Ashley bounded down the stairs with a duffle bag slung over her shoulder, and tossed her phone to me, which I barely managed to catch.

It’s dead, she said.

I handed it back to her without looking at it. What did it even matter? I felt like bursting into tears, or perhaps flames, like a car slammed at high velocity. She grabbed the last box from the front hallway, and walked out with Paul, who closed the door behind them with a look I had never seen him give me before. I held the look in my mind for several seconds after he had closed the door, parsing it out, until I realized—it was pity. Paul, my cornflake-faced giant from Amarillo, had every possible emotion at the disposal of a heterosexual man, and he chose pity. He might as well have chucked an egg at my face before closing the door. One parting addition to the mess of my house, my life.

12

THE GROUP HAD CONTINUED TO CHANGE SHAPE OVER THE winter, and into spring. At one point we had three new members, but then Pierce—the bald architect who came to one session, and said next to nothing—never came back. The other two newcomers stayed. The first was Shawn—a witty, loud, and effete man in his early thirties, with something of an equine face: big nose, big eyes, big teeth. The second was Mia, also in her early thirties—a self-described ‘antifa’ who worked with autistic teenagers and spent winters living and working at an ‘eco farm and wellness retreat’ in Oaxaca, Mexico. She had been arrested the year prior for blocking the construction of a new natural gas pipeline. I can’t recall how either of them found out about the group. It’s possible it was through Damian’s post on Reddit. Either way, both of them had heard The Hum for months, and suffered in isolation. Like most of us, they were initially reticent to adopt Howard’s theories wholesale, but gradually became some of the most active participants in our exchanges.