Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  “Well,” Jennifer Crawford said, leaning forward in the manner of someone about to impart sensitive information. Deena leaned in nearer. “I have it on good authority”—she dropped her voice to a confidential whisper—“that Clara might be going on Good Day, USA.”

  “Get out!” Deena cried, smacking Jennifer Crawford playfully on the shoulder.

  “Whoa,” I said. I reached a shaking hand for my mug to rinse the distaste from my mouth. “Really? When?”

  “Don’t know,” Jennifer Crawford said. “Next week maybe? But I heard she and her mom have been talking to one of their producers.”

  “Who told you?” Deena asked, leaning forward on her elbows.

  “Yeah,” I said. “How do you know?”

  “The Other Jennifer told me,” she said, shrugging. “She was there when Clara and her mom were on a conference call with the TV people.”

  “No way,” I said, leaning back with my arms wrapped over my belly. “No way are they going on Good Day, USA.”

  “It’s true. The Other Jennifer might get to go on, too, she said.”

  “Why would she even be telling you this? You guys had a huge fight! You don’t even talk to her!”

  Jennifer Crawford pursed her lips. “You don’t know everything, Colleen. We talk sometimes. Like you and I do. I talk to a lot of people.”

  I flushed, ashamed of myself. It was true, Jennifer Crawford and I talked more in AP US than anywhere else. I’d be more likely to talk with her outside of school than in advisory. I didn’t know why that was, but I could admit that it was true. Guess I wasn’t the only hypocrite at St. Joan’s Academy.

  “That’s wild,” Deena said. “Good Day, USA. My mom watches that every morning.”

  “This can’t be happening,” I moaned, leaning forward and resting my cheek on the table. I closed my eyes. “I just want it all to go away.”

  “Come on.” Jennifer Crawford laughed. “It’s awesome. Maybe they’ll come to the school to film and we’ll all get famous.”

  “I don’t want to get famous,” I groaned into the tabletop. “I want everything to go back to normal.”

  “Me too,” said Emma. “Hey, Jennifer.”

  “Hey.” Jennifer Crawford nodded hello as Emma sat back down.

  I hadn’t heard her come back. My head shot up from the table and I stared at her. She seemed flushed, but okay. Glassy. Like one of her dolls. She kept her eyes on the table, slipping her knuckle wart absently into her mouth.

  “You get your rec letter?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice careful.

  “What?” Emma said, pulling the knuckle out of her mouth without looking at me. “Oh, yeah. Sure. He said he was sorry it was taking so long.”

  “Huh.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t want to be famous?” Jennifer Crawford asked, not noticing my careful examination of Emma. “Everyone wants to be famous.”

  “Not me,” Emma said. Her eyes kept darting to Mr. Mitchell’s table, and when they landed there, her flush deepened.

  “I don’t think I’d mind,” Deena mused, also oblivious to what had just happened outside. “I think I’d be pretty good at being famous.”

  “Would you still hang out with us little people?” I smiled at her.

  “You? Oh, yeah. You guys could be in my entourage. I’d let you carry my luggage.”

  “Oooooh!” Emma grinned. Her eyelids fluttered, and it occurred to me that maybe they hadn’t had an argument after all. “Aren’t we lucky?”

  “I won’t carry your luggage,” I said, resting my cheek back down on the table, watching Emma’s face from my vantage point on the tabletop. There was beard burn along her chin. “I’ll only be in the entourage if I get to carry your goldfish bowl everywhere. Like in the limo. Like you won’t do any appearances without your goldfish.”

  “Of course,” Deena agreed. “The goldfish is nonnegotiable. And he only gets fresh, organic fish food.”

  “I’m definitely going to be famous,” Jennifer Crawford remarked. “No question.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. I have to figure it out. That’s why it would be awesome if Good Day, USA came to St. Joan’s. It’d be, like, a shortcut. I’d get discovered.”

  “Ha,” I said. “Clara’d get discovered, you mean.”

