My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

  She stood up, pulling Gretchen with her, turning them around, trying to walk. But Gretchen’s legs were too stiff to do more than stumble.

  “Glee!” Abby yelled. “Mar-ga-ret!”

  Seconds later, the girls came crashing through the woods.

  “Thank fucking God,” Margaret said.

  Then Glee and Margaret were all over Gretchen, leading her out of the clearing, Margaret pulling off her own big T-shirt and sliding it over Gretchen’s head because at least Margaret was wearing a bra. Abby stood and watched them go, relief flooding her limbs. She looked back at the blockhouse and saw something modern poking around its corner. Leaning over, she got a better look. A big metal box was planted in the dirt. Dusty green, it squatted in the woods, a white number 14 stenciled on the side. She picked her way over and laid a hand on top. It was buzzing. A Southern Bell logo was stamped on a padlocked hatch on the side, and she realized that the humming last night came from some kind of phone equipment.

  Mystery deflated, she turned again to the blockhouse and realized it didn’t look evil now, just filthy. Half the ceiling had collapsed and big chunks of broken tabby lay piled on the ground. The inside walls were scratched deep from top to bottom with more obscene graffiti, every inch thick with shaky symbols, unreadable words, weird letters that might have been numbers, band names hacked over sex drawings scratched over wannabe satanic designs. The ground was carpeted with empty wine-cooler bottles and cigarette butts.

  One slab of tabby lay in the center, as big and round as a dinner table, tipped up on one side to present its face to the window. Watery morning light shone on half of it. Smeared across its surface was a handful of something red that could have been fresh paint. Abby backed away slowly from the window and got out of the woods.

  It was just paint, she told herself. That’s all it was.

  Sunday Bloody Sunday

  Everyone was starving but the only items in Margaret’s fridge were half a grapefruit, a curl of cheddar cheese in a Ziploc bag, a case of Perrier, and a box of Fleet laxative suppositories, because Margaret’s mom was watching her weight again.

  Glee was jazzed up on no sleep, telling no one in particular the blow by blow of how they’d spent all night looking for Gretchen and how worried she’d been the whole time. Margaret was a space cadet, standing in front of the coffee maker, watching it fill. The girls stank. Abby’s shins seethed with scratches, her arms felt like solid bruises, and her scalp ached where she’d lost some hair. She kept trying to get Gretchen out the door, but Gretchen was moving in circles. First she wanted to go look for her T-shirt in the woods, then she couldn’t find her wallet, then her house keys weren’t in her bag. Margaret kept waiting for them to go, but after Gretchen put down her bag and couldn’t find it for the third time, Margaret stomped off to the shower and slammed the bathroom door. Finally, finally, finally they loaded up the Dust Bunny and backed out way too fast.

  “We should’ve waited for Margaret,” Gretchen mumbled, slumped against the passenger side window.

  “We’ll see her on Monday,” Abby said. “Right now we need to get home before your parents.”

  She bounced the Dust Bunny hard down the oak-lined dirt road.

  “Ow,” Gretchen moaned as her head knocked against the window.

  Old Charleston families loved their big country houses, and they loved their long driveways, and the worse condition they kept them in, the more they felt like they were the right kind of people. The Middletons were exactly the right kind of people. Just as her shock absorbers couldn’t take any more damage, Abby hung a right and the Dust Bunny hauled itself onto the two-lane blacktop that cut through the deep pine forest out of Wadmalaw and toward Charleston; she pressed the gas. The Bunny’s little sewing machine engine hummed like crazy.

  “Do you have twelve dollars I can borrow?” Abby asked.

  Gretchen just fiddled with the radio.

  “Gretchen?” Abby said.

  No answer. Abby decided to go for the long explanation. “They shorted me at TCBY this week but they’re making it up on my next paycheck. We’re not going to make it home if I don’t get some gas.”

  There was a long pause, then:

  “I can’t remember anything about last night,” Gretchen said.

  “You got lost,” Abby said. “And spent the night in that building. There’s a gas station in Red Top.”

  Gretchen thought about this.

  “I don’t have any money,” she decided.

  “They take cards,” Abby said.

