The desert chilled at dusk, and Rita came around with musty blankets. A rester named Claudia made a vat of pasta, and we all ate dinner at picnic tables. Blithe sat with the other resters. We watched over him from afar. For once, life wasn’t dictated by my own failings or motivations. It was not mysterious to me why someone would enjoy themselves there. At nine, Rita rang the bell for hot chocolate, served in hard plastic coffee cups with floating marshmallows. One of the resters passed around a bundle of sage. We cleansed ourselves.

The next morning, I was irritable after a night of sleeping next to Aiden, who rolled back and forth across the mattress, knocking into me. Even the desert outfit that he’d brought for me, light linen pants and a heat-stabilizing T-shirt and soft leather sandals, hardly soothed.

He had woken up at six to run around the lake. Instead of going back to sleep, I decided to meditate in the comforting strangeness of the motel room. Minna and my therapist had recommended the practice, but because of the pressure to somehow succeed at meditating, I’d always declined. At Rita’s, I was freer.

Aiden and I went to breakfast. We sat across from each other over our plastic bowls of cornflakes, sipping shitty coffee. Blithe was ignoring us from over at the rester table. In the sharpness of my fresh mind, I realized that he might think of us as I thought about Aiden, these bright and untainted beings. Shit.

“Hey, man, how do you keep up all your regimens? Where’d you learn all this discipline?”

“My father,” he said flatly, and a whiff of pain curled under my nose. “My whole life he’s gone to the boxing gym every other day at six thirty a.m. He was there when my twin and I were born. There’s a picture where he’s holding us in a hospital gown with a sweatband around his head.

I didn’t want to say cute if his parents were now estranged from him.

“But, like, how do you do it?”

“Well, I do it because when I don’t, I fall apart. If I don’t work out, I become unbelievably depressed. As much as waking up early sucks, it sucks less than the alternative. And this Gram stuff, let me ask you: Why do you think I photograph myself in favorable lighting every single day?”

Whoa. Even though I’d begged for it, I wasn’t ready for his realness.

“Because of all the frames that never fit.”