  “Clara’s not so special,” Jennifer Crawford said airily. “Once this all blows over, she’ll disappear. You’ll see.”

  Emma reached for her beret. She kicked me under the table with a foot and smiled.

  “Maybe,” I said, also starting to pull on my winter stuff.

  Deena saw us getting ready to go with a look of relief. Maybe she really was worried about her problem set.

  “Well,” Emma said, getting to her feet. “We’ve got to get going. Deena has to get home.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer Crawford said, covering her disappointment with breezy acceptance. “See you guys tomorrow.”

  “Not me,” Emma corrected her. “Them, though.”

  “Bye, Jennifer,” Deena and I said. Deena gave her a quick hug and I waved.

  She waved back, and turned her attention to Emma’s castoff muffin paper. She did a good job of seeming not to care that we were leaving.

  We piled back into Deena’s car, boots and scarves and jackets in a heap and our breath puffing out in clouds of vapor around our heads, steaming up the inside of the car windows.

  “Home?” Deena asked as she started to back out of her parking spot.

  “Nope,” Emma said. Her cheeks were glowing, and she had the tiniest, most mysterious Mona Lisa of smiles on her face. “We’ve got one stop to make first.”

  “Emma,” Deena said in a warning tone.

  “You’ll love it. I promise. Turn left up here.”

  Emma had taken the front seat, with me in the back, and I enjoyed feeling warm inside my coat, not having to give directions or know where we were going. I was thinking about Jennifer Crawford’s plans for fame, and about Emma and Mr. Mitchell.

  Tad.

  How did that start, I wondered.

  How does it ever?

  Chapter 18

  DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

  TUESDAY, VALENTINE’S DAY, 2012

  We rolled to a stop in a large parking lot by an undistinguished building that I’d passed every day for most of my life—a complex of medical offices and dentists and physical therapists all collected under the impossible name of Our Lady of the Inquisitor Medical and Ambulatory Care Center.

  Emma was tapping quickly on her phone.

  “Okay,” she said. “Come on, we don’t have a ton of time.”

  Deena and I exchanged a look in the rearview mirror.

  “What’s going on, Emma?” Deena asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “What are we doing here?”

  “Trust me,” Emma said, and her Mona Lisa smile opened up and spread over her whole face, causing her pale eyes to sparkle strangely. “Come on. Hurry up!”

  Emma hustled us out of Deena’s car and across the parking lot and through a set of sliding glass doors. The lobby of Our Lady of the Inquisitor smelled antiseptic and creepy, and there was this dead ficus in the corner that looked really twisted, like a malformed skeleton.

  Emma had her eyes glued to her phone, and Deena and I drew together out of instinctive discomfort, linking our arms as if beasts were going to leap out of the shadows and tear us apart.

  “I don’t like this,” Deena whispered to me out of Emma’s earshot. “She’s acting weird.”

  “It’s fine,” I whispered back. “You just hate surprises.”

  “I do hate surprises.” Deena frowned. “Like, a lot.”

  We crept forward together, following Emma, who seemed to know exactly where she was going. There was a lone security guard at the reception desk who g
lanced at us as we passed. Nobody was waiting in the lobby. We started down a long institutional corridor, the only movement besides us coming from a sagging silver Mylar balloon with a ragged string, tacking listlessly against an air vent near the ceiling. GET WELL SOON was printed on its side.

  We rounded another corner and spotted a white-coated woman at the far end of the hallway, leaning against the back of a waiting room chair and also looking at her cell phone. At the sound of our footsteps the doctor glanced up and beamed a huge smile.

  “Girls!” Dr. Gupta cried, folding us into a hug much bigger than I would expect from a woman as petite as she is. She had a musical British Indian accent that I secretly tried to imitate when I was home by myself. I’d never been able to get it right.

  “I didn’t tell them,” Emma said from inside Dr. Gupta’s ponytail. “They have no idea.”

  Dr. Gupta stood back, one hand on my shoulder and one on Deena’s.

