Conversion (11 page)

DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2012

E
veryone in Father Molloy’s advisory gasped. And then, slowly, inexorably, it began.

The giggling.

I could tell we were trying to keep it together, I could tell that it was partly out of shock, and fear, and discomfort, but none of that mattered, the giggling was pressing up through our chests and nothing we could do would stop it coming out and filling the entire advisory classroom.

The Other Jennifer was bald. And I don’t mean shaved-her-head bald. I mean
bald.
I mean gleaming pinkish-white skin on her scalp, so gleaming it looked polished, marred by one incongruous mole tucked behind one of her ears. The Other Jennifer still had her eyebrows and her eyelashes, so it wasn’t like cancer-patient bald, either. It was bizarre, and horrible, and yet it was also hilarious. The laughter came bubbling up in me as much as in anyone else.

“Oh my God,” Jennifer Crawford said, bringing her hands up to her mouth, her eyes wide with laughter.

The Other Jennifer stood before us all, her silk Elizabeth Taylor scarf hanging from her hand, her face a twisted mask of humiliation and pain.

“You think this is funny?” she screamed, her voice shrill.

The giggling swirled around her in eddies. Some of us tried to make it stop, and choked with the effort. Others of us didn’t try all that hard. The Other Jennifer was popular, but she wasn’t well liked in the way that Clara and Elizabeth were. Popularity can be funny that way.

“Oh my God, Jennifer,” Jennifer Crawford sputtered from behind her hands. “What happened to your hair?”

“Girls,” Father Molloy started to say. “I’m serious, now—”

But it wasn’t Father Molloy who commanded our attention.

“Jennifer,” Clara said, turning in her seat and addressing Jennifer Crawford.

The sound of her speaking brought us all to heel. Her voice was quiet, almost conversational. And she didn’t sputter or say, “Tzt tzt tzt HA.”

Instead she simply said, “I don’t think that’s very cool, do you?”

Clara leveled her gaze at Jennifer Crawford, who shrank before the interrogation of the queen.

“C’mon, I was just—” Jennifer Crawford started to protest.

Without bothering to get out of her seat, Clara rested a hand on the Other Jennifer’s arm. The Other Jennifer was vibrating with tension, her hands clenched at her sides, as though she couldn’t decide whether to run away or smack Jennifer Crawford in the face. At Clara’s touch, the Other Jennifer blinked, and the tension in her body uncoiled by a perceptible degree. She looked down at Clara, who tilted her head to the side in an interrogatory way.

Our giggling died down as we watched. Within a minute the advisory room was silent.

The Other Jennifer turned back to Jennifer Crawford, and held her in a steady glare while she lowered herself into her seat.

“I mean,” Clara continued, even more quietly, “they still don’t know for sure what’s wrong with us, you know? I think you could have, like, a little more respect. Don’t you?”

Jennifer Crawford hunched in her chair like a chastened puppy.

“I guess,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Clara stared at her for another long minute, and then she swept the classroom with her eyes, implicating all the rest of us in Jennifer Crawford’s disobedience. We stared hard at our hands. We had giggled, every last one of us. We were guilty.

When Clara decided that we had been placed on sufficient warning, she resettled herself in her seat, folding her hands on the desk. She nodded at Father Molloy, as though granting him permission to continue with whatever it was that he was about to do.

Father Molloy blustered his way back to the front of the classroom with a lot of “Well, all right then”s, interrupted by the hiss of the antique PA system crackling to life.

“Holy Mary, Queen of Knowledge, pray for us. Amen. Attention, seniors. Would Colleen Rowley please report to the nurse’s office? Colleen Rowley to the nurse’s office. Thank you.” Hiss, pop, click.

All eyes in the room swiveled to me.

“Me?” I asked.

I looked at Emma. She shrugged. Her eyes glimmered with private thoughts.

Then I looked at Deena, who mouthed
It’ll be fine
, and at Anjali, who nodded and waved her hand dismissively.

“I guess you’re up, Colleen,” Father Molloy said to me.

I stood, gathering my belongings, baffled about why I was being called so soon. I mean, I knew they’d be talking to all the seniors. But somehow I’d assumed they’d go in alphabetical order. I thought I’d be going well after Emma and Anjali.

