And now, here was Harvard, in the form of Judith Pennepacker.
And she wanted to interview me.
I just had to send it, right?
So I did. Poof. There it went.
I fled from my e-mail, grabbing my bag, elbowing Michael out of the way in the hall outside the bathroom as he cried, “Colleen, God!” and thumping down the stairs. I landed in the mudroom in a two-footed stomp and said, “Boom! I’m here, I’m ready.”
“Jesus!” my mother admonished me, thrusting a lunch bag into my hands. “Take your time next time, why don’t you. It’s not responsible behavior, making people wait for you, Colleen.”
“I had to return an e-mail, Mom,” I said, giving her a withering look.
“Oh, an e-mail! That does sound important, doesn’t it, Wheez?”
She addressed the underside of the piano bench, where I could hear my little sister giggling.
“Um, it was for my Harvard interview? Okay?” I said. “Is that okay with you?”
“Oh!” My mother stopped short. “Your . . . What?”
“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, turning my back.
Dad was already outside warming up the car, and I made for the front door.
My mother’s hand squeezed my shoulder on my way out. Neither of us said anything, but I knew she was proud of me.
“We’re gonna be late,” my father remarked as he backed the station wagon out of our driveway, bouncing over the curb with a jolt.
“I had to write back to my Harvard interviewer, Dad,” I said as I fished my phone out of my backpack. I wanted to let Spence know that I was going to be in the Square on Sunday. Maybe he’d be in town, too, and want to . . . I don’t know. Hang out?
“Oh really?” my father asked with interest. “You got one, eh? When’s it gonna be?”
“Sunday, I think,” I said, peering at the phone.
When I went into the text message application, I found I had one already waiting, from a number that said UNKOWN.
Mikey showing off his awesome new phone as payback for me pushing him at the top of the stairs. I didn’t see why he should get a new one when mine had had a huge crack in it since summer. Who was he going to call, anyway?
I clicked on the message, frowning.
Did you read it?
Read The Crucible? Well, yeah, everyone did. So what?
Yeah Mikey . . . So what?
“Sunday, huh?” my father continued. “Well, that’s damned exciting. You tell your mom?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
The phone vibrated in my hand. A new text.
Spence. My mouth twisted itself into a smile and I opened it.
Hey. Happy Friday
I grinned wider and tapped back, bringing the phone closer to my nose for a better view.
“What’d she say?” my father pressed.
“Dad. Just give me a minute, okay?” I said.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said, pronouncing it “ex-kee-yoooze” to make fun of me. “Sure, I’ll just wait. Just chauffeuring the car, no big deal. Nothing to see here.”
I snorted, tapping my response to Spence.
Hey. Guess what?
“That’s a fine thing, a Harvard interview. No reason to be nervous.” My father would not be thwarted. “I know your guidance counselor said not to read too much into whether you get one or not, but I can’t help but think it’s a good sign, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
The phone vibrated immediately with his reply. I wiggled my feet.
What?
“We’ll have to remember to see if your suit’s been dry-cleaned. I guess we could get it done tomorrow if we really have to. That place in Marblehead’ll do it in twenty-four hours, and I’m pretty sure they deliver. You ever use that place, or do you just go where your mom goes?”
“Dad!” It was impossible to concentrate, with him talking so much.
“Sorry, sorry! Just making conversation on a Friday morning with my eldest child.”
I wrinkled my nose at him, but then smiled to show I didn’t mean it.
I’ll be in the Square Sunday. Where are u?
“What’re you doing over there?” My dad pretend-craned his neck to get a look at my phone screen.
“Jesus, Dad!” I exclaimed, angling my shoulders so that he couldn’t see the screen.
“Is it a boooooooooy?”
The phone vibrated again.
“Dad, honestly, I’ll talk in just a sec, I’m just trying to do this one thing, okay?”
I’m not Mikey.
I sat back, confused. Then I realized that in my haste, I’d just opened the newest text without looking. But this one wasn’t from Spence.
Who is this??
I tapped back, frowning at the phone.
“Bad news?” my nosy father asked, noticing the change on my face.
“No,” I said. “It’s . . . No. It’s fine.”
I waited.
“You sure?” he asked.
The phone vibrated again, and I jumped in my haste to open the next text.
Belmont this wknd. Harvard Sq. sunday pm? No Jasons allowed.
Wait, what?
Oh, Spence! For a second I was disappointed that it wasn’t from the mystery texter, but only for a second, because then I realized that I now would be spending Sunday afternoon after my Harvard interview hanging out with Spence in the Square. Alone.
HA!
Grinning like a maniac, I texted him back.
Lol. Meet u at 5 at COOP
“My goodness.” My father seemed to be speaking to some invisible person sitting in the backseat of the station wagon. “The emotional ups and downs of this car ride rival some of the great films of Hollywood’s Golden Era. Such drama, such pathos, such . . .”
“DAD. Could you just cut me, like, a little bit of slack? Please? Just this once?”
“Who are you texting with, anyway?”
“Just a friend.”
“A guy friend?”
