Playlist for the Dead

26. The Mother We Share

THE THREE OF US STAKED OUT a spot in the middle of the field, just outside the muddiest part of the path the trucks would follow. “This is why I made you change,” Rachel said. “We’re going to get slathered. It’ll be amazing.”

I wasn’t seeing how, but it didn’t matter. We weren’t so far that I couldn’t see the drivers getting in their trucks; it looked like Eric and Ryan were going first. I hadn’t seen Ryan since the funeral, and it was kind of weird to see him alone, without Jason and Trevor—Trevor was probably still laid up, and Jason was lying low. Was I crazy, or was Ryan wearing one of Hayden’s T-shirts? I tried to remember which ones had been in the box and realized I didn’t remember seeing Hayden’s old Smiths shirt. I could feel a vein in my temple starting to throb.

From the starting line I heard the trucks gearing up—the purr of Trevor’s engine in that fancy new truck; the low rumbling of Eric’s well-used family pickup. Then both of them revved their engines, and I could hear the power Ryan had at his disposal. How exactly did Eric think he could beat him?

I heard the shrill blare of a whistle, and then both trucks were off. They had a few hundred yards to get going, from what I could tell, and for that stretch Ryan was ahead, though not as much as I’d expected given how much newer and nicer Trevor’s truck was.

It soon became clear, though, that the speed they’d built was only going to be so helpful once they reached the muddy part of the track. Both trucks hit the mud with their front tires spinning wildly, throwing mud on the throng of people who’d moved up to watch on both sides of the track. Rachel was right; within seconds just about everyone was covered. We all smelled like pig shit, which was completely gross at first, until my nose got used to it.

Once the trucks’ back tires hit the mud, though, it seemed like the front tires became almost irrelevant as the trucks fought to keep their forward momentum. It was almost as if the mud was trying to actively slow them down and suck them under; the only way to get through was to maintain speed, but it was clear how hard that was to do.

This, I could tell, was where Eric had an edge—probably from driving in mud on the farm. “Trevor usually drives in these things,” Rachel yelled to me, and I could see it—Eric obviously knew how it handled better than Ryan did. Ryan was trying to force the truck to move through the mud by going as fast as he could, but all he was doing was moving the mud around; the wheels spun and spun but the truck’s progress was minimal. He wasn’t stuck yet, but he wasn’t moving very fast, either.

Eric’s truck, in contrast, seemed to be gliding over the mud. It almost looked like he was doing an extended wheelie—the front wheels were almost off the ground, and the back wheels were the ones propelling the truck forward. It took me a minute to figure out why, partly because my eyes were half full of mud: Eric was subtly steering the truck left and right as he moved forward. Barely enough to be noticeable, but apparently enough to ensure the wheels had traction and to keep them from spinning out.

Eric’s truck passed Ryan’s just seconds before it became clear that Ryan had actually gotten Trevor’s truck stuck in the mud. By the time Eric crossed the finish line Ryan hadn’t managed to pull himself out, and finally he just killed the engine and got out. Eric and his crew celebrated at the finish line, whooping and singing and being silly in complete unabashed triumph. I watched them for a while and debated going over, but I didn’t want to interrupt their party, and I didn’t want to join it, either. Astrid was singing just as loudly as the rest of them; I looked as closely as I could for some sign that she was suffering, like I was, but I couldn’t see any indication of it now.

A group of jocks had gathered around Trevor’s truck, helping Ryan get it out of the mud. By the time they pushed it over the finish line, Eric and his friends had calmed down a little. Ryan leaned on the truck, covered in mud; Eric was the cleanest person around, other than spatter and handprints on his shirt from his friends hugging him or patting him on the back. I could see Eric and Ryan make eye contact as I walked toward the finish line—I was curious to see what would happen next.

For a while, neither of them said anything. It was like a game of chicken. Eric had won, and Ryan was obviously upset about it, but the pissing contest wasn’t quite over. Whoever spoke first ran the risk of looking weak. From the look on Eric’s face, I could tell he was fighting with himself. He wanted to say something, to force Ryan to acknowledge that he’d been beaten, that Eric had beaten him, but he was trying to be patient.

And then, to my surprise, Ryan stuck out his hand. “Good race,” he said.

Eric cocked his head and stood there for a minute, clearly not sure what to do. He looked over at Astrid, who, I was surprised to see, was smiling. Why was it so important for everyone to get her approval? But that’s what it must have been; Eric shook Ryan’s hand and said, “You too.”

From my perspective, it was a relief—it seemed as clear a sign as any that the war was over, that I didn’t have to worry about revenge plots anymore. I didn’t have time to be relieved for long, though, because Ryan had left the finish line and was walking right toward me.

I’d been right; he was wearing Hayden’s Smiths T-shirt. Funny how it fit him perfectly; I hadn’t thought for a long time about how he and Hayden basically had the same build, though Ryan had converted his thickness to muscle. They even looked alike, though Ryan’s features were sharper and handsomer than Hayden’s. “Can we talk?” he asked. He sounded just like I had, when Jess came up to me—a little nervous, but determined.

I shrugged. I wasn’t about to make things easy for him, whatever it was he wanted to say.

“We’ll be here whenever you’re ready,” Rachel said.

We walked a few feet away; the next race was starting, so no one was paying any attention to us. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said at the funeral,” Ryan said.

