“Well, I was early, and I figured you might be here.” She leaned over my shoulder to see what I was reading. “I don’t want to interrupt you reading your weird vampire comic or anything, though.”
“Not a problem,” I said, and put it down so I could look at her. Today’s outfit was a kind of ripped-up white shirt with a long, black, lacy skirt and high laced-up Doc Martens. There were black and white streaks in her hair to match, and her lips looked like a checkerboard: half black, half white on top, and reversed on the bottom. It looked like a lot of work, so I figured I probably shouldn’t kiss her, since I’d mess it up.
But then she frowned a little, and I remembered the look on her face when she asked me why I hadn’t made a move on her. Lipstick was fixable, right? I pulled her toward me and then leaned in. I was so glad I did, too, because when I pulled back she was smiling, and her lipstick was hilarious, all smudgy and swirly and gray. And she was laughing at me, too, since my mouth probably looked just like hers.
“Looks like you need a Kleenex,” she said.
“More like a Wet-Nap.”
But we both couldn’t stop smiling.
“You two shopping, or just blocking the aisle?” I heard the manager say.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Astrid said. She grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the ITC, toward the Sweet Spot, a candy store just off the food court. It sold just about every kind of sugary thing you could imagine—there was a whole aisle of weird-colored M&M’s, a row consisting solely of gummy candies, and a section devoted to chocolates from all over the world. Astrid made a beeline for the penny candy.
“This stuff is my favorite,” she said. “When I was little, my dad used to drive us to the fanciest part of town for Halloween, because they had the best stuff. This one house always gave out whole bags of old-school candy—saltwater taffy, candy necklaces, caramel bull’s-eyes. I think they owned a restaurant or something.”
“That was smart. We always stayed local. All Milky Ways and Almond Joys, and I hate coconut. Mom used to steal all my Reese’s peanut butter cups—she called it rent.”
We both bought our bags of candy and then sat down in the food court. “So there’s something I have to ask you,” I said.
“Sounds serious,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t really think so.
“Athena,” I said. “The password. How did you know about that?”
The screen fell again, but I was determined to get past it.
“I really need to know,” I said. “I’m going a little crazy here. I still feel like what happened to Hayden is my fault, but then there’s all this other stuff with Jason and Trevor, and I just don’t know what to do.”
“You never finished telling me why you think it’s your fault,” she said.
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“So are you.”
We stared at each other, almost as if daring the other one to talk first.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you the rest, if you promise to tell me about Athena.”
“Fine,” she said, and stuck a peppermint stick in her mouth without looking at me.
So Hayden and I had finally gone to a party, at his urging, no less, and here we were, lying on the ground, being laughed at. It was like living in a nightmare. I grabbed Hayden’s arm and tried to pull him upright. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
For some reason he resisted me, pulling his arm back but not getting up himself.
“Come on!” I said, and reached for him again.
This time he snatched his arm back. “Don’t touch me,” he said, but he did get up.
“What is going on with you? Are you okay?” I asked, trying to ignore the laughter around me, trying to pretend people weren’t still looking at us.
“No, I’m not okay,” he said. There was a ring of open space around us, but the path to the front door was packed with people. Hayden shoved his way through as the laughter died down; I followed him outside. The air had grown sharp and cold.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said. “I don’t understand. What just happened?”
“Nothing.” He started walking quickly, almost as if he wanted to get away from me, though we were both going back to his house.
I walked faster, to catch up with him. I had the advantage because my legs were so much longer; he’d never be able to ditch me. “You can’t say that was nothing. Why did we come here?”
“Why did we come here?” he repeated. “Why? For a public shaming, that’s why.”
I was starting to get angry. It was one thing for him not to tell me why before, but I’d been just as embarrassed as he was. He owed me. I’d just gone to a party I hadn’t wanted to go to, gotten mocked by people I hated, realizing nothing was ever going to change. And maybe that wasn’t Hayden’s fault, but right now it felt like it was. “You know, all you want to do most of the time is sit around and play Mage Warfare, and these days not even with me, and then you drag me to this party and we’re not even there for an hour before we’re both like five seconds away from getting our asses kicked by your stupid brother and his stupid friends. Who weren’t even supposed to be there. And you still don’t think it’s worth telling me why the fuck we were even here in the first place?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
“Try me.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. Not now.”
“I don’t get it. You’re my best friend. My only friend. I tell you everything, and you don’t seem to trust me at all.”
“It’s not about trust!” he said, and I could tell he was getting angry too. “Maybe it’s that once in a while I’d like something that’s just mine. Not ours to share. Just something that’s all about me. Why is that so hard to understand?”
It wasn’t—I got it, really. In some ways that’s what I wanted, too. “I just don’t see why you can’t have something that’s yours but tell me about it anyway.”
“I would have,” he said. “But now it’s gone.”
“Would you stop it with the cryptic bullshit and just tell me already?” I yelled as we crossed the street.
