My Best Friend's Exorcism

Life could be an endless series of joyless chores, or she could get totally pumped and make it fun. There were bad things, and there were good things, but she got to choose

She was beginning to feel like every test was a life-or-death challenge and if she failed even one of them

“Once you’ve finish reading it, you’ve finished needing it”

“If I stop being happy, will you kill me?” Gretchen asked.

“Totally,” Abby said.

Abby Rivers and Gretchen Lang were best friends, on and off, for seventy-five years, and there aren’t many people who can say that. They weren’t perfect. They didn’t always get along. They screwed up. They acted like assholes. They fought, they fell out, they patched things up, they drove each other crazy, and they didn’t make it to Halley’s Comet.

But they tried.

Gretchen smiled up at Abby, humming a little tune.

“I think we’re alone now,” she sang softly, eyes locked on Abby’s. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone aroun-ound. I think we’re alone now, the beating of our hearts is the only sou-ound . . .”

I see shapes and shadows moving through it. The demon of anger, the demon of sloth, the demon of not respecting your parents, the demon of heavy-
metal music, the demon of not keeping your promises

The two of them had never been shy about touching, even though in fifth grade Hunter Prioleaux had called them homos, but that was because no one had ever loved Hunter Prioleaux.

They traded scrunchies, they pored over YM and Teen and European Travel and Life. They fantasized about Italian counts, and German duchesses, and Diana, Princess of Wales, and summers in Capri, and skiing in the Alps. In their shared fantasies, dark European men were constantly escorting them into helicopters and flying them to hidden mansions where they tamed wild horses

Gretchen’s parents were uptight Reagan Republicans who spent every Sunday at St. Michael’s downtown, praising God and social climbing