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Playlist for the Dead
Michelle Falkoff


Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note:For Sam – listen and you'll understand.Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note: For Sam – listen and you'll understand.As he listens to song after song, Sam tries to face up to what happened the night Hayden killed himself. But it's only by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he will finally be able to piece together his best friend’s story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you – and the struggle to redefine yourself.























Copyright (#ulink_b92cd78d-9f85-5096-8156-88589bd1ba65)


First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Copyright © Michelle Falkoff 2015

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015

Michelle Falkoff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008110666

Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008110673

Version: 2014-11-26


For Erik, in memory


Contents

Cover (#u888cd34f-6f77-53e1-89e9-7f98bfca9f92)

Title Page (#u0553c822-3427-552a-ae73-c2cedac7b95f)

Copyright (#u7b275e95-3f37-5ff8-bc5d-9dab353196bb)

Dedication (#u4caa5707-9239-5901-b183-bdc402a4c13e)

Chapter 1 (#u7cb15910-2c8f-5420-b045-5179055a6104)

Chapter 2 (#uaabf7e2b-333e-56a2-aae5-34ef7d17e87a)

Chapter 3 (#u2cb3d9d5-64db-50b6-987e-25deadd63188)

Chapter 4 (#ua0502e88-fade-5387-bfc8-3898b337bf2b)

Chapter 5 (#u32c79521-c4d6-5837-aad2-cc69bcb657fa)

Chapter 6 (#u7f1f086f-6fff-5308-8fcc-41d6f4590a14)

Chapter 7 (#u6dd0ee89-22c2-5958-97de-dacd958b6eb7)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


ALL MY YEARS of watching TV made me think it was possible you could find a dead body and not know it until you turned the person over and found the bullet hole or stab wound or whatever. And I guess in some ways that was right—Hayden was lying under the covers, tangled up in a bunch of his lame-ass Star Wars sheets (how old were we, anyway?), just like he always was when I slept at his house.

Hayden had always been a hard sleeper; sometimes I had to practically roll him out of bed to get him to wake up. Which wasn’t easy—he was short and kind of round, and while I’m a lot taller, I’m more of a string bean kind of guy, and when he was out cold he was hard to move. When I saw him lying there I sighed, trying to figure out how to incorporate the apology from the night before, the apology I’d come over to give him, with the apology for dumping him out of bed onto the floor.

The sound of my sigh seemed loud to me, though, and it took me a minute to figure out why: Hayden wasn’t snoring. Hayden always snored. My mom, who’s a nurse, thought he had sleep apnea; the sound of his buzzing made it all the way down the hall to her room when he stayed at my house. She kept trying to get him to talk to his mom about getting some kind of mask that would help, but I knew that would never happen. Hayden didn’t talk to his mom unless he absolutely had to, and he was even less likely to ask his dad.

The silence in the room started to freak me out. I kept trying to convince myself it was nothing, that Hayden had just found a good position to sleep in that quieted his steady drone or something, but that would have been some kind of minor miracle, and even after five years of Hebrew school I didn’t really believe in miracles.

I gave his leg a little shove. “Hayden, come on.”

He didn’t move.

“Hayden, seriously. Wake up.”

Nothing. Not even a grunt.

I was just about to grab a stormtrooper’s head and pull down the sheets when I saw the empty vodka bottle on Hayden’s desk, standing in between his laptop and his model of the Millennium Falcon, just next to where he was sleeping.

That was weird—Hayden didn’t drink at all, not even at the few parties we’d been to. And from what I could tell he hadn’t had time to take as much as a sip from the keg last night. There was no reason for that bottle to be there. Unless he’d been even more bent out of shape than I realized; he could easily have taken it out of his dad’s liquor cabinet when he got home.

I felt my stomach churn with what I realized was guilt. That must have been why he wouldn’t wake up: he was hung over. Even through my guilt, I couldn’t help but start laughing. Hayden’s first hangover—I was going to give him so much shit for this when he finally woke up. Then I’d drag him off for a greasy breakfast and we’d make up. And everything would be fine.

Now he just had to wake up.

I moved closer to the head of the bed, sniffing cautiously in case he’d puked. The air smelled like it normally did in his house: overly disinfected, the pine scent overwhelming anything else. I swear his mom must have had cleaners come in every single day. I debated whether to roll him over or just pull the pillow out from beneath his head, but just as I went for the pillow I knocked over the empty vodka bottle with my elbow. It fell to the floor with a clang, taking down some other stuff with it.

I bent over to pick it up. No need to have Hayden wake up pissed that I’d made a mess; we had enough to talk about as it was. I grabbed the bottle, and then I saw a prescription bottle next to it and grabbed that too. It was a bottle of Valium with Hayden’s mother’s name on it. And it was empty. I didn’t know how many pills were supposed to have been in there, but according to the date on the bottle, she’d filled the prescription just a couple of days before. Which meant she’d gone through a whole bottle practically overnight.

I looked at the vodka bottle.

Or Hayden had.

And then I saw one more thing I’d knocked on the floor. A thumb drive, next to a torn-off scrap of notebook paper. For Sam, it read. Listen and you’ll understand.

That’s when I called 911.







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THE MORNING OF HAYDEN’S FUNERAL I couldn’t get out of bed. I don’t mean that I didn’t want to—if anything, I wanted the day to go by as quickly as possible, and if getting up was the first step, then I was in.

But I couldn’t do it.

It was a weird feeling, kind of like being stuck in a block of ice. I pictured that scene from Star Wars where Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite, hands in front of him as if he could somehow protect himself, mouth half open in silent protest. It was an image Hayden had always found haunting; he said it freaked him out every time he saw it, and he’d seen The Empire Strikes Back maybe a thousand times. I’d seen it nearly as many but for some reason I thought the whole carbonite thing was hilarious, and it was even funnier how twitchy it made Hayden. For his birthday I’d bought him an iPhone cover with the frozen Han Solo image on it, and I’d slipped frozen Han Solo ice cubes into his soda.

Remembering the look on his face made me laugh, and laughing seemed to break the spell. I could move again, though I didn’t want to anymore. Moving meant I was awake, and being awake meant Hayden was really dead, and I wasn’t quite ready to admit that yet. And laughing felt wrong, but also good, and the fact that it made me feel good also made me feel guilty, which brought me back to wrong. Really, I didn’t know how to feel. Sad? Check. Pissed off? Definitely.

What were you thinking, Hayden?

“What?” My mother cracked the door open and peered in at me. Her curly brown hair was twisted into a braid, and she was wearing a dress instead of scrubs. “Did you ask me something, Sam?”

“No, just talking to myself.” I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud.

She opened the door wider. “Still in bed? Come on, we’ve got to get cracking here. You know I’m not going to be able to stay for the whole thing—I’m going to be late for work as it is.” She snapped her fingers a couple of times. She wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type.

“I can’t get ready if you don’t get out.” It came out sharper than I meant it to, but she must have understood because she closed the door without saying anything, but not before hanging something on the back of my door on her way out. A suit, the one I’d worn to my cousin’s wedding last summer. She must have ironed it for me. I felt like even more of a jerk than I already did.

I got out of bed, turned on my computer, and pulled up the playlist I’d found on Hayden’s thumb drive. He’d left it for me, knowing I would find it, probably even knowing I’d find him—I was always the one to apologize first after our fights. I couldn’t stand staying mad. He must have realized I’d come over, even after how we’d left things.

I’d been listening to it constantly over the past couple of days, trying to figure out what he meant. Listen and you’ll understand. What was I supposed to understand? He’d killed himself and left me here all alone, left me to find him. And I was pretty sure it was my fault, though that wasn’t something I was prepared to think about at the moment. But I’d listened and listened, looking for the song that would confirm it, the song that would lay all the blame on me. So far I hadn’t found it.

Instead, I’d found a confusing collection of music from all over the spectrum—some recent stuff, some older. Some songs I knew; others I didn’t, and given that Hayden and I had developed our taste together—or so I thought—that was surprising. I’d have to keep listening to see if I could figure out what he’d been talking about, though I wasn’t sure what the point was.

I scanned the list for something funeral-appropriate. Most of the songs were pretty depressing, so there wasn’t an obvious choice; I started with a song that reminded me of the first time I’d worn the suit I was about to put on. It was gray and a little shiny and I’d worn it with a bow tie. My cousins, preppie throwbacks, already thought I was weird, so why not give them some proof? Mom was cool about it, just said she was happy I had a sense of personal style and an opinion about my clothes. She’d been a sharp dresser herself, back when she and my dad were still together, when she used to try. Now she rarely changed out of the scrubs she wore to work. Rachel, my older sister, was less cool about the suit and called me a dork in a bunch of different ways before Mom made her go back upstairs and change out of the dress she’d wanted to wear. Which, let’s be honest, was kind of trashy for a family wedding.

