Firecracker Read online

  “I want you to do this little task again. But this time, please perform real selfless acts.”

  I looked out his window. The sky was blue. The grass was green. Someone was riding a horse through the trail on the quad. If Dean Rein was powerful, he probably would’ve orchestrated my view to look exactly like that. To show me how different Bristol was from the school I would have to go back to the next day. I had a thought. A thought that I figured would probably work. “Care to make it interesting?” I inquired.

  “Oh, Astrid, this is my job. It’ll never be interesting.”

  I ran my thumb over the tips of my fingers, the international symbol for I have invisible money in between my fingers.

  “I’m not putting any money on this. I get paid to be here,” he said. “Plus, you have a lot more money than I do, so what do you stand to gain?” This was of course true for him and almost everyone.

  “Then how about I do the good deeds challenge? And if I do it well, I don’t have to come here anymore.”

  “Again,” he said, “I make money by you being here. Your parents are paying me. Money for my time is very agreeable to me.”

  “Then . . .” I looked out the window and I couldn’t help but smile. “How about we bet on Bristol? If I win, I get to come back to school here.”

  “That’s not entirely up to me.”

  I knew he would say something like that, but I didn’t really buy his argument. “Yes it is. You are the dean of students and I am a prospective student, Dean.”

  “I’d have to convince your parents.”

  “I convinced my dad that the whole world travels back in time for daylight savings. Just say it in a serious voice. He’ll believe anything.”

  “Fine,” Dean Rein said. “Do real good things. Three of them. Write them down. Include proof where available. And if they’re acceptable, that’s certainly something we can discuss.”

  “Uh-uh, not discuss. If I do it, I come back to Bristol. They will be good deeds. Great deeds.”

  He didn’t respond aloud, but his silence was enough for me. Ultimately I felt like I was going to get what I wanted. I wanted to go back to Bristol, and if he felt like he somehow set me on a path to be a better person and could smugly pat himself on the back, it was totally fine with me. Maybe I was already on my way to becoming a good person. I probably should’ve just quit right there.

  Pierre couldn’t manage to wait outside for the hour I was with Dean Rein. I should’ve figured that he would follow whatever weird impulse he had. In this case, he wanted to ride a horse to go talk to Talia Pasteur. Pierre talked to Talia regularly when he went to Bristol. Like many people, Pierre enjoyed conversations with people who would agree with pretty much everything and rarely interrupt. By the time I walked outside, Pierre had galloped halfway across campus. In place of him, there was a small freshman with a rather severe haircut standing at the bottom of the steps of the administration building.

  “Are you Astrid Krieger?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Andy Chang.” What is with people thinking that if you don’t know who they are, their name is sufficient explanation? “The guy with the long hair told me to wait for you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He said he went to talk to the person that he needed to talk to.”

  “Where?”

  “Her room.”

  “Where is her room?”

  “How would I have any idea?” Andy Chang asked. He had a point. I turned, intending to wander around and figure it out. “Are you really Astrid Krieger?” Andy Chang called out behind me.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I’ve heard of you. But you are not what I thought you would be.”

  “What did you think I would be?”

  “I thought at least you would be taller.” This was the strangest and most upsetting thing anyone had said to me in the last month, even though it kind of didn’t make any sense (because I, being Astrid Krieger, was exactly as tall as Astrid Krieger should be). But, I don’t know. Maybe Astrid Krieger the person and Astrid Krieger the reputation were no longer the same thing. I was still Astrid Krieger, but the Legend of Astrid Krieger was slowly fading away. It was almost as if I had gone back in time and somehow made my dad’s fiancée not die in that helicopter crash, thereby preventing him from meeting my mother at the hospital where she was working as a nurse, hence eliminating my existence. Astrid Krieger the legend was as tall as a mountain. Astrid Krieger the person wasn’t much more than five feet two inches, except in heels.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>

  Suddenly I knew where Talia Pasteur’s room was. Talia Pasteur’s room was my room. It would really be the only place that would make sense. I’d had the biggest room on campus. This was because it was a room meant for two people. My roommate, Yves Graneveis, was the daughter of a French diplomat. As far as the administration was aware, Yves’s arrival in the United States had been held up for several years at that point due to an Interpol investigation into her family surrounding the kidnapping of her brother, Gaston. The administration at Bristol was very understanding throughout the ordeal and promised to keep her bed available to her if and when her circumstances changed and she was ready to begin her education at Bristol. Of course, I completely made Yves Graneveis up, but she has a very believable passport, a Canadian medical license, and owns a minority stake in a chain of fine men’s clothing stores in the Midwest.

  When I got to Ladies’ Dorm 3 (they used all the good dorm names like “Hampshire Hall” and “Woodmeadow Residence” on the boys’ dorms), I saw Pierre on a horse and Talia skipping over to him from the east side of campus. I hadn’t been spotted yet, and I couldn’t think of a particularly stealthy way to spy. I wished that I had a Gatling gun. I also wished I had the ability to climb walls. There were a lot of graceful and death-defying things I wished that I could do at that moment. But I didn’t have any of the tools or magical abilities required, so instead I dove down and crawled under a bush. This was not ideal. I was getting mud on my hands and clothes. I was pretty sure I’d never hidden from anything. As a kid, I played hide-and-seek by sitting on a bench.

