The first morning of Lennon’s new life as a student at Drayton dawned without pomp or ceremony. Lennon woke in the wee hours of early dawn, hungover, feeling like she had lead for bones. Upon dragging herself out of bed, Lennon discovered that Blaine was already gone, her bed neatly made, the sheets folded into crisp hospital creases at every corner, the pillows fluffed. She must’ve left much earlier, or perhaps she’d never come back the night before.

Hastily, Lennon brushed her teeth (she didn’t have time for a shower), dressed, then left Ethos Hall a full half hour later than she’d intended to, and had to tramp through the gardens, the ground soft from yesterday’s storms, mud sucking at her brand-new loafers as she cut across the campus greens to make up time. The conservatory, which Lennon had initially assumed was a garden, was actually a large wooden overhang on the far western side of campus. It had a flat roof, surprisingly low, and all four of its wooden walls were open to the outdoors. It was striking, and one of the few modern structures on campus.

Lennon arrived only three minutes late, but the rest of her classmates were already there. There were eleven students total, sitting cross-legged on thin pillows arranged in a wide circle. Standing at the center of that circle was a tall woman she took for Dr. Lund, her professor. She was the opposite of what Lennon expected her to be. The image of “professor of meditation” brought to mind tousled hair, prayer beads, and nose piercings. But Dr. Lund was smartly dressed, in a well-tailored three-piece tweed suit, with polished brown oxfords. Her hair was dark, and shaped into a blunt bob, not a strand out of place. Dr. Lund looked and spoke like someone who would wrinkle her nose at the mere mention of anything that related, even vaguely, to the New Age.

Dr. Lund didn’t pause her lecture, or so much as register Lennon with a passing glance as she nabbed the only empty pillow in the circle. “Traditional meditational studies emphasize mindfulness and acceptance, but here at Drayton we adopt a different approach to the practice. Our primary focus is control. Our aim, with these studies, is to teach you how to identify and interrogate your every emotion with the intention of giving you full governance of your mind.”

And the minds of others, Lennon wanted to add, but dared not say that aloud.

Ian raised his hand. “Will this teach us how to persuade people?”

A dozen eyes affixed themselves on the professor in anticipation of her answer.

Dr. Lund leveled an icy glare. “This is no place for persuasion, Ian. Should it be performed within the walls of this conservatory, it will result in your immediate expulsion from Drayton. While meditating, the mind is prone. It is a violation of the highest degree to breach a person in this vulnerable state. In time, you will learn to bolster the walls of your mind to defend against these invasions. It will be a difficult and at times sickening endeavor, but it is utterly imperative that you learn to do this. Am I clear?”

A chorus of yeses. People nodded their heads. But Ian, glowering, folded his arms across his chest. He looked as if something he was entitled to had been pried from his bony fingers.

“With that said, let’s begin.”

They were asked to close their eyes and imagine an empty room in need of furnishing. They were allowed to fill this room with the articles of their choosing, totems from their past, memorabilia, keepsakes, and bespoke items that brought them some semblance of comfort. “I will warn you that it is important to adopt a discerning and moderate approach to this curation. Senseless clutter is intolerable,” said Dr. Lund, and the insides of Lennon’s eyelids briefly went dark as the shadow of the professor slid past her.

Lennon was asked to imagine different objects, to turn them over in her mind, assess their shape, and determine whether or not they aligned with her vision of the space. The features of the room were to be considered too. Would rafters hold the ceilings aloft? Were the walls to be painted? Does the room have windows, and if so, how many? Are they shuttered or hung with curtains?

“Above all else, it is imperative that this room function as a sanctum. By the end of our studies this semester, it should appear more real to you than anything that exists in a three-dimensional space.”

Lennon cracked one eye open, frustrated. The task seemed, in that moment, impossible. Try as she might, she couldn’t contain her thoughts to the limits of the room. Its details kept changing, or opening out onto memories that flooded her mind, unbidden, no matter how hard she tried to stop them.

“Your homework over the next twenty-four hours is to furnish your room with three items of your choosing,” said Dr. Lund. “Be prepared to bring them to our next class and discuss them in detail. I’ll see you tomorrow at sunrise.”

After meditating, the spillover from the class dispersed themselves across the green, finding their way—dazed and a little dissociative—to a nearby courtyard, perhaps drawn by the scent of coffee wafting from it. Drayton was strange in that each college housed its own dining room, where meals could be taken throughout the day. In addition to this, there was a large central dining hall and several small cafes—or bistros, as the student body referred to them—housed in the cramped basements beneath buildings or in small kiosks scattered about campus, often found in remote or otherwise deserted places where few students ventured to go. Orchid, where Lennon found herself this morning, was one of these. A hole-in-the-wall coffee shop that operated out of a small courtyard that was otherwise abandoned. There were rusty wrought-iron tables and patio chairs scattered across the cobbled courtyard, and students filled them, gathered under the blue cathedral of the early-morning sky, sipping coffee and chewing on sandwiches, working their way through salads, and smoking slender clove cigarettes, which Lennon had quickly learned was one of the favored vices of Drayton’s students and faculty alike.