Hayden had come over as I was getting ready, to see if I wanted to go to the mall with him. And by “mall,” he basically meant one store—the only store we ever went to. The Intergalactic Trading Company. The rest of the kids at school tended to hang out on the other end, near the sporting goods store. We rarely went down there. I’d forgotten to tell him about the wedding.

“Nice suit,” he said, in his quiet way, making it hard for me to tell if he was being serious or sarcastic. I was never sure, with Hayden. With me it was easy; I was always being a wiseass.

“Whatever. You wouldn’t be caught dead in one, right?” I winced now, remembering it, but even then I knew it wasn’t really true. Hayden would do whatever his parents told him. He didn’t like it, but it was better than the alternative.

He shrugged. “The bow tie helps,” he said. “But it would look way cooler with a T-shirt under it. Like this one.” He picked up the Radiohead shirt lying at the foot of my bed, the one he’d given me after going to see them on tour. It read how it ends, how it starts.

I rolled my eyes. “Does it really have to be Radiohead?”

“What’s wrong with Radiohead?” he asked, but he knew what I was going to say. We’d had this argument a million times.

“Some of their stuff is okay,” I said. “But what really makes them different from Coldplay? White English dudes who went to fancy universities and are probably too smart for their own good. But girls think Chris Martin is hot, and they think Thom Yorke is weird-looking, and so Coldplay sells a bazillion albums and Radiohead has to reach out to geeks like us. Something about it just doesn’t seem right.”

“You’re way off,” he said. “Radiohead is on a different planet than Coldplay. Kid A might be the greatest record ever made, and Coldplay gets sued for plagiarism every time they release a single. Just talking about them at the same time is, like, disrespectful to Radiohead.”

I loved getting Hayden all riled up. Back when we were little, Mom would worry about how much we fought. She’d come into my room when we were yelling at each other—okay, I was yelling; Hayden was rationally and patiently trying to explain his position, even as a kid—and she’d knock on the door. “Everything okay in there?”

“We’re fine,” we’d both say. And we were.

Just remembering it made me miss him.

I stopped getting ready for a minute and focused on the music coming out of my speakers. I wasn’t surprised he’d put “How to Disappear Completely” on his mix, since it was his favorite song (“Idioteque” was mine—despite how I needled Hayden, I agreed that Radiohead was infinitely better than Coldplay). I tried not to think too hard about the lyrics, about Hayden sitting there putting together this mix before making his final decision. I hated imagining him wanting to fade away like that.

My fists clenched, fingernails digging into my palms, and I tried to calm down. I’d spent the past few days alternating between missing him and hating him, feeling guilty and shitty, not knowing how I was supposed to be feeling but wanting it to be different, somehow. He’d left me alone, and I’d never have done that to him, no matter how mad I was. It had made it almost impossible to sleep, so on top of everything else I was exhausted. Exhausted and angry. A great combination.

Except being mad just started the cycle again, a cycle that was becoming familiar. Get angry. Blame Hayden. Feel guilty. Miss him. Get angry again. This was punctuated occasionally with the urge to scream or hit things, neither of which I could manage to do. Why couldn’t I be normal and just feel sad, like other people?

“Sam, get a move on!” Mom called from downstairs.

Back to missing him. I needed to do something to make myself feel better, though. I went to the laundry basket, dug out my old Radiohead T-shirt, and put it on under the suit.







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THE CHURCH WHERE THE FUNERAL was being held was on the east side of Libertyville, the rich side. The Stevenses, Hayden’s family, lived there. Mine didn’t.

From the outside the church looked almost like a really fancy ski lodge, all dark wood and exposed beams—it had probably been built by one of the architects responsible for all the McMansions on that side of town. The wood was lighter on the inside, which had a high arched ceiling and a sparkly modern-looking chandelier hanging down. Almost like they wanted people to forget it was a church.

My family was Jewish, so the only church I’d ever been to was the Catholic one on my side of town, where all the kids I went to school with had their First Communions. We’d just moved to town so I didn’t really know anyone, but one of the kids in my class had invited everyone to his and Mom said I had to go if I wanted to make friends, though it didn’t really work out like that.

The Catholic church had looked more like what I’d expect a church to look like: white on the outside, with a crucifix at the altar and lots of stained-glass windows. This church looked almost nothing like it, except for the fact that there were two columns of pews that ended with an altar. At the foot of that altar was a coffin, and in that coffin was Hayden. Probably also wearing a suit.

By the time we showed up the place was almost full. Rachel had taken off to sit with her friends as soon as we walked in the door, shocker, and so it was just me and Mom walking up and down the aisles, trying to find seats. The first few rows were filled with Hayden’s family—I saw his parents and Ryan, his older brother, as well as some aunts and uncles and cousins I recognized from the times I’d gone to Hayden’s house over the holidays. Since my family didn’t celebrate Christmas, Hayden would invite me over to have dessert with them after they’d finished opening their presents and having their big fancy dinner. Hayden was always grateful if I showed up, since it got him away from the table faster. His mom was always on his case about how much he ate, and Christmas was the worst. If he even looked at a second piece of pie, she’d give him a sharp look and say, “Do you really need that, Hayden?” But Hayden would never fight back. He wasn’t like that. He’d do anything to keep the peace.

They’d never deserved him, his family.

The rows behind Hayden’s family were filled with obnoxious rich people from his side of town and their obnoxious kids, friends of Ryan’s who’d spent years torturing Hayden, some at Ryan’s direction. They all thought life would always be as easy for them as it was right now. Rich jocks like Jason Yoder who hired tutors to get them through the hard classes; girls like Stephanie Caster with nose jobs and personal trainers who would have been beautiful without either but who now all looked exactly alike. I mean, they were still cute, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the same. It made me furious, seeing them all sitting there, acting like they were so sad when all of this was at least partly their fault. How could I feel so out of place at my own best friend’s funeral?

Mom put her hand on my shoulder. The weight of it was comforting; I was glad I didn’t have to be here alone. “We’ve got to sit somewhere, sweetie.” She steered me toward the back of the room, into one of the pews near the church door. “I know you want to sit closer, but they’re going to start soon and there just isn’t room.”

I nodded, reminding myself to unclench my fists.

“You’ll need to check in with Rachel—she’s going to arrange for you guys to get a ride home, okay? I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Sure.” It wasn’t surprising, but I wasn’t upset by it—Mom was always having to take off early, or come home late. When Dad left for good she’d gone back to school nights to become a nurse practitioner, and since the hospital was understaffed she’d signed up for as much overtime as she could get, especially since Dad was kind of a slacker about sending checks. We weren’t in bad shape, she told Rachel and me, but we weren’t working with a whole lot of cushion, either. Not like the people sitting at the front of the church.

I struggled to get comfortable on the wooden bench as everyone began to settle down. It was already fifteen minutes after the service was supposed to start, and I could still hear people coming in behind me. For a guy with basically one friend, his funeral was pretty crowded.

He’d have hated it, I was sure. He’d have been sitting here in the back, with me.

I felt hot and itchy. I was starting to sweat under my shiny suit. I thought about leaving, but I was trapped in the row—Mom had snagged the seat on the end so she could duck out quietly, and some random woman in a brightly flower-printed dress had me pinned on the other side. Weren’t people supposed to wear black to funerals? She looked like she was off to a fucking garden party.

I felt the urge to hit something again and tried to find a way to focus so I could calm down. I listened to the music that was being piped through the speaker system. No organ here. I didn’t recognize the song; it was some kind of New Age elevator music, all soothing, with flutes. Another thing that would have made Hayden nuts. I wondered whether he’d picked one of the songs on the playlist especially for his funeral, and I tried to figure out which one it might be. The best I could come up with was an old Arcade Fire song from their Funeral album. We both loved Arcade Fire. We actually watched the Grammys when they won Album of the Year, the first time either of us had had any interest in that show since we were little kids.