I felt my ears grow pink under his interrogation.
“I plead the Fifth,” I said.
We rolled up to the front drive of St. Joan’s, and my father shifted the car into park and looked at me.
“Have it your way,” he said. “You usually do.”
I smiled, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek.
“Bye, Dad. Love you.”
“Still with the news vans, huh?”
We both looked out the car window at the wall of white camera lights beaming up into the silent Gothic windows of the upper school. One of the front door gargoyles cast a contorted shadow over the lawn, a beaked demon with wings.
“I guess so. They didn’t get the memo about it all going back to normal.”
My father sighed and said, “Love you, too, sweetheart. Have a good day.”
As I hoisted my bag into place and prepared to face the gantlet of news vans and students streaming toward the front doors, I realized that the mystery texter had never written me back.
“Colleen! The strawberry girl, Colleen!”
I couldn’t place the song Deena had chosen to mock me with this week. All around me the girls of St. Joan’s were alight with the news of Clara, Elizabeth, the Other Jennifer, and the two underclassmen being back. Everyone had contradictory information, and everyone was certain that her information was unassailably correct. But one thing was for sure—Clara and her minions were back.
Sort of.
I mean, yes, they were present. But they were pretty far from back in any normal sense.
I could spot them in the hall with no problem, because each of them had an orb of space around her, like an invisible force field. People hovered around them in a tight-packed mass, but just out of reach. Maybe it was because w
e wanted room to stare at them. Maybe it was because we were afraid. None of us wanted to touch them.
I don’t know.
But I could scan the entire length of the hall, over the ribboned heads of my classmates—I was tall enough to see over most of the other girls in the upper school—and could easily discern three separate bubbles of space, floating at different paces and trailing different thicknesses of hangers-on. The three bubbles drifted, drifted, drifted, eventually drawing together into one big bubble outside Father Molloy’s advisory. Then the big bubble floated through the door, and the built-up mass of followers dispersed, breaking apart into separate individual girls, whispering, worrying, each squirreling away her own private nugget of truth.
I hesitated outside the classroom door, a sickening void opening somewhere deep in my entrails. My relief from the community meeting the previous night was abruptly pushed aside by a nauseating unease. I felt like I’d forgotten something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Nothing was missing from my backpack, I’d done all the reading for that day, I had a ride home with Deena, I’d answered the Harvard e-mail, all of my other apps were already in, everything was where it was supposed to be in my life. But something still felt wrong.
I realized that I was scared of Clara, too.
I put my hand on the classroom door, seeing by the silhouettes in the pebbled glass that most of the other girls in advisory were already there. Deena’s song continued, in fits and starts. It had bored its way into my head, but I still didn’t recognize it. Father Molloy leaned on his desk at the front of the room, looking haggard.
Clara perched in her usual spot, which no one would dare to touch. The Other Jennifer sat on one side of Clara, with a weird silk scarf wrapped around her head in a turban. Elizabeth was parked on Clara’s other side, still in a wheelchair. Every few seconds Clara said, “Tzt tzt tzt HA!” though she seemed better able to keep it quiet instead of crying out at the top of her voice like she had the previous night.
Every single girl in the classroom was pretending not to stare.
Except Jennifer Crawford. She was openly staring.
“Hey,” I said, sliding into my desk next to Deena.
“Hi,” she said.
Her eyes kept slipping to Clara’s corner of the room, but she was clearly trying to keep them from doing it.
“I don’t recognize today’s song. What is it?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. It’s ‘Christine.’ Siouxie and the Banshees.”
“It’s goth. Like, really old goth,” Anjali tossed over her shoulder. “Hey, Colleen.”
“Hey, Anj. Goth?”
“Like, really old goth.” Anjali smiled.
I shook my head. “Since when do you know really old goth?”
“Since forever. I mean, Taylor Swift is okay, but come on.”
“Emma, did you know our friends were so sophisticated?”
She slowly nodded, pulling a long hank of blond hair into a mustache under her nose.
“Wow,” I marveled. “All my friends have totally secret lives that I know nothing about.”
“You never asked,” Emma said, smiling out of the corner of her mouth.
I smiled back and settled into my seat, trying just as hard as everyone else not to stare at Clara. Anjali sighed loudly, and I perked up.
“Hey, Anj, guess what.” I leaned forward and prodded her shoulder with a finger.
“What?”
“I got one.”
Anjali spun in her seat, eyes bright, grabbed my forearm, and whispered, “Oh my God. You did?”
I nodded, and for the first time actually allowed myself to feel excited. Anjali had grades just about on par with mine, so we were applying to a lot of the same places. There was some competition there, no question, but she was so focused on Yale, and I didn’t want to go there, that it wasn’t as big a deal as it could have been. Deena wasn’t interested in big schools; she was just looking at little liberal arts colleges. She said she wanted to go somewhere where she could actually know everyone, if she felt like it. Which was a relief, because then we could just support each other without any of that weird pretend-supporting, really-resenting stuff that happens. But Emma, well. Her grades were good and everything, I mean, I’m not saying they weren’t, but they weren’t that great. She was in the humanities AP classes, but not the science ones. And anyway, she was going to stay in Boston for school just like her brother. I was sure of it. She could never leave Danvers. I don’t even think she’s ever left Massachusetts in her life.
