Firecracker Read online

  Fetal pigs were way too fancy for Cadorette. I mean, they probably cost as much as three dollars, and that wasn’t in the budget. Cadorette couldn’t even afford real condiments. In biology classes, we dissected worms. Since there weren’t enough, Lucy and I had to wait for someone else’s used worm. This gave Lucy and me a chance to really discuss her problem. “Let’s talk,” I suggested, seizing the opportunity.

  “How can I help you, Astrid?” Lucy said. There was a big smile on her face.

  “No. I’m here to help you.”

  “With what?”

  “I’m going to help you with you.”

  “With my what?” With her hair in her mouth and her lisp, it clearly sounded like she said, “Itch my butt.”

  “That,” I told her, “is precisely the problem. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want you to answer them honestly, okay?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “And for the sake of time and my tendency to get headaches, try to answer these questions with as little as possible obstructing your mouth,” I said.

  Lucy was lost for a moment, so I pointed to the hair in her gullet. When I was met with no real reaction, I very slowly pulled it out. She reacted as someone who has just spontaneously lost her sight but was too polite to say anything about it. It was obvious that this wasn’t going to work, so I signaled with my finger that she could put the hair back. She was thrilled.

  My questions were designed to find out what Lucy needed the most help with and who she really was. But her answers were indecipherable. She told me that when she was a kid, she dreamed of one day growing up to be “what a twin Aryan Aztec isn’t.” I had her repeat it seven times. It was only after I wrote this part of the book and sent her an email that I figured out what the hell she was talking about. Can you figure it out? The answer is revealed at the end of the chapter.*

  The strangest thing about Lucy was that she didn’t want to change. She didn’t want to stop eating her hair. She didn’t want to speak in a way that made her coherent. She didn’t want to dress better. She didn’t even care that much anymore about being what a twin Aryan Aztec isn’t.

  “I want to be in love,” Lucy said.

  “Just that?”

  “Just that?” she repeated, incredulous. “That’s everything.”

  Lucy stood up to get a handout on worm stomachs, but I stopped her. “I’ll get it,” I said, in the interest of doing another good thing.

  I felt bad for Lucy. Lucy thought love was everything. And that was sad because she probably only knew about love from books about vampires. I figured that finding love for Lucy would be easy. Although, I really didn’t know anyone who was in love. My mother and father definitely didn’t love each other. He needed someone to talk to, and she needed him to pay for things. That’s not love. Lisbet couldn’t possibly love Randy. I would say that she loved the idea of Randy, whatever that was. I loved my grandfather, but that was more of a mutual respect than the sort of love most people feel for family. Still, he was the only person in my whole life for whom I felt anything resembling love—other than my brother, Fritz.

  And that wasn’t the kind of love Lucy was asking for anyway. Lucy didn’t want the kind of love between a grandfather and a granddaughter or a brother and a sister. Lucy wanted someone she could kiss and hold hands with and take to a homecoming dance.

  By the time I picked up the worksheet and returned to the table, a used worm was ready for us. It was all cut up and basically worthless.

  “It looks like it spells something.”

  It did. The mangled parts of the worm were made to look like letters. And those letters read ASTRID, WHY! And then in worm guts it said underneath My place 5:00. I knew what it meant and who left it there. It wasn’t a mystery. The writer of the worm note was not very smart. Still, perhaps he could be useful.

  “Do you still want to go to the homecoming dance, Lucy?” I asked.

  Her eyes got big, and her smile grew wide enough to cause her hair to fall out of her mouth, though she was quick to remedy that. She nodded.

  “I’ll take care of it. I’ll find you a date.”

  “Really? You know a boy who would want to go with me?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  When Pierre left the Bristol Academy, he moved into a furnished apartment in a complex just next to the border of Cadorette Township and Cadorette Village. The complex was split into brick buildings, each holding six units. Most of the people who lived there were single mothers and recently divorced men who had run out of money. It was easy to discover which apartment was Pierre’s. It was the only one with a bright orange Ferrari Scuderia with a license plate that said BLAYZZZIN! parked outside.

  Pierre was home. He was obviously waiting for me. He’d been staging a whole scene for me beginning with the note made of worms. He stood on a stool in the middle of the room. A poorly tied noose made from either bedsheets or T-shirts was tied around his neck. You’d probably need to actually know Pierre to know what it all looked like. Pierre was acting. He’d done pretty much the same thing with different tools at least seven other times. He had walked in front of cars and swallowed as many as six children’s Tylenol in my presence, and yet he remained very much alive.

  “I need you to do something for me,” I said.

  “You read my worm,” he said. Pierre concentrated very hard on making a single, solitary tear fall down his cheek. “But it is too late. I am in the middle of doing something.”

  I did my best impression of fear and concern (the same amount of concern one might have for a broken nail—but a second-tier nail, like the left ring finger). “No. Please. Don’t,” I said.

