My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

  “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.

  “That’s all I care about,” Abby said.

  Gretchen slammed her locker shut and then rounded on Abby, hitching one strap of her bookbag over her shoulder. She was a few inches taller and Abby could see her nostrils flaring, her pupils dilating.

  “If you cared, you would have helped,” she said. “Not just talked about me behind my back.”

  “I tried to help,” she said. “You know I did.”

  Gretchen blew out her bangs.

  “Psh,” she said. “You didn’t do shit.” Then she was smiling, her mouth wide, eyes sparkling, and Abby’s heart leapt for a second because it was clearly a joke, and then Gretchen was saying over Abby’s shoulder, “Hey, y’all!” and she was hugging Margaret and Glee, and the three of them were heading off down the hall, shoulder to shoulder, framed in the bright afternoon sunlight spilling through the glass doors, leaving Abby back in the shadows by the lockers, wishing she could go with them, or stay where she was, or at least be comfortable with either choice.

  Everyone was Gretchen’s buddy—everyone except Abby. Even Wallace Stoney had managed to forgive her. Mrs. Lang had recruited Wallace to drive Gretchen to school since he lived in Mt. Pleasant, too. One morning Abby saw them sitting in his truck ahead of her in traffic, waiting to make the light on Folly Road, Gretchen was talking and Wallace was laughing. When Wallace hung out with Gretchen and Margaret and Glee during fourth-

  period break, he mostly talked to Gretchen.

  Abby wondered what Margaret thought about that.

  Abby sat across from Father Morgan in his office. His curtains were closed and it was cool and dark and he was telling Abby that Gretchen was completely normal.

  “I wouldn’t take all the credit,” he said. “But I spoke with her

  parents and it certainly seems to have helped get her back on track.”

  “That’s the thing,” Abby said. “She’s not on track.”

  Father Morgan smiled.

  “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” he agreed. “But the cover does give you a pretty good indication of what’s inside. And I’d say Gretchen’s cover looks a heck of a lot better than it did.”

  It had taken Abby a while to realize that there was one person who’d talk about Gretchen as much as she wanted: Father Morgan. He was way too involved in students’ lives, he thought he knew everything, and all you had to do was make an appointment.

  Now, sitting there in Father Morgan’s office, she knew she’d made the right decision. White and brown nubby curtains were drawn over his only window, leaving the room dim and safe. The furniture was nice furniture from a house, not the harsh office furniture that filled the rest of the school. Instead of yellow-painted cinderblock walls, Father Morgan’s office was lined with bookshelves filled with titles like Understanding Your Teenager and Living a God-Focused Life. And he loved to talk.

  “Gretchen is happy and social,” Father Morgan said. “She’s been an absolute joy in all our interactions and there is no shadow upon her as far as I can tell. You know what that says to me, Abby?”

  He waited for an answer, so she finally fed him his line.

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re scared of losing your friend,” he said and then smiled.

  Abby looked at her knee. She inhaled, shaking her head.

  “When she was sick,” Abby said, “she told me that people could look fine on the outside but be evil inside. Like satanists.”

  Or her parents.

  Father Morgan’s smile disappeared, and he stood up and came around his desk. He pulled a chair closer to Abby.

  “Abby,” Father Morgan said, “I know how it is to be a young person. There are all these reports of satanic cults everywhere, sacrificing babies. Geraldo Rivera’s doing a two-hour special on them next week. Of course you feel these things deeply, and they upset and influence you. But they’re not real.”

  “Then what are they?” Abby asked.

  “They’re . . .” Father Morgan waved one hand around in the air. “. . . metaphors. Ways of dealing with information and emotions. Adolescence is a complicated time, and some really bright people think that when the adult emerges, it’s like you’re being taken over by a different person. Almost like being possessed. Sometimes parents, or friends, get hurt when a loved one changes. They look around for something to blame. Music, movies, satanism.”

  He leaned back and flashed a smile.

  “So you think Gretchen is possessed?” Abby asked. “Like she has a demon inside of her?”

  His smile flicked off.

  “What?” he said. “No, it’s a metaphor. Abby, do you know the story of the Gadarene madman?”

  “Is he a satanist?” Abby asked.

  “In the Bible,” Father Morgan continued, “Jesus goes to Gerasa, and when he gets there a man approaches him who is possessed by demons. He’s been shunned and forced to live in the graveyard, which is as bad as it gets in Bible times. And when Jesus asks him what’s wrong, the man says he’s possessed by an unclean spirit. Jesus asks its name and it says, ‘My name is Legion.’ Does that sound familiar?”

