Hate List (5 page)

Duce moved last, shouldering past me, murmuring, “Yeah, it’s real great.”

I stood on the sidewalk, feeling marooned with this strange tide of kids moving around me, shoving me backward and forward
with their motion, but never breaking me loose into the sea itself. I wondered if I could stand in this very spot until Mom
came back at 2:50.

A hand fell on my shoulder.

“Why don’t you come with me?” a voice said in my ear. I turned and found myself looking into the face of Mrs. Tate, the guidance
counselor. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me along, the two of us heading boldly through the waves of
kids around us, leaving whispers in our wake.

“It’s good to see you here today,” Mrs. Tate said. “I’m sure you’re a little apprehensive about it, no?”

“A little,” I said, but I couldn’t say more because she was pulling me along so fast it was all I could do to concentrate
on walking. We broke into the vestibule before the panic in my torso could even well up, and somehow I felt cheated. Like
I should at least have the right to panic about entering my school again, if that’s what I wanted.

The hallway was a bustle of motion. A police officer stood at the door, waving a wand over students’ backpacks and jackets.
Mrs. Tate waved her hand at one of them and ushered me past him without stopping.

It seemed a little sparse in the hallways, like a lot of kids were missing. But otherwise it was like nothing had changed.
Kids were talking, squealing, shoes were scuffling on shiny tile, the walls echoing with the
wham! wham! wham!
of lockers slamming in the hallways beyond my eyes’ reach.

Mrs. Tate and I walked through the hall with purpose, then rounded the corner to the Commons. This time the panic rose so
quickly it made it to my throat before Tate could pull me into the large room. She must have sensed my fear because she squeezed
my shoulders harder and pressed on more quickly.

The Commons—once the place to hang out in the mornings, ordinarily packed shoulder-to-shoulder—was empty, save for the
clusters of empty tables and chairs. At the far end, the end where Christy Bruter had fallen, someone had installed a bulletin
board. Across the top were construction paper cutout letters reading
WE WILL REMEMBER
, and the board was papered with notes, cards, ribbons, photos, banners, flowers. A couple girls—I couldn’t tell who from
this distance—were pinning a note and photograph to the bulletin board.

“We would have banned congregating in the Commons in the mornings if we’d had to,” Mrs. Tate said, as if she could tell what
I was thinking. “Just out of safety concerns. But it looks like nobody wants to hang out here anymore anyway. Now we only
use the Commons for lunch shifts.”

We walked straight through the Commons. I tried to ignore my imagination, which had my feet sliding in sticky blood across
the floor. I tried to focus on the sound of Mrs. Tate’s shoes clacking against the tile, trying to remind myself of all the
things about breathing and focusing that Dr. Hieler had spent so much time coaching me on. At the moment I couldn’t remember
a single one.

We passed through the doorway at the other end of the Commons, where the administration offices were. Technically, this was
the front of the building. More officers were searching backpacks and passing metal detector wands over kids’ clothes.

“All this security is going to make our mornings get off to a slow start, I’m afraid.” Mrs. Tate sighed. “But, of course,
this way we’ll all feel safer.”

She whisked me past the officers and into the administrative offices. The secretaries looked on with polite smiles, but didn’t
say a word. I kept my face tilted to the floor and followed Mrs. Tate into her office. I hoped she’d let me stay there a long
time.

Mrs. Tate’s office was the opposite of Dr. Hieler’s. Where Dr. Hieler’s was tidy and lined with rows and rows of reference
books, Mrs. Tate’s was a haphazard conglomeration of paperwork and educational tools, like it was part guidance office, part
supply closet. There were books stacked on just about every flat surface and photos of Mrs. Tate’s kids and dogs everywhere.

Most kids came to Mrs. Tate to either complain about a teacher or look through a college catalogue, and that was pretty much
it. If Mrs. Tate had gone to college hoping to counsel scads of troubled teenagers, she was probably pretty disappointed.
If there can be such a thing as disappointment about not having enough troubled people in your life.

