Hate List (8 page)

After a while, Mrs. Tennille was able to get the class back under control, and we sat there, tension riding above our heads
like a cloud, while she finished going over the syllabus.

Slowly, people started to forget I was there. I began to feel like maybe this wasn’t totally impossible, sitting in that desk,
in that class. In that school.
You’ve got to find a way to see what’s really there, Valerie,
Dr. Hieler had told me.
You’ve got to start trusting that what you see is what’s really there.

I opened up my notebook and picked up a pencil. Only, instead of taking notes on what Tennille was saying, I began sketching
what I saw. The kids were in kid bodies, wearing kid clothes, their kid shoes untied and their kid jeans ripped. But their
faces were different. Where I would normally see angry faces, scowls, jeers, instead I saw confusion. They were all just as
confused as I was.

I drew their faces in as giant question marks, sprouting out of their Hollister jackets and Old Navy T-shirts. The question
marks had wide, shouting mouths. Some were shedding tears. Some were tucked in on themselves, looking snaillike.

I don’t know if it’s what Dr. Hieler had meant when he told me to start seeing what’s really there. But I know that drawing
those question marks did far more for me than counting backward from fifty ever could have.

Nick and I plunged in
through the school doors, the wind taking hold of mine and shutting it abruptly behind me. As always, the hall was packed
with kids hustling to their lockers, griping about their parents or teachers or each other. Lots of laughter, lots of sarcastic
grunts, lots of lockers slamming—early morning noises that are just naturally a part of the soundtrack behind high school
life.

We rounded the corner into the Commons, where the orderly motion of the halls poured into a stagnant milling of kids getting
in their before-school gossip. Some were at the Student Council table buying doughnuts, others sitting on the floors with
their backs propped against the walls, eating doughnuts they’d already scored. Some cheerleaders were balanced on chairs hanging
assembly posters. A few kids were tucked back against the stage area making out. The school losers—our friends—were waiting
for us, draped over chairs turned backward at a round table near the closed kitchen entrance. A few teachers—the brave ones
like Kline and Mrs. Flores, the art teacher—were wandering through the crowd, trying to keep some semblance of order among
them. But everyone knew it was a losing battle. Order and the Commons rarely went together.

Nick and I stopped just after we entered the room. I stood on my tiptoes and craned my neck. Nick was surveying the entire
room, a cold grin swiped across his face.

“Over there!” I said, pointing. “There she is!”

Nick scanned where I was pointing and found her.

“I’m so going to get a new MP3 player out of her,” I said.

Nick unzipped his jacket slowly, but he didn’t take it off. “Let’s go get this finished,” he said, and I smiled because I
was so happy he was going to stick up for me. And I was happy that Christy Bruter was finally going to get what she had coming
to her, too. This was the old Nick—the Nick I’d fallen in love with. The Nick who stood up to Christy Bruter and whoever
else was making life miserable for me, who never backed down when one of the football players would come after him, trying
to make him look small. The Nick who understood what it felt like to be me—crappy family, crappy school life, people like
Christy Bruter constantly in my face reminding me that I wasn’t like them, that I was somehow less than them.

His eyes took on a strange faraway look and he began walking briskly through the crowd ahead of me. He wasn’t paying attention
to where he was going. He was just walking through people, his shoulders butting theirs and knocking them backward. He left
me in a wake of angry faces and indignant shouts, but I ignored them and just followed him as closely as I could.

He reached Christy a few steps before I did. I had to crane my neck to see her over his shoulder. But I could still hear him.
I was straining to hear him because I didn’t want to miss a second of him scaring the heck out of Christy. So I’m sure of
what I heard. I still hear it just about every day.

He must have bumped Christy on the shoulder or something, just like she’d done to me on the bus. I couldn’t really see for
sure because at that point his back was still to me. But I saw her pitch forward a little bit, almost knocking into her friend
Willa. She turned around with a surprised look and said, “What’s your problem?”

By then I had caught up with Nick and was standing just behind him. On the security video it looked like I was standing right
next to him, all of us so close together it was impossible to tell whose body was whose. But I was just a step behind him,
and all I could really see was the top half of Christy over Nick’s shoulder.

