Shimmer
Fiction by Alex Pugsley
It’s the biggest Deedee party ever. Walking up to the house, Sheri and Celeste can’t believe how many people they don’t know. Some people they recognize, like the stoner kids who hang around the school parking lot, and those jocky guys, and the girls doing cartwheels in the snow Celeste recognizes from gymnastics. But those guys by the cars—aren’t those the guys from shop? And is that like a basketball team from a whole other high school? And those punk rock guys with green hair staring at them—whose friends are they? Look at them, unloading guitars and stuff from a van, what school are they from? How does Deedee even know them?
I can’t breathe, says Celeste, shivering. There’s too many people.
Can you believe this? Sheri says. There’s like two hundred people here already. I hope Deedee’s parents really went to Florida.
Fuck. My mom wants me home by eleven tonight.
Like that’ll happen.
Maybe I won’t go home tonight, says Celeste. Maybe I’ll just kill myself first.
I hate that joke.
I’m serious.
Yeah, well, who isn’t Celeste?
I’ll probably commit suicide around midnight. In case you can’t find me.
Then can I keep your black sweater?
No I want it back.
Too bad, says Sheri. You’ll be dead.
You have to give it back to my mother. And make sure you wash it so it doesn’t smell like cigarettes.
As if your mom doesn’t know you smoke. Fuck. Some people actually do commit suicide, Celeste, you freak.
Inside, it’s more crowded. In the basement, Sheri and Celeste walk by some people doing hot knives with a blowtorch. There’s kids smoking dope in the furnace room. Upstairs in the kitchen there’s twenty cases of beer, everyone’s drinking beer. Want a beer? Celeste takes a bottle of beer from a guy she knows, Donny, he has a car, how old’s he? Like nineteen. She pushes her thumb against the curve of the bottle but she doesn’t feel like drinking. Who are all those people in the backyard? Through the kitchen window, Celeste counts twenty more people she doesn’t know. The back-yard goes right into the woods and it seems like people fade away into trees like they’re at a bonfire or festival. This is so crazy. Fuck, though. What should she do? It’s the biggest party of the year and already she’s feeling anti-social and not that drunk anymore. She sips the beer. It tastes weird. She doesn’t really feel like drinking. Oh great she’s going to be the only person to have a shitty time at the biggest party of the year.
You all right? Sheri asks, unzipping her parka. Yeah it’s just freaking me out how many people I don’t know.
What a weird night, says Sheri. It was cold and now it’s muggy.
Sheri! Celeste grabs her. What?
I told you not to say that word.
What word—muggy? Why?
It’s like when people say “nuggets.” My mother says it all the time. It’s disgusting. It makes me feel like I’m throwing up in my head.
Muggy nuggets, says Sheri. Muggy nuggets.
I’m serious, says Celeste, pushing at Sheri’s beer.
Fuck off. I won’t be your friend anymore. You’ll never borrow my clothes again.
What’re you doing? Sheri slaps at Celeste’s hand. That’s my beer! Steal my grave that fast?
The front door opens and two people in ski jackets come in.
My god, says Sheri. It’s Owen and Rowan. The student council’s here?
Owen and Rowan, says Sheri. Rowan and Owen. Everybody’s favourite fucking couple. I’m so sick of hearing about Owen and Rowan. Who cares anyway? Why should we cow-tail to them?
Celeste lights a cigarette and gazes at them. How long they been going out?
Five years, says Sheri. Since Grade 6. Think they’ll get married?
Celeste blows a smoke ring. I hope their baby’s retarded.
She’s so fake, says Sheri, frowning. I can’t think of a prissier, faker, more stuck-up person. I’m glad she’s short.
You should see her mother, says Celeste. She’s like four-foot-nothing. She’s a total midget. She’s a shrimp.
Who’s Rowan talking to?
Celeste recognizes the other girl. She was one of the girls doing cartwheels outside in the snow. That’s that girl Angela Silver.
Who is she? Why does she have blue hair?
She’s that stupid little bitch that got me kicked out of gymnastics.
How old is she?
Grade 9.
Didn’t you used to hang around her all the time?
When I was in elementary.
How’d she get you kicked out of gymnastics?
I missed three practices and I said I was away and she told them I was lying. But Celeste looks down, remembering something else, something someone else said Angela said—that when Celeste got tits she stopped being everybody’s friend and became this big slut. Yeah meanwhile Angela Silver’s probably still a virgin with all her teeny-bopper friends still playing dress-up and tea-party in the attic and they’re how old? Fourteen, fifteen? And now she’s dressing like a punk rocker? Give me a break Angela Silver’s a punk rocker.
