After a few minutes, I turned my head to look out the window and noticed that Harriet was staring at me, her brow knit. I felt a flicker of pride, sour and dumb, like the sensation of stealing something small from someone deserving of theft. I flashed her what I imagined was a winning smile and focused my attention back on the front of the room. I didn’t understand Harriet’s problem. These girls seemed all right to me. Especially when, fifteen minutes later, our cushions were drenched in a yolky light, a light that left my limbs warm and loose for hours.

If I had known what was going to happen that summer, maybe I would have paid more attention to Harriet. Maybe I would have left these strange girls alone, no matter what they knew, no matter how pretty the light on their cushions. If I had left them alone, maybe none of it would have even happened.

No, here’s the truth: I would never have left them alone, even if I had known what was going to happen. Never. There are some things I simply cannot resist.

Later that morning, the danger of fainting more or less behind us, the Garudas went on a hike. We assembled after breakfast at the flagpole on the east side of the lawn, and a nearly neckless white guy introduced himself as Colin and pointed up at the flag. This was called the dream flag, he said, so named because it had come to an important teacher in a dream: blue and yellow twisted together as if each were crashing on the shore of the other. He explained that yellow was the earth, and blue the sky, and the curl of the wave was the Buddhadharma penetrating them both. Janet reached over and poked Laurel at the word penetrating, and Laurel pinched her back, but they both nodded at Colin’s explanation, as if they already knew much more than he was saying. (The use of penetrate to mean “insert into” dates back to the 1520s, but the connotation of affecting one’s feelings dates only to the 1630s: a hundred years of being touched but untouched.)

According to Colin, the trip up the mountain would really get our blood flowing, and all that blood flow was totally going to help us in our quest for ultimate warriorhood. Body and soul, you guys. Like, yeah, etc. Colin looked barely past his teenage years himself—that morning he wore a ratty t-shirt that read BUDDHIST FIST above, imaginatively, a picture of a dark blue fist designed to look as though it were emerging triumphant from his solar plexus. Janet routinely gave him the finger when he turned his back. When I asked if Serena was coming, the other two exchanged a look.

“Serena doesn’t like Colin,” Laurel said.

“Or exerting herself,” Janet said. She jumped up onto a rock. “Laurel likes Colin, though.” She gave him the finger again.