My Best Friend's Exorcism(12)

As far as Abby was concerned, that was a needlessly negative view of the situation. Yes, she had stayed in school by getting a scholarship that came with dozens of strings attached, but Albemarle Academy was definitely not looking for an excuse to get rid of her. Her grades were totally awesome. But you couldn’t argue with Margaret, so instead Abby offered to pay for Glee’s gas and was secretly relieved when Glee turned her down.

Their most recent drug safari had taken Glee and Margaret to the parking lot of a bait shop on Folly Beach, where they sat in Glee’s car for two hours in the pouring rain before Margaret got on the pay phone and discovered that their connection was not simply waiting a crazy long time to signal them. He’d been busted. They went to his room at the Holiday Inn, because what else were they going to do, and discovered that the cops not only had left the door wide open but had also totally failed to find his stash hidden underneath the mattress. Margaret and Glee did not make the same mistake.

Now there’s always a chance that if you find acid hidden underneath a mattress in a Holiday Inn, left there by two guys you’ve never met, who were hiding it from the police and who are now in jail, it might be spiked with strychnine or something worse. But there was also a chance that it might not be spiked with strychnine or something worse, and Abby preferred to look on the bright side.

Gretchen popped up out of the water and spat Margaret’s cigarette butt into the boat. It stuck to Margaret’s massive thigh.

“Oh my God,” Margaret said. “How did you even know that’s mine? AIDS!”

Gretchen sprayed a mouthful of water into the boat.

“That’s not how you get AIDS,” she said. “As we all know, you get AIDS by sucking face with Wallace Stoney.”

“He does not have AIDS,” Margaret said.

“Duh!” Glee said. “You get cold sores from herpes.”

Margaret looked pissed.

“What does it taste like?” Gretchen asked, grabbing onto the side of the boat and chinning herself up to look into Margaret’s eyes. “Do his herp lips taste like true love?”

The two of them stared at each other.

“For your information, they’re not cold sores, they’re zits,” Margaret said. “And they taste like Clearasil.”

They laughed and Gretchen pushed herself away from the boat and floated on her back.

“I’ll do it,” she said to the sky. “But you have to promise I won’t get brain damage.”

“You’ve already got brain damage,” Margaret said, jumping into the water, almost flipping the boat, and landing on Gretchen, one arm around her neck, dragging her beneath the surface. They came up sputtering and laughing, hanging onto each other. “Killer!”

They piloted the boat back to Margaret’s dock, the air getting colder as the sun set. Abby wrapped a flapping towel around her shoulders and Gretchen let the wind catch her cheeks and blow them out like a balloon. Three dolphins breached off to port and paced them for a couple hundred yards, then peeled away and headed back out to sea. Margaret made gun fingers and pretended to shoot them. Gretchen and Abby turned and watched them dive and rise, flickering through the waves, disappearing in the distance, as gray as the chop.

They tied up at Margaret’s dock and started lugging the skis up into the backyard, but Gretchen lingered with Abby down by the boat, cupping her elbows.

“Are you going to do it?” she asked.

“Hell, yeah,” Abby said.

“Are you scared?” she asked.

“Hell, yeah,” Abby said.

“So why?”

“Because I want to know if Dark Side of the Moon is actually profound.”

Gretchen didn’t laugh.

“What if it opens the doors of perception and I can’t get them closed again?” Gretchen worried. “What if I can see and hear all the energy on the planet, and then the acid never wears off?”

“I’d visit you in Southern Pines,” Abby said. “And I bet your parents would get, like, the lobotomy wing named after you.”

“That would be choice,” Gretchen agreed.

“It’ll be crazy fun,” Abby said. “We’ll stick together like swim buddies at camp. We’ll be trip buddies.”

Gretchen pulled some strands of hair around to her mouth and sucked salt water off the tips.

“Will you promise to remind me to call my mom tonight?” she asked. “I have to check in at ten.”

“I will make it my mission in life,” Abby vowed.

“Cool beans,” Gretchen said. “Let’s go fry my brains.”

Together the four of them heaped all their gear into a big pile in the backyard and hosed it down. Then Abby sprayed the hose up Margaret’s butt.

“Cleansing enema!” she yelled.

“You’re confusing me with my mother,” Margaret shouted, running for the safety of the house.

Abby turned on Glee, but Gretchen was crimping the hose. Things were devolving rapidly when Margaret came out on the back porch carrying one of her mother’s silver tea trays.

“Ladies,” she sing-songed. “Tea time.”

They gathered around the tray underneath a live oak. There were four china saucers, each with a little tab of white paper in the middle. Each tiny tab was stamped with the head of a blue unicorn.