Excuse me while I barf she’s a punk rocker. That’s pathetic.
She looks like a little skank tonight, Sheri says, noticing the girl’s blue hair, black nail polish, the safety pins in her jeans. Whatever. I’m going to go find Deedee.
Sheri starts up the stairs then comes back to grab her beer. And try not to be too much of a klepto, okay, Celeste? You big freak.
Celeste locks herself in an empty bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. She doesn’t look that drunk. She takes a breath, pulls at her bangs, then turns to see what her ass looks like in these jeans. She checks her eyeshadow, undoes a blouse button. The best tits in Grade 11, that’s what Robby Delano said. And those other guys said she and Alison Andrews were the hottest girls in school. So with all these people here, there must be some cute guy she can flirt with. She should just turn on her fake personality and mingle and see how many guys she can get to like her. That used to be fun. Just the moment before, wondering if she can get them to make out with her, she loved that. That used to be everything.
Someone’s knocking on the door.
Just a minute. Fuck! Celeste opens the mirror and looks in the medicine cabinet. Little bottles of Valium and Aspirin, Handi Wipes, a yellow hair elastic, Q-tips, a vacation photograph. Celeste snatches it. It’s a photo of Deedee in front of the Grand Canyon. She remembers when Deedee came back from there. The most unbelievable place you ever saw, Deedee said. She couldn’t even describe it. No one could explain it ’til they were there in person. All this nature. Looking at the photograph, Celeste wonders if she will ever see it in her life before she dies.
Someone knocks again.
Okay, okay, says Celeste. She grabs the Valiums and the Aspirins from the medicine cabinet and stuffs them in the front pocket of her jeans. Opening the door, she sees one of the punk rock guys, the guy with green hair. Is he ever tall—who is this guy? He kind of blushes and goes by so she smiles but it’s too late, he’s gone.
In the hall, Sheri’s talking with a bunch of people. There’s some Grade 9 kid, somebody’s lurpy little brother—that’s Darren Myer’s little brother—and some girl hanging off Sheri, barely standing up, she doesn’t even know where she is. Fuck that’s Angela Silver.
Celeste comes over. What’s going on? What are you doing with her?
Sheri shoves Darren Myer’s little brother. Get the fuck away from her, you horndog asshole! Can’t you see she’s intoxicated? Can’t you see she’s practically passed out?
What’d she drink? Celeste looks at Angela Silver.
That guy made her drink it.
What was it?
I don’t know. Bacardi. She chugged it. She chugged a pint of Bacardi.
Celeste and Sheri help Angela Silver downstairs to a bedroom and lay her on a bed. Celeste is taking off the girl’s sneakers when Angela Silver lurches forward and throws up.
Fuck! Celeste jerks back. She puked on me!
Sheri finds two towels and a face cloth in the laundry room. She puts the towels over the puke then sits on the bed and wipes Angela Silver’s mouth with the face cloth.
How you doing, Puke Face? You all right? Sheri looks up at Celeste. She should probably eat some bread or something.
Why? Standing beside the bed, Celeste checks her shirt for puke stains.
And someone should probably call her mother. And what, Sheri—get the party shut down?
She might have to get her stomach pumped, all right? She could die from alcohol poisoning, you know, Celeste. And we’d be responsible.
Like I’m going to go to jail over a fourteen-year-old. Remember Crystal-Anne Hobday? asks Sheri. She almost died in a snowbank. Think about it. She passed out in a snowbank after she had sexual intercourse with her own father! You think everything’s a joke Celeste, but it’s not funny.
Sheri gets up, leaving the face cloth hanging from Angela Silver’s nose. I’m going to find Deedee, she says, running up the stairs.
Celeste watches Angela Silver cough a few times. Hey Puke Face how you doing now? You going to puke again?
