Hate List (9 page)

“Yeah.”

“My mom said your mom called her the other day just to talk.”

I paused, tongs full of salad poised over my tray. “Really? How’d that go?”

Stacey didn’t look back at me, but instead kept moving, eyes focused on her lunch tray. Nobody would have known for sure by
looking at us if we were together or if she’d just been the unlucky one who had to stand next to me in the lunch line. She
probably wanted it that way. It was so much safer for her to just be unlucky.

She picked up a bowl of rainbow colored Jell-O and put it on her tray. I did the same. “You know how my mom is,” she said.
“She told her that she doesn’t want our family to be associated with yours anymore. She thinks your mom is a bad parent.”

“Wow,” I said. I felt a funny feeling in my stomach. Almost like I felt bad for Mom, which I hadn’t allowed myself to do much.
The guilt tore me up. It was much easier to think that she thought I was the worst daughter ever who’d ruined her life. “Ouch.”

Stacey shrugged. “Your mom told my mom to blow it out her ass.”

That definitely sounded like Mom. Still, I bet she went into her room and cried afterward. She and Mrs. Brinks had been friends
for about fifteen years. We were both silent. I don’t know about Stacey, but for me it was the stupid lump in my throat again
that kept me from talking.

We picked up our trays and paid for our food, then headed out into the Commons to find a seat and eat our lunches.

Normally this would be a no-brainer. Before last year, Stacey and I would take our trays to the far side, third table from
the back. I would kiss Nick and sit down between him and Mason and we’d all eat together, laughing, griping, destroying napkins,
whatever.

Stacey walked in front of me, stopping at the condiment kiosk for some ketchup. I poured myself a tiny cup of ketchup, too,
even though I had nothing to use ketchup on. I was just trying to avoid looking around and seeing how many faces were pointed
in my direction. I had an idea it was more than a few. She picked up her tray again, as if she didn’t know I was behind her,
and I followed her. Maybe it was by habit, but probably it was more like I didn’t know what else to do.

Sure enough, there was the gang sitting at the far left table near the back. David was there. So was Mason. Duce. Bridget.
And Bridget’s stepbrother, Joey. David looked up at us, waved at Stacey, and then sort of wilted as his eyes landed on me.
He gave me a half-hearted wave that died midway through. He looked very uncomfortable.

Stacey set her tray down in the one empty spot left at the table, in between Duce and David. Immediately Duce started in on
some conversation with her—something about YouTube—and she was laughing with him, squealing, “Oh, yeah! I saw that!” I
stood a few feet away from the table, still holding my tray, unsure of what to do next.

“Oh, yeah,” Stacey said, looking up at me. She had an almost surprised look, like she didn’t realize I’d been following her.
Like we hadn’t just been walking together through the lunch line. Like she hadn’t just been talking to me. She glanced at
Duce and then up at me again. “Yeah. Um…” She pressed her lips together. “Val. We um… ran out of chairs, I guess.” Duce hooked
his arm around her and again that slithery little superior grin swept across her mouth.

David started to get up like he was either going to find me a chair or give me his. He wasn’t eating. He almost never did.

Duce kicked the foot of David’s chair, jolting him. He didn’t look at David when he did it, but David stopped anyway and sat
back down. He sort of shrugged shyly and turned his eyes to the table, as far away from me as possible. Duce started talking
to Stacey again, very close to her ear. She giggled. Even David had gotten absorbed into something Bridget was saying. It
was like, with Nick gone, the “family” had kicked me out. Or maybe I had kicked myself out; I don’t know.

“No problem,” I said, though nobody appeared to have heard me. “I can just sit somewhere else. No big deal.”

What I really meant by that was that I would slink away and go sit outside somewhere alone where nobody would bother me and,
more importantly, I wouldn’t bother anyone else. It was for the best, really. What would I have talked to them about anyway?
They had spent the summer getting on with their lives. I had spent mine desperately scrambling to build a new one.