After another ten minutes the minister stood up at the altar. He began to drone on about the tragedy of losing someone so young, all platitudes and euphemisms and none of the words that described what had really happened. It made me so crazy I just stared straight ahead at the backs of people’s heads. A few rows in front of me, a girl with long white-blond hair with black streaks in it leaned on the shoulder of some tall hipster dude. I didn’t recognize either one of them, at least not from the back. I couldn’t help but think it was funny that her hair seemed funeral-appropriate, compared with the woman in the garden-party dress.

When the actual prayers started Mom kissed the top of my head and said, “Gotta go,” leaving as quietly as her nursing clogs would let her. I felt bad she had to work so many hours on her feet that she’d soak them when she got home, most nights. I’d offered to get an after-school job once I’d turned fifteen, a few months ago, but she just laughed. “Long gone are the days that teenagers could get jobs at the mall,” she said. “Half the moms I know at the PTA are working at the Gap. You don’t have a shot, kiddo. Just keep studying and I’ll hit you up for some help when I retire.”

She was joking, but only sort of. I knew there were kids at school whose moms were waiting tables at Olive Garden, or selling makeup and jewelry from their east-side basements, pretending it was just for fun, as if they didn’t need to start helping out if they wanted to keep living there. Ever since the Liberty Appliance Factory closed, a few years ago, the line between the rich people and the people who were struggling to get by had gotten blurry. It was nice of Mom to at least go in late; I tried to remember not to be mad at her for leaving me here.

After the prayers, the minister started asking for testimonials. “Anyone who wants to speak, anyone who has something to share,” he said. There was an awkward pause. Finally, Hayden’s father stood up. I couldn’t bear to look at him, to see him crying as if he’d lost something so valuable to him, when I knew the truth, how he spent all his time at work or traveling or visiting the woman Hayden knew he was sleeping with, the one who went on all his business trips with him.

But I couldn’t block out the sound of his voice. “Hayden wasn’t the son I expected to have,” he said. “I’d imagined playing catch in the yard, watching football on the weekends, going fishing. The things I’d done with my dad; the things I do with Ryan. It was the only kind of relationship I knew how to have with a son.” His voice cracked. “But my second son didn’t enjoy any of those things. He loved music and video games and computers. I didn’t know how to talk to him. And now I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I’d learned how.” He lowered his head, as if he were trying to hide the fact that he was crying.

It was a great performance. If only a single word of it were true.

I looked over to see Ryan in the front row. He was shaking his head, which surprised me. I would have thought he’d agree with every word that came out of his father’s mouth, like he always did.

I thought about getting up there, what I could say about my best friend, the stories I could tell. I could talk about how we’d met at a Little League tryout when we were eight, not that long after I’d moved to Libertyville. Neither of us had wanted to be there; Hayden was short and chubby even then, and to say I was uncoordinated was a pretty serious understatement. We both missed every pitch, dropped every ball thrown to us from even the shortest distance, and finally we’d run away from the field, pooling our change to buy one of those orange Dreamsicle pops from the ice-cream truck. Our parents had been furious, but we didn’t care.

I could talk about waiting in line to get into Phantom Menace 3-D when we were twelve, not realizing how crappy it was going to be, how we’d spent months trying to decide what costumes we’d wear, ditching the obvious—C-3PO for me, R2-D2 for him—in exchange for Boba Fett and Darth Vader, because they were more badass. I could talk about how Ryan and his buddies had followed us and egged our costumes and we’d had to sit through the endless movie feeling the eggs drying on our costumes and our skin, but we’d still had a good time.

I could talk about how excited we’d been to start high school last year, the first time we’d be at the same school, how convinced we’d been that once we were together things would be better. We couldn’t have known how wrong that would turn out to be.

But what would be the point of saying any of those things? Everyone might pretend to care now, but it was too late.

And then I saw the line. People were getting up to speak, standing in a row to the side of the altar. Hayden’s aunts and cousins, teachers, friends of the family. Kids from school. Ryan, on his own, without his usual buddies, Jason Yoder and Trevor Floyd. We’d called them the bully trifecta.

It shouldn’t have been shocking to me, to see who’d decided they had something to say at Hayden’s funeral. They were all starved for attention, and there wasn’t a chance they’d miss the opportunity to grab the spotlight, no matter what the occasion. But seriously, at a funeral? Were they really going to get up there and say nice things about Hayden, talk about how much they’d miss him, what a loss it would be for the school, the community? Did they have no sense of how much they’d contributed to the fact that we were all here in the first place?

There was no way I could let this happen. All the anger I’d been feeling, the urge to find someone responsible and hit them as hard as I could, boiled in me. I walked up to Ryan and tapped him on the shoulder while one of Hayden’s cousins was tearfully recounting some story about Thanksgiving, the last time the whole family had been together. Ryan frowned when he saw it was me. I was just about to say something when Jason Yoder stepped in between us. I hadn’t realized he was so close.

“You really think now’s the time?” he asked.

I moved to the right to get around him, only to be blocked again by Trevor Floyd.

“Let me by,” I said. I wasn’t scared of them. Not now.

“I don’t think so,” Jason said.

He was the only one of the three who wasn’t an athlete, and I was taller than he was. I pushed him aside to get to Ryan. It wasn’t like Trevor was going to deck me at a funeral.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “You’re really going to get up there and talk about what a great brother you were? When everyone here knows the truth? You were at that party just like me. You could have stopped things. You should have protected him, not made everything worse.”

Ryan opened his mouth, but before he could get the words out Jason shoved me so hard I banged into one of the pews. I saw people looking at us even as I tried—and failed—to keep from falling down.

“You’re really going to go after Ryan at his brother’s funeral?” Jason hissed. I’d underestimated his strength; I’d been more worried about the enormous Trevor, who was six and a half feet tall with the thick neck I’d learned was common to steroid users—kids at school called him Roid Floyd, but only behind his back. He wasn’t someone I was looking to get into a fight with. Especially not here.

I stood up as carefully as I could. My arms would be covered in bruises tomorrow, but I wasn’t about to let the bully trifecta see me fall down. “You’re a fucking hypocrite,” I said to Ryan. “And someday you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Ryan didn’t say anything, just stared at me for a minute. Then he moved forward in line. It was almost his turn to speak.

I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t wait for Rachel to find us a ride. I had to leave. Now.







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THE MALL WAS MAYBE TWO MILES away from the church, right near the border between the east and west sides of town. It was the middle of October and the weather hadn’t turned that cold yet, but it was pretty dank. The sky was a flatter gray than my suit, which matched my mood. Still, walking felt good, so I didn’t hurry; I just put in my earbuds and listened to Hayden’s playlist as I walked. I stuck mostly to the main drag, Burlington Street, past the downtown coffeehouses and restaurants, past the run-down museum of local history that marked the unofficial transition to the west side of town. The Libertyville Mall was just beyond the museum, but it was a combination of upscale and downmarket, as the real-estate people would say, just like the town itself. The anchor stores on one end were Nordstrom and Dillard’s; on the other end were JCPenney and Sears. Near the fancy end were boutiques and jewelry stores; the other end had the Payless shoe store and cheap clothing chains. The rich people were always fighting to close down the trashier stores so they could open a Whole Foods and a Trader Joe’s, but nothing ever happened. Typical.

It took me about an hour to get to the entrance, but I knew immediately where I wanted to go. The Intergalactic Trading Company was near the front door at the Sears end, its windows darkened and glowing with purple light. It had once been one of those gift stores that sold weird novelty items and lava lamps, and I guess they’d kept some of the décor. But the ITC was way too awesome to be all about whoopee cushions and fake barf. It was basically sci-fi/fantasy/geek heaven—it sold vintage Star Wars action figures, Magic: The Gathering playing cards, Mage Warfare figurines, Star Trek posters, comic books, and video games. Just about anything I could ever want.

I wandered the aisles, remembering all the conversations Hayden and I had had during the many hours we’d spent here. We’d ranked the Star Trek TV series (I insisted Next Generation was first, while Hayden was adamant that the old series was the best). We’d tried to start a Dungeons & Dragons club when we didn’t make the Little League team, but we couldn’t get anyone else to see the beauty of the twenty-sided die. We’d get there first thing in the morning when the new Walking Dead comic came out every month and would sit in the food court reading it from cover to cover. We loved the TV show too, and watched it at my house every Sunday night. It was the only time Rachel deigned to hang out with us.

It was really hard to be here without him.

The store was all but deserted in the middle of the day. After school there was usually a bunch of kids wandering around, geeks like Hayden and me, and younger kids, too. When we’d come at night there were often older guys there, collectors, I figured, with day jobs. But this was a place the assholes from school never came. It was a safe place. True, there were almost never any girls here, but guys like me and Hayden didn’t tend to do so well with the ladies anyway.

