“Fuck you, skank!” Wallace roared, standing up as best he could with Margaret hanging off him.
“You wish,” Gretchen said.
Abby and Glee were frozen. Wallace Stoney sniffed his sister’s underwear?
Gretchen stood up and got right in Wallace’s face. He looked like he wanted to grab her, but even Wallace knew you didn’t hit a girl in the middle of the Lawn.
“You aren’t good enough for Margaret,” Gretchen said. “You cheat, you lie, you say you love her but only so she’ll do you. And you know what’s most pathetic? The way you keep hitting on me. I’m not interested, Wimpy.”
Gretchen’s jaw was sticking out, her neck was corded, and her eyes were so wide you could see white all the way around. Abby felt like she should stop her, but things had gone too far. They were in a new territory that she didn’t know how to navigate.
“Margaret should dump your ass,” Gretchen said, “because—”
Then she leaned forward and threw up. Abby and Glee scuttled backward as a gallon of hot milky liquid spewed from Gretchen’s mouth in a high-pressure stream, hosing the grass between Wallace’s feet. Abby was barely out of the blast radius when Gretchen’s stomach flexed again, pumping out another gallon of thick white fluid. In it were black strands that looked like worms. Abby leaned closer and realized they were feathers.
Wallace leapt backward, shrieking like a girl.
“These are new shoes!” he shouted.
He noticed that everyone was watching and stuck his chest out, pushing Margaret behind him like a real man, protecting his woman from the horrible threat of girl vomit. Gretchen stood there, bent over at the waist, hands on her knees, breathing hard. Everyone could hear the seagulls, creaking and wheeling overhead, flocking around this sudden abundance of food.
“Oh. My. God,” Glee said.
“I—” Gretchen started, then she fell to her knees and unleashed another blast of white barf; when she’d finished, some of the feathers clung to her lower lip like spider legs. Abby saw Mr. Barlow running across the grass toward them; people were starting to move, and far off someone was giving a slow clap and whistle. Noise was breaking out across the Lawn, but Abby only had eyes for Gretchen. She raised her head and their eyes met. It looked like Gretchen was mouthing the words “help me.”
Then Mr. Barlow was there, and everyone was talking, and he was pulling Gretchen up and leading her to the front office, handling her carefully. Wallace was going back to his friends, getting away from the scene of the crime, pulling Margaret along behind him.
People started approaching the site of the disaster, but before they could get close, Abby snatched the volleyball shirt out of her bag and covered the pile of throw up. As she dropped her jersey over the white puddle, she could have sworn she saw some of the black feathers squirming slowly and unfolding, curling around each other as if they were alive.
Parents Just Don’t Understand
When Gretchen got mono at the end of eighth grade, taking care of her was a team effort. Abby, Margaret, and Glee had all her classes covered. Every day Abby would drop off Gretchen’s homework. On weekends the three of them would get together at Margaret’s downtown house and call Gretchen, sharing the phone, two ears pressed to the receiver at a time, as they told her how unfair Mr. Vikernes’s algebra exam was, and how all the seniors got in trouble for Senior Cut Day, and how Naomi White failed all her classes and was going to be held back.
That was the year Abby started weekday shifts at TCBY, and Mrs. Lang used to pick her up in the afternoon when she was finished. Abby would bring Gretchen vanilla in a cup with rainbow sprinkles and Oreo cookie crunch (once Gretchen’s throat could handle it) and sit on the other bed in Gretchen’s dark room and they’d do magazine quizzes and Abby would read to her: horrifying accounts of skiing accidents from Mrs. Lang’s copies of The Upper Room, gruesome stories of ballet dancers disfigured in house fires from her copies of Guideposts, and the “It Happened to Me” columns from Sassy with titles like “My Mom’s a Drug Addict” and “I Was Raped.”
That was the year Abby and Margaret lobbied Mr. Lang to start paying for cable. When they all pulled together for six weeks to get Gretchen better.
This time, Abby was doing it alone.