“Yeah!”
“When? When?”
“Sunday.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Emma asked.
“Colleen got a Harvard interview!” Anjali burst out.
I hadn’t even needed to tell her where, because we’d both been sweating our respective Ivy interviews for weeks now. After I’d gotten deferred from Dartmouth, I hadn’t heard anything about an interview one way or the other. My guidance counselor said it didn’t matter, but of course it did. Anjali’s Yale interview had been lined up since late December, and she’d gotten one for Cornell, too. I didn’t remember when they were supposed to be, maybe like a week after mine. I guess Judith Pennepacker didn’t feel like she needed to give us any warning. Well, she was right. When Harvard said jump, we jumped. They knew it. We knew it.
“She did?” Emma said in a small voice. She turned to me. “You did?”
“Yeah,” I said, uncertain. I couldn’t read Emma’s face. It looked drawn and masklike, with those oyster-colored eyes.
“When did that happen?” Emma asked.
“Just this morning. I got an e-mail.”
“Oh.” Emma looked back at her desk. “That’s great.”
“I’m sure you’ll get one,” I said, putting a hand on her arm. “It was totally last minute. She’s making me meet her on Sunday. So, like, no lead time.”
“Yeah,” Emma said. She didn’t look at me.
“Sunday!” Anjali squealed. “Oh my God, are you excited?”
“Harvard?” Deena broke in. “Colleen, that’s so awesome.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t help myself. I grinned.
I was on the point of saying something else, and to be honest I have no idea what it was, because I was interrupted by a commotion on the other side of the room.
“Would you STOP?”
We spun in our seats to see who had spoken.
The Other Jennifer was twisted around in her seat, a fierce glare aimed right at Jennifer Crawford.
Jennifer Crawford was smiling.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just, like, a totally new look for you. I mean, I love it. It’s so Elizabeth Taylor.”
“SHUT UP.”
“Girls.” Father Molloy got up from behind his advisory desk, standing at the front of the classroom with a stern expression. “Come on. It’s been a long week. Let’s not and say we did, okay?”
“What?” Jennifer Crawford said, widening her eyes with false remorse. “I didn’t do anything. I was just complimenting her . . . turban.”
“You bitch!” the Other Jennifer hissed.
We all inhaled sharply. It was rare to see open aggression at St. Joan’s. Oh, it’s not like we were innocent lambs who sat around holding hands all day. It’s just that most of our methods were more subtle. If we wanted to make someone feel how truly insignificant she was, there were ways and ways of doing it. Backhanded compliments on a Facebook feed. A subtweet or two. A stare just a second too long, followed by a tiny roll of the eyes. Whispering, always whispering. These were the methods of discipline and hierarchy employed in the halls of St. Joan’s.
Elizabeth slumped in her wheelchair, caught in the crossfire between the Jennifers, trying to pretend like it wasn’t happening. Clara had turned around in her seat, too, and watched with inte
rest. We all waited, wondering what ruling the queen would make.
“Jennifer . . . ,” she started to say.
We weren’t sure which one she was talking to. She worked her mouth for a minute, as if trying to form the words. Her head twitched with the effort.
“Girls . . . ,” Father Molloy tried again. “I really think that—”
But he was cut off when Clara sputtered, “TZT TZT TZT HA,” opened her mouth wide, rolled her eyes in her head, recovered herself, and commanded, “Show her.”
The Other Jennifer got to her feet. She glared at Jennifer Crawford, reached up, and pulled the scarf off her head.
We gasped, horrified.
The Other Jennifer was completely bald.
INTERLUDE
SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS
MAY 30, 1706
Reverend Green leans forward, his face so near to mine that I can taste his breath.
“You thought,” he says.
He means Betty Parris, that I thought she was playing.
“Yes,” I say. “That first day, I thought once Reverend Parris came home, she’d awake to her senses. But she didn’t. Tittibe put her straight back to the trundle, and rustled Abby down from the loft to get his supper. I’d never heard such things come out of Abby’s mouth as came out of it that day when Betty got put right back in bed.”
From the hall outside the closed study door a girl squeals in laughter, quickly shushed. The Reverend smiles and toys with his mustache in the manner of a young man who has some idea of what foolishness girls can be gotten up to.
“What happened next?” he asks.
“At first, nothing. Betty stayed abed, Abby got bossed about the house left and right, Tittibe giving her extra duties now that Betty weren’t well enough to help. The other children, Thomas and Susannah, carried on with nary a complaint, but then Thomas were a bookish sort of boy who never made much fuss, and Susannah just out of babyhood. The Reverend working away on his sermons, grim as ever, his wife flitting about, full of recriminations, pining for Boston. My mother called on her very often. Sometimes my mother’d take me with her, but I was never allowed to linger with them. I’d be sent up to the loft to look to Betty.”