Janet stood and pulled Laurel to her feet. Serena reached up and squeezed Janet’s hand. They exchanged a look that I couldn’t quite parse.

“Janet, Janet, Janet,” Laurel sang. “Let’s make out, okay? Just this once.”

“Behave, you,” Janet said, with obvious affection. She pulled her toward the path. Neither of them looked back at us before they disappeared.

Serena held up her hand until the sound of Laurel’s voice had dissolved.

“Finally,” she said. She pulled out her little wooden comb, the one I’d seen her use that first night, and scraped her thumb along its tines. This sound, she had told me, was the only one that ever truly gave her the Feeling. Even other, similar combs didn’t do the trick. This one had been her mother’s. I closed my eyes, but the hollow music of the comb sounded far away, overwhelmed by the crackling of the forest.

“It’s no use,” she said after a few minutes. “I don’t feel it anymore.” I opened my eyes. She had pulled out her silver cigarette box. “I’m tipsy, of course, but I don’t feel it, just normal drunk.” She held out the box. I shook my head. She put one in her mouth and snapped the lid closed. I didn’t ask her what it was.

There was a long silence. I realized that I had never been alone with her before. I looked down at my hands, and they seemed to me completely foreign, like someone else’s hands, like they had no relation to me whatsoever. I curled and uncurled my fingers.

“Come lie down,” she said. “I want to try something.” She moved backward and I obeyed. The rock was cold against my spine. She took my head into her lap and rested two fingers on each of my temples.

“Have you ever had sex?” she asked. So she had been wondering this too. I hesitated, too long. “I didn’t think so,” she said. “Don’t worry, it means I can trust you.” She began to rub my temples in small, slow circles. “You’re lying on a beach,” she said. “A beautiful, white sand beach. With palm trees. All of a sudden, four men come up to you, wearing deep blue robes that cover their faces and hands and shoulders, everything.”

Her fingers bored into my temples like awls.