  “Perfect, that’s perfect,” she said. “Anjali will be so surprised. She hasn’t seen anyone but Jason in days. Come! I’ll take you.”

  Deena and I exchanged one of our instantaneous, communicative looks. Jason? We didn’t have time to go any further than that, because Dr. Gupta took us in to see Anjali.

  She was sitting up in bed in a private room, decorated with flowers and some stuffed bears and a balloon bouquet that might have been short one silver Mylar member. Anjali looked like her usual self. She even had on her pajamas covered in cartoon manatees, which I remembered from a sleepover we’d had last year.

  “Hi hi!” she said from the bed, waving in jazz-hands excitement.

  Deena and I squealed and went in for a hug. Emma stood off to the side looking pleased with herself.

  “Oh my God! Anjali!” I said, but I may have shouted, because Dr. Gupta put a gentle fingertip to her lips.

  “Are you okay?” Deena spoke at the same time as me. “Why didn’t you text us back? We’ve been so worried! Tell her how worried we’ve been.”

  “We’ve been worried,” I confirmed.

  “I know, you guys, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s just that my mom took my phone”—she shot Dr. Gupta a dirty look, but Anjali’s mom just laughed—“’cause she said it was most important that I get lots of rest and not excite myself. She only let me text Jason once and that was it.”

  “Dumbass,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Colleen!” Emma whispered.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But I mean, he could’ve, like, called us. We’ve been freaking out!”

  “But how did Emma know where you were?” Deena asked.

  “I ran into Jason yesterday,” Emma said. “At the café with some people. He’s really not that bad, you know.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  Okay, maybe he wasn’t that bad. For a yo-boy.

  “So are you okay? What happened?” I asked, climbing into bed next to Anjali as Deena and Emma piled onto her feet.

  “I’ll let you girls catch up,” Dr. Gupta said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. But Anjali—”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t overtire yourself. You need your rest. The girls can stay for only fifteen minutes or so, and then they’ll have to go so you can sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  Dr. Gupta gave Anjali the universal I-mean-it look that all mothers give their daughters, and then slipped out. The door clicked closed behind her.

  “ANJALI!” I hollered. “What happened?”

  “Oh my God. You guys. It was crazy.”

  “Do you have the Mystery Illness?” Deena asked. “Or something else?”

  “Umm . . .” Anjali thought. “I don’t really know. My mom’s running some tests.”

  “Like what kind of tests?” we demanded.

  “Blood tests? I don’t know. For, like, poison, I think? I’m not sure.”

  “Poison! Like, cyanide or something?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. She’s not sure yet.”

  “But you haven’t told us what happened.”

  “Okay, so, I was at home,” Anjali said. “Just like normal.”

  “When?” we wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. Couple weeks ago.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I was working on a problem set for physics, and I was almost done, and then I was going to revise my paper for AP English when I started getting this really weird headache.”

  “Like a migraine?” we asked.

  “No. I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never had a migraine, so I’m not sure. Just like really intense, like it was drilling into my brain, right in the center of my forehead, like into my third eye.”

  “Crazy,” we breathed.

  “So I lay down for a while, thinking, Okay, maybe I’m just really tense, I’ve been working really hard, waiting on colleges and everything.”

  “Sure,” we all agreed.

  “And then, I started to cough. I rolled onto my side and I just hacked like you wouldn’t believe. That’s when my mom came in. I was coughing so loud, Mom could hear me all the way downstairs. Then there was this really intense coughing fit, and some stuff came up. It was really nasty.”

  “Stuff?” we asked. “What kind of stuff?”

  “Um.” Anjali took a hank of her hair and coiled it around a finger. “I’d rather not say. It was really disgusting.”

  “What was it, like, blood or something?”

  “Um.” Anjali frowned. “No. No, nothing like that. It was weird.”

  “We don’t understand,” we protested. “Was it bile? Did you vomit?”

