“You ladies are the most undermotivated, underachieving bunch of playing-to-lose girls I’ve ever seen,” she told them. “Go home and think about if you even want to be playing JV this year. Because if you’re not fired up, I don’t want y’all on the court.”
“Thanks, Coach,” Margaret said on their way out. “Truly inspirational.”
“I’m not your parents, Middleton,” Coach Greene said. “It’s time you girls woke up and joined the real world.”
Margaret and Abby rolled their eyes at each other, and then Margaret went to watch Wallace’s band practice while Abby and Gretchen walked out to the parking lot. Abby noticed Gretchen flinch again.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“The flashbacks are getting worse,” Gretchen said.
“Didn’t Andy say that was totally normal?” Abby asked.
“Andy doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Gretchen said, and Abby’s heart soared. “It’s been like someone’s touching the back of my neck all day long. And it’s happening more. Every second it’s, like, touch-touch-touch.”
They crossed the street and walked between the mossy oaks that guarded the gate to the student parking lot, kicking rocks, the sharp white gravel poking through the soles of their shoes. Most of the cars were already gone, and the Bunny sat at the end, all alone.
“Like this?” Abby asked, extending one finger and poking Gretchen in the shoulder. Poke.
“It’s not funny,” Gretchen said. “I couldn’t sleep last night. The second I got tired, hands started touching my face and pulling on my legs. I turned on the lights and they stopped, then I started falling asleep and they were touching me again.”
“It’ll wear off soon,” Abby assured her. “It’s been less than forty-eight hours. This stuff can’t stay in your system forever.” She managed to sound confident, as if she was an expert on the half-life of hallucinogenic drugs.
Gretchen hitched her bookbag strap higher on one shoulder. “If I don’t get some sleep tonight, I’m going to go nuts. My entire face hurts.”
Abby poked her in the shoulder again, and Gretchen swatted her hand away.
It was just another Monday to Abby.
She didn’t know it was the beginning of the end.
One Thing Leads to Another
“Some of you seniors may have seen this at parties,” said Coach Greene, standing at the podium in front of the upper school assembly, holding a green glass bottle. “The manufacturer calls it ‘Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler,’ but the Charleston County Police Department calls it ‘rape juice.’”
Sitting next to Abby, Gretchen jerked forward, flinching. She turned to see who had touched her, but of course nobody had. Hushed whispering and snickers broke out behind them: Wallace Stoney and his football buddy sidekicks, John Bailey and Malcolm Zuckerman (who had taken to calling himself Nuke for some unknown reason).
“It tastes sweet,” Coach Greene continued. “It costs about a dollar, and in hot weather, if you’re not careful, you’ll drink three or four of them without even noticing. But do not be fooled. Each one of these contains more alcohol than a can of beer. If you’re a young woman, these make it very easy to put yourself in a situation where that which is most precious to you could be permanently ruined. Y’all know what I’m talking about.”
She took a dramatic pause and scanned the audience, daring a single student to make a single joke. Laughter was lethal when you were being told something For Your Own Good.
“Some things that are broken cannot be fixed,” Coach Greene said. “Sometimes it only takes one mistake to ruin what cannot be repaired, be it your reputation, your family’s good name, or your . . . most . . . valuable . . . gift.”
Abby wanted to lean over and whisper it to Gretchen in solemn tones: Your . . . Most . . . Valuable . . . Gift. It had the potential to become something they said to each other all the time, like “Nik Nak Woogie Woogie Woogie,” the love cry of the Koala Bear, or “Hefty, Hefty, Hefty . . . wimpy, wimpy, wimpy” from the television commercial. But ever since she’d dropped into the shotgun seat of the Dust Bunny that morning, Gretchen had been bleary-eyed and miserable, all herking, jerking raw nerves.
