Firecracker (11 page)

“I didn't know you had a brother.”

“Why would you? No one talks about him very much anymore.”

“You and your brother aren't close?”

“We were really close. I loved my brother, like more than I loved anyone. He had dark hair like me. We dark-haired kids were like a separate team. I convinced him that we were adopted from the same birth parents—a family of coal miners from West Virginia. Most kids would be really upset if they thought they were adopted, but Fritz liked the mystery. I told him the coal-mining McNutters were raising eight kids, but they had eight more that they had to farm out elsewhere. They could only afford every other kid, and so they sold the extras to rich families, and Vivi paid a million dollars for each of us. Also, the McNutters were descended from gypsies, and they practiced black magic, and one of our long-lost siblings was a serial killer from Texas known as the Alphabet Slasher. It's hard to find a lot of five-year-olds who would laugh at a story about a long-lost brother who stabs prostitutes in alphabetical order, but Fritz was a good kid. And then Vivi got really angry when she heard about our stories and she was like, ‘If you were adopted, Astrid, please explain this.' Then she lifted the bottom of her blouse and showed off her cesarean scar. So I told Fritz, ‘The Alphabet Slasher strikes again.'”

I started laughing at the story because it was one of my favorites, but when I looked over at Noah, he put his hand gently on my shoulder. “What happened to Fritz, Astrid?”

“He died. He drowned when he was five.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. It was my fault.”

“No, that's not fair. Of course it wasn't your fault. You were a kid.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It's not fair. Let's go somewhere, okay?” I slid off the rocket ship. “I'm not opposed to the idea of ice cream.”

N
oah drove up Route 7 until we found a fast-food restaurant. There was no actual indoor part to the place, except where they cooked the food. It was a restaurant, but you had to stay in your car. I'd never been to one. Noah was incredulous.

“You've never been to this one?” he said.

And I said, “No. I've never been to
any
one. Not this chain of restaurants. Not any other fast-food place. Ever.” My grandfather hated fast food. He described the concept as “the unwashed masses served with unwashed hands.”

That the whole country was filled with food served fast and I'd never experienced it was the craziest thing Noah had ever heard. “But you eat horrible food all the time. I've seen you,” he said.

“I know,” I agreed. “But you can get horrible food anywhere. Even nice places.”

There was a large board with the menu on it on the outside of the restaurant. I was kind of shocked by how cheap everything was. I'd been to lots of convenience stores and was even arrested for robbing one (or two or seven, misunderstandings all), but I'd never thought you could get an entire meal for three dollars. It was more expensive at the school cafeteria. I could buy a burger for everyone parked at the restaurant with one bill from my wallet, and not even the largest bill.

I pressed the button on the menu board that said
Press here to order,
but nothing happened. There was just a pop of white noise coming out of the speaker. I waved over a boy about my age. He was wearing a paper hat and an apron covered in ketchup, like he just murdered someone in the kitchen.

“How does this work?” I asked.

“Um, here's a list of food that we have. Here are the prices. And then you pick the food that you want, and then you say what you want, and then you pay me, and then I bring the food,” the guy in the apron said.

“No. I know how a menu works. How do you order into this thing?” But that even confused the guy more. “Forget it. I want a vanilla milk shake, a large water for the missus—”

“Thanks,” Noah said.

“And french fries and um . . . twenty-three burgers.”

“Twenty-three? Two-three?”

“Two-three.”

Noah and I didn't want to sit in the car because not being cramped was the exact reason that we had left my home in the first place. We tried to sit on the hood of the car, but it buckled under our weight, so we sat on the curb in front of the car instead.

“You know,” Noah said, “buying all of these people burgers probably isn't really a good deed. It's not like it's going to help them. It's just a treat.”

“But it's not a bad thing, is it?”

“No. It isn't.”

“I'm going to count it.”

