“Aren’t you just full of useful information?” she said, with a smirk. “Doesn’t look much like Hayden, though.”
It was true; Hayden hadn’t really hit his growth spurt yet, and his mother’s nagging him to eat more protein and skip dessert had only made him stubborn. Physically the magus looked more like me, tall and skinny, not unlike Astrid’s hipster boyfriend. But the whole point of living in a fantasy world was the fantasy, right? My character was a golem, strong and sturdy like I wasn’t and probably would never be, unless I turned into one of those gym rats and started lifting weights all the time. I’d probably drop them on myself anyway. “It’s a role-playing game,” I said. “He could be whoever he wanted there.”
“Sounds liberating,” she said. “I think you should buy it if it reminds you of him. A keepsake.”
“So I won’t forget him?” I tried not to sound bitter.
Either she didn’t hear the sour note in my voice or it didn’t bother her. “You’ll never forget him. But you’re not going to make it through the rest of the school year, or the rest of high school, if you think about him all the time. If you have this, you’ll have a place to focus. You can think about him when you look at it, and the rest of the time you can try to live.”
“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve been through some stuff,” she said. Cryptic, like Hayden was. I could see why they might have been friends. “Trust me on this one.”
“I will,” I said. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She reached over again and picked up one of the earbuds dangling from my neck. I hoped she couldn’t feel my pulse starting to speed up. “What were you listening to, when I so rudely interrupted you?”
“It wasn’t rude,” I said, but she’d already stuck the earbud in her ear.
“Come on, press play,” she said.
I put the other earbud in my ear, hit the button, and listened with her. It was a song from the playlist, haunting and beautiful. Listening to it with her felt otherworldly, like we’d somehow left the store and wandered off by ourselves, into some dark and creepy forest. But together. I closed my eyes and kept listening.
“Gary Jules,” she said, and I snapped out of it, opening my eyes to the fluorescent lighting. Astrid was looking right at me; I hoped she didn’t think it was weird that I’d closed my eyes. “From the Donnie Darko soundtrack. It’s a cover of an old Tears for Fears song.”
I knew the original version, but I hadn’t heard the cover until the playlist. It didn’t sound like something Hayden would normally listen to, and I wondered about the fact that Astrid had immediately recognized it. “You’ve seen the movie?” I asked.
“A bunch of times. It’s amazing. You should totally watch it and tell me what you think.”
“Will do,” I said, and I knew it was true. I wanted to ask her more questions, to find out how she knew Hayden, to start, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Eric walking back into the store. No, I wanted to say. Not yet.
“Looks like it’s time for me to go,” Astrid said.
I wasn’t about to ask her to stay in front of her boyfriend. I really wished she’d come alone, but then again, I might have made even more of an ass out of myself.
Astrid smoothed the collar on my suit, a gesture that would have felt motherly from someone older but which didn’t feel motherly at all coming from her. Almost like we knew each other well enough that she had the right. I liked it. “Don’t worry about all those people at the funeral. The ones who deserve it will get theirs someday. Karma, you know.”
She sounded just like me. “Thanks.”
“Find me at school,” she said. “After you’ve watched the movie.”
I could feel my arm tingling where her fingers had been even as she walked away, which highlighted how sore it already was from Jason knocking me into that pew. God, I hated those guys.
Once Astrid was gone, I went up to the counter and asked if I could see the magus figurine. The guy working there was the same guy who was there every time we came in. Hayden and I had often wondered if the store had more than one employee. What would happen if he got sick? Or even just wanted a day off? He looked like one of the collectors: middle-aged and a little creepy. Maybe this was his dream job, and there was never anywhere else he wanted to be. I couldn’t even imagine what kind of job that would be, for me.
“Where’s your friend?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here by yourself.”
For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that there would be people who didn’t know what had happened. And that I might have to explain it to them. I felt my face get hot as I started to panic at the idea of telling the store clerk about Hayden. I couldn’t do it. “He’s not here,” I said. “Can I just look at the figurine, please?”
“No problem.” He unlocked the glass case and handed the figurine to me. It felt heavy in my hands, cool to the touch, cast in pewter or some other metal and then painted. Not exactly expert craftsmanship—the paint was crudely applied and was already starting to chip.
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.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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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.
I looked at the computer screen again. It was still there. My job was usually to come up with something witty in response, but I just stared at the blinking cursor. There was no way it could be Hayden.
ArchmageGed: You there?
Of course I was there; where else would I be? Hanging out with all my other friends? Oh, no, wait—I didn’t have any.
SamGoldsmith: Who is this?
ArchmageGed: Who do you think?
That was the thing—I couldn’t think of who it could be. No one from school knew us well enough to imitate Hayden. Someone from Mage Warfare? We chatted inside the game all the time, so someone could have seen us use that name. But the chat request hadn’t come from inside the game. This was my private email account. No one from the game had that info except Hayden.
Someone at school could have gotten it, though. Could it be one of the bully trifecta? Was this Ryan’s way of getting back at me for talking to him? As much as I disliked Ryan, though, I couldn’t imagine him being evil enough to sneak away from his family the night of his brother’s funeral just to screw with my head. Trevor was too stupid to pull off something like this, and from what Hayden had told me, Jason had his own stuff going on. It was possible; it just didn’t seem all that likely. But I couldn’t imagine who else it might be.
