Hate List (6 page)

Most days I found it totally ironic
that Mom drove Frankie to school because he hated to ride the bus while I rode the bus because I hated the excruciating car
ride with Mom. But some days I wished I’d gone ahead and braved Mom’s morning critiques because the bus was just such crap.

Usually I could crawl into a seat somewhere in the middle, sink down into a C-shape, my knees propped against the seat in
front of me, listen to my MP3 player, and completely disappear.

But lately Christy Bruter had been a real pain. It’s not like that was news, since I couldn’t stand Christy anyway. Never
could.

Christy was one of those girls who was popular because most everyone was afraid not to be her friend. She was big and bulky
and had a gut that stood out belligerently in front of her and thighs that were enormous and could crack a skull. Which was
weird because she was the captain of the softball team. I never could figure that one out. I just couldn’t imagine Christy
Bruter outrunning anyone to first base. But she must have done it at least once or twice, I guess. Or maybe the coach was
too afraid to cut her. Who knows?

I’d known Christy since at least kindergarten and never once had I thought I might like her. And vice versa. Every Back to
School Night, my mom would pull the teacher aside and advise her that Christy and I should never sit at the same table group
together. “We all have that one person…” Mom would say to the teacher with an apologetic smile. Christy Bruter was my one
person.

In elementary school Christy called me Bucky Beaver. In sixth grade she started a rumor that I wore a thong, which, in middle
school, was a huge deal. And in high school she decided she didn’t like my makeup and clothes and so started the nickname
Sister Death that everyone thought was hilarious.

She got on two stops after me, which could work in my favor on most days because I had time to get invisible before she got
on the bus. Not that I was afraid of her or anything; I just got sick of dealing with her.

I sank into my seat, slid down where my head was barely peeking over the top of the backrest, and stuffed my earbuds into
my ears, turning up the volume on my MP3 player with my thumb. I peered out the window, thinking that it would feel good to
hold Nick’s hand today. I could hardly wait to get to school and see him. I couldn’t wait to smell the cinnamon gum on his
breath and fold my head into the curl of his arm during lunch, sit shielded by him, all the rest of the world shut out. Christy
Bruter. Jeremy. Mom and Dad and their “discussions” that always, always, always turned into screaming matches and ended with
Dad slithering out of the house into a pocket of darkness, Mom sniffling pathetically in her room.

The bus slid to a stop, and then to another. I kept my eyes glued to the window, looking out at a terrier nosing through a
trash bag in front of a house. The terrier’s tail was beating the wind and his head was all but completely covered by trash
bag. I wondered how he could breathe and tried to think of the things he might have found in there that would get him so excited.

The bus got going again and I turned up my MP3 player as the noise ratcheted up exponentially with the number of kids that
got on. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes.

I felt a bump against my arm. I figured it was somebody walking past and ignored it. Then I felt a harder one and someone
used the cord to snatch the earbud out of my right ear. It dangled in midair, tinny music spilling out of it.

“What the hell?” I said, pulling the bud out of my left ear and rewinding the cord around the MP3 player. I looked to my right
and there was Christy Bruter’s face grinning on the other side of the aisle. “Go away, Christy.”

Her ugly friend Ellen (the equally Amazonian, red-haired, man-faced Garvin varsity softball team catcher) laughed, but Christy
just stared at me with this fake innocent bat of her eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sister Death. Maybe you’re having a hallucination. Maybe you got some bad X or something.
Maybe the devil did it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.” I pushed the earbuds back into my ears and settled back to my C-shape, closing my eyes. I wasn’t
going to give her the satisfaction of fighting back.

Just as the bus turned into the Garvin driveway, I felt another shove against my shoulder, only this time there was a mighty
yank on the cord of my earbuds and they were ripped out of my ears so hard the whole MP3 player flew out of my hand and skittered
across the bus floor, settling under the seat ahead of mine. I picked it up. The green light on the side of it had blinked
off and the screen was blank. I flipped the switch to turn it off and then on again, but… nothing. It was dead.

“God! What is your problem?” I asked, my voice getting loud.

Again, Ellen was snickering her man face off, and so were a couple other cronies sitting behind them. And again Christy was
giving me this fake wide-eyed look.

The bus doors opened and we all stood up. That’s some sort of kid instinct, I think. You could be in the middle of just about
anything and if the bus doors opened, you stood up. It was one of the constants of life. You are born, you die, you stand
up when the bus doors open.

Christy and I stood up within inches of each other. I could smell pancake syrup on her. She sneered at me, giving me a slow
top-to-bottom look.

“In a hurry to get to a funeral? Maybe dump Nick for a nice cold corpse? Oh wait. Nick
is
a corpse.”

I held eye contact with her, refusing to back down. After all these years she still hadn’t tired of the same old stupid jokes.
Still hadn’t grown out of them. Mom had told me once that if I kept ignoring Christy, eventually it would get boring for her.
But on days like today, ignoring her was easier said than done. I was so over this rivalry thing, but no way was I going to
let her get away with breaking my stuff.

I pushed past her into the aisle, which had started moving. “Whatever your problem is…” I said. I held up my MP3 player. “You’re
going to pay for this.”

“Oooh, I’m shaking in my boots,” she said.

