Playlist for the Dead

by Michelle Falkoff

  The doorbell rang before we could say anything else. Finally, food. It seemed like everyone was grateful to have the pizza to focus on for a while.

  “Tell me about your first day back,” Mom asked, after we’d all started eating.

  “No big deal,” I said. I really did not want to talk about Mr. Beaumont.

  “You missed the first few days when everyone was talking about Hayden,” Rachel said. “Now they’re all talking about what happened to Jason Yoder.”

  I turned to her so fast I almost hurt my neck. “What happened to Jason?”

  “You didn’t hear? This rumor started going around that he’s gay, I guess. And then, no one knows exactly what happened, but the police found him tied to a telephone pole outside the Blue Star bar. Buck naked. He didn’t press charges or anything—I guess he hoped no one would find out. But people always do. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  Libertyville was a pretty conservative town. Even though Iowa was progressive in being one of the first states to legalize gay marriage, it hadn’t trickled down to us quite yet. I hadn’t heard the rumor about Jason, but that wasn’t surprising—I wasn’t exactly clued in enough to be part of the rumor mill. But I’d heard about the Blue Star bar. It wasn’t officially a gay bar, but in the scheme of our small town, it basically was.

  The idea of Jason Yoder—one macho third of the bully trifecta—being tied naked to a telephone pole was a weird image. It was probably his worst nightmare.

  “Rachel, there’s no need for that kind of gossip,” Mom said. “That poor boy.”

  “Poor boy?” I said, feeling myself getting angry yet again. “He was a total bully who treated Hayden like crap. I’m not sorry.”

  “Sam!” Mom snapped. “You don’t have to like him, but you shouldn’t say something like that.”

  “What’s to be sorry about, anyway?” Rachel said. “You didn’t do it.”

  “Of course not. I just meant I’m not sorry it happened to him. That guy was an asshole.”

  “Language, Sam!” Mom said. “And besides, we’re not the kind of family who wishes bad things on other people.”

  Maybe you’re not, I wanted to say, and I could see Rachel was thinking the same thing.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  AFTER DINNER I WENT BACK UP to my room. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep right away, so I decided to play Mage Warfare, Archmage or no Archmage. I remembered when Hayden and I had first started playing. We’d talked a lot about the kinds of characters we wanted to create. I’d just read this crazy book about a video game that was supposed to be like reality, where the author had all these theories about why people created characters and acted the way they did in the game world. In the book some of them replicated their lives online—they had the same jobs, drove the same cars, hung out with the same kinds of people. It was like they were living their lives twice. And then there were the others, who went as far in the opposite direction as they could: accountants became movie stars, schoolteachers became rapists, that sort of thing. It was fascinating to me.

  Hayden found it disturbing, though. “Both of those options seem off,” he’d said. “It’s hard to imagine that people who were so content with their lives would want to be the same way online—they could just be happy in the real world and not bother with the game at all. And does it really make sense that people’s fantasies would have no resemblance to their real lives? I mean, if the schoolteachers were killing bratty kids that would be one thing, right?” He thought it made more sense if people were who they were but better. People who had boring jobs but loved karaoke would be the rock stars; beat cops would save the world. He would be tall and handsome and magical, and he’d fight for good. Like the Archmage.

  I was more intrigued by the darker aspects of gaming. I kind of liked being a bad guy in a world where no one knew who I was and where there were no consequences. And the whole idea of good and evil—there were so many people everyone thought were good who were clearly awful, so why was it a given that being on the good side was any better than being on the bad one?

  “If everyone thought like you did, there would be anarchy,” Hayden said.

  “I’m not sure that would be the worst thing in the world,” I said. “How can you say you believe in good and evil as absolutes and then look at politics? Both sides think they’re the good guys, and both seem like idiots to me. And they’re totally inconsistent—one side says government is bad but wants to control everything you do, and the other says government is good and then can’t get anything done, which makes government look bad. If there were anarchy, people would have to find ways to work together to make anything happen.”

  “It’s crazy to think people would manage without anyone in charge,” he said. “Look how desperate most people are for someone to tell them what to do.”

  “Some people,” I said. “But look at us—we both learn way more on our own than we do at school, and we’re more interested in things we find for ourselves.”

  “That’s what makes us weird,” he said, but he laughed as he said it.

  I thought about that conversation a lot, after he was gone. We hadn’t talked about the fact that we had different goals in learning on our own: I did it because I could, because I wanted to learn different things than the school wanted to teach me, because I looked forward to the day I could leave Libertyville behind and start over. Mom always reminded me that the best years of my life were ahead of me, that for the jerks in high school this was as good as it got, whereas someone like me would move on to more exciting things. “You’re going to have a beautiful life,” she’d say, smoothing my hair with her cool hand, “and high school will be just a distant memory.”

  But Hayden learned things on his own because he was having trouble learning them any other way. I couldn’t imagine how frustrating it must have been to be as smart as he was—brilliant, even—but to have trouble getting his thoughts out of his head. He could communicate with me just fine, but the teachers at school made him nervous, and he stammered and sputtered when they asked him questions. His writing wasn’t much better; he was okay when we Gchatted, in part because of autocorrect, but when it came to working through his thoughts on paper, the dyslexia got him every time. I realized we hadn’t talked much about his plans for the future; whenever I’d asked, he’d shut me down.

