Conversion (14 page)

“Well?” prompts a man whose face I cannot see, obscured as he is by half a dozen others.

“It’s as I feared,” the doctor says.

An excited murmur circulates among the assembly.

“I’d say these symptoms are beyond what’s in the power of natural disease to effect. It’s preternatural.”

“But what can that mean, Doctor?” Reverend Parris asks, worrying his hands together.

“I fear, Reverend Parris,” the doctor says, “that these poor girls are under an evil hand. All of them.”

DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2012

I
pulled up the driveway to Emma’s house, flipped off the radio, and leaned my head against the headrest. I was early, and I could see by the movement of silhouettes behind the living room curtains that the Blackburns were clearing the dinner table. I counted heads, and guessed that Mark was probably home for the weekend from Endicott. It was pretty weird, him going to college so close to home. But that’s how they did it in Emma’s family. Her mom liked to keep them all close. Like if she let them get too far out of her sight, something might happen.

I mustered myself, not really feeling in the mood to socialize. But it was set to be a pretty low-key night. Movies with Emma, just hanging out. We hadn’t done that in forever. I used to go to Emma’s all the time when we were younger, but in the last few years we’d gone out more instead. Partly it was because we were older, and so we could, but if I’m honest, it was also because the Blackburn house was grim. One of those fifties split-levels with cheap siding and a chain-link fence. Thick layers of dust and a greasy smell. Carpet stains.

Out of the car, doorbell, and Mark answered.

“Oh, hey, Colleen,” he said.

He was like the male Emma. Blond, slim, with practically no eyebrows, and permanently tanned. I tried to remember if he still played lacrosse. Damn, he looked good. What was he, twenty? If he weren’t Emma’s brother, seriously.

“Hey, Mark. Sorry I’m early.”

“No worries. Come on in.”

“Emma!” Mark called to the kitchen. I heard the sound of running water and dishes.

“Hey,” Emma said, emerging from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

She had a funny look on her face, and her parents were nowhere to be seen. Which was weird, since I’d just seen them all through the window. I knew they were home.

“Hey,” I said, looking between Emma and Mark. The silence between them was hard to quantify. I wondered if I’d interrupted an argument or something.

“So, d’you want to go out for a while?” Emma asked.

Mark disappeared into the living room.

“Um,” I hesitated. I was pretty tired, and we’d already talked about staying in and watching movies. I missed lying on my stomach on the floor of Emma’s room, like we used to do every weekend in middle school. I’d been looking forward to a night like we used to have. But I guess there weren’t going to be any more nights like we used to have. “Sure, I guess. Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like going out. I figure, you’ve got the car, right?”

Of course, if Emma really wanted to go out, couldn’t she just borrow Mark’s car? But whatever. Maybe she’d had a fight with her parents, and that’s why the atmosphere in their house was so off.

“Sure. Whatever. You want to tell your folks?”

“Nah. Mom’s having one of her episodes.” Emma enclosed this last word with ironic air quotes. “She felt a headache coming on. It’d be better if we just left.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I hadn’t even taken off my coat. I was still holding the car keys in my hand. Emma wound a scarf around her neck and said, “Let’s go.”

“Bye, Mark!” I called.

No answer.

Once we were in the car, Emma started spinning through radio stations and said, “Thank you. This is so much better. Want to drive to the water?”

Emma was a sailor, and I knew that during the winter she pined for the ocean. I liked sitting by the ocean, too—it was one of the nicest things about living where we did, along the water north of Boston. Most of us took the nearness of the ocean for granted. Not me. Definitely not Emma. Maybe that was why the Blackburns liked to stay close to home.

“Sure. Any place special?”

“Nah. Beverly, I guess. Or the Willows?”

The Willows was Salem’s old boardwalk, and one of our favorite places to go when we felt down. But Beverly was closer, and there was a park close to the harbor. Without discussion, I started driving us there.

A Florence and the Machine song came on, and Emma sang along. I cracked the windows and we let the cold winter night wash over our faces. Emma leaned back in her seat, her knees drawn up, boots on the dashboard, and smiled at me. But it was a sad smile.

