My Best Friend's Exorcism(18)

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-story 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.