Christ, Laura Banks agreed, Julie Slovitch was so gross. She’s definitely the person who must have had that bouquet of white roses delivered to Wallace during fourth-period break that morning.
“Now look at him,” Margaret said. “Acting like he’s King Stud.”
Abby sat with her back against the lamppost on the Lawn, next to the dark green Charleston bench where Margaret was ranting at Laura Banks. Glee didn’t sit with them anymore. At lunch she went to Chapel and took Communion instead. Gretchen was spending her lunches on the benches outside the now-shuttered Senior Hut with all the upperclassmen. Margaret dismissed Glee as a “Jesus freak” and ignored her defection, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that she was losing Wallace. It ate away at her from the inside.
Indian summer was making everyone slap-happy. Wallace worked the Lawn, passing out his white roses to all the girls, bestowing them with courtly bows and kissing their hands. Eventually, he wandered over to Margaret, Laura, and Abby and offered Margaret a rose.
“Here,” he said. “You looked so lonely, and you know, I have so many flowers because I’m such a stud.”
Margaret regarded him for a moment.
“Why don’t you shut up about your fucking flowers?” she finally suggested.
“Jealous much?” Wallace asked.
“I feel sorry for you,” Margaret snapped. “Julie Slovitch is a dog. If you loved me, you’d dump those in the trash.”
Abby knew exactly what Wallace was going to say before he said it.
“Who says I love you?” he asked.
Then he realized what he’d said. A single second of silence passed, and then Margaret laughed, harsh and braying. The sound echoed to the breezeway.
“You did,” she said. “When I almost dumped you and you begged me on the phone to stay with you.”
“I never begged shit,” Wallace said.
“You begged me like a little girl,” Margaret said, darting her face forward.
Her cheeks were bright red and the tendons in her neck popped. Her forehead was bony, bisected by a single pulsing vein, and the muscles along her jaw twitched beneath her translucent skin. Her knuckles were huge. On the volleyball court it was clear that her knees were wider than her thighs. The flesh was melting from her bones.
“You’re a bitch,” Wallace said. “Even Julie Slovitch has a better body than you. My dog has a better body than you.”
“Then why don’t you fuck your dog,” Margaret snapped.
That’s when Gretchen appeared, and instead of sitting with them, she put her hand on Wallace’s shoulder.
“Come on, Wallace,” she said. “You’re just chapping Margaret’s rooster. Why don’t you go?”
To Abby’s surprise, he left.
But not before getting in the final word.
“Fucking Skeletor,” he said.
Then he was off, high-fiving Owen Bailey, handing out the rest of his roses. The next afternoon it was written on one of the mirrors in the girl’s upper school bathroom:
“Skeletor gives good bone.”
Margaret had a new nickname.
There was one last person Abby hadn’t tried. As much as she hated to admit it, one other person might know Gretchen the way she did. So on Saturday night she finished her TCBY shift, and the second she got home she slammed her bedroom door, laid the pink blanket along the bottom, and opened Gretchen’s daybook. There was Andy’s phone number. She reached for Mickey Mouse and dialed.
The phone rang, short and shrill, twice, three times, then the click of someone picking up.
“Hello?” Abby said.
Silence. Outside her bedroom window, a moth batted against the screen.
“Is this Andy?” Abby asked. “I’m Abby Rivers. I’m a friend of Gretchen Lang?”
Silence. The fiber-optic ball on her dresser faded from purple to red.
She heard a mechanical echo down the line, wind blew static through a metal pipe. Her digital clock read 11:06.
“Abby?” a faint voice said.
Even furred with distortion, Abby recognized it instantly. This was the voice that reached down her throat and wrapped its fingers around her heart.
“Gretchen?” Abby said.
There was a series of clicks as solenoids snapped into place somewhere in the darkness of the phone company switching center. Deep space pops flew down trunk lines buried underground.
“Abby?” Gretchen said again, clearer. “Please?”
“Where are you?” Abby asked, her voice dry. “What number is this?”
A wall of static washed across the line. When it had passed, Gretchen was already talking.
“. . . need you,” Abby heard her say.
“I can fix this,” Abby said. “All you have to do is talk to me. Tell me how to fix this.”
“It’s too late,” Gretchen said, and her voice peaked and distorted. “I think? What time is it?”
“Are you home?” Abby asked. “I’ll meet you at Alhambra.”
“It’s dark,” Gretchen said, her voice drifting away. “He tricked me . . . he switched places with me and now I’m here and he’s there.”
“Who?” Abby asked.
“I think I’m dead,” Gretchen said.
Abby was suddenly very aware of the phone in her hand, her body on the bed, the thinness of the walls, how her window wasn’t locked, of the darkness pressing against the glass.
She imagined the phone lines running underground, through the dirt, past Molly Ravenel’s grave. She knew it was an urban legend but she imagined Molly hugging the Southern Bell cable tightly to her bony chest, clutching it with her hard fingers, throwing one leathery leg around it and drawing it close to the dry, insect-heavy center of herself, pressing her skeleton lips to the line, the clips and clicks echoing behind her grinning teeth.
“This is me,” Gretchen said, suddenly loud and clear. Then the sound of a tuning radio buzzed in Abby’s ear. “That isn’t me. That’s . . .” Metal crunched hard around the next few words. “You have to stop her. I mean me. I mean her. This is so hard, Abby. I can’t think clearly and it hurts to do this for long, but you have to stop her. She’s going to hurt everybody.”
“Who?” Abby asked.
“What time is it there?” Gretchen asked.
“11:06,” Abby said.
“What time?” Gretchen repeated with idiotic simplicity. “What time is it there? What time is it there? What time is it there?”
Abby tried to appease her.
“It’s Thursday night,” she said. “October 27.”
“Halloween is coming,” Gretchen said. “You have to be careful, Abby. She’s been planning something for you. She wants to hurt you most of all.”
“Why?” Abby asked.
“Because you’re my only friend,” Gretchen said.
The last word dissolved into a metallic echo, and then something thick and plastic snapped in Abby’s ear and the line was clear.
“Gretchen?” Abby whispered into the receiver.
Gretchen was gone.
Abby called the number back but the phone just rang.
Monday was the start of the blood drive, and during fourth-period break Margaret went out to the Red Cross Winnebago parked in front of the school to give blood. When she got up off the couch afterward, she seemed unsteady, then she said, “Mom?” and passed out. It happened all the time, but the Red Cross nurse was alarmed at how thin Margaret was and insisted they send her home.
Something was happening. Abby thought about the phone call with Gretchen, and how she was putting Glee in vestry and helping Margaret lose weight, and how she seemed to be dating Wallace. Something was going on, and Abby needed to stop it, but she couldn’t do it alone.
She would find a way to talk to Glee, even if it meant going to Communion during lunch, because Glee was spending all her time doing vestry, which was a very un-Glee thing to do. She’d talk to Margaret, too. Maybe even Father Morgan. If they didn’t believe her, she had the daybook, but that was a last resort. A school administrator would see that and put Gretchen directly in Southern Pines. She couldn’t show it to anyone until she was sure.
But first, there were the dead bodies.
She Blinded Me with Science