“Ryan was the third, then. But only Jason and Trevor were attacked,” Mr. Beaumont noted.
“So far,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I swear, it wasn’t me, and I’m not planning anything. I’m just saying that Ryan was the worst of the three. To Hayden, at least. If someone was going after Jason and Trevor, it only makes sense that they’d go after Ryan, too.”
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything to stop it. Though if the police were after me, it looked like I’d have no choice.
I LEFT MR. BEAUMONT’S OFFICE feeling overwhelmed. It was all just too much—Hayden being gone, the Archmage, the trifecta. I needed to feel like I wasn’t crazy, and these days, I only felt like that when I was with Astrid. I looked for her in the cafeteria at lunch but she wasn’t there. Her friends were at their usual table, though, Eric included, so I figured, screw it—I’d ask and see if they knew where she was.
“Hey, Sam!” Damian, the bearded guy from the party, called out. “Are you coming to sit with us? Scoot over, Jess.” He nudged a tiny pixie-haired girl I recognized from the party. She looked down but nodded and then moved for me.
I hadn’t planned on sitting down, but what the hell—not like I had anywhere else to go. “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t have any food, either, but I wasn’t hungry. “I was actually looking for Astrid—any of you guys seen her?”
Everyone turned to look at Eric, which made sense. He nodded his head at me. “Sure, she was in class earlier. I think she skipped lunch to study for a test. I can show you where her locker is if you want to try to catch her before sixth period.”
“That would be great,” I said, though I felt kind of awkward. Sure, it was kind of weird that Astrid’s boyfriend would help another guy who was clearly into her—I didn’t kid myself that I was hiding it well—but it was cool of him to do it.
“No problem,” he said. I wondered if he even saw me as a threat.
The cafeteria was on the bottom floor of the school, and of course Astrid’s locker was on the very top, in the opposite corner. Once Eric told me where it was I wasn’t surprised we hadn’t run into each other much; the school was divided into four quadrants, and my locker was in the southwest corner, where all the lockers were red, while hers was in the northeast, with glaring yellow lockers. Just being in those halls made my head hurt.
“Sorry I barely saw you at the party,” Eric said, as we headed up the stairs. He was wearing fancy pointy-toed shoes that clicked as he walked. Spats? What a hipster. “I heard you got into it with Trevor.” What did he mean by that? Did he think I was the one who hurt him?
“Got into it?”
“You know, at the party. I missed all the action but people told me he punched you in the face. I heard you told him off pretty good, though.”
“Yeah, well, he was always a jerk to Hayden,” I said. “It was worth getting decked just to tell him what I really thought.” I was almost afraid to ask, but I did it anyway. “Did you hear about what happened after?”
“Oh, I did.” He gave me a sidelong look as we pushed through the throngs of kids rushing to their next class. “He kind of got what he deserved, didn’t he? Like Jason.” It reminded me of what Astrid had said about karma.
“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure what the look meant. Was he trying to get me to admit something? “Sounds like Trevor got hurt pretty bad, though.”
“He’ll heal,” Eric said, trying to sound callous, but his voice cracked a little. I bet he thought things had gone too far, just like me. “Gives him some time to think about all the shitty stuff he’s done to people, anyway.”
“You think a meathead like him thinks about anything?”
Eric laughed. “Probably not. If he had any self-awareness he’d probably self-destruct.”
Well, this sucked. I liked Eric. It made it a lot harder to hate him.
Eric stopped in front of a locker so covered in stickers it was impossible to tell what color it had been. It looked like an eight-year-old had attacked it—there were rainbows and unicorns and kittens everywhere. “She was not a fan of the yellow,” Eric said.
“No kidding.”
“Listen, I’ve got to run to class, so you’re on your own from here. But we should hang out sometime. I know you’re probably laying low with everything that happened to your friend, but if you feel like getting out, a bunch of us are going to my house tonight. Astrid too. You should come by.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Maybe I will.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He gave me a fist-bump before heading down the hall. I didn’t think I’d ever fist-bumped with anyone before, besides Jimmy. Was he being sincere in inviting me over, or was it just one of those keep-your-enemies-close kind of things, so he could watch out for Astrid? The funny thing was, I wasn’t sure I cared. I liked the friends of hers I’d met so far, Eric included, and just the idea of hanging out with them made me feel a little less lonely.
Astrid didn’t show up before the next period started, but I had study hall anyway so I figured I’d just hang out and wait, making sure to avoid the hall monitors. I put on my headphones and clicked a song from the playlist. It was from a new band we liked, whose music had a creepy edge to it that felt appropriate to me. But if Hayden had been trying to send messages through this playlist, I was worried I wasn’t getting them. I had to pay more attention to the lyrics. This song gave me the sense that he felt like people had been lying to him. I may have done a lot of things wrong, but lying to Hayden wasn’t one of them. I had to remember that finding out what really happened had to be my priority.
Astrid finally arrived at her locker just a few minutes after the bell rang, just in time for me to acknowledge that my priorities had shifted a bit in the last couple of weeks. I felt guilty even as I noticed that she looked as cute as ever; her streaks today were red, yellow, and green, and she was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt.
“Sam!” she yelled, with a big smile on her face. “What are you doing here?”
I was so excited that she seemed happy to see me that I almost forgot to talk. “I was looking for you.”
“And you’ve found me. But I have to run or I’ll be late for class. Will you come meet me here after school? I’m craving french fries, and you promised you’d show me the best in town.”
“I’d be happy to,” I said, smiling back at her, so wide I worried my face would break. “See you this afternoon.”
So much for my plan of taking a nap to catch up on some of the sleep I’d missed. But there were so many things I wanted to ask Astrid, ranging from the selfish (was Eric her boyfriend or not?) to the serious (how did she know about Athena? And who is she?). The afternoon seemed to last forever; thankfully I had English last period, and Mr. Rogers tended to ignore it when I fell asleep in class, even though my desk was right in front of his.
The brief catnap gave me enough energy to run through the halls back to Astrid’s locker as soon as the bell rang. She must have raced back too, because she’d beat me there. “I’m dying of curiosity,” she said as I approached. “Where are we going?”
“Ever heard of a place called Peterson’s?” Peterson’s was an old soda fountain just outside of downtown, run by a couple who’d owned it since the ’50s. They didn’t have any kids, and a Coldstone Creamery had opened up a couple of blocks away, so I figured they were probably going to shut it down soon. I liked to give them business whenever I could; Hayden and I would go there after the mall sometimes. It was only about a fifteen-minute walk from school.
“Sounds familiar—I think I know the place you’re talking about. It always looks closed, though.”