But Angela Silver is hardly conscious. She lies on her side, her eyes slow, her skin pale. There’s puke on her shirt, one sneaker is off, one sneaker lost. Celeste sits beside her on the bed. She smooths Angela Silver’s blue hair away from her face and studies Angela Silver’s jeans. The seams have been torn out and pulled skin-tight with safety pins. Written on the faded denim in red ballpoint pen are names of bands Celeste doesn’t know. She finds a Keds sneaker decorated with black-and-white checkers drawn in black marker. Inside is a wrinkled pink sock. Celeste squints at it. Seeing the pink sock makes her remember something she doesn’t want to remember. It makes her feel sick in her head like when Sheri said muggy. She’s thinking about that when Angela Silver starts patting Celeste’s knee with her fingers. What the fuck? Celeste stands up, disgusted. Jesus. She spits a mouthful of beer on Angela Silver. Go fuck your mother, punker, she says, leaving Angela Silver alone in the bed, burping, murmuring, not knowing where she is.
In the backyard the sky’s clear, all the clouds are gone and it’s cold again—what a weird night, it keeps changing—and Celeste finds Veeper staring at the stars.
Quite the bed head there, Veeper, she says. What’re you looking at?
Meteor shower, says Veeper. It’s always at the end of February. Because the Earth passes through an asteroid belt. Probably one of the asteroids will crash down here just like the one in Siberia that wiped out the dinosaurs.
God is he stoned. She’s never seen him this stoned. Hey, says Celeste, pulling on Veeper’s sleeve. Where’s Wendell?
Fuck knows. But don’t quote me on that.
It’s me—Celeste—over here.
Veeper doesn’t say anything for a second. Hey Celeste Over There, he says, looking at her now. His hair’s kind of greasy so he’s not as cute as he is normally but his eyes are smiling. Celeste loves Veeper she doesn’t really know what he thinks about, his mind is so everywhere and embarrassed, that’s why he’s shy with girls. She remembers back in elementary when Veeper had really long hair like a girl, she used to follow him around when she was so bored she’d do anything; she’d love to blow his mind one day and fuck his brains out.
How many t-shirts you wearing tonight, Veep?
Three.
Only three? What’s wrong? Aren’t you the guy that wears four shirts to school?
He pulls at his shirts. That was the old Veeper, he says. I’m the new Veeper now. But don’t quote me on that. He looks again at the sky. In physics we learned the light from those stars left when the Cro-Magnons were dying out.
I’m so behind in physics it’s not funny, Celeste says. I don’t have a clue.
But he’s hardly listening to her. She can never say the right thing around him. Maybe he doesn’t like her. Everybody’s smart now. Oh well.
Celeste laughs. Yeah, Veeper you’re definitely on your own wavelength tonight, dude. What’re you on?
This hash from Eddie Fong. I’m so fucking wasted. Veeper starts giggling and looks at his boots. Here we go, he says, taking a step. Walking in the snow. Walking in the snow. He closes his eyes. I’m so fucking wasted.
There you are, Sheri says. What’re you doing out here?
Hiding, says Celeste. Talking about dinosaurs.
What’d you say to Veeper?
Secret boy talk. Later we’re going to a mystery land of pink forests and purple rocks and green water.
Celeste! You’re being weird again. I need you to be normal.
Why? Nothing ever happens and if it does it’s going to happen to somebody else anyway so who cares?
Your boyfriend’s here.
Fuck off—he is not! Celeste looks inside the windows of the house. She doesn’t want to see her boy-friend. She doesn’t want to deal with him and already she feels herself hating him. He’s just so urgently gross, she says. I’m sorry but I’m going to fucking vomit if I ever see him again. She leans over and spits in the snow.
Sheri is staring at Celeste as if she’s crazy. Are you all right?
Yeah.
Then stop being such a freak, okay? You’ve been in a weird mood ever since we left my house.
Okay, Mom. Okay.
You want this beer? says Sheri. I can’t finish it.
Celeste takes the beer and drinks from it.
You want me to go talk to him? Sheri asks.
Why didn’t he call me to say he’s coming out tonight?
I don’t know, says Sheri. He’s your boyfriend.
Celeste sighs, exasperated. God he’s boring. He’s the most boringest guy. Okay go talk to him. Tell him I want to break up.
Sheri is staring at her. Again? But you’ve only been back together a week!
