Playlist for the Dead(25)

“Don’t come back,” the 7-Eleven guy yelled as I went to get my stuff from the party.

Whatever, that guy would forget what I looked like after ten minutes, anyway. I wasn’t worried about him; I was worried about whether I’d make it back to the house where the party was without throwing up. I also had to take a piss in the worst way. I’d heard that heavenly forces watched over drunks and stupid people, and since I felt like both I figured I probably had some luck coming. It arrived in the form of a cluster of bushes big enough to duck into, where I took care of both problems. I still felt like shit, but shit felt a whole lot better than where I’d started.

The party must have raged on well past curfew, because the door was cracked open when I got there and I could see people all crashed out in the living room. I crept in as quietly as I could and made my way upstairs to the room where I remembered leaving my stuff on the bed. Two people in semi-undress had fallen asleep on top of it, but I managed to get everything out from under them without waking them up, which seemed like some kind of miracle.

I practically crawled out the way I came and buried myself in my sweatshirt as soon as I got outside. My cell phone and wallet were still in my pockets, and I checked the time to make sure I still had some leeway before Mom got home. It was only 6:20, so I was fine. But seven text messages? That couldn’t be right.

I scanned them as I walked home. They were all from Astrid.


Where are you? Text me back.



Every half hour, from three a.m. on. Same message, but I could almost feel the urgency increasing with every one she sent. Something bad must have happened. The time stamp of the last message was less than a half hour ago, so I took a shot.

You still up? I wrote, once I’d made it into the house and up the stairs to my room. Everything okay?

It wasn’t even a minute before my phone rang.

“Where have you been?” Astrid said, whisper-yelling. She must have been at home.

I was too embarrassed to tell her I’d fallen asleep on a bench outside the 7-Eleven. “I crashed right after I got home from the party,” I lied. Again. “Shut off the ringer on my phone. I just saw your texts when I got up to go to the bathroom.”

“Thank God,” she said.

“Why, what’s going on?”

“You haven’t checked Facebook yet, have you?”

“Nope. I haven’t even gotten out of bed.” That was true, except for how I’d just gotten in it. Also, she clearly hadn’t yet figured out that I wasn’t on Facebook. I didn’t need hard evidence of how many friends I didn’t have.

“Well, you’re going to want to take a look at some point,” Astrid said. “Someone beat the crap out of Trevor last night.”

My stomach lurched. “What?”

“The cops found him in an alley this morning. He’s got a concussion and two broken ribs. Looks like someone took a baseball bat to him.” She sounded almost excited, but she was probably wired from being up all night.

“Is he going to be okay?” I’d wanted to see him get what was coming to him, but not like this. Just because he was a jerk didn’t mean he needed to be pulverized.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine, but he’s done with sports for the year. Maybe even next year at college, too.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “We just saw him. Where were Jason and Ryan?”

“Nobody knows,” she said. “Nobody really knows anything. Jason’s still laying low after the whole Blue Star thing, and Ryan’s parents apparently are such a mess that he hasn’t left the house since, you know. Trevor was on his own last night. His parents freaked out when they woke up and realized he’d never come home, and they called the cops to look for him.”

“I thought the police didn’t get involved unless someone had been missing for, like, two days.”

“Justice works differently on the east side of town,” Astrid said. I noticed she didn’t say “their side,” or “our side” and it made me realize I had no idea where she lived. Now didn’t seem like the time to ask, though.

“Did they find out who did it?” I asked.

She hesitated. “That’s the thing,” she said finally. “Trevor says someone clocked him on the back of the head and he doesn’t remember anything after that. Never saw the guy. But some people on Facebook are saying . . .”

“What?”

I heard her take a deep breath. “People are saying it was you.”

I started to feel dizzy. “Me? How?”

“Everyone saw you guys getting into it at the party, and they heard him threaten you. People think you went home, got a bat, and went after Trevor because you couldn’t handle him without a weapon.”

So much for making new friends. They all already thought I was some sort of vengeful maniac. “I would never do that,” I said. “You know that, right? Please tell me you know that.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve just been trying to find you so you’d hear it from me and not someone who thought it might be you. And besides, from what Trevor said, this all happened after midnight, and I saw you leave the party way before that. I told people you went straight home.”

“Right,” I said. “Home.” Now I had to feel guilty for lying, on top of everything else.