Maybe I’d spoken too soon, because as I walked around, I noticed a couple of other people browsing, and one of them was a girl. Definitely a girl. Tall, like me, with kind of a pointy face—sharp chin, straight skinny nose. Her mouth was painted a deep burgundy and she had a lip ring with a turquoise stud in it. And a big mass of whitish-blond hair, with black streaks. She was the girl from the funeral. She was cute. Well, more interesting-looking than cute, but whatever look she was going for, I was into it.

And she seemed to be headed right for me.

I felt a rising sense of panic and fought the urge to hide.

Then she was right in front of me, and her mouth was moving but I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. What was wrong with me?

I must have looked really confused, because she smiled, reached out her hand, and pulled on the wire dangling in front of me.

Of course—I still had my earbuds in. No wonder I couldn’t hear her; I’d been blaring music from the playlist.

“You’re Sam, aren’t you?” she repeated.

She knew me? How did she know me? I nodded.

“Is that all you’ve got?” she asked. “Usually when someone initiates an introduction, you should ask her name.”

“Sorry,” I said. Figures I’d screw up my first conversation with a girl who actually seemed willing to talk to me. Still, I couldn’t tell if she was being serious. “I guess I’m a little out of it today.” She had to understand, right? She’d been at the funeral too.

“Understandable,” she said, and kind of smirked at me. So she had been kidding? I still wasn’t sure. “I’m Astrid.”

“Cool name.”

She smiled widely. “Picked it out myself.”

Before I could ask her anything else, the lanky hipster-looking dude from the funeral walked up in his super-tight skinny pants and put his arm around her. She turned to him and leaned her head on his shoulder, like I’d seen her do before. “And this is Eric. Eric, this is Sam. Hayden’s friend.”

Did that mean she knew Hayden? She couldn’t have—I’d know. But she knew who I was, and that didn’t make sense either. I didn’t think anyone knew who I was.

“Sorry to hear about your friend,” Eric said. “He sounded like a good guy, from what Astrid’s told me.”

So she did know Hayden. I couldn’t imagine how. And why wouldn’t he have told me? “He was,” I said.

“Anyway, didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll just be outside, whenever you’re ready.” He flicked Astrid in the arm and left the store. It seemed like a weird gesture for someone I assumed was probably her boyfriend, but I was hardly an expert on romantic relationships.

I was dying to know how Astrid knew Hayden, but I didn’t know where to start.

Luckily, I didn’t have to. “Look, I swear I’m not some crazy stalker, and I didn’t mean to freak you out, but I did follow you here,” Astrid said. “I just wanted a chance to tell you how sorry I am about Hayden. I only knew him for a little while, but he was a really nice guy, and I still can’t believe he’s really gone.”

“Me neither,” I said. “So … you guys knew each other?”

“Sort of,” she said, and pulled on one of the black streaks in her hair. “I know you guys were friends, and I saw you leave when all those hypocrites got in line to make speeches about him, so I thought you might like to know that there are other people out there who are going to miss him. For real.”

I knew she’d said “were” because Hayden was gone, not because he and I weren’t friends anymore. Still, I couldn’t help thinking about the night he died and how awful everything had been, especially between us. I didn’t want to look at Astrid—I didn’t want her to see whatever look was on my face and think it was because of her—so I turned to the glass case next to where we were standing, which held action figures from various games and other trinkets.

“Hayden used to make fun of people who bought stuff like this,” I said. “He called them dolls for dorks, as if that was going to somehow distinguish us from them.”

“Kind of like that Venn diagram of dorks versus geeks versus nerds?” she asked.

“You’ve seen that too?” I asked. Was this some kind of joke? A girl follows me into my favorite store and knows all about the stuff I’m into? “Anyway, one of these figurines kind of reminds me of Hayden’s character in Mage Warfare.” I waited for her to ask me what that was, but she didn’t. This was getting even stranger, but in a kind of awesome way. I’d never met a girl who knew what Mage Warfare was. But then again, I’d hardly hung out with any girls.

“Which one?”

I pointed to one of the figurines. It was maybe four inches tall, a long-haired man in a cloak and a floppy hat, holding a wand.

“A wizard?” she asked.

“It’s actually more of a warlock, or a magus. A disciple of Zoroaster, the inventor of magic.” I paused when I thought I saw her eyes glaze over. Apparently I could still be too dorky, even with a girl who seemed to get it. “I mean, yeah, wizard works.”

“Aren’t you just full of useful information?” she said, with another smirk. “Doesn’t look much like Hayden, though.”

It was true; Hayden hadn’t really hit his growth spurt yet, and his mother’s nagging him to eat more protein and skip dessert had only made him stubborn. Physically the magus looked more like me, tall and skinny, not unlike Astrid’s hipster boyfriend. But the whole point of living in a fantasy world was the fantasy, right? My character was a golem, strong and sturdy like I wasn’t and probably would never be, unless I turned into one of those gym rats and started lifting weights all the time. I’d probably drop them on myself anyway. “It’s a role-playing game,” I said. “He could be whoever he wanted there.”

“Sounds liberating,” she said. “I think you should buy it if it reminds you of him. A keepsake.”

“So I won’t forget him?” I tried not to sound bitter.

Either she didn’t hear the sour note in my voice or it didn’t bother her. “You’ll never forget him. But you’re not going to make it through the rest of the school year, or the rest of high school, if you think about him all the time. If you have this, you’ll have a place to focus. You can think about him when you look at it, and the rest of the time you can try to live.”

“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve been through some stuff,” she said. Cryptic, like Hayden was. I could see why they might have been friends. “Trust me on this one.”

“I will,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” She reached over again and picked up one of the earbuds dangling from my neck. I hoped she couldn’t feel my pulse starting to speed up. “What were you listening to, when I so rudely interrupted you?”

“It wasn’t rude,” I said, but she’d already stuck the earbud in her ear.

“Come on, press play,” she said.

I put the other earbud in my ear, hit the button, and listened with her. It was a song from the playlist, haunting and beautiful. Listening to it with her felt otherworldly, like we’d somehow left the store and wandered off by ourselves, into some dark and creepy forest. But together. I closed my eyes and kept listening.

“Gary Jules,” she said, and I snapped out of it, opening my eyes to the fluorescent lighting. Astrid was looking right at me; I hoped she didn’t think it was weird that I’d closed my eyes. “From the Donnie Darko soundtrack. It’s a cover of an old Tears for Fears song.”

I knew the original version, but I hadn’t heard the cover until the playlist. It didn’t sound like something Hayden would normally listen to, and I wondered about the fact that Astrid had immediately recognized it. “You’ve seen the movie?” I asked.

“A bunch of times. It’s amazing. You should totally watch it and tell me what you think.”

“Will do,” I said, and I knew it was true. I wanted to ask her more questions, to find out how she knew Hayden, to start, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Eric walking back into the store. No, I wanted to say. Not yet.

“Looks like it’s time for me to go,” Astrid said.

I wasn’t about to ask her to stay in front of her boyfriend. I really wished she’d come alone, but then again, I might have made even more of an ass out of myself.

Astrid smoothed the collar on my suit, a gesture that would have felt motherly from someone older but which didn’t feel motherly at all coming from her. Almost like we knew each other well enough that she had the right. I liked it. “Don’t worry about all those people at the funeral. The ones who deserve it will get theirs someday. Karma, you know.”

She sounded just like me. “Thanks.”

“Find me at school,” she said. “After you’ve watched the movie.”

I could feel my arm tingling where her fingers had been even as she walked away, which highlighted how sore it already was from Jason knocking me into that pew. God, I hated those guys.

Once Astrid was gone, I went up to the counter and asked if I could see the magus figurine. The guy working there was the same guy who was there every time we came in. Hayden and I had often wondered if the store had more than one employee. What would happen if he got sick? Or even just wanted a day off? He looked like one of the collectors: middle-aged and a little creepy. Maybe this was his dream job, and there was never anywhere else he wanted to be. I couldn’t even imagine what kind of job that would be, for me.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here by yourself.”

For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that there would be people who didn’t know what had happened. And that I might have to explain it to them. I felt my face get hot as I started to panic at the idea of telling the store clerk about Hayden. I couldn’t do it. “He’s not here,” I said. “Can I just look at the figurine, please?”

