My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

She could decide how she was going to be. She had a choice. 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 which things to focus on. Her mom focused only on the bad things. Abby didn’t have to.

everyone was desperate to be an individual, but they all were terrified to stand out.

“You keep rescuing me and I don’t know why,” Gretchen said. “But every day I tell myself my life must be worth something because you keep saving it.

The devil is loud and brash and full of drama. God, he’s like a sparrow.”

Abby and Gretchen still kept up, but it was phone calls and letters, then postcards and voicemail, and finally emails and Facebook likes. There was no falling-out, no great tragedy, just a hundred thousand trivial moments they didn’t share, each one an inch of distance between them, and eventually those inches added up to miles.