She motioned for me to sit in a chair with a torn vinyl seat and she edged herself around a small file cabinet and sat in
the chair behind her desk, dwarfed by stacks of papers and Post-it notes in front of her. She leaned forward over the mess
and folded her hands right in the middle of an old fast food wrapper.

“I was watching for you this morning,” she said. “I’m glad you came back to school. Shows guts.”

“I’m giving it a try,” I mumbled, rubbing my thigh absently. “I can’t make any promises I’ll stay.”
Eighty-three and counting
, I repeated in my head.

“Well, I hope you do. You’re a good student,” she said. “Ah!” she yelped, holding up one finger. She leaned to the side and
pulled open a drawer of the file cabinet next to her desk. A framed photo of a black and white cat pawing at something wobbled
as the drawer moved and I imagined her, several times a day, having to right the photo after it fell. She pulled a brown file
folder out and opened it on the desk in front of her, leaving the file drawer hanging ajar. “That reminds me. College. Yes.
You were considering…” she flipped through a few pages, “… Kansas State, if I remember correctly.” She kept flipping, then
ran her finger down a page and said, “Yep. Right here. Kansas State and Northwest Missouri State.” She closed the folder and
smiled. “I got the program requirements from each of them just last week. It’s a little late to be just starting this process,
but it shouldn’t be a problem. Well, you’ll probably have to account for some things on your permanent record, but… really…
you were never charged with… well, you know what I mean.”

I nodded. I knew what she meant. Not that it needed to be on my permanent record, because I pretty much couldn’t think of
anyone in the country who hadn’t heard of me by now. I was like best friends with the world. Or maybe worst enemies. “I changed
my mind,” I said.

“Oh. A different school? Shouldn’t be a problem. With your grades…”

“No, I mean I’m not going. To college.”

Mrs. Tate leaned forward, resting her hand on the wrapper again. She was frowning at me. “Not going?”

“Right. I don’t want to anymore.”

She spoke softly: “Listen, Valerie. I know you blame yourself for what happened. I know you think you’re just like him. But
you’re not.”

I sat up straighter and tried to smile confidently. This was not a conversation I wanted to get into today, of all days. “Really,
Mrs. Tate, you don’t have to say this,” I said. I touched my back pocket with the picture of Nick and me at Blue Lake in it
for reassurance. “I mean, I’m okay and everything.”

Mrs. Tate held up a hand and looked me straight in the eye. “I spent more time with Nick than with my own son most days,”
she said. “He was such a searcher. Always so angry. He was one of those kids who was just going to struggle through life.
He was so consumed with hate. Ruled by it, really.”

No
, I wanted to shout at her.
No he wasn’t. Nick was good. I saw it.

I was struck with a memory of the night Nick had shown up at my house unexpectedly just as Mom and Dad began to rev up for
their usual after-dinner bitchfest. I could feel it coming: Mom slamming plates into the dishwasher, mumbling under her breath,
and Dad pacing the floor between the living room and the kitchen, eyeing Mom and shaking his head. The tension was building
and I’d begun to get that tired feeling I’d had so often lately, wishing I could just go to bed and wake up in a different
house, a different life. Frankie had already disappeared into his room and I wondered if he got that tired feeling, too.

I was just climbing the stairs to my bedroom when the doorbell rang. I could see Nick through the window next to the door,
shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“I’ll get it!” I hollered to my parents as I ran back down the stairs, but the argument had already started and they didn’t
notice.

“Hey,” I’d said, stepping out on the front porch. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” he said back. He’d held out a CD. “I brought this,” he said. “I burned it for you this afternoon. It’s all the songs
that make me think about you.”

“That’s so sweet,” I said, reading the back of the case, where he’d carefully typed all of the titles and artists of the songs.
“I love it.”

