Free Conversion by Katherine Howe

troops behind her onward into battle. Both of the horse’s front legs were drawn up, as though about to rear, his eyes rolling back in his head. I got shivers whenever I looked at it.
    My least favorite was the one of Joan burning at the stake. The flames were made of these long shards of red and orange glass, and there were coils of smoke in black iron tracery all around her. But Joan looked different in that panel—her mouth closed, her hands bound before her, and her eyes looking up at heaven in this beatific way. Instead of her armor she was dressed in a white linen shift with a bow at the neck, like what a little girl would wear to bed. A crowd of people milled around her, their hands clasped in prayer, looking on with these fake sorrowful faces, as if they really wished they could do something but couldn’t be bothered. But Joan didn’t seem to mind. Her face was smooth and passive.
    It pissed me off. I hated seeing Joan look okay with being burned alive.
    “What’s up?” I whispered to Deena as I slid into the pew next to her. I realized that I’d missed Deena over the weekend. Emma was my best friend, but that was mostly because we had so much history together. I didn’t like to admit it to myself, but Deena and I had more in common.
    She shuffled her coat and backpack out of the way and smiled at me. She’d changed up her dreads, weaving them into two heavy braids and pinning them behind her head like an Edwardian lady.
    “Nothing much,” she said with a shrug. “Boring weekend. You?”
    “It was okay, I guess.”
    “How’s Jason?” Deena asked, in the mock-sighing way she used to make fun of Anjali.
    “Two words sum up my experience of Jason this weekend. And those words are
track.
And
suit.
”
    Deena threw her head back and laughed, clapping her hands.
    “Yes!” she said. “My God, I love that boy.”
    The sound in the chapel rose as girls filed in, each class pooling in their allotted section of pews, seniors on the front left, juniors front right, sophomores rear left, freshmen rear right, middle school in the upper central gallery, lower school flanking them in the choir gallery on either side.
    Emma dropped into her seat next to me, nudging me with an elbow in greeting. I smiled back at her, but it was a habitual smile. She’d seemed pretty miserable on Saturday night. She sucked at pretending to have fun. Even Spence had thought so when we talked about it Sunday, and he didn’t even know her.
    Anjali came huffing in just behind her, not looking up from her lightning-thumbs on her phone, and dropped into the seat on Emma’s other side. The sound of girls grew deafening, each squeal or chatter or footfall magnified by the echo off the glass windows and stone floor.
    I didn’t see Clara Rutherford. Or the Other Jennifer.
    “All right, all right, find your seats,” intoned the upper school dean, a gray-faced nun in practical shoes, waving her hands like someone trying to conduct an orchestra that hadn’t rehearsed.
    Teachers picked their way to seats among the various classes, choosing them seemingly at random, though the careful eye could discern that they chose spots next to known troublemakers. The sound in the chapel lowered to a simmer.
    “NOW THEN,” the dean said, too close to the mic.
    A squeal of feedback whined through the sound system and we all flinched, some of us putting our hands over our ears.
“OW-UH!”
a small girl’s voice echoed in the choir loft. Someone else said,
“Shhhhh!”
and she settled down.
    “Now then,” the upper school dean tried again.
    “Mary, pray for us. Amen.” A quick cross of herself, and those of us who were Catholic followed suit. “As you can imagine,” she continued, resettling her glasses on her nose, “we have some important announcements, so I’d like to get started right away. You all probably noticed the news van at the front of the upper school when you arrived this morning.”
    She scanned our faces, waiting. No one