Firecracker by David Iserson

Author:David Iserson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

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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.

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