My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

  And somehow Gretchen knew exactly what Abby was thinking. She was smiling back at Abby, and Abby didn’t want anyone else at her birthday party now, because her heart was beating in time with the music and they were spinning and Gretchen shouted out loud:

  “This! Is! Awesome!”

  Then Abby skated into Tommy Cox, got tangled up in his legs, and landed on her face, driving her top tooth through her lower lip and spraying a big bib of blood all down her E.T. shirt. Her parents had to drive her to the emergency room, where Abby received three stitches. At some point, Gretchen’s parents retrieved their daughter from the roller rink, and Abby didn’t see her again until homeroom on Monday.

  That morning, her face was tighter than a balloon ready to burst. Abby walked into homeroom early, trying not to move her swollen lips, and the first thing she heard was Margaret Middleton.

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t come,” Margaret snipped, and Abby saw her looming over Gretchen’s desk. “Everyone was there. They all stayed late. Are you scared of horses?”

  Gretchen sat meekly in her chair, head lowered, hair trailing on her desk. Lanie Ott stood by Margaret’s side, helping her berate Gretchen.

  “I rode a horse and it took a high jump twice,” Lanie Ott said.

  Then the two of them saw Abby standing in the door.

  “Ew,” Margaret said. “What happened to your face? It looks like barf.”

  Abby was paralyzed by the righteous anger welling up inside her. She had been to the emergency room! And now they were being mean about it? Not knowing what else to do, Abby tried telling the truth.

  “Tommy Cox skated into me and I had to get stitches.”

  At the mention of Tommy Cox’s name, Lanie Ott opened and closed her mouth uselessly, but Margaret was made of sterner stuff.

  “He did not,” she said. And Abby realized that, oh my God, Margaret could just say Abby was a liar and no one would ever believe her. Margaret continued, “It’s not nice to lie and it’s rude to ignore other people’s invitations. You’re rude. You’re both rude.”

  That’s when Gretchen snapped her head up.

  “Abby’s invitation was first,” she said, eyes blazing. “So you’re the rude one. And she’s not a liar. I saw it.”

  “Then you’re both liars,” Margaret said.

  Someone was reaching over Abby’s shoulder and knocking on the open door.

  “Hey, any of you little dudes know where—aw, hey, sweetness.”

  Tommy Cox was standing three inches behind Abby, his curly blond hair tumbling around his face. The top button of his shirt was undone to show a gleaming puka shell necklace, and he was smiling with his impossibly white teeth. Heavy gravity was coming off his body in waves and washing over Abby.

  Her heart stopped beating. Everyone’s hearts stopped beating.

  “Dang,” he said, furrowing his brow and examining Abby’s lower lip. “Did I do that?”

  No one had ever looked so closely at Abby’s face before, let alone the coolest senior at Albemarle Academy. She managed to nod.

  “Gnarly,” he said. “Does it hurt?”

  “A little?” Abby managed to say.

  He looked unhappy, so she changed her mind.

  “No biggie,” she squeaked.

  Tommy Cox smiled and Abby almost fell down. She had said something that made Tommy Cox smile. It was like having a superpower.

  “Coolness,” he said. Then he held out a can of Coke, condensation beading on the surface. “It’s cold. For your face, right?”

  Abby hesitated then took the Coke. You weren’t allowed to go to the vending machines until seventh grade, and Tommy Cox had gone to the vending machines for Abby and bought her a Coke.

  “Coolness,” she said.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Cox,” Mrs. Link said, pushing through the door. “You need to find your way back to the upper school building before you get a demerit.”

  Mrs. Link stomped to her desk and threw down her bag. Everyone was still staring at Tommy Cox.

  “Sure thing, Mrs. L,” he said. Then he held up a hand. “Gimme some skin, tough chick.”

  In slow motion Abby gave him five. His hand was cool and strong and warm and hard but soft. Then he turned to go, took a step, looked back over his shoulder, and winked.

  “Stay chill, little Betty,” he said.

  Everyone heard it.

