Playlist for the Dead(40)
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?