Conversion (27 page)

DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2012

T
hat Friday. Oh my God. How can I even describe what it was like that Friday?

First off, I couldn’t even see the school for all the media who were gathered outside. The board of trustees sent an e-mail to everyone the night before, warning us to expect a more intense than usual media presence. That’s how they put it—“more intense than usual.” Which is a pretty intense understatement, if you ask me. Anyway, we didn’t even see the e-mail until early that morning, and by then Wheez was already in the car because my dad was going to drop her after dropping me.

St. Joan’s Academy was a mob scene. And not just from all the news vans and the cameras and the cables and microphones and wires and satellite dishes and reporters, all the regional stations and the ones from western Massachusetts and CNN and MSNBC and Fox and all the New York stations and everything. Crowds of random people, strangers, just showed up to mill around and stare at the front of the school. A lot of them were there to see Bethany Witherspoon, since she’s that famous. But there were a bunch of people holding signs, too. Protesters.

Those wackos who always crash soldiers’ funerals were there, screaming that the Mystery Illness was a punishment from God because the government allowed gays in the military. Or I guessed that was what they were saying. Who the hell knew? Their signs said stuff like
SATAN IS COME TO DANVERS
and
PRAY FOR
OUR DELIVERY
and
GOD HA
TES SLUTS
and
CATHOLIC W
HORES OF THE DEVIL
.

On the other side of the parking lot huddled a small group of Congregationalists in practical sweaters and a van from the meetinghouse here in town. Their signs read stuff like
T
OLERANCE
and
REASON
and
LIST
EN: GOD IS STILL SPEA
KING
. I’m Catholic, I mean, of course I am, ’cause I’m Irish, but they’re pretty cool as Protestants go. I didn’t mind them. The most puzzling banner they held was
DON’T FORGET TH
E LESSONS OF THE PAST
.

“Whoa,” Wheez said, pressing her nose to the window of the station wagon. “Daddy, can we stay until Bethany Witherspoon gets here?”

My father shook his head. “We’ve got to get you to school, Louisa. And we don’t know what time she’s coming.”

But we needn’t have worried, because while Wheez was wheedling my dad, a huge bus pulled up, the kind with dark windows that rock bands use to travel around the country. The bus didn’t have any markings on it, but somehow everyone there knew immediately who it was. The news station spotlights spun away from the facade of St. Joan’s, and cameras and reporters all rushed the bus. The onlookers had already crowded around the bus’s door, pressed together by the two sets of protesters, their signs acting like a barrier crushing everyone into one big mass.

“That’s her!” Wheez cried. So we three by silent common agreement sat in the car and watched the star arrive.

The bus door slid open and camera flashes popped in a blinding blizzard of light, and by the time I’d rubbed the spots from my eyes, Bethany Witherspoon was halfway to the upper school front door, wearing gigantic sunglasses and waving and stopping to sign autographs for people. A few nondescript men and women followed behind her in matching windbreakers, some of them carrying official-looking equipment. To our surprise, the next people to climb off the bus were Clara Rutherford, the Other Jennifer, Elizabeth, and Leigh Carruthers. Again the waves of flashbulbs popped like firecrackers, and all four of them smiled and waved and started making their way through the crowd of media and well-wishers, stopping to give hugs and take pictures and shake hands.

“Wow,” I said. “Elizabeth is walking just fine.”

“Hmm,” my father said. “So she is.”

Even the Other Jennifer had shed her Elizabeth Taylor turban and was sporting a cute baby-fuzz pixie haircut.

“Maybe they’ve gotten better?” Wheez asked.

The crowd followed my afflicted classmates to the front doors, where Father Molloy stood waiting, his arms folded over his chest. The drainpipe gargoyles snarled over the priest’s shoulder, their tongues lolling.

I was too far away to hear, but it looked like Bethany Witherspoon held an impromptu press conference on the school steps, situating herself between Father Molloy and the four girls. Half a dozen microphones were thrust in front of their mouths. Reporters waved notebooks, trying to catch their attention. More popping flashbulbs and stark camera lights threw flickering black shadows over the Gothic doors. Over all their heads loomed the inverse image of St. Joan in stained glass, flames licking up her sides as she stared at the heavens.

