My stomach lurched. “What?”
“The cops found him in an alley this morning. He’s got a concussion and two broken ribs. Looks like someone took a baseball bat to him.” She sounded almost excited, but she was probably wired from being up all night.
“Is he going to be okay?” I’d wanted to see him get what was coming to him, but not like this. Just because he was a jerk didn’t mean he needed to be pulverized.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine, but he’s done with sports for the year. Maybe even next year at college, too.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “We just saw him. Where were Jason and Ryan?”
“Nobody knows,” she said. “Nobody really knows anything. Jason’s still laying low after the whole Blue Star thing, and Ryan’s parents apparently are such a mess that he hasn’t left the house since, you know. Trevor was on his own last night. His parents freaked out when they woke up and realized he’d never come home, and they called the cops to look for him.”
“I thought the police didn’t get involved unless someone had been missing for, like, two days.”
“Justice works differently on the east side of town,” Astrid said. I noticed she didn’t say “their side,” or “our side” and it made me realize I had no idea where she lived. Now didn’t seem like the time to ask, though.
“Did they find out who did it?” I asked.
She hesitated. “That’s the thing,” she said finally. “Trevor says someone clocked him on the back of the head and he doesn’t remember anything after that. Never saw the guy. But some people on Facebook are saying . . .”
“What?”
I heard her take a deep breath. “People are saying it was you.”
I started to feel dizzy. “Me? How?”
“Everyone saw you guys getting into it at the party, and they heard him threaten you. People think you went home, got a bat, and went after Trevor because you couldn’t handle him without a weapon.”
So much for making new friends. They all already thought I was some sort of vengeful maniac. “I would never do that,” I said. “You know that, right? Please tell me you know that.”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ve just been trying to find you so you’d hear it from me and not someone who thought it might be you. And besides, from what Trevor said, this all happened after midnight, and I saw you leave the party way before that. I told people you went straight home.”
“Right,” I said. “Home.” Now I had to feel guilty for lying, on top of everything else.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said. “I’ve got to crash now—I’m totally exhausted.”
“Of course. Talk soon.” I hung up the phone, and my stomach heaved. I hoped I didn’t have to throw up again. The fact was, I had no idea where I’d been when Trevor had been attacked. I assumed I’d been passed out on the bench, since sitting down was the last thing I remembered before getting up; it only made sense that I’d spent the whole night sleeping there.
But what if I hadn’t?
I’d never been as angry at anyone as I’d been at Trevor. At the party last night I’d wanted something bad to happen to him, and in some ways I wanted to be the bad thing. Who was to say I hadn’t actually done it, in some sort of drunken blackout rage? Wasn’t this why drinking was supposed to be such a terrible thing? Had I finally snapped and gone over the edge, like the loser in one of those songs on Hayden’s mix?
Just then I heard the ping of my Gchat window opening up. I crawled back out of bed and over to the computer.
ArchmageGed: Two down.
At first I had no idea what ArchmageGed was talking about. I was so tired I could hardly focus, and I was still dizzy from all the booze. But then I remembered what he’d said after Rachel told me about Jason: One down, two to go.
Was he talking about the bully trifecta?
Except that left me with even more questions. To start, how did ArchmageGed know the two attacks were related? And ArchmageGed didn’t just seem to know about the connection; he was all but taking credit for the attacks. But he wasn’t real; he was either the ghost of my dead best friend or some sort of hallucination on my part, either of which meant I was nuts, but which also meant there was no way he could go around beating people up. The only thing I knew for sure was that I’d written off the idea that someone was trying to screw with me. Not at this point.
I so wished my head weren’t spinning; it would have been hard enough for me to puzzle through this if I were sober and well rested. But I had to try. Okay, so if ArchmageGed was counting down, that meant Ryan was next. Normally I wouldn’t think that was too big a deal. I wasn’t all that broken up about Jason getting humiliated, although I didn’t think outing someone was cool; I was pretty disturbed at the extent of Trevor’s injuries, but I wasn’t exactly weeping with despair that someone else seemed to hate him as much as I did. The thought of something bad happening to Ryan seemed almost fitting, given that I viewed him as the most responsible for Hayden’s death.
But I’d told Mr. Beaumont that it wasn’t my job to decide who should pay for Hayden’s death, and I thought I meant it. The problem was, as far as I could tell, there were only two people who viewed the three of them as the source of most of our problems, and one of us was dead.
Was ArchmageGed trying to tell me that I’d done it?
I didn’t exactly have a good alibi for either event. I’d been on my computer Gchatting with the Archmage, who wasn’t real, when Jason got hit, and as far as I knew I’d been passed out on a bench in front of the 7-Eleven last night. And I was covered in bruises—from Jason knocking me into the pew at the funeral, from Trevor punching me in the face, and who knew what else? Could I really be sure that all my aches and pains were from the things I remembered? Was it possible that I’d attacked Jason, or Trevor, or both? And that they’d fought back?
I couldn’t picture it, and yet I supposed it was possible. More likely than ArchmageGed doing it, that was for sure. I was so confused.
Once again I was going to have to go without sleep, because there was no way I could go back to bed now. My nerves were all jangly; I had to do something. Hayden’s playlist was supposed to give me answers, so I pulled it up on my computer and looked over the songs again.
Hayden had included an epic from the Decemberists, my all-time favorite band. I remembered the first time we’d gone to the mall together by ourselves. We were eleven and my mom dropped us off with clear instructions: two hours, no purchases over two dollars, no McDonald’s. We broke the last two rules immediately, ordering five dollars’ worth of totally random stuff from the McDonald’s value menu and splitting everything, which was awesome but made us feel sick. We’d sat at the table and he’d listened to me bitch and moan about my dad, who had canceled yet another visit. He lived in California now and never invited me and Rachel out there—couldn’t afford the tickets, he said. He would come to visit when he wanted to hit up his own parents for money, money they didn’t have either, though I knew they always gave him something. Kind of sad when you get old enough to realize your dad’s a d-bag.
“You’re lucky you’ve got your mom,” Hayden would say. “One good parent’s better than two shitty ones.”