Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  “Yes!” Tittibe screams. “Yes! The Devil tell me where the witches live! Some of them live in Boston and ride here in the night upon sticks! And some are right here in this town among us, but he wouldn’t tell me who they were. I tell you, the Devil he a liar, and he wouldn’t tell me who they were!”

  She collapses to her knees, sinking over to the side in a faint, her head lolling back on her shoulders, her hands still tied to the bar, the ropes biting into her skin. All the adults around me are screaming, “Here? They’re here? Who else are they? How do we find them?”

  Deep and miserable moaning fills my ears, ripping through my mind, and I cry out for it to stop, stop! Stop your moaning, I can’t listen anymore! I can’t! I can’t!

  Until I realize the moaning is coming from me.

  Chapter 22

  DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

  MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

  I was in study hall. I can’t believe I kept just going to class and doing my homework like everything was normal. After Friday’s assembly, what little remained of protocol at St. Joan’s Academy for Girls pretty much flew out the window. Dress code was observed haphazardly, or not at all. Teachers let class out early, or just had us read aloud from textbooks.

  Girls stopped showing up.

  Some of them never came back.

  When Clara and the others moved down the hallway, everyone whispered and pointed and fell back in awe, even teachers. They’d fallen sick, and when the school refused to help them, they’d brought in Bethany Witherspoon to find the solution. They radiated a kind of power that I found as baffling as it was irresistible. I fell back from them, too, in the halls. Even the fringe girls, the second-tier afflicted like Leigh and Anjali, had this aura about them. A sheen of specialness caused the air around them to shimmer. I felt it when I stood next to Anjali. She wasn’t acting any different, exactly, except for the coughing and the pins, but the difference was there. She had an authority that she’d never had before. She spoke in more declarative sentences. People listened.

  Emma wasn’t in, and I hadn’t heard anything from her all morning. Part of me wondered if she was sick, too, since rumor had it that the number had passed forty. Like the assembly had almost made it worse, somehow. Nobody could keep track of who had the Mystery Illness and who didn’t. But Clara’s verbal tics were back, and Jennifer’s scalp was once again hidden under a silk turban.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, so I decided I should just pretend like everything was okay. So that’s why I found myself in the library, alone except for a sleeping Jennifer Crawford, while everyone else was—where? Where were they? I didn’t know. Deena wasn’t in school that day either.

  Periodically a searchlight spun through the library clerestory windows, making me squint and causing Jennifer Crawford to snort in her sleep. The spotlight belonged to Bethany Witherspoon’s team doing God knows what. I didn’t know what a searchlight had to do with testing the groundwater for spilled chemicals. But they kept poking around with weird equipment, pausing every couple of hours to update the media on the front steps of the school.

  The Department of Public Health van still idled out front. None of us had heard from them, though. As far as we could tell, they weren’t doing anything except for rolling up all the plastic sheeting when we got to school that morning.

  So I was in the library, alone, working on my extra-credit paper, reading more of the Salem transcripts in the index of my history book, when it clicked.

  “Oh my God,” I said aloud.

  Nobody was there to hear me, and Jennifer Crawford didn’t wake up. I gathered all my books and papers and shoved them into my bag and sprinted out of the library, pulling out my phone as I ran.

  I was stunned when Spence actually answered, because he really hated talking on the phone. He thought it was weird, not being able to see the other person’s face.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “Spence!” I cried, skidding to a halt before I plunged through the front doors of the school and into the waiting phalanx of reporters. Damn. I couldn’t go out that way.

  I dove through the doors of the student center to keep myself alone.

  “Colleen? Are you okay?” he said. In the background I heard a door click shut and then a deadness in the background that told me he had sequestered himself in his closet, which was where he went when he didn’t want his roommate to interrupt us.

  “I figured it out,” I whispered to him, looking over my shoulder through the student center doors and into the hall. No one spotted me.

  “Figured what out? Why are you panting?”

  “I figured out why Ann Putnam Junior got edited out of The Crucible.”

  “You called to tell me about your extra-credit history paper? Really?” His voice mingled disbelief and disappointment.

  “Spence! Listen to me. It’s because she was faking! In 1706 she gets up in front of everyone and basically says they were faking! She was in the middle of the whole trial thing, and she’s the only one who ever apologized, and it wasn’t ’til years later, but she did. She said she was sorry, and they were wrong, and they were totally faking everyone out.”

  A long pause unfolded on the end of the phone. Then I heard Spence draw a sharp intake of breath as he figured it out, too.

  “They’re all faking,” he said.

  “They’ve got to be.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know!”

  “Damn, Colleen. That’s crazy. Why would they do it?”

  “I don’t know. Attention?”

  “But all forty of them? That doesn’t seem possible. How are they keeping organized?”

  “They wouldn’t have to. Clara could get Elizabeth and the Other Jennifer to play along, no problem. And everyone else just wants to be like them.”

  “Huh,” Spence ruminated. “You know, I bet it makes you a pretty interesting prospect to a college, if you’re one of the Danvers Mystery Illness girls. Nobody had any idea who any of them were until this started to get splashed all over the television. Right?”