Gretchen wasn’t in school Thursday or Friday. Abby knew she hated skipping, so she kept calling Gretchen’s house, desperate to find out what was wrong, but Gretchen could never come to the phone. Over the weekend, Abby tried to convince Margaret and Glee to drive over with her, but Margaret wasn’t having it.
“She can call me and apologize or she can kiss my rooster,” Margaret said. “Did you hear what she said about Wallace? Who even thinks shit like that?”
Also, she was going out in the boat that weekend.
“I can’t come over,” Glee said. “It’s too upsetting.”
“And you’re going out in Margaret’s boat this weekend,” Abby said.
There was a long silence.
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Glee asked. “Stay home?”
Abby kept calling Gretchen’s house until finally Mrs. Lang got sick of it.
“Honestly, Abby, you have to stop calling. It’s becoming inappropriate.”
After that, she let the machine pick up.
On Monday morning, Mrs. Lang called Abby’s house and explained that she would be driving Gretchen to school because they had a doctor’s appointment. Abby was tempted to ask what kind of doctor but didn’t want to be called inappropriate again—it was a polite way of saying she was tacky—so she kept her mouth shut.
A tropical storm was clawing its way up the coast, pushing massive thunderstorms toward Charleston. It was so dark that Abby drove to school with her headlights on. An angry gray wind ripped down the breezeway, and during first-period Intro to Programming it rattled the door all through class, then changed direction and started screaming through the cracks.
It wasn’t until fifth-period Ethics that Gretchen finally arrived. Father Morgan taught the class and he was way too young and looked way too much like a blandly handsome TV weatherman to be taken seriously. So when Gretchen straggled in well after the second bell, holding a late slip, Abby had no problem waving to her while Father Morgan was talking.
“Every week for fourteen years,” Father Morgan was saying, “we’ve been taken on a wonderful journey to a place called Lake Wobegon, a little town of five hundred souls somewhere in Minnesota.”
Gretchen looked dully around the room, and Abby waved again.
“Gretchen!” she whisper-hissed.
“It’s a town with—yes, Abby?” said Father Morgan.
Abby wilted under the attention of an interrupted teacher, even a lightweight like Father Morgan. “I saved Gretchen a seat,” she explained.
“Wonderful,” he said, grinning. “Now, while Lake Wobegon feels as real as Charleston, some of you will be surprised to discover that it exists only in the imagination of Garrison Keillor . . .”
Gretchen looked up and down the rows, and Abby waved again.
“Abby?” Father Morgan grinned. “Is this about Lake Wobegon?”
“No, sir,” Abby said, dropping her hand.
Gretchen took an empty desk by the door. While Father Morgan went on about Lake Wobegon and the power of storytelling, and the wind rattled the windows, Abby tried to figure out what was wrong. Gretchen looked pale, her hair was lank, and she wasn’t even wearing lip gloss. Something white and crusty was caked in the corner of her mouth. Abby worried she had mono again.
Thirty-nine interminable minutes later, the bell rang and everyone ran for the door, shoving their desks back and grabbing their books, overjoyed that they didn’t have to listen to Father Morgan anymore. Abby caught up with Gretchen in the crush by the door as the class spilled out into the breezeway.
“What happened?” she asked. “I’ve been call
ing you all weekend.”
Gretchen shrugged and tried to push her way through the bodies, but Abby would not be denied. She pulled Gretchen up the breezeway, past the waist-high brick wall and into the garden in front of the auditorium. The ground was paved in dark brown brick; the garden was screened from the breezeway by a wall of trees and scattered with benches for private reflection and making out. A cold wind rattled the crepe myrtle branches.
“Leave me alone,” Gretchen said.
“What is going on?” Abby asked. “Where have you been?”
Gretchen rubbed her arm where Abby had grabbed it.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Why haven’t you called?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know,” Gretchen said, and she seemed genuine.
“Why’d your mom drop you off?” Abby asked.
Gretchen stared over Abby’s shoulder.
“Doctor’s appointment,” she mumbled.
“What kind of doctor?”
The seconds ticked by.
