Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  “Ready?” Ms. Slater asked, her eyes on the clock.

  With a nauseating certainty I knew.

  I wasn’t.

  “Begin.”

  Chapter 8

  DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2012

  Nobody said anything when Michael, earbuds still in his ears, wearing a huge parka that had belonged to Dad, climbed in next to me in the back of our station wagon that night. My brother is a skinny, pale kid, his hair a mushroom of dark curls on top of his head, and his shirt collars never seem to fit him right. Huge feet, though. My father insists he’ll be playing for the Celtics by the time he’s twenty.

  “Where’s Wheez?” I asked as my father backed our creaking station wagon out of the driveway, flattening the crust of plowed snow at the edge of the street. The car fishtailed in the slush and then righted itself, as though working from muscle memory.

  “She’s at a friend’s,” my mother said. “She’ll stay the night.”

  “On a school night? You’d never’ve let me sleep over on a school night in a million years,” I pointed out.

  I liked reminding my parents of the diminishing returns of their parenting as their family expanded. And they liked suggesting that I’d just worn them out.

  “They didn’t want her to get scared,” Michael said to me, in a voice so quiet I almost thought my parents wouldn’t be able to hear.

  “It’s not . . .”

  I started to say, “It’s not that big a deal,” to dismiss whatever they were worried about, to make it sound stupid that Louisa might be scared. Okay, so Clara hadn’t been back in school yet, but I’d heard very definite rumors that she would be back tomorrow, and so would her minions. She wasn’t even sick, not really. She’d just had a bad reaction to a vaccine. What had been a theory at school in the morning had solidified into fact, at least within my own self. My certainty was aided by the knowledge that I’d had all three of the HPV shots, like, two years ago. No way was any of that going to happen to me.

  But as I looked at my brother, streetlights flashing over his face as we trundled through the snow to the St. Joan’s campus, I thought better of it. He was scowling, and his arms were knitted over his chest, folding himself deep into the parka.

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t have,” my mother agreed from the front seat. “But Louisa isn’t you.”

  “Well, thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I leaned my forehead on the window and stared through the night as house after house rolled past, polite clapboarded ones with historical plaques by their front doors, petering out to self-important Victorians, the thick frosting of snow making them look like gingerbread houses built by witches to lure lost children in from the woods.

  Incredibly, there wasn’t a single news van parked in front of the school. I’d thought someone would have slipped up and talked to them, but apparently not. Or at least I’d thought TJ Wadsworth would have been staking the place out, sleeping in the news van with one eye open. But we made it from the parking lot through the Gothic front doors without incident—no cameras, no shouted questions, just the silent gargoyles rubbing their claws together as we passed. I let myself feel a glimmer of relief. I thought maybe they were calling everyone together to tell us that whatever it was was already over.

  Was I ever wrong.

  The scene inside the chapel hovered on the knife edge of bedlam. Girls and their parents and their siblings all crammed together, everyone wanting to find seats together and nobody able to do it. We located Emma and her mom right away. We hardly ever saw Mrs. Blackburn. She was like Emma, pale and blond, but she’d grown almost transparent with age, like one of the faded nun photographs hanging forgotten in the darkest wing of the upper school. She didn’t go to school events, on account of her migraines, or even leave the house all that much. Emma waved at me but didn’t make a move to bring her mom over to say hello.

  We spotted Anjali, who had Dr. Gupta with her, but not her dad—he was on a business trip to Jakarta, which is exactly the kind of glamorous thing that he was always doing. Deena was there with her dad, who shook hands with mine and said, “Hey, Mike, long time.” Jennifer Crawford scowled from a corner while her mother, an aging debutante type in pearls and a twinset, wrapped a loving arm around her pink-haired daughter’s shoulders and whispered in her ear. Fabiana stood off to one side with an intense look on her face, speaking a language I didn’t understand with a woman I initially took to be her sister. They moved their hands the same way, and they were exactly the same height. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Fabiana’s mom was barely twenty years old. Leigh Carruthers hung on her mother in the center of the room while Kathy Carruthers recounted her television appearance to a knot of other listening mothers. Leigh gazed with worshipful eyes into her mother’s face, ignored.

