Playlist for the Dead

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, like I’d seen her do before. “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.”

“Aren’t you just full of useful information?” she said, with another smirk. “Doesn’t look much like Hayden, though.”

It was true; Hayden hadn’t really hit his growth spurt yet, and his mother’s nagging him to eat more protein and skip dessert had only made him stubborn. Physically the magus looked more like me, tall and skinny, not unlike Astrid’s hipster boyfriend. But the whole point of living in a fantasy world was the fantasy, right? My character was a golem, strong and sturdy like I wasn’t and probably would never be, unless I turned into one of those gym rats and started lifting weights all the time. I’d probably drop them on myself anyway. “It’s a role-playing game,” I said. “He could be whoever he wanted there.”

“Sounds liberating,” she said. “I think you should buy it if it reminds you of him. A keepsake.”

“So I won’t forget him?” I tried not to sound bitter.

Either she didn’t hear the sour note in my voice or it didn’t bother her. “You’ll never forget him. But you’re not going to make it through the rest of the school year, or the rest of high school, if you think about him all the time. If you have this, you’ll have a place to focus. You can think about him when you look at it, and the rest of the time you can try to live.”

“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve been through some stuff,” she said. Cryptic, like Hayden was. I could see why they might have been friends. “Trust me on this one.”

“I will,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” She reached over again and picked up one of the earbuds dangling from my neck. I hoped she couldn’t feel my pulse starting to speed up. “What were you listening to, when I so rudely interrupted you?”

“It wasn’t rude,” I said, but she’d already stuck the earbud in her ear.

“Come on, press play,” she said.

I put the other earbud in my ear, hit the button, and listened with her. It was a song from the playlist, haunting and beautiful. Listening to it with her felt otherworldly, like we’d somehow left the store and wandered off by ourselves, into some dark and creepy forest. But together. I closed my eyes and kept listening.

“Gary Jules,” she said, and I snapped out of it, opening my eyes to the fluorescent lighting. Astrid was looking right at me; I hoped she didn’t think it was weird that I’d closed my eyes. “From the Donnie Darko soundtrack. It’s a cover of an old Tears for Fears song.”

I knew the original version, but I hadn’t heard the cover until the playlist. It didn’t sound like something Hayden would normally listen to, and I wondered about the fact that Astrid had immediately recognized it. “You’ve seen the movie?” I asked.

“A bunch of times. It’s amazing. You should totally watch it and tell me what you think.”

“Will do,” I said, and I knew it was true. I wanted to ask her more questions, to find out how she knew Hayden, to start, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Eric walking back into the store. No, I wanted to say. Not yet.

“Looks like it’s time for me to go,” Astrid said.

I wasn’t about to ask her to stay in front of her boyfriend. I really wished she’d come alone, but then again, I might have made even more of an ass out of myself.

Astrid smoothed the collar on my suit, a gesture that would have felt motherly from someone older but which didn’t feel motherly at all coming from her. Almost like we knew each other well enough that she had the right. I liked it. “Don’t worry about all those people at the funeral. The ones who deserve it will get theirs someday. Karma, you know.”

She sounded just like me. “Thanks.”

“Find me at school,” she said. “After you’ve watched the movie.”

I could feel my arm tingling where her fingers had been even as she walked away, which highlighted how sore it already was from Jason knocking me into that pew. God, I hated those guys.

Once Astrid was gone, I went up to the counter and asked if I could see the magus figurine. The guy working there was the same guy who was there every time we came in. Hayden and I had often wondered if the store had more than one employee. What would happen if he got sick? Or even just wanted a day off? He looked like one of the collectors: middle-aged and a little creepy. Maybe this was his dream job, and there was never anywhere else he wanted to be. I couldn’t even imagine what kind of job that would be, for me.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here by yourself.”

For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that there would be people who didn’t know what had happened. And that I might have to explain it to them. I felt my face get hot as I started to panic at the idea of telling the store clerk about Hayden. I couldn’t do it. “He’s not here,” I said. “Can I just look at the figurine, please?”

“No problem.” He unlocked the glass case and handed the figurine to me. It felt heavy in my hands, cool to the touch, cast in pewter or some other metal and then painted. Not exactly expert craftsmanship—the paint was crudely applied and was already starting to chip.

I turned it over to see the price tag. “Thirty-five bucks for this?” I asked.

“It’s a collectible,” he said.

“Sure it is,” I muttered.