Lennon and her classmates gathered in the far corner of the courtyard, around a rickety bistro table that was far too small to accommodate the lot of them. Ian sat next to Lennon and beside him was a feeble girl with a crucifix around her neck who, halfway through their meditation, had begun to cry and was still wiping her swollen eyes by the time their coffee arrived. Her name—Lennon learned—was Nadine, and she was slight with slick black hair, which she wore in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. Nadine, as it turned out, had been an aspirant at a convent in Delaware prior to arriving at Drayton. She had felt called to live a monastic life since childhood and was about to become a postulant when she’d first received news of her admission at Drayton.

“I was in confession. The priest’s voice suddenly changed, and he told me that I’d be moving on to the next step of the admissions process. At first, I thought he was God talking to me, and then I thought he was the devil.”

“And what do you think now?” Blaine asked, sipping on an Americano. She’d had a different class that morning, but had joined their group when she spotted them crossing the campus.

“Now…I think this is a test,” said Nadine. “A test of faith, that is. I think God sent me here so I can serve him in a different way. For years, I thought I was called to take the veil. But now I see that’s not my path. I’m supposed to be here. I wasn’t chosen by this school. I was chosen by God.”

Across the table, Ian rolled his eyes and stubbed out his third cigarette of the morning. “So let me get this straight, you find out magic is real from a possessed priest, and you still believe in God?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling in that cautious, rapt way that girls often do when they have the attention of the guy they like. “My faith is even stronger now that the curtain’s been pulled back. I see so clearly that I’ve been blessed with a unique opportunity to touch the hearts of men, to make them understand the love of Jesus.”

“Is that what they told you all of this was about?” Ian asked, clearly disgusted. “Jesus?”

Nadine gave a little laugh, but it wasn’t that funny. “I mean, if not that, what, then? You heard from the vice-chancellor herself. John Drayton was a Quaker, a Christian.”

“Everyone was Christian back then,” said Blaine.

“He was also an abolitionist,” said Felix. He was a dusty blond from Montreal who spoke English with a French accent and had a small pride flag pinned to the lapel of his jacket. He’d been working at a center for gay youth in Canada before coming to Drayton. “I mean, surely that had to be a founding principle behind all of this. John wanted to free people with this power.”

Lennon raised an eyebrow. “Free people by controlling them? Does that even make sense?”

As it turned out, each of them had a very different idea about what exactly would ensue upon their graduation from Drayton. This was mostly because they’d all been told different things by their advisors. Ian’s advisor, Dr. Alec Becker, told him he’d be placed in a high-powered job of his choosing, with enough money to fund the lives of his children’s children. Nadine had been informed that she’d start a Catholic mission in India, where her mother had emigrated from, and a generous donation of more than fifty thousand dollars was made to the charity of her choice after she’d formally enrolled at the school. Other first years had been promised anything from congressional seats to tenured professorships at Drayton and anything in between.

Lennon, however, had been made no promises, a fact that she kept to herself out of sheer embarrassment. Why had she been offered nothing? Was her desperation to escape her former life that obvious to the admissions department? Did they know that anything—even a role as small as a secretarial position in Irvine Hall—would have been far more rewarding than the misery of her failing relationship with Wyatt and a life she was quite literally willing to die in order to escape?

“If this is a ruse, it’s an expensive one,” said Blaine, peeling apart the layers of a croissant. Something about this made her look a lot younger than she was, a little girl playing with her food. “The clothes they gave us are ridiculously well tailored. And clearly the professors are loaded. I mean, have you seen their offices? Eileen has two Eames chairs. I could almost understand one Eames chair. But two?”

“And let’s be honest,” said Ian, “we aren’t expensive. We got a wannabe nun, an aspiring actress, and a college dropout turned housewife.” Here he jabbed his thumb at Lennon. She’d told him about the particulars of her past life during the convocation party and, in that moment, sorely regretted her drunk self-disclosures. “Then there’s me, working at the convenience store. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but they could’ve lured me into an unmarked white van with the promise of free rent, beer, and a pack of cigarettes.”

That got a long, sad laugh out of the table. But they all knew he was right. In a conventional sense, none of them had been slated for particularly promising futures. They hadn’t graduated from Ivy Leagues or accomplished anything worthy of note. They weren’t moneyed or from the sorts of families that mattered.

“Is it possible that they’re right and that we are somehow…innately talented?” Lennon asked, and the table went suddenly very quiet. Perhaps they, like Lennon, hadn’t allowed themselves to fully consider this possibility until that very moment. “Maybe we do have some skill that all of the most brilliant people we know simply don’t? Maybe we are that special?”