Playlist for the Dead

Great, now I had permission. I was about to say something snarky, but that was still an invitation to talk, and I didn’t want to talk. Not to Mr. Beaumont, not to anyone.

Mr. Beaumont must have been some kind of mind reader, though. “I see that you’re not eager to talk to me about this, and that’s fine. I want to be a resource for you, but only if you want me to be. I do think it would help you to talk to someone, though, so maybe we could talk about who that might be?”

He knew how to find the soft spots. I couldn’t really talk to Mom; she was so busy at work with all those extra shifts, and no matter what I said she’d worry, and she was worried enough already. Rachel wouldn’t be any help, and though Astrid had the potential to be a new friend, I didn’t want to think about her as a confidante, not like this. There wasn’t really anyone else. I looked down at the floor. Mr. Beaumont had put a big Persian rug over the gray industrial carpeting. He was trying pretty hard. “There’s no one else,” I said finally.

“Well, if that’s the case, I hope you’ll at least consider me as an option,” he said. “Maybe we can talk a little less about Hayden and a little bit more about you, for now? I can stop trying to guess how you’re feeling if you just tell me.”

“I’ll try,” I said. But it was hard to narrow it down. There was the anger/guilt/missing cycle, with a whole bunch of other emotions thrown in there, which was kind of hard to describe. “It’s a big jumble, I guess. It doesn’t seem real. I keep thinking he’ll be here soon, and he won’t.” My knee was starting to bounce again, so I hooked my foot around the leg of the chair to make it stop.

Mr. Beaumont nodded. “I lost a friend when I was very young. And I remember thinking the same thing—I kept waiting for him in places I expected him to be, or getting extra cookies at lunch because I’d always pick some up for him. But it does get easier, with time.”

If he was just going to trot out the clichés, talking to him would be useless. “Yeah, I’ve heard people say that.”

He leaned forward and I could feel him looking at me, though I focused my eyes on the prints he’d hung up on the wall. All abstract stuff, but in soothing colors. The whole office was kind of cheesy. “People are going to say a lot of things. And some of it will be helpful, and some of it will be annoying, and lots of it will get on your nerves. But they’re saying it because people said those things to them, or because they found it helpful when they lost someone. They mean well.”

Sure they did. “Is that supposed to make it better?” I looked him right in the eyes then and hoped he couldn’t see what I was thinking.

He met my gaze and somehow I felt like he knew, and that it didn’t bother him. “Not yet,” he said. “Someday.”

I knew he was trying to help, but he was dead-on about the whole getting-on-my-nerves thing. “Is that all?” I started to stand up.

He held up a hand. “Can I have just a couple of minutes more? I was hoping maybe you could tell me whether Hayden confided in you about how he was feeling. Did you have a sense that he was thinking about doing this?”

Way to jump right into it. I sat back down. What was I supposed to say? We talked about it all the time, but I never thought he was serious. I never was. “Any kid who’s been picked on as much as Hayden has thought about it,” I said.

“So he did talk to you?”

Talked about it? It was a running joke with us. We’d spent hours playing with Hayden’s iPhone, trying to get Siri, the virtual personal assistant, to recommend a suicide hotline. “I’m depressed, Siri,” Hayden would say.

I don’t understand, Hayden.

“I need help, Siri.”

I don’t understand, Hayden.

“I’m lonely. I don’t have any friends.”

I’m really tired of these arbitrary categories, Hayden.

“Siri, are you mad at me?”

No comment, Hayden.

We’d kept asking questions until we couldn’t talk because we were laughing so hard. Eventually we figured out we just needed to be more direct. “Siri, I want to jump off a bridge … which one is the tallest?”

But not for a second did I think he meant it. I never had. I knew things were bad—I couldn’t put that party out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried—but I had no idea he’d take it to this extreme. I figured he’d lock himself in his room for the weekend and ignore me, like he did sometimes when he was upset, or when I’d been a jerk, or both. I’d text him jokes and invite him to Gchat, but I wouldn’t hear from him until later in the week, maybe, and then only in Mage Warfare. He’d use his archmage powers to take down some really big creatures and I’d know that he’d gotten his revenge.

Only on some level I must have known that this time was different. After all, I’d gone to his house the next morning instead of following our normal routine.

“Sam?”

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I spaced out for a second. I haven’t been sleeping much.”

“Understandable. So you were saying that Hayden had mentioned suicide in the past?”

“Not in like a serious way. I didn’t see this coming at all.” Which was true, mostly.

“Not at all? So there was nothing that might be a triggering event, of sorts?” He was leaning forward again, hands on his thighs, anxious to hear what I had to say.