  Pierre wiped away his tear. He was reasonably satisfied.

  “I need you to do something for me,” I said again.

  “What?”

  “I want you to go to the homecoming dance.”

  This time, he cried a genuine tear. It was embarrassing for both of us. “You want me to go to the homecoming dance with you? Astrid, I cannot say I have felt any emotion deeper than I feel right—”

  “Not with me. You misunderstood. I have a date.”

  “You want me to go to the homecoming dance, but not with you?”

  “I need you to go with Lucy Hair Eater.”

  “Why? And I hope it is a reason greater than a desire to see me suffer without you, Astrid.”

  “Your misery is certainly a selling point for me, sure, but that’s not why. Just trust me on this. It’ll make her life. And my job now is to make her happy.”

  Pierre thought for almost a minute about how to respond, the noose still around his neck. “And then you will owe me a favor that I can cash in when I please?”

  “I don’t think so. But I’ll take it under advisement. And you should ask her really nicely, too. Something big, flamboyant, and European, like you’re good at.”

  Pierre nodded with his eyes closed. “I will. For you.” Then he gazed at me in an effort to force me to gaze back. “Astrid, you know, all I have for you is love. You are always too busy thinking about yourself to see that. Open your eyes, Astrid, and you will see what I see. I love you.”

  I still believe that Pierre didn’t love me. Pierre loved writing poems about me. My name probably rhymes with a lot of words in whatever language he speaks. But whatever he felt for me was nothing. “Were you even listening to me?” he asked then.

  “Maybe. Or maybe I was looking at my reflection in your napkin holder.” I looked away from the napkin holder, which was at a really good angle for me. “Would you like me to show you how to tie that noose correctly?”

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  “It’s seven o’clock,” Dean Rein said.

  “Fantastic,” I replied. “And to think, just yesterday at this time it was also seven o’clock. What a roller coaster life is.
”

  “Our appointment was for six.”

  “I had to go to Pierre’s.”

  “Really?” he asked, raising his eyebrow. “A relationship is a good step for you.”

  “Ew. No. It was just one of his cries for help, but the noose broke the ceiling fan and he hurt his knees.”

  “My god, Astrid.” He shook his head. “Everyone deserves help.”

  “Not Pierre. Talking to Pierre is like talking to a cloud. He’s just gas and rain.”

  Dean Rein walked to a coffee machine and refilled a mug that had a cartoon of a dog on a therapist’s couch, telling his problems to another dog. “Have you added anything to your list this week?”

  I handed him a crumpled piece of paper. “Yup.”

  Dean Rein squinted a few times, as if he expected the words to change. “You bought hamburgers, Astrid?”

  “A lot of hamburgers.”

  He took a pen and crossed it out. “Spending money doesn’t require from you the same effort it does from others. You don’t value money like the rest of the world.”

  “Everyone values money, sir. The more you have, the more you understand how much it can give you.”

  “I don’t buy your logic, Astrid.” That was fair. I was making it up as I went along. But by the end of it, I was convinced I was right. Dean Rein leaned in conspiratorially. “Why did you go see Pierre? You don’t like him. You just said that.”

  “The same reason I ever see Pierre. Sometimes, and it surprises even me, he can be useful.” I lowered my voice. “I have a plan.”

  Dean Rein shook his head and leaned back. “I’m familiar with many of your plans. It’s the only reason I have the cell phone numbers for several agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.”

  “No, this is a plan for doing good stuff. I give you my word.”

  “Oh.” He chuckled in the irritating way he always did. “Your word. To be frank, your word is about as valuable as a box of gossamer and dreams.”

  “How can your wife stand you?” I asked.

  “She stands me just fine.”

  “Really? Why does she spend so much of the year without you in Vancouver?”

  “She . . . Why do you know that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I know that? My plan is going to be good. So good, in fact, that by this time next week I’m going to be back at school here.”

  “You’re aware that’s not your decision.”

  “You’ll let me back. And when I’m here, I want my room back.”

  “You can’t have it back. It’s somebody else’s room now.”

  “I know it’s someone else’s room. But I want it.”

  “If you return to our school—and that’s a big ‘if’—you are entitled to a dorm room with a roommate. Like everybody else.”

  I thought over the option on the table. “If I agree to that, what are you going to give me?”

  Dean Rein crinkled up his face like a deflated balloon, and then he laughed silently. He said, “You actually don’t hold any cards here. Even humoring you is more than I owe you.”

  “So why are you even going through the motions, sir?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know, Astrid. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s rooting for you.”

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  Two towns over, there was a giant mall called Griswold Square. It was the only mall in the county, so when people told me they were going to the mall, that’s where they meant. Also, when people told me they were going to the mall, I would say, “AHHHHHH! Who cares? Why are you telling me this?”