“No problem.” He unlocked the glass case and handed the figurine to me. It felt heavy in my hands, cool to the touch, cast in pewter or some other metal and then painted. Not exactly expert craftsmanship—the paint was crudely applied and was already starting to chip.

I turned it over to see the price tag. “Thirty-five bucks for this?” I asked.

“It’s a collectible,” he said.

“Sure it is,” I muttered.

“Look, do you want it or not?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”







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WHEN I GOT HOME FROM THE STORE I went straight to my room and unwrapped the magus figurine. What a stupid idea, buying something that would make me think of Hayden every time I looked at it. I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since I found him; I couldn’t get the image of him lying there not-asleep under those stupid Star Wars sheets out of my mind. The paramedics had made me leave the room as soon as they got there; I’d had to listen to them trying to revive him from the hallway, but I could hear everything they were saying. It had been way too late; he’d been dead for hours by the time I got there.

I thought about throwing the figurine out. So what if it meant blowing thirty-five dollars? Then I thought about throwing it out the window. Or through the window. The sound of glass shattering might be satisfying. But it was such a dinky little thing, and with my coordination it would probably bounce off the window without breaking so much as a pane of glass and hit me in the face.

Instead, I moved a stack of books from the shelf above my crappy old computer and set it there. I’d be able to see it when I played Mage Warfare, which seemed fitting. Maybe for a little while I could pretend that Hayden was playing with me, from his house, though this time we wouldn’t interrupt our game to chat, like we usually did. Still, playing was the only thing I could imagine doing that would let me think about Hayden in a good way. I’d probably be better off taking a nap and trying to make up some of the hours of sleep I’d missed over the last week, but the walk had energized me a little and I figured I’d probably just lie in bed and go through the anger/guilt/missing-Hayden cycle over and over again.

No, playing the game would make me feel better. I put on Hayden’s playlist, logged in to Mage Warfare, and clicked on my golem avatar. My mother had told me stories about mute monsters made out of clay who existed to protect old Jewish communities, and I’d read this amazing book about golems and comic books and all sorts of craziness. The golems in those stories had no power of their own and had to do whatever their creators told them to do. I’d kind of felt bad for them. I thought it might be fun to create one who had a mind of his own—okay, my mind—and who could take down anyone he wanted to with no repercussions. I had no interest in that kind of violence in real life; it was only fun for me here because it wasn’t real. It was just a way to feel powerful somewhere, since I felt so powerless at school. My golem was named Brutus and he kicked ass on a regular basis.

Being in the game was like being in another world. I could almost pretend nothing had changed, that Hayden was still there, since we always played on opposite sides in Mage Warfare anyway. Hayden always had to be the good guy, fighting for the Cooperative, truth and justice and all that, while I liked playing for the bad guys. It was so different than who I was in real life, where I always worried about doing the right thing. What was so great about being a good guy, anyway? It’s not like it ever got me anywhere. From what I could see, the worst jerks at school were the ones who all the teachers and other kids thought were so terrific—Ryan, Trevor, and Jason got all the girls, drove nice cars, had lots of money. Ryan made captain of the lacrosse team back when he was a junior; Trevor would probably skip college and go straight to the NHL; Jason was the best-looking guy in school and the treasurer of student council. They could do whatever they wanted, and no one seemed to care that they weren’t such good people, that they had secrets. Whenever I got online I set up quests that pitted me against guys I figured were like them, players who wanted to be the center of attention, good at everything. And then I destroyed them.

Today I’d set myself up against a team of Alliance warriors. It was three on one, just like it had always been for Hayden when Ryan and his buddies singled him out, but I was determined to kick some ass anyway. I was making such good progress I’d barely noticed how dark it had gotten until I heard the ping of my Gchat window. At first that seemed totally normal; I’d been playing for a while, and that was when Hayden would usually check in.

Except Hayden was dead, so it couldn’t be Hayden.

I paused the game and looked away from the computer. It wasn’t just darker than I thought; it was pitch black. I’d been playing longer than I realized. I rubbed my eyes and looked back at the computer.

Someone named Archmage_Ged was IMing me.

That made no sense. Archmage_Ged was Hayden’s name in Mage Warfare—he’d based it on a character he loved from the Wizard of Earthsea books I’d loaned him as a kid, books he’d struggled to read. But he’d used his real name for Gchat.

I glanced up at the shelf where I’d put the wizard figurine, then looked back at the screen. Who would know to sign up for an account with that name? The glow of the computer monitor started to feel creepy, and the hairs on my arm were starting to stand on end.

The message said, How do?

I shivered, and all of a sudden I realized I was still alone in the house. Rachel hadn’t come home, and Mom was still at work.

The cursor was blinking at me. How do?

That was how Hayden and I always started our Gchat conversations. We’d picked it up after spending a series of weekends powering through all five seasons of The Wire. But no one would know to start a conversation with me that way.

I looked at the computer screen again. It was still there. My job was usually to come up with something witty in response, but I just stared at the blinking cursor. There was no way it could be Hayden.

Archmage_Ged: You there?

Of course I was there; where else would I be? Hanging out with all my other friends? Oh, no, wait—I didn’t have any.

Sam_Goldsmith: Who is this?

Archmage_Ged: Who do you think?

That was the thing—I couldn’t think of who it could be. No one from school knew us well enough to imitate Hayden. Someone from Mage Warfare? We chatted inside the game all the time, so someone could have seen us use that name. But the chat request hadn’t come from inside the game. This was my private email account. No one from the game had that info except Hayden.

Someone at school could have gotten it, though. Could it be one of the bully trifecta? Was this Ryan’s way of getting back at me for yelling at him? As much as I disliked Ryan, though, I couldn’t imagine him being evil enough to sneak away from his family the night of his brother’s funeral just to screw with my head. Trevor was too stupid to pull off something like this, and from what Hayden had told me, Jason had his own stuff going on. It was possible; it just didn’t seem all that likely. But I couldn’t imagine who else it might be.

Sam_Goldsmith: Well, I know who it isn’t.

Archmage_Ged: Are you sure?

Sure I was sure.

Sam_Goldsmith: Look, I don’t know who you are or why you’re doing this, but cut it out. Things are crappy enough as it is.

Archmage_Ged: Not messing with you. I’m here to help.

Sam_Goldsmith: What’s that supposed to mean?

Archmage_Ged: Just what I said.

Sam_Goldsmith: I don’t see how you can help when you won’t tell me who you are.

This was just too weird.

Sam_Goldsmith: Signing off now.

Archmage_Ged: Wait, don’t.

And for some reason, with that, I had the sense that I really was talking to Hayden. I mean, I knew it was impossible, and yet it sounded so much like him, teasing me for a while but quick to get serious, especially if he could tell I was getting annoyed at him. My heart started racing.

Sam_Goldsmith: Are you ready to be straight with me now? Who are you?

Archmage_Ged: I’m Archmage_Ged.

Interesting. He hadn’t said he was Hayden.

Sam_Goldsmith: Prove it.

The cursor blinked. The air in the room seemed to grow colder, and the goose bumps rose on my arms again. I looked at the clock on my computer screen. Somehow it was two in the morning. I’d been sitting here for hours and hadn’t even realized it. Hell, I was probably hallucinating; I’d barely slept in days, and it didn’t look like I’d be making up any ground tonight.

And then, all of a sudden, a song began playing, the music streaming through my computer speakers.

It was that Skylar Grey song I’d never heard before from the playlist. But the playlist had stopped playing hours ago. The room had been quiet since I paused the game. The song felt almost like an assault on the silence.

Archmage_Ged: See?

Sam_Goldsmith: That doesn’t tell me anything. I don’t even know that song.

It was some chick I’d never heard before, and I had no idea why Hayden would be listening to her.

Archmage_Ged: That’s the whole point. There’s a lot you don’t know. But I want you to.

Sam_Goldsmith: So tell me!

But the cursor just kept blinking.

Sam_Goldsmith: Are these songs supposed to mean something? Seems pretty obvious to play me some dumb chick music about invisibility when I can’t even see you.

Archmage_Ged: Lots of people want to be invisible. Maybe they even think they can pretend to be. But someone always sees.

Now the hairs on my neck were standing up. I must have looked like a plucked chicken. A scared, probably hallucinating chicken. But the thing was, whoever this Archmage_Ged was sounded an awful lot like Hayden. Especially because I had no idea what he was talking about.

Archmage_Ged: You’ll figure it out.

As if he’d read my mind.







