Page 52 of Letting Go

"I knew then it wasn't love. I didn't feel love for him. It was like he sucked me into him. I don't know how to explain it, looking back, it seems surreal to me."

"What do you mean surreal?"

"It sounds ridiculous. But he was so, I don’t know, magnetic? He didn’t even seem to have pupils. His eyes were almost—"

"That's miosis. It can be caused by opioids, tumors."

I sniff. "His eyes were just weird."

"Keep going."

"By the time we were on spring break, he had convinced me he could save me from myself. He said there was a bigger plan for me. That I was fated to meet him." I shake my head and a single hot tear rolls down my face. God, I was so stupid. "And that's what I needed to hear right then. My whole life had just broken apart, so I came home to basically get my stuff together to take off with him. I grabbed some clothes, my favorite teddy bear—"

"Name please."

"Of the bear?"

His hand squeezes mine again in affirmation. He's trying to make me feel better.

"'Thumbs,' because he didn’t have any. And my mom's watch and the cookbook. I threw everything in a duffle and left after three days. I told them I had to get back to study. But I really left because I knew what I was about to do and parts of my heart were breaking."

"But you still left."

I keep my head up. "I still left. Cheryl and I both left with him, just weeks before graduation. We drove to Montana, he picked up another girl, Peekie, in Chicago, and another in Indianapolis, and a fifth girl who I think had some mental disabilities. That was in Baker, Montana. The whole way there he kept talking about the power of love, and that love was not just transformative, it could be transferred. It's hard to explain. And crazy." I say into the dark, but now my vision is narrow and it's easy to talk. The dark provides a kind of invisibility cloak, with an anonymity that is seductive.

"He just kept going on and on about how love is transcendent, and that we were all good people, and all we wanted to do was take care of the environment, and we needed to do that. We were stewards of the planet, and we needed to take care of each other. We were empowered to do so, and if we just could understand our inner selves, our inner potential and unlock that, there was so much energy and so much power we could give to other people."

There's no movement next to me. Not even a shifting on the mattress. He is as still as ice.

"A year later we moved to Bethlehem…"

"West Virginia?"

"Yeah. West Virginia. By then he had two co-captains, Mike and Matt and they found us a huge old house. Reed had the money, he bought this old plantation and a hundred acres and we all moved in. Over the course of the next year, we just attracted more people. I mean it was beautiful. The house sat on the edge of this lake. We'd go down to the water and we would all, you know, touch each other, not sexually, but supportively and I don’t know how to explain it, but it made you feel like you could do anything."

I stop. The crack in my voice is audible but still, he doesn’t move. He just keeps holding my hand.

"There was euphoria. I'm sure, I mean looking back it had to be some form of mass hypnosis. I had transcendent feelings and I'm not religious at all."

"This was framed as a religion, then."

"Well, not really. I remember lying on the ground and they would tell me they love me. It was weird." I shiver. Now he moves and drapes the throw blanket over my shoulders. "Reed—"

"That's not what he calls himself."

Swallowing, I nod. "He calls himself the Seer. Everyone else is a Seeker."

"How would you describe the group, Chloe?" His voice is soft. Still, though he sits, immoveable.

My gut hurts.

"It was a … it is a cult." It's as if the world is suddenly cut out away from me and I'm drifting.

"A religious cult?"

"Yes and no."

In the dark I just keep plowing forward, trying to negotiate space and memory and come up with something tangible. "I don't know how to explain what it was; it was more like self-help. You can do this type of thing with God thrown in on the side, like many of the Seekers thoroughly believed and were devout believers. But there was also a portion of us, me included, who were not, and yet, we still felt drawn to him."