A familiar car was parked three spaces away from us in the parking lot. The voices coming from the car were also familiar. I could hear some laughter and snippets of my name and references to Noah, whom they were calling “Spaz Face.” I figured that this was the sort of place where the kids from Cadorette liked to drive and yell things at each other. It was probably popular for the same reason that we were there in the first place—because if you kept on driving, you'd eventually find it. Noah and I must have made for an interesting couple, but the sound of their laughter didn't make my face feel hot like it had before. The hot face must have come from feeling out of place, and I wasn't out of place. I liked talking with Noah. And Noah never cared about people laughing.

“Sometimes, people don't realize high school isn't forever,” Noah said. “But things will of course be okay later.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because soon I'll be doing what I want to do.”

“And what's that?” I asked.

I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. I think he worried I was going to make fun of him. “I want to be a journalist.” He took a sip of his water and waited. When I didn't say anything, he stared at me. “You have no opinion on my career aspirations, Astrid?”

“Nope,” I said. “I don't read.”

“It's what I've always wanted to do. I used to look at newspapers before I could even really understand them. I would figure out the connections between the words and the pictures. I liked it. I liked how words made me feel.”

I didn't really want to laugh at him, but that was funny, so I couldn't help it. “You must have had so many friends. They'd come over. You'd talk about how words felt.”

“I think we both know that didn't happen too much,” he said.

“Yes. Duh.”

“You must have felt that way about . . . What are you passionate about?” He looked at my face for some sort of clue, but I was careful not to give anything away. “Hitting people?”

“No. Lots of things. I don't know.”

“Are you going to college?” he wanted to know.

“I don't know.”

“Have you applied?”

“Why? Is it hard to get into college?”

“Sometimes. For some people.”

“Not for someone like me, though. Is that what you're saying?”

Noah looked like he was trying not to say anything that would make me mad. “My parents weren't good with money,” he said. “It's my responsibility to find a way to do it for myself. It's hard. I don't like it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being like you, but you don't have to worry about it. Your family's full of all those oil barons and senators.”

“And a princess,” I said.

“What?”

“My great-great-aunt was the princess of Austria.”

“Right. Anyway, it's been harder for me than I wish. Even if I get in somewhere, I need a scholarship.”

And then our food came.

I knew what Noah was trying to say, and I knew he thought that I didn't often consider my future after high school (whichever high school it happened to be), but of course I did. However, when I thought about my future, it was a lot more about what I didn't want than what I wanted.

My parents were happy with Lisbet and her life, so that was probably what they wanted for me too. Living at home, marrying some guy, and soon enough having roughly three babies named Satchel, Jerushah, and Gretel (this is what Lisbet planned on naming her eventual children). When I pictured my future, I didn't picture a husband. I definitely didn't picture children, and I didn't have names for them (other than Childrens Krieger, of course).

I thought about my grandfather and how powerful he was, and there was something to that. I liked that if he wanted something, he didn't have to change the world to get it. The world changed for him. If that doesn't make sense to you, then you probably will never be a powerful person. Nobody ever told my grandfather how he should behave or what he should or shouldn't think. If he wanted something, people found a way to give it to him. It all goes back to that painting: “Never let anyone stop you from having everything you want.”

That concept appealed to me. But my grandfather had always said that to be like him, I would have to be exactly like him. Live his life over, basically. Like him, I went to Bristol. But I wasn't interested in the rest of his life. Like him, he would want me to go to Harvard, then join the navy, then work for the family business, and then run for Senate. It was a source of frustration that, since I was a female and it was not 1943, it would be impossible for me to kill as many Japanese as he did in World War II. “There were no dames on my PT boat,” he would say. “I'm not saying it's impossible, but to do it right, you'll need a time machine and a sex change.”

