Gretchen stayed seated. Abby sat beside her as the Lawn emptied and everyone headed to class. The wind started up again, whipping their hair around. “Margaret’s just being Margaret,” Abby said. “Let’s go.”
“I hope she dies,” Gretchen said in a low voice. “I hope Wallace gives her AIDS and she dies a slow, miserable death.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Abby said.
“I need you to buy me a phone,” Gretchen said, getting up and brushing off her butt.
“Like, a phone phone?” Abby asked, not following.
“Go to a thrift store. You can get one for ten bucks,” Gretchen said. “I’ll pay you back.”
She grabbed her bookbag, hefted its strap over one shoulder, and started walking. Abby tried to keep up. “I’ve got TCBY tonight,” she said. “I don’t get off until nine.”
“My mom’s having book club at our house,” Gretchen said. “Just come over. She’ll be drunk.”
Abby was about to ask why she needed a phone when Gretchen suddenly leaned over and gave her a hug. Abby caught a whiff of something sour.
“No matter what happens,” she said. “I’ll never hurt you.”
For the rest of the day, Abby wondered why Gretchen thought she needed to say that.
Broken Wings
Mom cars spilled out of the Langs’ driveway and lined Pierates Cruze—Volvos and Mercedes and Jeep Grand Cherokees parked fender to fender in front of the neighbors’ houses. Abby spotted a space in front of Dr. Bennett’s and pulled the Bunny onto his grass. Before she even turned off her ignition, the front porch lights came on and Dr. Bennett was standing outside, shaking his finger at her. Embarrassed, Abby drove around the block and parked in the Hunts’ front yard instead.
The Cruze was dark. The air was heavy and the wind was wet. The bamboo grove next to Gretchen’s house rustled and sighed. Abby was always welcome to walk into Margaret’s and Glee’s houses, but she had to ring the doorbell at Gretchen’s. Because tonight was book club, she didn’t know whether she should ring or just slip inside, but as she came up the walkway the sound of women laughing got louder and Mr. Lang came out the door.
“Hey, Mr. Lang,” Abby said.
“Oh, Abby,” he said, closing the door and muffling the raucous lady laughter. “That’s a wild bunch.”
“Yes, sir,” Abby said.
They stood there. The wind changed direction. Another peal of laughter erupted inside.
“Can I go see Gretchen?” Abby asked.
“Is Gretchen all right?” Mr. Lang asked at the same time.
They both paused, caught off guard by their accidental jinx.
“Um, yes, sir,” Abby said.
Over the years, Abby had engaged in very few adult conversations with Gretchen’s dad, mostly because she’d learned to be wary of them. Usually they involved her being led through a series of rhetorical questions that ended with a lecture on trickle-down economics, the Evil Empire, or the real solution to the homeless problem.
“You can talk to me, Abby,” Mr. Lang said. “Right? We understand each other?”
She thought about Mr. Lang looking through Gretchen’s notebooks to see if she’d been doodling boys’ names in the margins. She thought about the doctor telling him that his daughter’s virginity was intact.
“We understand each other perfectly,” Abby said.
“If something is happening with Gretchen, I’d like to think you’d tell me.”
Behind him, heat lightning flickered on the horizon.
“Sure,” Abby said. “Can I go upstairs?”
He considered her for a minute, trying to peer through Abby’s skull with his lawyer eyes, then stepped aside. “Go on,” he said. “I have to get the cat.”
“What cat?” she asked, reaching for the door handle.
Mr. Lang started toward the back of the house.
“There’s a dead cat on the lower level,” he said.
“Whose is it?” Abby asked.
“We’ve got owls,” he said. “They’ve been carrying off cats all week. Just snatching them up. It’s a mess.”
“Abby!” Gretchen said, exploding out of house. Talking and noise and laughter poured through the open door; Gretchen grabbed Abby’s arm and pulled her inside. “Stop bothering my friend,” she snapped at her dad.
The house was bright white and filled with the smell of flowers and the sound of happy women in the living room.
“Yoo-hoo!” Mrs. Lang called. “Is that Abby Rivers?”
Gretchen took the white carpeted stairs two at a time, pulling Abby behind her, turning back over her shoulder to shake her head. Abby paused at the top of the stairs and leaned over the rail.
“Hi, Mrs. Lang!” she called, and then she was in Gretchen’s room and Gretchen was closing the door. The air-conditioning
was on subzero, so Abby pulled her sleeves down over her hands.
“Did you get it?” Gretchen asked, plucking at Abby’s bookbag.
Abby opened her bag and produced the beige Trimline phone she’d bought from First Baptist Mission for eleven dollars. There was a scuff mark on one end, and it was spattered with white paint. Gretchen snatched it, bounced over her twin beds, and crouched on the carpet to plug it into the jack behind her headboard. Then she lifted the receiver and grinned.
“Dial tone!” she whispered.
She unplugged the cord, wrapped it around the phone, and opened her closet. Max stood up stiffly and crawled out from underneath Gretchen’s desk, yawning and stretching. While Gretchen buried the phone in her closet, the dog trotted over and stuck his cold nose into Abby’s hand.
When Gretchen emerged, Abby noticed the dark circles under her eyes and that her skin was cloudy. Her jaw was tight and she was jumpy, but she didn’t seem quite as exhausted as before.
“Come on,” Gretchen said, heading into her bathroom. “I’m doing my hair.”
Gretchen stood at the counter while Abby lowered herself into the empty bathtub and stretched out. She liked sitting in Gretchen’s tub. It was her thing. Max settled himself in the doorway. He never came into the bathroom because he was scared of floor tiles.
“They took away my phone privileges,” Gretchen said, focusing on her reflection, lifting a long section of hair straight up. “But I still need to call Andy.”
“You need to call Margaret,” Abby said, her feet propped against the wall.
Gretchen lifted the crimping iron. “I’m not apologizing. Everything I said was true, and Margaret knows it. That’s why she’s mad.”
“Wallace totally deserves to be barfed on,” Abby said. “But he is her boyfriend.”
Gretchen squeezed the crimping iron and held it for five seconds. The bathroom filled with the smell of hot hair.
“Margaret’s so far up his butt, she’s lost her identity,” Gretchen complained.
“What’re you doing to your hair?” Abby asked.
“Andy told me I should embrace change.”
A muffled burst of laughter rose through the floor. Abby wished she could go downstairs. She wanted to see the book club. She wanted to be around their jokes and their gossip. She wanted to see if Mrs. Lang had made those miniature quiches.
“I hope we still laugh like that when we’re their age,” Abby said.
“They’re drunk,” Gretchen said. “I’d rather die than turn into them.”
More laughter filtered through the floor. At the sound, Gretchen tightened her lips; she released the crimping iron with a clack, sniffed her warm length of hair, and then moved on to the next section.
“Wallace is lame,” Abby said. “But you need to be diplomatic if we’re all going to stay friends.”
Gretchen squeezed the crimping iron so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Maybe I don’t want to be friends,” she said.
Abby couldn’t even process this. How do you decide you don’t want to be friends anymore? How do you toss aside people you’ve known for years?
“But they’re our friends,” she said.
It was the best she could do.
“Listen to them,” Gretchen spat as more laughter shook the floor. “They’re giving me a headache. You should have heard my mom going on about her ‘problem daughter.’ How I’m ‘troubled’ and how she’s ‘crucified on the cross of my adolescence.’ They’re such hypocrites, it makes me sick.”
She put down the crimping iron and turned her head from side to side in the mirror.
“Does this look hot? Or bizarre?”