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            “Wendy is going to be a writer,” Stephanie said. “Where have you been?”

            “Wendy?” Larry asked her.

            “I want to be a writer.”

            “Seriously?” Wade said.

            “Seriously,” she said. “I want to write stories or for a paper, something.”

            “Don’t you feel, though, that we’re just kids?” Wade said.

            “We are kids,” Larry said. “This is the way kids talk. This is the way everybody in here is talking.”

            “Bullshit,” Wade said.

            “See,” Larry said. He signaled the waitress and asked for takeaway boxes. “We’re going to have some groceries.”

            “A writer,” Stephanie said. “That’s cool. You’ve always written well.”

            “It’s just something I want to do,” Wendy said. “I’m not very good, but it’s what I want.”

            Wade said, “That’s obvious.”

            “What?”

            “You spend a lot of time on your homework or whatever.”

            “I see you almost every day,” Wendy said.

            Wade swirled his drink and drank it down. “Let’s blow this place.”

            “Let the birds finish,” Larry said.

            • • •

            Crossing the parking lot, Larry said to Wade, “I’ll drive. Allow me.”

            “I don’t think you’ll be driving my truck, big boy. Gimme that bottle.”

            “Keys,” Larry said.

            “You’re flipping out too,” Wade said. He pushed past Larry and got into the driver’s seat and started the truck. “You’re fucking flipping out. What is it, time to flip out? Get in, everybody. Let’s cruise.” The three young people looked at Wade, who had closed his door and was setting his CD player for Byton Hartman, the country singer.

            Larry assessed his friend, and it was fully decided in him. He felt it as a shock in his elbows: he didn’t like Wade. He had his hand on the smooth glass bottle in his suit pocket, and he knew for the first time in his life that he didn’t like someone, and he was sure it was a good decision. Flipping out? Now that phrase made him angry. He felt again at the top of a big wheel slowly turning. “How dumb can you be?” he said quietly to himself. “You dumb bunny.” It was a phrase of his mother’s.

            “What?” Wade said. “What’d you say?

            “I’m talking to myself, Wade. Again.”

            The girls’ short rabbit fur coats bristled in the cold Wyoming breeze. A week ago it had been warm. “He’s okay,” Wendy said. “I’ve seen him drive worse than this. Let’s just go.” She went around and climbed into the cab of the truck. Larry looked at Stephanie, and she leaned against him and said, “It’s okay, Larry. Come on.” In the narrow backseat, she slid against him for warmth, pretending to chatter her teeth. “Turn on the heater,” she said to Wade. “It’s cold.”

            “I sort of thought it might be raining,” Wendy said. She was sitting with Wade in the front seat. “It’s been raining in there for two hours.”

            Wade wheeled them onto Main Street and said, “We can’t go to Wendy’s. Her mom waits up, and she’d get us all in a big game of Scrabble.”