Luke wasn’t in the garden that day, though I did find Ava, sunning herself on his bench. When I reached to stroke her head, she jumped away, and I saw that she’d been sitting on a folded piece of paper. I snatched it up: it was a note from Luke, but it said nothing, only that he wouldn’t be there that day, and which beds to weed and water, and a firm instruction to not come looking for him. His handwriting was loose and elegant, like a girl’s. I wondered if he was angry with me. I folded the note carefully and put it into my pocket. I would give it to Serena later, I promised myself. I wouldn’t keep it under my pillow and read it at night, tracing the loops with a finger, trying to determine secrets of personality and desire from the slant of consonants. I wouldn’t put it in my mouth. What would be the point of that?

I’ll say this for fasting: I did feel lighter. In the days that followed, consuming nothing but nettle soup and tea (of which we had plenty, Tenzin having apparently decided to turn a blind eye to our culinary experiments), I would often go into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, carefully checking for cheekbones. I didn’t find them, but I did find that my stomach felt small and void, and yes, light. I have never in my life been skinny and romantic. For a while, I fancied myself tragic, like a consolation prize. But I had always felt that I was missing some essential experience of youth by never being nubile, thin and limber. By never having long brown legs and a flat, tympanic stomach. I didn’t want to grow old and never have had those years of beauty, to have only ever been this moist, lumpy thing. Or worse, to lie to myself and remember an invented pretty youth, just to have something to sigh over when a storm was coming and my knees were bothering me and the folds of my fat were sticking to one another and also to the back of my chair in all the humidity. Because there is something terrible about a girl not neatly zipped into her own skin, or so we are repeatedly told. There is something rude about it, something offensive to all who see her, especially her friends, who would like her to be beautiful, as beautiful as a mirror. While we fasted, I felt worthy of reflection.

But of course, we had other reasons to thin out our bodies. “When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly,” Sister Bertrille explained. Yes, the Flying Nun. She weighed a mere ninety pounds, I’ve heard—not counting the cornette, of course. And you see what she accomplished. It’s right there in the name.