Page 53 of Letting Go

"You were one of the first people, right? An Originalist?"

My thighs start shaking. He'd done some homework.

"Reed had these glass medallions we wore around our necks. All the Seekers had opaque ones, colors. His was clear glass, mine was brown the three other girls were blue and green. They were supposed to make us special. Because we had 'clarity.'"

Bryce pushes down on my thigh as if to hold it in place. My teeth chatter. "I'm sorry. I'm nnnot cold. I get this way when I ttttalk about it." This is the first time I've ever talked about it. What stops the chattering is the wave of guilt. "I and seventy-nine other people fell for it. We, who were so desperate for a plan."

Bizarrely a dry laugh escapes from between my lips.

"That was eight years ago. What happened there, Chloe? And how did you get away? Did you just leave? Did they try and stop you? This is the kind of info we need."

Suddenly, my legs stop shaking. The dark is so helpful—it's like I'm not really telling the story and if I don’t have to see him. My body doesn’t seem connected to itself—it’s as if someone else is telling this horror tale.

"We worked twenty hours a day. Got between three and four hours of sleep. I spent most of my time in the garden and kitchen. I ground flour by hand at one point. Everything was regimented and performed at the exact same time. You knew if you weren't doing one thing you were doing another. We weren't allowed to have sex or even look at someone in a sexual way. My feeling is that he was having sex with a lot of the women, and maybe some of the men. He only selected physically beautiful people, rich kids who were just lost, and wanted to help the world, and he fed on that. He just fed on us like a vampire."

Still, Bryce's hand is on mine. He sits in the dark just listening, unmoving, an anchor in this nightmare.

"Then it got really weird. He put many of us on calorie-restricted diets of eight hundred calories a day and he would measure us naked with a tape every morning. I knew it was wrong, that this was horrible, but it was hard to leave." I stop for a moment. "You have no money, no power, no place to go. He basically brainwashes you into believing you're worthless if you leave, and only valuable if you stay. Then he had two girls have abortions and he and I got into huge fights. By that time, I was staying to try and help people. I helped plot an escape."

I swallow. "But Reed found out. He kicked the other four off the compound and then kept telling me, how I couldn't leave him. That my love was transcendent and it was transcendent through me to God. If I left, I would be leaving God. And I said," I try to control my breath, "I don’t care, I don’t believe in your God. And that's when he flipped out. Told me he was going to make me believe."

Bryce is sitting so still, I almost think he's not listening. "Bryce?"

"I'm here."

"So he installed me in a room in the basement of the house. It's fieldstone and cinderblock and deep. So deep I couldn’t get to the little eyebrow windows to get. and he keeps me there for I think a little more than three months."

"Chloe…"

"Just let me get through this. I can’t stop now," I say, and bring his hand up to my chest.

I go on to tell him how Reed starved me, how I dropped twenty pounds, got to the point where I'd faint if I stood up too fast. How I was allowed only one glass of water a day until my kidneys hurt. His recorded lessons I had to listen to, piped-in over Bluetooth.

Bryce says nothing.

"And that's when I decided I had to leave or I'd die there."

Suddenly he moves, swiftly, and the chair by the window goes flying against the wall between our rooms.

My hands come up to my ears and I scoot fast on the bed, up against the wall. His breathing is erratic, he's panting. Then he kicks the broken chair, the moonlight spills across his back.

"Bryce, I'm sorry…"

Turning my direction, he takes a few steps and then climbs onto the mattress. "Chloe," he says, his voice straining on my name. "I'll kill him." He fumbles for the light by the bed.

Fear must have shown in my face because as soon as the light flicks on he grabs my shoulders, moving across the bed on his knees. "You have nothing to apologize for. Nothing."

Reaching up, I take his hands down from my shoulders, but I continue to hold them. "I got sick after that. He called Leslie, a doctor at Everlast. She was one of his inner sanctum people and she told him I had pneumonia."

"That's how you escaped."

I nod. "She arranged to send me to the local hospital and when I got there, she told them I was from Everlast. That afternoon, a social worker came to visit me and by morning they'd transferred me to a different hospital, under a different name."

Bryce's face is impassive. I can’t read it or him and so I look away.

It is hard to tell him the rest of it. How I wrote an affidavit on behalf of the state, how I contacted Devon who was still in Colorado and she sent me enough money for Little Blue. And how I hid for the next four years. Hopscotching across the country, taking jobs and money under the table, trying so hard not to be found. How I settled in Portland for a full year and figured it was over. Writing to Devon, and finally letting her talk me into trusting my family again and making the decision to return. But also, how despite all this, I can never let my guard down.

"Because I knew one day Reed would come after me."