  “. . . better give us some answers,” Kathy Carruthers was saying. “I swear, they will if they know what’s good for them. If they don’t, we’re going to take it to the next level, you see if we won’t. I’ve been getting a lot of calls.”

  When she said that last part, she raised her eyebrows, or at least, I thought that’s what she was trying to do. The Botox made it so all she could do was widen her eyes until they bulged.

  “A lot. Of calls,” she said again.

  The women bunched around Mrs. Carruthers all chattered and nodded, a buzzing hive of plotting and scheming and planning to take it to the next level, whatever that meant.

  What really surprised me most, though, was the presence of Clara Rutherford.

  Yep. Clara.

  She floated near the front of the chapel, not far from the lectern, sweetly dressed in a soft pink cardigan and skirt. She was flanked by her parents, each of them holding on to one of her elbows. A void yawned around the three of them. No one crowded in. No one buzzed too close. If it was possible, Clara looked more noble than ever, even though every couple of minutes her head flung itself backward and she let out a sharp cry that sounded like “Tzt tzt tzt HA!”

  The Other Jennifer was also there with her parents, and so was Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s mom surprised me—I didn’t remember ever seeing her before. Elizabeth was pretty athletic, doing field hockey and stuff, and I thought she also rode horses. But her mom was this tiny wisp of a woman, wraithlike, her face drawn with worry. We all feasted on the reason why: Elizabeth was in a wheelchair, her wrists drawn up under her chin, contorted with tension, her mouth flapping open and shut, and her eyes kept drifting up to the chapel ceiling. Elizabeth’s mom’s hands gripped the wheelchair handles as if she needed them to hold herself up, too.

  “Thank you!” the upper school dean blared into the microphone. “Parents! Students! If I might have your attention, please.”

  Our voices lowered without stopping while family clusters started moving into pews.

  “Thank you!” the dean said again. “If you all could find your seats, we promise not to take up too much of your time.”

  “God, I hope not,” my mother muttered. “Michael? Come over here, please.”

  My brother loitered near my father’s shoulder, staring at Elizabeth.

  “Mikey, come on,” I said, poking him. Usually he was better than that.

  “Sorry,” he said, looking first at his feet and then at nothing in the exact opposite direction from Elizabeth, Clara, and the Other Jennifer.

  “Jeez. Way to stare. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  I liked Michael most of the time, but he could be a real pain in the ass. He had the subtle ability to sow discord in our family, in ways that I sometimes didn’t figure out until days later. Stuff of mine would disappear, I’d blame Wheez, there’d be a huge door-slamming fight, my mother would yell at me for yelling at Wheez, and a week later my stuff would reappear and Michael would be looking smug at
the breakfast table.

  My mother grasped his parka sleeve and moved him bodily to stand next to her.

  “Come on,” she hissed. “Let’s sit down.”

  The pews were filling up, so there wasn’t room for all four of us to sit together. My mother parked Michael in a pew with a glare, and my father took my elbow.

  “Come on, Colliewog,” he said, more gently than I expected. “I’ve got us some seats over here.”

  Clara and her parents settled into the seats of honor in the front pew, with the Other Jennifer and Elizabeth flanking them. They were all still wearing the same elegant low ponytails tied with black ribbon. So Clara.

  The upper school dean cleared her throat, and started to say, “Mary, Queen of Knowledge, pray for us,” but was interrupted by Clara going, “TZT TZT HA!”

  An awkward silence settled upon the senior class, and we all looked at our hands in our laps so that we wouldn’t stare at her, which is what we wanted to do.

