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.
“Um,” I said. I was saying a lot of um in this interview. “A couple of them, I’m pretty sure. Yes.”
“What about Clara Rutherford?”
“Clara?” I echoed.
It wasn’t like Clara and I were close enough friends for me to know. I peered at Nurse Hocking. Of course, she might not know if we were close enough friends or not. From the outside, it probably looked like Clara and I were part of the same essential group. Adults sometimes missed subtle gradations of social distinction like that.
“Do you know if Clara is sexually active?” The gravelly suit woman restated the question as if I somehow hadn’t understood.
“Well, I’m not . . . Why are you talking to me first, anyway?” I asked, a twist of suspicion tying itself in my throat.
The nurse and the suit woman exchanged a look.
“You were the first one to bring it to our attention,” Nurse Hocking said. “You’re kind of ground zero for this whole—” She paused, waving her hand in a circle, looking for the right euphemism. She finally decided on “situation” after the suit woman supplied it for her.
“So?”
“So . . .” She drew the words out. “We’re trying to reconstruct everything that happened around when Clara and the other girls fell ill. Just so we can be sure it’s contained.”
“Why wouldn’t it be contained?” I asked.
“Oh, it is,” the nurse hastened to add.
“We’re almost finished,” the suit woman said, as if that would make it okay.
“Just one more question, Colleen,” Nurse Hocking said, shuffling through the papers in my file. “How many times have you had strep throat?”
INTERLUDE
SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS
MAY 30, 1706
Grinning at you?” Reverend Green asks, his fine brows knitting over his eyes.
“Grinning,” I affirm. “Like a dog with a pullet in its mouth.”
“But you said she was screaming bloody murder when you arrived at the parsonage.”
“So I did.”
The Reverend leans back in his chair, a fingertip alongside his temple. “And that Mrs. Parris said she’d been so for some days.”
“Yes.” I watch him, wondering if he understands.
“I see,” he says at length. “Go on.”
I’m standing in the parsonage loft, and downstairs I hear Reverend Parris telling his wife that he’ll be calling in some worthy gentlemen for their opinions. He lists several names, all men I know, all of them active in the village church. Among the names I hear mentioned, foremost among them is my father’s.
An inquiry from Mrs. Parris, the exact nature of which is muffled.
“Tomorrow, if I can,” I hear Reverend Parris say in response.
I hear bustling, Tittibe busying herself with midday dinner. Susannah’s stopped crying, and Thomas is asking his father a question that I can’t hear.
Tomorrow, Abby’s bound to be found out.
“Abby, what’s all this? What are you about?” I whisper, not wanting the adults to hear me.
She grins wider. Shrugs.
“You can hear them well as me,” I say. “Tomorrow the Reverend’s bringing some magistrates in, and they’re going to look you well over. They’ll find you’re not sick. You’ll be in the pillory. And I won’t be sorry to see it.”
“I won’t,” she says.
“They’ll throw clods at you, and cabbages, and they’ll be frozen. You just think about that. A frozen cabbage hitting your face.”
She leans back on the bolster and toys with a length of her hair. She looks clean and combed, and her cheeks are pink with rest. It’s snug up in the loft, with the warmth from the downstairs fire and the smells of dinner, tasty things roasting, rich in the steam collected under the roof. The feeling has finally come back to my feet from my long trudge in the snow. I’d like to climb into that trundle myself.
“Look you, Annie,” she says. “If Betty’s too sick to fetch and carry, why can’t I be, too? Perhaps she’s given me her vile distemper. Anyway, I’m much tireder than she is all the time. Why should I be a servant and she not be? She’s no better than me. I deserve some rest.”
Betty Parris is watching us, her eyes as wide as plates. I glance at her for confirmation. She shakes her head quickly but says nothing.
“It’s a lie, Abby,” I say, my hands knotting under my apron. “It’s a vile sin, lying. If they’re working you too hard, it’s up to you to ask God for His mercy. You can’t just take it for yourself.”
She sticks out her lower lip in a wicked pout.
“But I am sick!” she whines. “The Reverend says so. I’m being tortured. I’m near torn to pieces. Look!”
She sticks out one skinny arm and pulls the sleeve of her shift up above her elbow. The skin is mottled red, scored with evil-looking marks.
“Why, Abby!” I cry, horrified. It’s like the pox, only worse.
I hurry to her, flushed with shame at my suspicions. She smiles in triumph. I perch on the edge of her bed, taking the arm in my hands and turning it nearer the light.
“See?” she says. “Did you ever see such distemper? I need my rest. Everything they do for me only makes it worse. Mrs. Parris and that island witch are at their wits’ end to find a cure.”
“And what’ve they tried?” I ask, frowning over the marks.
Upon closer inspection they don’t look like pox at all. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the like. Except, possibly . . . I hunt back in my mind for the time my brother met a rat in the hayloft, and ran in sobbing, his hands covered in bites.
