“Imagine the distance between yourself and the ground growing, growing, growing. Imagine you are lightness itself, nothing but lightness and air.” His thumb kept moving against my skin. What did it mean? I wished he would spread his palm against my back, run it up my spine, clutch at my vertebrae, scream into my face. Something.

But instead, he stepped away from me. “You can open,” he said.

“What was that?” I said. I scanned his face for some clue as to what had just happened. Was it possible I had imagined the thumb? I knew he had held on to me for much too long. My skin was buzzing, as if he had some electricity in him after all.

“It’s a visualization some practitioners have found useful,” he said. “Let’s call it the first step toward what you seek.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Good girl,” he said. “There’s the smile I was looking for.” I hadn’t realized I was smiling. “Rota’s over,” I said.

That evening, the Garudas and Dragons had what the staffers called Transcendent Yogic Exploration. This was essentially a yoga class, led by Dominique in a large meeting room whose chief feature was an enormous slab of rock pushing in from the mountain like an inserted tongue. To my surprise, right before the class began, Serena slipped into the room. She didn’t come straight for us, but instead made a lazy lap, looking around, dragging her fingers along the stippled rock, like Niobe reformed. She seemed to make the other girls nervous. The Dragons were whispering furiously among themselves. Look, look: the virgin witch gypsy werewolf slut in the flesh. Don’t startle it, no sudden movements, you don’t know what might happen.

“What’s their problem?” I asked Janet, to cover the fact that Serena’s appearance had unsettled me too. The hug, the thumb: what would Serena think, and had I done something to invite it, and either way had it left any signs?

“Some people find Serena unsettling,” Janet said, with approval.

“She is a bit strange.”

“These girls just aren’t used to encountering anyone with purpose,” she said. I thought this was not at all what made Serena strange, but didn’t say so. Anyway, by then she had sat down beside us, and was looking up at Dominique.