Far in the woods, Celeste runs away from the party. It’s steep uphill past the backyard maybe rocks sticking up she has to be careful oh fuck so what if she cuts her jeans or a branch scratches her eye out or she falls and smashes her head on a stone. She runs faster and in her hand she has a forty-ouncer of Bombay Sapphire gin she stole from the freezer in the basement. Celeste watches her breath rise up in the cold air and into outer space and all the meteors. Finally she can breathe again, just finally she can breathe again; she takes the top off the gin and brings the bottle to her mouth. God she loves the smell of gin in winter, like perfume in air she just loves the Jesus smell of it. Gin smells so beautiful because it smells like there’s always more of it. And finally when she drinks she knows she doesn’t have to be in the world anymore because she can just be in some weird cartoon land where anything goes and nothing’s boring. She puts the bottle to her lips and swigs it to the sky. Air bubbles up. Remember the first time she got drunk? At the parish dance, she split a jar of moose piss with Cathy Charles except Cathy didn’t show up and Celeste drank it all. Inside the gym she got so hot she had to go outside and barf. When the paddy wagon caught her she was directing traffic in the middle of the street. Is this your daughter? the police officer asked when he got her home. You little two-dollar slut, her mother said. Thanks, Mom. Takes one to know one. Her own mother said that and now she remembers what she didn’t want to remember before and wouldn’t let herself remember before but it gets remembered anyway like a car flashing down the wrong way of the street. She remembers when she was a little kid and her mother stayed out all night the first time. Remember that? Her mother comes home at seven in the morning. Celeste is watching Saturday morning cartoons and playing with her Polly Pocket when she finds her mom’s panties in a shoe on the front porch, wrinkly pink panties with white elastic. Why would her mom leave her panties in her shoe? Where was she that she was taking off her fucking panties? Celeste chugs from the gin bottle. It’s quiet. The smell of skunk somewhere. She lets fresh darkness seep into the trees and feels for the pills in her jeans pocket. She could really do it this time. Why not? Who cares, whatever, fuck you, goodbye. Her body found the next day frozen in a snow bank like Crystal-Anne Hobday. Why does she always have to think this stuff? But it’s so easy. How could you not think it? Why wouldn’t you want it all over and done with? She takes out the pills and empties them into her hand. When it’s like this, when it gets inside her head like this, it’s like keeping her finger over a candle or slicing her finger with a pocket knife, the slit on her finger like a little mouth with no eyes. Fuck, why is she thinking this? She doesn’t even know if she’s thinking it. How can she tell if she’s thinking it? It’s dominizing her thoughts. Dominizing? Is that a word? Celeste laughs, loud, drunk again, thank god, and then she has to pee. She stuffs the pills in her pocket, pulls down her jeans and underwear, and her pee whizzes and steams in the cold pine needles, into the ground, like when she peed in the middle of the street at some slumber party. Celeste remembers watching her own pee stream down the pavement and gather in a puddle at the bottom of the street. Someone dared her to do it. Angela Silver or somebody. When was that? Summer of Grade 6. Playing hide and seek with Angela Silver and her friends that summer, that was fun, all those rich kids in that nice neighbourhood, hiding under the train bridge, making up songs, eating that gum, what was that peppermint gum, the gum with the liquid centre? You can’t get that anymore, Freshen-up gum, she remembers as a snowball explodes on a tree.
Who’s that? Celeste stands and pulls up her clothes, her underwear twisting in her jeans. Who the fuck is that?
She hears a kid running in the woods.
Fuck off you little maggot, she says, striding away, untwisting her underwear and fastening her jeans. She doesn’t notice when the pills, the pills she stole from the bathroom, spill from her pocket and fall and disappear in the grey of a snowdrift.
Celeste sits drunk outside with the stoners, cross-legged by the woodpile, burning a hole through a leaf with a cigarette. But it’s so cold her fingers are numb, she can’t make the hole perfect. Three of the stoners throw matches at each other and the matches fizz and bounce on the frozen snow beside her. A match flames by her head, pffts, goes out.
Fuck off you little pyros, Celeste says. You could have blinded me! Do that again and I’ll smack you, douche bag.
Go douche yourself, a kid says.
And I find out who the little dinkweed was that threw the snowball at me, you’re dead. I mean if you’re going to throw something at me, at least do it to my face.
Inside the house someone starts playing an electric guitar. Everybody looks up. Celeste watches the punk rockers jump up and down in the living room. That tall guy with green hair is screaming into a microphone, green hair caught in his eye-lashes. It makes Celeste want to go in there and finger it out of his eyes for him. Another guy gets pushed into a drum kit. So why is everyone into punk rock now? Like skater kids and flumpy girls in drama, okay, but normal people like Angela Silver? And don’t punks hate everything? Why are they so mad? They’re mad at stuff they do anyway like posing and being pretentious. It doesn’t make sense. Why do they get to be so mad?
Sheri stumbles by with somebody. She’s got her arm around somebody, it’s that lurpy little guy, it’s Darren Myer’s little brother. Oh my god Sheri’s getting together with a Grade 9?
