Firecracker (17 page)

I
t was just a goddamn pool. It got deep, sure, but just seven feet. It was big, though. The pool was giant from end to end.

Thirty seconds had passed since I'd heard the splash. It felt like an hour, but it likely took us much less time than that to run fifty feet. Noah was an awkward runner, but he wasn't slow.

My grandfather's wheelchair lay on its side at the edge of the pool. One of the wheels—the little one up front—had somehow fallen off and now was bobbing in the middle of the pool. I turned to the pool and saw the skeletal figure of the Honorable Montgomery Krieger of Connecticut floating facedown. Grandpa wore the long sort of pajamas that men wore in silent movies. The kind with the butt flap.

There wasn't too much light out there, and when a cloud passed over the moon, my grandpa's floating figure didn't look like a person at all. He wasn't shaking or struggling. He was just going down. Down into the water. And as the figure moved farther underwater, I could make out Grandpa's wrinkly, spotted, fat head. Grandpa wasn't trying to grab any air or anything. He was just going down.

Just going down.

 

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

 

We once had a summer compound near the Cape in Massachusetts. My grandfather had a sailboat and there was this guy, Captain Steve, and he was supposed to teach us how to sail. My grandfather was disappointed that my dad wasn't good with knots. He wanted to make sure that Lisbet, Fritz, and I were knot prodigies. There is a ton more involved in sailing, I have to assume, but as far as we were concerned, the whole thing came down to knots. It was boring. Lisbet cared. I didn't. Fritz didn't.

I think at that point, I was into fencing, or at least I had this épée that I would carry around with me. I liked to slice it through the air and point it at people and make demands. Fritz wanted one too, and when he got one, we would fence in the underneath part of the boat, where there was a room and a bar and couches. “The underneath part” is a technical sailboating term. Also, the front of the boat is called the “bow” and the back of the boat is called the “back part.” I was and am no expert on boats.

It began to rain, so I was perfectly fine staying in the underneath part to keep dry. Captain Steve or Something could pilot the boat to shore without my help. Fritz worried that there was no room down there for a proper fencing match. “I can't stab anything down here,” he said. So he decided to take things upstairs.

I didn't want to go upstairs. I didn't want to get wet from the rain, and I didn't want to hear anything more about how to pilot a rig, or whatever sailors talked about. But there was really no way for me to prove my superiority as a fencer if I didn't see the end to that particular bout.

I climbed the stairs, tilted the trapdoor up, and stepped on the deck just in time to catch a bucketful of rain on my head and hear the splash and cry of Fritz falling into the water. I looked over the edge of the boat to see him hitting at the ocean with his palms first. He kept his head above for a little bit. The water was choppy from the storm and the waves pushed him farther away from the boat. And then he couldn't keep his head above the waves.

 

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

 

Noah knelt at the edge of the pool. He didn't move to jump into the water.

“Somebody? Hello! Somebody? Help!”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You can't swim.”

“I can't swim!” Noah's face was red, and he was beginning to look panicked. I stared at the water, feeling my body tremble.

“Can you swim?” Noah yelled.

“Yes! Of course!” But I didn't jump in. “I can . . . but I'm scared.”

“You're not scared of anything! You said that!” His voice was getting increasingly louder with every word.

“Well, guess what? I'm a liar. I'm a liar, and I'm scared of water. Okay?” I was screaming at him by that point. “My brother's dead; my grandpa's in the pool. You can't swim. I'm scared, okay?”

“You're not a liar. You're not afraid of anything.” Then he looked at me for a final second and said the thing I'd all but forgotten: “You're Astrid Krieger!”

“Call someone,” I yelled. “Get help or something. Go!”

“What are you going to do?” Noah asked.

“I'm jumping in.” And I jumped in as Noah ran to the front of the house, yelling for help.

 

 

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

 

There are these moments where you can't always figure out if you're doing the best thing. You just do the thing that happens. Does that make sense? Sometimes you don't actually make those little decisions at all: if you're going to take your shoes off before you jump in, if you're going to be able to pull him up, if you know what to do at all.