  “I have a card?” Gretchen asked hopefully.

  “In your wallet,” Abby said.

  Abby knew that Gretchen’s dad had given her a credit card for emergencies. Except for Abby, all the girls had gas cards and credit cards and allowances, because no one’s dad wanted his daughter to be stranded somewhere without enough money to get home. Except for Abby’s dad. He didn’t much care about anything except lawn mowers.

  Gretchen hauled her bag onto her lap and began pawing through it until she found her wallet, fumbled it open, and froze.

  “How much do you have?” Abby asked.

  Nothing but the hum of the Dust Bunny’s engine.

  Abby risked a look over.

  “Gretchen?” she asked. “How much?”

  Gretchen turned to Abby, and in the morning sun Abby could see that her eyes were swimming with tears.

  “Sixteen dollars,” she said. “That’s enough for gas and a Diet Coke, right? That’s okay if I have a Diet Coke?”

  “Of course,” Abby said. “It’s your money.”

  The light sparkled on tears as they slid down Gretchen’s cheeks.

  “Gretchen?” Abby asked, suddenly worried.

  Sunlight flickered through the trees as they drove, turning strong and solid as they left the pine forest behind. Tomato fields lay flat and fallow for acres on either side of the two-lane blacktop. Gretchen inhaled so deep, it turned into a shuddering sob.

  “I just really, really . . . ,” Gretchen broke off, overcome. She tried again. “I need everything to be normal right now.”

  Abby reached over, took her hand, and squeezed. Gretchen’s skin was cold, but the inside of the car was warming from the sun.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Abby said. “I promise.”

  “You’re sure?” Gretchen asked.

  “Totally positive,” Abby said.

  By the time they rolled into Red Top, they were running on fumes and Gretchen was starting to come down.

  They were silent the rest of the ride home. Exhausted, Gretchen leaned way back in her seat, picking at her hair, her mud-caked legs stretched out in front of her. The closer they got to Mt. Pleasant, the happier Abby felt. They were headed up onto the first span of the bridge when Bobby McFerrin started whistling; Abby turned up the volume on “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and mellow radio reassurance filled the car. Everyone was in church, so there was no bridge traffic. The sun was sparkling off the waves in the harbor, and there wasn’t a thing in the world that couldn’t be fixed by a good night’s sleep.

  Where the Oasis gas station split Coleman Boulevard in two, Abby hung a right and rolled through the Old Village at a stately twenty-five miles per hour. Live oaks formed tunnels over every street, occassionally exploding out of the middle of the road and forcing the the asphalt to split around them. There was nothing suburban about the neighborhood; it felt as if they were driving through a forest full of farmhouses. They passed the brick Sweet Shoppe with its basketball courts, then the mossy Confederate cemetery on the hill, the pinprick police station, the tennis courts. They drove past house after house, and every one of them comforted and calmed Abby.

  There were red houses with white trim. Magnolia yellow Southern mansions with wraparound porches and giant white columns. Neat little saltbox cottages with mossy slate roofs. Rambling two-st
ory Victorians wreathed in drooping verandas. Looking up, you couldn’t see the sky, just the underside of an endless green and silver canopy of leaves dripping Spanish moss. Every lawn was clipped, every house was freshly painted, every power walker waved hello and Abby always waved back.

  The only flaw in the Old Village’s perfection were big orange stains splashed up the sides of houses where the sprinklers hit. City water was expensive and, even worse, full of fluoride. That might be fine for your children, but God forbid you use it to hydrate your Alhambra Hall Yard-of-the-Month flowerbeds. So everyone sunk wells for their outdoor hoses and (because the Mt. Pleasant water table was loaded with iron) the sprinklers stained everything orange: driveways, sidewalks, porch railings, wood siding. After enough years of sprinkler splash, your property looked jaundiced, and then the neighbors complained, and then you had to repaint your house. But that’s the price you paid to live in paradise.