  “Now then,” the dean said, visibly flustered. “We’d like to thank you all for taking the time to join us this evening. I know a lot of you have concerns about what’s been happening to some of our girls, particularly after that unfortunate and inaccurate news report. The administration is meeting privately with the teachers so that everyone is prepared to offer your children the support they most need, on an individual level, as we move past these concerns. As you can see, our three special girls are here this evening, and I, for one, would like to give them a round of applause. We’re so glad to have them safely back in the St. Joan’s community.”

  She beamed a thoroughly insupportable smile and started clapping her hands. The noise boomed through the microphone, each clap an explosion with a corona of feedback. We all looked at each other in the pews, and then slowly joined her in a halfhearted clap. Several of the parents sat, staring in disbelief.

  After a minute of overly vigorous clapping the dean discovered that we had all stopped, so she stopped, too. A nervous frown fled across her face, and she said, “I’ve asked the school nurse to say a few words.”

  Nurse Hocking got up, with her new white coat on, and her tasteful makeup that she never used to wear. I glanced sideways at my dad and saw his eyebrows low over his eyes. In the pew in front of us, I spied Emma’s mom hunched forward as though she were in pain, massaging her temples with her fingertips.

  “Tzt tzt HA HA HA!” Clara cried. Some of us may have snickered, but if so, we kept it pretty well under wraps, especially when our parents shushed us.

  “Good evening, everyone,” Nurse Hocking said. “Girls,” she addressed herself to the front pew, “it’s such a pleasure to see you all looking so well. And I’m delighted to be able to tell your classmates that you’ll all be back in school tomorrow.”

  We gasped, and glances were exchanged. Some of us exclaimed that this was awesome. Others of us wondered under our breaths if that was really safe, since they hadn’t told us what was going on yet, not really. What if it was contagious? But the nurse had started clapping again, farther away from the microphone, and so we all joined in, and eventually the applause started to feel genuine, like we all got swept up in a feeling of relief that they were okay, and the proof was that they’d be back in school tomorrow and everything would go back to normal.

  When the clapping died down, everyone was smiling and parents were hugging their children to their chests. Nurse Hocking had a huge grin on her face, and gradually we all turned our attention back to her.

  “Now, we also wanted to let you parents know that over the next couple of days we’ll be talking with every member of the senior class, just so we can make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”

  A hand shot up, and a father called out, “Talking with them about what?”

  The nurse nodded and said, “We’ll be asking them a few questions for their medical files. Every year we ask you all to share your children’s pediatric records so we can keep track of their immunizations and health history. Totally confidential, of course. The administration has decided that we can best protect your daughters if we gather just a little more information. So we’d like to take a minute and talk to everyone. Everything will be held in complete confidence, and it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

  Another hand shot up. Kathy Carruthers. Of course.

  “Why haven’t you told us what’s the matter with them? Is it really that sex vaccine? We have a right to know!”

  Nurse Hocking’s smile grew tighter, but it didn’t budge from her face.

  “Thank you. As I’ve just said, all medical information collected about our students is kept strictly confidential. That means we aren’t at liberty to share the specifics of the girls’ diagnosis with you. But the important thing is, they’re doing just fine, and we’re doing everything in our power to keep our students safe. Thank you all so much for coming, and we’ll see you at school tomorrow!”

  For an agonizing minute the chapel sat frozen in silence.

  A few people shifted as if they were going to stand up, but no one wanted to be the first. Is that it? I guess that’s it. We pushed back dinner for this? Ridiculous.

  A shuffling of feet as everyone gradually stood, murmuring, pulling car keys from pockets, climbing into coats.

  Dad glanced down at me and said, “Guess you’ll be talking to the nurse, then.”

  “Huh,” I said. “I guess.” My stomach rolled over uneasily. What could they possibly want to know? Why hadn’t they said what was wrong?

  I spotted Emma steering her mother to the side door, away from the milling crowd of parents and girls. Mrs. Blackburn looked stricken. I reached forward to pluck at Emma’s sleeve, but my hand only grabbed thin air.