“Did you ask about the flashbacks? Did you tell him you threw up?”
“It wasn’t that kind of doctor,” Gretchen said, and on the last word her face turned bright red and her forehead furrowed.
Abby didn’t understand. “What kind of doctor was it?”
Gretchen sucked in a big whoop of air and began to cry. “To see if I was a virgin,” she wailed, covering her mouth with the crook of her elbow to muffle her scream. Then she bit down hard on her arm, her teeth sinking into her sweater as tears slicked her face. Abby pulled Gretchen’s arm out of her mouth and led her deeper into the chapel garden, getting her to a bench and sitting her down.
Gretchen slammed her feet on the ground. “Fuck them,” she hissed. “Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. I hate them.”
“You are a virgin, right?” Abby asked.
Gretchen’s eyes zoomed in on Abby.
“You’re my best friend,” she said. “How can you even say that?”
Abby looked away.
“Why’d they take you?” she asked.
Gretchen stared straight ahead and Abby turned to see where she was looking. Behind her was the auditorium garden, the brick walkway, the sidewalk, and the distant Lawn where fourth graders were filing outside with Mrs. Huddleson’s turtles. Abby realized Gretchen wasn’t seeing any of it.
“I had to put on a robe that didn’t cover anything,” Gretchen said. “Then the doctor made me put my feet up in stirrups so he could see everything, and then he stuck his fingers inside of me. They were freezing cold, and afterwards they gave me a tissue to wipe out the grease, but I can still feel it down there.”
Gretchen’s pupils were pinpoints. She was breathing hard.
“That’s sick,” Abby said.
“My mom said it’s because of the noises,” Gretchen whispered. “She and my dad can’t sleep at night because of noises in my room.”
“What noises?” said Abby.
Gretchen bit a hangnail off her little finger and spat it out.
“Sex noises,” she said.
Abby didn’t understand.
“From your room? What are you doing?”
“Nothing!” Gretchen snapped. “I’m sleeping. I’m finally sleeping. They’re liars. And they lied to the doctor, and now he thinks I’m having sex.”
“Your mom’s crazy,” Abby said. “They can’t do this. It’s child abuse.”
Gretchen wasn’t listening to her anymore.
“They’re going to tell everyone,” she said. “They want to get rid of me. They want to send me to Southern Pines.”
“Did they say that?” Abby asked.
Southern Pines was worse than Fenwick Hall. Southern Pines was where crazy kids went, and even Riley wasn’t bad enough to wind up there. But it existed, somewhere out in North Charleston, the ultimate threat. Cause too much trouble, cross some invisible line, and your parents sent you, like Sweet Audrina in the V. C. Andrews book, to get electroshock therapy and lose your memory, one toasted brain cell at a time.
The fifth-period bell rang.
“The doctor has a file on me,” Gretchen said, tears gathering along the bottoms of her eyes as she held up her thumb and forefinger two inches apart. “This thick. I’m not going to let them send me away. You can’t let them.”
The sky was thick with clouds and a strong wind pulled them to shreds. No one was sending Gretchen away. This kind of thing didn’t happen to people like them. Abby found a ragged Kleenex in the bottom of her bag and wiped Gretchen’s face.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “You’re just tired.”
Gretchen jerked her head away.
“If they send me away, I’ll kill them both,” Gretchen said. “I’ll get my dad’s gun and kill them both.”
“You don’t mean that,” Abby said.
“I begged them to help me,” Gretchen said. “I begged them. And they put my name in for prayers at church and—”
Gretchen couldn’t go on. She dug her fingernails into her knees, squeezing so hard her wrists shook. Abby tried to pull on them, to make her relax, but Gretchen kept digging in.
“What happened?” Abby asked.
“It was an accident,” Gretchen said, letting go of her knees and swiping tears off her face. “I threw up again.”
“In church?” Abby asked.
Mute with shame, Gretchen met her eyes and nodded.
“They know you didn’t mean it,” Abby said.
“They made me eat oatmeal,” Gretchen said. “I told them I didn’t feel good, but they didn’t listen. They decided I had to have breakfast. They decided that’s what’s good for me. They never ask me what’s good for me.”
