Playlist for the Dead(2)

What were you thinking, Hayden?

“What?” My mother cracked the door open and peered in at me. Her curly brown hair was twisted into a braid, and she was wearing a dress instead of scrubs. “Did you ask me something, Sam?”

“No, just talking to myself.” I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud.

She opened the door wider. “Still in bed? Come on, we’ve got to get cracking here. You know I’m not going to be able to stay for the whole thing—I’m going to be late for work as it is.” She snapped her fingers a couple of times. She wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type.

“I can’t get ready if you don’t get out.” It came out sharper than I meant it, but she must have understood because she closed the door without saying anything, but not before hanging something on the back of my door on her way out. A suit, the one I’d worn to my cousin’s wedding last summer. She must have ironed it for me. I felt like even more of a jerk than I already did.

I got out of bed, turned on my computer, and pulled up the playlist I’d found on Hayden’s thumb drive. He’d left it for me, knowing I would find it, probably even knowing I’d find him—I was always the one to apologize first after our fights. I couldn’t stand staying mad. He must have realized I’d come over, even after how we’d left things.

I’d been listening to it constantly over the past couple of days, trying to figure out what he meant. Listen and you’ll understand. What was I supposed to understand? He’d killed himself and left me here all alone, and left me to find him. And I was pretty sure it was my fault, though that wasn’t something I was prepared to think about at the moment. But I’d listened and listened, looking for the song that would confirm it, the song that would lay all the blame on me. So far I hadn’t found it.

Instead, I’d found a confusing collection of music from all over the spectrum—some recent stuff, some older. Some songs I knew; others I didn’t, and given that Hayden and I had developed our taste together—or so I thought—that was surprising. I’d have to keep listening to see if I could figure out what he’d been talking about, though I wasn’t sure what the point was.

I scanned the list for something funeral-appropriate. Most of the songs were pretty depressing, so there wasn’t an obvious choice; I started with a song that reminded me of the first time I’d worn the suit I was about to put on. It was gray and a little shiny and I’d worn it with a bow tie. My cousins, preppie throwbacks, already thought I was weird, so why not give them some proof? Mom was cool about it, just said she was happy I had a sense of personal style and an opinion about my clothes. She’d been a sharp dresser herself, back when she and my dad were still together, when she used to try. Now she rarely changed out of the scrubs she wore to work. Rachel, my older sister, was less cool about the suit and called me a dork in a bunch of different ways before Mom made her go back upstairs and change out of the dress she’d wanted to wear. Which, let’s be honest, was kind of trashy for a family wedding.

Hayden had come over as I was getting ready, to see if I wanted to go to the mall with him. And by “mall,” he basically meant one store—the only store we ever went to. The Intergalactic Trading Company. The rest of the kids at school tended to hang out on the other end, near the sporting goods store. We rarely went down there. I’d forgotten to tell him about the wedding.

“Nice suit,” he said, in his quiet way, making it hard for me to tell if he was being serious or sarcastic. I was never sure, with Hayden. With me it was easy; I was always being a wiseass.

“Whatever. You wouldn’t be caught dead in one, right?” I winced now, remembering it, but even then I knew it wasn’t really true. Hayden would do whatever his parents told him. He didn’t like it, but it was better than the alternative.

He shrugged. “The bow tie helps,” he said. “But it would look way cooler with a T-shirt under it. Like this one.” He picked up the Radiohead shirt lying at the foot of my bed, the one he’d given me after going to see them on tour. It read HOW IT ENDS, HOW IT STARTS.

I rolled my eyes. “Does it really have to be Radiohead?”

“What’s wrong with Radiohead?” he asked, but he knew what I was going to say. We’d had this argument a million times.

“Some of their stuff is okay,” I said. “But what really makes them different from Coldplay? White English dudes who went to fancy universities and are probably too smart for their own good. But girls think Chris Martin is hot, and they think Thom Yorke is weird looking, and so Coldplay sells a bazillion albums and Radiohead has to reach out to geeks like us. Something about it just doesn’t seem right.”

“You’re way off,” he said. “Radiohead is on a different planet than Coldplay. Kid A might be the greatest record ever made, and Coldplay gets sued for plagiarism every time they release a single. Just talking about them at the same time, is, like, disrespectful to Radiohead.”

I loved getting Hayden all riled up. Back when we were little, Mom would worry about how much we fought. She’d come into my room when we were yelling at each other—okay, I was yelling; Hayden was rationally and patiently trying to explain his position, even as a kid—and she’d knock on the door. “Everything okay in there?”

“We’re fine,” we’d both say. And we were.