  Abby turned to Gretchen and smiled and her stitches ripped and her mouth filled with salt. But it was worth it when she turned and saw Margaret Middleton standing there like a dummy with no comeback and nothing to say. They didn’t know it then, but that’s when everything started, right there in Mrs. Link’s homeroom: Abby grinning at Gretchen with big blood-stained teeth, and Gretchen smiling back shyly.

  That’s What Friends Are For

  Abby took that Coke can home and never opened it. Her lip healed and the stitches came out a week later, leaving an ugly fruit jam scab that Hunter Prioleaux said was VD but that Gretchen never even mentioned.

  As her scab was healing, Abby decided there was no way her new friend hadn’t seen E.T. Everyone had seen E.T. And so one day she confronted Gretchen in the cafeteria.

  “I haven’t seen E.T.,” Gretchen repeated.

  “That’s impossible,” Abby said. “60 Minutes says even the Russians have seen E.T.”

  Gretchen stirred her lima beans and then made up her mind about something.

  “You promise not to tell anyone?” she asked.

  “Okay,” Abby said.

  Gretchen leaned in close, the tips of her long blond hair trailing across her Salisbury steak.

  “My parents are in the Witness Protection Program,” she whispered. “If I go to the movies, I might get kidnapped.”

  Abby was thrilled. Gretchen would be her dangerous friend! Life was finally getting exciting. There was only one problem:

  “Then how could you come to my birthday party?” she asked.

  “My mom thought it would be okay,” Gretchen said. “They don’t want being criminals to keep me from having a normal life.”

  “Then ask her if you can see E.T.,” Abby said, getting back to the important subject. “If you want to have a normal life, you have to see E.T. People are going to think you’re weird if you don’t.”

  Gretchen sucked the gravy off the tips of her hair and nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “But your parents will have to take me. If my parents and I are seen in public together, a criminal might recognize them.”

  Abby exhausted her parents into agreement, despite the fact that her mom believed seeing a movie more than once was a waste of time, money, and brain cells. The next weekend, Mr. and Mrs. Rivers dropped off Abby and Gretchen at Citadel Mall to see the 2:20 showing of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial while they went Christmas shopping. Because she lived a sheltered life in the Witness Protection Program, Gretchen was clueless about how to buy tickets or popcorn. It turned out she’d never even been to a movie on her own before, which was bizarre to Abby, who could ride her bike to the Mt. Pleasant 1–2–3 and see the $1 afternoon matinees. Gretchen may have had criminals for parents, but Abby felt a lot more worldly.

  The lights went down and at first Abby was worried she wouldn’t love E.T. as much as all the other times she’d seen it, but then Elliott called Michael penis-breath and she laughed and the government came and Elliott reached for E.T. through the plastic wall and she cried, reminding herself once more that this was the most powerful motion picture in the world. But as Elliott and Michael stole the van right before the big chase at the end, Abby had a horrible thought: What if Gretchen wasn’t crying? What if the lights came on and Gretchen was sitting there sucking on her braids like this was an ordinary movie? What if she hated it?

  These thoughts were so stressful, they kept Abby from enjoying the ending. As the credits rolled,
she sat in the dark, miserable, staring straight ahead, too scared to look at Gretchen. Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore, and as the credits thanked Marin County for its assistance she turned her head and saw Gretchen staring at the screen, her face totally blank. Abby’s heart cramped and then, before she said anything, she saw the light from the screen reflecting off Gretchen’s wet cheeks, and Abby’s heart unclenched and Gretchen turned to her and said, “Can we see it again?”

  They could. Then they had dinner at Chi-Chi’s and Abby’s dad pretended it was his birthday and the waiters came out and put a giant sombrero on his head and sang him the Mexican birthday song and gave them all fried ice cream.

  It was the greatest day of Abby’s life.

  “I have to tell you something serious,” Gretchen said.