Invisible hands had been touching her all night, she’d told Abby. Touching her face, tapping her shoulders, stroking her chest. She’d laid in her bed for hours, holding completely still, praying the flashbacks would stop while tears ran down her temples and pooled in her ears. Around 2 a.m., Gretchen snuck the cordless phone into her bedroom, called Andy, and talked to him for two hours until she finally fell asleep. When she woke at dawn, she was excited that she’d managed to sleep for two solid hours. Then she felt a hand brush her stomach and she ran into the bathroom and threw up.
“I cannot tell you the number of students who come into my office crying,” Coach Greene said from the podium on the big blond-wood stage at the front of the auditorium. “You don’t know how valuable something is until it’s gone.”
Abby wondered if maybe Gretchen was exaggerating. How long could flashbacks really last? But it seemed real. Earlier that morning, Gretchen had fallen asleep in U.S. History, which made Mr. Groat rap on her desk and moan through his mustache that maybe she’d find the front office more interesting.
“This is your future I’m talking about, people,” Coach Greene shouted. “A little bit of carelessness and you could ruin it permanently. Like that!”
She snapped her fingers and they sounded like bones breaking. Coach Greene paused to let the import of her remarks sink in. A sheen of sweat coated her upper lip.
The massive air-conditioning system rumbled on and shoved cold air out the ceiling vents. Someone on the other side of the auditorium coughed. In the silence, Gretchen jerked forward again, making her chair rattle. Abby shot her a look. Gretchen’s right shoulder was twitching like someone was pushing it again and again, joggling it back and forth. Abby never prayed in chapel but right now she prayed that Coach Greene didn’t notice the disruption.
“Stop it,” Gretchen said, under her breath.
Cold sweat ran down Abby’s ribs.
“Shh,” she whispered.
“One gift,” Coach Greene repeated, waving the green bottle dramatically. “And you can only give it away one time, and that should be to the person you love, not—”
“Stop it!” Gretchen shouted, standing up and turning around, face flushed.
Every head in the auditorium whipped in her direction, every student leaned forward, everyone suddenly focused on Gretchen, her face bright red, arms tense, body quivering.
“I didn’t do anything,” Wallace Stoney said, leaning back, holding up his hands in the “I surrender” position.
“May I help you, Miss Lang?” Coach Greene asked.
“Gretchen,” Abby whispered out the side of her mouth. “Sit. Down.”
“Is there a problem, Miss Lang?” Coach Greene repeated, landing hard on each word.
“Someone keeps touching me,” Gretchen said.
“And then you woke up,” Wallace Stoney murmured, getting a ripple of laughter from the boys sitting around him.
“Quiet!” Coach Greene shouted. “Am I boring you, Miss Lang? Because I can repeat this in Saturday School if you’d prefer. Or maybe you can hear it again when you’re crying in my office after you’ve thrown your treasure in the gutter and shamed yourself, your family, and your school. Would you like that?”
Gretchen should have said “No, ma’am.” She should have apologized. She should have sat down and taken her lumps. Instead, to Abby’s horror, she argued.
“Wallace keeps touching the back of my neck.”
“You wish!” Wallace said, and even Mrs. Massey sitting at the end of their row laughed before putting on her faculty face and leaning forward, extending a silencing finger at Wallace.
“Enough,” she said.
&nbs
p; “But I didn’t do anything,” Wallace protested.
“We saw him,” Nuke Zuckerman said, jumping to his buddy’s defense. “He was just sitting here. She’s psycho.”
Coach Greene pointed at Gretchen with the wine cooler bottle.
“Wait in the lobby, Lang,” she said. “Better yet, march yourself to the front office and wait for Major. He’ll have a better idea of how to deal with you.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Gretchen shouted.
“Outside, right now! March!”
“But—”
“Now!”
Abby looked down, studying her hands, twisting her fingers around themselves.
“S’not fair,” Gretchen mumbled as she dragged herself over Abby’s legs and stumbled down the row, exhausted and loose-jointed. Maybe she lost her footing, maybe somebody stuck out a leg, but when she reached the end she went sprawling into the big aisle that led to the exit doors and landed on all fours. And that was when the woo sound started.
