“It’s like the Beverly Hills Diet,” Gretchen said to Margaret. “Only all fruits and veggies. Combined with the milkshakes, you’re going to lose ten pounds before the semiformal. Easy.”
Gretchen and Margaret sat next to each other at the picnic table on the Lawn, elbows propped on the silver sun-warmed wood, going over Margaret’s food diary. Gretchen’s German textbook lay forgotten in front of her. Abby noticed that Gretchen was already on the second-to-last chapter.
Glee sat across from them, facing the auditorium, looking for something. Abby was perched at the far end of the table, trying to stay on top of her biology homework, listening to the conversation, wondering why Gretchen was so concerned with Margaret’s diet.
Margaret looked like those skinny, pale girls in the Robert Palmer videos—complete with high forehead, sharp jawline, and dramatic cheekbones. She was buying new clothes every week as her old outfits got baggy and loose. Her mom was prouder of Margaret for losing weight than she’d ever been about anything in her daughter’s life. She bragged that Margaret was finally having a second growth spurt and “filling out.” Her friends agreed. Margaret was turning into a real beauty, they said. Mr. Middleton didn’t notice because he hadn’t gotten his credit card bills yet.
“I’m barely even hungry anymore,” Margaret said.
“You don’t have a butt anymore,” Glee said.
“I’ll borrow some of yours,” Margaret said.
Frisbees and seagulls floated through the air. Teachers were holding grass class out on the Lawn, and all the classroom windows were open.
“Oh, by the way,” Gretchen said, reaching into her bag. She pulled out a sealed envelope. “Father Morgan is using me as his delivery service again. I’m going to start charging.”
Glee hesitated then took the envelope, stacked her books, and marched off in the direction of the auditorium, taking the turn around the bell tower that led to chapel. Abby was surprised that Margaret wasn’t saying anything. What kind of note was a teacher sending a student that had to be sealed in an envelope?
“You know she’s doing vestry all the time,” Gretchen said, watching Glee go. “I feel bad for getting her involved. I think she’s spreading herself too thin.”
“You can never be too thin,” Margaret said, then pointed to something in her food diary. “Look, see last Monday? 20 Ce. I’m already cutting it in half. I hate all this water weight.”
Abby sat on her bed and opened Gretchen’s daybook. The first page was devoted to Andy’s phone number, written in bubbly blue digits, each letter in his name outlined in yellow highlighter: Andy Solomon. Abby turned the page. For a few pages it was Gretchen’s homework assignments written in different colored pens, back when they’d still had some of the same classes:
Intro to Program – basic shapes
English – poss. test
US History – think of topic for research paper
Ethics – do questions for Thurs news articles
German – read vocab
Biology – graph for friday
Geometry – pg 28, 32 #1–8 (I understand it!! Sort of?)
Bright splashes of color marked birthdays, school letting out early, volleyball games. Then the schedule stopped, the colors disappeared, and the next page was packed with cramped handwriting from top to bottom, curling back up the side, a tiny crazy monologue. The same with the next page, and the next. Abby tried to read it, but it was either nonsense about angels and demons or chains of random words.
Then the drawings began. At first they were between the words, but then they grew until they pushed the words off the page, were written on top of them, red scrawls of marker forming spirals and bars, pictures of crying sad faces, flowers dripping tears, funnels inside mouths, crude insects, bugs, worms, cockroaches, spiders.
Near the back, Abby found the pages that would get Gretchen a one-way ticket to Southern Pines if anyone ever saw them. The pages that read: Kill them all. I want to die. Kill me. Make it stop make it stop make it stop. Reading them made Abby’s breath come fast and shallow and high in her chest. It made her feel lightheaded. White scratches dotted her vision.
The next morning, she woke up to find her forehead almost solid with scabs, and the zits around her nose had filled with yellow pus. Abby used two Q-tips to squeeze them dry before she pancaked and powdered her face into uneven, lumpy order and went to school. The first thing she did when she got there was find Gretchen. It was time they had a talk.
Gretchen’s hand raced down the pages of her spiral notebook, answering the end-of-chapter German questions.
“I can help you,” Abby said, planting herself directly in front of Gretchen’s desk.
They were in Mrs. Erskine’s English room before the first bell. People were slowly drifting in, finding desks or frantically finishing the previous night’s homework, racing through the assigned reading.
Gretchen looked up, blinking. She glanced around to see who else was in the room.
“You’re not in this class,” she said. “Did you transfer?”
“No,” Abby said, relieved that Gretchen was at least talking to her. “I can help you with whatever is going on.”
Abby had been stressing all night over how to say this, but now it was going better than she thought.
Gretchen gave her a vague smile.
“What’s going on?” she asked, bemused and confused.
“I know you’re not happy,” Abby said, sitting down backward at the desk in front of Gretchen, arms on the back, being earnest. “Just talk to me. Tell me what happened. We’re still friends.”
Gretchen bent back over her German book.
“Of course we’re still friends,” she said. “Why else do you think I let you sit with us at lunch? I know Margaret’s being a giant pill, but that’s Margaret. Maybe when she loses some weight, she’ll be happier.”
Abby put a hand flat on Gretchen’s notebook, blocking her pen.
“Why are you doing that with Margaret?” she asked.
This time, Gretchen looked at her seriously.
“The same reason I got Glee into vestry,” she said. “Because it makes her happy. You’re so negative lately. I don’t know what happened between y’all, and I know it’s stressful, but it’ll work out, Abby. Actually, the person I worry about most is you. I want all my friends to be happy, and something’s definitely wrong with you. I didn’t want to say anything, but your skin is acting up again.”
Something nudged the side of Abby’s hand and she looked down to see that Gretchen’s right hand was still moving on the page, frantically scrawling jagged print across her notebook.
Abby looked up quickly.
Gretchen was still staring at her, totally unaware of what her right hand was doing, a sweet expression of concern on her face.
“What’s bothering you, Abby?” she asked. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Gretchen’s hand stopped moving, and Abby couldn’t help herself: she looked down. Rushed letters were written upside down so that the words faced her.
not me not me help me not me
Abby looked away, but not fast enough. Suddenly Gretchen tore the page from the notebook, her face filled with fury. She crumpled it up and was about to say something when Wallace Stoney appeared beside them.
“How’s it hanging, G-meister?” he asked.
She beamed up at him.
“Hey, Wallace,” she said. “Is everyone still going to Med Deli after?”
“Only if you figure out my Deutsch,” he said. “I should never have signed up for Nazi.”
“It’s easy,” Gretchen said. “Give it here.”
He started to sit in Abby’s chair, as if she were invisible. Abby flinched and got up, careful not to touch him.
“See you later, Abby,” Gretchen said. “Think about what I said.”
Then she and Wallace bent their heads over his German book. As Abby left, she could hear Gretchen explaining to Wallace Stoney just how easy everything was.
“It’s Julie Slovitch,” Margaret said during lunch. “God, that pig is delusional. She fantasizes about humping him all the time.”