Conversion Read Free

where they’ll be like a sleeper cell ready to activate when they hear the secret password.”
    “And the secret word would be?” Emma asked.
    “
Jason,
” I said, sending Emma and Deena into fits of giggles.
    “You guys, shut up!” Anjali said, turning around and hitting my arm. “You are so gross.”
    She was pretending to be upset, but she was smiling. Being the only one of us with a boyfriend came with the assumption that it was her privilege to let us tease her.
    “
Jason
is so gross,” I clarified as Deena said, “Mmm-hmm,” and shot Anjali her
We keep telling you
look. That look is deadly.
    The bell rang just as Father Molloy strode in, clapping his hands and saying, “All right, girls, let’s take it down a notch.”
    Father Molloy is the kind of priest that my mother likes to call “Father Oh Well.” That’s such a Rowley family Irish name joke. Pathetic. Anyway, she says that because she thinks he’s cute, and I guess he sort of is except for he’s really old, like, forty. He perched with one knee up on the edge of the desk and frowned at the roll sheet. I don’t even know why he was bothering, since I don’t think we had any new girls this late in the year. We’d already had him for eighth-grade catechism anyway, most of us.
    While he was distracted, Anjali pulled her phone out of her sweater pocket and slid it under the lid of her desk. There’s a pretty intense “no cell phones in class” policy at St. Joan’s, and Anjali is a prime offender. She can text without looking, which she swears is easy, though I’ve never been able to do it. They had taken at least two phones away from her in the previous semester that I know of, and when they take your phone away, they actually keep it. What I couldn’t believe was that Anjali’s parents kept buying her new ones. My mother told me that if they ever took my phone away, I’d be buying the next one myself. Which is fine, except I don’t have three hundred dollars just kicking around. I now texted during class only in the event of a dire emergency. Anjali, though, she’s ridiculous. I peered over her shoulder to see what she was writing.
    “You shouldn’t text him back right away like that,” I whispered.
    “What?” Anjali whispered back.
    Father Molloy had started down the roll sheet for attendance, and girls were responding when he called their names.
    “Emma Blackburn?”
    “Here,” Emma said.
    “Jennifer Crawford?”
    “Here,” said the girl with pink-streaked hair and heavy eyeliner sitting in the back of the room.
    I leaned in closer so Anjali could hear me. “You should at least wait five minutes. Or, heck, wait ’til fifth period. Then he’ll appreciate it.”
    Deena had her eyes fixed straight ahead, but I could tell she was listening.
    “What for? I like him. If I text back quickly, I hear from him sooner,” Anjali said out of the side of her mouth.
    “But, Anj,” I said, leaning forward on my elbows hard enough to tip the desk. “You’ve got to—”
    “Critical commentary, Miss Rowley?”
    Crap.
    “No, Father Molloy.”
    He dropped the roll sheet on the desk and folded his arms. I’d seen him give other girls that look before, but I didn’t think he’d ever given it to me.
    “I’m sorry, but I think only half the room caught what you were saying,” he said. “Would you mind repeating it?”
    “I’m sorry? I wasn’t saying anything.”
    “Fair enough. Perhaps Miss Seaver in speech and debate didn’t cover projection. Stand up, if you will.”
    Double crap.
    “Chop chop,” said Father Molloy.
    I stood up, a whole roomful of girls whispering a decibel above silence, rows of wide-blinking eyes staring at me with pity and, in a few faces, delight. So far this year I was perfect: attendance, lateness, everything going seamlessly. I had two early decision deferrals to think about, and another dozen applications had gone out last week. Plus the thing with Fabiana. I needed to get out of this without it