My Best Friend's Exorcism(50)

On the other hand, there was Dr. Gillespie, a marriage counselor for half the divorced couples in Charleston. Last year he was found tied to one of his office chairs, dressed in women’s clothing, beaten to death with a Pre-Columbian statue from his collection. Not a single story about it appeared in the newspaper. When people mentioned it at fundraiser receptions, they referred to it as a “terrible accident,” and twelve months later you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would admit to remembering Dr. Gillsepie, let alone being one of his patients.

Turning eighteen doesn’t determine when you become an adult in Charleston; neither does registering to vote, graduating from high school, or getting your driver’s license. In Charleston, the day you become an adult is the day you learn to ignore your neighbor’s drunk driving and focus instead on whether he submitted a paint-color change proposal to the Board of Architectural Review. The day you become an adult is the day you learn that in Charleston, the worse something is, the less attention it receives.

At Albemarle, everyone was suddenly being very adult about Gretchen.

For almost a month, Gretchen had been shunned. Now she wasn’t getting demerits, she was getting attention. People wanted to be near her, to sit where she sat, to talk to her before class, to get her opinion, to receive her attention. For three weeks, Gretchen had been an unmentionable. In three days, she’d soared to number one.

It scared Abby how quickly everything changed.





The weather got hot. The sky was a cloudless silver dome.

Gretchen opened her thermos and poured a cup of thick white milkshake.

“What is that nastiness?” Margaret asked.

“This?” Gretchen asked. “I don’t think you’d like it.”

“How the fuck would you know?” Margaret asked.

Gretchen reached into her backpack and pulled out an unmarked white plastic canister with a black lid and handed it to Margaret.

“My mom got it from Germany,” she said. “It’s a diet supplement. One shake a day meets all your nutritional needs. It’s got, like, eight hundred calories in it or something. I think it’s full of speed. Anyhoo, the FDA totally won’t approve it, but I stole one from her.”

She pulled the canister out of Margaret’s hand, who held onto it for a few seconds longer, then watched with deep longing as it went back into Gretchen’s bookbag.

“Let me smell it,” she said.

Gretchen handed her the cup. Margaret wafted it under her nose, then held it there.

“Vanilla,” she said. “And bananas? Can I try?”

Gretchen raised her eyebrows and nodded.

Most people had Margaret pegged wrong. They thought she just wanted to party all the time, but Margaret was a big girl who wanted to be small, and she would do anything to melt her flesh, whether it was Jazzercise twice a week, the Cambridge Diet, the Rotation Diet, the F-Plan Fiber Diet, Scarsdale, Deal-a-Meal, Grapefruit 45. None of them worked, so she kept trying one after the other, suffering through the bloating, the fainting spells, the farts, the hunger pains, the headaches, the cramps. One of these regimes was bound to make her skinny. She had faith.

“It’s not totally rank,” Margaret said, putting down the cup and wiping the thick white mustache from her upper lip. “Do you have more?”

“Cases,” Gretchen said, rolling her eyes.

“I’ll buy one,” Margaret said.

“No way, José,” Gretchen said. “I’ll give it to you. My mom doesn’t even drink them anymore.”





Abby couldn’t put her finger on what had changed. All of Gretchen’s clothes were new—blazers with rolled sleeves, a man’s necktie with a beige vest, a diamond-print oversized sweater dress, blue-and-white striped sailor tees—but it wasn’t the clothes. She had a new haircut, she was wearing more makeup, she was standing straighter and pushing out her chest, but none of those were it, either.

Gretchen was glowing. She was spotlit by a personal shaft of sunlight wherever she went. She was turned on, engaged, vibrant, kinetic. Every guy was watching her. More than once, Abby saw Mr. Groat turn to stare at Gretchen’s butt when she walked down the hall.

No one watched Abby walk down the hall. She’d woken up on Tuesday, the day after Gretchen’s miraculous return, and discovered a small red spot on her right cheek. It was the stress, she told herself. The next morning, the spot was bigger and darker. The morning after that, there were two more.

Abby stared at herself in the mirror and tried hard not to cry. There were three pink spots to the right of her nose, and the skin on her forehead was rough. No matter how much powder she applied, her chin stayed shiny. There was a sore spot on her neck, and when she pressed, she could feel something painful and swollen deep beneath the surface. No matter what she did, the spots kept ripening.

Gretchen was no longer in any classes with Abby, so it was days before she finally managed to speak with her privately. Abby caught her in the hall right as fourth-period break started; she was throwing books into her locker.

“Hey,” Abby said, slowing down and playing it casual.

“Hey,” Gretchen said, without stopping.

“You look a lot better,” Abby said.

Gretchen zipped up her bookbag.

“As if you’d care,” she said.