Playlist for the Dead(45)

Was she about to say boyfriend? I hoped she was about to say boyfriend. “Nice to meet you, Sam,” Mrs. Sueppel said. “I’d shake your hand but as you can see, I’m up to my elbows in chicken guts over here.”

“No problem,” I said.

“Okay if we just go upstairs?” Astrid asked.

“Go right ahead.” Mrs. Sueppel turned back to the sink and continued plucking away.

“Was that one of the chickens from outside?” I whispered to Astrid as we headed up the stairs.

“Don’t mess with Mrs. Sueppel,” she whispered back, grinning.

The attic was up three flights of stairs. They were all wood, but it wasn’t wood like at Stephanie’s house or Hayden’s, all even and polished and shiny; this was wood that someone had clearly cut from a tree by hand, sanded down, and nailed together to build this house, years and years ago. The stairs creaked so loudly as we walked on them I was worried I’d fall through, except that the wood seemed so solid under my feet.

“Coming through,” Astrid called out as we neared the top of the stairs, which stretched toward what looked like the ceiling.

A trapdoor dropped down above us, allowing us to see a narrow ladder that first Astrid, then I climbed, leading into Eric’s room. Except “room” wasn’t quite the right word. His room was the attic, and the attic stretched the length of the entire house, narrowing at the sides where the roof came down. It wasn’t like any teenager’s room I’d seen before; it felt more like an art studio.

One side of the room was paint-spattered, with multiple easels where Eric and some of his friends were working. Damian was there, sitting in a corner with a sketchbook and a box of colored pencils. There was also a big plastic tub of clay sitting next to a wheel where Jess, the girl from the lunch table, was throwing a pot or something. She was the only one I hadn’t officially met; I tried to smile at her, but she looked at me quickly and then turned back to her pot, and I figured it wasn’t a good time. I didn’t want to interrupt her, especially since this whole making-new-friends thing was still not my area of expertise.

The other side of the room was filled with books and DVDs, and there was a decent-sized flat-screen TV hooked up to a Blu-Ray player and a stereo, though I didn’t see any video games. Bummer.

“Hey, guys, glad you could make it,” Eric said, coming out from behind one of the easels. “Sam, I take it you found Astrid okay?”

“I did,” I said, and she grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

Eric’s face broke out into a grin. “I see. It’s about time, Sam.”

I blushed again. This was all pretty new to me. “This is your room?” I asked.

“Mine all mine,” he said. “Ran out of bedrooms when my little brother was born so I convinced them to give me the attic. I turned it into a combo art studio/movie house, so now we hang out here a lot.”

“Your parents leave you alone?”

“More or less.” He walked back over to the easel. “Make yourselves at home. You into art at all? We’ve got just about everything here you’d need.”

“Not really,” I said, though I wished I was. “What are you painting?”

Eric looked over at Astrid. Something passed between them that I didn’t understand. She shrugged. “Come check it out,” he said.

I walked over to the easel. He’d been working on what appeared to be a portrait of a boy, blond, sharp-featured, sad. He looked familiar, though I couldn’t place him right away. “You’re really good,” I said.

“Thanks. Can’t seem to get it quite right, though.” He frowned at it, then put his paints down. “How about we watch a movie? Everyone up for that?” He walked over to the rack of DVDs and scanned through them. “Theme today is teenage angst, just like every other day.”

“You pick,” Damian called out.

“Dealer’s choice it is,” Eric said. He loaded up a movie, and Jess and Damian started arranging stacks of pillows and blankets along the wall across from the TV. I guess they knew the drill. I found a big square pillow to lean on, and Astrid curled up next to me as a creepy song I recognized from Hayden’s mix came over the speakers. Lying together watching a movie with Astrid was pretty much the greatest thing that had ever happened to me.

The movie itself was disturbing, though. It was old—from the ’80s or ’90s, I wasn’t sure—about a loner kid with a pirate radio station. At one point he dealt with a suicidal kid who eventually killed himself. He felt really bad about it and ended up giving this long, ranting speech about why suicide wasn’t the answer. I found myself fighting the urge to get up and walk out, even though the speech itself wasn’t preachy or anything like that. It was just that I hadn’t realized what the movie was about; even hearing the word “suicide” was kind of like getting kicked in the stomach. Hayden had never even tried to talk to anyone, let alone some random asshole on the radio. Would that have made things better or worse?

“You okay?” Astrid whispered as the credits rolled.

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I meant it.

“Not the most sensitive pick, Eric,” she said.

He had the decency to look embarrassed. “I know, I’m really sorry,” he said. “Totally didn’t think it through before I put it in, and then it was too late, you know? No offense?”