Playlist for the Dead

by Michelle Falkoff

  I was getting tired again; it was hard keeping my eyes focused, and I found myself reading and forgetting to scroll and reading the same thing again. But it was too late to go to bed; the sun was going to come up soon. And besides, I had to know the whole story.

  I finally got up to go to the bathroom, then went downstairs for a Coke—I needed caffeine now if I was going to get through this. The house was quiet in the way only an empty house can be—Mom was at work, and Rachel had taken the opportunity to go stay at Jimmy’s, though Mom would kill her if she found out. Every step I took seemed to echo off the walls. The old stairs creaked as I climbed them, which normally I could ignore, but tonight it kind of freaked me out. I kept expecting ArchmageGed to show up in person again, which I knew was crazy, but it didn’t stop my head from spinning around every time I heard a new noise.

  Finally I took Hayden’s laptop into bed with me and continued reading. The relationship between ArchmageGed and Athena kept heating up; I’d gotten to the part where they talked about music, and I’d been right that a lot of the songs he’d put on the playlist came from her, like the one I was listening to now, a song that was a strange mix of desperately sad and optimistic. But things changed at the point where Hayden decided it was time for them to reveal their real names. Whereas Athena had always been open with him before, now she was withdrawing a little; I could see that this was going to be a real turning point for them. But I knew where Hayden was coming from. He wanted to know if this was real; he wanted more than an online relationship.

  ArchmageGed: I get that you probably live a million miles away, or are a hundred years old, or a dude, or whatever, but you can tell me. I’ll get over it. I just want to know who you really are.

  Athena: It’s not like that.

  ArchmageGed: That’s even better, then.

  Athena: Not necessarily.

  ArchmageGed: I don’t understand. We’ve already said that we know each other better than anyone else. I feel so close to you, but I need to know whether this is real.

  Athena: It’s more complicated than you realize.

  ArchmageGed: I’ll uncomplicate it. Hi, I’m Hayden Stevens. I’m sixteen. I’m a sophomore at Libertyville High in Iowa. See, it’s not so hard. And now you know who I am. But if you don’t tell me who you are, it’s over.

  There was a gap in the time stamps of the chat transcript. Athena was clearly thinking things over.

  Athena: Fine. But I want to do it in person.

  ArchmageGed: Really? How?

  Athena: All those things you just told me—I already knew.

  ArchmageGed: How?

  Athena: I’m from Libertyville too.

  There was another gap in the transcript while he processed what she’d just said. It probably completely freaked Hayden out.

  ArchmageGed: So we didn’t meet randomly here.

  He’d figured something out, anyway.

  Athena: We had some help. I’ll explain everything when we meet.

  ArchmageGed: Where? When?

  I could tell he wanted her explanation to be a good one, one that was fitting of who he believed her to be.

  Athena: There’s a party next weekend at Stephanie Caster’s house. We can meet there.

  ArchmageGed: If you really know who I am, you’ll understand why that might not be the best place.

  Athena: It wasn’t my idea. That friend I told you about—she thinks it will work. There will be a ton of people there. No one will pay attention to us.

  ArchmageGed: Why can’t we go somewhere and be alone?

  Athena: Because I’m afraid.

  ArchmageGed: Of me? I promise, I’m not scary.

  Athena: I’m not so good with people. And I’m afraid that when you meet me I won’t be what you wanted me to be. I really want to talk to you in person, but I need to feel safe.

  She was pretty self-aware; she knew herself well enough to know that being honest with someone at home in front of a computer screen was very different than dealing with them in real life.

  But she’d given me one of the pieces of the puzzle—why we were at that party in the first place.

  Who was Athena? Had she even showed up? How did she know how to find Hayden in the game?

  My mind was racing again. I didn’t know where to start figuring out the answers to all my questions. I finally looked away from the computer to realize that I could see the sun rising. It was almost time for school—I really had stayed up all night. The questions would have to wait. I closed my eyes. With the computer still sitting on my chest, I started to drift off. But right before I fell asleep, I came up with one more:

  How did Astrid know about Athena?

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  “WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HOME?”

  I opened my eyes to see sunlight streaming through my window and Hayden’s laptop still sitting on my chest, though it had long since gone into power-save mode. My iPhone alarm had gone off but apparently I’d just slept through it; I could hear a song from the playlist in the background. Mom was standing in the doorway of my room, frowning at me. She must have just gotten home from work; she was wearing rumpled pink scrubs with little monkeys all over them.

  “Overslept,” I said, my voice cracking. I wasn’t really awake yet. Not surprising, given that I must have fallen asleep at like five in the morning.

  She sighed. “Get dressed quick. If I drive you we can get you there just in time for homeroom.”

  I felt bad; she looked as exhausted as I’d been feeling lately. I brushed my teeth, put on extra deodorant, and threw on my clothes as fast as I could.

  “Were you up playing Mage Warfare all night?” Mom asked, as I got in the car. “Or is something else going on? Were you thinking about Hayden?”

  She’d pretty much covered it. “All of the above,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  “Tell me what’s happening.” She ran her hands through her rumpled curls and I could see that she hadn’t had time to brush her hair before herding me off to school. I felt bad for keeping her from going to bed; I knew how it felt.