Father Molloy came over and rested a hand on my shoulder.

“You know,” he said, “you shouldn’t have to do this. It’s none of their business.”

I was surprised that he would say that. I wondered if it was true, that they really didn’t know what was making everyone sick.

“I don’t mind,” I said.

But his words made me hesitate.

Father Molloy looked hard at me. “None. Of their business,” he said again, enunciating every word.

I nodded, but gathered my books to my chest and moved to the classroom door, tracked by a dozen pairs of the eyes of the girls of St. Joan’s.

“Colleen,” Nurse Hocking said, looking up at me from some papers on her desk. “Thanks for joining us today.”

Us?

The school nurse was looking pretty plush these days. Like she was getting her makeup professionally done. She was even wearing heels. I knew that she was in the habit of giving a quote or two to the reporters every morning, fluff about how the girls were doing fine, how no, she was not at liberty to share their diagnosis for reasons of confidentiality, but that she could assure the community that the school was completely blah blah blah blah blah. For a while we’d all made a point of watching every newscast every night, hoping to glean more information. But quickly we’d learned that the only information that was going to show up on the news would be put there by Nurse Hocking. Most of us figured that we could do a better job of gathering information ourselves.

“Have a seat,” Nurse Hocking said.

She gestured to the chair on the opposite side of her desk.

The school nurse was accompanied by a woman in a suit whom I’d never seen before. She also held a clipboard, and she was doing her best to blend in with the curtains.

“Hello,” I said directly to her.

“Please,” Nurse Hocking said, indicating the chair again. “Sit down.”

“Um,” I said, lowering myself into the chair and watching the woman in the suit. “I didn’t know there’d be anyone else here?”

“Oh,” Nurse Hocking said with a wave. “Don’t worry. She’s authorized.”

I suppose I could have asked a dozen questions at that point, reasonable stuff like
Authorized by whom?
or even
Who is she?
, but I was nervous and confused. And I still trusted Nurse Hocking—I mean, she was so young and pretty and nice, and she gave me notes to get out of field hockey if my cramps were too bad, and she didn’t even try to laugh it off or make me feel like I was faking. Honestly, it felt a little weird having someone else there, okay, but it didn’t occur to me to object. How old do I have to be before I start disagreeing with doctors?

There was a floor plan of the upper school pinned to the wall behind Nurse Hocking’s desk, and it had seven red push pins in it, each with a Post-it note underneath, and a date. The Post-its were all connected with different colors of yarn.

“Now then,” Nurse Hocking said, opening a file folder. “This shouldn’t take too long. I apologize for some of the questions we’ll be asking you. Some of them might seem pretty personal. But I assure you that everything will be kept completely confidential.”

There was that word again,
confidential
. Nurse Hocking had been using that word a lot.

“Okay,” I said, with an uneasy look at the woman in the suit. “But I thought everyone was getting better.”

“Yes,” Nurse Hocking said. But she hesitated over the word just a little too long. “This is just a precaution.”

“A precaution,” the woman in the suit said with more force.

It was the first time she’d spoken. Her voice was gravelly, like a smoker’s.

“Now, Colleen.” The nurse was using my name an awful lot. It was weird. “It says here you’re up to date on all your immunizations. Diptheria, pertussis, TB, chicken pox—”

“I can’t believe they immunize for that now,” the suit woman said with a hacky laugh.

“Yeah,” I said, eyes moving between them both.

“And have you ever had an adverse reaction to any immunization?”

“I don’t think so. You’d have to ask my mom, I don’t really remember.”

“Never any itching, rash, headaches, fatigue?”

“Um.” I tried to remember anything remarkable about getting vaccines, but other than kicking my feet and crying when I was eight and going through a shot-freakout phase, I can’t remember a single thing worth mentioning. “No. Not that I’m aware of.”

“And have you had the HPV vaccine series?” Nurse Hocking asked, and the woman in the suit looked up from her clipboard with interest.

“Um,” I demurred.

“Colleen,” the nurse broke in. “Are you sexually active?”

Oh. Oh, great.

