Hate List (24 page)

I peered into the refrigerator. He was right. Other than a carton of milk and some ketchup, a small bowl of leftover green
beans and a half dozen eggs, there wasn’t much to be had. “Cereal’s okay,” I said, pulling down a box from the top of the
refrigerator.

“It’s goddamn stale,” he said.

I stared at him. His eyes looked red-rimmed, his face unshaven. His hands looked rough and shaky and I realized it had been
so long since I’d looked at Dad, I hadn’t even noticed how much he’d aged lately. He looked old. Spent.

“Cereal’s okay,” I repeated, more softly now, grabbing a bowl out of the cupboard.

I poured my cereal into the bowl and sloshed some milk into it. Dad ate silently. As I was leaving the room, he said, “Everything
in this house is goddamn stale.”

I stopped, one foot on the bottom step. “Did you and Mom fight again or something?”

“What would be the point of that?” he responded.

“You… you want me to order a pizza or something? For dinner, I mean?”

“What would be the point of that?” he repeated. Seemed like he was right, so I just crept back up the stairs to my room and
listened to the radio while I ate my cereal. He was right—it was stale.

I had slapped the petrified pizza onto my tray and was spooning some slimy canned fruit cocktail into the square next to it
when I heard Mr. Angerson’s voice just over my shoulder.

“Not planning to eat that in the hallway, are you?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess I was,” I said, going about my business. “I like the hallway.”

“That’s not what I was hoping to hear. Should I go ahead and line up a teacher for Saturday detention?”

I turned and leveled my stare at him, using every ounce of determination that I had left. Angerson didn’t even bother to try
to understand. “I guess so.”

Stacey, who’d been in line just ahead of me, took her tray and ducked away, scurrying toward her table. I could see her in
my peripheral vision saying something to Duce and Mason and the gang. Their faces turned toward me. Duce was laughing.

“I’m not going to let you orchestrate another tragedy in this school, young lady,” Mr. Angerson said to me, a little red coloring
creeping up from under his tie to his chin.
So much for the medal and the letter and all that hero and forgiveness crap
, I thought. “There is a new school policy that no personal isolation is allowed in this school. Anyone who is caught regularly
secluding herself from the student body will be carefully scrutinized. I hate to say but some extreme cases could be subject
to expulsion. Are we clear?”

The line was moving around me and out the door now, I realized, and kids were staring as they went. Some of them had curious
grins on their faces and were whispering to their friends about me.

“I never orchestrated anything,” I answered. “And I’m not doing anything wrong now, either.”

He pursed his lips and glared at me, the red creeping from his chin up his cheeks. “I would like you to consider your options,”
he said. “As a personal favor to the survivors of this school.”

He let the word “survivors” drop on me like a bomb and it worked. I felt shaken by it. Felt like he said the word extra loud
and that everyone had heard it. He turned and walked away and after a minute I turned back to the fruit cocktail. I loaded
more of it onto my tray with shaky hands, even though my stomach suddenly felt very full.

I paid for my food and carried my tray out into the main part of the Commons. I felt like everyone was staring at me, like
a bunch of rabbits caught in the middle of the night by back porch lights. But I looked forward, only forward, and headed
out into the hallway.

I could hear Angerson just inside the cafeteria talking to some boys about where French fries belonged and where they didn’t,
and steeled myself for another face-off when I heard footsteps coming around the corner.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked, as I sunk to the floor, carefully balancing my tray on my lap.

I opened my mouth to answer, but was interrupted as a bustle of motion burst into the hallway. Jessica Campbell, holding her
lunch tray, whisked around Angerson and slid to the floor next to me. Her tray rattled against the linoleum as she shrugged
out of her backpack.

“Hi, Mr. Angerson,” she said brightly. “Sorry I’m late, Valerie.”

“Jessica,” he said, one of those statements that sounds like a question. “What are you doing?”

She shook her milk carton, opened it. “Having lunch with Valerie,” she answered. “We’ve got some Student Council stuff to
talk about. I figured this would be the best way to talk without getting interrupted. It’s so loud in there. Can’t hear yourself
think.”

Mr. Angerson looked like he wanted to punch a hole in something. He stood around for a minute, then pretended he saw something
alarming going on in the Commons and scurried off to “break it up.”

Jessica giggled softly after he left.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Having lunch,” she said, taking a bite of her pizza. She made a face. “God, it’s petrified.”

I smiled in spite of myself. I picked up my pizza and took a bite. We ate silently, side by side. “Thanks,” I said around
a mouthful of pizza. “He’s totally looking for a reason to expel me.”

Jessica waved her hand at me. “Angerson’s such an ass,” she answered, and then laughed as I opened my notebook and drew a
picture of a bare butt wearing a suit and tie.

[F
ROM THE
G
ARVIN
C
OUNTY
S
UN
-T
RIBUNE
,
M
AY
3, 2008, R
EPORTER
A
NGELA
D
ASH
]

Abby Dempsey, 17—As Student Council Vice President, Dempsey was manning a fundraising table selling doughnuts. She was shot
twice in the throat. Police believe that the bullets were stray, intended for a student in line approximately three feet to
Dempsey’s left. Dempsey’s parents had no comment for reporters, and are said by friends of the family to be “grieving deeply
for the loss of their only child.”

Mom called and left a message on my cell phone telling me she had a meeting and couldn’t come pick me up. My first reaction
was outrage that she would expect me to ride the bus after everything that had happened. Like I could just flop down in a
seat beside Christy Bruter’s posse now and everything would go fine.
How could she?
I thought to myself.
How could she throw me to the wolves like that?

