“I need you to help me,” Gretchen said.
Abby levitated.
“Anything,” she said.
“You have to help me . . .” Gretchen repeated, her voice trailing off. She chewed her fingernails.
“Help you what?” Abby asked, riding the brakes downhill.
“You have to help me find Molly Ravenel,” Gretchen said.
Abby’s heart sank and then shattered into pure rage. She’d spent weeks worrying about what to do, and now Gretchen was talking about a stupid urban legend?
“I don’t care about Molly Ravenel!” Abby shouted. “Why are you acting this way?”
“We have to dig her up and give her a Christian burial,” Gretchen gabbled, leaning close. “She’s underneath the blockhouse on Margaret’s land in Wadmalaw, rotting in the dirt because Satan put her there, because he ate her soul. But if we can bury Molly, save Molly, if we can get Molly out—”
“Shut up!” Abby screamed as the Bunny wheezed up the second span. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I’m the only friend you have left and I have stuck by you even though everyone says I shouldn’t, and you finally talk to me and it’s this crazy kindergarten junk? I don’t know who you are anymore!”
“I’m me,” Gretchen said. “Am I? Maybe I’m someone else? No, I’m still me; it hasn’t happened yet, it can’t have happened yet. I’m still me, I’m still myself. You have to believe I’m still me.”
Abby decided that Gretchen needed a dose of reality. Everyone was tiptoeing around her and acting like nothing was wrong. Someone had to confront her.
“If you don’t start talking normally,” Abby said, “I will ditch you and I will never talk to you again, and then you’ll be all alone and—”
Gretchen lunged across the gearshift and grabbed the wheel. They were in the downtown lane and Gretchen jammed the wheel hard to the left, sending the Bunny careening into oncoming traffic, steering straight into the grill of a navy-blue pickup truck.
“No!” Abby screamed.
Her instinct was to jam on the brakes, but the pickup was too close. Abby could see the driver: no shirt, mullet rippling in the wind, his cigarette falling out of his mouth, grabbing the top of his wheel with both hands. The car behind them laid on its horn. Abby cranked the wheel to the right, but Gretchen fought her. The Bunny’s tires flickered and wobbled, and then Abby elbowed Gretchen hard in the ear. Gretchen snapped back in her seat, her head knocking into the window, and Abby hauled hard to the right, praying there wasn’t a car where she wanted to go.
The Bunny dipped its hood dangerously low to the asphalt, then swerved back into the right-hand lane with a sickening lurch. Abby had overcorrected, and now she heard that sound in movies when tires squeal; she smelled burning rubber. The Bunny flew at the side of the bridge with its thin steel railing, and Abby saw the hood hitting the metal and her rear end lifting, and then the Bunny flipping end over end into space, falling, falling, hitting the water eighty feet below, hard as concrete.
And then they were back in their lane like nothing had happened, the Bunny doing a cool fifty-five miles per hour. A Creekside mom in a freshly washed station wagon honked as she flew past on the left. The back end of the navy-blue pickup was in the rearview mirror, disappearing toward Mt. Pleasant; Gretchen was leaning against her door, cradling one ear.
Abby’s heart was banging against her ribcage as they rode over the next span and then got off the bridge. She took a left and pulled into the parking lot outside the old cigar factory and pried her hands off the wheel, one cramped finger at a time. Then she screamed so loudly, her voice bounced off the ceiling.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Gretchen buried her face in her hands and unleashed huge wracking sobs that made her shoulders twitch. Maybe she was crying, maybe she was laughing. Abby didn’t care anymore. Her anger made her incandescent, screaming, jabbing her finger at Gretchen’s shaking back.
“I’m done with you!” she shouted. “You just tried to kill us! I’m done! I’m never talking to you again!”
Gretchen’s hand shot out and twisted itself in the sleeve of Abby’s shirt.
“Don’t,” she begged. “Please don’t leave me alone. If you leave, I can’t do it anymore.”
“Then tell me what’s happening,” Abby said, feeling the adrenaline drain, leaving her hungry and sick.
“I’m so tired,” Gretchen said, leaning back in her seat, eyes closing. “I just want to sleep.”
“Don’t,” Abby warned.
“You want to know what’s happening?” Gretchen asked. “You want to know what’s really happening?”
“What do you think?” Abby asked.
They sat in the Bunny for a long time without talking, and then Gretchen finally told Abby the truth.
King of Pain
“You can’t be involved,” Gretchen said. “This can’t touch you.”
“I’m already involved. You almost killed us,” Abby said, feeling her stomach tighten and her heart beat faster.
Gretchen wasn’t listening. She was looking at Abby pleadingly.
“Can you promise me?” she asked. “Can you promise me that when this is all over, everything will go back to normal?”
“If you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, then no more phone calls,” Abby said. “No more rides to school. Maybe later, after Christmas vacation, but right now I need a break.”
“Promise me?” Gretchen demanded, tears slipping out of one eye. The other eye was pink and infected. “Promise me it’s not too late for everything to go back to the way it was.”
“Then tell me what’s happening,” Abby said.
Gretchen smeared her shirtsleeve across her face. It came away snotty.
“I’ve been having my period for two weeks,” she said. “I think I’m bleeding to death but my mom won’t listen. She buys me pads and I go through five or six a day.”
“You have to go to the doctor,” Abby said.
“I’ve been,” Gretchen said.
“A different doctor,” Abby said. “A real doctor. You could have a disease.”
Gretchen’s hollow laugh echoed in the Bunny.
“A disease,” she repeated. “It’s like a disease, sure. I caught it that night at Margaret’s.”
Abby felt her heart slow, her fists unclench. They were finally getting somewhere.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I’m not a virgin anymore,” Gretchen said.
The statement hung in the air between them. It wasn’t just that Gretchen had lied to her in front of chapel when she’d asked, but that they had promised not to do this without talking to each other; now Gretchen had crossed a threshold and left Abby behind with the little kids. On the heels of that thought came a more serious one. That night at Margaret’s. Gretchen hadn’t just lost her virginity. This was worse.
“Who was in the woods?” Abby asked.
Abby had read the stories in Sassy, she’d seen The Burning Bed, she and Gretchen had gone to The Accused. If this could happen to Gretchen . . . the thought couldn’t fit inside her head. Who would hurt Gretchen? Who would twist her and tear her up and then dump her in the woods like garbage?
“I can’t,” Gretchen said.
The pieces fit. These were the warning signs in the Cosmo features. And if Gretchen couldn’t say the name, then it was someone they knew.
“Who was it?” Abby asked.
Gretchen closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest. Abby reached out and rubbed her arm. Gretchen flinched. Faces from the yearbook flicked through Abby’s head.
“Who?” Abby asked again. “Tell me his name.”
“Every night,” Gretchen said. “Again and again. He sits on my chest and I can’t move. He watches me, and then he hurts me.”
“Who?” Abby asked.
“I can’t change clothes,” Gretchen said. “I have to stay covered. I have to sleep in my clothes and I can’t shower because when he sees my skin, he tears it. I can’t give him a way in. I have to keep him out. Do you understand?”
Abby was lost. Everything was coming too fast.