  Abby shrugged. Her family didn’t go to church, but she thought she’d heard something like that in a horror movie.

  “So Jesus expels the demons and puts them in a bunch of nearby pigs,” he says. “And the pigs run off a cliff and die and the man is cured. He’s free. But everyone in the village is upset and they ask Jesus to leave. You see?”

  “Poor pigs,” Abby said.

  “Poor pigs,” Father Morgan agreed. “But do you see the bigger point?”

  “That no one ever thanks you for trying to save them?” Abby said.

  “That the people in that village needed the Gadarene
madman to be sick,” Father Morgan said. “That way they could project all their problems onto him. They blamed him for everything: too much rain, too little rain, their kids staying out past curfew, cows dying. As long as he was sick, they could point to someone who wasn’t them and say, ‘That’s his fault. He’s possessed by Satan.’ And when Jesus cured him, they didn’t know what to do. They were at a loss.”

  Abby was not following this logic.

  “You think there isn’t anything wrong with Gretchen,” she said.

  “I’m saying maybe you need something to be wrong with Gretchen,” Father Morgan said. “Sometimes the hardest thing for us is when the sick person gets better.”

  “Why?” Abby asked.

  “Because then we have to deal with ourselves,” he said, looking at her meaningfully and letting his words sink in.

  A rap at the door broke the mood. Father Morgan put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up and opened the door. Gretchen stood there.

  “Hi, Father M,” she said, smiling.

  “Come on in,” he said. “I was just wrapping up with Abby.”

  “What are you doing here?” Abby asked, staring at Gretchen. Standing behind her was Glee.

  “I’m in vestry,” Gretchen said. “And Glee wants to join. What are you doing here?”

  Before Abby could answer, Father Morgan answered for her.

  “She’s still worried about you,” he said. “She just wanted to check in with me.”

  Gretchen stepped into the room.

  “I feel great,” she said, but her voice was too bright and hard.

  “Now,” Father Morgan said, “if I recall correctly, you two shouldn’t be spending time together. So Abby, why don’t you skedaddle.”

  As Abby got up to go, she eased past Gretchen in the door, and Gretchen made eye contact and smiled.

  “I’d love to have been a fly on the wall,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you must be saying about me.”

  The next day, the exorcist arrived.

  Missionary Man

  “When you’re worried and stressed out, when you feel like everyone hates you and your parents just don’t understand. When the world keeps coming at you and pushing you down and down, you’ll finally hear a still, small voice inside your head. No, it doesn’t mean you’re ready for the funny farm. That voice is God, and he’s speaking to you, and he’s saying, ‘Dude, I’ve got this.’”

  Then the enormous young man lying shirtless on the stage floor gritted his teeth while his musclebound brother brought down a sledgehammer and smashed the cinderblock resting on his abs. It exploded into gray powder, and the football players in the audience cheered ironically.

  “Praise God!” the shirtless guy shouted, leaping to his feet. “Sometimes God lets you hit rock bottom to show you that he is the rock at the bottom!”

  Everyone in the auditorium hooted and cheered. Abby couldn’t tell if the five guys onstage understood that they were being laughed at, or if they thought they were being laughed with. She sunk down lower in her seat. She just wanted assembly to be over.

  The Lemon Brothers Faith and Fitness Show was the funniest thing ever to hit Albemarle Academy. Five enormous meat potatoes strutted across the plastic-covered stage, popping their biceps, striking poses, and praising God. In the audience, the utter insanity of it all was blowing everyone’s minds.

  Once a month, Wednesday assembly put on a barn-burner. One week it was a screening of “Black Ice, White Lines,” about a bunch of high school seniors who did cocaine at parties (“flying high on the Devil’s dust,” the narrator intoned) and then drove home and hit a patch of black ice that sent them straight to hell.

  There was the day the assistant football coach from the Citadel came and described in vivid detail the Passion of Christ, lingering over every wound in nauseating technical detail. There was a kid with no arms who played trumpet with his feet. But this? This was something truly special. Throughout the entire student body, not a single pair of pants was dry.

  Elijah, the second-youngest brother, took center stage.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “when I’m shifting steel and sweating blood and I don’t think I’m going to make the clean and jerk, or when I’m stuck on the hang and can’t get the snatch, suddenly I’ll feel lighter, like someone has taken my load. And that’s when I look up and I say, ‘That was you, God. Thank you! Thank you for taking my load!’”