On the other side of the door, we could hear Dad’s voice getting closer. “You know, maybe I
won’t
come home, Jenny, that’s a great idea,” he was growling. Nick looked at the door, and I could swear I saw embarrassment creep
through his face. And something else. Pity, maybe? Fear? Maybe that same weariness I felt?

“Want to get out of here?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It doesn’t sound too good in there. We can hang together
for a while.”

I nodded, opening the door a crack and dropping the CD on the table in the foyer. Nick reached out and grabbed my hand, leading
me to the field behind my house. We found a clearing and sprawled on our backs in the grass, looking at the stars, talking
about… anything, everything.

“You know why we get along so well, Val?” he asked after a while. “Because we think just alike. It’s like we have the same
brain. It’s cool.”

I stretched, wrapping my leg around his. “Totally,” I said. “Screw our parents. Screw their stupid fights. Screw everybody.
Who gives a shit about them?”

“Not me,” he said. He scratched his shoulder. “For a long time I thought nobody would ever get me, but you really do.”

“Of course I do.” I turned my head and kissed his shoulder. “And you get me, too. It’s kind of creepy the way we’re so alike.”

“Creepy in a good way.”

“Yeah, in a good way.”

He turned to face me, propping himself up on an elbow. “It’s good that we have each other,” he said. “It’s like, you know,
even if the whole world hates you, you still have someone to rely on. Just the two of you against the whole world. Just us.”

At the time, my thoughts had been so consumed with Mom and Dad and their incessant arguing, I’d just assumed we were talking
about them. Nick knew exactly what I was going through—he called his stepdad Charles his “Step du Jour” and talked about
his mom’s ever-changing love life as if it were some big joke. I’d had no idea he might have meant us against… everyone. “Yeah.
Just us,” I’d answered. “Just us.”

I looked at the carpet of Mrs. Tate’s office, once again struck with the feeling that I never knew Nick at all. That all of
that soul-mate stuff we’d talked about was just bullshit. That when it comes to reading people, I’m an F student.

I felt a lump in my throat. How indulgent was that? The school outcast cries over the memory of her boyfriend, the murderer.
Even I would hate me. I swallowed and forced the lump to go down.

Mrs. Tate had sat back in her chair, but was still talking. “Valerie, you had a future. You were choosing colleges. You were
getting good grades. Nick never had a future. Nick’s future was… this.”

A tear spilled over. I swallowed and swallowed but it did no good. How did she know about Nick’s future? You can’t predict
the future. God, if I could have predicted what happened, I would’ve stopped it. I would’ve made it go away. But I didn’t.
I couldn’t. And I should have. That’s what gets me. I should have. And now my future doesn’t have college in it. My future
is about being known around the world as The Girl Who Hates Everyone. That’s what the newspapers called me—The Girl Who
Hates Everyone.

I wanted to tell Tate all of these things. But it was all so complicated, and thinking about it made my leg throb and my heart
ache. I stood up and shrugged into my backpack. I wiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands. “I better get to class,” I said.
“I don’t want to be late on the first day. I’ll think about it. College, I mean. But like I said, I can’t make any promises,
okay?”

Mrs. Tate sighed and stood up. She pushed the file drawer in, but didn’t move around the file cabinet.

“Valerie,” she said, then stopped and seemed to reconsider. “Try to have a good day, okay? I am glad you’re back. And I’ll
hang onto those program requirements for you.”

I started toward the door. But just before I reached for the doorknob, I turned.

“Mrs. Tate? Have things changed much?” I asked. “I mean, are people different now?” I didn’t know what I hoped her answer
would be. Yes, everyone learned their lesson and now we’re all one big, happy family, just like they say we are in the newspapers.
Or no, there were no bullies—it was all in your head just like they say. Nick was crazy and you bought it and that’s all
there was to it. You were angry for no reason. So angry, but it was all in your imagination.

Mrs. Tate chewed on her bottom lip and seemed to really consider the question. “People are people,” she finally said, turning
up her palms in a helpless, sad shrug.

I think that was the last answer I wanted to hear.