The water was cold, and it was hard to see under there. The pool lights were off most nights. I had to just wave my arms around until I felt something. Eventually I felt a limb. An arm. A leg, maybe. I wasn't sure. I didn't know how long I was under the water. A few seconds. A minute. I felt like I needed to breathe, but I also needed to grab and pull because my grandfather was drowning down there and no one else was there to do anything about it.

I hated the water.

I pulled at his leg, or his arm, or whatever, and I opened my eyes when I could breathe again. I felt around for the way back up and somehow managed to pull both my grandfather and myself over to the edge of the pool. I lifted myself out, over the stone, holding onto the senator's chest with my other arm while keeping his head above the surface. When I was completely out of the pool, I could lean over the side and pull my grandfather's whole body to the concrete around the pool. I have no idea how I was able to do that.

I didn't know CPR, so I just pounded on Grandpa's chest. It seemed like the right thing to do. I pounded a few times, and I put my ear close to his mouth. I heard the sound of his shallow, raspy breathing. It wasn't a hearty, full,
I want to live, dammit!
cry, but it meant he was breathing. I breathed too. I laughed a little. It wasn't a perfect situation, but he'd been drowning, and then he was alive, and that's what the point of jumping in was.

I looked at the senator lying there, breathing his shallow breaths, and I couldn't help but think for a minute that the one I jumped in after—the one I saved—wasn't my grandfather at all. In my confused state, for a moment I believed it was Fritz that I'd pulled out of the water.

It had happened the same way with Fritz. I was the only one who could get to him. Everyone had been on the far side of the boat or underneath the main cabin. By the time they got there, Fritz was gone. I was the only one who could have jumped in and saved him. But I hadn't jumped in after Fritz. It had been raining, and there were waves, and the boat was moving fast, and more importantly, I just didn't. I didn't used to be afraid of the water, but I was after that. I saw Fritz go under, and he never came up again.

T
here are a lot of places to go in a hospital if you don't want to be found. I chose a room where a woman was recovering from having things shoved in her boobs and stuffed in her lips. It wasn't pretty (which I'm sure was the opposite of her intention). She didn't want me in the room, but she was unable to actually tell me to leave (because of the stuff in her lips). It was for the best. In the future—advice to everyone—if there's a wet girl in a fancy dress covered in mud and scratches, with eye makeup running down her face and neck, and she's sitting in your hospital room, leave it alone. Let whatever happens happen.

I sat there quietly for a while. The lady in the room tried to say something, possibly, “Are you okay?” She said it in between her gross lips, though, so she could've been saying anything. I was okay.

Hours before, I'd been in the ambulance with my grandfather. I was yelling at him. I was yelling as loud as I could. “Did you jump in the pool? What were you trying to do? You knew you wouldn't be able to get yourself out. What if I hadn't come home? Who was going to help you? What were you trying to do? Was it on purpose?”

Grandpa answered in an uncharacteristically quiet voice: “Puppy, it's just . . . the world turned and flung me.” Then he laughed and wheezed and coughed this horrible sound, like he was spitting up a mouthful of needles.

He didn't want to tell me why he jumped in the pool. I never found out whether or not he did it on purpose. I can't say I'm positive he was trying to die, but an elderly man who can't move his legs usually doesn't get that close to a pool.

His only answer was that the world had flung him. He made an excuse. He laid out an alibi. He told me it was the world's fault.

The other thing I kept thinking about was what Noah had said: “He told me that you've turned out better than he could ever be.” Something about that felt weird. And not just because that wasn't my grandfather's style.

I walked out to the lobby; I was still dripping wet, a fact that everyone kept noticing and pointing out. If the members of my family all had one thing in common, it was real A+ skill in noticing whether or not someone was dry and pointing it out as if it were news. “Did you know you're wet, Astrid?” they all said. Then Vivi said, “I'm glad you're okay,” but she probably thought that's what she was supposed to say.

Noah was fiddling with the Coke machine around the corner from the lobby. There was something I'd figured out, and I knew it was time to confront him.

“You knew my grandfather,” I said.

“You must be freezing,” he said.

“You worked there, right?”

