AFTER DINNER I WENT BACK UP to my room. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep right away, so I decided to play Mage Warfare, Archmage or no Archmage. I remembered when Hayden and I had first started playing. We’d talked a lot about the kinds of characters we wanted to create. I’d just read this crazy book about a video game that was supposed to be like reality, where the author had all these theories about why people created characters and acted the way they did in the game world. In the book some of them replicated their lives online—they had the same jobs, drove the same cars, hung out with the same kinds of people. It was like they were living their lives twice. And then there were the others, who went as far in the opposite direction as they could: accountants became movie stars, schoolteachers became rapists, that sort of thing. It was fascinating to me.
Hayden found it disturbing, though. “Both of those options seem off,” he’d said. “It’s hard to imagine that people who were so content with their lives would want to be the same way online—they could just be happy in the real world and not bother with the game at all. And does it really make sense that people’s fantasies would have no resemblance to their real lives? I mean, if the schoolteachers were killing bratty kids that would be one thing, right?” He thought it made more sense if people were who they were but better. People who had boring jobs but loved karaoke would be the rock stars; beat cops would save the world. He would be tall and handsome and magical, and he’d fight for good. Like the Archmage.
I was more intrigued by the darker aspects of gaming. I kind of liked being a bad guy in a world where no one knew who I was and where there were no consequences. And the whole idea of good and evil—there were so many people everyone thought were good who were clearly awful, so why was it a given that being on the good side was any better than being on the bad one?
“If everyone thought like you did, there would be anarchy,” Hayden said.
“I’m not sure that would be the worst thing in the world,” I said. “How can you say you believe in good and evil as absolutes and then look at politics? Both sides think they’re the good guys, and both seem like idiots to me. And they’re totally inconsistent—one side says government is bad but wants to control everything you do, and the other says government is good and then can’t get anything done, which makes government look bad. If there were anarchy, people would have to find ways to work together to make anything happen.”
“It’s crazy to think people would manage without anyone in charge,” he said. “Look how desperate most people are for someone to tell them what to do.”
“Some people,” I said. “But look at us—we both learn way more on our own than we do at school, and we’re more interested in things we find for ourselves.”
“That’s what makes us weird,” he said, but he laughed as he said it.
I thought about that conversation a lot, after he was gone. We hadn’t talked about the fact that we had different goals in learning on our own: I did it because I could, because I wanted to learn different things than the school wanted to teach me, because I looked forward to the day I could leave Libertyville behind and start over. Mom always reminded me that the best years of my life were ahead of me, that for the jerks in high school this was as good as it got, whereas someone like me would move on to more exciting things. “You’re going to have a beautiful life,” she’d say, smoothing my hair with her cool hand, “and high school will be just a distant memory.”
But Hayden learned things on his own because he was having trouble learning them any other way. I couldn’t imagine how frustrating it must have been to be as smart as he was—brilliant, even—but to have trouble getting his thoughts out of his head. He could communicate with me just fine, but the teachers at school made him nervous, and he stammered and sputtered when they asked him questions. His writing wasn’t much better; he was okay when we Gchatted, in part because of autocorrect, but when it came to working through his thoughts on paper, the dyslexia got him every time. I realized we hadn’t talked much about his plans for the future; whenever I’d asked, he’d shut me down.
Was it possible that he’d always known? What else hadn’t he told me?
Then a weird thought occurred to me. There was someone I could ask.
The Archmage.
Right. I put the thought out of my head and logged in to Mage Warfare, losing myself in the game for hours. I was on fire—I killed so many people I couldn’t keep track of all the angry chat messages I was getting. It was like they gave me fuel; the more these random strangers from all over the world cussed me out, the better I did. It didn’t matter if the players were good or evil. If they got in my way, they were screwed. I was so wrapped up in the mayhem I’d created that it took me a while to realize that the pinging of the chat window wasn’t coming from inside the game.
ArchmageGed: How do?
It was happening again. And I was sure I was awake—I’d drunk so much Coke with my pizza I might never sleep again, though admittedly I hadn’t even begun to make up for the hours I’d lost. I looked at the clock: 1:43 a.m. Later than I realized. I was going to have to call it soon.
SamGoldsmith: Whoever this is, cut it out.
ArchmageGed: You know who this is. Miss me?
SamGoldsmith: Seriously, stop it.
And I meant it. Much as I would have loved to talk to Hayden, I didn’t believe it was really him. There was no afterlife where people got to come back as their fantasy selves. It didn’t even work in Mage Warfare.
ArchmageGed: Come on, the fun’s only just started!
Fun? My best friend was dead and someone was trying to talk to me about fun? That was just mean.
SamGoldsmith: I’m logging out now.
But I waited. Despite myself, I was curious about what was really going on here.
ArchmageGed: Look, I can help you.
Help me with what? Deal with the fact that my best friend was gone? I wasn’t seeing it.
SamGoldsmith: There’s nothing you can do for me.
ArchmageGed: You’d be surprised what I can do. Don’t you wish there are things you’d done differently? Things you’d change?
Of course there were. But there was no way to go back.
SamGoldsmith: Can’t change anything. It’s too late.
ArchmageGed: Not for everyone.
SamGoldsmith: What do you mean?
The cursor blinked while I waited for him to reply.
ArchmageGed: One down, two to go.
What was that supposed to mean?
And then I remembered what Rachel had said about Jason Yoder. I imagined he’d been terrified of being outed, and there was no more straightforward way of getting outed than to be tied up naked outside a gay bar.
Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence.
SamGoldsmith: Are you talking about the bully trifecta?
The cursor just blinked, but like last time, a song from the playlist started coming through my speakers. It was a song I had forwarded through every time it came up; I couldn’t bear to remember the last time I’d heard it. I tried to shut off iTunes to make the music stop, but somehow it kept playing. I still didn’t want to listen to it.
But apparently now I’d have to.
“I don’t understand why all of a sudden you, of all people, want to go to a party,” I’d said. We were sitting in Hayden’s room, surrounded by wall-to-wall Star Wars paraphernalia. No one would ever think a girl lived there, that’s for sure. “You hate parties. You get mad every time I try to make you go to one.”
“Which is why you owe me,” Hayden said. “If I’m asking, it must be important, right?”
“I guess, but I still don’t get it.”
“What’s to get? You’re the one who keeps saying we need to hang out with other people.” As usual, I couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic, and it kind of pissed me off. What was so awful about suggesting that we weren’t the only two people at Libertyville High worth interacting with? Not to mention that some of those other people might be girls?
“But for no reason?”
“Who says there isn’t a reason?” He gave me a half grin, and I knew he wasn’t going to tell me. I’d been bugging him about it all day and gotten nothing. It was really frustrating.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me everything, but we’re going into enemy territory here. Usually that merits an explanation.” The party was at Stephanie Caster’s house, and she was part of Ryan’s crew. We’d never been to one of those parties before; the few we’d gone to were a little less exclusive.
“Ryan’s got an out-of-town game tonight. It should be safe.”
“That’s not the kind of explanation I was looking for, and you know it,” I said, still annoyed.
“Well, sometimes life is unfair.”