Without anything else to do, I sat on the bench in the garden and waited for him to return. After a while, I lit a cigarette. I had been carrying around a pack of Serena’s for a few days; they were squashed and loose from my pocket. I didn’t mind. I was trying to get addicted to them. I had heard so much about addiction, that furious body craving that had spawned an industry of patches and psychotherapies, but the feeling eluded me. I didn’t know what it was to want something that way, in the cells. (Didn’t I?) I wanted to want that way, and to satisfy my want, and to want again. I was getting closer: the smell of the smoke made me think of the black sand. I lay back on the bench and closed my eyes.

Serena wanted to escape the role of the slit-open damsel, that was clear. But it wasn’t only that. I understood it now, the smoke piling around my face, the nicotine turning my stomach, her body twirling behind my eyelids. She wanted to be the robed men. She wanted to wield the knife, pour the sand. She wanted to say who was a beautiful girl, and what that meant we had to do. Lightness was antidote, perhaps—but it was also the flaming sword.

Serena would not wait, if she were here. Serena would act. I stood and walked around the perimeter of the garden, toe to heel. I touched the red door of the shed, still too shiny. I pushed it open. Inside there was nothing but tools and bags of soil. I touched everything, just to be sure, like checking teeth. Then I went out through the gate and around to the back of the fence, where a little matted path revealed itself. I had seen Luke walking from this direction on days he’d arrived late to rota. I thought he must live somewhere down that path. I had told no one about this, not even Serena, though I’d considered reporting it to Nisha, who still believed he lived “nowhere.”

Without really thinking about it, I started walking. Why not? The trees rose up enormous around me almost immediately, and after only a few minutes, I might have been in the middle of an ancient forest, nowhere near a clearing of any kind, never mind a whole meditation center crawling with teenage girls. The change in temperature was almost shocking, like jumping off a pier. But I was not afraid. My body did not resist. I kept walking, and eventually, a small cabin materialized before me. It was the kind of structure that told you nothing at all about a person: simple, wooden, the inside hidden by old floral curtains that might have been hanging in the windows for decades. An ax leaned against the side of the house. Faded prayer flags fluttered from the eaves.

I knocked.