Playlist for the Dead(8)

I turned it over to see the price tag. “Thirty-five bucks for this?” I asked.

“It’s a collectible,” he said.

“Sure it is,” I muttered.

“Look, do you want it or not?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”



WHEN I GOT HOME FROM THE STORE I went straight to my room and unwrapped the magus figurine. What a stupid idea, buying something that would make me think of Hayden every time I looked at it. I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since I found him; I couldn’t get the image of him lying there not-asleep under those stupid Star Wars sheets out of my mind. The paramedics had made me leave the room as soon as they got there; I’d had to listen to them trying to revive him from the hallway, but I could hear everything they were saying. It had been way too late; he’d been dead for hours by the time I got there.

I thought about throwing the figurine out. So what if it meant blowing thirty-five dollars? Then I thought about throwing it out the window. Or through the window. The sound of glass shattering might be satisfying. But it was such a dinky little thing, and with my coordination it would probably bounce off the window without breaking so much as a pane of glass and hit me in the face.

Instead, I moved a stack of books from the shelf above my crappy old computer and set it there. I’d be able to see it when I played Mage Warfare, which seemed fitting. Maybe for a little while I could pretend that Hayden was playing with me, from his house, though this time we wouldn’t interrupt our game to chat, like we usually did. Still, playing was the only thing I could imagine doing that would let me think about Hayden in a good way. I’d probably be better off taking a nap and trying to make up some of the hours of sleep I’d missed over the last few days, but the walk had energized me a little and I figured I’d probably just lie in bed and go through the anger/guilt/missing Hayden cycle over and over again.

No, playing the game would make me feel better. I put on Hayden’s playlist, logged in to Mage Warfare, and clicked on my golem avatar. My mother had told me stories about mute monsters made out of clay who existed to protect old Jewish communities, and I’d read this amazing book about golems and comic books and all sorts of craziness. The golems in those stories had no power of their own and had to do whatever their creators told them to do. I’d kind of felt bad for them. I thought it might be fun to create one who had a mind of his own—okay, my mind—and who could take down anyone he wanted to with no repercussions. I had no interest in that kind of violence in real life; it was only fun for me here because it wasn’t real. It was just a way to feel powerful somewhere, since I felt so powerless at school. My golem was named Brutus and he kicked ass on a regular basis.

Being in the game was like being in another world. I could almost pretend nothing had changed, that Hayden was still there, since we always played on opposite sides in Mage Warfare anyway. Hayden always had to be the good guy, fighting for the Cooperative, truth and justice and all that, while I liked playing for the bad guys. It was so different than who I was in real life, where I always worried about doing the right thing. What was so great about being a good guy, anyway? It’s not like it ever got me anywhere. From what I could see, the worst jerks at school were the ones who all the teachers and other kids thought were so terrific—Ryan, Trevor, and Jason got all the girls, drove nice cars, had lots of money. Ryan was captain of the lacrosse team as a junior; Trevor would probably skip college and go straight to the NHL; Jason was the best-looking guy in school and the treasurer of student council. They could do whatever they wanted, and no one seemed to care that they weren’t such good people, that they had secrets. Whenever I got online I set up quests that pitted me against guys I figured were like them, players who wanted to be the center of attention, good at everything. And then I destroyed them.

Today I’d set myself up against a team of Alliance warriors. It was three on one, just like it had always been for Hayden when Ryan and his buddies singled him out, but I was determined to kick some ass anyway. I was making such good progress I’d barely noticed how dark it had gotten until I heard the ping of my Gchat window. At first that seemed totally normal; I’d been playing for a while, and that was when Hayden would usually check in.

Except Hayden was dead, so it couldn’t be Hayden.

I paused the game and looked away from the computer. It wasn’t just darker than I thought; it was pitch black. I’d been playing longer than I realized. I rubbed my eyes and looked back at the computer.

Someone named ArchmageGed was IMing me.

That made no sense. ArchmageGed was Hayden’s name in Mage Warfare—he’d based it on a character he loved from the Wizard of Earthsea books I’d loaned him as a kid, books he’d struggled to read. But he’d used his real name for Gchat.

I glanced up at the shelf where I’d put the wizard figurine, then looked back at the screen. Who would know to sign up for an account with that name? The glow of the computer monitor started to feel creepy, and the hairs on my arm were starting to stand on end.

The message said, How do?

I shivered, and all of a sudden I realized I was still alone in the house. Rachel hadn’t come home, and Mom was still at work.

The cursor was blinking at me. How do?

That was how Hayden and I always started our Gchat conversations. We’d picked it up after spending a series of weekends powering through all five seasons of The Wire. But no one would know to start a conversation with me that way.