Firecracker Read online

  Lucy laughed, but I could tell she wasn’t laughing at me. Even when she laughed, there was still a chunk of hair in her mouth. She sounded like a horse choking on hay.

  She looked again at my schedule and pointed to a series of numbers. “That’s your locker number. That’s your combination.”

  “I’m not going to remember that,” I told her. And I never did.

  She laughed again and chomped and stopped outside a classroom door. “You’re going to just love it here,” she said, staring with a smile at a loose piece of the ceiling.

  “I don’t think I will.”

  “You just have to meet people. Everyone’s really nice.” She again gazed absently toward the fluorescent lights. It was a little odd that she thought everyone was nice. Because I’d been there for, like, two minutes, and I was pretty sure no one was nice. She stuck her hand into her bag and rummaged around in there until she found what she was looking for. She pulled out an envelope and handed it to me shyly. “I invited everybody I know to my birthday. That’ll be a good place to meet people, I think,” she said.

  I looked at the envelope suspiciously, like it was going to blow up. I’d never been invited to a birthday party before, at least never to one that didn’t end with a Brunei prince shooting an endangered condor with a gold revolver off the side of a 450-foot-yacht. Regular birthdays had never sounded like occasions I would want to attend anyway. Besides all that, Lucy seemed too old to be having a birthday party. I was almost positive she wasn’t six.

  “Just RSVP by the end of the week,” she said.

  “Oh. I can’t come.”

  “You don’t even know when it is,” she said.

  “Still. I’m sure I have something else.”

  “It’s going to be fun.”

  “Will there be a magician?”

  Lucy smiled. “Maybe.”

  “Then I for sure won’t be there.”

  Lucy found me entertaining rather than convincing. I stuffed the invitation deep into my pocket. I did not want to go to Lucy Redlich’s birthday party. But then I remembered Dean Rein’s challenge. I was supposed to do things I didn’t want to do. Maybe Lucy’s party would be my first thing. Lucy opened a door on our right and walked in with a smile. I noticed that nobody smiled back or even looked at her. “This is our English class,” she told me.

  Before I’d even stepped inside the classroom, I heard something I didn’t like at all. It was ominous—the kind of sound that, had I been starring in a horror movie, would have been preceded by violins shrieking and then drums banging. And then a second later I would be dead.

  The sound was a voice. “I believe my eyes are deceiving me,” the voice said. The voice was mind-boggling. It formed a soup of words that didn’t really sound like what they were supposed to. I was in a different school and a different town, yet Pierre was right behind me.

  A POEM FOR ASTRID

  The Window

  By Lukas Borsz

  Sometimes at night I look through the window,

  At night,

  Through my window.

  And I see a wisp of you moving through the snow.

  I smile,

  Every night,

  When I see you,

  Through my window.

  My head is full of birds,

  They sing their song.

  My heart flows with štěstí (that is the Czech word for “happiness”),

  And it sings its song.

  And then across the way,

  I can see your window,

  And I wonder what you think,

  At night,

  Through your window,

  When you look down,

  And see me.

  If you were to ask Pierre who he is to me, the first thing he would probably say is, “My name’s not Pierre.” And while that’s true, if you saw a blond guy wearing a tracksuit talking on a neon green cell phone with a big stupid grin on his face all the time and a very phlegmy accent, I’m positive you would know who I was talking about if I called that guy Pierre.

  The second thing Pierre would say is that he’s my boyfriend. I’m not positive how he got that idea, but he’s held onto it for a long time, and I’ve had a hard time getting rid of him. We’ve kissed a few times (because I needed some furniture moved), but beyond that, I’d never held his hand or encouraged any of the big stupid European things he does to show me how he feels. He buys me a lot of flowers. I have no use for flowers. Flowers die before they do anything. If someone wants to win me over, they should give me something useful, like juice boxes or a boat.

  Even if Pierre was my boyfriend, he ended up not being a very good one. He was one of the people who told Dean Rein I’d cheated. Needless to say, I was not very happy to see him standing behind me in the doorway of my classroom at Cadorette.

  Pierre looked completely ridiculous. Every article of clothing had giant words across it. He clearly had no idea what was meant for boys and what was meant for girls and what people stopped wearing about ten years ago. His giant shirt said Democracy and featured a snake weaving through a flaming skull. His jacket was a pattern of spiderwebs and flannel and zigzags and colored squares. His sweatpants said smack it across the butt.

  “I had a baseball hat,” Pierre said. “But they wouldn’t let me wear it because there is a dress code. You can hide weapons in a baseball hat. Can you believe it?”

  “What are you doing in my English class, Pierre?”

  “I should ask you the same question, Astrid. I have been in this class for a week.”

  “No you shouldn’t because it’s my English class. You don’t even speak English.”

  “I’ve been in this country for five years. I’m speaking English right now.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “You have to leave.”

  “No, I cannot. There was nothing left for me at Bristol. Without you, my heart was a rowboat without the row. Understand?”

  “Barely.”

  “I am heartbroken with how things ended with us at Bristol.”

  “You sold me out. You told on me.”