  I looked out the window as she drove, at the run-down houses in our neighborhood that gave way to downtown as we got closer to school. The leaves had long since turned, and the streets were littered with them, damp and crushed under people’s feet and car tires. A few people had started putting up Halloween decorations; I turned away when I saw a fake gravestone with R.I.P. written on it in big, shaky letters. I wanted to tell her everything, but she’d just get worried, and she had enough to deal with. “I’ve just been thinking a lot,” I said, instead. “About Hayden and everything. Do you believe something happens to people? After they die?”

  “Like heaven? Harps and fluffy clouds?”

  I’d been thinking more about ghosts, specifically ghosts shaped like wizards, but I didn’t see any reason to mention that. “I guess.”

  “No, I don’t really believe that,” she said. “I think we need to focus on the lives we’re living now. The dead live on in our memories. And our dreams. I dreamed a lot about my mother after she died, and I still do. Good dreams, and bad ones too. But I didn’t mind even the bad ones. It made her still feel real to me.”

  Maybe that’s what had happened. Maybe I’d fallen asleep sitting up, that time I thought I’d actually seen the Archmage. “How real? Like she’s in the room with you?” I was holding my breath.

  “Not literally,” she said, pulling into the school parking lot. “But real enough that even now I sometimes wake up and forget she’s gone. And sometimes I feel like she’s watching us. Like she’s seen you kids grow up, and she’s happy. But that’s just wishful thinking.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, as I opened the car door. The air was cold and smelled like dead leaves.

  Mom smiled. “You never know. Have a good day at school, okay? We can talk more later if you want.”
>
  I knew it wasn’t going to be a good day at school, though, not after skipping out yesterday. I couldn’t avoid Mr. Beaumont forever; my homeroom teacher gave me a stern look and said I needed to go see him right away. I braced myself and went straight to his office.

  “Nice to see you again, Sam,” Mr. Beaumont said, sitting in one of the big comfy chairs and indicating that I should sit in the other one. “Though I’d asked you to come yesterday. I didn’t expect to have to come and get you.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just didn’t have a free period, that’s all.”

  “I see,” he said, though I knew that if he had a copy of my schedule, he already knew I was supposed to have a study hall yesterday afternoon. “Well, we can let that go for now. We’ve got lots to talk about today.”

  “Do we?” I wondered what he knew, what it made sense to tell him. For a moment I toyed with the idea of telling him about the Archmage, but the thought of saying the words out loud made me feel even crazier than I already did.

  “We do, I’m afraid. I’ve been in meetings all morning talking to people about what happened to Trevor this weekend. Including the police.”

  My heart started pounding. “The police?”

  “Yes, the police.” Mr. Beaumont sounded stern, not at all the friendly, open confidant he’d portrayed himself to be at our last meeting. “From what I understand, there are two boys who’ve been injured at this school in the past week, and you’ve had altercations with both of them.”

  I felt my face start to get red. I hoped it didn’t make me look guilty. Did that mean the police were looking into what happened to Jason, too? I thought he’d insisted on keeping the police out of it. That’s what Rachel had said, anyway. I wondered who’d seen me arguing with the trifecta at the funeral. “It’s not like that,” was all I could think of to say.

  To my surprise, Mr. Beaumont nodded. I sank back in my chair, not realizing I’d been sitting ruler-straight. “I told the police I’d met with you, that I didn’t think you were capable of that kind of violence,” he said. “Now I need you to tell me that I did the right thing.”

  “Of course you did!” But I couldn’t keep the note of doubt out of my voice.

  “Let me tell you what I know, and then you can tell me what you know,” he said. “I know that you and Jason exchanged words at Hayden’s funeral, and then Jason was beaten up by someone he didn’t see. I know that you and Trevor got into a fight at a party this weekend, in front of a lot of people, I might add, and that night someone attacked Trevor, also from behind so he couldn’t see who it was. I know that Jason and Trevor are Ryan Stevens’s best friends, and the three of them, as you told me, treated Hayden very badly. And I know that you’re angry and upset and missing your best friend, and we talked just last week about not lashing out. I believe it was a good talk, and I want to believe that you were listening to me, which is why I told the police what I did. But you have to understand how all of this looks.”

  Oh, I understood. I understood perfectly. I looked down at my jeans. There was a little tiny rip right at the knee; I pulled at a thread and it ripped through the fabric. It felt kind of satisfying.

  “Sam, I need you to look at me and tell me you didn’t do this.”

  I looked back up, remembering the conversation Astrid and I had had about lying. I didn’t want to think of myself as a liar. I didn’t know what to do. I had to tell him something. “I didn’t do it.” It wasn’t completely a lie, since I didn’t think I’d done it.

  Mr. Beaumont looked at me. I remembered when he’d seemed to almost read my mind before; I wondered if he could read it now. “Why don’t you tell me where you were when those boys were attacked? That will set my mind at ease, and then maybe I can talk to the police so you don’t have to.”

