My Best Friend's Exorcism(48)

Abby snatched it off the hook.

“Hello?” she said.

A long moment of silence whistled down the wire.

“Please,” Gretchen said, “don’t hate me.”

Out of habit, Abby almost said she didn’t hate Gretchen, but she took a minute and remembered everything and put it all into her voice when she said, “Go away.”

“Don’t be mad at me, Abby. Please,” Gretchen said.

All you really need to know is that I’m going to crack you wide open, Robert McCall said on the TV.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Abby said.

“I don’t understand,” Gretchen said, totally bereft. “What did I do?”

That’s when Abby knew: Gretchen was crazy. She had gone crazy and she was pulling Abby down with her. The longer they talked, the worse it would get.

“If I have to explain it to you, then we were never friends,” Abby said.

“Don’t leave me alone,” Gretchen begged. “I can’t do this on my own. I can’t fight it by myself. I’m sorry for what I did, but he makes me. He’s always whispering in my ear, telling me what to do, making me hurt people. He wants me to be all alone, with no one left but him. I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so, so, so sorry.”

The whining, wheedling edge in Gretchen’s cracked voice made Abby feel nothing but contempt.

“Goodbye, Gretchen,” she said.

“But we’re friends,” Gretchen cried in a tiny voice inside the receiver, and a fist gripped Abby’s heart and squeezed. “You’re my best friend.”

Abby was far away from her body, and all she had to do was stay out of the way as her hand floated to Mickey’s arm and hung up the phone.

“It’s over,” her mouth said to no one in particular.

The phone rang again, but Abby picked up the receiver and dropped it. She didn’t want to talk to Gretchen. Right now, she wanted to show Gretchen how much this pain hurt. Abby wanted her to feel what she felt. She wanted her to know this wasn’t a game.



Friday was Spirit Day, and God’s fist, made of angry black clouds, slammed down on Charleston with a vengeance. The wind kicked over garbage cans and sent trash skittering down the streets, whipping fine sand through the parking lot, lashing its grains against exposed ankles. By first period, everyone’s hair was ruined—the girl’s bathroom reeked of hairspray, the sinks were spattered with gobs of mousse. The breezeways became wind tunnels that blew up skirts and blasted faces red.

By the end of second period it was pitch dark outside the windows. Packs of football players gathered in the halls, muttering blackly about how their game had better not be canceled or there would be hell to pay. Something oppressive coiled around the school and squeezed. Five of the football players face-planted Dereck White into a garbage can. Someone shook up a Coke can and tossed it inside Carson Moore’s locker.

The rain smashed down during Spanish 2. One second Mr. Romasanta was conjugating asesinar, the next second his voice was drowned out by a wave of static as the full fury of the sky was unleashed. Cold water misted through the windows, followed by a scramble as the suck-up students raced to close them and turn on the air-conditioners.

That night, Abby didn’t eat anything except a bag of microwave popcorn in her room while she watched Dallas, Miami Vice, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous—anything that turned off her brain. The rain kept up all day Saturday, turning streets into rivers and yards into lakes.

Abby’s dad ran out to his shed early and stayed there all day. Abby hid in her room and distracted herself by cleaning out her closet. Normally the rain made her feel snug and cozy, but today it only made her feel cold.

She found her old Dukes of Hazzard lunch box where she kept all her pictures, and she sat on the bed with her stuffed animals and went through them, dealing out a deck of cards from her past: she and Gretchen dressed for the punk rock party at Lanie Ott’s house when they were all still friends; Gretchen in fifth grade showing off her moonwalk in the driveway. Gretchen asleep, covers pulled up to her chin, photographic evidence taken by Abby that she smiled when she slept (Gretchen still wasn’t convinced).

So many pictures right before a moment or after a moment; pictures of each other when they weren’t ready for the picture yet, or when one of them had her hat on when she meant to take it off or her sunglasses off when she meant to put them on. Abby talking, mouth in weird half-open shapes, Gretchen gesturing at unseen things Abby couldn’t even remember anymore. Abby laughing. Lots and lots of pictures of Abby laughing.

The summer after sixth grade it had rained like this. Abby and Gretchen had put cots on the screened porch of the Langs’ beach house on the Isle of Palms and slept outside every night, listening to the rain whisper as they fell asleep. For a week in August, Mr. Lang took off from work and stayed at the beach house, too. He spent the mornings on the phone, but at night they played Uno and Monopoly. During a lull in the rain, he took them shrimping to show them how to use a cast net, but it turned out he didn’t have a clue. A black lady fishing on the beach had shown them how to hold it in their teeth, sucking in salt water, biting the lead weights along the edge, then twisting their upper bodies and hurling the net like a carpet. They caught exactly one shrimp. It was delicious.

At night they lay in the dark, listening to 95SX play “Russians” by Sting and “Take Me Home” by Phil Collins over and over again, and they talked about how they’d move in together after high school, and they’d each get a cat and they’d name them Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke, and even if they had boyfriends, they wouldn’t let boys get in the way of their friendship.