But there was no way I was going to talk about the party, or anything that had happened since. Hayden had been through enough, and so had I. And I was starting to get angry again. “Look, Hayden was pretty miserable. His brother and his friends treated him like shit, he was bombing all his classes, and I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting his parents, but they were awful too. And no one here did anything to make it better. There was a time when maybe someone could have helped him, but it’s too late now, so why are you talking to me about it? Why don’t you talk to all of them?” My face was burning now, and I realized I was yelling.

“I’m sorry we didn’t see what was happening, Sam, and certainly I’ll be talking to some of the people you’ve mentioned. But it’s you and me talking now, and I want you to know that I’m here whenever you need me. I know you’re angry, and I want to help you channel that anger into something productive, rather than something harmful.” He looked like he was going to reach over and touch my arm or something like that, but he must have figured out that I was itching to hit something.

“What do you want me to do? Take art classes and draw pictures using black crayons? Write short stories about an alternative universe where my best friend didn’t kill himself? What do you want?” I had to calm down. I tried focusing on my breathing. In, out. In, out. Slower each time.

“I just want you to remember that you have options. Sometimes when people are angry they lash out at other people, and there’s enough violence around here as it is.” His brows were furrowed, and his voice had gotten quiet again, despite my yelling.

It took me a minute to figure out what he was so worried about. And then I got it. He thought I was going to shoot up the school or something. Hayden had put a song about it on the playlist; I wondered if that meant he’d thought about it himself. I forced myself to stop yelling, to speak almost as quietly as he had. “Look, it’s true that I think there are a lot of people to blame for all of this, but I’m one of them.” For a second, my mind flashed back to the party, to the last words I’d ever said to him. Fuck you, Hayden. Some kind of best friend I was. “And it’s not my job to decide who should pay.”

Mr. Beaumont exhaled; I hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. “I’m glad to hear you feel that way, though I’m sorry you feel responsible. Maybe that’s something we could talk about next time.”

I figured that meant there had to be a next time, so I nodded and took another handful of M&M’s before I left.

“In the meantime, get some rest,” Mr. Beaumont said. “You look exhausted.”

No kidding.

I WAITED UNTIL I GOT HOME to look at the envelope Mr. Beaumont had given me, once I’d shut myself up in my room. It was full of pamphlets—on suicide, grieving, depression, anger management. The suicide one was loaded with statistics. Someone died by suicide every fourteen minutes or so, which seemed crazy high to me, and a million people a year attempted it. It was the third leading cause of death for teenagers, and boys did it more often than girls. Girls tended to use it as what the pamphlet called a “cry for help,” though it sounded more like an attention grab to me. They would slit their wrists but cut the wrong way, or take a bunch of pills when they knew someone was likely to find them. Boys were more definitive. Hanging, shooting, jumping off tall things.

I could just imagine Mr. Beaumont giving a pamphlet like this to Ryan. He’d probably jump all over the fact that Hayden had used a girl’s strategy. Leave it to the bully trifecta to come up with reasons to mock him even after he was gone.

The lack of sleep was starting to make me dizzy so I lay down on my bed for a while and tried to take a nap. But my head was still spinning from all the different things going on—Hayden being gone, of course, but also Astrid, and the Archmage. Except I was pretty sure I must have dreamed the Archmage. I wasn’t in the habit of falling asleep in my desk chair, but there was a first time for everything. I tried to put it out of my head but just when I thought I was about to drift off there was a knock at the door.

“Mom, I’m trying to sleep in here.”

“It’s not Mom.” I opened my eyes. The door opened and Rachel came in my room wearing her usual outfit: a very tiny skirt and so much makeup it looked like she’d spray-painted it on. Funny, when she didn’t have on a fake face she and Mom looked a lot alike—both were tall, with long brown curly hair and big brown eyes. But while Mom looked tired all the time from working, Rachel looked like she worked at one of the makeup counters at the mall. Which was actually her dream job. All that makeup made her look old, though, almost as old as Mom. If she just took off half of the makeup and gave it to Mom, they’d both look great.

Not that I’d ever say that to either one of them. I wasn’t a complete idiot.

“You haven’t stepped one foot in my room in at least a year,” I pointed out. “What are you doing here?”

She looked around at the band posters that covered every inch of the walls not already taken over by my bookshelves. “It hasn’t improved much. Listen, Jimmy’s coming over for dinner and I need you to get your ass downstairs ASAP and make this as painless as possible.”

“I totally forgot,” I said, and closed my eyes again. “Mom said something this morning. I think I’ll just stay up here.”

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