Conversion by Katherine Howe Read Free Book Online Page A

wondering if there was a way to fade freckles and wishing my nose weren’t quite so snubby. I stuck my tongue out at myself, drew dark liner on my eyelids, and texted Anjali.
    Meet at 9 by the newsstand.
    J’s friend better be cute.
    January in Massachusetts can be peripatetic. That’s a two-dollar SAT word,
peripatetic,
meaning either “wandering around” or “a student of the school of Aristotle.” This time I meant it in the wandering-around sense, both that the weather comes and goes in unpredictable ways, dumping a foot of snow one day and then simmering it into slush the next, and that there was a restlessness in the air, a sense that something was about to happen. Though standing in Harvard Square maybe had something Aristotelian about it, too. Scholarly. Skeptical. Less famous than Plato.
    I stood in my peacoat right at nine, damp with sweat because it was one of those nights that looked cold but wasn’t, waiting for Anjali and them to get there. I didn’t know why I bothered to be on time—Jason was always late. Then when I got annoyed about it, he’d tell me I “gots to chill,” and I’d seriously want to smack him in the teeth.
    Harvard Square is always a scene, and this Saturday was no different. Everyone was out soaking up some of the unseasonable warmth. Some gutter punk kids had started a drum circle in the Pit. The same homeless guy was selling
Spare Change News.
Grizzled Cambridge types in army surplus jackets hunched over chessboards, timers ticking. Bands of Harvard girls picked their way along the sidewalk, trying to keep their heels from getting caught in the bricks. I leaned against a lamppost, trying to look preoccupied so no weirdos would bother me. It’s tricky, looking indifferent enough to keep weirdos at bay but engaged enough that your friends can find you. I usually go for a mix of busy/preoccupied/mysterious, as if I were a woman freshly arrived off an international flight from Geneva and just here looking for my driver.
    “Waiting for someone?” said a voice next to my ear.
    I jumped. Not something someone freshly arrived from Geneva would do.
    The voice belonged to a fresh-looking guy about my age, the kind of guy who smells like soap. His hands were in his pockets, and he had a 1990s retro haircut, short in the back, sideburns, long on top. Button-down shirt under an open barn jacket. He was lean, and standing with his shoulders rounded forward the way tall guys do when they want to be able to hear what a girl is saying. He had a dimple in his left cheek, and the beginnings of lines around his eyes. I smiled.
    “Um, yeah,” I said. “Sort of.”
    “Me too,” he said, looking off across the crowd of punk-rock drummers.
    One of the gutter punk kids, a skinny boy with long cockleshell dreads and a ripped Minor Threat T-shirt, got up in the center of the Pit and coiled his arms and legs in rhythm. The guy in the button-down shirt watched the punk dancer, smiling as though thinking of a private joke. He shifted his weight, and then somehow we were waiting together.
    “They’ll be here any minute,” I said.
    I didn’t want him getting any ideas. Not all weirdos look like weirdos at first.
    “Oh, yeah, mine too.” He nodded.
    A long pause while we both pretended to scan the crowd for familiar faces. The new quiet between us grew awkward, lying there under the sound of the drumming.
    “So,” he said. “Who-all’re you waiting for?”
    “Just a friend of mine from school. Her and her boyfriend.” I added this second part so he’d know a guy was coming. He got the hint, and shifted an inch or so away from me.
    “You go here?” he said, gesturing over his shoulder with his chin.
    He meant Harvard. Harvard kids always talked like that.
    “Nah,” I said. I didn’t elaborate.
    “BU?” he asked.
    “No, no. I’m not in college,” I said, feeling foolish, though I didn’t know why. I mean, I’d be in college soon enough, right? Maybe even “here.”
    He ducked