My Best Friend's Exorcism(25)

“Stop it,” Gretchen said, under her breath.

Cold sweat ran down Abby’s ribs.

“Shh,” she whispered.

“One gift,” Coach Greene repeated, waving the green bottle dramatically. “And you can only give it away one time, and that should be to the person you love, not—”

“Stop it!” Gretchen shouted, standing up and turning around, face flushed.

Every head in the auditorium whipped in her direction, every student leaned forward, everyone suddenly focused on Gretchen, her face bright red, arms tense, body quivering.

“I didn’t do anything,” Wallace Stoney said, leaning back, holding up his hands in the “I surrender” position.

“May I help you, Miss Lang?” Coach Greene asked.

“Gretchen,” Abby whispered out the side of her mouth. “Sit. Down.”

“Is there a problem, Miss Lang?” Coach Greene repeated, landing hard on each word.

“Someone keeps touching me,” Gretchen said.

“And then you woke up,” Wallace Stoney murmured, getting a ripple of laughter from the boys sitting around him.

“Quiet!” Coach Greene shouted. “Am I boring you, Miss Lang? Because I can repeat this in Saturday School if you’d prefer. Or maybe you can hear it again when you’re crying in my office after you’ve thrown your treasure in the gutter and shamed yourself, your family, and your school. Would you like that?”

Gretchen should have said “No, ma’am.” She should have apologized. She should have sat down and taken her lumps. Instead, to Abby’s horror, she argued.

“Wallace keeps touching the back of my neck.”

“You wish!” Wallace said, and even Mrs. Massey sitting at the end of their row laughed before putting on her faculty face and leaning forward, extending a silencing finger at Wallace.

“Enough,” she said.

“But I didn’t do anything,” Wallace protested.

“We saw him,” Nuke Zuckerman said, jumping to his buddy’s defense. “He was just sitting here. She’s psycho.”

Coach Greene pointed at Gretchen with the wine cooler bottle.

“Wait in the lobby, Lang,” she said. “Better yet, march yourself to the front office and wait for Major. He’ll have a better idea of how to deal with you.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Gretchen shouted.

“Outside, right now! March!”

“But—”

“Now!”

Abby looked down, studying her hands, twisting her fingers around themselves.

“S’not fair,” Gretchen mumbled as she dragged herself over Abby’s legs and stumbled down the row, exhausted and loose-jointed. Maybe she lost her footing, maybe somebody stuck out a leg, but when she reached the end she went sprawling into the big aisle that led to the exit doors and landed on all fours. And that was when the woo sound started.

No one knows how it happens, or who starts it, but it’s the same sound that arises spontaneously when someone breaks a glass in the cafeteria. A long, low sound of chiding and shame that slipped softly out of three hundred throats and filled the auditorium: A-woooooo. As relentless and unchanging as an air-raid siren, it accompanied Gretchen on her long march up the aisle to the double doors while Abby sat ramrod straight, mortified, refusing to join in.

“Stop that!” Coach Greene shouted from the front of the auditorium. She clapped twice into the microphone. “Cut it out!”

Then she took the whistle hanging around her neck, leaned into the microphone, and blew a single sharp blast. The microphone shrieked feedback, the woo sound stopped, and students grabbed their ears in exaggerated pain.

“You think this is funny?” Coach Greene shouted. “There are people out there waiting for you to turn your head for a single second so they can put drugs in your Coca-Cola: GBH, LSD, PCP. You think I’m lying? Read a newspaper.”

Which is when Major heaved himself up out of his chair in the first row and trundled to the podium, bulldozing Coach Greene aside.

“Settle,” he mumbled in his clotted monotone. “Settle, everyone. Thank you, Coach, for that valuable information.”

He brought his thick flippers together in a dull drumbeat that went on and on until the faculty took the hint and picked it up; finally students joined in with ragged applause.

“I would like to take this moment to convey my deepest disappointment in you all,” Major rumbled. “The fundamental core values of Albemarle Academy are embodied in our motto: Faith and Honor. This morning you all have broken faith with me.”

Major was always disappointed in everyone. It was his sole emotional state. He was thick-waisted and gray: gray hair, gray skin, gray eyes, gray tongue, gray lips. He had attended Albemarle as a boy and been either a teacher or the principal for more than three decades, and in all that time he’d been disappointed in every single student who'd passed through his doors.

“The school year has barely begun and already there are incidents of vandalism in the Senior Hut,” he rumbled on, crushing all those who whispered before him. “There have been students parking in the senior lot without the proper sticker clearly visible in their windows. Students have been seen smoking on campus. Starting this afternoon, the Senior Hut is closed for the duration of the semester. I’ve spoken to the hut advisor, Mr. Groat, who agrees with my decision.”