As for college? I didn't know. I knew I didn't want to work for Krieger Industries—partially because none of the employees ever really looked like they wanted to be there, and also I'd never been interested in making things designed to blow people up. I'm by no means a people person, but I'm also not a dead-people person. When I thought about my future, I didn't have all the details, but it looked something like this:

“I like New York as a city,” I said. “I like cities in general. And I have never lived in one. I like that everything is right there in a city, but you can also stay inside and shut the door and be alone. I imagine a big apartment, but I actually don't need it to be that big. When my mother calls, I won't have to answer. I could even change my name so nobody could find me, though I like ‘Astrid Krieger,' so I probably won't follow through on that. I would have the food I want. The TV I want. The geography I want. And no one else will bother me about anything. I imagine that sort of life as happy. Well, maybe not happy, but better.”

“Isn't that more or less what you have right now?”

“No. Now I have to live here and go to school.”

“What you're talking about isn't a future,” Noah said. “Maybe that's an afternoon, but it's not enough. And it's actually kind of sad.”

“Sorry,” I said. “But it's my plan for me. You can do whatever you want.”

“But what about friends?”

“I have no use for friends. Never have.”

“What about me?” he said. “Are we friends?” Writing it down, it sounds a little desperate, but it didn't sound that way then.

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“What about a job? You have to have a job.”

“I don't have to have a job.”

“Eventually, you do.”

“Why?”

“Because that's what people do. This place is hiring.” He pointed to a Help Wanted sign affixed to the kitchen. The sign showed a smiling milk shake filling out an application.

“I think I'm more qualified for something that couldn't be done by a milk shake with eyes. Plus, that milk shake looks just like the milk shake on the sign. That's obviously how he got the job.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Nepotism.”

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

The burgers didn't look very much like their picture, but that probably explained why they were only a dollar. They looked like brown mush in between white mush. But even at their best, that's kind of what burgers are. The boy in the paper hat gave them to me in three white bags, and I passed them out. There were truck drivers and old men and a mother with a little girl and everyone was more than happy to have a free burger. Well, maybe not happy. More like confused. But they were willing to take them. And that's sort of like happiness.

The car with all the laughing was different. Of course, there was the red-faced kid with the beer shirt. And there was another guy who was just in a wrestling onesie. And there was a skinny girl with slumped shoulders and sunglasses that she was wearing even though it was nighttime. And another girl with a face of freckles and big hair. And of course Summer Wonder was there, as it was her car.

“The two of you make a beautiful couple,” she said to me and Noah when I walked up to her car. And she said it in such a way as to ensure we knew that she didn't mean a single word of the sentence. I even doubted the “two of you” part, for a second. Like, maybe there were suddenly three of us. Her tone was that opposite from what she really meant.

But I looked at Noah, and I didn't feel bad about being with him at all. “Burger?” I offered.

Summer looked at her friends, then back to me. “What did you do to it?”

“Nothing. That's just how they make burgers here.”

“I don't want your burger,” she said. But when she looked back at her friends for the second time, there appeared to be a mutiny.

“They're free?” Beer Shirt asked.

I nodded.

“Sweet,” he said, dipping his hand in the bag. “Can I have two?” He took two, then pulled one out for everyone else in the car.

Summer Wonder looked at her burger in a cunning way, like she was going to mash it up and wipe it in my hair in a repeat of the Twinkie incident, but then she didn't. She didn't say “Thanks,” but she ate the burger. It was a small victory.

I finished my milk shake as Noah drove me back to my place. It was there in the car that I had an idea. “You know,” I told him, “what I'm doing right now could actually be my job.”

“Which part?” he said.

“Like when I gave out the burgers. I could do that. But for a living.”

“That's not really a job. That would cost money.”

“Not every job is for money. I could be like a charity person or the pope, but on a slightly smaller scale.”

“You know, a lot of people do good things all the time. But they do other things for jobs.”

“Not like me, though. I'm going to do it so much better. I'm going to do a really good job. A great job.”

“And you're going to help people in need, or you're still going to try to fix me?”

“Oh, you're in need,” I said. “You are in desperate need.”

Noah laughed a little, but I could tell he wasn't positive whether I was making a joke. (I wasn't.) “What are you going to do?”