Nisha and Harriet asked me polite questions about my hometown, my favorite films, my preferred flavors. I liked them. Harriet was even funny: a jumble of stories and auburn hair and loud laughter, she was the daughter of some kind of Oregonian lumber baron and kept getting arrested for destruction of property. “Wood is surprisingly delicate,” she told me in a goofy stage whisper that made Nisha snort. “And so are my neighbors’ feelings.” Nisha, on the other hand, was tense and jittery—I could see why she preferred to be high—but she was nice enough, despite her habit of laboriously describing old drug experiences. Apparently, there is nothing in the world quite as mind-blowing as driving over a mountain, totally stoned, as the sun comes up and “The King of Carrot Flowers, Parts 2 & 3” plays on the stereo (not Part 1, she was sure to make clear; Part 1 is just a pop song). Even back then, when I more or less believed her, I was bored by stories like these. But which version, Harriet wanted to know, which car, which mountain, which strain?

After lunch, we had rota: our two hours of daily work around the Center. “Essentially, we pay through the nose for the privilege to come and do their chores,” Harriet said, raising her pinkie in the air as she took an elaborate slurp from her iced tea.

“But despite the name, there is no actual rotation,” Nisha said.

“You’ll notice that they always make the really violent girls do the dirty work,” Harriet said. She stood and stretched her arms, looking around the room; the knives on her back seemed to bend around the straps of her tank top, like a warning. “I’m not sure it’s such a great strategy.”

“Sometimes it kind of tires them out,” Nisha said. “Usually it just annoys them.”

I followed them to the corkboard outside the dining hall where our assignments had been posted, handwritten in ink on thick creamy paper.

“Office again,” Harriet groaned. “Kill me dead.”

“Laundry room,” Nisha said, pointing at her own name. “Boring.” She looked at me. “What’d you get?”

I pretended to scan for my name, though of course I had located it immediately. “Garden,” I said.

“Garden?” Harriet said. She gripped my arm. “Since when is there rota in the garden?”

The expression on her face alarmed me. “Does that count as dirty work?” I said. If Shastri Dominique thought I was violent, it had to mean that she knew what I had done. It had to mean that my mother had called, maybe that she was coming to get me.

Nisha took a step back and looked me over, as if I’d been in disguise this whole time, and had finally revealed myself. “No,” she said. “It definitely does not.”