Free The Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook

up already. I tried to take up as little space as possible on my chair, so he wouldn’t call on me.
    He looked right at me. “We’ll start with you.”
    “But…,” I said.
    “Come on, what’s your story, morning glory?” one of the guys said.
    Brock gave his hands a little clap. “That’s it. Exactly. Tell us your story, Gloria.”
    The class started to snicker. It was kind of hard to know where to go from there. Should I start by giving my real name, and if so, should I go for Nora, or just resign myself to Noreen? Or maybe we only had to start with an introduction the first time we embarrassed ourselves in front of the camera.
    “Come on, we don’t have all day here,” a woman with blond hair and graying roots a mile long said. “Oh wait, we do.”
    Everybody cracked up. I waited, hoping they’d forget about me and go on to someone else.
    “Laugh if you will,” Brock said. “But your ability to tell the world who you are is the first step to figuring out what you want your life to be.”
    He pushed a button on the video camera. He lifted one hand over his head and brought it down like the clapper on a movie set. “Go,” he said.
    “Me?” I said.
    “Good try,” one of the guys said.
    I looked at the camera and tried to smile. “Okay, I’m Noreen Kelly, but I think I’d like to be Nora. I have absolutely no idea who I am since I stopped working, or how I got to be my age knowing aslittle about the world outside the office as I do, but I’d really like to think there’s still hope for me.”
    “Cut,” Brock said.
    “Sorry,” I said. “Did I do it wrong?”
    Brock was too busy attaching the camera to a monitor with a cord to answer.
    “If you’re going to play that or anything, would it be okay if I left the room?” I asked.
    Brock pushed a button on the monitor, and suddenly there I was, looking like a Looney Tunes character who wanted to run but couldn’t, since her knees had turned to jelly and she’d just found out her feet were nailed to the floor. For a long moment nothing happened, then one side of my mouth turned up in a sickly smile.
    “Oh, God,” I said. I buried my face in my hands and peeked out between my fingers.
    On the screen, I started flapping my hands around like an idiot and talking really fast. I seemed to be saying something about havingabsolutelynoideawhoIam .
    It was so bad, nobody even made a crack. We all just sat there in silence while Brock disconnected the cable from the camera.
    “So,” Brock said. “Tell us what you’re thinking.”
    I scrunched my eyes closed. “Who the hell was that?”
    “Exactly,” Brock said. “So think about it for next time and we’ll try again. In the meantime, if you don’t have a video camera at home, you might try putting your one-page story in writing. A first step on the way to creating a life script, if you will.”
    I faded in and out while the rest of the class took their turns, but I saw enough to know I was definitely the worst.
    As soon as the session was over, I made a beeline for the door.
    “Yo, Gloria,” a male voice said behind me.
    I kept walking.
    An arm came around my shoulder, and I tried to shrug it off. It stuck, so I stopped walking and ducked out from under it.
    “Hey, nice move,” another male voice said. “Maybe you should consider a career in the martial arts.”
    There was an unemployed guy in front of me and an unemployed guy behind me, so I wasn’t quite sure which way to turn. I decided to hold my ground. I crossed my arms over my chest and just stood there.
    The woman with the messy hair I’d sat next to last time walked up beside me. “Don’t worry,” she said, “what they’re lacking in maturity they make up for in age.”
    “Okay, truce, Janie,” one of the guys said. He turned to me. He had dark hair and stubble and deep-set dark eyes, and up close he smelled really good. “She’s just upset because she wanted to go out with me, and I said I didn’t want a casual