Firecracker Page 2

  I pushed my grandfather in his wheelchair along the stone walkway that led out to the main pool. The pool was shaped like a kidney with a deep, black pit in its center, modeled after my grandfather’s own kidney after he got shot during World War II.

  “So, let me get perspective,” he said. “Did you cheat?”

  “Of course I did. Everyone does.”

  “Be glad I’m not working for the FBI. The confessions roll right off your tongue,” he said. “Were you sloppy?”

  “I’m never sloppy.”

  “Most people get caught because they’re sloppy.”

  “Good for them. I’m not most people. I have no patience for those who can’t execute a plan with elegance,” I said.

  “Indeed. Survival isn’t a race. It’s a dance.”

  “I was set up.”

  “That only means you went into business with the wrong people. You made your bed, Astrid.”

  “Untrue. I’ve never made my bed in my life.”

  My grandfather laughed. I was one of the very few people who could make him laugh.

  I knew that if my grandfather told Dad that going to the public school and therapy was a stupid idea, my dad would probably also think it was a stupid idea. But Grandpa was never going to tell Dad that. We both knew it, and I would never ask. He just said, “You got caught. You have to pay if you get caught.” He then proceeded to cough for two full minutes.

  “Would you do it? I mean, if you were me, would you even listen to them? You would never go to the crappy school, right?”

  “I,” Grandpa said as he rolled his now-unlit cigar around his mouth, “would never get caught. So it’s not really an issue for me, baby, now is it?”

  “I guess not.”

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  The Bristol Academy was in Southboro, Connecticut, about an hour away from where my family lived. There were parts of the school I never spent any time in—the tennis courts, the entire third and fourth floors of the library, the kayak dock—but I spent a lot of time in Dean Rein’s office. My first day at Bristol was also Dean Rein’s first day as Dean of Students. I had spent the previous day in jail for trying to sell the Southboro Police Station to the People’s Republic of China (long story). It was a joke, but some people don’t get jokes. I was released quickly, though, because I was fifteen and it’s hard to keep a fifteen-year-old in jail for very long. Dean Rein called me into his office as soon as I dropped off my stuff in my dorm room.

  “Boy,” he said, “wasn’t I surprised when I heard one of our new students was in jail.”

  “Were you?” I asked. “I wasn’t surprised. I’ve been to jail before. The cell had a TV. It was a pretty doable afternoon.”

  “I was curious about you and so I spoke with Madame Brichot, your last headmistress.”

  “Oh yeah, Judy, right? How’s her leg?”

  “Why?” He suddenly got nervous. “Did you do something to her leg?”

  “No. Course not. She just had a weird leg.”

  “Have you not been happy in your previous schools, Ms. Krieger?”

  “I don’t know. I’m good.”

  “Your test scores, your grades—they’re impressive—but then I look at all of these disciplinary problems and I say to myself, ‘Here’s a young woman who isn’t being challenged. Here’s a young woman who might need to talk.’”

  Then he put his hand on my shoulder in a way that was intended to be fatherly, but Dad and I have a standing no physical contact policy.

  “You can tell me anything, Astrid,” he said, motioning around his office. “This is a safe space. You can’t get in trouble for anything you do or say here.”

  He had an empty vase on the side of his desk. It was glass with flowers painted on the side. I walked over and knocked it to the ground and watched as it shattered.

  “Safe space,” I said. And then I left.

  After that, we didn’t pretend to be friends. We both pretty much hated each other, and that was perfectly fine with me. I didn’t have friends at Bristol; most people left me alone. Instead, I had accomplices. This isn’t to imply that I had this crack team of genius spies like in movies. I didn’t, but they usually did a good job. The group consisted of Pierre, Peter and Jeremy Elfrish, Maribelle Rohit, Joe Flemming, and Talia Pasteur—all skilled in different ways, all willing to help me for a price. They were loyal—at least I thought they were. Accomplices are like friends, only they don’t care about you. They care about stuff—money, grades, boyfriends, alcohol, or whatever. Me, I wanted power. My grandfather liked to say, “You know power is the best thing in the world because as soon as you have it, everyone is trying to take it from you.” No one is ever trying to take your friends away, so that’s how you know they’re less important.

  I bribed a janitor during my freshman year for a master key to every door on campus, which I kept with me almost all the time until it disappeared from my room during junior year. With that key, I could go anywhere, but pretty soon, I could go anywhere anyway. Everyone was a little scared of me. As the years passed, I developed a kind of reputation.

  When I walked into chapel the first day of senior year, someone was in my seat. All it took was a sideways glance, and that girl ran. She actually ran. She didn’t have anything to worry about, though. I’m not a bully. I don’t mess with the weak. I take people down who need to be taken down.

  A few days after that, someone took me down. Someone betrayed me and I left.

