Firecracker (9 page)

“Of course,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

N
oah waited for me outside of gym class.

“You know, I never mentioned it, but I thought it was pretty cool you came to Lucy's birthday. She kept saying, ‘Can you believe Astrid Krieger came to my birthday party?'”

“Yes, I am wildly exciting.”

Noah laughed.

Then he got a little nervous and asked, “Can I walk you to lunch?”

I was about to say,
No, I know how to get there myself, thank you,
but I still didn't know how to get there myself. And surprisingly, I didn't mind the idea of someone walking me. That day, Noah was wearing a blue tuxedo jacket and a grey T-shirt. It took some of the attention off me. And it was way better than walking with Pierre. Noah was very polite in a way that not a lot of people were, particularly Pierre.

“Did you do the homework?” Noah asked as we walked.

“No.”

“You don't know which homework I was referring to.”

“But I'll save you some time. I didn't do it.” If you didn't do your homework at Cadorette, no one seemed to care. The teachers didn't really expect you to do any of the homework, and most of them seemed focused on other things like their divorces. Ninety percent of the teachers at Cadorette had red eyes and couch lines on their faces: telltale signs that their marriages were breaking up.

We walked into the cafeteria. Lunch never changed. The pizza just got older. The indignities piled up. That day, my lunch table wasn't even there. I scanned the crowded cafeteria to check if Summer Wonder's table was now twice as wide. It wasn't, but everyone there was stealing glances at me and laughing, as they tended to do.

“We could sit outside,” Noah offered.

“It's raining.”

“Yeah.” He walked over to the filthy empty space where the table once lived. Lucy carried over her lunch tray and took a seat on the floor as if she wasn't expecting a table to be there in the first place. “Well, are you too good to sit on the floor?” Noah asked with a sly grin.

“Honestly,” I said, “I think I am.”

“You shouldn't let it bother you,” Noah said. Then he too sat on the floor.

“Why shouldn't I? It seems like exactly the kind of thing I should be bothered by.” My dress was a fairly complicated collection of purples and greens, lace and buckles. I was very pleased about it when I put it on that morning, but as I hunkered down among the dust bunnies and ants, it felt less like an outfit and more like a contraption. Once I shoved the bulk of it under me, it offered a nice cushion and back support, and the colors were practically blinding against the greys and beiges of the walls and floor. So in that case, it was still successful clothing.

“It could be worse. At my old school, these guys would kick me in the backpack when I walked down the hall. Or someone would lean their hand in from behind my head and flick the back of my ear. It sounds like no big deal, but it hurts.”

I felt a damp coldness spread over the top of my legs and looked down to see a wet orange puddle spreading across the fabric over my lap. “Uh,” I said. “This is worse.”

Noah looked concerned and looked over to Lucy. Lucy said, “Oh . . .”

“What? No. I didn't pee on myself.” I reached underneath my legs. “I sat on my juice box and the straw points up.”

They both laughed, but it wasn't a mean laugh. I found it less funny than they did, as I was wet and without a juice box.

Noah looked off to the back of the room as if catching someone's eye. “I'll get you another one,” he said, seeming distracted. He walked out in a rush through the far door to the cafeteria—which was in the opposite direction of the place where he could buy another juice box.

I motioned to Lucy. “Follow me.”

We stayed a few paces behind Noah as he moved into the hallway. Two guys in black T-shirts—one short, one tall—got behind him really close. Noah took a step. The short one stepped on his heel. And then the tall one smacked Noah on the back of the head. And then the short one hit him again. And Noah just kept walking. He didn't do anything. For the life of me, I could not figure it out. Noah looked pained, like he wished everyone would just stop bothering him. I also wore that expression a lot. It was only when he turned his head and saw me that he acted with any real urgency. He moved quickly and the other guys moved after him but not quickly enough. When Lucy and I turned the corner, Noah and the guys in the black shirts had vanished.

I spun around in a circle to see if someone had disappeared behind me, but the hallway had begun to get crowded with people, and I didn't recognize anyone other than Lucy, who was looking at me anxiously as if awaiting instruction. “Lucy, do you know how I told you I had a skill for figuring out how someone is useful?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, didn't you wonder how you're useful?”

“Sure. That'd be nice to know.”

If I were inclined toward honesty, I'd tell Lucy that she was just about as useful as a carrot in a knife fight. I couldn't say that, but I wasn't going to lie to her either. She did have a particular talent. “It's information,” I said.

“Information?”

“You know who everyone is and what everyone does. No one can make a plan without information. It's very valuable.” Of course, she was completely useless at observing anything that happened to herself—not only was she still eating her hair, but there was a scab on her arm that she couldn't leave the hell alone—but I couldn't expect her to be perfect.

“Very valuable?” she asked hopefully.

“For instance, I actually need some information now. So I've come to the right place.”

Lucy was giddy. “Go. Ask me anything.”

“Who were those guys smacking Noah around the hall?”

“I don't know,” she said. I wiped my closed eyes, trying hard to not show my annoyance.

“Information. Think, Lucy. This is how you're useful.”

“Sorry. This has been happening. I think some people just don't like Noah.”

“Yes, but why?”

“I don't know. There are people who like to make things hard for new kids at Cadorette.”

“Yes, I'm aware. I just tried to eat lunch on the floor, and the entire lower half of my body is covered in juice. But why Noah?”

