Chapter 6

The car slowed down as it passed. The driver, a bald guy with gray stubble on his face, leaned across the passenger seat and called through the window.

“Need a ride, hon?”

Kristen ignored him, facing down the street as if looking for her bus. Baldie drove on. It was the third offer she’d had since she’d been sitting here. The guys were creepy, but in a weird way she liked the attention. It meant she looked good, and she wanted to look good — for Patty.

Of course, at her age, and with her body, it didn’t take much. She was dressed simply, in a loose-knit pink sweater, red sneakers and socks, and black cargo pants. She had showered, and she smelled like roses.

Patty had told her to wait at the bus stop a half-mile from school. They would meet here and go to lunch, then to a museum or a movie. Kristen had a fantasy about necking in the theater, and Patty feeling up her tits like a horny boy. To make it easy for her, she wasn’t wearing a bra, or a shirt. Her bare white skin shone through the mesh of her sweater, and her coppery nipples actually poked through the gaps in the weave, though they were well camouflaged enough by the pink. Anybody would have to look close to see them, but the guys in the cars were looking close, and right now, Kristen wished her hair were as long as Suzie’s. She crossed her arms. Maybe it was a mistake to leave the house so exposed, but now that she’d seen men’s reactions, she was dying to see Patty’s.

That is, if Patty ever showed up. She said she’d here at a quarter to two, after Good Friday prayers, and it was almost two-thirty. Kristen was hungry. The metal bench was starting to hurt her butt. She’d let three buses go by, and she worried the next guy who tried to pick her up wouldn’t take no for an answer. She looked expectantly at the shops across the pike, sure that at any second her beloved redhead would come bobbing around the corner, brimming with explanations and apologies.

But after ten more minutes, she’d had enough. Patty had said not to come to the convent, but if Kristen was going to be stood up, she was owed an explanation. Maybe something was wrong. Maybe Patty got sick, or maybe — more likely — she was feeling guilty. In that case, one look at Kristen in her see-through sweater would bring her around.

Kristen got up from the bench and crossed the pike when the light changed. Bobbi, the woman who owned the second-hand jewelry store on the corner, waved to her through the window. The girls from Saint Agnes spent a lot of their after-school hours in there, trying on antique silver pins and lapis pendants. Kristen was surprised Bobbi recognized her out of uniform. She had a sudden inspiration — she and Patty would go in this very afternoon and buy matching rings. Jade, if Bobbi had them, to remind her of Patty’s eyes. She pointed down the street toward the school, as if explaining why she couldn’t come in just then, and she walked on.

Off the crowded pike, with its banks, real estate offices and shops, the road descended into a valley of brightly painted gingerbread homes with wrought iron fences. The sidewalk stopped at the first cross street, and Kristen continued on the shoulder, past the old orphanage where, now, they took care of kids from the city who’d been abused or whose parents were in jail. Stone cottages built a century ago were hidden behind a barricade of trees that were just beginning to bud. Farther along, across the roadway, stood a white-grid block incongruously called the Cloister, where retired nuns were warehoused with other old Catholics, and where, every December, the girls from Saint Agnes, in their plaid winter uniforms and red Santa hats, would wander the antiseptic corridors, singing carols and handing out construction-paper Christmas cards drawn by kids at an elementary school. The girls were assured their visit made the old people happy.

The walk felt a lot longer than usual. Finally, the white box receded at the edge of Kristen’s vision, and as the road curved, Saint Agnes Academy turned slowly into view, a gray fortress on a green hill. Everyone called it The Castle. It was built of smooth gray stone, with heavy oaken doors recessed into Gothic arches. Above them, in a pointed niche, stood Saint Agnes herself, patroness of virgins, martyred at twelve, guarding her charges’ virtue with outspread arms. Twin chess-piece turrets, rising a full story above the adjoining roof, stood at each end of the gray façade, and everywhere the walls were studded with battlements, so in case of attack, Kristen guessed, the girls of Saint Agnes could rain arrows on the raping Vandals below. All that was missing was a moat and a drawbridge.

The school brochure called it a marvel of neo-medieval design, but Kristen, and a lot the other girls, never bought into the pretense. Some uninspired architect, with no ideas of his own, had knocked off Camelot from a textbook and planted it in the suburbs, where it had no business being. The turrets were always closed off, and no one was ever allowed up on the roof.

Kristen climbed the asphalt drive and around the tower on the left. Behind the school was the sisters’ residence, a squat lump, made of the same gray stones as Castle, that sat between parking lot and the soccer field. The nuns walked fifty feet to work every morning. She mounted the flag steps and rang the bell.

Stillness. Sunshine. Birds. She rang again, and after a small eternity she heard the sucking sound of an inner door. A lock clicked, then another. The dark door opened a crack, and Kristen found herself being examined by the hard gray eyes of Sister Saint Augustine.

“Yes?”

“Sister Patrice asked me to meet her here.”

“Sister Patrice is indisposed,” the nun said. “Can it wait?”

“Well ... we ... uh...”

“Yes?”

“We were going to talk about my vocation.”

“You want to be a nun?”

“I think so.”

“Never think. Either you know or you don’t.”

“I’m only fourteen.”

“A baby,” Sister Saint Augustine said. “Very well. Come inside. I’ll see if Sister’s well enough to receive you.”

She stepped back, and the heavy door opened wide, as if on its own. Kristen went in. The nun heaved the door shut and brushed past her, leading her into a dim foyer. The walls were covered halfway up with dark oak. The ceiling, too, was oak, deeply coffered and toothed at the edges. The rugs were spotless, but they looked old — thick and dull blue, with an indecipherable pattern of thorns and yellow flowers that twined around a faded brown cross. A staircase with a wood-spindle banister went up the left wall. To the right, an archway, braced with fluted oak pillars, opened onto a sitting room.

“Wait in there,” Sister said. “Sister is upstairs.”

But Auggie didn’t go upstairs. She went back behind the staircase and disappeared, limping slightly. She always limped. The sole of her right shoe was thick, to compensate for her short leg.

The sitting room had windows on three sides. Kristen sat in a ruffled loveseat opposite the archway. A crucifix hung on the wall to the left of the arch, a picture of the Virgin on other. Magazines were fanned out on the coffee table in front of her, like in a doctor’s office, except these magazines were religious. The covers were smooth, as if they had never been opened.

Impatient and uncomfortable, Kristen picked one up. She flipped to an article about making the gospel relevant to the millennial generation, and she was about to discover the secret when Auggie limped into the room again, carrying a tray.