Playlist for the Dead(10)

As usual, though, I was pretty sure Hayden was right. God, I missed fighting with him.

I walked downstairs to grab some coffee before school. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in her scrubs, both hands wrapped around an enormous mug of what smelled like tea as I walked down the stairs. Tea meant she’d just gotten home from work and was about to go to bed. It was so weird to be on such different schedules. She gave me an up-and-down look as I headed toward the coffeepot, which she always put on for me and Rachel even though she never had any. She could be pretty cool like that. “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked.

“Something wrong with it?”

She opened her mouth, paused, closed it, opened it again. “No,” she said finally. “I’ll see you at dinner tonight, and you can tell me all about your first day back, all right? And make sure to be on time—apparently Rachel is bringing a friend home.”

“A friend?”

“A gentleman caller,” Mom said, with one eyebrow arched.

“This should be good.” Rachel had horrible taste in boyfriends, and there had been a lot of them. Most of them never made it past the driveway, though, so she must be really into this one.

“Indeed. Now get to school—you don’t want to be late.”

That was debatable, but I left just in time to catch the bus, where I sat alone in one of the front seats, listening to my iPod. That was normal—I always sat alone. It wasn’t that I wanted to, necessarily, but for some reason it seemed terrifying to just sit down next to a random person. Was I supposed to talk to them? What would I say? As long as I could remember I’d been shy around strangers—not as bad as Hayden, but bad enough. I was fine once I knew someone, but I hadn’t really gotten to know anyone except Hayden, at least since I moved to Libertyville. I’d counted myself lucky to have made such a good friend, someone who made me stop feeling so lonely, and for years that was enough. Until it wasn’t anymore.

I’d imagined that everything would be different once Hayden and I got to high school. I felt like we’d both made progress in getting over our shyness; now we’d have a chance to expand our insular little world. In high school, I was sure, there would be a bunch of guys more like us—into gaming and music, maybe a little geeky but not total dorks—and they’d be our friends. Maybe there would even be some girls. Girls like Astrid.

And some of that had been true. Libertyville High was huge—it had kids not just from Libertyville itself but from a bunch of neighboring farm towns, and there were tons of kids who neither of us had ever met, some of whom looked like us and ran clubs that included stuff we were into. Gaming, comics, all that. But I’d counted on Hayden being on the same page as me, and as soon as school started, I could tell I’d been wrong. I couldn’t get Hayden to come with me to anything, and I was too nervous to go alone.

I figured out pretty quickly why Hayden was so inclined to hide out. Ryan and his friends were in my sister’s grade, so they were all juniors by the time we got to school. But Rachel was content to pretend she was an only child, ignoring me when we ran into each other in the halls. Not Ryan. We’d made it through the first few days of school without incident, happy in the knowledge that even though we didn’t have any classes together—I was in the Honors track, but Hayden was dyslexic and stuck in all the lower-level classes—we shared a lunch period most days. And on Fridays, we shared it with Ryan and his friends.

“Oh, look, it’s Ryan’s fatass little brother,” we’d heard Trevor say as we sat down with our lunches.

“How are you liking the new school, Gayden?” Jason said, plunking his tray down next to Hayden. That was their second-favorite nickname for him. The first was an oldie-but-goodie, one Ryan had come up with when they were little kids: Hate-him.

“Leave me alone,” Hayden said, looking around for Ryan. Sad that he’d thought Ryan might be able to help. He realized his mistake as soon as he saw Ryan standing right behind Jason, laughing. “Not funny, Ryan.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ryan said. “It’s kind of funny.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Trevor said. “Maybe we need to step up our game.” He opened up his little box of chocolate milk and dumped it over Hayden’s head. The three of them started laughing.

“That’s definitely funny,” Ryan said.

I’ll never forget the look on Hayden’s face as he sat there, milk dripping down onto his favorite T-shirt. Metallica, like the one I wore now. I saw the knowledge wash over him that nothing was going to change, that things would perhaps be even worse than he’d thought. That Ryan wasn’t going to help him. And as the sound of people laughing grew louder, once the other kids saw what had happened, I realized he was probably right.

I thought about that moment as I stepped into the cafeteria for the first time since Hayden died. I’d spent most of the morning nodding off in my classes, but there was this kind of protective bubble around me—I could tell none of the teachers wanted to say anything to me because of Hayden. The kids were friendlier, though—people said hi to me in the halls who’d never spoken to me before, and some even complimented my T-shirt. This strange attention from people who used to ignore me was confusing. It was almost as if they were treating me like a celebrity. Best-friend-of-dead-guy = famous. Like it was some kind of accomplishment.