My Best Friend's Exorcism(44)

Abby couldn’t get enough air. She was stupid to think that she was smarter than Mrs. Lang. Of course she had called the school. Abby wanted to go back and start over, to do this differently, but it was too late. She had blown her chance.

“Get to class,” Major said. “I will not be writing you a late slip, and let us consider that your reprimand. Reflect on how you have repaid Miss Lang’s friendship. Faith and Honor, Miss Rivers. Do you have them?”

For the rest of the morning, Abby was wrapped in cotton, floating through her classes in a daze. Mrs. Erskine called on her and she didn’t know who wrote Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. In Biology, Mrs. Paul passed out permission slips for the upcoming tour of the medical university’s gross anatomy lab. She took one but didn’t hear a word about what they’d be seeing.

At lunch, she sat on the Lawn with Margaret and Glee out of habit and listened to Wallace Stoney go on about how he had ditched his band the Dukes of Neon (now on their third name change) and how they would never go anywhere without him because he was the glue that held them together. Then he segued seamlessly into a monologue about the gross anatomy field trip, which was a rite of passage for every tenth-grade class.





“It’s rad,” he said. “I wrote a song about it.”

“Is it really full of cadavers?” Glee asked.

“Dude,” he said, “it was gnarly. There’s all this nasty stuff like glass jars with two-headed babies in them, and there was even a pecker in a jar and the water was all green. It looked like pecker-flavored wine cooler.”

“Foul,” Glee said.

“Shut up,” Margaret said, “or I’ll never be able to drink wine coolers again.”

“Aw, sugarbear,” Wallace said, “the green stuff’s nasty. The red stuff is what’s righteous. You can drink ten bottles of that shit and never barf.”

Abby robotically ate her carrot sticks and drank her Snapple. Everyone felt very, very far away. She didn’t come to herself again until she was pulling out of the parking lot after school and found that she was turning left at the stoplight on Folly Road instead of right, headed toward Wadmalaw. She was driven by a powerful conviction: if the Langs didn’t believe her about Gretchen’s rape, if Major didn’t believe her about Gretchen’s rape, she’d make them believe. If something had happened to Gretchen, there might still be evidence at Margaret’s, at that blockhouse buried in the woods.

But forty-five minutes and a quarter tank of gas later, as she stood in front of that rancid outbuilding, Abby saw that it contained nothing but the same stupid garbage—a water-swollen copy of Oui, a charred pair of men’s tightie whities, a pile of Bartles and Jaymes Premium Blush empty bottles. It was covered with the same stupid graffiti—“Eat Fuk Preps” and “Dukes uf Neon world sexxx tour 88.” It was a waste of time.

She walked around the building again. One second she was crawling over the broken slabs of tabby, staring at the graffiti, trying to find a clue like they always did on TV but realizing that she had nothing, and the next second she knew.

Dukes uf Neon. That was the name of Wallace’s band, or it used to be, before they changed it for the third time. He’d just said so on the Lawn. All these empty bottles of Bartles and Jaymes (The Charleston Police Department calls it rape juice). In Abby’s imagination, a picture began to form: Wallace coming to visit Margaret, waiting in the woods, hiding in the blockhouse until she could sneak away from her friends. And instead finding Gretchen in the darkness, lost, afraid, naked.

Wallace Stoney.

“I wouldn’t,” a man’s voice said.

Abby jumped. Standing behind her was a big guy, cigarette burning in one hand, belly hanging out beneath a stained Polo shirt, wearing M. Dumas khakis frayed at the cuffs. His unbrushed blond hair stuck up, his nose was crooked, and his eyes were dull. Riley Middleton.

“I’m a friend of Margaret’s,” Abby said. She didn’t know what drugs he might be on. Then she wanted to laugh. The Langs thought she was some bigtime drug dealer, and here she was, scared of the real thing.

“I know,” he said. “You’re Glee.”

“Abby,” she said. “Glee’s our other friend. What wouldn’t you do?”

He took a step toward her and Abby stepped back. He had drugged girls. He had done things to them in the back of his car and no one knew she was out here. Riley stopped and took a showy drag off his cigarette.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” he said, exhaling a thick blue cloud of smoke. “If I were you.”

Abby tried to glimpse the Bunny through the woods and realized that all she could see was more trees. All she could hear was the sound of frogs. She was alone with Riley. A plug opened behind her belly button and her courage drained away.

“Why not?” she asked, playing for time, trying to keep him talking, looking for an opening.

“Heavy shit went down here,” he said. “Devil worship, slave torture, murder.” He paused and smiled. “Rape.”

Abby took another step backward and stumbled over a chunk of tabby. She could hear the telephone junction box humming in the silence, she could feel it hissing through the ground. Riley smiled again.

“You’ve got a nice body,” he said. “How old are you?”