“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.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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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 g
one, 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.”
I felt the weight of Rachel sitting down on the edge of my bed, which was weird enough that I opened my eyes again.
“She probably didn’t tell you she’s decided to cook,” Rachel said, wrinkling her nose. “There are so many ways this could turn into a complete disaster that counting them is making my head explode. I need you to get my back on this one, little brother.” She looked at me with what I could only assume she intended as puppy-dog eyes. All I could see were cracks in the makeup as she widened her eyes as far as they could go.
Still, Rachel almost never let herself get into a situation where she owed me a favor. This could be fun. I stood up slowly, feeling pretty dizzy. “You owe me big,” I said. “But I must have misunderstood you. You said Mom’s cooking? Does she want you guys to break up?”
“That might be the strategy. Cover for me for a bit, okay?”
She disappeared down the hall, and I was left to face the prospect of Mom in the kitchen all by myself. Jimmy was already sitting at the kitchen table by the time I got downstairs. I’d never met him—Rachel had never invited any of her boyfriends to anything involving the family, and this one didn’t go to Libertyville High. As soon as I saw him, I understood why she’d never brought him around: he looked like any parent’s worst nightmare. Tattoos, stretched earlobes, studded leather jacket, the whole thing. I’d have expected someone who looked like him to be lounging, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth even if he was smart enough not to smoke inside. But Jimmy was sitting straight up in his chair, hands folded in front of him like he was at a business meeting. Mom was at the stove, stirring something in a pot billowing with smoke, which was already making me nervous.
Jimmy stood up and held out his hand. “How you doing, man?”
“Not too bad.” I shook his hand. His grip was firm, but he didn’t do that thing guys do sometimes where they almost crush you so you know how manly they are. “So you’re here for dinner, huh?”
Jimmy nodded and tried not to look worried.
“I hope Rachel warned you to eat first,” I said.
“Not nice,” Mom called out.
“Need some help over there?” I asked.
She turned around and I could see beads of sweat on her forehead. “I might just take you up on that, Sammy.”
I hated it when she called me that, especially in front of Jimmy. It almost made me wish I hadn’t offered. But I didn’t want her to burn the house down; we’d avoided fires in the past, but narrowly. There was a macaroni-and-cheese incident that I was still trying to forget, and some stains in the ceiling brought back memories of exploding eggs every time I looked up.
I walked over to the stove and looked into the pot, waving away the smoke to see a sludge of white and brown and black, though I couldn’t identify anything that actually looked like food. “What is that?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.
“It was supposed to be risotto,” Mom said. “With mushrooms and—”
She was interrupted by the smoke alarm. I reached over and shut off the burner, then took the pot and put it in the sink while Mom disabled the alarm. I hoped Jimmy wouldn’t notice that we had a system. “What do you like on your pizza, Jimmy?” I asked.
Rachel laughed behind me. I turned and saw she’d changed into a slightly longer skirt, taken off a little bit of the makeup. She looked just respectable enough to make Mom happy. She must really like this guy. “Nice outfit,” I said.
“Jerk.” She pinched my arm, hard, reactivating the soreness from the bruising, but it made me kind of happy—she used to do that when we were younger, when I’d follow her around just to get her to pay attention to me. Negative attention from her was just as good as positive, when I was little.
“I can eat anything,” Jimmy said.
Mom sighed and went to get her wallet.
“Sausage and peppers it is,” I said, and went to call it in. We weren’t exactly kosher. Sausage and peppers was my favorite; Rachel usually lobbied for Hawaiian, but I figured she wasn’t about to fight with me in front of her new boyfriend.
After I hung up I sat at the kitchen table with Jimmy while Rachel helped Mom scrape the burned risotto off the bottom of the pot. We sat and stared at each other for a while. It felt like he was waiting for me to say something, but Rachel must have warned him that I’m not exactly the world’s best conversationalist. “Rachel says you’re into music,” he said finally.
I nodded, though I was surprised she’d told him something so positive, at least compared to what I would have imagined she’d say.
“What are you listening to these days?” he asked. I’d changed from my relish-crusted Metallica shirt into a vintage Coca-Cola T-shirt I’d found at a thrift store. “Mostly alternative stuff, am I right?”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. Yeah, he was right, but who was he to judge me just on my clothes? Had he looked in the mirror lately? “The Ramones, right now.” It was sort of true; it was what had been on the playlist when I’d listened to it on my way home from school.
“Good stuff. I’ve been digging the Clash lately, myself. I’ll burn London Calling for you if you don’t have it already. You’ll like it.”
That was actually pretty cool of him. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as I thought.
Mom and Rachel came back in and started setting the table with paper plates and plastic silverware. As if we were really going to cut up our pizza. “So how’d you get into the Ramones?” Jimmy asked.
Rachel snorted. “Since when do you listen to the classic stuff?” She turned to Jimmy. “I made him listen to every album I ever bought and the only stuff of mine he ever liked was indie.”
To his credit, Jimmy didn’t change his facial expression at all. “It’s all about variety, man,” he said, and held out his fist.
What the hell. I bumped fists with Jimmy and said exactly what I was thinking. “I started listening to the Ramones because Hayden put them on his suicide-note playlist.”
The kitchen got really quiet, and I knew right away I’d gone too far.
“Sammy, now might not be the time,” Mom said finally.
“No, it’s cool, Mrs. Goldsmith,” Jimmy said. “I kinda went through something similar myself.”
“You did?” I asked, before I could help myself. I wondered if Rachel had known. Mom and I both looked over at her. Mom’s mouth was hanging open.
Rachel shrugged, but she didn’t look that surprised.
“I move
d here from Chicago last summer,” Jimmy said. “I had this friend who was going through some stuff, and he offed himself. In my house, with my dad’s gun. I’m the one who found him.”
For a second I found myself thankful that Hayden had chosen the method he did. I couldn’t imagine my last memory of him involving blood. It made me nauseous just thinking about it. I looked over at Rachel again; now she looked a little shocked. I figured she’d known the basics but not the details.
“It’s why we left,” he continued. “None of us could stand to be in that house, and my mom kept saying how terrible it was to live in cities, all the awful things that happened there.”
“Kind of ironic, that you’d move here, and then . . .” My voice trailed off. I wasn’t quite ready to say it out loud.
“Yeah, that’s one word for it. It would have been a lot harder if I hadn’t already met your sister.” He smiled at Rachel, and she smiled back. I could see how into him she really was. Even Mom was starting to warm to him. “I loved Chicago—I just wanted to leave the house, not the city. It was my dad’s idea to take off for cow country.”
“Corn, not cows,” Rachel said, and squeezed his hand. I’d been tempted to say the same thing, but let’s face it, there were some cows.
“Anyway, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it back home, and I didn’t really want to talk about it here, but now that it’s been a little while I can think about it more clearly. So if you ever need to talk, you can talk to me. Maybe not now, but someday.” I wondered if my sister had put him up to it, but that would be so not like her. And he looked like he really meant it.
“That’s a very nice offer, Jimmy,” Mom said.
I could see Rachel trying not to smirk. This couldn’t have gone better if she’d scripted it herself. She looked over at me, willing me to say something.
“Okay, thanks,” I said. I was starting to like him, despite myself. Too bad he hadn’t showed up before Mr. Beaumont. Then I could have at least said I had someone else to talk to.