Playlist for the Dead (17 page)

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.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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I LEFT MR. BEAUMONT’S OFFICE
feeling 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.

“Sorry I barely saw you at the party,” Eric said, as we headed up the stairs. He was wearing fancy pointy-toed shoes that clicked as he walked. Spats? What a hipster. “I heard you got into it with Trevor.” What did he mean by that? Did he think I was the one who hurt him?

“Got into it?”

“You know, at the party. I missed all the action but people told me he punched you in the face. I heard you told him off pretty good, though.”

“Yeah, well, he was always a jerk to Hayden,” I said. “It was worth getting decked just to tell him what I really thought.” I was almost afraid to ask, but I did it anyway. “Did you hear about what happened after?”

“Oh, I did.” He gave me a sidelong look as we pushed through the throngs of kids rushing to their next class. “He kind of got what he deserved, didn’t he? Like Jason.” It reminded me of what Astrid had said about karma.

“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure what the look meant. Was he trying to get me to admit something? “Sounds like Trevor got hurt pretty bad, though.”

“He’ll heal,” Eric said, trying to sound callous, but his voice cracked a little. I bet he thought things had gone too far, just like me. “Gives him some time to think about all the shitty stuff he’s done to people, anyway.”

“You think a meathead like him thinks about anything?”

Eric laughed. “Probably not. If he had any self-awareness he’d probably self-destruct.”

Well, this sucked. I liked Eric. It made it a lot harder to hate him.

Eric stopped in front of a locker so covered in stickers it was impossible to tell what color it had been. It looked like an eight-year-old had attacked it—there were rainbows and unicorns and kittens everywhere. “She was not a fan of the yellow,” Eric said.

“No kidding.”

“Listen, I’ve got to run to class, so you’re on your own from here. But we should hang out sometime. I know you’re probably laying low with everything that happened to your friend, but if you feel like getting out, a bunch of us are going to my house tonight. Astrid too. You should come by.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Maybe I will.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He gave me a fist-bump before heading down the hall. I didn’t think I’d ever fist-bumped with anyone before, besides Jimmy. Was he being sincere in inviting me over, or was it just one of those keep-your-enemies-close kind of things, so he could watch out for Astrid? The funny thing was, I wasn’t sure I cared. I liked the friends of hers I’d met so far, Eric included, and just the idea of hanging out with them made me feel a little less lonely.

Astrid didn’t show up before the next period started, but I had study hall anyway so I figured I’d just hang out and wait, making sure to avoid the hall monitors. I put on my headphones and clicked a song from the playlist. It was from a new band we liked, whose music had a creepy edge to it that felt appropriate to me. But if Hayden had been trying to send messages through this playlist, I was worried I wasn’t getting them. I had to pay more attention to the lyrics. This song gave me the sense that he felt like people had been lying to him. I may have done a lot of things wrong, but lying to Hayden wasn’t one of them. I had to remember that finding out what really happened had to be my priority.

Astrid finally arrived at her locker just a few minutes after the bell rang, just in time for me to acknowledge that my priorities had shifted a bit in the last couple of weeks. I felt guilty even as I noticed that she looked as cute as ever; her streaks today were red, yellow, and green, and she was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt.

“Sam!” she yelled, with a big smile on her face. “What are you doing here?”

I was so excited that she seemed happy to see me that I almost forgot to talk. “I was looking for you.”

“And you’ve found me. But I have to run or I’ll be late for class. Will you come meet me here after school? I’m craving french fries, and you promised you’d show me the best in town.”

“I’d be happy to,” I said, smiling back at her, so wide I worried my face would break. “See you this afternoon.”

So much for my plan of taking a nap to catch up on some of the sleep I’d missed. But there were so many things I wanted to ask Astrid, ranging from the selfish (was Eric her boyfriend or not?) to the serious (how did she know about Athena? And who is she?). The afternoon seemed to last forever; thankfully I had English last period, and Mr. Rogers tended to ignore it when I fell asleep in class, even though my desk was right in front of his.

The brief catnap gave me enough energy to run through the halls back to Astrid’s locker as soon as the bell rang. She must have raced back too, because she’d beat me there. “I’m dying of curiosity,” she said as I approached. “Where are we going?”

“Ever heard of a place called Peterson’s?” Peterson’s was an old soda fountain just outside of downtown, run by a couple who’d owned it since the ’50s. They didn’t have any kids, and a Coldstone Creamery had opened up a couple of blocks away, so I figured they were probably going to shut it down soon. I liked to give them business whenever I could; Hayden and I would go there after the mall sometimes. It was only about a fifteen-minute walk from school.

“Sounds familiar—I think I know the place you’re talking about. It always looks closed, though.”

“Half the time it is,” I admitted. “They keep really weird hours. But they’re usually open in the afternoon. Hayden and I used to go there after school sometimes, on our way to the mall.”

She didn’t say anything, just grabbed my hand and squeezed it for a minute, then let it go. I wished she hadn’t. For the brief moment our hands were entwined, I had no questions. But as soon as she let go, they all came back.

We walked quietly at first, past the fields that had mostly been harvested, though a few still had tall stalks of corn for Halloween mazes. I could still pick up the scent of burning leaves. It felt nice to walk beside her without talking, feeling like it wasn’t necessary to fill the space between us. Except that now I wasn’t being honest with myself—part of the reason I wasn’t talking was because I was afraid that the first thing I’d say was “How did you know about Athena?” There had to be a better way to lead into that conversation.

Astrid seemed a little jumpy, too, pulling at her extensions and almost skipping as we got close to the diner. It was almost like she knew that I needed to talk to her. Which I guessed made sense; the last thing she’d said to me was the password, and she had to know I’d have questions.

When we reached Peterson’s Soda Fountain, I held the door open for Astrid to walk through. “How chivalrous,” she said, and gave a little curtsy. Something about the way she said it reminded me of the chat logs between Hayden and Athena. I swallowed hard. How much did she know, anyway?

The soda fountain was literally not much more than that—there was a counter lined with peeling linoleum, flanked by stools covered in cracked red leather with bits of foam poking through. I knew it wasn’t the most appetizing-looking joint, but I hoped Astrid would trust me, even as the thought crossed my mind that perhaps I couldn’t trust her. “Here okay?” I asked, pointing to two of the less destroyed-looking stools.

“Sure. Where are the menus?”

“No need. Allow me.”

“The gentleman is going to order for the lady?” she asked. And I had that thought again—she sounded like Athena. Which reminded me that Astrid had said she was into Greek mythology. She’d have known that Athena was the goddess of war, like I’d seen in the chat logs.