No one knows how it happens, or who starts it, but it’s the same sound that arises spontaneously when someone breaks a glass in the cafeteria. A long, low sound of chiding and shame that slipped softly out of three hundred throats and filled the auditorium: A-woooooo. As relentless and unchanging as an air-raid siren, it accompanied Gretchen on her long march up the aisle to the double doors while Abby sat ramrod straight, mortified, refusing to join in.
“Stop that!” Coach Greene shouted from the front of the auditorium. She clapped twice into the microphone. “Cut it out!”
Then she took the whistle hanging around her neck, leaned into the microphone, and blew a single sharp blast. The microphone shrieked feedback, the woo sound stopped, and students grabbed their ears in exaggerated pain.
“You think this is funny?” Coach Greene shouted. “There are people out there waiting for you to turn your head for a single second so they can put drugs in your Coca-Cola: GBH, LSD, PCP. You think I’m lying? Read a newspaper.”
Which is when Major heaved himself up out of his chair in the first row and trundled to the podium, bulldozing Coach Greene aside.
“Settle,” he mumbled in his clotted monotone. “Settle, everyone. Thank you, Coach, for that valuable information.”
He brought his thick flippers together in a dull drumbeat that went on and on until the faculty took the hint and picked it up; finally students joined in with ragged applause.
“I would like to take this moment to convey my deepest disappointment in you all,” Major rumbled. “The fundamental core values of Albemarle Academy are embodied in our motto: Faith and Honor. This morning you all have broken faith with me.”
Major was always disappointed in everyone. It was his sole emotional state. He was thick-waisted and gray: gray hair, gray skin, gray eyes, gray tongue, gray lips. He had attended Albemarle as a boy and been either a teacher or the principal for more than three decades, and in all that time he’d been disappointed in every single student who'd passed through his doors.
“The school year has barely begun and already there are incidents of vandalism in the Senior Hut,” he rumbled on, crushing all those who whispered before him. “There have been students parking in the senior lot without the proper sticker clearly visible in their windows. Students have been seen smoking on campus. Starting this afternoon, the Senior Hut is closed for the duration of the semester. I’ve spoken to the hut advisor, Mr. Groat, who agrees with my decision.”
There was a pause. The air felt charged.
“Also,” Major continued, “anyone found parking in the senior lot without the appropriate sticker on his or her vehicle will receive a suspension. Discipline . . .” Whispering was breaking out through the rows. Coach Greene moved up the aisle, writing down names. “Settle. Discipline is the training that makes punishment unnecessary. Let us now sing our alma mater.”
Mrs. Gay scurried to the upright piano at the foot of the stage and started banging it out while Major, Coach Greene, and Father Morgan, the new chaplain, rose and sang. The faculty and student body hauled themselves to their feet and joined in. Abby was probably the only person in the auditorium who knew all the words, but she mumbled through the verses, the same as everyone around her. The room swelled with atonal chanting as the student body sang the praises of their school with all the joy of prisoners breaking rocks.
Abby, Glee, and Margaret regrouped immediately afterward. Everyone was abuzz, scattered in clumps across the Lawn. Rumors were flying that Major was going to cancel the homecoming dance, or Spirit Week, or tear down the Senior Hut, or he was going to murder everyone’s parents and give them all Saturday School. No one could tell what he would do next. The man was insane.
The three girls, however, were worried about Gretchen. They’d gone directly to the front office the second that assembly ended, but Miss Toné, the upper school secretary, kicked them right back out again. They retreated to the Lawn and sat where they could see the office door. They watched it with so much attention, it was surprising it didn’t burst into flames. They saw Major go inside. They saw him go into his office, with Gretchen. They saw him snap his venetian blinds shut. They stared at the front office door, barely talking. They needed to see Gretchen the second she emerged.
“What’s up, space cadets?” Wallace Stoney said, dropping to the grass between Margaret and Glee and sticking his tongue down Margaret’s throat.
“You guys,” Glee said. “Gag me. For real.”