  “Don’t hate me,” Pierre said. “I was dazzled by numbers and percentages. I had no choice but to name names.”

  “I would never have done that to you.”

  “You have done that to me.”

  “I would never do it again. Bloods protect Bloods.”

  “What is this Bloods?”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  Pierre made what I called his “Shakespeare face.” It’s when he gets really serious and puts his nose in the air like he’s a character in a Shakespeare play. “Does this mean that we are breaking up?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t aware that we were together.”

  “I love you, Astrid,” Shakespeare Face said.

  I had no idea what I was supposed to say back to him. I didn’t love him. Not even a little bit. I would have no problem lying to him if I thought there was anything much to gain from it, but there wasn’t. Uttering those words would hurt me a lot more than they would help. He would surround me with his arms and lean close to my mouth so I could get sick from his cologne, which smelled like peach schnapps and gunpowder. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want his face against mine. The few times we kissed in the past, his tongue had bounced around like a dying slug in my mouth. I could taste him on me for weeks after, no matter how much I brushed my teeth. What had he been eating? Fried chicken? Onions? Old shoes?

  I walked into the classroom. Lucy Wet Lick pointed to an empty seat next to her. Predictably, it was in the front row. In another predictable maneuver, Pierre took the seat next to me. And everyone else in the class just stared at me, because of course.

  “I think you have to live in the town to go to the public school. I live in Cadorette. I’m sure there are sch
ools for you in . . . Bulgaria,” I said to Pierre.

  “Czech Republic. They made an exception for me because I am a conduit to the international world.” Pierre leaned in quietly. “And I also said I would find out who is dealing cocaine.” He pointed to a nervous kid in the back row. “I think I will say it is that one. He seems to fidget.”

  Ms. Sharp was a young teacher. A few weeks before, she’d been full of ambition. A few months before that, she was still the president of her sorority. By the time I was in the class, she had become a pale and terrified shadow of her former self.

  She wrote in weak script on the chalkboard until the chalk broke in her hand and crumbled to the floor. The board read Oral Reports, and even before anyone laughed, she quietly said, “Enough. Just enough already.” She glanced at a piece of paper that lay on her desk and jotted something in a notebook with a felt-tip pen. “It’s just an embarrassment of riches this week. Another new transfer. Pretty soon this whole class will be full of new students who haven’t read the book.” She seemed exasperated and out of breath. “Krieger., A., do you want to come up here and introduce yourself?”

  I did not want to. I wanted to fling my bag across the room, leave, and never return. I felt a scalding heat all over my face. My legs shook with nervous energy. My hand was clean now, but I remembered what I had written on it days before: DO THINGS I DON’T WANT TO DO. Standing up in class wasn’t like me at all, but I didn’t feel like me either. I stood up. I could feel everyone looking at me. I let myself focus on a few of their faces and got mostly confused looks in return. A girl with long hair, a shirt that showed off her entire abdomen, and a lazy eye laughed and glanced around at the others, eager to share her amusement.

  The only person who wasn’t just gawking at me was sitting two seats away from mine in the first row. He had this messy hair like he’d just climbed out of bed, but I suspected he’d put in some effort to get it that way. He wore a blue-and-white polyester shirt that looked exactly like this thing my dad wore in some notorious pictures from the seventies that chronicled a period he referred to as his “Lost Weekend.”

  The polyester kid was sitting in the class like it was the most relaxing thing in the whole world. He stretched out his legs, resting his red-sneakered feet directly in front of me. He glared over his shoulder at the rest of the class, holding a finger to his lips to quiet them.

  He wasn’t threatening at all. No one seemed to care. A few guys loudly mocked his “Shhhh.” I guess it must’ve been very frustrating for everyone to look at his clothes and not know what his favorite basketball team was. I can’t really explain it, but I didn’t feel that same nervous, hot, leg-shaking feeling when I looked at that kid who was now right in front of me.

  “Why don’t you tell us your name?” Ms. Sharp said.

  “Okay. I’m Astrid Krieger.”

  “Why hello, ASS-trid.” This was from a big guy with a red face and a T-shirt that said Buttwiser, King of Rears. From that day forward I almost never saw that guy wearing anything that didn’t say something good about beer, bad about girls, or speculate about who farted. He will probably be married in a shirt that says Don’t worry, she’ll look good after a six-pack.

  A few kids laughed. Beer Shirt nodded, accepting the admiration as if he’d been the first to think of this particular play on words. And believe it or not, it was the first time I’d heard it. No one had ever been bold enough or stupid enough to make fun of me before. And I’d never thought too much about the ways in which my name sounded like a body part. I paused for a second to think about whether or not Krieger also sounded like something bad. It didn’t. Meager. Eager. Nah.

  “Doug!” Ms. Sharp yelled. Doug. Lug. Fug. Rug. Mug. Jug. Tug. Nope, nothing great. I would work on it. “Go on, Astrid.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I just transferred here from Bristol, which is a school just like this one, except it’s kind of nicer. But I’m just, you know, a regular girl like anyone else. Um, I enjoy music and hanging out and status updating and whatever you people do. Oh, and I live in a rocket ship. But it’s just a prototype, so it doesn’t work.”