How does anyone know how to answer that question? I mean, I guess technically, the answer was no. But it was also not no. It depended on what she meant. I’d had near misses. Freshman year at a student council dance, this guy Clark whom I knew from church youth group pulled me close during a slow song and pressed his lips to mine. They’d been warm and his chin was rough and he tasted like Skittles and I’d kissed back, and then when his tongue moved between my lips, I was seized with such intense waves of desire that I had to break away and run to the ladies’ room and throw up.

There’d been other guys, nothing major, hookups at parties and stuff like that. Then there’d been Evan. He was in my same class at St. Innocent’s, and we’d hung out pretty steadily last year. Most of our relationship, if you want to call it that, had been over text message. One night we went for coffee at this place in Salem, and when we realized there was a band setting up, we left to roam the streets. Our hands found each other in the dark, our fingers lacing together, and the feeling of his skin against mine caused my knees to shake and that same coil of almost-nausea to wrap around my stomach. It was a warm night, and we sneaked into the cemetery behind the art museum. He kissed me, hard, and when I put my hands in his hair and groaned into his mouth, he lifted me up onto one of the tombs and spread my knees apart and his hands found me in the dark. He moved a finger into me, within me, and he looked into my eyes and the stars around me fell into blackness.

I stole every minute I could with Evan after that. It was so much better than what I . . . Well. It was good. It was really, really good. He’d wanted to. He’d asked me. But I was afraid. I didn’t know why. Everyone told me it wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t think my hesitation was why we stopped hanging out—Evan wasn’t a bad guy. He just had an internship in D.C. last summer, and we both got busy with other things. I saw on Facebook that he hooked up with some girl he met on his internship, and I spent a night of red-faced sobbing with Emma in my room. But I didn’t know why, it’s not like he was ever officially my boyfriend or anything. We still messaged each other sometimes. In the end there wasn’t any big scene. Maybe I wish that there had been.

And now, Spence.

Sort of.

Maybe.

Had he?

I thought of his ease, his casual slouching posture, his button-down shirts.

Of course he had.

I blushed, worrying that he wouldn’t like it if I haven’t. Guys are supposed to like it if you haven’t, but I don’t think they do, really. I think it stresses them out. Now I wished that I’d had the nerve to try with Evan. I’m sure it would’ve been okay. Maybe better than okay, and then I wouldn’t have to be so worried about it now. Spring semester, senior year, and still acting like a little girl.

“Colleen?” the nurse prodded me.

I realized I hadn’t answered her.

“No,” I said.

“I see.” Nurse Hocking jotted something down on a piece of paper in the file.

The suit woman made a note, too.

I shifted in my seat.

“And what about your friends?” the nurse pressed. “Are any of them sexually active?”

A sickening lurch in my stomach told me that this was a completely inappropriate question.

“I’m not sure I should . . . ,” I protested.

“It’s all right,” the suit woman said. “We’ve got approval.”

I watched her warily, and thought about my friends. Anjali, definitely yes. She’d had boyfriends in her other cities before Danvers, and I thought she’d lost it when she was, like, fourteen, which I personally thought was way too young, but then, I was kind of a prude, as Anjali liked to point out. She and Jason were definitely involved that way, not that she gave me any details, because she knew I didn’t approve of Jason. I knew she was careful about it. Like, really careful. Pill plus condoms every time. She was far too serious to let a stupid mistake get in the way of Yale.

Deena had confessed to me that there was a guy in Japan when she was on her exchange program last summer. It was really intense for two months, and now she was on kind of a guy hiatus because they’d ended in this incredibly dramatic way that she was still coming back from, mainly having to do with the impossibility of doing long-distance with a guy in Japan. Screaming and crying in airports and stuff like that. He was from America, on the exchange program, too, but I think they still thought it was impossible. So she was in the yes column, too.

I thought about Emma. I realized that I had no idea whether Emma was or not. Wasn’t that weird? She was probably my closest friend, certainly my oldest friend, and I had no idea. She hung out with the same loose confederacy of guys from St. Innocent’s and other schools like we all did, and I guessed she hooked up with some of them. But Emma was funny that way. No matter how closely I looked, there was always a layer that I couldn’t get beneath.