  There was an ice cream stand at the mall called “Cream ’n’ Good,” which managed not to make any sense and sound totally disgusting at the same time. That’s where Mason worked. His uniform was a paper hat and a Hawaiian shirt.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked him. “I am the girl who didn’t pepper spray you in the face.”

  “A lot of girls didn’t pepper spray me in the face. Like, all of them,” he said.

  “I can change that right now, if you’d like.”

  He looked uncertain of whether I was kidding. “Can I get you something?” he finally offered.

  “Firstly, I’d like a cookie dough Typhoon, extra walnuts. Secondly, I need to talk business.”

  “Let me get your Typhoon first.” Mason looked very different in his place of work. At school he looked like the sort of person who had dozens of pet snakes. But at the mall he looked like someone who maybe had only one snake. He mostly just looked like a kid who worked at an ice cream shop. It really drove home how much effort it takes for people to look scary. If they stopped working at it, it didn’t keep up.

  He handed me my Typhoon—vanilla ice cream, cookie dough, peanut butter cups, three kinds of sprinkles, Rice Krispies, whipped cream, extra walnuts, and two maraschino cherries. It was lovely. “I have to say this because I’ll get in trouble with my manager if I don’t,” he said. “So: have a cream-filled day.” He cleared his throat, perhaps trying to restore his dignity. “What’s your business?” he asked when he was finished.

  “Homecoming dance,” I said. “Are you going?”

  “No.”

  “I need you to go. And not with me.”

  “Dances are stupid. For stupid people. Who are stupid. You couldn’t pay me to go. You don’t have enough money.”

  “You work at an ice cream stand that charges by the gummi bear, and I’m very rich,” I told him. “Of course I have enough money.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you sure I can’t entice you with a warehouse of ugly shirts or really good tickets to an angry concert?”

  “You act like you know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Again, I’m very rich. My grandfather has private investigators on retainer and the Internet is a giant pit of information. I know you work here. I know you got a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago but you’re not sure if you should go because you think your band might take off. It won’t. I know you got your heart broken last year by a girl named Tabitha and you don’t have a good place to express your anger. And I know your brother spent two weeks in rehab and now he’s very religious, your dad is in the navy, you lived in the Philippines for four years, and also, puntang ina mo.

  “Did you just insult my mother in Tagalog?”

  “Yeah, I only know how to curse in Tagalog. And you know what else I know—you owe me.”

  “Why do I owe you?” he said.

  “You owe me because when I could’ve made you cry, I didn’t. And that’s something you’ll appreciate when you think back on your high school days.”

  “I’ll give you a free Typhoon. But that’s it,” he said.

  “You’ll go,” I said.

  “No.”

  “You will. Because something is going to happen there that’s pertinent to your interests and your life. If you miss it, well, you will have missed it forever.”

  Then I handed him a fifty-dollar bill and walked away.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  *By the way, Lucy wanted to be a “veterinarian’s assistant” one day.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  THINGS THAT EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW

  By Astrid Krieger

  Punching. (Make sure your thumb is outside your fist or you will break it.)

  Basic lock picking. (You should also know complicated lock picking, but basic is enough for the short term.)

  Essential bits of information about things boys like, in case you need something from them. These include but are not limited to football, Superman, and how to wear a baseball hat.

  Where the nearest knives are located.

  How to curse in at least three languages.

  Basic anatomy, i.e., where to hit or kick someone so it will hurt most.
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  How to make an Old Fashioned. (You might only need to know this if you and I have the same grandfather and he told you a hundred times that the only thing you really need to know in life is how to make an Old Fashioned. Either way, it’s one sugar cube, three dashes of Angostura bitters, club soda, and a two-count of rye whiskey.)

  Lisbet had been conspiring to dress me and do my hair and makeup for practically my whole life. I didn’t know what the appeal of it was, but I didn’t know a lot of things, like how microwave ovens worked. She was last able to fulfill her wish when I was about two years old, and she managed to get her hands on me just long enough to transform my toddler self into a horror movie clown-demon. Since then, I’d always managed to outrun her and her lipstick weapons. She would plead, “Please. I just want to flat iron your hair for two hours.” Doing makeovers was not something Lisbet wanted to do. It was something she needed to do, similar to breathing and eating a celery stalk every other day.

  But my streak of good luck was not going to last forever. This was her wedding day. She had a team of serious women waiting in the east wing of the house to powder her face and shine and lacquer her hair into a stiff architectural structure. On that day, she could have whatever she wanted, and she wanted to make me over. So I’d agreed. And it wasn’t a trick. It happened.

  After pulling hair extensions and sharp-heeled shoes from her closet, after holding the bridesmaid dress up to my body, and thinking, and going back into her closet, and thinking some more, and discovering a bra that “will be invisible to everyone,” and after a long jag where she seemed to be building another person out of the air with her fingers—Lisbet tied me into a bunch of fabric. It had a lot of detailing that she referred to by a lot of names, but I can only describe it as a shiny yellow dress.