The atmosphere at the Center changed after that. How can I put this? It seemed that the grounds themselves had tensed, that the Center, which I had grown to love so much, had been peeled away in the night and replaced with another version of itself, almost the same, and nothing like it at all. I was sure that even a stranger would have been able to tell something was off just by setting foot onto our chalky driveway. It was that charged, that basic. When the staffers counted us at the start of an activity, they made sure to touch us, each one, on the head or the arm. When they had us all together in one room, at meals or during group meditation, they paired off among themselves, heads together. When they gave us directions, their voices were near-screams.

What was known, now, about Serena: that she was lost in the woods. That she was dead in the woods. That she was pregnant, and Luke was the father, and that they’d run off to be together—that old slog. That Luke had married her. That Luke had killed her. That she had killed Luke. It didn’t have to be Luke, though. Anyone could murder us up here, anyone. That she was caught in a bear trap, caught in a web, caught in a crevasse. That she had hitched to the nearest town, only to get drunk and murdered and chopped up and hidden in some townie’s walls. That she’d been walking down the road, on her way to freedom, and a car had hit her, and kept going, and her body had rolled off into a ditch. What would you do? we asked one another, and ourselves. What would you do if you were the driver, and the girl was clearly dead, and no one was around to see? Turn yourself in, ruin your own life, or? That she was hanging by the neck out in the woods somewhere, in a noose of her own invention, her toes brushing grass—that long-desired levitation, in that long-imagined stance. That she was just playing with us, and would appear in the next day, in the next hour, in the next five minutes, blinking, smirking, asking what.

What was known about Luke: still nothing, officially, but we all had our suspicions. Men and girls only disappear on the same night for one reason, we all knew, no matter what Shastri Dominique said or did not say.