Bethany Witherspoon waved merrily at the crowd and then started to head into the school. Father Molloy waylaid her in the open doorway, and a focused argument took place. Father Molloy, unsurprisingly, lost. Into the upper school marched Bethany Witherspoon and her team, followed by half a dozen of the reporters. The priest was able to fend off everyone else, including the random onlookers and the protesters, who gradually drifted back to their opposing sides of the parking lot.

“Well,” my father said to me, “looks like it’s going to be quite a Friday.”

“I want to see what happens!” Wheez whined from the backseat. “Can I go to school with Colleen?”

“Can it, Louisa,” my father said. To me, he said, “You feel okay? You ready to go in?”

“Does it matter?” I asked, giving him a wan smile.

“Not really, no,” he agreed. “Good luck.”

As I climbed out of the car and readied to face whatever bedlam I would find inside, another nondescript van pulled up. Written on the side in bland script was
MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC
HEALTH MOBILE UNIT
. Two people climbed out of the van. The press ignored them.

I found Deena in advisory right away, following her hum of “Body and Soul,” and to my surprise discovered both Emma and Anjali there, too, everyone in her seat like it was a regular Friday. Anjali looked like she’d lost some weight. She was still coughing weird fish-bone pins up at least once a day, and her throat and mouth were raw from it. The skin at the corners of her mouth was red and peeling. But she wasn’t about to miss Bethany Witherspoon riding to our rescue. Neither was Emma, who acted like it was totally normal that she was back, just like it was totally normal that she’d been missing school even though there wasn’t anything wrong with her. In fact, just about everyone was back in advisory that morning. The only sign that St. Joan’s had been in the grip of the Mystery Illness for two months was the plastic sheeting all over the hallways, and the roving bands of news cameras.

Father Molloy looked like death warmed over. I swear, if I were him, I’d have quit by now. I guess that’s the problem with being a man of God. There’s no quitting. Unless you’re the pope.

“Okay, girls, listen up,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face.

He was interrupted by the door opening and Clara Rutherford appearing in the doorway, bathed in a halo of light. This halo emanated not from heaven, however, but from the shoulder-mounted portable television camera a guy was carrying behind her.

“It’s okay if they come in with me, right?” Clara asked, but not really, because she was already halfway to her allotted desk and the camera guy had captured it all on film. The Other Jennifer and Elizabeth, back in a wheelchair for some reason, trailed in behind her. The camera guy got footage of them, too, presumably for B-roll.

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” Father Molloy said, waving his hands in the camera’s lens. “This is not happening. You’ll have to wait outside, I’m sorry.”

The camera guy looked to Clara for confirmation. She shrugged.

“No problem,” said the camera guy, possibly because the classroom door’s pebbled-glass window meant he could get some atmospheric and creepy shots from outside. The priest hustled them out of the classroom and shut the door with a decisive click. Immediately the glass window glowed with camera light.

“Well,” said Father Molloy once we’d settled down as much as anyone could, which wasn’t much. “First off, it’s good to see you all back. Jennifer, Elizabeth. Clara. Anjali. Emma. Fabiana. It’s been mighty quiet around here without you. And I want you to know that we’ve had candles burning in the chapel for each and every one of you. I think you’ll agree with me that the best thing for all of us will be to let this run its course so that we can get back to the matter at hand, which is learning.”

Yeah. He actually said that. Sure, I wanted everything to go back to normal, too. But that wasn’t about to happen with Bethany Witherspoon clacking up and down the halls in her stilettos (okay, the plastic sort of muffled the clacking) and the assembly coming up that afternoon.

“I guess I know why you all chose today to come back. And I don’t have to expend any energy urging you to attend the assembly this afternoon. We’ll be hearing from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, who are on campus today to make sure that none of your symptoms have an environmental cause. Now. Who’s got questions?”

A forest of girls’ hands shot up.

“Did you see us on TV?” one of the afflicted girls chirped. “How’d we do?”

“Yes,” said Father Molloy in a leaden voice. “I saw. Other questions?”

“Is Nurse Hocking back today?” one of us asked, and the entire room tittered.

