Shimmer

from "Deedee at the 7-Eleven"

“So what the fuck have you been doing, Veeper?” Wendell’s voice is all loud and angry in the empty parking lot. “What the fuck, man? Where is it?”
I’m out on the highway and I lift my head up and look at Wendell in the distance there. It’s Friday night and we always meet at the 7-Eleven but I guess I’m a little late. It’s pretty dark but you can see Wendell because of the lights of the 7-Eleven store. Well you can’t really see his face, but you can see his black baseball hat and his blond hair and his jacket’s undone even though it’s February.
“Veeper?”
Sometimes I feel like Wendell’s been yelling at me like that for the last three years, ever since he gave me that nickname in grade six. I kind of had this high-pitched voice back then. Wendell’s a couple years older than me, he used to hang around my stepbrother, but we’ve been in the same grade ever since he failed some stuff in grade nine last year and I got put ahead. Actually me and Wendell got in a fight once when I first came to his school. I hit him in the cheek with a snowball in this big snowball fight. I just threw it, I didn’t know where it was going, and I apologized and everything but he chased me for an hour saying he was going to get me. It was weird, because I could tell he was seeing if I was going to be afraid of him or not, and when he finally caught up with me he kind of went crazy and threw me down. We wrestled around in the snow and then I got on top of him and told him when I let him up I didn’t want to fight anymore. But then when he got up, he just stood there throwing snowballs in my face saying, “You don’t do that to Wendell Boudreau. You just don’t do that to Wendell Boudreau” over and over. And I couldn’t help it, I started crying and then everybody stayed there and I walked home by myself. That was the last time I ever cried in real life. I hated grade six.
So I’m out on the highway and I yell something back at Wendell and jump into these alders in the ditch. The alders are all covered in ice and start clicking each other as I’m walking through them. I drink what’s left in one of my beers. I’ve had two or three beers by now that I got from my mother’s and so things are starting to kind of swirl by me. I toss the empty bottle so it’ll roll across the ground without breaking. I always do that. I like that thing where you just stop and watch the bottle spin over the frozen ground, over the ice that’s frozen in old footprints. Because then it’s like only some weird coincidence that you’re seeing it.
“So Veeper,” Wendell says, looking at me, “did you get the two-four or what? What’s going on?”
We talk in this girl’s voice sometimes and I start talking in it. “Okay don’t say hi. Don’t say hi, you snob. You two-faced snob.”
“So what’s going on? Fuck, man. What are you saying? I want to get going.”
“I guess I’m saying I couldn’t get in.”
“Oh, man,” Wendell says, shaking his head. “I don’t fucking believe it. Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious,” I go. “I’m totally fucking serious. I-couldn’t-get-in. What’s your problem?”
“Oh and that’s great. That is just fucking great.”
“Excuse me for living. You got a hot date lined up or something?” There’s one of those big garbage dumpsters in the middle of the parking lot and I start flicking stuff from my pockets into it. Cigarette wrappers, receipts, old candy. “Take it easy,” I say. “I got Donny to go in for us. He’s bringing it in the Nova.” Then I crack up like I can’t help it.
Wendell doesn’t say anything. He’s watching one of the cigarette wrappers blow off in the wind. “You fucking hope Donny’s bringing it in the Nova,” he goes. He turns around and puts a knuckle to the side of his nose and blows something out of it. Then he wipes his nose with the sleeve of his jacket and spits. Wendell can spit about four different ways. He’s got a chink in his front tooth he can spit out of and he can also make these little spit bubbles under his tongue and send them floating down streets or football fields or parking lots or whatever.
He sniffs something in his nose and looks at me. “Aren’t you just Mr. Fucking Comedian tonight,” he goes.