  The Dust Bunny rumbled onto Pierates Cruze, where live oak branches raced low over lawns and hung close enough to the road to scrape the Bunny’s roof. Rocks pinged off the undercarriage as they rolled down the dirt road, the tires kicking up a lazy beige cloud as Abby pulled to a stop in front of Gretchen’s house, which sat close to the street with only a square of asphalt for parking. She yanked the emergency brake (the Bunny had a tendency to roll) and turned to give Gretchen a hug.

  “Are you okay?” Abby asked.

  “I’m in so much trouble,” Gretchen said.

  Abby looked at the digital clock glued to her dashboard: 10:49. Gretchen’s parents were usually home from church by 11:30 these days. There was plenty of time for her to hose off her shoes, get inside, clean herself up, and get her head together but she needed to start moving. Instead, she sat there staring out the windshield. She needed a pep talk.

  “I know you’re seriously freaked out,” Abby said. “But I promise you that things are not as bad as they seem. Nothing you’re feeling right now is permanent. But you have to get inside and get cleaned up and get normal or your parents are going to kill you.”

  She leaned over and gave Gretchen a hug.

  “Eye of the Tiger,” Abby said.

  Gretchen looked down at the gearshift and nodded. Then she nodded again, more definitely. “Okay,” she said. “Eye of the Tiger.”

  She pushed open the door with her shoulder, then heaved herself up out of the car, slamming the door behind her and stumbling up the driveway to her house. Abby hoped she remembered to leave her shoes outside.

  Gretchen was cold. Gretchen was tired. Gretchen had spent all night alone in the woods. They’d hang out later that night, Abby told herself. They’d rent a movie or something. Nothing was wrong here. Don’t worry. Be happy.

  The Old Village was in Abby’s rearview mirror as she crossed back over Coleman Boulevard and headed up Rifle Range Road, driving toward a neighborhood where no one ever told you to repaint your trim. In Abby’s neighborhood, telling someone their trim looked a little orange could get you shot.

  She passed the Kangaroo gas station across the street from the guy who sold boiled peanuts and garden statuary out of a shack surrounded by hundreds of concrete birdbaths. Then she passed the Ebenezer Mount Zion A.M.E. church, which marked the boundary of Harborgate Shores, a bland cookie-cutter subdivision that ran for miles; after that, the houses got smaller and the yards were mostly full of boat trailers and dirt. Abby passed a thicket of brick ranchers with fake colonial columns holding up vestigial front porches, then it was all roadside shacks, tin-roofed cinderblock bunkers, and, finally, Abby’s driveway.

  She pulled up in front of her sad, sagging house, with its broken spine and huffing window-unit air conditioners and the army of busted lawn mowers sprouting from the weeds, which were the only things growing in their yard. Despite owning close to three hundred lawn mowers, Abby’s dad never cut the grass.

  When Abby entered Gretchen’s house, it was like opening the pressurized airlock of a gleaming spaceship and walking into a sterile environment. When she entered her own house, it was like forcing open the waterlogged door of a hillbilly’s shack and walking into a moldy cave. Boxes were still piled along the walls and pictures were stacked down the hall because even four years after the move from the larger Creekside house, Abby’s mom still hadn’t unpacked.

  Mr. Lang sat on the worn couch, shirt off, hairless belly resting in his lap, holding a Styrofoam cereal bowl, his feet resting on their scratched-up coffee table. He had the TV on.

  “Hey, Dad,” Abby said, crossing the living room and kissing him on the cheek.

  His eyes didn’t move from the screen.

  “Mm,” he said.

  “What’re you watching?” Abby asked.

  “Gobots,” he said.

  Abby stood to the side and watched mopeds transform into grinning robots, and fighter jets shoot lasers out of their tires. She waited for a conversation to materialize. It didn’t.

  “What’re you doing today?” she asked.

  “Fixing mowers,” he said.

  “I’ve got TCBY,” Abby said. “I might go over to Gretchen’s after. What time’s Mom home?”

  “Late,” he said.

  “You want me to get you a real bowl?” she tried.

  “Mm,” he shrugged.

  Based on past experience, this was about all she could expect from him, so Abby headed into the kitchen, grabbed a green apple, and walked quickly through the drab house to her bedroom. She opened and closed her door as fast as possible, so that none of the poison gas that made her parents so depressing could follow her.

