Zoe Letting Go by Nora Price

before the sound of approaching footsteps jolted me from my research. How long had I been inside the bathroom?
Please don’t be Devon
, I prayed, folding the paper back up and shoving it into the waistband of my leggings. I opened the door.
    “God!”
    Jane jumped back, recoiling from my presence.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    Both of Jane’s hands were pressed defensively to her chest, and she seemed on the verge of hyperventilating.
Overreaction, much?
I thought, moving past her into the hallway. “The bathroom’s free,” I whispered, lifting my chin toward the door. But Jane made no answer, and when I turned to look before heading into my room, she was still frozen solid in the hallway.

[Day Four]
    Luckily, last night’s
brief interaction with Jane didn’t erase the reading I accomplished in the bathroom. I’ve woken up early today, before breakfast, in order to translate the information I learned as faithfully as possible in this notebook. For organization’s sake, I will list the material in a numbered list, with my own questions interspersed throughout.
    What I know about Twin Birch
    1. Twin Birch is the brainchild of two psychologists, Angela and Alexandra, who founded the program ten years ago in this very house.
    2. Originally, fifteen girls were accepted per session [hence all the empty rooms?] but the number was quickly narrowed to six. [Why?] Patients arrive over the course of five days, with arrivals staggered so that each patient can receive a customized initiation.
    3. The program consists of four elements: Therapy, Activity, Intake, and Group Downtime.
    Therapy means one-on-one sessions with Alexandra.
    Activity is any supervised period of physical activity. Our activities are Cooking and Gardening, but past activities, according to the paper, have included Lawn Sports, Origami, Needlework, and Meditation.
    Intake is eating.
    Group Downtime is the centerpiece of the Twin Birch Experience. It is a concept devised by Angela and Alexandra and refined carefully over the course of two decades. Several articles published in psychological journals and authored by Angela are cited in the paper. Group Downtime itself has four components, the first three of which are set in motion before any of the patients arrive at Twin Birch. Angela and Alexandra select a sample of girls whose disorders and personalities will, according to a private metric, produce favorable results. They choose the girls from the pool of applicants and mail notices offering each girl a spot in one of six annual sessions. Applicants do not get to choose which session they will attend. The enrollment rate approaches 100 percent.
    The second step of Group Downtime involves location. It is paramount, according to the paper’s explanation, that patients besituated in comfortable, spacious housing stripped bare of technological impediments, like cell phones or laptops.
    Third , there must be ample opportunities for patients to spend time in nature.
    The fourth step is the simplest. After an elite group of girls has been selected and congregated within the confines of an elegant, leafy location, they are to be left alone.
    That’s it.
    As far as I can tell, the concept of Group Downtime itself is simple; the preparation, microscopically complex. In essence, it is an unsupervised slot of time in which patients are left to their own devices with each other.
    This is everything that I am able to remember with clarity. I have a fuzzy recollection of other details, but I’d rather not jeopardize the accuracy of this notebook with guesswork.
    As I review my notes, I see that much of the page is devoted to the kinds of clinical nuts-and-bolts that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in an advertisement or a brochure. I remind myself that the memos were not set out on a wicker table or handed out to patients upon arrival, but stored in Angela’s private domain. I wasn’t supposed to be reading it.
    What does it