Yeah, I hadn’t expected that to work. “We talked mostly about Hayden. And some weird stuff that’s been happening at school.”
“Like Trevor Floyd getting beat up after that party you went to?” Rachel asked. “It’s all anyone’s talking about. You know what the rumors are, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What rumors?” Mom asked. “I know I’m not around as much as I’d like, but that means you kids need to do a better job of keeping me informed.”
Rachel laughed. “Relax, Mom. The rumor is that Chickenbutt over here is responsible, but look at him. There’s no way he could beat up a guy that big.”
“Piss off, Rachel,” I said.
“Language, Sam!” Mom gave me a stern look.
Rachel had called me Chickenbutt since I was little, because I’d always been so scrawny. It was true I hadn’t filled out much, if at all, but it was kind of offensive that she didn’t think I was capable of doing something. Making an impact. I mean, I wanted it to not be true, but still.
“You’d be surprised what people can do when they’re pushed,” Jimmy said. “Not that I’m saying you did anything, Sam. Just saying.”
I knew what he meant, and I felt oddly grateful to him for saying it.
“Sam, you came right home from the party, didn’t you?” Mom asked, brow furrowed.
“Of course, Mom.” Even though I was getting more and more worried about that all the time, there was no need to give her something else to worry about. “So are there any other theories about who might have done this?” I asked Rachel. “Besides me?”
“Well, some people think they aren’t connected,” she said. “People kind of knew about Jason already. And you know Trevor. He’s always been an a—” She looked over at Mom. “—a very not nice person.”
“Could have been his ’roid dealer,” I said.
“I think people usually get steroids from their gyms,” Jimmy said. Mom gave him a “you-would-know” look, and Jimmy held his hands up. “No personal knowledge here. Just city living.”
“Do you miss it there?” I asked. Anything to change the subject.
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “But I’m hoping to head back there for college.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “College?” she asked hopefully. “For some reason I assumed you weren’t in high school now.”
“Because I look like a dropout?” He laughed. “I had enough credits to graduate a year early, between my AP classes and some college courses I’d been taking on the side. They gave me a diploma before I left. I’m spending the year taking some online science classes and working on nailing the SAT so I can get a scholarship. I’m going to be a doctor.”
He said it with confidence—not “I want to be a doctor,” or “I’m hoping to be a doctor,” but “I’m going to be.” And I believed him.
“See?” Rachel said. “Don’t judge a book by its cover, Mom.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was finding people surprising these days. It made me wonder whether everyone had these secret lives, these aspects of themselves that didn’t match who they seemed to be. Just thinking about it made me tired, though, and I remembered that I’d all but pulled an all-nighter the night before. I had to make up some ground. I was just about to make my excuses when Jimmy said, “Sam, you got a minute?”
“Sure,” I said, though I had no idea what he wanted. “I was just about to go upstairs and try to crash early. Mind if we hang out in my room?”
I saw him look over at Rachel, and she gave a little nod. So they’d planned this.
We went upstairs; I sat on my bed while Jimmy looked around at all my stuff. “Nice book collection,” he said. “You a big reader?”
“Used to be,” I said. “I’m more into video games now.”
He smiled. “Rachel mentioned that. You know she blew me off when you guys were playing Halo, right?”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Me neither,” he said. “But I was glad you guys were bonding.”
Who was this guy? “I don’t know if I’d call it that.”
“Well, you should know that she’s looking out for you,” he said. “And I just wanted to say that I know we don’t know each other that well, but there aren’t that many people in the world who’ve gone through the stuff we have. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’ve been better,” I admitted. There were actually a lot of things I wanted to ask him, like whether he’d had anything weird happen to him, like whether he’d seen his friend even after he was gone, but I couldn’t find the words to say it without sounding like an insane person. But there was one thing. “When did it get better?” I asked. “When did you start to feel like it was okay to, like, be in the world again?” I didn’t know how to describe the mixture of elation and guilt I was feeling about Astrid, so I didn’t try.
“That’s a tough one,” he said, and sat down on the bed with me. “It wasn’t an all-of-a-sudden kind of thing. I think I just went through the motions for a while—I tried being normal, going to school and all that, but it wasn’t working for me. I guess I wanted closure, but I was never going to get it, because the only person who could tell me why things had gone down the way they did was dead. Once I made my peace with that, I started being able to think about other things. Moving helped, too—I needed some distance. Does that help at all?”
“A little,” I said, which was accurate. I didn’t have the option of moving, and while I got what he was saying about closure, Hayden had kind of left the door open—he’d all but told me that there was something to figure out, so I needed to do it.
“I know it’s not the same for you,” he said. “But maybe it will help to keep busy, do new things. Rachel mentioned that there was a girl . . .”
“I don’t want to talk—”
He held up his hands. “I’m not asking. I’m just saying you should go with it. You won’t be able to stop thinking about what happened if you sit home by yourself. Listen, Rachel was telling me about this thing happening over the weekend she thought I’d get a kick out of—something called mudding? Whatever it is, we don’t have it in Chicago. You should come with us.”
I’d heard of it—it sounded kind of stupid. Guys in trucks basically drag racing in the mud. Kind of a macho thing. Ryan used to race Trevor’s enormous red pickup sometimes—I guess Trevor wasn’t very good at it. Didn’t seem like something I’d be into, but Rachel’s boyfriends had always been into it, and she must have liked it, too, because she always went with them. “I don’t know,” I said.
Rachel came down the hall and stood in the doorway, as if on cue. I wondered if she’d been eavesdropping. Wouldn’t be the first time. “Come on, it’ll be something different,” she said. She actually wanted me to go? With her, in public? This was new. “It’s one of the few social events at school where anyone can go and not feel weird. People don’t get all judgy. They just get dirty.”
“I’ll consider it,” I said.
“Think of it as a favor to me,” Jimmy said. “I don’t think I’ll be in my element there, you know?”
Oh, I did.
Once he left, I debated whether to turn on the computer or just go straight to bed. But there was so much swirling around in my head and I just wished there was someone I could talk to about it. The problem was, the person I really wanted to talk to was Hayden. When would I stop feeling this way? When would he stop being the first person I wanted to call whenever anything happened?
Maybe it was time to give in. Even if I was delusional, there was a good chance I could turn on my computer right now and someone named ArchmageGed would show up. And maybe he’d be cryptic and annoying, just like Hayden, but maybe he would also listen. Like he’d asked me to do.
It was worth a shot. I booted up the computer and logged into Gchat.
SamGoldsmith: Are you here?
And then I inhaled deeply, and wrote,
I believe you now.
It wasn’t entirely true, but it didn’t matter.
The cursor blinked for a long time, so long I thought maybe I’d fallen asleep when I heard the ping of a new message.
ArchmageGed: Really?