Read the book: «Playlist for the Dead»

THE CHURCH WHERE THE FUNERAL was being held was on the east side of Libertyville, the rich side. The Stevenses, Hayden’s family, lived there. Mine didn’t.

From the outside the church looked almost like a really fancy ski lodge, all dark wood and exposed beams—it had probably been built by one of the architects responsible for all the McMansions on that side of town. The wood was lighter on the inside, which had a high arched ceiling and a sparkly modern-looking chandelier hanging down. Almost like they wanted people to forget it was a church.

My family was Jewish, so the only church I’d ever been to was the Catholic one on my side of town, where all the kids I went to school with had their First Communions. We’d just moved to town so I didn’t really know anyone, but one of the kids in my class had invited everyone to his and Mom said I had to go if I wanted to make friends, though it didn’t really work out like that.

The Catholic church had looked more like what I’d expect a church to look like: white on the outside, with a crucifix at the altar and lots of stained-glass windows. This church looked almost nothing like it, except for the fact that there were two columns of pews that ended with an altar. At the foot of that altar was a coffin, and in that coffin was Hayden. Probably also wearing a suit.

By the time we showed up the place was almost full. Rachel had taken off to sit with her friends as soon as we walked in the door, shocker, and so it was just me and Mom walking up and down the aisles, trying to find seats. The first few rows were filled with Hayden’s family—I saw his parents and Ryan, his older brother, as well as some aunts and uncles and cousins I recognized from the times I’d gone to Hayden’s house over the holidays. Since my family didn’t celebrate Christmas, Hayden would invite me over to have dessert with them after they’d finished opening their presents and having their big fancy dinner. Hayden was always grateful if I showed up, since it got him away from the table faster. His mom was always on his case about how much he ate, and Christmas was the worst. If he even looked at a second piece of pie, she’d give him a sharp look and say, “Do you really need that, Hayden?” But Hayden would never fight back. He wasn’t like that. He’d do anything to keep the peace.

They’d never deserved him, his family.

The rows behind Hayden’s family were filled with obnoxious rich people from his side of town and their obnoxious kids, friends of Ryan’s who’d spent years torturing Hayden, some at Ryan’s direction. They all thought life would always be as easy for them as it was right now. Rich jocks like Jason Yoder who hired tutors to get them through the hard classes; girls like Stephanie Caster with nose jobs and personal trainers who would have been beautiful without either but who now all looked exactly alike. I mean, they were still cute, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the same. It made me furious, seeing them all sitting there, acting like they were so sad when all of this was at least partly their fault. How could I feel so out of place at my own best friend’s funeral?

Mom put her hand on my shoulder. The weight of it was comforting; I was glad I didn’t have to be here alone. “We’ve got to sit somewhere, sweetie.” She steered me toward the back of the room, into one of the pews near the church door. “I know you want to sit closer, but they’re going to start soon and there just isn’t room.”

I nodded, reminding myself to unclench my fists.

“You’ll need to check in with Rachel—she’s going to arrange for you guys to get a ride home, okay? I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Sure.” It wasn’t surprising, but I wasn’t upset by it—Mom was always having to take off early, or come home late. When Dad left for good she’d gone back to school nights to become a nurse practitioner, and since the hospital was understaffed she’d signed up for as much overtime as she could get, especially since Dad was kind of a slacker about sending checks. We weren’t in bad shape, she told Rachel and me, but we weren’t working with a whole lot of cushion, either. Not like the people sitting at the front of the church.

I struggled to get comfortable on the wooden bench as everyone began to settle down. It was already fifteen minutes after the service was supposed to start, and I could still hear people coming in behind me. For a guy with basically one friend, his funeral was pretty crowded.

He’d have hated it, I was sure. He’d have been sitting here in the back, with me.

I felt hot and itchy. I was starting to sweat under my shiny suit. I thought about leaving, but I was trapped in the row—Mom had snagged the seat on the end so she could duck out quietly, and some random woman in a brightly flower-printed dress had me pinned on the other side. Weren’t people supposed to wear black to funerals? She looked like she was off to a fucking garden party.

I felt the urge to hit something again and tried to find a way to focus so I could calm down. I listened to the music that was being piped through the speaker system. No organ here. I didn’t recognize the song; it was some kind of New Age elevator music, all soothing, with flutes. Another thing that would have made Hayden nuts. I wondered whether he’d picked one of the songs on the playlist especially for his funeral, and I tried to figure out which one it might be. The best I could come up with was an old Arcade Fire song from their Funeral album. We both loved Arcade Fire. We actually watched the Grammys when they won Album of the Year, the first time either of us had had any interest in that show since we were little kids.

After another ten minutes the minister stood up at the altar. He began to drone on about the tragedy of losing someone so young, all platitudes and euphemisms and none of the words that described what had really happened. It made me so crazy I just stared straight ahead at the backs of people’s heads. A few rows in front of me, a girl with long white-blond hair with black streaks in it leaned on the shoulder of some tall hipster dude. I didn’t recognize either one of them, at least not from the back. I couldn’t help but think it was funny that her hair seemed funeral-appropriate, compared with the woman in the garden-party dress.

When the actual prayers started Mom kissed the top of my head and said, “Gotta go,” leaving as quietly as her nursing clogs would let her. I felt bad she had to work so many hours on her feet that she’d soak them when she got home, most nights. I’d offered to get an after-school job once I’d turned fifteen, a few months ago, but she just laughed. “Long gone are the days that teenagers could get jobs at the mall,” she said. “Half the moms I know at the PTA are working at the Gap. You don’t have a shot, kiddo. Just keep studying and I’ll hit you up for some help when I retire.”