  I wasn’t expecting to be back so soon. But as I walked into the administration building, the front left window still broken from the day before my expulsion, I thought about something my sister Lisbet would often say: “Every door is a window.” She was trying to say Every time a door closes, a window opens, but she remembered it wrong. I liked it though. It meant that every moment can be an opportunity and that’s something I believe. If I played it right with Dean Rein it was possible I could just hit reset on the past week, return to Bristol, and never have to spend one minute in Cadorette Township High School, the local public school. I was practically smiling at the thought when I walked into Dean Rein’s office. Dean Rein didn’t look all that happy to be sitting there with me, though, which was weird because it was his stupid idea to be my therapist in the first place.

  “Isn’t this unethical?” I asked when I sat down in his office.

  “Why is that, Astrid?”

  “This doesn’t seem kosher at all. You know me. Aren’t you not allowed to be the psychologist of someone you know? I mean, I don’t even know if you’re a real doctor.”

  “Before teaching, I did this as a profession. And I keep my license current. You are no longer one of my students, so it’s not unethical. And yes, I am a real doctor.”

  He pointed to a wall of framed diplomas. I wondered if anyone had ever closely looked at that wall. There were way more diplomas than he could’ve possibly earned. Nobody could go to that many schools. Eventually, I realized that some of the documents weren’t even diplomas. They were more like certificates. One of them said that he was Camper of the Week at something called Happy Time Day Camp in 1961.

  “Well, not a real doctor,” I pointed out. “A PhD isn’t a real doctor.”

  “A PhD is very much a real doctor.” He pursed his lips together.

  “My cousin Gretchen has a PhD in Performance Studies. I went to her to get my appendix taken out, and you know what happened?”

  He rolled his eyes. “What happened, Astrid?”

  “I died.” I stood up and peered more closely at the diplomas. I swear, some of the important words looked glued on. “Johns Hopkins? That sounds made up.”

  “It isn’t made up. It’s a fine institution.”

  “If it’s a real place, is Johns Hopkins a guy or is it two guys? You know, like Larry Johns and Bill Hopkins. And they started up the college together.”

>   “I don’t know, Astrid, I think it’s one person. Can you—?”

  “There’s one person and his first name is ‘Johns’? That’s, like, the stupidest thing I ever heard. His name is plural. I bet he thought that made him sound really important. ‘I am two Johns in one.’”

  “Could you—?”

  “You know what I’m going to name my kid?”

  “Honestly, it doesn’t—”

  “When I have a kid, I want her to be really important, so her name has to be really plural. I’m going to name her Childrens.”

  He looked at me like I was speaking a different language. “Children?”

  “Not ‘Children.’ Childrens. Childrens Krieger.”

  “So, you’d like to have a child someday, Astrid?”

  “I’d like to have Childrens. Childrens Krieger. Are you even listening to me? You should really take a better look at that diploma. It really looks fake.”

  He turned his head a little to look, but he noticed me watching him, and he stopped. “I’m not going to look at my diploma. I know what it says. And we’re here to talk about you, not me.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  He took a deep, careful breath and looked down at his legal pad. “Why do you think you’re here?”

  “You know why I’m here.”

  Dean Rein was skinny and shaped like a damp sock. Every time he moved his arm, his entire torso seemed to seep into the floor. When he first came to Bristol, he addressed the school in chapel and said something like, “My heart has always been in education.” The truth of his change in career is a little more complicated. His son, Martin Jr., was making meth, and he blew his arm clean off in the Rein garage. Somehow the experience made Dean Rein take a look at his life and decide that he should take a more active role in shaping the lives of young people. Not his son, mind you. Other young people whom he didn’t know. He told me once that I reminded him of his son, though I imagine not in the sense that I’m a girl and have the amount of hands needed to clap.

  “What I’m asking is, why has your life brought you to this place? Why do you think your parents and I felt you needed to make changes?”

  “I was expelled.”

  “And why did that happen?” he said.

  “Because someone betrayed me, and then you expelled me.”

  “I feel like we’re going in circles. You broke our honor code at Bristol. We are firmly against cheating. I caught you cheating. You were expelled. The end.”

  “Who set me up, Dean Rein?”

  “Do we need to go into this again?”

  My silence told him that yeah, we did.

  “This is supposed to be therapy,” he said.

  “I find the tale of my own downfall therapeutic.”

  “Do you really, or is this just an excuse to have another argument with me about your expulsion?”

  “I find arguing with you therapeutic too.”

  He sighed and opened a drawer and took out a folder and from that, a list of names. “Listen, Astrid, this is very simple. Here’s a list of the students whom I called into my office last week: Peter and Jeremy Elfrish. Maribelle Rohit. Joe Flemming. Talia Pasteur. Do those names sound familiar to you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Luk az burrssszz,” he said, as if that was an answer that would explain everything instead of what it sounded like to me, a jumble of meaningless sounds.

  “‘Look as bur az?’“ I repeated to make sure I heard him correctly.

  Dean Rein pointed to the list of names. And there on the bottom—Lukas Borsz.

