Doug Larsen - A Portrait of My Grandfather

I peeled off my helmet, breathing hard. I had reduced the reality setting before previewing the packet that had killed Grampa, but it was still pretty powerful stuff. At full power, it would probably do the job on all four of those corporate guys.

It had been easy to lift that packet from Grampa’s Virtual Meadow recording and put it into my computer. I could trigger it any time I wanted. I just had to find out who deserved it.

And then I’d be done, and nobody would have a clue.

The next day in school, I followed Tiffany Montgomery from our computer class again. This time she was wearing a short, tight skirt with a leopard pattern. I wondered where anyone came up with so many skimpy skirts. I also wondered what her parents were like, to let her wear that stuff. Not that I was complaining.

Since computer class had been so boring, I’d spent the time thinking about killing Grampa’s killers. I was feeling pretty bloodthirsty about it.

My mind had wandered from Tiffany’s skirt, which was lucky. I looked to one side, and saw Bruce Heber and his friends glowering at me from the side of the hall. Instinctively, I looked down, and then caught myself and looked back at him. His face was still lumpy and puffy, with red tinges around his nose and mouth. The bloodthirsty attitude brought about by Grampa’s killers stayed with me long enough to give me some courage. I stopped walking, and looked at him.

“What’s your problem, Heber?” I said.

“What’s yours?” he shot back.

I didn’t have a snappy answer, and was keenly aware that noise had died down considerably in the hall. I scrambled for something to say.

“Any time you wanna try again, you just let me know,” I said.

He glowered at me, but didn’t say anything. I turned and walked away, my back feeling very exposed. I noticed Mary Adams and some of her friends watching with wide eyes, and it felt good. I passed a couple of other jerks who weren’t as tough as Heber, but who used to bother me sometimes. They glanced at me quickly, and looked away as they kept walking.

Johnson and Andrews were walking together, and they came up to me.

“Hi, Walters,” Johnson said.

“Hi, guys.”

They walked with me in silence for a minute. Then Andrews said, “Heber’s face looks like a roasted marshmallow.”

Johnson and I laughed in surprise. Johnson said, “It looks like someone danced the polka on it.”

I laughed again. “And the worst thing is, it looks better than it did before.”

All three of us laughed, which felt good.

“Hey,” Johnson said, “if we pick up the pace a little bit, we’ll be able to see Tiffany Montgomery from behind.”

“You’ve noticed her too?” I asked.

“Hasn’t everybody?” Andrews answered.

We all chuckled, and walked faster.

I walked home from school, feeling pretty good. I’d gone through the whole day without being bothered or humiliated—not once. I couldn’t think of the last time that happened.

I was making progress on finding Grampa’s killer. And I was ready to retaliate, as soon as I was sure of my target. The best part of it was, nobody would ever suspect a thing.

I smiled dreamily. I’d learned a lot. I’d taught myself a lot of new stuff. And I was going to kill the person who’d killed Grampa. I would have liked to tell him about it.

I slowed down, my smile fading. I could imagine myself telling Grampa all of this. But it didn’t seem right. It didn’t work in my mind. I kept picturing Grampa’s disapproving frown, which I had seen, although rarely used against me. But in my mind, it was directed at me now.

“Hmmmmmmm,” I could hear him say. “That doesn’t sound like the Greg I know. Don’t go killing anyone on my account. I don’t want that on my conscience. Or yours, either.”

I stopped walking, and kicked at the sidewalk for awhile. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it at all. I wanted them to feel what Grampa felt. I wanted revenge for how I felt. I wanted to kill them.

But the more I thought about it, I knew Grampa wouldn’t like it. And if I ever saw him again, somewhere, I wanted to be able to look him straight in the eye like I always had. And I wanted to see his crinkly smile as he looked back, two equals who had the highest possible opinion of each other.

I sighed a sigh of deep regret, and looked skywards. “OK, Grampa,” I said out loud. “I won’t kill them. I promise.”

I felt better. I hurried home, because I had a lot to do before everything was finished. I slipped past my mom with no trouble, and went up to my room. I quickly booted the computer and reached under the mattress for Grampa’s notes.

They weren’t there.

I felt around, and then lifted the mattress up. There was the lingerie catalog. I looked underneath it. Nothing. I rooted frantically under the bed, and between the bed and the wall. Nothing.

Grampa’s notes were gone.

In a panic, I tore through my room. Maybe I’d left them somewhere else, even though I knew I hadn’t. Rooted through my drawers. My God, they’re gone, who would have taken them, what does this mean? I could probably do without them now, but how could they have disappeared?

Someone knocked at my door, and I quickly shoved the drawers shut. “What?” I called.

My mom opened the door, and looked searchingly at me. “Hi,” she said.

“What?” I asked again. I’d been told that it was rude to say “Whattaya-want?” I cast my eyes over the room, trying to figure out somewhere else I might have left those pages.

Mom brought her hand out from behind her back. I stared in shock at Grampa’s notes in her hand. She held them out. “Looking for these?”

I stared at them, helpless.

“What are these?” she asked.

I worked my mouth uselessly. “What—how—”

“I found them under your mattress,” she said. “I know it’s a horrible thing for a mother to do, but I was so worried about you these days that I decided I’d see if I could find out what was going on in your life. I expected to find the lingerie catalog, but I didn’t expect to find these.”

The lingerie catalog. The implications flooded me, and I stared at her with shock and mortification. My face turned flaming hot, and I knew it was bright red. “The lingerie catalog—I —it—there’s this article—on—on—”

She smiled slightly. “Relax,” she said. She touched my flaming cheek with a cool hand. “The catalog means you’re a normal teenager. Every boy has a magazine like that, and they all hide it under their mattress. Your dad told me about the Playboy he had under his when he was your age.”

My Dad??

She showed me Grampa’s notes again. “But then I find these technical notes, with my dad’s handwriting all over them, and you’re busy on your computer all the time. What’s going on?”

I shrugged sullenly. “Nothin’. Just hacking around.”

I sat on the bed, looking at my feet. There was a long silence.

“Listen,” she said finally. “I’ve been having a hard time lately. My dad’s death has hit me real hard.”

Yeah, well, me too, I thought. But I looked at her in surprise. I didn’t think adults had problems like that.

“Some things just never made sense to me,” she went on. “At first I thought, the death of a loved one never makes sense. But I can’t get over the fact that some little things just don’t add up.” Her voice was getting a little choked up, and I quickly looked at the floor again. But she wasn’t finished. “It’s been keeping me awake at nights, it’s been keeping me from functioning normally, it’s caused problems between your father and me.” I looked at her quickly, shocked into concern. Her eyes were brimming with tears as she looked at me. “Please,” she said. “I really need to know.”