Two weeks later Lucy and Isabelle were expelled and everyone in our entire dorm woke up to one-point violations on our boards. They said it was for association, whatever that means, but I took it as yet another warning. Your actions are important, but so are the actions of everyone around you. If your community messes up, everyone pays.

We’ve started our mornings praying for them ever since.

“Now bow your heads and close your eyes,” Brigid reminded us, still pacing the hallway in front of us. “Let us say the Lord’s Prayer for our friends and their sins...”

Everyone began whispering the Our Father, to themselves or to God or to both, the accumulated hush sounding like a waterfall.

For the past week I’d been tacking on an extra Our Father to the end of our session especially for Ruthie and me. For us and our sins.

Because Ruthie and I had acquired a lot of sins.

We had slipped right into our foresty friend group as if we were supposed to be there all along. If you saw the seven of us—in the dining hall, walking to class, sneaking drinks and smokes in the forest—you’d never know Ruthie and I were late additions. We blended right in.

Catherine was right. That was the key to not getting caught. If you play the game—study your lines, look the part—they have no reason not to trust you.

Ruthie and I stopped wearing makeup. We stopped straightening our hair and wearing jewelry, except for my mother’s necklace, which we all agreed helped sell our new personalities. I stopped borrowing her clothes—though they were the only ones that fit me at this point—and we both started digging through my closet every morning while we were getting ready for the day. Long skirts, tights, sweaters—modest options that took the Covenant Code’s dress code five times too seriously.

We almost exclusively ate egg whites and salads with grilled chicken so our numbers on the scale during our weekly weigh-ins stayed the same, even as we drank our weight in Bud Light and marshmallow-flavored Smirnoff a few days a week. When Ruthie and I got back from a jog together to check on our stash in the woods, Brigid greeted us in the lobby with such a massive smile on her face—“You guys work out together, too! You’re just a dream roommate example!”—that we started doing it every day. Not to the woods, but around campus and through town. As we started hanging out with the group more often, these runs became my favorite part of the day—unadulterated Ruthie and me time. No distractions. No other people. Just us.