In the morning, I rose slowly from my bunk and dragged myself into one of the open showers; I leaned my forehead against the chipped yellow tile as the water ran. I was not used to staying up all night. I might have even fallen asleep that way, naked and leaning in my cheap shower shoes, had it not been for the girl singing atonally in the stall next to mine. (Poor cat, quite strangled.) When I emerged, my towel carefully organized to cover as much of my body as possible, most of the Garudas were still in the dormitory, getting ready or resisting the same. Nisha was giving Harriet an extravagant cat eye. Jamie was still curled in bed, her covers tight to her chin, her eyes open. A girl named Evie was methodically winding her blond dreadlocks into a pile on top of her skull; when she was finished, she looked as though she were wearing a second, expressionless head, the exact same size and color as her own. Janet and Laurel were not there. Janet’s bed was neatly made: hospital corners. Laurel’s was a nest of blankets.

I got dressed and tried to shake off the feeling I had, sudden but acute, that they’d disappeared, not just from the room, but from the world—or worse, that they’d never been there at all. Despite Laurel’s pictures still tacked above her stirred sheets, despite Janet’s damp running shoes at the foot of the bed, I was half-convinced I had imagined them, simply desired them into being. It was the obvious explanation. Girls like them, a girl like me. We are what we think. Whom did I imagine I was fooling?

But when I entered the main shrine room, there they were, corporeal and everything, seated in their usual corner. No one else had arrived yet, not even Shastri Dominique, and the room looked large and mouthlike. I hesitated. Janet waved me over and patted the cushion beside her.

“We like to get to meditation early,” she said as I approached.

“We are very particular about our cushions,” said Laurel.

I looked down at her cushion and found it to be indistinguishable from the others.

“Just wait until the sun clears the northeast peak,” Janet said. The other girls were filing in now. Shastri Dominique bowed low at the door, found her place at the front, and struck the bowl.