Michelle Falkoff - Playlist for the Dead

I’d been listening to it constantly over the past couple of days, trying to figure out what he meant. Listen and you’ll understand . What was I supposed to understand? He’d killed himself and left me here all alone, and left me to find him. And I was pretty sure it was my fault, though that wasn’t something I was prepared to think about at the moment. But I’d listened and listened, looking for the song that would confirm it, the song that would lay all the blame on me. So far I hadn’t found it.

Instead, I’d found a confusing collection of music from all over the spectrum—some recent stuff, some older. Some songs I knew; others I didn’t, and given that Hayden and I had developed our taste together—or so I thought—that was surprising. I’d have to keep listening to see if I could figure out what he’d been talking about, though I wasn’t sure what the point was.

I scanned the list for something funeral-appropriate. Most of the songs were pretty depressing, so there wasn’t an obvious choice; I started with a song that reminded me of the first time I’d worn the suit I was about to put on. It was gray and a little shiny and I’d worn it with a bow tie. My cousins, preppie throwbacks, already thought I was weird, so why not give them some proof? Mom was cool about it, just said she was happy I had a sense of personal style and an opinion about my clothes. She’d been a sharp dresser herself, back when she and my dad were still together, when she used to try. Now she rarely changed out of the scrubs she wore to work. Rachel, my older sister, was less cool about the suit and called me a dork in a bunch of different ways before Mom made her go back upstairs and change out of the dress she’d wanted to wear. Which, let’s be honest, was kind of trashy for a family wedding.

Hayden had come over as I was getting ready, to see if I wanted to go to the mall with him. And by “mall,” he basically meant one store—the only store we ever went to. The Intergalactic Trading Company. The rest of the kids at school tended to hang out on the other end, near the sporting goods store. We rarely went down there. I’d forgotten to tell him about the wedding.

“Nice suit,” he said, in his quiet way, making it hard for me to tell if he was being serious or sarcastic. I was never sure, with Hayden. With me it was easy; I was always being a wiseass.

“Whatever. You wouldn’t be caught dead in one, right?” I winced now, remembering it, but even then I knew it wasn’t really true. Hayden would do whatever his parents told him. He didn’t like it, but it was better than the alternative.

He shrugged. “The bow tie helps,” he said. “But it would look way cooler with a T-shirt under it. Like this one.” He picked up the Radiohead shirt lying at the foot of my bed, the one he’d given me after going to see them on tour. It read HOW IT ENDS, HOW IT STARTS.

I rolled my eyes. “Does it really have to be Radiohead?”

“What’s wrong with Radiohead?” he asked, but he knew what I was going to say. We’d had this argument a million times.

“Some of their stuff is okay,” I said. “But what really makes them different from Coldplay? White English dudes who went to fancy universities and are probably too smart for their own good. But girls think Chris Martin is hot, and they think Thom Yorke is weird looking, and so Coldplay sells a bazillion albums and Radiohead has to reach out to geeks like us. Something about it just doesn’t seem right.”

“You’re way off,” he said. “Radiohead is on a different planet than Coldplay. Kid A might be the greatest record ever made, and Coldplay gets sued for plagiarism every time they release a single. Just talking about them at the same time, is, like, disrespectful to Radiohead.”

I loved getting Hayden all riled up. Back when we were little, Mom would worry about how much we fought. She’d come into my room when we were yelling at each other—okay, I was yelling; Hayden was rationally and patiently trying to explain his position, even as a kid—and she’d knock on the door. “Everything okay in there?”

“We’re fine,” we’d both say. And we were.

Just remembering it made me miss him.

I stopped getting ready for a minute and focused on the music coming out of my speakers. I wasn’t surprised he’d put “How to Disappear Completely” on his mix, since it was his favorite song (“Idioteque” was mine—despite how I needled Hayden, I agreed, Radiohead was infinitely better than Coldplay). I tried not to think too hard about the lyrics, about Hayden sitting there making this mix before making his final decision. I hated imagining him wanting to fade away like that.

My fists clenched, fingernails digging into my palms, and I tried to calm down. 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.

Except being mad just started the cycle again, a cycle that was becoming familiar. Get angry. Blame Hayden. Feel guilty. Miss him. Get angry again. This was punctuated occasionally with the urge to scream or hit things, neither of which I could manage to do. Why couldn’t I be normal and just feel sad, like other people?

“Sam, get a move on!” Mom called from downstairs.

Back to missing him. I needed to do something to make myself feel better, though. I went to the laundry basket, dug out my old Radiohead T-shirt, and put it on under the suit.

THE CHURCH WHERE THE FUNERALwas 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 family 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.