Playlist for the Dead. Michelle Falkoff

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      ARCHMAGE_GED HAD ME SO FREAKED OUT that I got almost no sleep the whole 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, but I wasn’t so sure. “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 billionaire 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.

      I’d imagined that everything would be different once Hayden and I got to high school. I felt like we’d both made progress in getting over our shyness; now we’d have a chance to expand our insular little world. In high school, I was sure, there would be a bunch of guys more like us—into gaming and music, maybe a little СКАЧАТЬ