I guess it goes without saying that I wasn’t going to ride the bus home, whether Mom was driving me or not. Truthfully, my
house was only about five miles away and I’d walked the route more than once. But that was back when both of my legs were
normal. I doubted my ability to do it now, sure that halfway there my thigh would begin throbbing and force me to sit down
and wait for the nearest predator to whisk me away.

But I could probably make it a mile or so, I figured, and Dad’s office was not much farther than that. True, getting a ride
from Dad was definitely not top on my list. Probably not any higher up than giving me a ride was on his. But it would be better
than trying to avoid the drama on a school bus any day.

There was once a time when I was embarrassed that Dad’s office wasn’t more imposing. Here he was, supposedly this big-shot
lawyer, and he was in a tiny brick “satellite office,” which, if you asked me, was just another way of saying “hole in the
wall in the suburbs.” But today I was glad he worked in a hole in the wall not far from school, because the October sun did
nothing to warm up the air and within just a few blocks of walking I was beginning to be sorry I hadn’t taken the bus after
all.

I’d only been to Dad’s office a couple times before; he didn’t exactly put out a welcome mat for his family to show up at
work. He liked to pretend it was that he didn’t want us exposed to the, as he called them, “lowlifes” he represented. But
I think the truth was that Dad’s office was his escape from the family. If we started showing up there, what would be the
point of him always being at work?

My leg felt tight and I knew I was lurching along like a horror movie monster by the time I opened the big double glass door
set in the brick of Dad’s office. I felt glad to have made it.

Warm air settled around me and I stood in the entryway rubbing my thigh for a minute before walking into the office itself.
I could smell microwave popcorn, buoyed on top of the air and snaking around me, and I felt hunger twist inside of me. I followed
the scent through the vestibule and around the corner to the waiting area.

Dad’s secretary blinked at me from behind her desk. I couldn’t remember her name. I’d only met her once before, at some family
picnic the head office had sponsored a summer or two ago, and thought it was Britni or Brenna or something young and trendy
like that. I did remember, though, that she was only twenty-four and had the most incredibly shiny straight sheath of cocoa-colored
hair that hung down her back like a superhero cape and these big cow eyes that blinked slowly and housed giant trusting pupils
ringed with the color I can best describe as spring green. I remembered her being cute and shy and laughing longer than anyone
else every time my dad told one of his stupid corny jokes.

“Oh,” she said, a blush rising to her cheeks. “Valerie.” It was a statement. She didn’t smile. She gulped—actually gulped
like they do in the movies—and I imagined her reaching for a red security button under the desk just in case I should pull
a gun or something.

“Hi,” I said. “Is my dad here? I need a ride.”

She pushed away from her desk in her rolling chair. “He’s on a conference c—” she began, but she couldn’t finish because
Dad’s door flung open at just that moment.

“Hey, sweetheart, could you pull the Santosh file… ?” he was saying, nose down in a pile of paperwork, reading. He walked
around the back of Britni/Brenna’s chair. She sat motionless, except for the color that crept up her face. Dad’s hand landed
familiarly on her shoulder as he walked by, giving it a soft squeeze, a gesture I hadn’t seen him give to my mother in… forever.
Britni/Brenna ducked her head and closed her eyes. “What’s wrong, baby? You seem tense—” Dad started, finally looking up,
but he stopped when his eyes landed on me.

His hand jumped from Britni/Brenna’s shoulder and back up to the paperwork he was holding. The gesture was subtle, unassuming,
almost so much so that I wondered if I’d seen what I thought I’d seen after all. I might have thought I was imagining things
had my eyes not totally accidentally rested on Britni’s/Brenna’s face, which looked almost wet with a furious blush. Her eyes
were trained only on the desk in front of her. She looked mortified.

“Valerie,” Dad said. “What are you doing here?”

I tore my gaze away from Britni/Brenna. “I need a ride,” I said. At least I think I said it. I’m not entirely sure because
my lips were so numb. Britni/Brenna mumbled something and darted out of her chair toward the restroom. I could have guessed
that she wouldn’t come out again until after I’d left. “Mom um… Mom had a meeting.”

“Oh,” Dad said. Was I seeing things or was his face looking flushed too? “Oh, yeah. Sure. Okay. Give me a minute.”

He stepped briskly back into his office and I could hear things shuffling around in there, drawers being shut, keys rattling.
I stood rooted to my spot, beginning to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing.

“Ready?” Dad asked. “I’ve got to get back, so let’s move.” All business. All Dad. I expected nothing less.

He opened the door, but I couldn’t move.

“Is that why you and Mom hate each other?” I asked.

He looked like he considered pretending he didn’t know what I was talking about. He cocked his head to the side and let the
door close.

“You don’t know what you think you know,” he said. “Let’s go home. It’s really not your business.”

“It’s not because of me,” I said. “It’s not my fault that you and Mom hate each other. It’s yours.” And even though I pretty
much knew my parents weren’t exactly in love before the shooting, this hit me like some great epiphany. And for whatever reason
I felt worse than I had before. I guess I always thought that if it was just about me, when I left the house they would be
in love and happy again. Now, with Britni/Brenna’s beautiful flushed face in the picture, Mom and Dad would probably never
be in love again. Suddenly all those fights they’d had over the years no longer seemed reparable. Suddenly I understood why
I had clung to Nick like a life preserver—he not only understood crappy families, he understood crappy families that would
never be good again. There must have been a part of me that knew all along.

“Valerie, just let it go.”

“All this time I’ve been beating myself up about making you and Mom hate each other and you were having an affair with your
secretary. Oh my God, I’m such an idiot.”

“No.” He sighed, put his hand to his temple. “Your mother and I don’t hate each other. You really don’t know anything about
my relationship with your mother. This isn’t your business.”