Ten fingers coil around my calf, gently folding my leg in half and bringing my knee to my nose. I want her to push harder, press the entire weight of her body on top of me until my hip dislocates. But to my disappointment, she relaxes, and I am able to take yet another breath.

The bun plastered to the top of my head forces my neck into an uncomfortable angle, so once Feather is optimally distracted stretching another self-proclaimed yogi, I shift to the right, resting my cheek on the damp towel, and sliver my eyes open. The woman two inches beside me has long brown hair threaded into a choppy braid and a small bicycle tattooed to the nape of her neck. I’d fixated on her a few times during class—the way her skin softened below her sports bra, how the excess pinched together on each side during Triangle Pose but held its shape in a plank. The way some coarse dark hair poked out from her shorts during Happy Baby. I never thought I’d be the kind of person to work out in a sports bra—or take part in any fad-based exercise cult in the first place—but here I am, just like her, in an overpriced Lululemon set picked fresh for the season like summer tomatoes in the Hamptons.

The woman’s eyes open and she smiles, idly, when she sees I’m looking at her. Her teeth are yellowed in that way everyone’s are, but her forehead holds not one wrinkle. She’s paid good money to look like she’s never worried about anything in her life. My first instinct is to avert my eyes, but instead I smile back. I’ve learned that’s what you’re supposed to do. Then she closes her eyes again, just as Feather tolls the last bell, finally relieving me from this compulsory calm.

Rather than follow the herd of half naked four-packs to the showers, I make my way down the mood-lit hallway to drop my damp towel into the linen collection basket. Then I move into the mat section, attempting to clean mine with an unidentifiable substance simply labeled “mat cleaner” in that half-assed way one cleans knowing someone else will come in and do a better job shortly.

A petite and stout woman in bleach-white scrubs appears from a room across the hall, like a ghost. I think it’s the laundry room, which we’re not supposed to know exists. All that stuff is meant to happen in the shadows, when classes are in session so they can maintain the secret that there are women who aren’t twenty-eight, five foot eleven, and a size two who exist in the world without paying hundreds of dollars to try and change themselves. There’s an image to uphold here, after all.