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ARCHMAGE_GED HAD ME SO FREAKED OUT that I got almost no sleep the whole weekend, and I was terrified to turn on my computer—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted the Gchat window to pop up again. In the light of day it seemed clear to me that there was no way it could have been Hayden. Better to focus on things that were real, like the fact that I had to go to school.

For my first day back I put on my favorite jeans, a zip-up hoodie, and my Metallica T-shirt—one of their songs had come on the playlist as I was getting ready, and it made me think of Hayden. They were one of the bands we fought about; Hayden was strongly in favor of their stance against music piracy, but I wasn’t so sure. “What if you spent your whole life working for something and people thought they were entitled to it for free?” he said. He didn’t have to add that he thought I’d understand, as someone who didn’t have a lot of money, but I knew he was thinking it. He always tried to be sensitive about the fact that his family was loaded and mine wasn’t, but sometimes there was no getting around it.

“If I was already a billionaire then maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal,” I said. “And it’s not like most of the money is going to the artists anyway. It’s all about making record companies rich. It costs nothing to distribute music electronically—this stuff should be dirt cheap by now.”

As usual, though, I was pretty sure Hayden was right. God, I missed fighting with him.

I walked downstairs to grab some coffee before school. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in her scrubs, both hands wrapped around an enormous mug of what smelled like tea as I walked down the stairs. Tea meant she’d just gotten home from work and was about to go to bed. It was so weird to be on such different schedules. She gave me an up-and-down look as I headed toward the coffeepot, which she always put on for me and Rachel even though she never had any. She could be pretty cool like that. “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked.

“Something wrong with it?”

She opened her mouth, paused, closed it, opened it again. “No,” she said finally. “I’ll see you at dinner tonight, and you can tell me all about your first day back, all right? And make sure to be on time—apparently Rachel is bringing a friend home.”

“A friend?”

“A gentleman caller,” Mom said, with one eyebrow arched.

“This should be good.” Rachel had horrible taste in boyfriends, and there had been a lot of them. Most of them never made it past the driveway, though, so she must be really into this one.

“Indeed. Now get to school—you don’t want to be late.”

That was debatable, but I left just in time to catch the bus, where I sat alone in one of the front seats, listening to my iPod. That was normal—I always sat alone. It wasn’t that I wanted to, necessarily, but for some reason it seemed terrifying to just sit down next to a random person. Was I supposed to talk to them? What would I say? As long as I could remember I’d been shy around strangers—not as bad as Hayden, but bad enough. I was fine once I knew someone, but I hadn’t really gotten to know anyone except Hayden, at least since I moved to Libertyville. I’d counted myself lucky to have made such a good friend, someone who made me stop feeling so lonely, and for years that was enough. Until it wasn’t anymore.

I’d imagined that everything would be different once Hayden and I got to high school. I felt like we’d both made progress in getting over our shyness; now we’d have a chance to expand our insular little world. In high school, I was sure, there would be a bunch of guys more like us—into gaming and music, maybe a little geeky but not total dorks—and they’d be our friends. Maybe there would even be some girls. Girls like Astrid.

And some of that had been true. Libertyville High was huge—it had kids not just from Libertyville itself but from a bunch of neighboring farm towns, and there were tons of kids who neither of us had ever met, some of whom looked like us and ran clubs that included stuff we were into. Gaming, comics, all that. But I’d counted on Hayden being on the same page as me, and as soon as school started, I could tell I’d been wrong. I couldn’t get Hayden to come with me to anything, and I was too nervous to go alone.

I figured out pretty quickly why Hayden was so inclined to hide out. Ryan and his friends were in my sister’s grade, so they were all juniors by the time we got to school. But Rachel was content to pretend she was an only child, ignoring me when we ran into each other in the halls. Not Ryan. We’d made it through the first few days of school without incident, happy in the knowledge that even though we didn’t have any classes together—I was in the Honors track, but Hayden was dyslexic and stuck in all the lower-level classes—we shared a lunch period most days. And on Fridays, we shared it with Ryan and his friends.

“Oh, look, it’s Ryan’s fatass little brother,” we’d heard Trevor say as we sat down with our lunches.

“How are you liking the new school, Gayden?” Jason said, plunking his tray down next to Hayden. That was their second-favorite nickname for him. The first was an oldie-but-goodie, one Ryan had come up with when they were little kids: Hate-him.

“Leave me alone,” Hayden said, looking around for Ryan. Sad that he’d thought Ryan might be able to help. He realized his mistake as soon as he saw Ryan standing right behind Jason, laughing. “Not funny, Ryan.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ryan said. “It’s kind of funny.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Trevor said. “Maybe we need to step up our game.” He opened up his little box of chocolate milk and dumped it over Hayden’s head. The three of them started laughing.

“That’s definitely funny,” Ryan said.

I’ll never forget the look on Hayden’s face as he sat there, milk dripping down onto his favorite T-shirt. Metallica, like the one I wore now. I saw the knowledge wash over him that nothing was going to change, that things would perhaps be even worse than he’d thought. That Ryan wasn’t going to help him. And as the sound of people laughing grew louder, once the other kids saw what had happened, I realized he was probably right.

I thought about that moment as I stepped into the cafeteria for the first time since Hayden died. I’d spent most of the morning nodding off in my classes, but there was this kind of protective bubble around me—I could tell none of the teachers wanted to say anything to me because of Hayden. The kids were friendlier, though—people said hi to me in the halls who’d never spoken to me before, and some even complimented my T-shirt. This strange attention from people who used to ignore me was confusing. It was almost as if they were treating me like a celebrity. Best-friend-of-dead-guy = famous. Like it was some kind of accomplishment.

Before, everyone pretty much had left me alone. I didn’t fit into any of the groups—I wasn’t a grind like the brainiacs in my classes, who looked down on Hayden because they thought he was stupid; I was too uncoordinated for sports but big enough to be hard to knock over; I wasn’t artsy or creative or talented at anything; it turned out that the kids in the gaming club were way too dorky, and they weren’t into music like Hayden and I were. And the kids who were into the music we liked looked down on anyone who was into gaming. We couldn’t win.

Anyone who was anyone at this school fit in somewhere, even if the lines were fluid—jock brainiacs were still cool, the kids who had the best drugs could hang out with anyone, that sort of thing. Parties were fair game for anyone as far as I knew, though Hayden and I hadn’t ventured into that scene very much. Until we did, and look where that had gotten us. No, after that day in the cafeteria I’d figured out it was safest to stick with Hayden, and apparently the whole school agreed with me. Some days I wondered whether, if it wasn’t for him, I would ever talk to a single person.

Now I was a spectacle. I put in my earbuds so I wouldn’t have to hear people talking about me as I walked through the cafeteria with my tray, nodding occasionally to the random people who waved as if they knew me. I headed for the table in the back where I used to sit with Hayden, looking for Astrid as I went. I thought I remembered seeing flashes of her blond hair at lunch before, but it might have just been wishful thinking, because I made it to the table without seeing her. I sat down and forced myself to doctor up a hot dog as best as I could, drowning it in ketchup, mustard, and relish to hide the sight of its unnatural pinkness. Which meant that condiments squirted everywhere as soon as my teeth clamped into the roll. I could feel the bright green relish dribbling down my face and onto the Metallica T-shirt. At least I was alone. One of the perks of having no friends was that no one was there to see you squirt condiments all over yourself.

Except I wasn’t really alone. “Do you have any idea what’s in those things?” Astrid said, from over my shoulder.

I finished chewing and grabbed a napkin to wipe off the relish. Astrid plunked herself down in the seat across from me. Way to make an impression, Sam, I thought, but what did it matter? She had that hipster boyfriend anyway. “I try not to think about it,” I said.

“That’s probably for the best. First day back?”

I nodded, wanting to think of something witty to say, but I had nothing. “Do we have the same lunch period?”

“Looks like it, Captain Obvious.” She grinned, but I still felt like an idiot. “Want to come sit with my friends?” She pointed at a table a few rows over and back from where I was sitting. There was a group of kids there I’d seen before, part of the artsy crowd. They spent a lot of time in the studio on the upper level and at a coffee shop in South Branch, the next town over, listening to slam poetry or whatever. It wasn’t my scene. I wasn’t even sure what slam poetry was.

“No, it’s okay,” I said, trying to dab at the relish without making more of a mess.

“Why not?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

Could she not see that I’d just made a total mess of myself? I tried to think of something normal to say. “Um, new people, you know. Not sure I’m ready. I mean,” I panicked, “not you or anything. I just—” I could tell I wasn’t succeeding at trying to sound normal.

