Free Firecracker by David Iserson Page B

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    When I saw the all-new, blond Talia Pasteur with her stupid-looking mime makeup the week before, I felt a combination of shock and confusion. It was like trying to do a really hard math problem while also trying to swing on a trapeze. I may be overselling my feelings, but it was overwhelming given that I arrived at a bunch of very different conclusions all at once. Talia Pasteur had been planning her haircut and her eye makeup for months, maybe even years. Talia was ready to blossom—like when a tree becomes a butterfly. For whatever reason, Talia waited until I was out of the picture to make this big life change. That wasn’t a coincidence. I decided that Talia Pasteur had wanted me out of Bristol. She was the person who set me up.
    I had other suspects, sure. Others had wanted me gone. My grandfather has a phrase for people like us: “Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown.” You may have heard that before. He didn’t make it up (though he claims he did). What it means is if you are, say, Astrid Krieger, and life as Astrid Krieger is thoroughly and completely awesome, you should still watch out. It can be a pain in the neck (you know, because of that heavy crown). It’s not all lollipops and rocket ships. People very often don’t like me. (I know. Shocking.) Luckily for me, though, the people who haven’t liked me have rarely been smart or clever.
    I first suspected Whitney Brown of setting me up. My first year at Bristol, Whitney was running for freshman class student representative. She had a prominent unibrow and fingers like a lizard. I had known her since I was two, when we would quietly play with blocks and think about how much we hated each other. I remember her calling my stuffed bear “learning disabled.”
    Student government elections are a lot different at Bristol than they probably are at your school. At public school, someone’s mom does her posters with Magic Marker. At Bristol, it’s this whole thing with professional printers and attack ads. So Whitney Brown’s father was actually running for Senate against my grandfather that same year and his stupid slogan was One Choice, One Connecticut, Carl Preston Brown. He lost. But not before Whitney ran for class president. So Whitney used the same printer and the same design, and her posters were supposed to say One Choice, One Year, Whitney Brown. I spent a late night wandering through campus and blacking out certain letters on her posters (specifically, Choice On ar Whitney and n ) so her campaign slogan became One Eye Brow. She had like a thousand of those posters printed, and she was super angry. (She shouldn’t have been because she actually won. People loved voting for “One Eyebrow.” And I didn’t care either way.) Do you want to know how she tried to get me back? By hanging a bucket of water over my door. Seriously. If her plan had been executed perfectly, I would have opened my door and the bucket of water would have fallen on my head. And then what? I’d have gotten a little wet. Who cares? I could just dry myself and change clothes in my room, which is where the bucket-holding door was. Straight-up amateur hour. I decided that there was no way Whitney set me up. She never could have been so innovative.
    What was just so unbelievable about Talia Pasteur is that she tried to get me kicked out of Bristol and succeeded. I honestly didn’t think she had it in her. I would have admired her if I wasn’t so mad at her. I never thought much of Talia at Bristol. I certainly didn’t hate her. We weren’t friends, but she was the closest thing to a friend I had. When I was stealing term papers or buying fireworks, she was usually there. Talia wasn’t my enemy. I didn’t understand why I was her enemy. We weren’t equals. I was the shark and she was the little fish sharks barely even notice. Why would she have wanted me out