Free We Are All Completely Fine by Darryl Gregory Page A

strict if unconscious structure in those early meetings: We took turns, giving each a share of time to talk about our lives and deliver our spooky stories. We might as well have been sitting around a campfire.
    Dr. Sayer told us this commonly happened in groups. Eventually, she said, the group would stop telling , and start working . Most of us did not know what that meant, and the rest of us pretended not to know; telling was risky enough. A crisis in the group can speed that process along, like a shock that starts the heart beating.
    Martin’s attack was the first of several shocks to hit the group. Barbara learned about it the next day, when Jan sent out an email to the group. Stan, who never checked his AOL account, was the last to know; Jan had left a follow-up message on his answering machine.
    Harrison, of course, was the first to know. After Jan called, he hung up and sat on the bed, thinking hard.
    “She’s looking for me?”
    He turned. Greta was sitting in the armchair across from the bed, her arms around her knees. She was still naked except for the boy’s jockey shorts.
    “I think she’s figured out you’re here,” he said. “She’s intuitive like that.”
    “So what did she say about the attackers?”
    “Nothing much. Martin doesn’t seem to remember, or else he didn’t get a good look while they were beating him.”
    “I’m going to have to tell the group about the Sisters,” she said.
    “Yes?”
    “Like you said, Jan’s intuitive. She’s going to ask me sooner or later. It’s time to tell the story.”
    Harrison and Greta’s relationship—their offline, outof-band, extracurricular relationship—started after the second meeting, when she finally accepted his offer to drive her home. They barely spoke during the drive, the silence broken only by Greta’s monosyllabic directions, then a final, awkward “Thanks.” The next week he took her home again, and it became a regular thing. They began to talk, her short questions always aimed at getting him to talk about his childhood, and because he would not talk about that, they talked about the only thing they had in common: the group. Soon their comments became post-meeting debriefs, which became all-out dissections. The drive home became too short; they would sit in his car outside of her apartment building (a grim chunk of poured cement allocated for student use) and perform the weekly autopsy.
    Harrison wasn’t sure whose idea it had been to go to the pub their first time. They’d walked out of the meeting to his car and Greta said, “Maybe we could . . . ?” and Harrison said, “I know a place.” And that became their new regular thing. He drank doubles of Kilbeggan. She ordered Sprite.
    Greta saw things that he missed entirely. Barbara was clinically depressed, she said; you could tell in the way she talked about her family. “All her stories are about how the boys did this with their father, or did this other thing on their own. She doesn’t seem to be in their lives. She’s watching them, like they’re on TV.” And in the next meeting Harrison would surreptitiously study Barbara, and sure enough he would see the deep sadness behind the mask of helpfulness and empathy.
    Yet in other ways, Greta was hopelessly naïve, especially when it came to the men. For example, she’d noticed that Stan’s eyes were permanently glued to her chest, but found this to be completely innocent. “He’s an old man,” she said. “With no hands! How does he even masturbate?”
    “I’m not sure he has even the basic equipment anymore,” he said. Her eyes went wide; this hadn’t occurred to her. He said, “So how about Martin, then? He’s got the hots for you.”
    “What? No. He barely looks at me.”
    “Because he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He flushes when you come in.” Later, after Martin told the group what he was seeing through the glasses, Harrison wondered if he was wrong about this.
    “How about you?” she