  Was it possible that he’d always known? What else hadn’t he told me?

  Then a weird thought occurred to me. There was someone I could ask.

  The Archmage.

  Right. I put the thought out of my head and logged in to Mage Warfare, losing myself in the game for hours. I was on fire—I killed so many people I couldn’t keep track of all the angry chat messages I was getting. It was like they gave me fuel; the more these random strangers from all over the world cussed me out, the better I did. It didn’t matter if the players were good or evil. If they got in my way, they were screwed. I was so wrapped up in the mayhem I’d created that it took me a while to realize that the pinging of the chat window wasn’t coming from inside the game.

  ArchmageGed: How do?

  It was happening again. And I was sure I was awake—I’d drunk so much Coke with my pizza I might never sleep again, though admittedly I hadn’t even begun to make up for the hours I’d lost. I looked at the clock: 1:43 a.m. Later than I realized. I was going to have to call it soon.

  SamGoldsmith: Whoever this is, cut it out.

  ArchmageGed: You know who this is. Miss me?

  SamGoldsmith: Seriously, stop it.

  And I meant it. Much as I would have loved to talk to Hayden, I didn’t believe it was really him. There was no afterlife where people got to come back as their fantasy selves. It didn’t even work in Mage Warfare.

  ArchmageGed: Come on, the fun’s only just started!

  Fun? My best friend was dead and someone was trying
to talk to me about fun? That was just mean.

  SamGoldsmith: I’m logging out now.

  But I waited. Despite myself, I was curious about what was really going on here.

  ArchmageGed: Look, I can help you.

  Help me with what? Deal with the fact that my best friend was gone? I wasn’t seeing it.

  SamGoldsmith: There’s nothing you can do for me.

  ArchmageGed: You’d be surprised what I can do. Don’t you wish there are things you’d done differently? Things you’d change?

  Of course there were. But there was no way to go back.

  SamGoldsmith: Can’t change anything. It’s too late.

  ArchmageGed: Not for everyone.

  SamGoldsmith: What do you mean?

  The cursor blinked while I waited for him to reply.

  ArchmageGed: One down, two to go.

  What was that supposed to mean?

  And then I remembered what Rachel had said about Jason Yoder. I imagined he’d been terrified of being outed, and there was no more straightforward way of getting outed than to be tied up naked outside a gay bar.

  Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence.

  SamGoldsmith: Are you talking about the bully trifecta?

  The cursor just blinked, but like last time, a song from the playlist started coming through my speakers. It was a song I had forwarded through every time it came up; I couldn’t bear to remember the last time I’d heard it. I tried to shut off iTunes to make the music stop, but somehow it kept playing. I still didn’t want to listen to it.

  But apparently now I’d have to.

  “I don’t understand why all of a sudden you, of all people, want to go to a party,” I’d said. We were sitting in Hayden’s room, surrounded by wall-to-wall Star Wars paraphernalia. No one would ever think a girl lived there, that’s for sure. “You hate parties. You get mad every time I try to make you go to one.”

  “Which is why you owe me,” Hayden said. “If I’m asking, it must be important, right?”

  “I guess, but I still don’t get it.”

  “What’s to get? You’re the one who keeps saying we need to hang out with other people.” As usual, I couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic, and it kind of pissed me off. What was so awful about suggesting that we weren’t the only two people at Libertyville High worth interacting with? Not to mention that some of those other people might be girls?

  “But for no reason?”

  “Who says there isn’t a reason?” He gave me a half grin, and I knew he wasn’t going to tell me. I’d been bugging him about it all day and gotten nothing. It was really frustrating.

  “Look, you don’t have to tell me everything, but we’re going into enemy territory here. Usually that merits an explanation.” The party was at Stephanie Caster’s house, and she was part of Ryan’s crew. We’d never been to one of those parties before; the few we’d gone to were a little less exclusive.

  “Ryan’s got an out-of-town game tonight. It should be safe.”

  “That’s not the kind of explanation I was looking for, and you know it,” I said, still annoyed.

  “Well, sometimes life is unfair.”

  Stupid cryptic rational Hayden. “You’re wearing that?” I asked.

  He looked down. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  Nothing, really. Jeans, sneakers, and a Vampire Weekend T-shirt. He actually looked all right—maybe he’d even lost a little weight? Had he been trying and I hadn’t noticed? “Didn’t know you were into those guys, that’s all. Aren’t they a little poppy for you?” Hayden usually liked sad, whiny music. Vampire Weekend was my thing.

  “Maybe I’m feeling more upbeat today.”

  “Well, good for you,” I said. Sure, now he was feeling upbeat. I’d been trying to get him to go to parties forever, parties with people that we might actually like. And now, the one time he was willing to leave the house, we were stuck with the Stephanie Caster crowd. I knew I should just be grateful that he was willing to branch out, but for some reason it annoyed me. Why did everything have to be on his terms?