Seriously? Jason had practically dislocated my shoulder when he knocked me down. “You have a weird way of showing it,” I said.

“My friends are very protective of me,” he said. “They know I’ve been going through a lot.”

“Sure you have,” I said, feeling the anger rise up in me again. “Your life was pretty close to perfect, and now your geeky little brother won’t get in the way.”

He looked like I’d slapped him, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. “Look, I know you’re Hayden’s best friend, so you see things how he did. But did you ever think that maybe it was just one side of the story?”

“You’re telling me there’s two sides? You made his life hell, you stole his chance to have a girlfriend, and now he’s dead. What’s the other side?”

“You don’t know what it was like for me,” he said. “One of my earliest memories is of Dad puncturing my soccer ball with a steak knife so I would throw the football around with him. You think I wanted to play football, a guy my size? I get killed out there. I would have made a great goalie, but Dad said soccer was for wimps and he wasn’t going to have a wimpy kid. At least not until Hayden, who got to just hide in his room playing video games all day. He didn’t have to deal with any of our parents’ crap.”

Was he kidding? “Did you not hear how they talked to him?”

“Sure, talk,” he said. “But at the end of the day, they left him alone. And Hayden had a learning disorder. They yelled at him about his grades, but they didn’t hold him to the same standard they used for me. I had to get straight As or there was no allowance, no clothes for school, no new equipment for sports. I worked my ass off.” He paused, wondering, I was sure, why he was bothering to tell me all this. I know I was. “It was just so unfair,” he finally said, and his voice grew softer. “I knew it wasn’t his fault; I knew it was better for him to fight them and then hide out than to cave like I had. But God, I resented him so much for it. I get that it makes me a bad person. I get it.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him on that one. “Is that why you made Jess leave the party?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “I’d gone into his room to use his computer because mine crashed—you know I have an old shitty one because I keep getting Bs in math, and they won’t upgrade it until I fix it—and I’d seen him talking to this girl online. And for some reason it just made me furious to think that he was going to meet this girl, when I’d lost the one girl I was really into.”

“Astrid?”

He nodded. “I know you’ve been hanging out with her, and she probably told you what an asshole I am for dumping her, but you have no idea what it was like when her dad died. I guess I understand it better now, but she turned into a totally different person, and it was like every decision she made was a judgment on what she’d been like before. And on me. So I broke up with her, but really, she broke my heart.”

It was so weird hearing him talk like this; I could tell it was weird for him too. He had this look of surprise on his face, like he couldn’t believe the things he was saying.

“I just couldn’t handle the idea that Hayden would succeed where I failed. And so I went to that party and told him that Athena wasn’t real. I told him it was all a joke, that Astrid and I were in on it together, that she’d never really been his friend. He didn’t want to believe me, but he couldn’t argue when he saw Jess’s text message.” He looked down at the Smiths shirt. “I saw Mom packing up the box of stuff to give to you. It never occurred to her that I might want something to remember him by. This was the only band he listened to that I didn’t hate, so I took it before she left.”

I thought about some of the other songs on the playlist, like the one about siblings that I’d never fully understood. The lyrics were sad, but it was kind of a happy-sounding song. I wondered what Hayden had been trying to tell me about Ryan, whether he’d had any idea that the way Ryan treated him came from such a sad place. Maybe, on some level, he knew. I wasn’t really sure what to say, though. I’d spent years thinking of only the bad things he’d done, with no regard for what it might have been like to be him. His life seemed so charmed, especially when compared to Hayden’s; it was confusing to think that he had his secrets, just like everyone else.

“I know you blame me,” he said. “And that’s fair. I blame myself, too. And if you’re the one who beat up Jason and Trevor, well, I guess I understand that, too.”

“I didn’t—” I started to say, but he held up his hand.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We all did a lot of bad things, and it makes sense that bad things would happen to us. But losing Hayden—I have to live with the fact that I can never fix this. My friends hurt people, sure, but those people will heal, just like Jason and Trevor will. Hayden’s not here to heal, though, so I don’t think I ever will, either.”

I’d never imagined getting to a place where I could ever feel bad for Ryan, but right now, I did. “I know what you mean,” I said.

“I can’t ask you to forgive me,” he said. “I can’t forgive myself, anyway, so what would be the point? But do you think, someday, it might be possible for you not to hate me so much?”

I thought about that for a minute, about the ever-growing list of people who felt responsible for Hayden’s death. We were all right, but we were all wrong at the same time. And ultimately Hayden was the one who’d made the decision. He was the one who’d left us here, trying to figure it out, never able to say we were sorry, to make things right. I would never understand how hurt and confused and hopeless he must have felt, to decide it wasn’t worth trying, and I wasn’t mad at him anymore for doing it, but I never wanted to feel that way. And I never wanted to feel like I’d made someone else feel that way, either.

“I don’t hate you,” I told Ryan, and I mostly meant it. “I don’t hate anybody.”

“Thanks,” he said, and I understood what people meant when they talked about weights lifting from them. “It means a lot.”

“I haven’t finished going through all the T-shirts your mom brought over,” I said. “You can come by sometime, if you want. See if there are any more you’d want to take with you.”

“I’ll do that,” he said.

I walked back over to Rachel and Jimmy. “Rachel told me that was your friend’s brother,” Jimmy said. “You okay?”

I nodded. “I will be,” I said.

“Come on, little brother,” Rachel said. “Time to go home.”