“Look, do you want it or not?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

WHEN I GOT HOME FROM THE STORE I went straight to my room and unwrapped the magus figurine. What a stupid idea, buying something that would make me think of Hayden every time I looked at it. I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since I found him; I couldn’t get the image of him lying there not-asleep under those stupid Star Wars sheets out of my mind. The paramedics had made me leave the room as soon as they got there; I’d had to listen to them trying to revive him from the hallway, but I could hear everything they were saying. It had been way too late; he’d been dead for hours by the time I got there.

I thought about throwing the figurine out. So what if it meant blowing thirty-five dollars? Then I thought about throwing it out the window. Or through the window. The sound of glass shattering might be satisfying. But it was such a dinky little thing, and with my coordination it would probably bounce off the window without breaking so much as a pane of glass and hit me in the face.

Instead, I moved a stack of books from the shelf above my crappy old computer and set it there. I’d be able to see it when I played Mage Warfare, which seemed fitting. Maybe for a little while I could pretend that Hayden was playing with me, from his house, though this time we wouldn’t interrupt our game to chat, like we usually did. Still, playing was the only thing I could imagine doing that would let me think about Hayden in a good way. I’d probably be better off taking a nap and trying to make up some of the hours of sleep I’d missed over the last week, but the walk had energized me a little and I figured I’d probably just lie in bed and go through the anger/guilt/missing-Hayden cycle over and over again.

No, playing the game would make me feel better. I put on Hayden’s playlist, logged in to Mage Warfare, and clicked on my golem avatar. My mother had told me stories about mute monsters made out of clay who existed to protect old Jewish communities, and I’d read this amazing book about golems and comic books and all sorts of craziness. The golems in those stories had no power of their own and had to do whatever their creators told them to do. I’d kind of felt bad for them. I thought it might be fun to create one who had a mind of his own—okay, my mind—and who could take down anyone he wanted to with no repercussions. I had no interest in that kind of violence in real life; it was only fun for me here because it wasn’t real. It was just a way to feel powerful somewhere, since I felt so powerless at school. My golem was named Brutus and he kicked ass on a regular basis.

Being in the game was like being in another world. I could almost pretend nothing had changed, that Hayden was still there, since we always played on opposite sides in Mage Warfare anyway. Hayden always had to be the good guy, fighting for the Cooperative, truth and justice and all that, while I liked playing for the bad guys. It was so different than who I was in real life, where I always worried about doing the right thing. What was so great about being a good guy, anyway? It’s not like it ever got me anywhere. From what I could see, the worst jerks at school were the ones who all the teachers and other kids thought were so terrific—Ryan, Trevor, and Jason got all the girls, drove nice cars, had lots of money. Ryan made captain of the lacrosse team back when he was a junior; Trevor would probably skip college and go straight to the NHL; Jason was the best-looking guy in school and the treasurer of student council. They could do whatever they wanted, and no one seemed to care that they weren’t such good people, that they had secrets. Whenever I got online I set up quests that pitted me against guys I figured were like them, players who wanted to be the center of attention, good at everything. And then I destroyed them.

Today I’d set myself up against a team of Alliance warriors. It was three on one, just like it had always been for Hayden when Ryan and his buddies singled him out, but I was determined to kick some ass anyway. I was making such good progress I’d barely noticed how dark it had gotten until I heard the ping of my Gchat window. At first that seemed totally normal; I’d been playing for a while, and that was when Hayden would usually check in.

Except Hayden was dead, so it couldn’t be Hayden.

I paused the game and looked away from the computer. It wasn’t just darker than I thought; it was pitch black. I’d been playing longer than I realized. I rubbed my eyes and looked back at the computer.

Someone named Archmage_Ged was IMing me.

That made no sense. Archmage_Ged was Hayden’s name in Mage Warfare—he’d based it on a character he loved from the Wizard of Earthsea books I’d loaned him as a kid, books he’d struggled to read. But he’d used his real name for Gchat.

I glanced up at the shelf where I’d put the wizard figurine, then looked back at the screen. Who would know to sign up for an account with that name? The glow of the computer monitor started to feel creepy, and the hairs on my arm were starting to stand on end.

The message said, How do?

I shivered, and all of a sudden I realized I was still alone in the house. Rachel hadn’t come home, and Mom was still at work.

The cursor was blinking at me. How do?

That was how Hayden and I always started our Gchat conversations. We’d picked it up after spending a series of weekends powering through all five seasons of The Wire. But no one would know to start a conversation with me that way.

I looked at the computer screen again. It was still there. My job was usually to come up with something witty in response, but I just stared at the blinking cursor. There was no way it could be Hayden.