“Oh, most everything. Poultices of all kinds, a plaster, warm beveridge with sage leaves, purgatives, and lots of rest, of course. I need my sleep.” She says this last bit primly, her eyelashes lowered.
I brush a fingertip over the marks. Abby flinches. They’re red enough that they could be growing foul with pus, but not quite. They sure do smart, though, from the look of them.
“And there’s no improvement?” I ask.
“None. I just cry and cry and scream and scream.” She pauses. “And Thomas has to carry in the buckets for me.”
I glance into her eyes, which are gleaming with mischief. She regains her arm from my grasp and pulls the sleeve back down.
“Abby,” I start to say.
“It’s easy,” she says. “You want me to show you?”
“Show me?” I echo.
She nods, a strange smile on her face.
“Roll up your sleeve,” she commands me.
I shrug off my cloak and push the sleeve up as far as it will go on the tight jacket I’m wearing, exposing a few inches above my wrist. Abby takes my arm in her hands. Her touch is gentle as she probes my skin with her fingertips. She glances at me, her smile growing wider.
Then she pulls my wrist to her mouth and sinks her teeth into my flesh.
I scream, yanking my arm away, and stare at her with horror.
She’s laughing, wiping her mouth with the back of a wrist.
“Abby!” I cry, cradling my arm in my lap. A semicircle of marks on my skin flushes crimson, some of them deep enough that droplets of blood are pushing to the surface.
A commotion stirs downstairs as the Parrises wonder which of us cried out. Was it Betty? It didn’t sound like Betty. And that wasn’t Abby’s scream. Could it be Ann? What if it’s Ann?
At the foot of the ladder Reverend Parris calls up, “Ann? Are you all right?”
Abby has her arms wrapped around her waist, and she’s laughing silently.
“See?” she whispers. “Easy.”
I’ve gotten to my feet, staring down at her with equal parts wonder and horror.
“Ann? Answer me! I’m coming up.”
“No!” I find my voice, though it’s shaking. “I’m quite well. Thank you, Reverend Parris.”
“Who was it cried out just now?”
Abby watches me, waiting to see what I’ll say. Betty’s watching, too, the blankets brought up before her mouth.
“Ah,” I demur. I could say it was Abby. But then she’ll have me in a lie. “It was me, Reverend Parris. I cried out. But I’m all right.”
Abby has settled back in her bedclothes, arms behind her, cradling her head, sleepy and smiling.
“You’ll see,” she whispers. “It pays to have a good distemper now and again.”
“Ann, I want you to come down this instant. The girls need their rest, and we’ve got a message for you to take to your father. Come down!”
The ladder rattles with their insistence.
I gather my cloak up to my chest and back away from Abby. Each foot goes down unsteadily, as though a fearsome pit were widening around me.
“Coming,” I call, my voice shaking.
“Always have to come when called,” Abby whispers. “Fetch and carry, obey everyone. You’ll see, Annie. Don’t we deserve some sport?”
Chapter 11
DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2012
The school nurse and the mystery suit woman interrogated me for seemingly ever. All sorts of questions about strep throat—have I had it? How many times? Did it ever turn into scarlet fever? W
hat about rheumatic fever? I said I didn’t really remember, but wouldn’t all that stuff be in my file anyway? They said yes, but they wanted to be sure the file was accurate. Would I please ask my parents? And on and on. The whole time I kept staring at the floor plan spread behind the nurse’s desk.
The one with seven pins on it.
By the time I was free, the class period had already changed over and I was due in AP US History. Almost overdue—class was all of ten minutes from being over. At that rate, they’d never talk to everyone in the senior class. Or if they did, they wouldn’t finish until we were all in college.
When I skulked into the classroom, Ms. Slater was wrapping up a long lecture about early colonial architecture. She had an overhead projector and was drawing on a transparency of a house floor plan, with lots of little arrows and things. She saw me come in and nodded at me to sit. Emma must have told her where I was.
Emma pulled her coat off the seat she’d been saving for me and whispered, “You were gone for forever. What did they ask you?”
“Weird stuff,” I whispered back. “Like about what vaccines I’d had, and if I’d ever had strep throat, and if I was having sex with anybody.”
Emma blanched. “Oh my God. That sounds awful.”
“Yeah. But that wasn’t the weirdest part.” I shifted my eyes left and right to make sure no one else would be able to overhear me. Emma leaned closer.
“It’s not five,” I whispered.
“What do you mean, it’s not five?”
“It’s seven.”
“No way.” Emma sat straight up in her seat, her eyes wide with panic, hands planted on her desk to force herself to stay seated. “Seven? They told you that?”
“No. But they’ve got this floor plan.” I gestured to the image Ms. Slater was projecting. “It’s of the whole school. And there were seven push pins on it, in different clusters. Like markers. I definitely recognized two in the chapel.”
“Seven,” Emma repeated, staring at nothing.