“Save it,” he snapped, dropping into his chair and picking up a stack of test papers. “I said my piece, you heard me, and the next person I’ll tell is Major. I’m giving you a chance to help your friend. Now get to class.”
Abby realized that no one was going to do anything. For five years, Gretchen had been the perfect Albemarle student, and the faculty still saw what they were used to seeing—not what was really happening. Maybe they chalked it up to PSAT stress or problems at home. Maybe they figured that tenth grade was a tough transition. Maybe they were caught up in their own divorces and career dramas and problem kids, and if she still wasn’t turning things around on Monday they’d say something. Or maybe the following Monday. Or the Monday after that.
Something was changing inside Gretchen. Maybe it was the acid, maybe it was Andy, maybe it was her parents, maybe it was something worse. Whatever it was, Abby had to keep trying. She couldn’t abandon her friend because soon Gretchen would be ready to talk. Any minute now she’d look up from her daybook and say, “I have to tell you something serious.”
The next day was Wednesday, and when Gretchen got into the Dust Bunny, Abby was relieved: she was still wearing the same clothes but didn’t smell bad. Maybe Mr. Barlow had gotten through to her after all.
Then a new smell hit her: United Colors of Benetton perfume. Gretchen was drenched in it. She’d gotten a bottle from her parents two years ago, and it quickly became her signature scent. That morning, Gretchen reeked of it. Abby’s eyes were still burning when she walked into first period.
Later that day, Abby went against her better judgment and appealed to a higher authority. She came back from TCBY and found her mother balancing the checkbook at the dining room table. Abby’s mom took every shift that came her way, sleeping at patients’ houses three times a week in case they woke up in the middle of the night and needed someone to change their Depends. Abby mostly saw her in passing or asleep on the sofa, or she heard her coughing behind a closed bedroom door. Clueless as to how to start a conversation, she hovered awkwardly by the couch until her mom noticed.
“What?” Mrs. Rivers said without looking up.
Abby dove in before she could second-guess herself.
“Do you ever have patients who hear voices?” she asked. “Like voices that talk to them all the time and tell them things?”
“Sure,” her mom said. “Nutjobs.”
“Well,” Abby said, forging ahead, “how do they get better?”
“They don’t,” her mom said, tearing up a stack of voided checks. “We put them on pills, send them to the nuthouse, or hire someone like me to make sure they don’t chug-a-lug the Drano.”
“But there has to be something you can do,” Abby said. “To make them like they used to be.”
Abby’s mom was exhausted but she wasn’t stupid. She took a sip of her Diet Pepsi and looked at her daughter.
“If this is about Gretchen, and it usually is,” she said, “then it’s none of your beeswax. You worry about you and let Gretchen’s parents worry about Gretchen.”
“Something’s wrong with her,” Abby said. “You could talk to her parents, or we could go over there together. They’d listen to you.”
“Families like that don’t listen to other people,” Mrs. Rivers said. “You get in the middle of whatever this is and you’ll be giving them an excuse to blame you for everything.”
Abby was reeling. Deep down she thought that, too, but it sounded so unfair coming out of her own mother’s mouth. Her mom didn’t know anything about the Langs.
“You’re just jealous that I have friends,” she shot back.
“I see the friends you have,” Abby’s mom said. “And they’re of no consequence. You’ve got big things ahead of you, but these girls will wear you out and drag you down.”
Abby’s chest prickled with heat. Her mom had never expressed an opinion about Abby’s friends—and she was horrified to hear how twisted and misguided it was. Her mom didn’t know anything about her friends.
“You don’t even have friends,” Abby said.
“Where do you think they went?” Abby’s mom asked. “Charleston people like the Langs, they only want easy times. The minute it rains, watch them run.”
Words could not express the frustration Abby felt.
“You don’t understand anything,” she said.
Her mother looked genuinely surprised.
“Good God, Abby. Where do you think I grew up? I understand these people better than you.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Abby said.
Her mom massaged the bridge of her nose. She started talking while her eyes were still closed.
“When I was your age, I trusted the wrong people,” she said. “I was silly when I should have been serious. I let myself get in over my head. Those girls are not the same as you. If they make a mistake, their parents can buy their way out of it. But people like us? We take one wrong step and it haunts us forever.”
Abby wanted to say that her mom was wrong. She wanted to force her to see that they were nothing alike; but she was so angry, her throat couldn’t form the words.
“I never should have talked to you!” she shouted and stormed off to her room.
On Monday, Abby pulled up in front of the Langs’ house and saw that Max had knocked over the garbage cans again and pulled a bag into the center of Dr. Bennett’s yard, where he was ripping it apart. When Abby pulled the emergency brake, Max yanked his nose out of the white plastic and ran away. That’s when Abby saw that the bag was full of used Maxipads and tampons, a whole pile of them, saturated with clotted black blood.
Abby was debating whether to clean up the mess or honk the horn when Dr. Bennett came around the Cruze from the opposite direction. He was returning from his morning walk, swinging the cane he’d made out of a sawed-off broomstick, a rubber cap nailed to one end.
He saw the bloody garbage strewn across his grass at the exact moment Gretchen emerged from her house, looking dazed and still wearing the same outfit as the day before. From inside the Dust Bunny with the windows rolled up, the whole scene was like a silent movie, with Dr. Bennett shouting at Gretchen, punctuating his sentences by whacking the garbage bag with his stick. Gretchen replied by raising her middle finger, and Abby read her lips:
“Fuck you.”
Abby’s spine stiffened; she didn’t know what to do. Get out? Stay in the car? Dr. Bennett was coming at Gretchen faster than Abby had ever seen him move, passing in front of the car’s hood and swinging his stick at Gretchen’s legs. Gretchen hit him with her bookbag, knocking him against Mrs. Lang’s Volvo. He was shouting again, and then Mr. Lang was running out of the house, with Mrs. Lang right behind him in a pink sweatsuit.
Abby watched Mr. Lang mouth the words “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” as he put himself between Dr. Bennett and his daughter, and then the two men were tussling, grabbing each other’s shirt collars.
Gretchen, forgotten for the moment, ran around the back of the Dust Bunny and yanked open the door, shouts filling the car as she dropped into her seat in a nostril-searing cloud of United Colors of Benetton.
“Go,” she said.
Abby hit the accelerator, sending rocks spraying from underneath her tires. They flew through the Old Village. At the first stop sign Abby really looked at Gretchen, trying to see who was there, not just who had always been there before. Angry pimples were smeared across Gretchen’s chin, infected whiteheads grew in the creases next to her nostrils, dry scabs were encrusted on her forehead. Her breath smelled bad. Her teeth were yellow. Crust was caked in the corners of her eyes. She stank of perfume.
Someone had to do something. Someone had to say something. Teachers weren’t doing it. Her mom wasn’t going to do it. The Langs wouldn’t do it. That left Abby.
Traffic on the bridge was light because they were running late, so Abby veered left onto the new bridge. As they started to climb the first span, with the Bunny’s engine having a heart attack underneath the hood, she finally said it.
“What’s happening to you?” Abby asked.
At first she thought Gretchen wasn’t going to say anything, but then she spoke, her voice hoarse.