My Best Friend's Exorcism(64)
Abby knew she looked stupid, mouth flapping open, trying to form words, but this wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.
“He said all that because he hates me,” she said. “He’s blaming me for what other people did.”
“Your job is to make that man like you,” her mother came right back at her. “He should speak your name one time in your life, and that’s at graduation when he hands you your diploma. He’s blaming you for what other people did? I wonder who those people are. I wonder why I heard Gretchen Lang’s name in there?”
Abby wanted to lie, but she was too raw.
“It’s not the way you think,” she began.
“I’m sure I can’t possibly understand anything about your wonderful friends,” Mrs. Rivers said. “I warned you those girls would take you down this path, and you thought I couldn’t possibly understand anything about your life. Oh, no, you’re too smart for me. So you ignored everything I said and here we are. Well, I hope you feel clever now.”
“I—” Abby began.
“Enough,” her mother snapped. “I have put up with enough from you today. I have to get to work.”
With that, she slammed into her car. Her dad walked slowly to the passenger door and got in. Abby watched as they pulled on their seatbelts, backed out, and drove away. Behind her, the halyard banged against the metal flagpole like an idiot trapped inside a cage, causing the metal to echo as the wind lifted impossibly higher. A sheet of white paper skirled across the sky, riding a crashing ocean of air currents over Abby’s head.
Abby watched her mom’s car brake at the stop sign, then turn onto Albemarle, chased by another sheet of paper snapping at its rear bumper. She looked back toward school and saw, framed in the breezeway, a blizzard of paper rolling and tumbling across the Lawn. Thin shouts reached her, and she started walking, then running, toward campus, her heart iced over with dread.
It was 4:05 and the sounds of volleyball practice were sucked from the open gymnasium door and torn to scraps by the wind. Afterschool detention was in full effect in Mr. Barlow’s computer room. Rehearsals for the Founders Day concert were under way in the auditorium. And a girl stood half naked on top of the bell tower, throwing papers into the sky.
One cartwheeled past Abby and she snatched it up. It was a photocopy of a handwritten note that began, “Dearest One, like a lily among thorns is my darling among the young women . . .” She let her eyes fall down the page to the signature: Bruce. There was only one Bruce on campus—Father Bruce Morgan—and she looked up and realized why the silhouette of the girl looked familiar, with her tan arms and white breasts.
A few students and teachers had stopped to stare, and more were drawn from their offices and classrooms; the girl on the tower was stumbling close to the edge. The ground lurched and rocked beneath Abby’s feet as the figure waved her arms, shouting, the wind pulling away her words and draping her hair over her face. Abby started to walk toward the bell tower. Now the box of photocopies was empty and the girl tossed it, but the wind didn’t lift it anywhere. It just fell straight down and hit the bricks, a dress rehearsal for what Abby knew would happen next.
Maintenance staff wrestled with the tower door as the girl teetered on the lip, set against the sky, the wind swaying her back and forth. Abby stopped because she didn’t want to hear what was about to happen. She knew that if she got too close, the sound would be something she would never stop hearing.
The girl prepared herself: She bowed her head, raised her arms to the sky, then stretched out one leg and stepped forward into the void just as two arms wrapped around her from behind and lifted her out of the air. A man pulled her against his chest, her legs kicking into empty space; he heaved himself backward, staggering out of sight with the girl in his arms.
Abby ran for the bell tower. Her feet kicked at swirling papers, and the noise of shouting became clearer as the auditorium blocked the wind screaming off the marsh. The door at the base of the tower banged open and a circle of maintenance men backed out, holding the girl thrashing in their hands.
“I want to die! I want to die! Let meeee!” Glee shrieked.
Calm, reasonable, boring Glee was screeching and howling, clawing at the men who carried her. Glee, who refused to fight because she was a “no drama mama,” kicked at their thighs, scratched their arms, spat in their faces. The girl who had once proclaimed that nothing in the world was worth getting upset about, really, who said crying was the way boring people showed off, began to scream and sob. Her black stirrup pants had been pulled low in the struggle and her soft belly hung out; Abby noticed Glee wasn’t wearing a top, and someone brushed past her holding a blanket. Across Glee’s breasts was written “For you” in black marker.
“Let me die. Let me go, please, let me go,” she wailed.
A sharp odor tickled Abby’s nose. Glee reeked of vodka. Her entire body was now wracked with sobs, jerking in time to her heaving chest as “For you” twisted and swayed. While the maintenance men wrapped Glee in the blanket, her rescuer hung back in the bell tower’s doorframe, obscured in darkness, afraid to step into the light. It was Father Morgan.
“I love him, I love him, I love him,” Glee sobbed, turning around, reaching for him. Glee’s voice was hoarse and full of passion, and Abby didn’t recognize her anymore.