As I wandered through the hospital to the Botox lady's room earlier, I saw a male nurse banging on a copy machine, fighting a paper jam in front of a tower of manila folders of records. At that instant, in my memory, I could see Noah doing pretty much the same thing. He was in a dress shirt and nice pants. I'd seen him at a photocopy machine and at a coffee machine. He'd been in an office. And I'd been in that office. He was copying a—what was it—a check or something.

“Yes,” he said. He looked pained, like he'd been punched in the face.

“You met my grandfather before. He said of course he knew you. And you used to work for my father.”

“It's not what you think.”

“It's not? Because I think you weren't supposed to be at my high school at all. I think you work for my family. And you came there because it was part of your job. Someone paid you to go to Cadorette. To keep an eye on me. Did my family pay you to be my friend?”

“Okay. It's, um . . . it's what you think. But you don't understand. Let me explain . . . ”

And then I felt something wet running down my face. I was crying, just like anyone else in the world might have done in that moment. I couldn't talk, I was shaking so much. Everything hurt so much.

“Sit down,” Noah whispered. He took off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders. Then he let one of his hands linger on my shoulder.

“No!” I said. “Don't touch me. You're a liar.”

“I know. That's what I said.”

And then I paused for a long time, trying to catch my breath. The tears just kept on coming. I hated crying. I avoided it at all costs. But it was a release. It made me feel better. I started to see the appeal. “Why is everyone who likes me either fake or dead? Huh?”

And then I could finally purge myself of what I'd been crying about in the first place. “I don't want him to die, Noah.”

Noah leaned in to hold me again, which was the wrong move because when he got close enough, I punched him in the face.

BAM!

He flew back against the Coke machine. He raised his hands in front of his face to cover it, but I was able to get around them. I only stopped when I felt one of the hospital security guards pull me away. Even then, I probably connected a few more.

“You know, I trusted you,” I said. “And I don't trust anyone.”

 

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

 

I wanted to get away. There was no reason I needed to sit in a hospital all night. In my hand were Noah's car keys from his suit jacket. I hadn't even noticed I'd grabbed them until I had them in my hand. And I must've had them in my hand the whole time I was hitting him. It had probably made it hurt more, and I was okay with that.

I found Noah's big-penis car and opened the door. Driving couldn't be that hard. I thought of all the people who managed to do it every single day. Most of those people had to have been idiots because most people
were
idiots. I put the key in the ignition and turned. It was easy. I had no idea why I hadn't tried it before. Then I moved the thing next to the thing. You know, that thing you pull to move from Park to Drive. I managed that with no problem.

And one second later:

SLAM!

The car hit the bumper of an ambulance. It made a loud crunching sound. That was pretty much the end of my driving career.

I got out of the car and immediately was blinded by a lot of bright lights. I couldn't see what was behind them, but they were moving at me. Running at me. Maybe ten of them, all white. It was only when they were practically touching my face that I could see where they were coming from. The lights belonged to television cameras. There were a million things happening that night, and now some stupid reporter was going to turn my collision with an ambulance into news. Goddamn news. What a worthless idea. Why would I be news to anyone?

“I did it,” I said. “I hit an ambulance. There. Are you all happy?”

A woman in a business suit put a microphone in front of my face. I had to squint to even tell what it was. I couldn't see the woman's face. She could have been deformed, for all I saw. She could've had a giant Cyclops eye, which would've been awesome. She said, “How are you going to remember your grandfather?”

“What?” I asked. It was not me at my most quotable.

“Montgomery Krieger's death has affected people all over the country. All over the world. But he was your grandfather. What would you like people to know about him?”

That was how I found out. I didn't have the time to think about what I wanted people to know about him. He wasn't a good man, but the Kriegers aren't good people. I always thought he wanted me to be just like him, but it turned out
he
no longer wanted to be just like him, so he placed himself alone and helpless in the middle of a giant kidney-shaped pool. That's not what I told the news, though. I just said, “He's . . . he's dead?” Then the tears started again. I couldn't last five minutes in my plan to never cry again.

The camera tilted down, and I could see the reporter's face. She had a lousy stupid job to do, but I don't think she had planned to break that kind of news to me. She put the microphone down and quietly said, “I'm sorry.” And then she hugged me. This stranger hugged me into her shoulder. She was probably a mother. A good one, unlike the one I was familiar with. I got snot all over her jacket, and she didn't even care.