Someone else added, “She might cast a spell on you, Christy,” and they all laughed.

I moved down the aisle and stepped down onto the sidewalk, cut behind the bus and jogged to the bleachers where Stacey, Duce,
and David were hanging out as usual.

I climbed up to meet them, out of breath and furious.

“Hey,” Stacey said. “What’s up? You look pissed.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Look what that bitch Christy Bruter did to my MP3 player.”

“Oh, man,” David said, taking it out of my hands. He pushed a few buttons, tried to switch it on and off a few times. “You
could get it fixed or something.”

“I don’t want to get it fixed,” I said. “I want to kill her. God, I could just rip her stupid head off. She’ll regret this.
I’m totally going to get her back for this.”

“Just blow her off,” Stacey said. “She’s such a cow. Nobody actually likes her.”

A black Camaro roared into the parking lot and rolled up next to the football field. I recognized the car as Jeremy’s and
my heart sped up. For a second I forgot about the MP3 player.

The passenger side door opened and Nick stepped out. He had on the heavy black jacket he’d been wearing lately, and it was
zipped up to his chin against the cool wind.

I skipped up to the top of the bleachers and yelled out to him.

“Nick!” I called, waving.

He caught my motion, tipped his chin upward slightly, and shifted his course in my direction. He moved slowly, methodically
toward me. I bounded down the bleachers and across the lawn to him.

“Hey, baby!” I said, reaching him and wrapping myself around him. He sort of dodged me, but leaned down and kissed me, then
turned me and slung his arm across my shoulders just like always. It felt so good to be under his arm again.

“Hey,” he said. “What’re you losers doing?” He used his free hand to do some sort of handshake thing with Duce and then socked
David in the shoulder.

“Where you been?” David asked.

Nick smirked and I was struck by how odd he looked. Vibrant, almost buzzing or something.

“Been busy,” was Nick’s only reply. His eyes swept the front of the school. “Been busy,” he repeated, but he said it so quietly
I’m pretty sure I was the only one to hear him. Not that he was really talking to any of us. I could’ve sworn he was talking
to the school itself. The building, the ant-like activity inside of it.

Mr. Angerson scuffed up behind us then and used his “principal voice,” the one we liked to imitate at parties:
No, Garvin students, beer is bad for your growing brains. You must eat a healthy breakfast before coming to school, Garvin
students. And remember, Garvin students, just say no to drugs.

“All right, Garvin students,” he said. Stacey and I elbowed each other and snickered. “Let’s not linger this morning. Time
to go to class.”

Duce flicked Angerson a salute and started marching into the school. Stacey and David followed him, laughing. I started, too,
but stopped under Nick’s arm, which was still holding me in place on the sidewalk. I looked up at him. He was still staring
at the school, a grin playing around the corners of his mouth.

“Better go before Angerson ruptures something,” I said, tugging at Nick’s arm. “Hey, I was thinking. Want to ditch lunch and
get Casey’s today?”

He didn’t answer, but continued staring at the school silently.

“Nick? We better go,” I said again. No response. Finally I kind of shoved him with my hip. “Nick?”

He blinked and looked down at me, the grin never changing, the bright look in his eyes never wavering. Maybe even growing
more intense. I wondered what in the heck he and Jeremy had taken that morning. He was acting really weird.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Got a lot to do today.”

We started walking, our hips bumping one another with each step.

“I’d let you borrow my MP3 player for first period, but Christy Bruter busted it on the bus,” I said, holding it up for him
to see. He peered at it for a moment. His smile widened. He grabbed me tighter and walked toward the door more quickly.

“I’ve been wanting to do something about her for a long time,” he said.

“I know. I totally hate her,” I whined, squeezing all the attention I could out of the incident. “I don’t know what her problem
is.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

I smiled, excited. The sleeve of Nick’s jacket scratched along the back of my neck. It felt nice. Real somehow. Like as long
as that sleeve was scratching along the skin of my neck everything would be normal, even if he was on something. For right
now anyway, Nick was here with me, holding me, going to stand up for me. Not for Jeremy. For me.

We hit the doors and Nick finally let go of my shoulders. A breeze gusted right at that moment and swept down the collar of
my shirt, billowing the front of it. I shuddered, my spine suddenly getting really cold.

Nick opened a door and waited for me to go in ahead of him.

“Let’s go get this finished,” he said. I nodded, heading toward the Commons, my eyes peeled for Christy Bruter, my teeth chattering.

[F
ROM THE
G
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C
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UN
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RIBUNE
,
M
AY
3, 2008, R
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A
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]

Jeff Hicks, 15—As a freshman, Hicks would have ordinarily not been walking through the Commons, according to some students.
“We don’t go through there if we can help it,” freshman Marcie Stindler told reporters. “The seniors hassle us if we go down
there. It’s sort of like an unwritten freshman rule to stay away from the Commons except during lunch. Every incoming freshman
knows that.”

But Hicks was running late on the morning of May 2nd and cut through the Commons in his hurry to get to class, which some
are calling a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He suffered a shot to the back of the head and died
instantly at the scene. A memorial has been set up in his name at Garvin County State Bank. Police say it’s unclear whether
Levil knew Hicks or if Hicks was accidentally hit by a bullet intended for someone else.