“I’m peachy,” Gretchen said. “I’m cold, I’m naked, I’m starving, I spent all night in the fucking woods.”
The reply threw Abby. Gretchen never cussed. She held out Gretchen’s shorts.
“I found these,” she said. “But I lost your shirt.”
Snatching them from Abby’s hand, Gretchen stepped into her shorts, her joints cold and stiff. She pulled them up and then crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her hands into her armpits.
“We thought you were lost,” Abby explained. “We’ve been looking for you since you jumped off the dock. Margaret was about to call the police.”
Gretchen leaned over, arms hiding her breasts, skin rough with goose pimples, and she kept bending until she was crouched like she was going to pee, and then she froze, hair hanging over her face. It took Abby a second to realize she was crying, and then Abby crouched beside her, wrapping her arms around Gretchen’s ice-cold back.
“Shh, shh, shh,” she said, rubbing Gretchen’s back. “It’s okay.”
Gretchen leaned into her awkwardly, and snuffled and shook for a full minute before she made a complicated noise in her throat.
“What?” Abby asked.
“I want to go home,” Gretchen repeated.
“We are,” Abby said.
She stood up, pulling Gretchen with her, turning them around, trying to walk. But Gretchen’s legs were too stiff to do more than stumble.
“Glee!” Abby yelled. “Mar-ga-ret!”
Seconds later, the girls came crashing through the woods.
“Thank fucking God,” Margaret said.
Then Glee and Margaret were all over Gretchen, leading her out of the clearing, Margaret pulling off her own big T-shirt and sliding it over Gretchen’s head because at least Margaret was wearing a bra. Abby stood and watched them go, relief flooding her limbs. She looked back at the blockhouse and saw something modern poking around its corner. Leaning over, she got a better look. A big metal box was planted in the dirt. Dusty green, it squatted in the woods, a white number 14 stenciled on the side. She picked her way over and laid a hand on top. It was buzzing. A Southern Bell logo was stamped on a padlocked hatch on the side, and she realized that the humming last night came from some kind of phone equipment.
Mystery deflated, she turned again to the blockhouse and realized it didn’t look evil now, just filthy. Half the ceiling had collapsed and big chunks of broken tabby lay piled on the ground. The inside walls were scratched deep from top to bottom with more obscene graffiti, every inch thick with shaky symbols, unreadable words, weird letters that might have been numbers, band names hacked over sex drawings scratched over wannabe satanic designs. The ground was carpeted with empty wine-cooler bottles and cigarette butts.
One slab of tabby lay in the center, as big and round as a dinner table, tipped up on one side to present its face to the window. Watery morning light shone on half of it. Smeared across its surface was a handful of something red that could have been fresh paint. Abby backed away slowly from the window and got out of the woods.
It was just paint, she told herself. That’s all it was.
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Everyone was starving but the only items in Margaret’s fridge were half a grapefruit, a curl of cheddar cheese in a Ziploc bag, a case of Perrier, and a box of Fleet laxative suppositories, because Margaret’s mom was watching her weight again.
Glee was jazzed up on no sleep, telling no one in particular the blow by blow of how they’d spent all night looking for Gretchen and how worried she’d been the whole time. Margaret was a space cadet, standing in front of the coffee maker, watching it fill. The girls stank. Abby’s shins seethed with scratches, her arms felt like solid bruises, and her scalp ached where she’d lost some hair. She kept trying to get Gretchen out the door, but Gretchen was moving in circles. First she wanted to go look for her T-shirt in the woods, then she couldn’t find her wallet, then her house keys weren’t in her bag. Margaret kept waiting for them to go, but after Gretchen put down her bag and couldn’t find it for the third time, Margaret stomped off to the shower and slammed the bathroom door. Finally, finally, finally they loaded up the Dust Bunny and backed out way too fast.
“We should’ve waited for Margaret,” Gretchen mumbled, slumped against the passenger side window.
“We’ll see her on Monday,” Abby said. “Right now we need to get home before your parents.”
She bounced the Dust Bunny hard down the oak-lined dirt road.
“Ow,” Gretchen moaned as her head knocked against the window.
Old Charleston families loved their big country houses, and they loved their long driveways, and the worse condition they kept them in, the more they felt like they were the right kind of people. The Middletons were exactly the right kind of people. Just as her shock absorbers couldn’t take any more damage, Abby hung a right and the Dust Bunny hauled itself onto the two-lane blacktop that cut through the deep pine forest out of Wadmalaw and toward Charleston; she pressed the gas. The Bunny’s little sewing machine engine hummed like crazy.
“Do you have twelve dollars I can borrow?” Abby asked.
Gretchen just fiddled with the radio.
“Gretchen?” Abby said.
No answer. Abby decided to go for the long explanation. “They shorted me at TCBY this week but they’re making it up on my next paycheck. We’re not going to make it home if I don’t get some gas.”
There was a long pause, then:
“I can’t remember anything about last night,” Gretchen said.
“You got lost,” Abby said. “And spent the night in that building. There’s a gas station in Red Top.”
Gretchen thought about this.
“I don’t have any money,” she decided.
“They take cards,” Abby said.
“I have a card?” Gretchen asked hopefully.
“In your wallet,” Abby said.
Abby knew that Gretchen’s dad had given her a credit card for emergencies. Except for Abby, all the girls had gas cards and credit cards and allowances, because no one’s dad wanted his daughter to be stranded somewhere without enough money to get home. Except for Abby’s dad. He didn’t much care about anything except lawn mowers.
Gretchen hauled her bag onto her lap and began pawing through it until she found her wallet, fumbled it open, and froze.
“How much do you have?” Abby asked.
Nothing but the hum of the Dust Bunny’s engine.
Abby risked a look over.
“Gretchen?” she asked. “How much?”
Gretchen turned to Abby, and in the morning sun Abby could see that her eyes were swimming with tears.
“Sixteen dollars,” she said. “That’s enough for gas and a Diet Coke, right? That’s okay if I have a Diet Coke?”
“Of course,” Abby said. “It’s your money.”
The light sparkled on tears as they slid down Gretchen’s cheeks.
“Gretchen?” Abby asked, suddenly worried.
Sunlight flickered through the trees as they drove, turning strong and solid as they left the pine forest behind. Tomato fields lay flat and fallow for acres on either side of the two-lane blacktop. Gretchen inhaled so deep, it turned into a shuddering sob.
“I just really, really . . . ,” Gretchen broke off, overcome. She tried again. “I need everything to be normal right now.”
Abby reached over, took her hand, and squeezed. Gretchen’s skin was cold, but the inside of the car was warming from the sun.
“You’re going to be okay,” Abby said. “I promise.”
“You’re sure?” Gretchen asked.
“Totally positive,” Abby said.
By the time they rolled into Red Top, they were running on fumes and Gretchen was starting to come down.