  “Neat.” Ms. Sharp nodded. “And why don’t you tell the class about a book that changed your life.”

  I hadn’t yet written the book you’re reading right now, so I didn’t really have anything much to say. Only one book at that point had particularly changed my life, and that was Introduction to Psychology. But those words didn’t come out. I mean, that’s what I tried to say, but it came out as, “Neener durrm maaaaaa—” That was weird. It surprised the hell out of me. I looked right at all those faces, smiling and laughing. These people. This place. My face was feeling hot again. My legs shook more. And then I looked at the ceiling. There was a spitball that may have been sixty years old hanging there. And then I remember thinking, Why am I looking at the ceiling? But it was too late. It was all blurry. My legs decided that they were no longer interested in holding my body up, which is total bullshit because they have one job. And then I fell. I fainted. I actually fainted for real. Boom. My head fell right into a piece of wood. Smack. And it was loud, and it hurt, and that’s all I remember.

  When I was ten years old, the Kriegers went to Paris. It wasn’t exactly a vacation. My grandfather and father had a meeting with some Saudi Arabians in the restaurant at the George V hotel. One morning, I was supposed to stay in the room but found myself getting incredibly bored. Vivi was sorting through piles of clothes, and Lisbet was seated in a plush velvet chair, enamored of the pigeons outside the east sitting room window. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I snuck out. I say “snuck out,” but I actually just opened the door and left. No one even noticed. I wandered over to the restaurant in search of my grandfather. I’m hazy about what was actually happening there. In my imagination, one of the Saudis was negotiating to purchase Lisbet, but that was probably just wishful thinking. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, and after the whole incident was over, I was sworn to secrecy. (I mention it now because the non-Kriegers who were involved are no longer alive.)

  I hovered around the maitre d’ podium for a little bit, slowly inching closer to the table where my grandfather and the others sat. “What is it, Puppy?” he asked when he finally made eye contact.

  “I’ve been in the room all day. It’s horrible.”

  He wasn’t mad. He just smiled. “How about you handle the rest of the day, Dirk?” he said to my father, who started breathing heavily from the shock of it. Grandpa got up and took my hand. “Let’s get our butts the hell out of here. It’s boring to me, so I can only imagine what it’s like for you.”

  We started walking fast—practically running. He was old even then, but he could outrun pretty much anyone. We went through a gate and past a length of tourists, and then we stopped. “Here we are,” he said.

  “This is a museum. If I wanted to be bored, I could’ve stayed in the hotel with Lisbet.”

  “This isn’t a museum, Monkey. It’s the mother-fucking Louvre.” He pronounced it Loov-er because he refused to speak any French.

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t take you here to learn about art. I’m trying to stay awake too. But I am going to teach you something.”

  “Well, that’s just great.”

  He pulled my arm and we moved past the line. I don’t know if he got special treatment or something, but no one stopped him. He looked like he knew what he was doing. We moved into these long hallways full of paintings. People were shoving their way over to the Mona Lisa like they expected her to do something other than be a painting, and Grandpa and I laughed a little before we moved on.

  “I want you to find your painting,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a ton of paintings here. I want you to find yours. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  I kind of had no idea what he was talking about, but I looked
around quickly as we walked through. Most of the stuff was about Jesus or wars or Jesus in wars or ladies taking baths, and I didn’t really care for any of it. But then we crossed into another room, and I understood what he was talking about. I’d seen a painting of this girl. She was smiling mischievously, like she knew she’d done something wrong or was secretly teasing someone. She wore a boa that moved around her like a snake and her hands were encased in long, golden gloves.

  “Well, I’ll be. It’s like you’re looking in a mirror, huh?” Grandpa said.

  “Kind of. I guess. Is that what you meant? Is that my painting?”

  “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with it, and he seemed a little bothered that I wasn’t catching on. “Take it,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “I sure as hell know I’m not speaking French. You heard me. Take it. It’s your painting.”

  He wasn’t smiling, so it seemed like this wasn’t a joke. In fact, he was checking over his shoulder to see if he could spot cameras or security guards. I reached my hand out and ran my fingers lightly over the frame. Nothing happened.

  “Take it,” he told me again.

  And so I did. I pulled at the golden frame, surprised by how easily its weight shifted into my hand. Then I heard a horrible wail from an alarm. It whined and screeched until I let go and jerked my hand back. The painting wobbled and leaned sideways, so that the girl in the portrait was smirking at the ground. Two men in uniform appeared right behind me a moment later. “Astrid, what are you doing?” my grandfather asked in a shocked tone. “Don’t touch that!” I turned to look at him, and he winked at me. He then spoke quietly to the two guards and flashed his congressional ID. He did that a lot when we went on trips. With that ID, he actually had diplomatic immunity, which meant that he could technically commit any crime he wanted to in another country and they couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t know how often he actually exercised this power, but I once saw him steal a Pez dispenser from a store in Berlin. The guards nodded to him, and we walked out of the museum.