We pulled into the parking lot off the oceanfront park. All the boats had been taken out of the harbor and parked on jacks in the boatyard by the overpass, a spiky forest of masts against the starry sky. Through the cracked windows we could hear waves curling onto the rocks below. The air smelled crisper. Sharper.

“You want to get out?” I asked.

“Nah,” she said.

Instead she rummaged in her jacket pocket and pulled out a small baggie. I pretended not to see what she was up to, ignoring the rustling and the flick of the lighter.

“You want?” she asked, trying to pass me something small and burning, with a thick, acrid smell.

I eyed her, my temple resting on my fist.

“Nah,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

“Suit yourself.”

She rolled the window down more and blew a lazy plume of smoke out of the car. She hadn’t even asked me if it was okay. I considered the problem of the smell, but decided that could probably be taken care of with some air freshener.

We sat for a while, and Emma let out a long sigh. The atmosphere in the car loosened.

“That’s Clara’s house, over there,” Emma said, gesturing with her free hand.

“Which one?”

“That one, with the one light on upstairs.”

Clara lived in one of those wedding cake houses, painted navy blue with crisp white trim, the kind of house that a self-satisfied merchant built himself in 1880 to show that he’d arrived.

“I wonder if they’re home.”

“Dunno.”

We both gazed at the wedding cake house. It had a widow’s walk on the roof, with what must have been a killer view over the harbor. I reflected that if that were my house, I’d hang out on the roof all the time. I’d be up on that roof right now, if I could.

“I’m surprised there’s not a news van outside.”

“Maybe there is. Look.”

I squinted, and sure enough there was a dun-colored, unmarked van, barely visible in the shadows cast by the naked trees across the street from Clara’s house. And it had a small, unobtrusive satellite dish on its roof.

“Oh my God. Why don’t they just leave us alone?”

Emma smiled and said, “The Mystery Illness of 2012. They can’t just drop a story that great. Not when it’s up to seven now.”

“I can’t believe that. You don’t know who, do you?”

Emma shook her head, rustling in her plastic bag again. I weighed whether or not to comment. Nobody wants a friend who’s judgmental. But then . . . I’d just ask. Why not.

“Are you, like, okay?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

I knew she dipped into that on occasion—got it from Mark, was my impression—but this seemed kind of uncharacteristic for her. Weed was more of a lazy summertime activity for Emma. Seasonal. Like eggnog.

The lighter flicked once, twice as she tried to get the spark going, splashing her face with snaps of yellow light. She took a long drag, held her breath, coughed, and exhaled out the window. She proffered me the joint again out of habit, and I waved it away.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I’m just disappointed.”

The Harvard interview. A twist of guilt knifed in my gut, followed by one of those unwelcome, secret thoughts:
Well, let’s be honest, Em, your grades aren’t up to it. I mean, B-plus GPA?
As soon as that thought bloomed in my mind, I pushed it away as disloyal.

“I’m sorry, Emma. They’re crazy not to give you one. I probably won’t get in anyway.”

“Sure you will.” She smiled out of the side of her mouth and took another long toke on her joint. “Anyway, those interviews don’t even really matter.” She said this casually, a reassurance for herself. But also a pinprick for me.

I was trying to come up with something encouraging to say, or barring that, something sufficiently self-deprecating, when I felt the atmosphere in the car plunge in a sudden chill. The air pressure changed, as though the barometer had fallen.

“It’s him,” Emma said.

“Who?” I asked, following Emma’s stare.

“Mr. Mitchell,” she said.

Sure enough, the slim figure of our AP US History teacher was loping down the sidewalk, coming from the direction of Clara’s house. Mr. Mitchell’s hands were thrust in his jacket pockets, and his head was ducked down in thought. He looked different, and I realized it was because he wasn’t in a jacket and tie like he wore at school. He wore a motorcycle jacket and jeans. His hair was sloppy.

Emma palmed the joint and slouched down in the passenger seat of my station wagon.

“That’s weird,” I said, watching him pass. I’d forgotten how cute he was. He looked younger, dressed like that.

“Shh!” Emma hushed me, sinking lower.

“He doesn’t look like he’s been sick or anything,” I remarked.