  I had a pretty good view of the horse’s tail. Horses smell bad from the front, but it’s much worse when your nose is seven inches from one’s anus. I could only hear pieces of their conversation through the sound of the horse stomping on leaves.

  What I heard was this:

  Talia: You showed up——surprised——let you———does that.

  Pierre: I am my own——-That is——understand.

  Talia: I hope you know—————when she————Astrid—————strid.

  Pierre: Please, you have to know that I————What do you think——————? She isn’t making it.

  Talia: I’m sure she’s doing fine————————what she deserves anyway———————found out about us.

  Pierre: There is an us?————forever———is what I think. She doesn’t know—————-about—————

  Talia: She doesn’t? I doubt that. Hello, Astrid———strid———————in the bush————————I see you. Yes. I see you.

  The jig was up. I thought about staying in the bush forever, maybe building a life down there just to prove that I had some other reason for being there, but I knew that she knew my real reasons. I’d been stupid. If anyone could spot somebody else hiding in shrubbery, it was Talia. It’s like how my mother can tell which actresses on TV have cheekbone implants.

  I stood up—I was covered in filth. I stayed stoic, but I must have looked like a goddamn hobo.

  “You brought her, then? You said you came alone,” Talia said to Pierre.

  He shrugged. “I will always be prepared to lie for her.”

  “You shouldn’t have to,” she said. Talia’s look had changed even more in the previous w
eek. She had on leather wristbands and hair extensions on only one side. She looked like she was tilting her head to the right, even though she wasn’t. “He won’t say it,” Talia told me as she chewed on her thumbnail with venom. “So you say it. Why are you here?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “I know your reasons. You meet with Dean Rein every week because you’re crazy.” A small crowd had gathered. I noticed Andy Chang—the freshman with the bad hair—and Joe Flemming, who I used to employ for his computer expertise, in the back of the crowd. Maribelle Rohit, whom I’d utilized for her acting ability, was just behind Talia. If this was a war, they were definitely on her side of the battlefield. They were scared of her. I could tell because they used to be scared of me.

  “I’m not crazy. There are a lot of not-crazy people in therapy.” Ugh, looking back, I still can’t believe I quoted my mother.

  “You see everybody all around here, we all go to school here. You don’t. Go home, Astrid.”

  “You know what you did, Talia.” I just figured I would come right out and say it. Maybe it would work. Maybe I would break her under cross-examination.

  “What did I do?”

  “I trusted you, and you’re the one who got me kicked out.” I gave her a hard stare. The sort that makes people tremble. I saw a few of the sophomores shake a bit.

  “You trusted me, Astrid? Really? Were we ever friends?”

  “We were friends . . . ish.”

  “I thought we were friends once. But I was silly and naive. I’m not so naive anymore. You’re a liar, a cheater, and a thief; and you got kicked out because you’re a liar, a cheater, and a thief.”

  I let that roll around in my head a little bit. She had a point, but I couldn’t let her know that. “You sent those tests to Dean Rein, though. You set me up.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did.”

  “I didn’t.”

  I was about to get stuck in one of those back-and-forth loops that could go on for weeks. Let’s just say it went on, like, nine more times. Pierre was the one who broke it. “Astrid will prove it.”

  “I will!” I said. I would?

  “So prove it,” Talia said, calling Pierre’s bluff. She had me. Again. I couldn’t prove that she’d done anything. I felt it inside, but I didn’t really know how I could prove anything. I could make something up, but that probably wouldn’t work. Maybe if I pulled a magical map from my pocket and said, I found THIS! it would work. She wanted me to prove her guilt, and I needed to figure out how. Without evidence, there was nothing to say it really was she who set me up. That was what a lawyer would have told me, anyway. I wasn’t a lawyer, but I know how to say “objection” and “overruled.” Just then, I had to back down. But I needed to do it in a way that didn’t make me seem like a total failure. I needed people to know that I was still Astrid Krieger. I was exactly as tall as I should be. Talia was an imitation, a fake, a blurry photocopy. Because I had no other options, I got on the horse and rode away. I didn’t have to look back to know that everyone was watching me. I only hoped they didn’t see me get off the horse on the other side of the parking lot and wait twenty minutes for Pierre to find me before abandoning the horse for his stupid scooter.

  I had accepted Dean Rein’s challenge. I was about to do all sorts of incredibly good things. It was like putting on new clothes. I actually tried to say it to myself in the mirror:

  “Astrid, you’re a good person.” Then I laughed. Trying to see my reflection as a good person was almost like seeing myself with a mustache.

  I started to make a list of really good things I could do, but I didn’t get very far. My mind wouldn’t go there. I decided instead that I should maybe just ask a good person for advice and steal her answers. It wouldn’t really be stealing so much as borrowing.

  My house was not full of good people. My grandfather was the most like me, so it was safe to say he wasn’t good. My mother was awful. My father wasn’t bad, but he was too lazy to do much good. That left Lisbet. Was Lisbet a good person? Lisbet was certainly a nice person. But was that the same as good? Some people would say so. And being nice is a very important part of being good. How much a part of it, I wasn’t positive, but I thought I might as well ask her before going to anyone else.