“When’s the last time you ate something?” Abby asked, taking Gretchen’s left hand in hers.
“I can’t,” Gretchen said.
“It’ll settle your stomach,” Abby said. “I’ll get you Donut Stix and ginger ale from the machines.”
“No!” Gretchen said, pulling her hand away, her eyes wide. “Everything I eat tastes nasty and rotten. I’m so hungry and I’m so tired, I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Abby put her arm around Gretchen’s shoulders and pulled her close while Gretchen buried her head against Abby’s chest and hyperventilated. After a few minutes, Abby tried rocking her from side to side. A minute later, Gretchen held her palms out.
“We are the world,” she whisper-sang, rocking into Abby from side to side. “We eat the children.”
She exhaled sharply through her nose, and now they were both rocking from side to side all cheesy, singing their own private version of “We Are the World.”
“We put butter on everything,” they both whisper-sang. “And just start chewing.”
In sixth grade, Mrs. Gay had made the lower school choir do a special lunchtime performance of “We Are the World.” Gretchen had been Kim Carnes. Abby, who had no musical ability whatsoever, was relegated to playing Quincy Jones, standing in front of the choir and pretending to conduct. In blackface.
Now, sitting in front of the auditorium, late for class, they did the Cyndi Lauper part, and the Bob Dylan part, and by the time they’d re-created the Stevie Wonder/Bruce Springsteen duet, Gretchen was dry-eyed enough to clean up her face.
Abby got them both into their next classes with late notes from Miss Toné, and at lunch she bought Diet Cokes for Margaret and Glee and used everything she had to convince them to sit with her and Gretchen.
“She’s totally sick,” Abby told them. “She wants to apologize, but she feels awful.”
Margaret remained unconvinced. Gretchen had made her look bad in front of her senior boyfriend, and she’d never forgive her. But Glee dreaded any kind of unpleasantness.
“It’s supposed to be gross all week,” Glee said. “Let’s sit
outside while we can.”
“Exactly!” Abby agreed.
Together, they bullied Margaret into going, and for the rest of lunch they all huddled together on the Lawn, under gray skies, and the entire time Abby told herself that it wasn’t so bad. But it was. The wind was freezing. Margaret sat on the bench, not talking. Gretchen sat on the grass, not talking. Margaret barely ate. Gretchen barely ate. Abby and Glee had to do enough talking and eating for all four of them.
“Did you do your notecards for The Scarlet Letter?” Abby asked Glee.
“Oh my God, it’s so boring,” Glee said. “And why are we supposed to feel sorry for Hester? She’s a tramp.”
Abby and Glee talked about the homecoming dance and PSATs and Spirit Week while Gretchen and Margaret stared into space. The conversation limped along until the bell rang and Margaret bolted without a glance back. Glee followed.
Gretchen stayed seated. Abby sat beside her as the Lawn emptied and everyone headed to class. The wind started up again, whipping their hair around. “Margaret’s just being Margaret,” Abby said. “Let’s go.”
“I hope she dies,” Gretchen said in a low voice. “I hope Wallace gives her AIDS and she dies a slow, miserable death.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Abby said.
“I need you to buy me a phone,” Gretchen said, getting up and brushing off her butt.
“Like, a phone phone?” Abby asked, not following.
“Go to a thrift store. You can get one for ten bucks,” Gretchen said. “I’ll pay you back.”
She grabbed her bookbag, hefted its strap over one shoulder, and started walking. Abby tried to keep up. “I’ve got TCBY tonight,” she said. “I don’t get off until nine.”
“My mom’s having book club at our house,” Gretchen said. “Just come over. She’ll be drunk.”
Abby was about to ask why she needed a phone when Gretchen suddenly leaned over and gave her a hug. Abby caught a whiff of something sour.
“No matter what happens,” she said. “I’ll never hurt you.”
For the rest of the day, Abby wondered why Gretchen thought she needed to say that.
My Best Friend's Exorcism Page 9
