Girl's Guide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky

much for my poor out-of-shape body. I staggered sideways, narrowly missing the woman on the next mat. I caught Melissa’s quick smile, but she smoothed it away when I glared at her.
    The instructor’s voice remained calm. She spoke to the entire class, but I knew her words were meant for me. “If you ever find an asana too challenging, remember that you can assume the Child’s Pose.”
    Sounded like a good idea to me. I folded myself onto my mat, sitting on my heels and stretching my arms in front of me. I tucked my head down and tried to focus on my breathing.
    Child’s Pose. I was a child. My mother’s child. My mother was still alive.
    Enough! Yoga was definitely not for me today. (Was it ever?) As the instructor started to move the class into a series of sun salutations, I rose up out of Child’s Pose. I collected my mat, not even bothering to roll it into a tight cylinder.
    Both the instructor and Melissa looked at me questioningly. “Cramp in my foot,” I said.
    The instructor started to offer me a bottle of the overpriced water that she sold from a minifridge at the back of the studio, but I shook my head and mouthed to Melissa, “I’ll wait in the hall.” She looked torn, but I shook my head. “Stay,” I enunciated silently.
    I limped out to the hallway, exaggerating my supposed foot cramp like a teenager trying to get out of gym class. I dropped the act as soon as I closed the studio door, and I slumped against the wall to wait for the dogs and warriors and children to finish up their class.
    I thought about lighting up a cigarette.
    I don’t actually smoke. I never have. I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes in my hair. But there have been times when I wanted a cigarette as a prop, as an image. I wanted to lean against the wall like a weary ballerina, staring down the hallway as I struggled to bear the burden of my recent knowledge. I would look wan and brave, with wisps of my hair just curling beside my high-cheekboned face. My collarbones would jut out like wings as my delicate wrist rose, as my lips pursed one last weary time to take a deep, mentholated drag, and the cigarette tip glowed vermilion in the darkening hallway.
    Yeah, right. I’d probably cough like a patient on a consumption ward, and my eyes would tear up, and my mascara would run.
    By the time Melissa joined me, I’d had time to select another vice.
    “Mojito therapy,” I said.
    “What?” Her face was flushed with her yogic success. She went on as if I hadn’t actually spoken. “I went from Bow to Camel today! I could feel the energy flowing through me, down my arms and legs, all at the same time!”
    I tried to remember which was Bow and which was Camel—I think that Melissa had just accomplished the back bends that the springy, popular girls had always shown off in third-grade gym class. I fought the urge to ask what Mary Lou Retton was doing these days, and I repeated, “Mojito therapy. Now.”
    Melissa finally heard the dire note behind my words. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Your foot wasn’t really cramping, was it?”
    I shook my head. “I’ll tell you all about it when we’ve got drinks in our hands. You’ve got limes? And mint?”
    “Of course.” Melissa shrugged and tossed her yoga mat over her shoulder. She’d rolled hers into a perfect cylinder and sheathed it in its nylon bag. I felt like a naughty preschooler beside her, too slovenly even to have picked up my toys. “Oh,” Melissa said. “I brought one of these for you.”
    She passed me a fluorescent-pink flyer. I recognized the logo for the yoga studio centered at the top of the sheet. In delicate script, the page announced a special weekend series on “hot yoga.” Participants were expected to bring their own towels (three, recommended) and water supply. I looked at Melissa for a long time before I crumpled the paper and crammed it into my bag. “You have got to be kidding.”
    “Rock, paper, scissors?”
    “No way.” She must have