Playlist for the Dead(59)

“Me neither,” I said. I could hear the fire crackling.

“When Eric came to pick us up, he was a mess. Red eyes, mismatched clothes. He couldn’t talk—he just drove us to the party and then indicated that we should get out; it was clear he wasn’t coming. He held up his phone, like we should call him to pick us up. But Astrid wouldn’t get out of the car.”

“Yeah, he told me what happened,” I said.

“I bet he didn’t tell you how freaked out we were, though. You have to understand, Eric usually has it together. I’d never seen him like this, and I don’t think Astrid had, either. She kept asking him if he needed anything, if he wanted to talk, and he kept shaking his head, but it was pretty clear that he was about to start crying again. She asked me if I’d be okay for a little while and I told her of course I would, that she should go talk to him. He needed her more. I’d manage at the party by myself until she could come back. She didn’t want to go, but it was obvious that she had to.”

“That’s what she told me, but she made it sound like she ditched you.”

“See, that’s why she thinks it’s her fault, and that’s why she’s wrong.”

“Tell me the rest,” I said, and shifted a little to get closer to the fire. I was still cold, though I wasn’t sure how much of that was from the chill outside and how much was from how anxious I was to hear what had really happened.

“Eric dropped me off, and I thought I’d just go in and find a quiet place to hide until Hayden got there. Astrid had pointed him out to me at school, so I knew who he was even if he didn’t know me. I was so excited to finally meet him, to introduce myself properly. And scared, too, but kind of in a good way.”

“I get it,” I said, and I did. “But I’m kind of confused about one thing. Why didn’t you just meet him at school? I know you wanted to be somewhere public, and school’s pretty public.”

She looked down. “It’s embarrassing,” she said, and tugged on her earlobe. It reminded me of Astrid, pulling on her hair extensions. “It’s just—I’ve never been on a date before, let alone kissed someone. And I know I’m weird-looking and quiet—”

You’re not, I wanted to say, but she was, and we both knew it.

“—and I was scared. I was afraid Astrid had been wrong, that he wouldn’t like me, and I’d gotten so attached to who we were online, I didn’t want to mess it up. I knew it couldn’t go on like that forever, but if something bad was going to happen, if he took one look at me and decided it wasn’t going to work, I didn’t want to have to get through the rest of school. I wanted to be able to just go home.”

There were other, better ways, I thought, but then again, what did I know? “So why didn’t you stay until we got there?”

“Because Ryan and his buddies got there first.”

Of course.

“I don’t know what his problem is, but he really has it in for Hayden,” she said. “He’d found the chat logs—Hayden must have left the game open one day, and Ryan had gone in and read them.”

“Maybe he saw Hayden looking happy for once,” I said bitterly.

“Could be,” she said, her tone matching mine. “Anyway, he must have seen me looking around, or even just looking totally out of place at that party, both of which were true—he came right up to me. ‘You’re Jess, aren’t you?’ he asked. I told him I was. He looked me up and down and started laughing. ‘I’m Hayden’s brother,’ he said. ‘He asked me to give you a message.’

“I got kind of excited. I didn’t know much about Ryan, really; I knew he and Astrid had gone out but she didn’t like to talk about it. And I knew he and Hayden didn’t get along, but Hayden didn’t say much about it either, and I thought maybe things had changed. Maybe Hayden being happier was helping him deal with his family.” Her little mouth twisted. “Pretty presumptuous of me, right? To think I could make a difference to someone I hadn’t even met?”

“But you did,” I said.

Jess picked at a patch of dried grass from underneath her leg. “Well, I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t understand things at all,” she said, with some bitterness. “Ryan’s message for me was that Hayden had looked for me at school, now that he knew my real name. And he was horrified to think that I was who he’d been talking to. He wasn’t coming.”

“That wasn’t true!” I yelled. “We were on our way!” I felt like I was watching one of those horror movies, where the viewer knows the killer is coming but the victim doesn’t. I knew what was happening, but I was powerless to stop it. I wished there were some kind of rewind button I could press.

“Sure, I know that now,” she said. “But you have to understand—it was exactly what I was afraid of. I’m sure Ryan had figured that out from the chat logs. He knew just how to hurt me, and he knew it would hurt Hayden, too. Who would be that cruel?”

“Someone who would out someone so they could keep pretending his friend wasn’t gay,” I said, and shook my head.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Jess said. “But Ryan was laughing, and his friends backed him up, even as they saw me starting to cry. I had to get out of there, so I left. And then I sent Hayden a text.”