotgunning it when James decided that he had to intervene. 

“That’s enough!” James said as he positioned himself between the two men. “Neither of you are going to the O! You are adults!”

The room was full of people who looked perplexed, including Isla. 

“The OHL,” Boreanaz said, looking dejected. Kitsch also appeared dejected, although he was looking more upbeat than Boreanaz. After all, he had just won the mini sticks game. 

Having chastened the two men, he led them back inside and sat them down for lunch. They ate sullenly, but perhaps with a little less tension after having taken out their frustration with one another in the mini sticks game. 

Isla offered to fetch The Rock more water, which he happily accepted. Every time she interacted with him, he was unceasingly polite and charming. The Rock, no matter how much James tried, had stayed mostly silent in his interactions with the group. For James, he was his biggest project yet.