He stopped in the middle of the road and turned to face me. “No!” he screamed. “No, I’m not going to tell you. Wasn’t it enough that I got thrown down the stairs and humiliated in front of everyone? Do I have to live through the rest of it again? I don’t think so.” He got out his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and threw it at me. “Here. You’ve got your phone. Call a cab. I want to be alone tonight.”
The twenty fluttered to the ground in front of me. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never seen him like this before, and truth be told, I didn’t really want to go back to his house and have to deal with it. But I didn’t want to have to pick up that twenty, either. I’d rather walk, no matter how far it was.
We stared at each other for a minute that felt like ten; the glare of headlights at a stop sign down the street finally snapped us out of it. We both started walking, in opposite directions.
“Fuck you, Hayden,” I said, but he didn’t turn around.
That was the last time I saw him. Alive, anyway.
I took a deep breath and waited for Astrid to say something. For a minute she sat there, sucking on that stupid peppermint stick, still not looking at me. Great. Now she understands. “See?” I said, eventually. “It really was my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” she said.
“You can’t say that.”
“I can,” she said, and then she finally looked at me. “I know why Hayden went to the party.”
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I STARED AT ASTRID LIKE AN IDIOT. “How could you know? You weren’t there.”
“I was supposed to be,” she said.
I didn’t know what to think. But the wheels in my head were spinning, spitting out possible scenarios. Astrid was Athena, and th
ey were supposed to be together at the party. Athena was fake, and Ryan and his friends had set Hayden up just to embarrass him. But how would Astrid know that? Unless she’d been back with Ryan. God, I hoped that wasn’t true. But it didn’t seem right. Nothing I could think of seemed right.
“Let me tell you the whole thing,” she said. She looked worried—scared, even—but she started talking anyway. “I told you I’d become friends with Hayden when I was going out with Ryan, but we stayed in touch even after the breakup. Just the occasional text here and there; he knew I was having a hard time with everything, and he was such a sweet kid. And I liked him so much. I didn’t know why he always seemed so alone to me. Especially when he had a friend like you.”
Something about the way she said it made me feel guilty, but I resolved to just listen and not try to defend myself.
“I decided he needed a girlfriend. And I told him that, but he was too shy to try himself.”
I could have told her that; we’d talked about girls all the time, but neither of us had the guts to ever approach one.
“I wanted to fix him up, but I didn’t think he’d go for it. So I figured I’d try another approach. I had the perfect person in mind: someone cute and small and shy, just like him. Someone creative, who could be talked into finding online gaming fun.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Jess,” Astrid said quietly, looking down.
I remembered the pixie-haired girl I’d seen at the party, and then at lunch, the one who’d never talked to me. I’d thought maybe she didn’t like me for some reason; maybe she’d thought I was the one who hurt the bullies. But maybe it was just shyness. “Jess?”
Astrid nodded. “She’s a sweetheart, just like Hayden, but she’s even shyer than he is. I’ve been wanting the two of you to become friends, but the thought of it completely freaks her out, so I haven’t pushed it. It’s partly because I feel so awful about what happened. See, when you say it’s your fault, I can say that I know it isn’t. Because it’s mine.”
I started to shake my head.
“At least partially,” she said. “I told her how into Mage Warfare Hayden was, that she should set up a user name and find him in the game. That way she wouldn’t have to talk to him in person, not right away; I knew she was much more comfortable online, just like him. She was nervous at first, but I really talked Hayden up, and eventually she was into it. I even suggested the user name.”
I felt my shoulders slump with relief. So that was the connection between Astrid and Athena. I had to admit, it made more sense than the thought of Hayden and Astrid together. And now I didn’t have to feel weird about the idea of sharing a girlfriend with Hayden.
“It worked perfectly at first,” she continued. “Hayden didn’t tell me anything, of course; he wasn’t about to confess to me when he hadn’t even told you. But I kept up with Jess. She was so excited—it seemed like she was really coming out of her shell. They were super cute, always talking about music and making little mixes for each other. I felt like the world’s best matchmaker. And I was even more excited when Jess told me they’d decided to meet in person. She’d been texting me while they were talking online, and I told her about the party. I figured Ryan and those guys wouldn’t be there because of the football game, and I swore to her that it was the perfect place for them to meet. She was terrified he wouldn’t be into her once he’d met her, though I knew there was no chance of it. But if that’s what she needed to feel safe, then I’d make sure she had it. I’d be her wingman.”
“But you weren’t,” I said.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t. I was supposed to meet her there, but something happened, and I just couldn’t. I apologized to her about a thousand times and promised her everything would be fine. Stephanie Caster’s kind of a bitch, but her parties always draw such a big crowd that I figured Jess and Hayden could slip off together and no one would care. I knew it didn’t really matter where they were; as soon as they met in person everything would be fine. She was nervous, but she said she’d be okay.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Why didn’t you go?”
“I can’t talk about that,” she said. “I’m sorry, but it’s not my story to tell. Just trust me when I say I didn’t have much choice. You know what it’s like to have a best friend.”
