Playlist for the Dead (16 page)

Which meant that by the time school started, Hayden had his first girlfriend.

And he hadn’t told me.

I didn’t know what to think. My gut reaction was to be offended; we were best friends, and while he tended to be shy about revealing personal things—I’d always seen him as cryptic, but really, I knew how much of it was shyness—I had trouble imagining he’d hide something so significant from me.

But in some ways I could understand why. Because all I could think about was the possibility that Athena wasn’t really who she said she was. The voice in the transcript seemed real, and she was saying all these really open and honest things to Hayden, so much so that I felt a little ashamed reading them, like I was eavesdropping on a private conversation. Which I basically was. But I couldn’t help but think of that Catfish thing where people used the Internet to totally humiliate people who thought they were in love. I didn’t think Ryan and his buddies were computer-savvy enough to trick Hayden in Mage Warfare, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t some other unscrupulous person out to scam him. Hayden knew me well enough to know that I’d at least ask the question, and I was sure it was a question he wasn’t interested in discussing, let alone finding out the answer to.

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.

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

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

He’d figured something out, anyway.

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

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?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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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.”