  I found Lisbet in her bathroom, where she can usually be found in the mornings. A good chunk of her time there was spent dallying with makeup and hair-related issues. But, mostly she just sat there, happily smiling at her reflection. I was years past finding this weird.

  While Lisbet’s fiancé, Randy, lived in the guesthouse with Lisbet, he would leave early in the morning for work—sometimes while I was still awake from the night before. He worked either far away or long hours or both. When Lisbet first met him, she told me what he did for a living. He was a lawyer or banker or fireman or astronaut or horse whisperer or candy maker or something. He was not so successful that they lived somewhere else but not so unsuccessful that he didn’t need to comb his hair and put on a tie and go to the office.

  I knocked. Knocking was always a good idea. There were things you just didn’t want to walk in on people doing. I learned that lesson when I was in boarding school in Switzerland. I had a roommate then. She had a name, of course, but I couldn’t think of her as anything other than Girl Who Licks My Used Tissues When She Thinks I’m Not in the Room.

  Lisbet didn’t answer when I knocked, so I cracked the door and yelled her name a few times.

  “I’m so glad you could come see me, Astrid,” Lisbet said, staring deeply at her reflection while perched on a tufted stool in front of her vanity. Lisbet had this thing where if you and she were ever in the same place, she would assume that she asked you to be there. Once I was in the elevator at our dad’s office and she happened to be there too, and she said, “I’m so glad you could make it, Astrid,” as if she’d scheduled this elevator get-together. 11:08 on the east, middle elevator. We will meet for nineteen seconds until the door opens again.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” I told her. I leaned back against the mural of a foxhunt that was painted above the wainscoting. After Lisbet moved into the guesthouse, she’d added smiles to most of the foxes with acrylic paint.

  “And I wanted to ask you something.” She addressed my reflection in her mirror.

  “You first.”

  “No, you first,” she said.

  “Why are you nice, Lisbet?” I said.

  “Why am I nice? I don’t understand.”

  “You know how I have to do all this stuff now?”

  “Stuff you have to do?” Lisbet absolutely never remembered backstory. If you were watching a movie with her, you’d need to re-explain who the cop was and who the murderer was multiple times. And when she called me on the phone, she would sometimes say, “It’s your sister . . . Lisbet.” As though I had more than one sister.

  “I’m going to the school in town. I have to go to therapy. That stuff.”

  “Of course. Yes. How’s that working out for you? I’m very worried about it.”

  “It’s awful, Lisbet. I’m constantly miserable.”

  “And you want some tips from me about how not to be miserable?”

  “No. It’s more about . . . how you’re a good person.”

  “Me?” She gave herself a hard and probing stare in the mirror, apparently considering it. “I don’t think so. I’m normal. I’m not especially good.”

  “Well, you’re probably the most good person I know.” (“Most good person,” by the way, is very different from the “best person” I know. I’m the best person I know.)

  Lisbet laughed. Or at least, it sounded like it was supposed to be a laugh. It was more like a quiet hoot. “I couldn’t be the best person you know. What about Ginny Ford?”

  “Who’s Ginny Ford?”

  “I guess you don’t know her. She’s very consi
derate. I’m surprised the two of you haven’t met.”

  “What I mean, Lisbet, is that people like you. You’re nice to everyone. You seem to make an effort with people . . . I’m kind of wondering how you do it.”

  Lisbet didn’t say anything for about a minute. “It’s easy, Astrid.” I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t. We both stared at Lisbet’s face in the mirror.

  “It’s easy . . . what?”

  “It’s easier, I mean. It’s easier for me to be nice than to not be nice. Do you remember Griffin Hammett?” Griffin Hammett was Lisbet’s boyfriend for the majority of the time she was at Bristol. We only overlapped briefly at that school, so I only knew about him from the letters Lisbet wrote me. Lisbet and I had a one-sided correspondence. She liked to write letters and send them in the actual mail. She and my grandfather are probably the last people in the world who do things like that. She would write me letters about all sorts of stupid stuff like “I ate a salad” and “If you can remember, please answer my question from my last letter. I really need to know how to spell his name so I can tell my doctor.” More and more the letters were about Griffin Hammett. And because she’s Lisbet, the letter might say, “Have I told you about Griffin, my boyfriend of two years?” Griffin visited Lisbet at the estate the summer after my first year and her last year at Bristol. I was just passing through for a week before my parents sent me to Australia. Griffin was sleeping in the guesthouse—the very same house I was standing in right then. My first impression of him at school and at the Krieger Estate was that he was relatively harmless, but he had an annoying way of telling you how he did something once just slightly better than you. If there was wine served with dinner, Griffin would say, “My parents love that bottle, though they normally drink the 1990.” Or, “Spain is nice, but for an authentic Spanish experience you should really go to Portugal.” Or, “Your pants have two legs in them. Well, my pants have three legs in them. Four, even.” He was annoying, but who cared, right? I wasn’t the one writing his last name next to my first name surrounded by a cloud of loopy hearts on every piece of paper in sight.