She was joking, but only sort of. I knew there were kids at school whose moms were waiting tables at Olive Garden, or selling makeup and jewelry from their east-side basements, pretending it was just for fun, as if they didn’t need to start helping out if they wanted to keep living there. Ever since the Liberty Appliance Factory closed, a few years ago, the line between the rich people and the people who were struggling to get by had gotten blurry. It was nice of Mom to at least go in late; I tried to remember not to be mad at her for leaving me here.

After the prayers, the minister started asking for testimonials. “Anyone who wants to speak, anyone who has something to share,” he said. There was an awkward pause. Finally, Hayden’s father stood up. I couldn’t bear to look at him, to see him crying as if he’d lost something so valuable to him, when I knew the truth, how he spent all his time at work or traveling or visiting the woman Hayden knew he was sleeping with, the one who went on all his business trips with him.

But I couldn’t block out the sound of his voice. “Hayden wasn’t the son I expected to have,” he said. “I’d imagined playing catch in the yard, watching football on the weekends, going fishing. The things I’d done with my dad; the things I do with Ryan. It was the only kind of relationship I knew how to have with a son.” His voice cracked. “But my second son didn’t enjoy any of those things. He loved music and video games and computers. I didn’t know how to talk to him. And now I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I’d learned how.” He lowered his head, as if he were trying to hide the fact that he was crying.

It was a great performance. If only a single word of it were true.

I looked over to see Ryan in the front row. He was shaking his head, which surprised me. I would have thought he’d agree with every word that came out of his father’s mouth, like he always did.

I thought about getting up there, what I could say about my best friend, the stories I could tell. I could talk about how we’d met at a Little League tryout when we were eight, not that long after I’d moved to Libertyville. Neither of us had wanted to be there; Hayden was short and chubby even then, and to say I was uncoordinated was a pretty serious understatement. We both missed every pitch, dropped every ball thrown to us from even the shortest distance, and finally we’d run away from the field, pooling our change to buy one of those orange Dreamsicle pops from the ice-cream truck. Our parents had been furious, but we didn’t care.

I could talk about waiting in line to get into Phantom Menace 3-D when we were twelve, not realizing how crappy it was going to be, how we’d spent months trying to decide what costumes we’d wear, ditching the obvious—C-3PO for me, R2-D2 for him—in exchange for Boba Fett and Darth Vader, because they were more badass. I could talk about how Ryan and his buddies had followed us and egged our costumes and we’d had to sit through the endless movie feeling the eggs drying on our costumes and our skin, but we’d still had a good time.

I could talk about how excited we’d been to start high school last year, the first time we’d be at the same school, how convinced we’d been that once we were together things would be better. We couldn’t have known how wrong that would turn out to be.

But what would be the point of saying any of those things? Everyone might pretend to care now, but it was too late.

And then I saw the line. People were getting up to speak, standing in a row to the side of the altar. Hayden’s aunts and cousins, teachers, friends of the family. Kids from school. Ryan, on his own, without his usual buddies, Jason Yoder and Trevor Floyd. We’d called them the bully trifecta.

It shouldn’t have been shocking to me, to see who’d decided they had something to say at Hayden’s funeral. They were all starved for attention, and there wasn’t a chance they’d miss the opportunity to grab the spotlight, no matter what the occasion. But seriously, at a funeral? Were they really going to get up there and say nice things about Hayden, talk about how much they’d miss him, what a loss it would be for the school, the community? Did they have no sense of how much they’d contributed to the fact that we were all here in the first place?

There was no way I could let this happen. All the anger I’d been feeling, the urge to find someone responsible and hit them as hard as I could, boiled in me. I walked up to Ryan and tapped him on the shoulder while one of Hayden’s cousins was tearfully recounting some story about Thanksgiving, the last time the whole family had been together. Ryan frowned when he saw it was me. I was just about to say something when Jason Yoder stepped in between us. I hadn’t realized he was so close.

“You really think now’s the time?” he asked.

I moved to the right to get around him, only to be blocked again by Trevor Floyd.

“Let me by,” I said. I wasn’t scared of them. Not now.

“I don’t think so,” Jason said.

He was the only one of the three who wasn’t an athlete, and I was taller than he was. I pushed him aside to get to Ryan. It wasn’t like Trevor was going to deck me at a funeral.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “You’re really going to get up there and talk about what a great brother you were? When everyone here knows the truth? You were at that party just like me. You could have stopped things. You should have protected him, not made everything worse.”

Ryan opened his mouth, but before he could get the words out Jason shoved me so hard I banged into one of the pews. I saw people looking at us even as I tried—and failed—to keep from falling down.

“You’re really going to go after Ryan at his brother’s funeral?” Jason hissed. I’d underestimated his strength; I’d been more worried about the enormous Trevor, who was six and a half feet tall with the thick neck I’d learned was common to steroid users—kids at school called him Roid Floyd, but only behind his back. He wasn’t someone I was looking to get into a fight with. Especially not here.

I stood up as carefully as I could. My arms would be covered in bruises tomorrow, but I wasn’t about to let the bully trifecta see me fall down. “You’re a fucking hypocrite,” I said to Ryan. “And someday you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Ryan didn’t say anything, just stared at me for a minute. Then he moved forward in line. It was almost his turn to speak.

I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t wait for Rachel to find us a ride. I had to leave. Now.