  People were laughing so hard, they thought they’d never return to normal. Father Morgan sat in the front row, looking up at the massive bodybuilders, all gleaming and glistening in the spotlights, with his mouth hanging open in awe. Major looked unreadable. The Lemon Brothers seemed to think the laughter meant they were on the right track.

  Isaiah, the ringleader and MC, pointed to two enormous notched wooden beams leaning against the massive blank stage wall, one much shorter than the other. Jonah and Micah, his other brothers, heaved up the longer beam and brought it center stage.

  “We want to invite any volunteers to come move this burden,” Isaiah said, a smile breaking out across his mustached face. “Can you guys lift this lumber? Can you shift this weight? What about you? Young lady, would you like to try?”

  Everyone laughed as Gretchen flexed her muscles in the audience.

  Isaiah laughed and flexed his own back at her. Then he pointed next to her.

  “How about you? You look strong?”

  He was pointing at Wallace Stoney. No one wanted to get onstage and be embarrassed, but Wallace was too arrogant to refuse. He stood up and said something that Abby couldn’t hear.

  “You can bring people, sure,” Isaiah said. “The more the merrier. Don’t be shy.”

  Wallace said something fast to Gretchen, then he grabbed Nuke Zuckerman and the two Bailey brothers to go onstage with him. They were a big chunk of the football team’s offensive line, and school pride swept the auditorium. The football players clapped for them first, and then everyone else joined in, eager to see these corny Christians get their challenge shoved back in their faces by the pride of Albemarle. Maybe these guys couldn’t win a football game, but they were certainly able to pick up heavy things.

  “Now come to the center,” Isaiah said, leading them to the larger wooden beam. It was about fifteen feet long. “Can you lift this? Let me see some muscle. Show us your muscle.”

  The four boys struck exaggerated bodybuilding poses and the Lemon Brothers clapped for them.

  “Now let’s see you lift,” Isaiah said. “Or are those just show muscles?”

  Wallace bossed the other football players into position. He bent over one end of the log, with Nuke at the other and the Baileys in the center. On his count, they strained and managed to lift the chunk of wood to shoulder height. Faces reddening, arms shaking, they pushed and raised it over their heads. Major looked nervous, probably thinking of liability issues, but Isaiah was ecstatic.

  “Give them a big round of applause,” he cued the crowd. “But now, let’s see the real challenge. Lift that . . . and this.”

  Micah and Jonah heaved the shorter beam off the back wall and brought it center stage, where they lowered it with a loud bang. It was only a third the length.

  “Can we put this one down?” Wallace asked.

  Isaiah made a “whatever works” gesture, and the football players dropped the long heavy log with a boom and began strategizing. First they tried to lift both beams at once, then they stacked them, piled them on top of each other, tried to balance them, but they couldn’t make it work. Wallace was getting angrier and angrier. Finally, when it was clear they weren’t getting anywhere, Isaiah intervened.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You tried.”

  Isaiah laid a hand on Wallace’s shoulder, but Wallace flicked it off. He and his football buddies started to walk offstage angrily, but Isaiah planted himself in front of th
em.

  “I’ve never seen volunteers raise it chest-high before, so another round of applause for these fine young men,” he said as the audience obliged. “Wait here, don’t go anywhere. What would you say if I said my brother can pick up both these logs all by himself?”

  He held out the mic.

  “I’d say you were lying,” Wallace replied.

  Isaiah cued his brothers, and Christian, the youngest one with the biggest muscles, walked over to the two massive pieces of lumber. He dragged the short one to the top of the long one and dropped it into place, locking the notches. Then he bent his knees, lifted the end of the longer beam, arms shaking, face red, neck corded, and he ducked underneath. Balancing it on his back, he lifted both logs at once. Notched together, they formed an enormous cross. Face sweating, Christian shifted his grip and the rear of the cross swung wildly, almost taking out the back wall of the auditorium; but then he had it and was pressing up and up and up. The cross was over his head. Slowly, he spun in a circle, his brothers ducking so they wouldn’t get decapitated. The crowd went wild. Christian held the massive cross for two seconds before bending his elbows.

  “Hup!” he cried, and his four brothers came and took the weight.

  More applause.

  “With the power of the cross,” Christian crowed into his brother’s microphone, breathing hard, “everything is possible.”

  He struck a bodybuilding pose, flexing his sculpted shoulders under his mesh tank top. Next, Jonah, who walked with a limp, placed a watermelon on a table.

  With one blow, Christian shattered it with a fist.

  “These are the problems that afflict this world,” Christian said as the melon exploded into a shower of pink pulp. Jonah threw him two grapefruits. “Life may be tough, but my God is tougher.”