  “Do you know Lukas Borsz, Astrid?”

  “No.”

  “Sure you do. Tall, blond. The lacrosse team. He’s from the Czech Republic. He’s with you all the time. Come on, jog that memory of yours.”

  “You mean Pierre?”

  Dean Rein didn’t say anything, which I took as a yes. “I’m not going to give him the pleasure of me remembering his real name,” I said. “I call him Pierre. Probably because his name is Look as bur az. That sure doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

  “Lukas . . . Pierre . . . we had a long conversation the day before you had to leave our school.”

  “Did Pierre read you one of his poems? They’re horrible, aren’t they? ‘Flowers’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘flowers.’ They’re the same—”

  “I didn’t have an agenda. I didn’t even mention your name.”

  “Then why did you bring those people in?”

  “I’m observant, Astrid. I’d been watching you for a long time. I watched whom you interacted with. They each came in, and I just brought up a few things. Tests. Term papers. Cheating. Things like that. Lukas and the others, they all had a lot to say.”

  “I’ll bet they did. Because they all cheated in your class.”

  “Funny. They all said it was you. Only you.”

  “I’m sure they would. Did they have proof?”

  “No,” Dean Rein said, fiddling with some paper in his manila folder. “They didn’t need it. In the mail I received some papers. Blank tests. From every year you were at Bristol. An advance copy of every test you ever took at Bristol.”

  “They’re old tests. There’s nothing against the rules about having tests that I already took.”

  He flipped to the last paper. “This test is the midterm to my senior Psychology class. I’m not giving it for three weeks.”

  “This doesn’t prove anything. Anyone could’ve had these.”

  “No student has the exact same schedule. Different English classes, different years. Some take Art History. Some take Music Appreciation. Over several years, your schedule is a thumbprint. These tests match your class schedule. Only your schedule. How would you explain this phenomenon?”

  “You know that theory about how if an infinite number of monkeys typed on an infinite number of typewriters, they’d eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare?”

  “So in this scenario, are you Shakespeare or the monkeys?”

  I thought about it for a second. “The monkeys, sir.”

  “You’re a real firecracker, Astrid, aren’t you?” Firecracker is what people in certain social circles say when what they really mean is asshole.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Have I mentioned your head is shaped like an actual penis?”

  “Yes you have. On a few occasions.” He sighed. “I was hoping perhaps I made a mistake. You didn’t cheat. I brought in each of your friends and on some level, I hoped they would defend you. That they would find a hole in my logic. But your friends all sold you out, Ms. Krieger.”

  “They’re not my friends.”

  “No, I guess they’re not. Girl like you, you don’t have any real friends, do you?”

  “I did the work, sir,” I lied.

  “Are you lying?”

  “No, I’m not lying,” I said, also lying.

  “Can you prove it?”

  “How would you like me to prove it, sir?”

  “Tell me the name of one of the books that you read in Introduction to Psychology. If you were set up, you should be able to tell me that much.”

  I couldn’t think of anything. I mean, I brought a notebook to class, but I could hardly say the name of a book for his class was Notebook. He was talking about the thick blue textbook he passed out on the first day last year. It had a lightbulb on the cover and I remembered that because I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world. Like, psychology is supposed to be a real serious thing but the ideas in the book should be taken exactly as seriously as when Wile E. Coyote has a plan. At that moment, I knew exactly where that book was. It was under a pair of yellow pants that I never wore. They were probably Lisbet’s. Lisbet would probably think yellow pants were a great thing to own. I still had no idea what the book was called.

&n
bsp; “No, I understand. That’s a difficult question,” he said. “You’ve only taken Introduction to Psychology for about a year. How about any book you’ve read in your three years at this school? Any one will do.” And then he let himself smile a little.

  I always had a backup plan. If something was going in a direction I didn’t like, I had a way of pulling it back. Usually my backup plans involved money. Money isn’t always the cleverest solution to a problem, but it works almost every time. But Dean Rein knew I had money. He knew that if he wanted a building or a squash court in exchange for another free pass for me, he would’ve never expelled me at all. In fact, there already was a building and a squash court paid for by an endowment from the Krieger family expressly for this purpose. He wasn’t blinking. He wasn’t flinching. And I had no answer to his stupid question. For once, I had no backup plan.

  “You know,” I said. “People who do the work—like me—can’t always remember what the books were c—”

  “Introduction to Psychology.”

  “Huh?”

  “The textbook for your introductory psychology class is called Introduction to Psychology.”

  “So it is.” I nodded sagely, as if I’d known all along. “You know, I’m not sentimental. I’m also not an idiot. If I did cheat, which I didn’t, I swear,” I lied, “why would I keep those old tests knowing that someone could send them to you at some point? That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “Maybe”—Dean Rein leaned back in his chair—“you wanted to get caught. It’s like I said when you first came into my office those years ago; maybe you just wanted to talk.”