Celeste grabs Sheri’s foot. Hey, Sheri, you freak. How you doing? You all right?
Fuck you scared me! Where were you?
Doesn’t matter.
What were you doing?
Something else that doesn’t matter.
Sheri turns to Darren Myer’s little brother. This is my friend, Muggy.
Hi, Muggy.
Hey.
So Celeste, what time’s it? What time you staying ’til?
I’m going soon. It’s like one thirty.
You’re going? You need to stay at my house?
Celeste looks at Darren Myer’s little brother and smiles at Sheri. Don’t worry about it, she says. I’ll just act normal and go home. It’s okay. I’m probably not that drunk. Did you talk to my dumb boy-friend? What’d he say?
Sheri wipes some hair off her face. He thinks you hate him. He thinks you hate him so he’s being like ‘Oh she hates me so I don’t like her first’ type thing. I said, ‘Celeste doesn’t hate you.’
It’s such a fucking diddly-bop thing. Did you tell him I want to break up?
No. Because I know you don’t mean it. But Celeste he’s going to try and get everyone against you, I can tell.
I don’t care. Let him go play his fucked up little games. He’s got mental problems. Trying to make it so complicated. It’s not complicated. It’s obvious. He’s obvious. Fuck. Celeste stands up. I’m going.
Wait for us, says Sheri. I’m just going to say goodbye to Deedee.
For a second Celeste watches Sheri walk off with Darren Myer’s little brother. Behind her, in the wood-pile there’s a bug, a silverfish, frozen in a crack.
From the backyard, Celeste walks between the houses toward the street. This is obviously the worst night of anyone’s life so she’ll just walk home like a loser. Who cares at this point? Maybe she will break up with her boyfriend this time. She can get another boyfriend and tell the old one to fuck off but it won’t matter. Nothing really happens. Not really. She makes herself take a big breath because she feels like she’s about to cry. She feels like she’s about to cry for no reason so she looks up at the sky, watching for the glow of the meteor shower, wondering if Veeper is still here. Veeper at least listens and he’s not judgmental. What did he say? Here we go, walking in the snow. God that was cute. Just the way he said it. Like a little kid. Celeste pushes a tear from her eyelid and between the houses a bird swoops past, a sparrow or swallow or some other word then she remembers the word starling. She’s remembering the word starling when she hears someone in the snow crunching behind her and she turns to see that guy she saw before, the guy with green hair, the punk rock singer, looking at her.
You got a staring problem?
Sorry.
Oh, she says. I thought you were somebody else.
Are you Celeste Tate?
Are you a police officer?
Huh? No.
Then yes I am. She smiles and he sort of blushes again. He’s nice. This guy is actually nice you can tell.
I was pretty sure it was you, he says. Because I saw you at a dance once with your friends. You were in a black sweater. I know it sounds stupid, but I always knew I’d see you again.
Doesn’t sound stupid. What’s your name? Josh.
So you just decided to come out and say hi? Are you in that band? You don’t exactly look like a punk rocker. Except your hair.
No. Those guys just borrowed my amp. I’m in another thing. I just sang one song. Look, I didn’t mean to bother you. If you’re meeting your friends or something.
You didn’t bother me, says Celeste, walking up to him. Hey look. She points at the window on the side of the house. My reflection in the window’s talking to you.
He turns to see Celeste’s reflection in the window.
Now she’s smiling, she says. Now she’s laughing. Now she’s gone. What’s your name again?
It’s still Josh.
You hear about the meteor shower?
Yeah. He looks into the sky. I haven’t seen it yet. Yeah. I should stay up and watch it. But I only got four hours’ sleep last night. I went to sleep at five and got up at nine. She yawns and lets her hair fall across her eyelashes, looking at him, one of her eyes moist, her lips open.
I know you’re probably going, Josh says, glancing at her. But I just wanted to say I think you’re really great.
Celeste doesn’t say anything. She puts her hand on the back of his neck and pulls him close to kiss him. He kisses her back, his teeth bumping hers, so she makes her mouth soft, matching her lips to his mouth. One of her hands moves to his waist. But what’s he doing? She moves her head to one side.
What’re you doing? Are you holding your breath?
I don’t know where to breathe, he says.
You can breathe in your nose, she says, putting a hand on his cheek. Or breathe me. She kisses him again. Yeah. Just breathe me, she says. Breathe me. »