  No one was allowed inside Abby’s room. It belonged to a different house, one she’d built herself, with her own money and hard work. Diagonal pink and silver wallpaper lined the walls, and a carpet of black and white circles with a large red triangle cutting across them covered the floor. There was a JC Penney two-deck stereo sitting on a milk crate she’d draped in silver shimmer fabric, the touch-tone Mickey Mouse phone she’d gotten one Christmas sat next to her bed, and her 19-inch Sampo color TV sat on a glass coffee table.

  A shiny pink and black vanity stood against one wall. Its round mirror bordered with layer upon layer of snapshots: Gretchen in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin that time she had mono, Gretchen and Glee at the beach looking hot in their neon green and black bikinis, Margaret catching air on the hydroslide, the four of them posed for a photo at the ninth-grade semiformal, Gretchen and Abby with their cornrows in Jamaica.

  Abby’s bed was a high, soft nest, held together on three sides by curly white metal railings that rattled whenever she got in. It was piled deep with comforters and blankets, six huge pink pillows, and a mound of her old stuffed animals: Geoffrey the Giraffe, Cabbage Head, Wrinkles the Pound Puppy, Hugga Bear, Sparks, and Fluffy the Fluppy Puppy. She knew it was childish, but what was she going to do? She couldn’t stand to see the hurt in their beady plastic eyes if she put them in the trash.

  Everything in this room had been paid for by Abby, or bought by Abby, or hung by Abby, or painted by Abby, and it was the one place where she felt as comfortable as she did at Gretchen’s. She dropped Duran Duran’s Arena into her stereo and cranked up the volume. Gretchen had given it to her for her birthday three years ago, and it always made her feel like summer in the car with the windows down. She crept down the hall, blasted away the crud with a boiling hot shower, wrapped a towel around herself, and then retreated back to her room. It was getting close to 1 p.m, which meant it was time to put on her face and go to work.

  Back in seventh grade, Abby had woken up one day with a huge blast of zits across her cheeks, forehead, and chin. They were moving out of Creekside at the time and she was so upset and nervous about every single thing in her life that she’d started picking at them. Within a week her face was a mass of oozing scabs and angry, infected craters. She’d begged her parents to let her go to the dermatologist, like Gr
etchen did, but only got a chorus of her mother’s favorite number-one hit single, “We Can’t Afford It.”

  Can we have a dog? “We Can’t Afford It.”

  Can I get biology tutoring? “We Can’t Afford It.”

  What about summer school, so I can graduate early? “We Can’t Afford It.”

  Can I go on the Greece trip with Mrs. Trumbo’s art class? “We Can’t Afford It.”

  Can I go to a doctor so my face doesn’t look like scab pizza? “We Can’t Afford It.”

  Abby had tried Seabreeze, Noxzema, and St. Ives mud masks. Everything advertised in Seventeen, everything she saw in YM. There was even one misguided moment when she’d rubbed mayonnaise into her chin and forehead in a fight-fire-with-fire approach she’d read about in Teen. The results weren’t pretty. No matter what she did, the zits got bigger. It had taken just five days for them to appear, but nothing she did made them go away.

  Then she stopped touching her face, and cut out Coke and chocolate, and maybe changing hormones helped, too, because after three months of humiliation her face started to clear up. Not entirely, but at least it was a cease-fire. But the war left her skin ravaged with scars. There were deep ones on her cheeks, shallow wide ones in the middle of her forehead, enormous black holes jabbed into her nose, and deep red marks outlining her chin.

  “You can only see them when the light hits at a certain angle,”

  Gretchen reassured her, but it was too late. Abby was heartbroken because she had ruined her face and never even gone out with a boy.

  She stayed in her room for an entire weekend that summer; then on

  Monday, Gretchen took her to the Book Bag on Coleman Boule-vard and they went through all the beauty magazines, and finally Gretchen shoplifted a makeup book. Back home, they studied it more closely than they’d ever studied anything at school, made a list, and drove to Kerrisons, where Gretchen bought her eighty-five dollars’ worth of makeup. It took Abby a couple weeks of experimenting, but by Labor Day she had a face she could live with.