Cleopatra and Frankenstein(28)

“Broke,” said Zoe when it came to her turn.

“Sorry, was that ‘broken’?” asked Kyle.

She repeated her word.

“That’s great, Zoe,” said Kyle. “Although I think we’d call that more of a state than an emotion.”

“It’s a pretty emotional state when you’re in it,” said Zoe.

Tali glanced sideways at her disapprovingly, but the other girl, the pretty bulldog, met her eyes and smirked. Zoe had always been good at connecting with one other person in a group this way. “Connection through rejection” or “bad-behavior bonding” was what her counselor at the therapeutic boarding school she’d been sent to called it.

“All right.” Kyle rubbed his hands nervously. “Onwards and inwards.”

For the next game, individuals could volunteer to sit on a stool at the center of the room known as the “hot seat” while the group called out personal questions to them. Zoe learned that Sandra the bindi wearer was a life coach who enjoyed masturbation in the bath, newcomer Ralph’s biggest turn-on in a woman was kindness and a willingness to try anal, and that Kyle—who abashedly agreed to take a turn in the hot seat at the group’s request—was a polyamorous vegan who loved cooking for his mother. Zoe caught Tali’s eye and mouthed I hate you to her before turning back to the group with a tight-lipped smile.

Next, Kyle asked them to lie on the floor and relax their bodies as much as possible. Zoe checked her phone again; some friends were meeting for drinks at the opening of a new bar in the East Village. All of life, it seemed, was happening outside that room.

“I want you all to close your eyes and imagine a moment in which you were really vulnerable,” said Kyle, dimming the lights.

Zoe would do nothing of the sort. She stared at the ceiling and tried to think, instead, of how she could make money quickly and without effort. But the thought, the one she’d been so carefully not thinking about, bullied its way to the front of her mind. She was fifteen years old, and she was in love. He was in the grade above her at her first boarding school, a guitarist in the school jazz band. He kissed her at the Halloween party—he was dressed as a strip of bacon, she a sexy mouse—then took her to a grassy knoll behind the science building. They had sex in the wet grass with their costumes scrunched to their waists. And that was it. He became the hook upon which she hung her whole self.

“How did that moment make you feel?” whispered Kyle. “Scared? Exhilarated? Angry? Really sink into that feeling.”

Just the thought of him was a kind of warmth, a blush from the inside out. In class, she would ignore whatever lesson was happening and turn into herself to relive every moment of that night. He was kind but indifferent toward her when she showed up to his band practices or orchestrated ways for them to bump into each other between classes. She couldn’t stand, or understand, his passivity. They had found this incredible thing together. Why didn’t he want to do it again and again and again?

The following weekend, exhausted by her own disappointment, she decided to try getting drunk. She and a friend waited outside the liquor store in town until they found a man willing to buy them a bottle of vodka, then sat on a bench with a carton of orange juice taking turns slugging one, then the other, until they’d finished both. An hour later it had seemed like an amazing idea to break into his dorm room and surprise him. It would be adventurous, romantic. She wanted to lie next to him, to cradle his head on her chest and comb his hair with her fingers. She was scrambling through his window, too drunk to even remember the act afterward, when she’d collapsed onto his dorm room floor in her first seizure.

“Now imagine a moment in which you felt safe and loved,” said Kyle.

But she was already too deep inside the memory to leave now. Coming back to consciousness after seizing was like smashing through a pane of glass. She remembered opening her eyes to the school nurse’s round white face. She’d had no idea where she was. It was when the nurse helped her to her feet that she felt the wet cling of her skirt to her thighs. There was a dark patch on the carpet. The shame she’d felt, such shame. So physical that even now it brought her hands involuntarily to her face.

“Now imagine a moment in which you made someone else feel safe and loved,” said Kyle.

She’d read afterward that it was common during grand mal seizures and had lived in terror of it happening to her again, but so far it had only been that first time. In the weeks after, she’d watched video after video of people thrashing on the ground, heads whipping from side to side as though trying to break free from their bodies. It was an act of violence to herself to watch them. He had seen her like that. Had anyone in this room ever been vulnerable like that? Had anyone in the history of the world ever been humiliated like that?

“I feel the healing energy in this room,” said Kyle. “I feel it.”

After they’d stretched and sat up, Kyle told them they would be working in couples for the final exercise. Zoe was relieved to be paired with the girl who’d seemed amused by her earlier. Kyle instructed them to press their palms to their partner’s and make short, declarative statements about themselves starting with “I am” and “I am not.”

Zoe pushed her palms to the girl’s, who introduced herself as Portia. Up close she was more sultry than pretty, with a slightly upturned nose and full, pillowy lips colored a dark plum. She had a diamond stud in her cheek where a dimple might have been. They eyed each other shyly.