Playlist for the Dead by Michelle Falkoff Read Free Book Online Page B

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