“The waters have pushed you back, pushed you up from the bottom at last. You try to move, but you can’t. Because all of your insides have been replaced by black sand and seawater.” And for a moment, it was true. My organs were ossified, my limbs pinned. I tried to raise my arms and my body resisted, only for a beat, just enough for doubt, enough to set my heart, which had been so still a moment before, to a quick double beat. Then my fingers creaked to life and I sat up, feeling as stiff as if I had been asleep for centuries, hemmed in by brambles and dust. The trees swam around my head. Serena looked at me seriously. “That’s how it is,” she said. “But lightness is the antidote.”

She reached again for her cigarettes; this time, I accepted one. “Like this,” she said. I copied the way she held her hand, her mouth. I took a drag and erupted into coughs. She offered me no encouragement. She was looking out into the woods, as if she’d heard something moving there.

“When did you start smoking?” I asked when my throat had cleared.

“I’ve always smoked. I smoked in the womb.”

“Your poor mother,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. She took another drag and looked me over. “My poor mother was obsessed with levitation, you know.”

“Really?”

“She was devout, you might say. A devotee. My father indulged her. We used to come here together, the three of us, every year. My mother was a follower of this one particular teacher, who taught that the practices used for cultivating levitation also happened to be the fastest path to enlightenment. He taught that the two are uniquely connected. If you can achieve one, you’ll achieve the other. He’s part of why this place is so famous. He said that if you can learn to become light, truly learn, then you will also become enlightened.” She snapped her fingers and laughed, but it sounded hollow, hungry. “It’s right there in the word. And then you’ll be able to do anything. The world will be utterly open to you.” She stabbed out her cigarette, half-smoked, and lit another. “Every year, my mother came to study with him. Luke was there, too, at the end. They must have received the same teachings, only Luke was a quicker study, I guess. I remember how much she wanted it, how hard she tried. She was always with him, always trying to learn, get extra lessons, an overachiever, like my Janet. But anyway, that teacher died. And the next year, my mother killed herself. She hanged herself. Here, at the Center.”

My mind went blank—no, blank and racing, like a television tuned to static. Does that even happen anymore? Does anyone else think about the fact that static is anything but static?