“I get it,” she said, tugging at a red streak I hadn’t remembered being in her hair the other day. I wondered how she knew exactly where it was until I realized it was an extension. How awesome, to be able to change the color of your hair whenever you wanted. She was wearing bright red lipstick to match and it made her eyes look almost unnaturally green. “You should give them a chance sometime, though. They kind of adopted me when I needed some new friends.”

She didn’t have to add “like you do”—it was implied. I wondered why she’d have needed new friends, but I wasn’t sure how to ask. I looked back over at the table and saw Eric sitting there. Great.

“Don’t get all judgmental because they’re into different stuff than you are. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Hayden: I bet you have more in common with some of them than you think.”

Instantly I felt a burst of jealousy, which was ridiculous. Like retroactively, as if Hayden had already found better, cooler friends and left me behind.

Except that’s not how he’d left me behind. His way was worse.

“How did you know him?” I asked. I guess the easiest way was just to say it.

“Hayden?” She hesitated. “Oh, you know. From around. School, you know.”

But Hayden wasn’t really around. And I was sure he’d have told me if someone like her was in his classes. Was she even in the same grade as us? For some reason she didn’t want to tell me how she knew him, but I had no idea why.

“Come over and sit,” she said, still twirling her hair extension. “Maybe you need new friends too.” She must have seen the look on my face, though, because she added, “I’m not trying to get you to replace Hayden.”

“I know,” I said. I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t interested, but I just couldn’t handle meeting a whole bunch of new people. I wasn’t feeling ready yet. It was confusing enough just meeting her. “But not today, okay? Some other time?”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, though I wasn’t sure she really meant it until she added, “There’s a party Friday night. Give me your phone.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of bossy?” I said, but I handed my phone over. Our hands touched as she took it from me, and I could swear I felt a spark. It was probably just static.

She smiled again, and the jewel in her lip ring glittered. “All the time. See you Friday.”

I didn’t want her to leave, though. “So I watched that movie you told me about? Donnie Darko?”

“And? What did you think?” She leaned forward and looked right at me. It seemed like she actually cared what I thought.

Except now I had to say something interesting. I wasn’t sure what, but I’d brought it up, so I had to say something. Still—time travel, giant rabbits? It was kind of hard to follow. I knew the main character ultimately died, but he wasn’t unhappy about it, and I wondered if that’s why she’d suggested it. “It was weird. I think I liked it, but I’m not really sure why.”

Astrid laughed. She had a great laugh—not some stupid giggle, but a real laugh. I bet Eric could always tell when he was really being funny, and I felt jealous again. “It’s a wacky movie. But I figured you like sci-fi stuff, right? And something about the way he accepted what he had to do, it made him seem brave. Like how I thought Hayden was.”

Hayden? Brave? “Really?” I asked. I tried not to sound too skeptical, but I wasn’t sure we were talking about the same person. Especially not after what he’d just done.

She shrugged. “That’s just how I saw him. He took a lot of crap from people, but he always seemed so, I don’t know, stoic about it. I always thought he hadn’t let it get him down. Guess I was wrong, though.”

The thing was, she wasn’t wrong. That had always been my take, too. I just hadn’t thought of that as bravery. It just seemed like he’d put up a wall so he wouldn’t have to deal with what was happening. And, of course, I hadn’t factored in that everyone has a breaking point.

“Did you buy that figurine?” Astrid asked. All these questions she was asking—I’d never had someone take such an interest in my life before. Certainly not a girl.

“Yes.” I was tempted to tell her about the other night, but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy. Not when it seemed like we were on the verge of actually being friends. “It was a good idea. Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said. “Glad to help out.”

I wondered again how she understood things so well, what she’d been through that made her seem to automatically get it. Or was that just her? I desperately wanted to know more. And though there was something that felt kind of disloyal in thinking so much about another person after I’d just lost my best friend, I had to think Hayden would have approved. He’d liked her too, after all. Though I wasn’t sure how much. Why hadn’t he introduced us?

The bell rang, signaling the start of fifth period. Astrid looked at the disgusting remains of my hot dog, post–condiment explosion. “I’m sorry I kept you from eating your lunch. And it looks so … appetizing.” Was I crazy, or did she seem not that sorry?

I picked up a damp, cold french fry and made a spectacle of chomping on it, glad to have the distraction. “What a waste of a delicious meal,” I said, then decided to be bold. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation finally getting to me, but the words came out of my mouth before I could overthink it. “Someday I’ll introduce you to the best french fries in Libertyville.” My face felt hot and I prayed I wouldn’t start sweating.

“You’re sure I haven’t met them yet? I consider myself something of a french fry expert.”

“Positive,” I said.

“Someday, then,” she said with a wink, and then she walked away.







(#ulink_9323e693-88a4-5eff-9097-8caf563f08f8)


USUALLY FIFTH PERIOD WAS MY English class, but I’d gotten a note in homeroom saying I needed to go meet with the school guidance counselor. I’d met Mr. Beaumont at some meetings the school made us have when we were freshmen, to get us thinking about what kinds of electives we’d want to take. I remembered him being a little guy, a lot shorter than me, dressed more casually than the other administrators, in jeans and a sweater. I figured he was trying to make students think he was cool, though it seemed like maybe he was trying too hard.

He was expecting me; the door was open when I got to his office and he was standing near it, hand outstretched. “Hi, Sam,” he said, and waited for me to shake. Weird to have a school official shaking hands, but whatever, so I did it. “Nice to see you again. Have a seat.”

His office didn’t look like any office at school I’d ever seen. There was a desk, but it was pushed over into the corner, and in the middle of the room were two big chairs that actually looked pretty comfortable, with a small coffee table between them, and a candy dish filled with M&M’s. I’d only eaten that one french fry and catastrophic bite of hot dog, so I was starving.

Mr. Beaumont must have seen me notice them. He sat down in one of the chairs and said, “Take as many as you want. Need some water?”

I sat in the chair across from him, stuffed a handful of M&M’s in my mouth, and shook my head. This had the added benefit of saving me from having to say anything right away, since I didn’t really see the point of me being here.

“I wanted to reach out to you, see how you’re doing,” he said. “You know, we’re all devastated by what happened, as I’m sure you are. It might make you feel better to talk about it.”

Not a chance. “I don’t see how,” I said.

“I’m sure it must seem that way right now. But can we just try? Maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t, but either way, we’ll know.”

I shrugged. Obviously he wasn’t going to let me out of here until I said something.

“I understand you two were very close,” Mr. Beaumont said.

“That’s one way of putting it,” I said.

“What’s another way?”

I shrugged. How was I supposed to describe my relationship with Hayden? He was my best friend. My only friend. And I’d thought it might be time for that to change, and he hadn’t, and now he was gone. I wasn’t about to sit here for however long he made me stay and get into that.

“Can you describe your friendship to me at all?” he asked gently.

What did he expect me to say? That we were both socially awkward misfits? That we’d saved each other from loneliness for a really long time, and now that was over? “We were friends. What else am I supposed to say?” My knee was bouncing up and down, almost as if I had no control over it. I really didn’t want to be here.

“Was he your only friend?”

Now my knee was even more out of control. I willed it to stop shaking before Mr. Beaumont noticed. “I guess.”

“And you were his? Only friend?” His voice was getting quieter and quieter, as if he knew the questions would be hard to hear, no matter at what volume. But despite him trying to soften me up, I could feel myself getting angry, blood heating up my face. He must have seen it, too, because he didn’t wait for me to say anything. “Look, I know it’s going to be hard to talk about Hayden. I’ll give you some things to read for later on, when you feel like it.” He gave me a manila envelope. I didn’t bother opening it, just stuck it in my backpack. “I understand you’re probably sad and confused, and probably angry, too. I want you to know it’s okay to feel anything you’re feeling right now.”

Great, now I had permission. I was about to say something snarky, but that was still an invitation to talk, and I didn’t want to talk. Not to Mr. Beaumont, not to anyone.

Mr. Beaumont must have been some kind of mind reader, though. “I see that you’re not eager to talk to me about this, and that’s fine. I want to be a resource for you, but only if you want me to be. I do think it would help you to talk to someone, though, so maybe we could talk about who that might be?”

He knew how to find the soft spots. I couldn’t really talk to Mom; she was so busy at work with all those extra shifts, and no matter what I said she’d worry, and she was worried enough already. Rachel wouldn’t be any help, and though Astrid had the potential to be a new friend, I didn’t want to think about her as a confidante, not like this. There wasn’t really anyone else. I looked down at the floor. Mr. Beaumont had put a big Persian rug over the gray industrial carpeting. He was trying pretty hard. “There’s no one else,” I said finally.

