My Best Friend's Exorcism(92)
Abby looked at her. Gretchen’s face was greasy and a pimple was forming next to her nose. Her hair was sticking up in the back and the car smelled like she’d slept in it. But her eyes were clear and her chin was up as she overhanded the steering wheel to the left and they pulled out of the condo parking lot.
“I’m not sure how long we have,” Gretchen said. “I called from the road to let them know I was all right, but I’m sure they’re spazzing. Because when I say I borrowed my mom’s car, I guess the technical term is that I stole it.”
She pulled into a Blockbuster Video parking lot and the Volvo jerked to a stop. The engine gave a death rattle as they rolled into an empty space. Gretchen yanked the emergency brake, then turned in her seat to face Abby.
“Someone else was living my life,” Gretchen said. “And all I could do was watch. I saw myself getting my friends drunk and telling them lies, and sleeping with Wallace, and feeding Margaret poison, and I can’t remember much of anything except flashes.”
A Blockbusters employee in a bright blue and gold shirt walked past to unlock the store, giving them a bored glance through the windshield.
“I’d wake up and have no idea where I was or how I got there,” Gretchen said. “Where the cuts and bruises came from. I remember your face, and smearing something across it, and I remember listening to you cry and feeling happy, and I remember Good Dog Max . . .”
Gretchen’s voice cracked.
“All winter,” Gretchen said, “after the beach house, everything hurt so bad and I felt like it would never stop. Something was wrong inside of me. I was empty and ashamed and I knew I was broken in a way that could never be fixed. I needed to hit the reset button and start over. So a couple of days before Christmas I went into my parents’ bedroom and got my dad’s gun, and I carried it with me all day until it was warm; and I taught myself how to turn the safety on and off, and how to open it and put in the bullets, and how to pull back the hammer. And then I sat on my bed for a long time, and finally I just couldn’t think of any reason not to do it, you know?”
Abby couldn’t move. Outside, a customer walked up and dumped videotapes into the Blockbuster return slot, sending them rattling down the chute.
“I put it in my mouth,” Gretchen said. “It tasted like poison, and I was so scared, and I had to pee so bad, and I had my finger on the trigger and I could feel exactly how much pressure I needed so I could stop feeling this way all the time. Then I realized you’d think it was all your fault, because you always think everything is all your fault, and I knew I had to explain to you that I was pulling the trigger because I was a fuck-up, not because of anything you’d done. So I decided to write a note telling you that it wasn’t your fault, and then the note turned into a letter, and somewhere between pages five and eight I didn’t want to kill myself anymore.”
Gretchen shoved her hands into Abby’s. They were warm and wet.
“You keep rescuing me and I don’t know why,” Gretchen said. “But every day I tell myself my life must be worth something because you keep saving it. They can’t keep us apart. I don’t care what happens. You never stopped trying to save me.
“I love you, Abby. You’re my best friend, and my mirror, and my reflection, and you are me, and you are everything I love and everything I hate, and I will never give up on you.”
Behind them, a police car cruised by slow. Gretchen stopped talking while they watched it pass.
“Do you remember fourth grade?” Abby asked. The words felt awkward in her mouth. “My birthday party at Redwing Rollerway?”
Gretchen thought for a minute.
“My mom made me give you a Bible,” she said.
“No one came,” Abby said. “I was so humiliated. Then you showed up at the last minute and saved the day.”
The cop made a second pass and this time stopped behind them, his engine idling.
“What happened in the beach house?” Abby asked. “It all feels so real, but everyone keeps saying I made it up. I need to know if it really happened or if it was all just unicorns.”
Gretchen put a hand on either side of Abby’s face and pulled them together until their foreheads were touching.
“It wasn’t unicorns,” Gretchen said. “I need you to tell me everything. Because you’re the only person I can hear it from without going insane. I need to know it all.”
Abby started to talk. She was still talking when a second police car showed up, and she didn’t stop when they put the two of them in the backseat. She kept on talking while they waited for her mom to show up at the police station, and she was still talking when they got home.
After some arguing, Abby’s mom called the Langs, and Mr. Lang bought a ticket to fly up the next day. That night Abby and Gretchen slept in Abby’s bedroom and kept talking all night.
They stopped briefly when an exhausted Mr. Lang arrived the next morning and launched into a tirade about what was going to happen to Gretchen and Abby if he had anything to say about it. Abby’s dad waited until he ran out of steam and said:
“I think enough harm’s been done, Pony. Why don’t we leave it here. Let the girls write. If they can pay the bill, let them call. Can’t you see this is tearing them up inside?”
Abby and Gretchen kept talking all the way to the airport, and then Abby went home and wrote Gretchen a letter, and that night at 11:06 her phone rang. They kept on calling, and writing letters, and making each other mix tapes with ornate covers they drew in silver and gold paint pens or made out of wrapping paper, recording messages to each other between the songs, mailing each other their high school yearbooks to sign, mailing each other rolls of toilet paper with stamps on the wrappers to see if the postal service would deliver them (they did), sending each other giant birthday cards, collages, weird candy, squirt bottles of Bartender’s Friend artificial foam, ridiculous keychains, inappropriate Hallmark condolence cards for no good reason, and Abby sent Gretchen a corny postcard whenever the Cherry Hill West volleyball team went out of town.