Face still latched onto Wallace’s mouth-hole, Margaret flipped Glee the bird while she put her legs over his lap and kept feeding him her tongue.
“Very mature,” Glee said.
Abby was sure it was crazy awesome to have someone hot for your body all the time, but now wasn’t the time to show off your killer romance by scrumping in the middle of the Lawn.
“What did you do to Gretchen?” she asked Wallace.
“You were right there,” he said, detaching from Margaret. “Get the fucking makeup out of your eyes. She’s clearly dreaming about me touching her, because she can’t stop talking about it.”
“She’s been in there for half an hour because of you,” Abby said. “You should tell what you did.”
“You should mind your own fucking business,” Wallace said calmly. “Your little bone buddy is a psycho, why’s that my fault?”
They ignored him because Gretchen was finally coming out of the front office. She trudged over and plonked down next to Abby, not even looking at Wallace.
“What happened?” Glee asked. “You were in there for, like, three hours.”
Margaret wiped Wallace’s spit off her chin. Then she broke off half her Carnation breakfast bar and handed it to Gretchen. She was only too happy to give away solid food that contained actual calories.
“What did that buttmunch say to you?” she asked.
Gretchen started breaking Margaret’s breakfast bar into crumbs, letting them fall on the grass. “He just talked,” she said. “Mostly about faith and honor, and how there’s a war in America for the souls of its children or something. I stopped listening. He wanted to know if I was on drugs.”
“Yeah,” Wallace said. “Stupid pills.”
Everyone ignored him.
“What’d you say?” Margaret asked. She harbored an irrational fear that Gretchen might have narced on all of them.
“I told him Coach Greene didn’t have anything to say that I needed to hear. Then he told me I needed to apologize to her before I could return to volleyball practice. Then I told him that was fine because I’m quitting the team.”
The three of them stared at her in horror. When you got in trouble, you tried to make it better; you didn’t make it worse. Wallace Stoney barked a seal laugh.
“You are so hosed!” he cackled.
“What did he do?” Abby asked.
“He gave me detention,” Gret
chen said. “For disrespect.”
“Smooth move, Wretched.” Wallace laughed again. “You really boned that up.”
“For real?” Abby asked in disbelief. How could Gretchen just walk off the volleyball team and leave her behind? “If you quit the team, your parents are going to kill you.”
Gretchen shrugged. Then Wallace came in again, commandeering the conversation, not even noticing that no one was laughing.
“Are you on the rag?” he asked. “Is that why you tried to get me in trouble?”
“Wallace,” Gretchen said quietly, “stop being a pig.”
Everyone held their breath for a minute, waiting for Margaret to react.
“Stop being a dumb whore,” Wallace shot back, laughing, the big senior man swatting down the sophomore.
“You don’t have to pretend to be tough with us,” Gretchen said. “We all know about the first time you and Margaret did it. You didn’t last five seconds.”
She was staring at Wallace now, hands clenched around her shins, chin tucked behind her knees. No one was laughing, no one even dared to move. This was a total secret that Margaret had told them, and they all knew they were not supposed to ever repeat it ever. The scar over Wallace’s upper lip turned white.
Margaret tore out a clump of grass and threw it at Gretchen. “What’s your malfunction?” she snapped.
“I’m just being honest with Mr. Stud Muffin,” Gretchen said. “He’s a poser. He can’t do it without being wasted, and he picks on Abby because she’s too nice to fight back. I’m tired of being polite to him.”
“At least I’m not an ice queen virgin bitch,” Wallace snarled at Gretchen, sitting up straight, pushing Margaret’s legs off his lap.
Gretchen didn’t miss a beat.
“At least I don’t sniff my sister’s underwear.”
Wallace lunged for her, hands outstretched. Glee and Abby screamed. Everyone on the Lawn looked over, and even the bocce players stopped tossing their balls to stare. Margaret jumped on Wallace’s back and knocked him away from Gretchen, who propelled herself backward on the grass, crab-style.
My Best Friend's Exorcism Page 8