  “Maybe.” I slid to the floor, my books between my feet, and leaned my head against the student center door. “Maybe.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I have to tell someone. Who do I tell?”

  Spence paused, considering. “Is there someone at school?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. The nurse is gone.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Then a thought stopped me short. “But won’t they all get in trouble?”

  “I mean, yeah. Of course they will. With everything that’s happened? People have lost their jobs over this, Colleen. And think of how they’ll get treated in the press, if it comes out. Bebe Appleton? Are you kidding me? She’ll tear out their souls on national television. She’ll mess up their lives so bad, they won’t ever come back. And good-bye, college. That’s, like, massive plagiarism scandal times a million. No school in their right mind would want them. Especially not if it’s got an honor code, and a lot of them do.”

  “Christ.”

  “I know.”

  We paused, breathing together while I sifted through my brain looking for the right thing to do. I knew it had to be in there somewhere. But I wasn’t finding it.

  “Spence,” I moaned, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the student center door.

  “Colleen,” he said. I could hear his voice smiling.

  “God.” I opened my eyes and stared across the room to the bleeding plaster Jesus crucified against the student center wall. With my knees drawn up like that I was totally flashing Jesus, which seemed kind of wrong. But his eyes gazed beatifically at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, unembarrassed.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don�
�t know,” I confessed. “I don’t know. I have to think about it.”

  “Sleep on it,” he suggested. “It’s not like one day is going to make any difference. Right?”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  The searchlight peered through the dim windows of the student center, tracing across the fake-old tapestry of St. Joan in pigtails and bringing a glint of life to the plaster Jesus’s eyes. I dropped my knees down.

  “You want me to see if I can come in this weekend?” Spence asked, sounding manful in his offer of protection. It was pretty hot, to be honest.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d actually really like that. Do you think you can?”

  “They’re always happy to have me at Belmont,” said Spence, and I laughed, because he was imitating his mother’s haughty, detached way of expressing affection for her son at boarding school.

  “That would be seriously awesome,” I confessed. “I mean, if you were going to come home anyway.”

  He snorted at my half-assed attempt to sound casual. “You could come over and watch a movie or something. Get your mind off things.”

  A goofy smile plastered itself on my face, and I hoped he wouldn’t be able to hear it in my voice.

  “Oh really? You think I’m ready for the grand introduction?”

  “Piffle. They’re always happy to have my friends visit at Belmont.” It was his haughty-mom voice again, and we both cracked up.

  When I got off the phone, I’d decided what I needed to do.

  For one thing, I had to talk to Anjali.

  But first, I wanted to talk to Emma.

  I had to walk, since Deena wasn’t in school that day and my dad couldn’t pick me up until six. I could have begged a ride off someone else, but it was starting to warm up. The first crocuses had peeked up through the snow; they always looked odd and vulnerable when their purple noses poked through all that white. Anyway, Emma’s house was only, like, a twenty-minute walk from school. I still had two class periods to go, and I hesitated for about five seconds before I said “Screw it” aloud to the empty hallway and just left.

  The parking lot still overflowed with protesters, and the lunatic Whores of Satan people screamed at me when I walked by about how much of a Catholic slut I was, but most of the press clustered off on the athletic field filming Bethany Witherspoon as she did some kind of chemistry experiment with one of her team. She was going to be pretty pissed when she figured out there wasn’t anything wrong with the groundwater. What if she realized they’d been fooling her on purpose? Forget TJ Wadsworth and her trashed local news career. Bethany would ruin them even worse than Bebe Appleton would. I saw the Massachusetts Department of Public Health van parked in its usual spot, but I didn’t see anyone inside.

  The one I couldn’t figure out was Anjali. Why would she fake being sick? She was totally getting into Yale without any weird publicity stunt to boost her chances. I didn’t get it. Sure, she liked attention. I mean, look at how much she craved all those texts from Jason. It wasn’t a mystery to me that Anjali would want more attention. It was a mystery to me how she’d be able to fool her mom.

  I trudged up the sidewalk to Emma’s front door, sidestepping a puddle of slush in the cracked pavement at the bottom of her stoop. I leaned on the buzzer and waited.

  The house looked empty at first, but I saw Emma’s mom’s car in the driveway. Her mom never went out anyway. Someone had to be home.

  “Emma?” I called out. “Hello?”

  I banged on the door, and it rattled in its frame.

  “Mrs. Blackburn? Are you home?”

  I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed my face to the picture window next to the front door. There weren’t any lights on, but I saw a flicker of movement deep in the shadows of the living room.

  “Hello?” I called again.

  The door creaked open and Mrs. Blackburn materialized behind the screen.

  “Colleen?” she said in her wispy voice. I’d known Mrs. Blackburn since I was tiny, but she always wore this vague lack of recognition in her face when she looked at me. I always felt like I had to reintroduce myself to her.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s me, Mrs. Blackburn. Colleen. Is Emma home?”

  “Emma?” she said. Sometimes she had to work to remember her daughter’s name, too.

  “Yeah. I really need to talk to her. Can I come in?”