“I don’t believe she is. And I’m told Dr. Strayed has gone back to UMass.”

“They are so getting sued,” someone whispered to someone else.

“Do you think we’ll be hearing from Bethany Witherspoon at assembly?” one of us wanted to know.

“I should hope not,” said the priest. “She’s not affiliated with the school, and she hasn’t been invited here. So, no.”

“She was so invited here, by our parents,” said another of the afflicted girls. “We think she should be allowed to talk.”

“That’ll be up to the board of trustees,” Father Molloy said, a little sharply. “Now, does anyone have a real question?”

“Do you think the Mystery Illness is really caused by pollution?” I asked, gazing levelly at him.

“No,” he said, gazing just as levelly back. “I don’t.”

“Oh, like you’re a scientist,” one of the afflicted girls scoffed. I wasn’t used to hearing them talk to Father Molloy like that. I saw that it made him angry, but he didn’t say anything to stop them.

“Neither is Bethany Witherspoon,” he said. “Now take out your books. We’ve got fifteen minutes before first period, and I want to see some reading.”

If I thought the steps of the school were bad, I was totally unprepared for the scene in chapel. Two security guys flanked the chapel doors, guarding against a stampede. At least, I think that’s what they were doing there. Maybe they were worried about the protesters. And they should have been; Emma and I were waiting in a thick knot of girls to get through the doors when we saw a heavyset guy in a security uniform muscling out a woman in a sandwich board who was screaming, “Sluts of the Devil! Apostates! Whorechildren!”

“Whoa,” Emma whispered. “She’s pretty upset, huh?”

“I know,” I whispered back. “Those insults are seriously old school.”

Inside the chapel was so dense with bodies, there wasn’t a question of finding a place to sit. Girls packed into every square inch, sitting on the backs of pews, piled together on the floor, pressed up against the walls. Camera lights blared against the stained-glass windows, throwing the images of Joan’s life into white opacity. Nobody was at the pulpit. The room was so crammed with girls and reporters and random people and protesters that nobody could move. I felt sweat beading on my hairline, and a deep ache beginning to bore itself into my forehead. I couldn’t find Anjali or Deena. Anjali had just texted me that they were near the front, having sneaked out early from Calc BC, but there was no way we were going to find them.

Father Molloy stood off to one side, hands planted on his hips, glaring at some of the protesters who had sneaked in with anti-Catholic placards. Some of the other teachers were there, too, but no one seemed to be in charge. Through the surging mass of bodies I spotted a familiar wicked eyebrow, which belonged to Ms. Slater. She held my gaze for a split second, only long enough for me to see her shake her head once, and then the crowd boiled her away from us.

Emma and I wedged ourselves into a rear corner by the bank of candles, which someone had wisely thought to extinguish before herding us all in there.

“Is it weird to be back?” I asked her.

“Not really,” she said. “It’s kind of nice, actually. I was getting really bored. People had stopped remembering to e-mail my assignments. God knows how far behind I’ve gotten. Good thing I’m into college already so it basically doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah.” I shuffled my feet, thinking about Emma getting into college. Emma, and her fake rec letter from Mr. Mitchell.
Tad.
“Emma? I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something,” I said slowly.

“Oh?” She didn’t meet my eyes, instead craning her neck like a seabird to look over the ribboned heads of our classmates. “Hey, look! There she is.”

Some of the girls in the front started screaming with excitement, and flashbulbs popped, roiling the mob into a bubbling stew, hot enough to simmer us all alive. Bethany Witherspoon appeared at the pulpit, flanked by some of her people in the matching shirts. They positioned themselves more like bodyguards or henchmen than a science team. Then again, I guess I’d never seen a celebrity science team. Someone else in a white windbreaker was standing off to the side, looking unimpressed.

“So much for what Father Molloy said,” I muttered, but Emma wasn’t listening. Her pale eyes widened with excitement; she was as much a part of the mob as all of us.

One of the science-team henchmen passed the star a megaphone. She flashed a brilliant smile and cried, “Good afternoon, girls!” Her words echoed off the chapel walls, filling our ears with sound and authority.