“You’ve been on the list for a long time,” he said, and I immediately went cold because I couldn’t believe he’d just told
her about the list. I was pissed, honestly. That list was our secret. Just between us. And he’d just blown it. And I knew
that with Christy Bruter there would be hell to pay. She’d probably tell her friends and they would have something else to
make fun of us about. She’d probably even tell her parents about it and they’d call mine and I’d get grounded. Maybe we’d
even end up suspended and then I’d be screwed when it came to finals.

“What list?” she asked and then she looked down just slightly and her eyes grew big. She started to laugh, and so did Willa,
and I started to pull up onto my tiptoes to see what they were laughing at.

And then there was the noise.

It wasn’t so much a noise in my ears as it was in my brain. It sounded like the whole world was shutting down on me. I screamed.
I know I did because I felt my mouth open and my vocal cords vibrate, but I heard nothing. I shut my eyes and let out a total
scream and my arms instinctively flung themselves over my head and the only thought I had was
this is something bad, this is something bad, this is something bad
, which I’m pretty sure was my body going on autopilot. Lifesaving autopilot. It was more like a message from my brain to
my body—danger: run away!

I opened my eyes and reached out to grab Nick, but he had moved to the side and instead I found myself looking at Christy,
who had this totally shocked look on her face. Her mouth was open like she was going to say something, and her hands were
both clutching her stomach. They were covered with blood.

She wavered and then began to fall forward. I jumped out of the way and she hit the floor between me and Nick. I looked down
at her, feeling like I was in slow-motion, and saw that there was blood spreading across the back of her shirt as well and
there was a hole in the fabric right in the middle of the blood.

“Got her,” Nick said, looking down at her, too. He was holding a gun and his hand was shaking. “Got her,” he repeated. He
kind of laughed a little, this high-pitched laugh I still think was surprise more than anything. I have to believe it was
a surprised laugh. I have to believe he was as surprised by what he did as I was. That somewhere underneath the drugs and
the obsession with Jeremy was a Nick who, like me, thought it was all a joke, all a what-if.

And then everything snapped into real time. Kids were screaming and running, clogging the doorways and falling over one another.
Some were standing around looking amused like someone had just pulled off a good prank and they were sorry they’d missed it.
Mr. Kline was shoving kids out of the way, and Mrs. Flores was screaming commands at them.

Nick started to rush through the crowd, too, leaving me with Christy and all that blood. I turned my head and Willa and I
locked eyes.

“Oh my God!” somebody screamed. “Somebody! Help!”

I think it was me screaming, but even today I can’t be sure.

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

Ginny Baker, 16—Baker, a straight-A honor roll student, was reportedly saying goodbye to friends before rushing to first
period when the first gunshot rang out. According to witnesses, Baker appeared to be a deliberate target, Levil bending to
shoot her as she crouched underneath a table.

“She was screaming ‘Help me, Meg!’ when he bent down and pointed the gun at her,” junior Meghan Norris said. “But I didn’t
really know what to do. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t even hear the first gunshot. And it all happened so fast.
All I knew was Mrs. Flores was yelling at us to get under the table and cover our heads, so we did. And I just happened to
dive under the same table as Ginny. And he got her. He didn’t say anything to her at all. Just leaned down, pointed the gun
in her face, shot her, and walked away. She was real quiet after he shot her. She wasn’t asking me to help her anymore, and
I thought she was dead. She looked dead.”

Baker’s mother could not be reached for comment. Her father, who lives in Florida, describes the incident as “the worst kind
of tragedy a parent could imagine.” He added that he will be moving back to the Midwest to help Baker through the extensive
plastic surgery that doctors say will be required to reconstruct her face.

“So did your mom go back to work today?” Stacey asked. We were in the lunch line, getting our trays filled. We’d just come
out of English together. Class had been tense but livable. A couple girls passed notes back and forth to one another and Ginny’s
seat was empty, but other than that things were quiet. Mrs. Long, my English teacher, was one of the few who’d signed that
letter of thanks from the school board. Her eyes got kind of teary when I’d walked into the room, but she didn’t say anything.
Just smiled and nodded at me. Then she let me take my seat and she started class. Thank God.