That meant it had to do with Eric. I wanted to believe her, but I just wasn’t sure yet. “I don’t remember seeing Jess at the party either, though.”
“She got there before you guys did,” Astrid said. “And it was just long enough for her to run into Ryan and his buddies.” She said their names with even more bitterness in her voice than I usually had. She must really still hate him. “I don’t know what they said to her, but whatever it was, it was enough to send her flying out of there. She texted me that she was breaking up with Hayden and she never wanted to hear his name again. I didn’t get the message until hours later; I tried to ask her what happened but she wouldn’t text me back.”
“And Hayden never got to meet her.”
“Which is just so sad to me,” she said. “They could have been happy. If I’d gone to the party . . .”
“You know things wouldn’t have been any different,” I said. But I understood why she was sad; I felt the same way. Hayden had come so close to something real, and to have it taken away from him . . . that had to have been devastating.
“Not necessarily. I could have kept Jess away from those guys, or talked to her after, or kept them away from Hayden . . .”
“You can’t know that. You can’t know that anything would have been different.”
“Well, neither can you,” she said, and I supposed on some level she was right. “All we can say for sure is that Ryan and his friends are at least partly to blame.”
I wanted so badly to ask whether she thought I was somehow taking revenge, but I didn’t know how to say it without sounding crazy. And even as I got angrier and angrier at them, at whatever it was they’d said that pushed Hayden over the edge, I wanted desperately to know that I wasn’t responsible. Maybe they deserved payback, but not this anonymous, physical harm. They needed to know they’d done something wrong. And everyone else needed to know it, too.
No, it couldn’t have been me. It just couldn’t have. But if not me, then who? ArchmageGed? Really?
Astrid reached out and put her hand on mine. “Where are you, Sam? I lost you there for a minute, didn’t I?”
“I’m just thinking,” I said. “There’s still so much that doesn’t make sense to me, and there’s still one thing I’m worried about. There’s only one member of the bully trifecta who hasn’t gotten what’s coming to him: Ryan.” I told her my theory, that if Jason and Trevor had been attacked, then Ryan was next.
She pulled at one of her hair extensions. “You can’t be sure of that,” she said. “It’s not a given that the attacks are connected. It might be karma, but it could still be random, couldn’t it?”
“It could, but that doesn’t mean it is,” I said. “I’m worried something will happen.” I paused. “I mean, what if it really was me?”
“Not a chance,” she said. “I know it wasn’t. And so what if something happens to Ryan? He deserves whatever he gets.”
“That’s kind of harsh, isn’t it?” It freaked me out a little that she could feel such hostility toward someone she used to like so much, but then again, I’d never been through a breakup before. I had no idea what it would be like, and I didn’t want to have to think about it. I was glad she was so sure it wasn’t me, though. I wanted to be that sure too.
“Do you really think so? Wouldn’t you like to see all three of them get what they deserve? Wouldn’t it be kind of satisfying, in a way?” She was leaning forward now, almost as if to say it was okay for me to say it, that she wouldn’t judge me.
But I’d judge myself. I had to make sure things didn’t go any further; I just didn’t know how. “I don’t think that would fix anything,” I said.
“You never know,
” she said, and stood up. “I’ve got to head out now, but what are you doing this weekend?”
“I’m supposed to go to this mud racing thing with Rachel and her boyfriend, but if you want to hang out I can get out of it.”
“No, that’s perfect!” she said, finally smiling again. “That’s what I was going to ask you about. Eric’s racing. It’ll be amazing.”
“Eric?” I was still having trouble reconciling hipster Eric with farm-kid Eric, though I supposed the mudding thing made sense for someone who knew how to fix a tractor.
“He’s shockingly good at it. And I think he’s going to race Ryan. It’ll be fun to see Eric kick his ass.”
“Not sure ‘fun’ is the word I’d use, but I’ll be there,” I said.
And then we kissed, for a long time. I wished it were forever; I wished I could freeze that moment, standing in the middle of the mall, and not have to think about anything else ever again. I didn’t want to think that Ryan was next, and that on Saturday, everyone would be watching. And I had no idea what was going to happen.
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SOMETHING ABOUT KNOWING ASTRID really and truly believed that I wasn’t the one who’d attacked Jason and Trevor seemed to give me permission to finally get some much-needed rest. I managed to put everything out of my mind and just sleep, and it felt wonderful. I woke up the next morning, feeling more awake and alert than I’d felt in weeks.
But the questions weren’t gone. I wasn’t sure what to do next until I remembered the thing that Astrid hadn’t explained: why she hadn’t gone to the party. It wasn’t her story to tell, she’d said. Clearly, then, it was Eric’s. I needed to talk to him.
The key was figuring out how to get Eric by himself—today was one of the days we all had lunch together. I scoured the cafeteria as soon as I got there, not bothering with food, and managed to catch Eric in line before he’d even sat down. “Can we talk for a minute?” I asked. “Alone?”
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