There were some sixty of these girls in the Center’s main shrine room when Magda led me inside, all jostling and laughing and shouting at one another. I stood blinking for a moment in the doorway. This was an enormous version of a space I recognized: my father’s own personal shrine room, which had once been tucked in the attic of what was now my mother’s house. Here, as there, the white walls were hung with gold silks, the wood floor was patterned with red cushions, and there was a squat shrine at the front, which held candles, sticks of incense, framed images of old men and green goddesses, and several unidentified objects—one was definitely a cookie—stuck into little bowls of rice. Here, as there, I had to remove my shoes to enter. Here, as there, I was required to bow as I crossed the threshold.

But no one else was paying any attention to the room, or to the shrine, or to the threshold. No one else was holding their breath. Nearly every body I saw was in motion, girls scrambling to touch one another, shoulders and hair, all of them seeking the best positions, the best friends, the long-desired faces of their age-old enemies. The sounds—shrieks of recognition, cracked-jaw chattering, spiraled laughter—bounced busily back and forth between the walls, building to a cacophony that sparked around me like an electrical storm. To say hyenas is too pat, but: hyenas. They have the same stalk, the same hysteria. They are equally dangerous; this much should be obvious to anyone. At least here no one knew me, or knew I was any different from them. No one even looked in my direction. I found a safe, silent cushion and sat.