That night, I heard Laurel tap, and Janet tap. As usual, I turned my face toward the door, waiting for that slice of light to open against the ceiling. But instead, after a few seconds, I felt a hand prod my shoulder.

“Get up.” It was Laurel. “Get your shoes.”

I sat up so quickly I nearly hit my head on the overhead beam. Harriet shifted above me.

“Come on, Olivia,” Janet said, her voice flat but not unkind. “Come with us. Carpe PM.”

Laurel snorted. I hesitated, wondering how it was that a girl who never smiled found it within herself to make a pun. Then I pulled on my sneakers and followed them out of the dormitory. They paused in the doorway, only long enough for each of their tongues to appear, dark wet shapes in the dim light, thrust toward Magda, who was snoring in her single bed, her night guard already spat onto the pillow next to her face. I kept my own tongue in my mouth, not ready, after all, to pledge my allegiance just yet.

They led me across the dark grounds in silence, until we finally turned into what I could barely identify as one of the canopied trailheads Magda had pointed out on the first day. Janet and Laurel stalked upward while I tripped over rock and root, dirtying my palms, scraping my knees. Neither of them stopped to help when I stumbled. After I cried out for the third time, Janet paused and lit a flashlight, a little mercy. It bobbed against her hip, and the circle of light it left on the ground widened and tightened, widened and tightened, as if breathing.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll find out,” Laurel said, her voice dim and disembodied.

But of course, I already knew.

When I think about Serena’s tent, I remember it as bigger than the others. Though I know that memory is false, or perhaps implanted. In reality, it must have been a utilitarian, one-person triangle like all the rest of the tents on the mountain. Inside, there would have been a thin mattress on top of a narrow wooden pallet, a small clapboard bookcase, and a single flashlight that expanded into a weak yellow lamp, all of it tinged green by the nylon sheeting, all of it smelling of bug spray. The expansiveness I remember must have been Serena herself, or the fact that, as I was about to discover, she had brought pillows and blankets and candles and a gold Moroccan ottoman and sheepskins and silks to throw over everything, like layers of luscious fat draped over cold gray bones.