  It was the second time she’d slept over. Abby’s parents were out at a Christmas party, and so the two of them had eaten frozen pizzas during The Powers of Matthew Star and now Falcon Crest had just ended. Falcon Crest wasn’t as good as Dynasty, but Dynasty came on Wednesday nights, a school night, so Abby wasn’t allowed to watch it. Gretchen wasn’t allowed to watch anything. Her parents had strict TV rules, and they didn’t even have cable because it was too dangerous to have their names on the bill.

  Three weeks into their friendship and Abby was used to all the strange rules of the Witness Protection Program. No movies, no cable, barely any TV, no rock music, no two-piece swimsuits, no sugary breakfast cereals. But there was something Abby knew about the Witness Protection Program from movies, and it scared her: sometimes, with no warning, the people under protection disappeared overnight.

  And now that Gretchen had something important to say, Abby knew exactly what it was.

  “You’re moving,” she said.

  “Why?” Gretchen asked.

  “Because of your parents,” Abby said.

  Gretchen shook her head.

  “I’m not moving,” she said. “You can’t hate me. You have to promise not to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Abby said. “You’re cool.”

  Gretchen kept picking at the plaid sofa, not looking at Abby, and Abby started getting worried. She didn’t have a lot of friends, and Gretchen was definitely the coolest person she’d ever met, after Tommy Cox.

  “My parents aren’t really in the Witness Protection Program,” Gretchen said, clenching her hands in her lap. “I made it up. They won’t let me see PG- or R-rated movies. They’ll only let me see G-rated movies until I’m thirteen. I didn’t tell them I was going to E.T. I told them we went to see Heidi’s Song instead.”

  There was a long silence. Tears slipped down her nose and dripped onto the sofa.

  “You hate me,” Gretchen said, nodding to herself.

  Actually, Abby was thrilled. She’d never totally believed the whole Witness Protection Program story anyway because, like her mom said, if something seemed too good to be true then it probably was. And if Gretchen’s parents treated her like a baby, that made Abby the cool one. Gretchen needed her if she was ever going to see a PG movie or keep up with Falcon Crest, so they’d always have to be friends. But Abby also knew that Gretchen might stop being her friend now that Abby knew a secret about her, so she decided to give her a secret back.

  “You want to see something gross?” she asked.

  Tears splatted onto the couch as Gretchen shook her head.

  “I mean really gross,” Abby explained.

  Gretchen kept crying, clenching her hands until her knuckles turned white. So Abby got a flashlight out of the kitchen drawer, pulled Gretchen off the sofa, and forced her upstairs into her parents’ bedroom, listening for their car pulling into the driveway the entire time.

  “We shouldn’t be in here,” Gretchen said in the dark.

  “Shhhh,” Abby said, leading her past the trunk at the foot of the bed and into her dad’s closet. Inside, behind his pants, there was a suitcase. Inside the suitcase was a black plastic bag, and inside the black plastic bag was a big cardboard box containing a videotape. Abby switched on the flashlight and shone it on the VHS box.

  “Bad Mama Jama,” she said. “My mom doesn’t know he has it.”

  Gretchen wiped her nose on her sleeve and took the box from Abby with both hands. On the front cover, an extremely large black woman was bent over, dressed in nothing but a string bikini, spreading her fanny wide open. She was looking back over her shoulder, wearing orange lipstick that matched her nail polish, smiling like she was thrilled two little girls were looking up her butt. The caption under the photo read: “Mama’s got supper in the oven!”

  “Ew!” Gretchen squealed, throwing the tape at Abby.

  “I don’t want it!” Abby shouted, throwing it back at her.

  “It touched me!” Gretchen said.

  Abby wrestled her onto the bed and straddled Gretchen’s squirming body, rubbing the tape all over her hair.

  “Ew! Ew! Ew!” Gretchen screamed. “I’m going to die!”

  “You’re going to get pregnant!” Abby said.

  That was the moment. When Gretchen stopped lying to Abby about the Witness Protection Program, when Abby showed Gretchen her dad’s secret sex fetish for large black women, when Abby wrestled with Gretchen on her parents’ bed. Starting that night, they were best friends.