  “Um.” Mrs. Blackburn was still in her dressing gown, and her pale blond hair had grown wintry over the years, giving her a ghostly aspect that I found unnerving. Of course, it didn’t help that she never went outside. “I’m not sure now’s the best time.”

  “Please,” I said, stepping up and pressing my hands to the screen door. “It’s really important. I won’t stay long.”

  Mrs. Blackburn gave me a long, vague look.

  “It would be better, I think, if you didn’t,” she said simply.

  “I have to,” I said, pulling open the screen door and pushing past Emma’s mom. “I’m sorry, but I have to. Emma?” I called.

  “Well. It’s your decision,” Mrs. Blackburn said, drifting back into the shadows of the living room.

  Emma’s room was off the second-floor landing. It was dark up there, only a thin line of light showing under her bedroom door, but I knew the way as well as I knew the way to my own. I thumped up the stairs into the darkness overhead, coming to a stop with my hand on the doorknob.

  Inside, I heard sounds of muffled weeping.

  “Emma?” I whispered, gently creaking the door open.

  She sprawled on her stomach on the bed, head buried in a pillow that I remembered from our sleepovers when we were little—threadbare Powerpuff Girls pillowcase, with bits of feather leaking out the end. Her arms wrapped tight around her American Girl doll, the one in the funny Puritan hat. The doll’s hair was askew, and it smiled with glassy eyes up at the ceiling. Emma’s whole body trembled, the force of her crying ripping through her in waves.

  “Emma,” I said again, tiptoeing into her bedroom. Dozens of dolls gazed down on us from shelves all over the narrow room.

  I lowered myself onto the edge of her bed and hovered my hand over her back.

  “He—he—he—he doesn’t l—l—l—love me anymore!” she sobbed.

  “Oh, Emma,” I whispered. I wanted to pet her pale hair, but the pure power of her misery made me afraid.

  “Wh—wh—why doesn’t he love me anymore?” she wailed, gasping for breath in the pillow. “We d—d—dated for months. I th—th—th—thought I was s—s—s—special!”

  “What did he say?” I asked as gently as I could.

  I mean, what I wanted to say was He’s an adult and you’re a kid and that’s disgusting and I hate him and I really wish I didn’t know this had happened. But I couldn’t say that.

  “He s—s—s—said I should m—m—m—meet him at Salem W—W—Willows to talk to—n—n—night, but that it would be the l—l—l—last time.”

  I brought my hand slowly down onto Emma’s back, trying to soothe her. She shuddered at my touch, lifted herself onto her elbows, and stared at me.

  My friend’s face was puffy and red from weeping. Her pale, almost invisible eyebrows and eyelashes made her look fragile and vulnerable even when everything was fine, and now, when everything had fallen apart, she looked as desperate and tender as a snail pulled out of its shell. Emma’s eyes were so bloodshot, they seemed to have changed color, from pale oyster shell to dark red.

  I started to say something, but as Emma’s eyes bored into me with the full force of her pain and despair, my long-simmering migraine bloomed into being. I felt the dull corkscrew of pain that had been lingering behind my forehead all day twist into my brain. I gasped from the suddenness of it. The pain split my skull in two between my eyebrows. Inside my brain, the pain radiated out in branches, reaching to the back of my eyes, the roots of
my tongue, even the roots of my hair.

  Emma’s eyes flared redder, and my awareness of her room fell away, the dusty dolls with their glassy eyes receded; the twin bed and the Powerpuff Girls pillow drifted away behind a red mist of pain. All I knew were Emma’s weeping, angry eyes and the flames of pain filling my skull, wrapping around my head like a halo of fire. I don’t know how long it lasted. It felt like forever. My eyes rolled into the back of my head, and with a scream of anguish Emma flung herself facedown on her bed, wracked with sobs.

  I must have passed out, but only for a second, because the next thing I was aware of was the thwack of my face against the floor. I opened my eyes with a groan to see the edge of the dust ruffle on Emma’s twin bed and Emma’s foot sticking off the bed right over my head. Next I became aware of someone—Emma—weeping, and another sound. A sound of groaning, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. When I closed my mouth, the groaning changed timbre. I realized that the groaning was pouring out of me. I sat up, slowly, my thumb pressed between my eyes, my breath ragged from pain.

  Emma wept, her whole body shaking with sobs. She didn’t even know I was there.

  “Emma,” I said. The word came out like a pebble in my mouth. I crawled, first one hand, then another, knees sliding across the carpet from the floor onto her bed. She didn’t look up.

  “Emma,” I repeated, reaching for her.

  She gulped for air, sobbing, her face rooting in the pillow.

  “Time.” The word was impossible to make, like trying to tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue. Also it wasn’t the word I’d planned to start with.

  “You . . . are . . . time . . . what?” I fumbled, the words tangling together around my teeth.

  Emma peeked over her arm, a frightened pale eye staring at me.

  I frowned, and tried again.

  “Him . . . meeting,” I managed to say. Barely.

  “What did you say?” Emma asked from inside her pillow, her unnerving pale eye watching.

  “Tad,” I struggled to say. “Tonight?” I scowled with effort, trying to put the words in the right order in my head. Then I spat out in a rush, “Willows Salem at him meeting you’re time what?”