My Best Friend's Exorcism(27)

She was staring at Wallace now, hands clenched around her shins, chin tucked behind her knees. No one was laughing, no one even dared to move. This was a total secret that Margaret had told them, and they all knew they were not supposed to ever repeat it ever. The scar over Wallace’s upper lip turned white.

Margaret tore out a clump of grass and threw it at Gretchen. “What’s your malfunction?” she snapped.

“I’m just being honest with Mr. Stud Muffin,” Gretchen said. “He’s a poser. He can’t do it without being wasted, and he picks on Abby because she’s too nice to fight back. I’m tired of being polite to him.”

“At least I’m not an ice queen virgin bitch,” Wallace snarled at Gretchen, sitting up straight, pushing Margaret’s legs off his lap.

Gretchen didn’t miss a beat.

“At least I don’t sniff my sister’s underwear.”

Wallace lunged for her, hands outstretched. Glee and Abby screamed. Everyone on the Lawn looked over, and even the bocce players stopped tossing their balls to stare. Margaret jumped on Wallace’s back and knocked him away from Gretchen, who propelled herself backward on the grass, crab-style.

“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.