  Everything happened over the next six years. Nothing happened over the next six years. In fifth grade they had separate homerooms, but over lunch Abby told Gretchen everything that had happened on Remington Steele and The Facts of Life. Gretchen wanted Mrs. Garrett to be her mom, Abby thought Blair was usually right about everything, and they both wanted to grow up to run their own private detective agency where Pierce Brosnan had to do whatever they said.

  Gretchen’s mom got a speeding ticket with the girls in the car and said “Shit” out loud. To bribe them into not telling Mr. Lang, she took them to the Swatch store downtown and bought them brand new Swatch watches. Abby got a Jelly and used her own money to get one green and one pink Swatch guard that she twisted together; Gretchen got a Tennis Stripe and matching green and pink Swatch guards. After playing outside, they’d sniff each other’s watch bands and try to figure out what they smelled like. Abby said hers smelled like honeysuckle and cinnamon and Gretchen’s smelled like hibiscus and rose, but Gretchen said they both just smelled like sweat.

  Gretchen slept over six times at Abby’s house in Creekside before Abby was finally allowed to spend the night at Gretchen’s house in the Old Village, the la-di-da part of Mt. Pleasant where all the houses were dignified and either overlooked the water or had enormous yards, and if anyone saw a black person walking down the street who wasn’t Mr. Little, they would pull their Volvo over and ask if he was lost.

  Abby loved going to Gretchen’s. The Langs’ house sat on Pierates Cruze, a dirt road shaped like a horseshoe where the house numbers went in the wrong order and the street name was spelled wrong because rich people could do whatever they wanted. Their house was number eight. It was an enormous gray cube that looked out over Charleston harbor through a back wall that was a two-story high window made of a single sheet of glass. Inside, it was as sterile as an operating theater, all hard right angles, sheer surfaces, gleaming steel, and glass that was polished twice a day. It was the only house in the Old Village that looked like it was built in the twentieth century.

  The Langs had a dock where Abby and Gretchen swam (as long as they wore tennis shoes so they wouldn’t cut their feet on oysters). Mrs. Lang cleaned Gretchen’s room every other week and threw out anything she didn’t think her daughter needed. One of her rules was that Gretchen could have only six magazines and five books at a time. “Once you’ve finish reading it, you’ve finished needing it” was her motto.

  So Abby got all the books that Gretchen bought at B. Dalton’s with her seemingly unlimited allowance. Forever . . . by Judy Blume,

  whic
h they knew was all about them (except for the gross parts at the end). Jacob Have I Loved (secretly Abby believed that Gretchen was Caroline and she was Louise). Z for Zachariah (which gave Gretchen nuclear war nightmares), and the ones they had to sneak into the Langs’ house hidden in the bottom of Abby’s bookbag, all of them by V. C. Andrews: Flowers in the Attic, Petals in the Wind, If There Be Thorns, and, most scandalous of them all, My Sweet Audrina, with its endless parade of sexual perversion.

  But mostly, for six years, they stayed in Gretchen’s room. They made endless lists: their best friends, their okay friends, their worst enemies, the best teachers and the meanest teachers, which teachers should get married to each other, which school bathroom was their favorite, where they would be living in six years, in six months, in six weeks, where they’d live when they were married, how many babies their cats would have together, what their wedding colors would be, whether Adaire Griffin was a total slut or just misunderstood, whether Hunter Prioleaux’s parents knew their son was the spawn of Satan or if he fooled them, too.

  It was an endless Seventeen quiz, an eternal process of self-classification. They traded scrunchies, they pored over YM and Teen and European Travel and Life. They fantasized about Italian counts, and German duchesses, and Diana, Princess of Wales, and summers in Capri, and skiing in the Alps. In their shared fantasies, dark European men were constantly escorting them into helicopters and flying them to hidden mansions where they tamed wild horses.

  After they snuck into Flashdance, Abby and Gretchen would slip off their shoes at the dinner table and grab each other’s crotches with sock-covered feet. Abby would wait until Gretchen was lifting a forkful of peas, then stick her foot in Gretchen’s crotch, making her fling food everywhere and sending her dad into a tirade.