  Anjali drew up her knees. “Um. It wasn’t . . . liquid. Exactly. That was the weirdest part. That was when my mom took me to the hospital.”

  “What, did you have, like, a hairball or something?” we teased.

  But she didn’t laugh.

  “No. It actually looked kind of . . . sharp. It was like this little wet lump of stuff. Like fish bones, but all caught up in a ball. And kind of metallic, almost. Like fish bones, but different.”

  “Ew,” we said, grimacing at the thought. “Did it hurt?”

  “Yeah,” Anjali said. “It hurt a lot. And after it came up, I was bleeding and stuff, like it had raked my trachea on the way up. It was really awful. I was super-scared. My mom bundled me up and drove me straight here. It was the closest hospital, and she’s got privileges here, so that’s where we came. And I’ve been here ever since. But I think I can go home pretty soon.”

  “Have you been twitching, like Clara and them?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I just get this awful headache, and then the coughing.”

  “You mean the fish bones keep coming up?” we asked, aghast.

  “Yeah,” Anjali said. “About once a day. I’ll hack and hack and hack, and then I’ll spit out this weird fish-bony ball. It’s definitely not bones, though. You know how I hate fish.”

  “It could still be the Mystery Illness,” I said. “Look at the Other Jennifer. She lost all her hair. That hasn’t happened to anyone else.”

  “That’s true,” Deena said. “When you come right down to it, everyone we know has different symptoms. They don’t even look like the same thing at all, actually.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Clara’s the only one who really can’t talk, right? Elizabeth pretty much only has it in her legs. Jennifer lost her hair.”

  “Leigh is vibrating,” Deena added. “Did you see her on television? That was crazy.”

  “What?” Anjali asked. “I haven’t heard any of this. Leigh Carruthers?”

  “Oh, yeah. She and her mom went on TV. This Is Danvers.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You should see the school. Every day we have to fight through reporters.”

  “Holy cow.”

>   “And now Jennifer Crawford says that Clara might be going on Good Day, USA,” I added.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Twenty-seven people,” Emma said from her perch near Anjali’s feet. “That’s the last number I heard.”

  “Does your mom think it’s PANDAS, too?”

  “PANDAS? What’s that?”

  “Um. It’s an acronym. Pediatric . . . Autoimmune . . .”

  “Neurological Disorder And Stuff,” Deena finished for me. We laughed.

  “But what does it mean?”

  “Basically,” I said, “some kids, after they have strep throat, a few months later go on to develop weird tics and things. Like OCD. A lot like what Clara has. Nurse Hocking and this infectious disease doctor went on TV and said that’s what it was.”

  “It’s not PANDAS,” Dr. Gupta said from the doorway.

  We jumped. We hadn’t heard her come back.

  “It’s not?” we asked.

  “Definitely not, no. It was very irresponsible of Dr. Strayed to say it was.”

  “But how do you know?” we asked Anjali’s mom. She pulled up a rolling hospital chair next to her daughter’s bed and smoothed Anjali’s hair away from her forehead.

  “Couldn’t it just be, like, a mutation?” Deena asked. “Some variety of strep they haven’t seen before?”

  “No, Deena. I don’t think so. For one thing, PANDAS isn’t exactly a disease, you know. Not the way you’re talking about it. It’s more of a catchall term used to describe a constellation of symptoms that can’t be explained any other way. It’s a little like saying that the universe is made up of puppies, ice cream, and everything else. That’s true, technically, but putting it that way puts too much importance on puppies and ice cream, and it doesn’t actually clarify much about the universe.”

  Dr. Gupta checked to see if we were following, but she saw that we weren’t really.

  “PANDAS doesn’t appear in the DSM, the diagnostic manual all doctors use to identify diseases,” she explained. “Some doctors aren’t comfortable even using the term, as the causal relationship between a streptococcus infection and the tic behaviors hasn’t been proven. It’s not a disease at all, in the classical sense. It’s just a hypothesis. A fancy set of words.”