“I heard someone say he looks like the 1970s threw up on his shirt.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That was me.”

“He's just different. You're different too. People don't like that. It makes them mad.”

“Who were the guys following him? Who's the short guy with the long chestnut hair like a lovely pony? The one wearing a black T-shirt with Satan leading a line of people into a meat grinder?”

Lucy thought about it for a moment, weighing ideas. “His name is Lance, but people call him Melty.”

“Because of his skin?”

“He likes to melt things.”

“Of course. And the other one? Tall with curly hair?”

She paused for a moment. “I don't know,” she said, but something in her tone told me she couldn't be believed.

“I'm serious, Lucy. I already know what he looks like.”

“If I tell you, are you going to hurt him?”

“I don't know. I haven't made a plan yet.”

“Promise you won't do anything bad to him?”

“Lucy, I don't think you understand. I
have
to do something bad to him. Otherwise, no one will.” I sighed. “Lucy, do you even know why I'm here?”

She blinked a bunch of times. “Like, because of . . . God?”

“No, do you know why I'm in this school?”

“Uh-uh.”

“I used to go to the Bristol Academy. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And I got kicked out. Okay? And it was because someone went behind my back and betrayed me.”

“I thought it was because you cheated?”

“Yes. Kind of. But cheating is a complicated issue. If you had the opportunity to ask any athlete, politician, businessperson, or celebrity you really like if cheating ever helped them succeed, do you know what they would say?”

“No?” Lucy said.

“Exactly. And that would be a lie. And lying is just another form of cheating. I would still be at Bristol if someone hadn't betrayed me. And that's not right. People can't just get away with messing with people like me or you or Noah. So, I'm here to make stuff like that right, okay? And if you tell me who he is, I can take care of him. It's the right thing to do.”

“But you know what he looks like.”

“Revenge takes research and understanding. A little information is never as good as a lot of information.”

“Okay. I understand. But I just need you to promise you won't hurt him.”

Lucy wasn't ever going to understand me. It just wasn't her way. And it was very easy for me to make promises because promises were the sorts of things that you could make up and down all the livelong day, if you had no intention of keeping them. I'm positive that I promised my parents when I was thirteen that I would never curse again. Can you believe that shit?

But Lucy had caught me at a new point in my life. I was waist deep in the middle of Dean Rein's challenge. I was now trying to keep promises. “Whoever it is,” I said, “I won't hurt him.”

Lucy nodded. “His name is Mason.”

“What's the deal with him?” I said.

“He's . . . he's artistic.”

“He's autistic?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe. He painted that.”

Lucy pointed to the end of the hallway, where a mural hung. It read:
Nominate Your Homecoming King and Queen
. The painting was of a vengeful and angry king and queen standing above their fallen enemies, bloody swords in hand. The king held the heart of one of his victims. Noah's two torturers really liked bloody, dead people. I then noticed that Lucy had adopted a dreamy look when talking about Mason. It was a look I recognized from movies, similar to how Talia Pasteur looked at Pierre or Lisbet's dog looked at things he was going to pee on. Lucy and Mason would make a weird couple. I would've guessed Lucy would like someone exactly like herself, but admittedly I never totally understood love. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. Vivi ended up with my father even though she was born outside a hippie commune on the floor of a Volkswagen van, while my father literally grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth—so he would always know where it was when it was time to eat cereal or soup. Mason was very long and thin, while Lucy was short and squat. Together they would look exactly like the number 10. Well, more like the number 1o. But I couldn't give their potential coupling careful consideration just then. I'd become distracted by the homecoming nomination mural. It wasn't because I had any real interest in homecoming kings and queens. I was interested because of what was under the mural. “Hey,” I yelled across the hallway, “that's my lunch table.”

The boy behind the table wore a T-shirt for some band he was glad no one had ever heard of. The Laundry Children? The Scoliosis Twins? Something like that. The paper hanging in front of his seat at the table said that he was the student council president. Also, he was named Ben. The paper said that too.

“You stole my lunch table,” I said. “I had to sit on the floor.”

“This is a school table. It could be from anywhere.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I was the one who carved ‘Cadorette High School Sucks' right there.”

Ben shook his head. “That could've been anyone.”

“I don't think just anyone carves with such ornate calligraphy.”

“You may have a point. I'm sorry. I could give it back, but the lunch period is almost over. Perhaps you'd like to nominate someone for homecoming court instead. Because you're here and all.”

I hadn't given the homecoming dance much thought. I didn't care about any of that stuff. We didn't have homecoming at Bristol. We instead had something called Boat Days. But I was interested in the concept of homecoming queen. It had nothing to do with dresses or dancing or feeling special on the inside and outside and all that worthless crap. Pretty much, I just wanted everyone in the school to understand that I was Astrid Krieger, for godssake. I wanted people to understand what that meant. A position of royalty seemed like a good first step.

“Tell me,” I said, “this homecoming queen, does the title come with its own tiara?”

He leaned back in his chair, barely bothering to look at me. “There's a thing the queen wears on her head. Yeah.”

“Platinum?”

“I'm sure it's plastic.”

“I'm sure I could bring my own. And the throne? Do they just keep it at the front of the school and people move it around, or is there one in each classroom that the queen attends?”

He wasn't sure if I was serious or not. “Homecoming queen is just for the dance and the football game.”