A writer goes to a residency at Devil's Throat, near a lake where she went camping with her Girl Scout troop as a child. She remembers driving to camp with a bunch of girls she didn't get along with and one of their mom's, after a mysterious "incident" one year. She gets pulled over by a police officer for speeding and she hits a rabbit, but can only find the front half of the rabbit in the road.

She arrives at the residency a day before they expect her. She meets the other artists--Lydia, who she doesn't like; Anele, who she likes at first; Benjamin, who is nice to her; Diego, who flirts with Lydia; and a mysterious painter whose name and words she continues to forget as soon as she hears them--and Edna, the cook and housekeeper.

She agrees to let Anele photograph her for her project, titled "The Artists." She settles into her cabin. In a written list of names of its previous residents, she sees someone with her same name was there years ago. She prepares to work on her novel, but wakes up ill the next morning. She stays in bed sick for a few days. Anele comes to check on her and she begins to write again. The mysterious painter brings her medicine. She can't remember what she says or tell what the pills are, and she flushes them down the toilet. She hikes around the lake and remembers being ill at Girl Scout camp. She begins to erupt with puss-filled lumps, which she drains and bandages.

Anele takes her to photograph her. She tells Anele the fairytale where the Brownie name came from, but can't remember the tale's key rhyme. Anele has her fall out of a chair in a field wearing nothing but a sheet. She feels this isn't what she signed up for, but then they have a splendid time running back, trying to beat a storm. One night, she sees Lydia and Diego having sex. In her cabin, she masturbates. She thinks about scale of objects and defamiliarization. The artists' share their work and she feels betrayed by Anele's portrait of her. They're all eerie. The one of her looks like she's dead. When she reads her work, Lydia asks her if she ever worries she's the "mad woman in the attic," or writing about herself. The writer says she does write about herself, but her character isn't crazy. The writer has a dream about her wife, who isn't responding to her letters.

She explores and finds a young lost girl scout, who she takes back to her camp. On the way, she asks the girl scout to remind her of the Brownie rhyme, which is: "Twist me, and turn me, and show me the elf. I looked in the water and saw myself." Afterward, the writer looks in the water and sees only sky. Another day, she finds the back half of the rabbit on her door mat. She takes it to the dining table, horrifying Lydia. They have a fight and Lydia leaves the residency.

The writer thinks back to how she had one of the girls at camp one year, who felt just curious then afraid. The other girls saw, and while the writer was sleepwalking they led her to the middle of the woods such that she woke up in the darkness, terrified, and saw herself in the scale of the universe. She was taken home from camp.

At dinner, the writer hears and remembers something the mysterious artist says. It's like the mysterious artist is suddenly a normal person. The writer tells everyone, "Don't be afraid. I'm not. Not anymore," then leaves the residency in the middle of the night after throwing her novel notes and laptop in the lake. As she passes a speed reader sign, it gives no reading for her speed, as if she isn't there. When she gets home, she can't remember her neighbors. She sees a woman in her yard, wearing clothes her wife owns, and hopes when she turns her head it will be her wife and she will reassure her she still exists.

The last section of the story is directed toward the reader as if it is a residency application. She says she is lucky and special to have truly met herself, though she may seem unhinged, and that we should hope the same for ourselves.