As I spoke, he paused, looking out over the water, its waves glittering under the starlight, and ran his hand across the back of his neck. Even through the darkness I could see he looked upset about something. Almost like he’d been crying.

“Will you shut up?” Emma hissed, grabbing for my shoulder and dragging me down out of sight lines with the park.

“What? He can’t see us. It’s
night,
” I pointed out, struggling up on one elbow so that I could finish watching him pass by.

He considered the ocean for a long moment, breeze ruffling his hair, before continuing on, his eyes on his feet. Mr. Mitchell never glanced at our car. After a few minutes he was swallowed by shadow and disappeared. I sat all the way back up, staring down the block to the last corner where I’d seen him.

“Why do you suppose he hasn’t come back, Em?” I asked, bringing a knuckle up to my mouth for a thoughtful chew.

Emma didn’t answer. When I looked over at the passenger seat, I saw Emma sitting with her hands over her face. A wet snuffling sound was coming from behind her hands.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s it. We’re going to the Shanty.”

The Shanty is about the size of my closet, and my closet isn’t exactly a walk-in. It’s this lobster place on Artists’ Row in Salem, and has a vibe about it that I particularly like. I found a spot on Essex Street, got us out of the car, and steered Emma by her elbow. She wiped her face on her sweater sleeves and slurped the snot into the back of her throat. There never was an uglier crier than Emma Blackburn. I’m serious: her whole face just folds in on itself and her eyelids puff up and she looks like a completely different person.

“Hey, Leland,” I said to the recalcitrant owner of the Shanty.

He grunted in greeting. We took one of the plate-sized tables in back, close to the lobster tank. I plopped Emma down and stuffed a fistful of paper napkins into her hands, and she buried her nose in them. Two menus were slapped on our table, followed by two sets of silverware in a defensive heap.

“I’m sorry,” Emma bubbled. She blew her nose with a honk.

“Shh,” I said.

Leland came back with a pad. “Get you girls something?”

“Yeah. Two beers, please. Sam Winter?”

“Hmph,” Leland said. “Anything to eat?”

I looked at Emma, who slumped in her chair like a potted plant someone forgot to water.

“Just some sweet-potato chips. Thanks.”

Another grunt, and Leland withdrew.

I turned to Emma.

“I think you should lay off that stuff. Seriously. It just makes you paranoid and depressed.”

Emma smiled wanly at me and blew her nose again. On the television screen behind the softly bubbling lobster tank, the evening news began. TJ Wadsworth, in a deep violet suit this time, was reporting on a house fire in Peabody the previous night.

“Maybe,” she said. “I just hate this. Don’t you hate this?”

“Hate what?” I asked.

“I don’t know. This. Everything. It’s all ending. I don’t want it to change. Do you?” Emma’s eyes were rimmed in red, and she looked at me, pleading. But the truth was, I didn’t understand. I didn’t know why she was so afraid.

“Um. I do, actually. Kind of,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“No!” she cried. “I hate that everyone’s going to move away next year. I hate the idea of leaving my parents alone. I wish everything could just stay the same. I like it here. I like things as they are. I don’t want it to be different!”

We were interrupted by two pint glasses plunked down in front of us, with a basket of sweet-potato chips dropped in between. I took a sip and grimaced.

Root beer.

Leland smirked at me and said, “You want me to run you a tab?”

I scowled at him, and he went away chuckling.

Emma took a sip of her root beer and piled some sweet-potato chips into her mouth. We chewed in silence while the weatherman pointed out a cold front that would be dropping up to three inches of snow on the Eastern Seaboard, beginning the next day. Emma wiped her mouth and face with more paper napkins and raised raw eyes to the television screen.

“My head’s killing me,” she remarked.

“You’re probably just dehydrated from all that crying,” I said. But I wasn’t really listening.

Over our heads the news crawl announced that the St. Joan’s Academy Mystery Illness, once thought to be an isolated outbreak of sensitivity to a batch of vaccines in a small handful of local pediatricians’ offices, had spread.

To eight.

Mid-February

LUPERCALIA

The magistrate sits in your heart, that judges you.

ELIZABETH PROCTOR
THE CRUCIBLE
, ACT 2