  I felt Michael’s hand clutch my arm through my coat sleeve.

  “Why didn’t they tell us what’s happening, Colleen?” he whispered to me, his eyes wide with panic.

  “I don’t know, Mikey,” I whispered back. I put my arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer. “I just don’t know.”

  Chapter 9

  DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2012

  It was a very formal e-mail. Too formal for before breakfast.

  Dear Ms. Rowley,

  Greetings. I am the Harvard alumna who has been assigned to conduct your admissions interview. I will be meeting with prospective students in forty-five-minute appointments at the Dado Tea House in Harvard Square this Saturday and Sunday between 2:00 and 5:00. Please inform me which of these blocks of time will be convenient for our interview.

  It is not necessary to bring a curriculum vitae or transcript, as we have that information already, but you should come dressed appropriately and prepared to discuss your accomplishments at St. Joan’s.

  I may be reached at this address, or through my assistant at the phone number listed below.

  Cordially,

  Judith Pennepacker, H’99

  Crap. As I read the e-mail, I felt my heart rate rise and my palms grow damp.

  I stood up.

  Then I sat down again.

  I lifted my fingers to the laptop keyboard.

  Then I put them back in my lap.

  If I wrote back right away, would I look too eager? But what if I waited until study hall, or after school? She might think I was making her wait. Judith Pennepacker didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would look too kindly on being made to wait.

  Curious, I entered her name into Google to see what I could find out. That was a pretty weird last name, so I thought I’d find something.

  Sure enough, I found a Facebook page, featuring a formal profile photograph of a woman in a business suit with serious eyeglasses and hair parted in the middle, smiling like she was ready to eat my entire family for a snack and pick her teeth with our toenails. I also found that she happened to share her last name with one of the oldes
t freshman dorms at Harvard University.

  Awesome. Just really, really great. This wasn’t intimidating at all.

  Dear Ms. Pennepacker, I began. Good start.

  Thank you so much for your e-mail. I am so looking forward to meeting you and having the opportunity to learn more about Harvard from an alumna such as yourself.

  Such as yourself?

  Such as you?

  Like you?

  Crap.

  Backspace, backspace.

  Thank you so much for your e-mail. I am so looking forward to meeting you and learning more about Harvard.

  Better.

  Okay. Now, what time should I ask to go? Did I want to be the first interview, or the last? I bet that if I were the last one, she was going to be tired and grumpy. Right? But if I was the very first, she might talk to someone completely amazing later on that day and then forget all about me. I wanted to be fresh in her mind, right? Right. Okay. So let’s say . . . Sunday. Second interview, Sunday. Yes. That should be good.

  Would it be possible for me to meet you at 3:00 on Sunday? Sincerely yours, Colleen Rowley

  I hunched over the keyboard, staring at the e-mail, thinking. I backspaced again.

  Yours truly, Colleen Rowley

  No, no. That’s stupid. I’m not hers, truly or otherwise. I’ve never even met her before.

  Backspace.

  Sincerely, Colleen Rowley

  Satisfied, I sat back in my chair, staring at the e-mail for a full five minutes.

  “Colleen!” my mother hollered up the stairs, breaking my concentration. “Your dad’s ready to leave! Hurry it up!”

  “Okay, okay!” I hollered back.

  I reread the e-mail one last time. This interview could be life-changing. I’d applied early to Williams and Dartmouth, but they’d both deferred me. That just about ruined Christmas, I’m not going to lie. Reach schools. I mean, I’d had a shot, but they’re reaches for everyone. My parents pointed out that a deferral wasn’t the same as a rejection, but that was exactly the kind of thing parents were supposed to say. Deferral is just rejection for kids with high self-esteem, I told them. Then they tried a different tack, suggesting that if I’d gotten in early decision, I’d be locked into one place, without having the option to choose.