  “Why are you being such an asshole?” It wasn’t like Hayden to get all confrontational. He must have been really excited about the stupid party to get so irritated with me.

  “Didn’t mean to pee in your Cheerios. Sorry.” I got up from sitting on his bed and sat at the desk, scrolling through iTunes on Hayden’s fancy MacBook. “Here, you want upbeat? We’ll do upbeat.” I clicked on “Diane Young.” “In honor of your shirt,” I said.

  “That’s pretty aggressively upbeat,” he said.

  “Lyrics are still a downer, though. Saying someone’s got the luck of a Kennedy is harsh.”

  “Are we going to sit around talking about lyrics all night? We should probably get out of here.”

  No. I forced myself to snap out of the daze I’d been in. I wasn’t at the party with Hayden; I was home, alone, in my room. And I wasn’t ready to think about this yet. I tried rebooting the computer to make the music stop, but nothing happened. The song kept playing, its rapid-fire drumbeat echoing against the walls.

  Creepy. Almost creepier because the song was so happy sounding. Almost like it was mocking me.

  My Gchat window pinged.

  ArchmageGed: Come on, you can remember the whole thing.

  It wasn’t going to happen. Not now. I couldn’t handle another night without enough sleep; that had to be why all this was happening. None of it was real.

  And yet the song kept playing.

  I tried shutting down iTunes again, clicking out of Gchat. Nothing.

  It sounded as if the song was getting even louder. Which was impossible.

  My heart was pounding and when I looked down I realized my hands were shaking. Finally I slammed my laptop shut. The music ended as abruptly as it had begun; the silence seemed almost loud. Loud enough to keep me awake, but I really had to go to sleep.

  Except when I turned around, someone was sitting on my bed.

  I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. The person on the bed was a man, young but not handsome, with long reddish-brown hair that almost matched his skin.

  ArchmageGed.

  Or at least someone who looked almost exactly like the wizard figurine I’d bought. I looked up at my shelf—but the figurine wasn’t there.

  It made no sense. I felt myself starting to panic. How did he get in my room? There was no way this could really be happening.

  “Who are you?” I asked, finally, but he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. Then the air around him seemed to shimmer, and the room got cold, almost like there was a breeze blowing in, though my windows were closed. And yet I was sweating.

  I closed my eyes and felt my head pounding, almost like my brain was trying to come out my ears. This was not real. It couldn’t be.

  I tried to monitor my breathing, to keep from panicking. In. Out. In. Out. Slowly. I had to find a way to be rational. Hayden’s vision of ArchmageGed was, I knew, a kind of dashing magician, a glamorous alternative-universe David Blaine. If he were really ArchmageGed, wasn’t that who I would see? I’d always pictured him as more like Gandalf, a tall old man with long gray hair and flowing robes; if this were all my imagination, the person on the bed would look like him.

  I was a little calmer now. I opened my eyes again.

  The figurine was there.

  But the wizard was gone.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Remember, the party’s tonight. Come early.

  All day Friday I stared at Astrid’s text. She’d really meant it when she said I should come. It was Friday afternoon, and though I hadn’t forgotten about the party, I just wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go.

  I’d spent the rest of the week completely freaked out about the Archmage situation. What had really happened in my room that night? I’d been so wired that I hadn
’t slept at all, and I’d been up most nights since trying to figure it out. Now I felt like a zombie. I needed to talk to someone about it, but there was no way I would even consider Astrid, and the only other people I could imagine—Mom, Mr. Beaumont, Jimmy—would all think I was crazy. Which I was starting to think I was. No, I had to put it out of my mind. I knew I should probably just stay in, especially given what happened last time I went to a party, but maybe this was the kind of distraction I needed.

  Kind of presumptuous of you to assume I’m going, isn’t it? I read it over before I sent it and realized it sounded rude, so I added a winking smiley face and hoped it was enough. ;-)

  Oh, you’re going. Trust me, it’ll be a good thing.

  How could I argue with that? I started getting ready. I brushed my teeth so many times my gums bled, and I accidentally put too much gel in my hair and had to wash it twice to get it out. I spent what felt like an hour staring at a drawer of T-shirts, before deciding on a Raygun shirt that said MAKE AWKWARD SEXUAL ADVANCES NOT WAR. Mom had rolled her eyes when I bought it, but I guess she thought the odds were against me getting to make the advances in the first place. She was probably right; I had a feeling the shirt could do more harm than good. But I liked it.

  Hayden’s mix wasn’t exactly filled with party music, but I was finding it hard to listen to anything else these days. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to listen to that Vampire Weekend song again, so I opted instead for a song we’d rocked out to together before. It felt a little bit like an homage.

  But it made me even more conflicted about whether I should be going out. I couldn’t imagine what Hayden would do in my place, but I’d never have put him in this place. And I wouldn’t be in this place at all if he were still here. Bitter, maybe, but true.

  The party was on my side of town, which was already a point in its favor. The jock jerks tended to stay on their side, where there was always action because their parents traveled so much. “I’m kind of nervous about this,” I admitted to Astrid, when she called to give me the details. “I haven’t been to that many parties, and the last one . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Not out loud.