She turned to the other reporters and said, “Not now, guys.” The newspeople turned around, and all the bright white lights went away.

 

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

 

I wasn't on some search for how to change my life. I didn't read books about it. In fact, I wasn't reading books at all. This was the first book I ever finished reading—the book you are reading right now.

I wasn't looking for change, because I'd always liked who I was. I'd been called a lot of horrible things in my life, but it never really made a difference to me because I have always been pretty much thrilled with myself. That makes me different from probably ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine percent of other seventeen-year-olds. I don't know a lot of other people my age that well, but I can just tell that they all pretty much hate themselves. Every morning they look in the mirror and they take a deep breath and all they can do is think about how much they want to vomit at their own reflections.

I hate that I'm so fat and I have so many pimples and my breath stinks and I'm not very smart or I am too smart and no one likes someone who's too smart and my feet are big and I'm super gay and everyone hates this dress,
they might say. Is that about right? I'm guessing, but I think that's pretty much what most seventeen-year-old people say to themselves.

Not me, though.

I'd always woken up every morning and looked in the mirror, or one of many mirrors that I had hanging around (yeah, I had a lot of mirrors), and I thought about how great it was that I was Astrid Krieger. I'd always thought I was pretty lucky on that point. It was about as great as you would think it would be. Which was pretty great.

But for the first time, I wondered if I was wrong about myself.

The only light I saw apart from the hospital, which was lit pretty well, was a little orange glow under the emergency room awning. It was Vivi and her cigarette. I walked toward that beacon.

“Do you want to take a walk?” she asked when I'd joined her on the bench she was sitting on.

Although I didn't particularly want to, I nodded. We circled the parking lot together.

“Is that the boy's car?” she wanted to know.

“Yes. But I'm sure he's earned a new one. I hope Grandpa paid up before he kicked it.”

“Why can't you ever make things easy, Astrid?”

“I try to make things as easy as I can.”

“For yourself. Not for anyone else.”

I'd heard that argument before, but it had been a while since I'd heard it from Vivi. “I've changed.”

She laughed. “You should probably be out of range of the stolen car when you try to convince me you've changed.”

“I have changed. I've done all sorts of good things. A list of them. An actual list, for Dean Rein. I may have done bad things in my day. But I am not a bad person.”

“We're all bad people, Astrid. Every one of us.”

I disagreed, but Vivi shared my penchant for making ridiculous statements, so I let it go. “Why don't we ever talk like this anymore?” she wanted to know. She started another one of her menthol cigarettes.

“We never talked, period.”

“No. We talked. Things used to be different.” I knew my mother well enough to know that sentence was close as she would ever come to telling me she cared or to talking about the bad things we were going through. I mean, if Fritz was actually named Things Used to Be Different Krieger, we would have talked about him all the time instead of, you know, never.

“Your grandfather didn't hire that boy to hurt you,” she said.

I was glad we weren't going to pretend for the rest of our lives that someone wasn't paid to go with me to the homecoming dance. Because that's not something that happened to everyone.

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”

“It's true. He's been sick for a long time, you know. He wanted to have someone looking out for you.”

“I can look out for myself.”

“Don't I know it. Monty said you would figure it out in the end.”

“Not fast enough.”

“Well, he bet me a thousand bucks that you would put it together. Now that you did, though, I don't have to pay him. Because he's dead. Good for me. I'm sorry. Gallows humor. I used to work in a hospital.”

“I'm sure you were hilarious, Vivi.”

“Don't be sarcastic. It gives you face lines.”

“Why did he do it, then? Why did he hire Noah?”

“Probably because you get away with everything. You make messes. We can't trust you, Astrid. We never know what phone call we're going to get next. We have to live our lives.”

“You live your lives all the time. Everyone lives their lives. And that's all I want. Let me live my life.”

Vivi laughed. “When have I stopped you from living your life however you wanted? My head hurts from you living your life however you want. You're almost eighteen. You're almost your own problem. In a few months, you're free to dig your own ditch and fall in it.”