Playlist for the Dead Read online

  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 the new Star Wars movie 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—C3P0 for me, R2D2 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 last Thanksgiving, the last time the whole family had been together. Ryan frowned when h
e 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.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  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. “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.”