“Well, if that’s the case, I hope you’ll at least consider me as an option,” he said. “Maybe we can talk a little less about Hayden and a little bit more about you, for now? I can stop trying to guess how you’re feeling if you just tell me.”

“I’ll try,” I said. But it was hard to narrow it down. There was the anger/guilt/missing cycle, with a whole bunch of other emotions thrown in there, which was kind of hard to describe. “It’s a big jumble, I guess. It doesn’t seem real. I keep thinking he’ll be here soon, and he won’t.” My knee was starting to bounce again, so I hooked my foot around the leg of the chair to make it stop.

Mr. Beaumont nodded. “I lost a friend when I was very young. And I remember thinking the same thing—I kept waiting for him in places I expected him to be, or getting extra cookies at lunch because I’d always pick some up for him. But it does get easier, with time.”

If he was just going to trot out the clichés, talking to him would be useless. “Yeah, I’ve heard people say that.”

He leaned forward and I could feel him looking at me, though I focused my eyes on the prints he’d hung up on the wall. All abstract stuff, but in soothing colors. The whole office was kind of cheesy. “People are going to say a lot of things. And some of it will be helpful, and some of it will be annoying, and lots of it will get on your nerves. But they’re saying it because people said those things to them, or because they found it helpful when they lost someone. They mean well.”

Sure they did. “Is that supposed to make it better?” I looked him right in the eyes then and hoped he couldn’t see what I was thinking.

He met my gaze and somehow I felt like he knew, and that it didn’t bother him. “Not yet,” he said. “Someday.”

I knew he was trying to help, but he was dead-on about the whole getting-on-my-nerves thing. “Is that all?” I started to stand up.

He held up a hand. “Can I have just a couple of minutes more? I was hoping maybe you could tell me whether Hayden confided in you about how he was feeling. Did you have a sense that he was thinking about doing this?”

Way to jump right into it. I sat back down. What was I supposed to say? We talked about it all the time, but I never thought he was serious. I never was. “Any kid who’s been picked on as much as Hayden has thought about it,” I said.

“So he did talk to you?”

Talked about it? It was a running joke with us. We’d spent hours playing with Hayden’s iPhone, trying to get Siri, the virtual personal assistant, to recommend a suicide hotline. “I’m depressed, Siri,” Hayden would say.

I don’t understand, Hayden.

“I need help, Siri.”

I don’t understand, Hayden.

“I’m lonely. I don’t have any friends.”

I’m really tired of these arbitrary categories, Hayden.

“Siri, are you mad at me?”

No comment, Hayden.

We’d kept asking questions until we couldn’t talk because we were laughing so hard. Eventually we figured out we just needed to be more direct. “Siri, I want to jump off a bridge … which one is the tallest?”

But not for a second did I think he meant it. I never had. I knew things were bad—I couldn’t put that party out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried—but I had no idea he’d take it to this extreme. I figured he’d lock himself in his room for the weekend and ignore me, like he did sometimes when he was upset, or when I’d been a jerk, or both. I’d text him jokes and invite him to Gchat, but I wouldn’t hear from him until later in the week, maybe, and then only in Mage Warfare. He’d use his archmage powers to take down some really big creatures and I’d know that he’d gotten his revenge.

Only on some level I must have known that this time was different. After all, I’d gone to his house the next morning instead of following our normal routine.

“Sam?”

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I spaced out for a second. I haven’t been sleeping much.”

“Understandable. So you were saying that Hayden had mentioned suicide in the past?”

“Not in like a serious way. I didn’t see this coming at all.” Which was true, mostly.

“Not at all? So there was nothing that might be a triggering event, of sorts?” He was leaning forward again, hands on his thighs, anxious to hear what I had to say.

But there was no way I was going to talk about the party, or anything that had happened since. Hayden had been through enough, and so had I. And I was starting to get angry again. “Look, Hayden was pretty miserable. His brother and his friends treated him like shit, he was bombing all his classes, and I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting his parents, but they were awful too. And no one here did anything to make it better. There was a time when maybe someone could have helped him, but it’s too late now, so why are you talking to me about it? Why don’t you talk to all of them?” My face was burning now, and I realized I was yelling.

“I’m sorry we didn’t see what was happening, Sam, and certainly I’ll be talking to some of the people you’ve mentioned. But it’s you and me talking now, and I want you to know that I’m here whenever you need me. I know you’re angry, and I want to help you channel that anger into something productive, rather than something harmful.” He looked like he was going to reach over and touch my arm or something like that, but he must have figured out that I was itching to hit something.

“What do you want me to do? Take art classes and draw pictures using black crayons? Write short stories about an alternative universe where my best friend didn’t kill himself? What do you want?” I had to calm down. I tried focusing on my breathing. In, out. In, out. Slower each time.

“I just want you to remember that you have options. Sometimes when people are angry they lash out at other people, and there’s enough violence around here as it is.” His brows were furrowed, and his voice had gotten quiet again, despite my yelling.

It took me a minute to figure out what he was so worried about. And then I got it. He thought I was going to shoot up the school or something. Hayden had put a song about it on the playlist; I wondered if that meant he’d thought about it himself. I forced myself to stop yelling, to speak almost as quietly as he had. “Look, it’s true that I think there are a lot of people to blame for all of this, but I’m one of them.” For a second, my mind flashed back to the party, to the last words I’d ever said to him. Fuck you, Hayden. Some kind of best friend I was. “And it’s not my job to decide who should pay.”

Mr. Beaumont exhaled; I hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. “I’m glad to hear you feel that way, though I’m sorry you feel responsible. Maybe that’s something we could talk about next time.”

I figured that meant there had to be a next time, so I nodded and took another handful of M&M’s before I left.

“In the meantime, get some rest,” Mr. Beaumont said. “You look exhausted.”

No kidding.







(#ulink_d07c83a3-04a3-5e0b-a2c5-3cc2f013f28e)


I WAITED UNTIL I GOT HOME to look at the envelope Mr. Beaumont had given me, once I’d shut myself up in my room. It was full of pamphlets—on suicide, grieving, depression, anger management. The suicide one was loaded with statistics. Someone died by suicide every fourteen minutes or so, which seemed crazy high to me, and a million people a year attempted it. It was the third leading cause of death for teenagers, and boys did it more often than girls. Girls tended to use it as what the pamphlet called a “cry for help,” though it sounded more like an attention grab to me. They would slit their wrists but cut the wrong way, or take a bunch of pills when they knew someone was likely to find them. Boys were more definitive. Hanging, shooting, jumping off tall things.

I could just imagine Mr. Beaumont giving a pamphlet like this to Ryan. He’d probably jump all over the fact that Hayden had used a girl’s strategy. Leave it to the bully trifecta to come up with reasons to mock him even after he was gone.

The lack of sleep was starting to make me dizzy so I lay down on my bed for a while and tried to take a nap. But my head was still spinning from all the different things going on—Hayden being gone, of course, but also Astrid, and the Archmage. Except I was pretty sure I must have dreamed the Archmage. I wasn’t in the habit of falling asleep in my desk chair, but there was a first time for everything. I tried to put it out of my head but just when I thought I was about to drift off there was a knock at the door.

“Mom, I’m trying to sleep in here.”

“It’s not Mom.” I opened my eyes. The door opened and Rachel came in my room wearing her usual outfit: a very tiny skirt and so much makeup it looked like she’d spray-painted it on. Funny, when she didn’t have on a fake face she and Mom looked a lot alike—both were tall, with long brown curly hair and big brown eyes. But while Mom looked tired all the time from working, Rachel looked like she worked at one of the makeup counters at the mall. Which was actually her dream job. All that makeup made her look old, though, almost as old as Mom. If she just took off half of the makeup and gave it to Mom, they’d both look great.

Not that I’d ever say that to either one of them. I wasn’t a complete idiot.

“You haven’t stepped one foot in my room in at least a year,” I pointed out. “What are you doing here?”

She looked around at the band posters that covered every inch of the walls not already taken over by my bookshelves. “It hasn’t improved much. Listen, Jimmy’s coming over for dinner and I need you to get your ass downstairs ASAP and make this as painless as possible.”

“I totally forgot,” I said, and closed my eyes again. “Mom said something this morning. I think I’ll just stay up here.”




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