My Best Friend’s Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix, is a diet coke and a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. In high school, lunchtime is holy. No matter who you are or where you sit— this hour is more sacred than any time spent in prayer or under the bleeding cross of Christ. In between bites, your best friend and you share indelible pieces of gossip. People you like, people you no longer like, people that have done an awful thing, people that will do an awful thing. The diet coke you share is an added bonus, a rare drink that the two of you savor. It is the low-cal beer of high school girls. You have always believed there is a causation to shifts in the universe, to the changes that happen. And you of all people would know if your best friend was different, even by the slightest change in the part in her hair or the way she greets you from her locker. As you split the peanut butter and jelly sandwich like you have always done, and hand the other half to your other half, she opens the slices, looks at both sides, then, without much thought at all, leans across the table and slaps them to your cheeks. It is the bite of cold from the grape jelly that shocks you first, and it sticks to your carefully applied foundation in purple lumps. On your other cheek, the chunky peanut butter begins its slow descent all the way down to your chin. You realize this is the worse thing anyone has ever done to you. As you rip the pieces of bread from your face, your face all sorts of colors now, you are completely and utterly ashamed. More than that— you are confused. She is the one who knows you best. Your best friend looks devilish under the fluorescent lights, sitting stiff with a shit-eating grin. Watching not everyone else’s reactions (because there are many), but yours. As you look at her, horrified, getting up from the table to run to the bathroom, she yanks your wrist. Pulls you in, her breath sour and mingling with the grape jelly. She gurgles. Diet coke froths from her mouth, as if her whole body was fermenting from the sickness within. Someone has done the worst thing to her, too, and it’s up to you to save her now.