Book: Playlist For Th Dead

• Remembering the look on his face made me laugh. and laughing seemed to break the spell. I could move again, though I didn't want to anymore. Moving meant I was awake, and being awake meant Hayden was really dead, and I wasn't ready to admit that yet.
• And laughing felt wrong, but also good, and the fact that it made me feel good also made me feel guilty, which brought me back to wrong.
• Really, I didn't know how to feel. Sad? Check. Pissed off? Definitely.
• I'd spent the past few days alternating between missing him and hating him, feeling guilty and shitty, not knowing how I was supposed to be feeling but wanting it to be different, somehow. He'd left me alone, and I'd never have done that to him, no matter how mad I was.
• It had made it almost impossible to sleep, so on top of everything else I was exhausted. Exhausted and angry. A great combination.
• It was a great performance. If only a single word of it were true.
• I could talk about how excited we'd been to start high school last year, the 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,
• But the whole point of living in a fantasy world was the fantasy right?
• "Lots of people want to be invisible. Maybe they even think they can pretend to be. But someone always sees.
• I'd counted myself lucky to have made such a good friend, someone who made me stop feeling so lonely, and for years that was enough. Until it wasn't anymore.
• This strange attention from people who used to ignore me was confusing.
• Our hands touched as she took it from me, and I could swear I felt a spark. It was probably just static.
• 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?
• But Hayden learned things on his own because he was having trouble learning them 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.
• "Don't you wish there are things you'd done differently? Things you'd change?"
• For a second, I'd hoped she'd say that he wasn't coming, that they'd broken up, but I reminded myself that she was my new friend, not my future girlfriend. Even if that might have been nice. Or amazing.
• Was I crazy, or was she flirting with me?
• She smiled then, a wide grin that made the gem in her lip ring sparkle in the dim light. She was so pretty, and I liked that it was an odd prettiness, that it wasn't a given that everyone in the world would be able to see it. It made her special. To me, anyway.
• I almost looked like I fit in. I almost felt it, too. It was a strange feeling, one I wasn't used to.
• "I've told some white lies. I try to avoid the whoopers, but sometimes it's just a matter of evasion.
• "I don't really think about anything else these days." I said, and that was only a little bit of a lie. Because I'd been thinking about her. A lot.
• I realized that without him I had nothing. No one else to call, no interests that we didn't share. The fact was, I was lonely.
• And he was nice, too. I hated that I could totally get what she saw in him.
• I still felt like shit, but shit felt a whole lot better that where I'd started.
• "As long as you've got a plan." I said, but really, I didn't care. I'd have followed her anywhere, plan or not.
• There was something about what was happening that felt so perfect that I felt almost certain that nothing could screw it up.
• "Sounds good," I said, and it really did. I liked the idea that she was assuming we'd have more conversations, that we would eventually be able to talk about everything.
• "It's definitely memorable." I said. I wished I could think of the words to say it better, but being around her like this made me nervous, in a good way.
• She didn't say anything, just grabbed my hand and squeezed it for a minute, then let it go. I wished she hadn't. For the brief moment our hands were intertwined, I had no questions. But as soon as she let go, they all came back.
• It felt nice to walk beside her without talking, feeling like it wasn't necessary to fill the space between us.
• She couldn't be. It didn't make sense; I couldn't picture Astrid and Hayden together at all. Or was it just that I didn't want it to be true?
• I hoped she was focusing on the part I wanted her to, about being the one is she wanted me to. I didn't want the song to end, but it did. It had to.
• Was I just bad as everyone else? I hoped not.
• Lying together watching a movie with Astrid was pretty much the greatest thing that had ever happened to me.
• 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.
• Part of the reason I hated to think that I might be responsible was because things hadn't gone down the way I would have wanted them to.
• "Maybe it's that once in a while I'd like something that's just mine. Not ours to share. Just something that's all about me. Why is that so hard to understand?
• And then we kissed, for a long time. I wished it were forever; I wished I could freeze that moment, standing in the middle of the mall, and not have to think about anything else ever again.
• "I'll be okay." I said, and I wanted it to be true.
• But loneliness is a thing that has weight, an it get heavier over time and it soon became clear to me that having friends for a summer was making it harder to function in a place where I had none.