SamGoldsmith: Well, I know who it isn’t.
ArchmageGed: Are you sure?
Sure I was sure.
SamGoldsmith: Look, I don’t know who you are or why you’re doing this, but cut it out. Things are crappy enough as it is.
ArchmageGed: Not messing with you. I’m here to help.
SamGoldsmith: What’s that supposed to mean?
ArchmageGed: Just what I said.
SamGoldsmith: I don’t see how you can help when you won’t tell me who you are. This was just too weird. Signing off now.
ArchmageGed: Wait, don’t.
And for some reason, with that, I had the sense that I really was talking to Hayden. I mean, I knew it was impossible, and yet it sounded so much like him, teasing me for a while but quick to get serious, especially if he could tell I was getting annoyed at him. My heart started racing.
SamGoldsmith: Are you ready to be straight with me now? Who are you?
ArchmageGed: I’m ArchmageGed.
Interesting. He hadn’t said he was Hayden.
SamGoldsmith: Prove it.
The cursor blinked. The air in the room seemed to grow colder, and the goose bumps rose on my arms again. I looked at the clock on my computer screen. Somehow it was two in the morning. I’d been sitting here for hours and hadn’t even realized it. Hell, I was probably hallucinating; I’d barely slept in days, and it didn’t look like I’d be making up any ground tonight.
And then, all of a sudden, a song began playing, the music streaming through my computer speakers.
It was that Skylar Grey song I’d never heard before from the playlist. But the playlist had stopped playing hours ago. The room had been quiet since I turned off the game. The song felt almost like an assault on the silence.
ArchmageGed: See?
SamGoldsmith: That doesn’t tell me anything. I don’t even know that song.
It was some chick I’d never heard before, and I had no idea why Hayden would be listening to her.
ArchmageGed: That’s the whole point. There’s a lot you don’t know. But I want you to.
SamGoldsmith: So tell me!
But the cursor just kept blinking.
SamGoldsmith: Are these songs supposed to mean something? Seems pretty obvious to play me some dumb chick music about invisibility when I can’t even see you.
ArchmageGed: Lots of people want to be invisible. Maybe they even think they can pretend to be. But someone always sees.
Now the hairs on my neck were standing up. I must have looked like a plucked chicken. A scared, probably hallucinating chicken. But the thing was, whoever this ArchmageGed was sounded an awful lot like Hayden. Especially because I had no idea what he was talking about.
ArchmageGed: You’ll figure it out.
As if he’d read my mind.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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ARCHMAGEGED HAD ME SO FREAKED OUT that I got almost no sleep the rest of the weekend, and I was terrified to turn on my computer—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted the Gchat window to pop up again. In the light of day it seemed clear to me that there was no way it could have been Hayden. Better to focus on things that were real, like the fact that I had to go to school.
For my first day back I put on my favorite jeans, a zip-up hoodie, and my Metallica T-shirt—one of their songs had come on the playlist as I was getting ready, and it made me think of Hayden. They were one of the bands we fought about; Hayden was strongly in favor of their stance against music piracy. “What if you spent your whole life working for something and people thought they were entitled to it for free?” he said. He didn’t have to add that he thought I’d understand, as someone who didn’t have a lot of money, but I knew he was thinking it. He always tried to be sensitive about the fact that his family was loaded and mine wasn’t, but sometimes there was no getting around it.
“If I was already a bi
llionaire then maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal,” I said. “And it’s not like most of the money is going to the artists anyway. It’s all about making record companies rich. It costs nothing to distribute music electronically—this stuff should be dirt cheap by now.”
As usual, though, I was pretty sure Hayden was right. God, I missed fighting with him.
I walked downstairs to grab some coffee before school. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in her scrubs, both hands wrapped around an enormous mug of what smelled like tea as I walked down the stairs. Tea meant she’d just gotten home from work and was about to go to bed. It was so weird to be on such different schedules. She gave me an up-and-down look as I headed toward the coffeepot, which she always put on for me and Rachel even though she never had any. She could be pretty cool like that. “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked.
“Something wrong with it?”
She opened her mouth, paused, closed it, opened it again. “No,” she said finally. “I’ll see you at dinner tonight, and you can tell me all about your first day back, all right? And make sure to be on time—apparently Rachel is bringing a friend home.”
“A friend?”
“A gentleman caller,” Mom said, with one eyebrow arched.
“This should be good.” Rachel had horrible taste in boyfriends, and there had been a lot of them. Most of them never made it past the driveway, though, so she must be really into this one.
“Indeed. Now get to school—you don’t want to be late.”
That was debatable, but I left just in time to catch the bus, where I sat alone in one of the front seats, listening to my iPod. That was normal—I always sat alone. It wasn’t that I wanted to, necessarily, but for some reason it seemed terrifying to just sit down next to a random person. Was I supposed to talk to them? What would I say? As long as I could remember I’d been shy around strangers—not as bad as Hayden, but bad enough. I was fine once I knew someone, but I hadn’t really gotten to know anyone except Hayden, at least since I moved to Libertyville. I’d counted myself lucky to have made such a good friend, someone who made me stop feeling so lonely, and for years that was enough. Until it wasn’t anymore.