  I felt relief wash over me for a minute, until I remembered that I didn’t really have alibis for either night. But it was comforting to know that Mr. Beaumont was inclined to believe me, even if there was a good chance it wouldn’t be for long.

  “I was at that party Saturday night,” I began. I told him how Trevor had showed up and started in on me, how I’d gotten really drunk for the first time and fallen asleep at the 7-Eleven. “I was really, really pissed off at him, but I swear I was totally passed out.”

  Mr. Beaumont frowned. “Did anyone see you at the 7-Eleven?”

  “Just the guy who worked there. He woke me up in the morning.” My face still felt hot, as if I were lying, but I wasn’t. As far as I knew.

  “Do you know what time you left the party?”

  I shook my head. “I think it was before midnight because I wanted to make the curfew, but like I said, I was pretty drunk.” It was embarrassing to have to admit that to him, but I didn’t see what else I could do.

  “What about the night Jason was hurt? Where were you then?” Mr. Beaumont looked almost hopeful. I could tell he didn’t want it to be me. Not as much as I didn’t, though.

  “At home.” It sounded lame even as I said it.

  “Who was with you?”

  “No one. Mom works nights most of the time, and my sister was out. I think.”

  “You think?” His eyebrows arched.

  I sighed. “I haven’t been getting much sleep since Hayden died. Everything’s all kind of blurry. I don’t remember whether Rachel was at home; I just remember that she’s the one who told me Jason got beat up, the next day.”

  Mr. Beaumont leaned forward, elbow on his knee, chin in his hand. Like that statue of the guy thinking. “It’s a little worrisome that you don’t have anyone who can vouch for you either night. You may want to ask around, see if anyone saw you at the 7-Eleven, or talk to your sister about whether she remembers seeing you that night. I’ll do what I can to help with the police, but you might still have to meet with them at some point.”

  “Does that mean you believe me?” I tried not to sound too hopeful, but I couldn’t really help it. If he believed me, then maybe I really was telling the truth.

  He hesitated for just a second, and I knew I wasn’t off the hook. “I want to,” he said. “It just would be nice to have some verification. Have you given any thought to who else might be behind this?”

  Setting aside Hayden and Astrid, it was all I’d thought about. But I hadn’t been able to come up with anything. “They were all assholes. There must be someone else who had some kind of beef with them.”

  “You said ‘all’—do you mean just Jason and Trevor?”

  “I guess I was including Hayden’s brother, too. Ryan. The third member of the bully trifecta.”

  Mr. Beaumont laughed. “Is that what people call them? Sorry, I know it’s not funny. It’s a clever name, though.”

  It made me feel better that he was laughing. If he thought I was guilty, would he do that? “Props for Hayden for that one—he came up with it. Far as I know it was just the two of us who called them that. I only knew about what they did to Hayden, though. I don’t really know if they targeted anyone else the way they went after him.”

  “Hayden was a lot smarter than people gave him credit for, wasn’t he?” he said, with that gentle tone of voice he sometimes had.

  Nice that someone finally got it. “Way smarter.”

  “Ryan was the third, then. But only Jason and Trevor were attacked,” Mr. Beaumont noted.

  “So far,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I swear, it wasn’t me, and I’m not planning anything. I’m just saying that Ryan was the worst of the three. To Hayden, at least. If someone was going after Jason and Trevor, it only makes sense that they’d go after Ryan, too.”

  And I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything to stop it. Though if the police were after me, it looked like I’d have no choice.

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  I LEFT MR. BEAUMONT’S OFFICE f
eeling overwhelmed. It was all just too much—Hayden being gone, the Archmage, the trifecta. I needed to feel like I wasn’t crazy, and these days, I only felt like that when I was with Astrid. I looked for her in the cafeteria at lunch but she wasn’t there. Her friends were at their usual table, though, Eric included, so I figured, screw it—I’d ask and see if they knew where she was.

  “Hey, Sam!” Damian, the bearded guy from the party, called out. “Are you coming to sit with us? Scoot over, Jess.” He nudged a tiny pixie-haired girl I recognized from the party. She looked down but nodded and then moved for me.

  I hadn’t planned on sitting down, but what the hell—not like I had anywhere else to go. “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t have any food, either, but I wasn’t hungry. “I was actually looking for Astrid—any of you guys seen her?”

  Everyone turned to look at Eric, which made sense. He nodded his head at me. “Sure, she was in class earlier. I think she skipped lunch to study for a test. I can show you where her locker is if you want to try to catch her before sixth period.”

  “That would be great,” I said, though I felt kind of awkward. Sure, it was kind of weird that Astrid’s boyfriend would help another guy who was clearly into her—I didn’t kid myself that I was hiding it well—but it was cool of him to do it.

  “No problem,” he said. I wondered if he even saw me as a threat.

  The cafeteria was on the bottom floor of the school, and of course Astrid’s locker was on the very top, in the opposite corner. Once Eric told me where it was I wasn’t surprised we hadn’t run into each other much; the school was divided into four quadrants, and my locker was in the southwest corner, where all the lockers were red, while hers was in the northeast, with glaring yellow lockers. Just being in those halls made my head hurt.