I turned around and looked across the cafeteria. It was weird—it all seemed the same as it had before. The same kids were
sitting together. The same skinny girls were eating the same salads. The same jocks were loading up on proteins. The same
nerds were acting invisible in the corner. The noise was deafening. Mr. Cavitt was wandering among the tables snapping, “Hands
above board, kids. Hands above board!”

The only thing that had changed was me.

I took a deep breath and pressed forward, trying my best to ignore Stacey’s laughs and squeals behind me.
This is what you wanted
, I told myself.
You wanted to push Stacey away. You wanted to come back to Garvin. You wanted to prove that you shouldn’t have to hide. You
wanted this, now you’ve got it. It’s only lunch. Just suck it up and get through it.
I kept my eyes on my tray and on the floor in front of me as I walked out into the hallway.

I pressed my back into the wall just outside the Commons, leaned my head back, and closed my eyes. I let out a deep breath.
I was sweating and my hands were starting to feel cold around the tray. I totally wasn’t hungry and I wished this day would
just go away. Slowly I sank down to the floor and set the tray on the floor in front of me. I rested my elbows on my knees
and plopped my head into my hands.

In my head I went back to the only safe place I knew: Nick. I remembered sitting on his bedroom floor, Playstation controller
in hand, yelling at him, “You better not let me win. Damn it, Nick, you’re letting me win. Cut it out!”

And him doing that thing he did with his mouth whenever he was being ornery—sticking his tongue out slightly to the side,
mouth hanging open in a smile, snickering softly every few seconds.

“Nick, I said to cut it out. Seriously, don’t let me win. I hate it when you do that. It’s insulting.”

More laughing every few seconds and then in one fiery swoop, purposely losing the game we were playing.

“Damn it, Nick!” I cried, smacking him in the arm with my controller, as my character flashed up on the TV screen in a victorious
pose. “I told you not to let me win. God!” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away from him.

He was laughing out loud now, bumping my shoulder with his. “What?” he said. “What? You won fair and square. Besides, you’re
just a girl. You needed help.”

“Oh, you did not just say that. I’ll show you help,” I snarled, tossing my controller to the side and practically tackling
him, making him laugh all the harder.

I pummeled him playfully on the shoulders and chest with my fists, his mischievousness ruining my pout. You didn’t see it
very often with Nick, but when he was in the mood to play around, it was contagious as hell. “Oh no! Oh don’t, you big brute,”
he kept saying in this high, mocking voice between laughs. “Ouch, you’re hurting me.”

I lunged into him even harder, grunting and shoving him. We rolled around and suddenly I found myself pinned under him. He
was holding my wrists down against the floor, both of us breathing hard. He leaned over me, close to my face. “It’s okay for
someone to let you win sometimes, you know,” he said, getting all serious. “We don’t always have to be the losers, Valerie.
They may want to make us feel that way, but we’re not. Sometimes we get to win, too.”

“I know,” I said, but I wondered if he even realized how much I’d already felt like I’d won, just being in his arms.

“You can come sit with me,” a voice said, ripping me out of my daydream. I opened my eyes, preparing myself for the rest of
the joke.
You can come sit with me… when hell freezes over.
Or
You can come sit with me… not!
What I saw instead took my breath away.

Jessica Campbell was standing over me, her face showing no emotion whatsoever. She was dressed in her volleyball uniform and
her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

Jessica practically ruled Garvin High. Easily the most popular, she could also be the cruelest, because everyone wanted to
be her and would do just about anything to please her. Christy Bruter might have started the nickname Sister Death, but Jessica
called me that name in a voice so cold and dismissive it made me feel small and stupid. She was the one who egged on Jacob
Kinney to trip Nick in the hallways and the one who told Mr. Angerson that we smoked pot in my car in the parking lot in the
mornings, which was a total lie, but earned us an in-school suspension just the same. She was the one who didn’t even bother
to make fun of us behind our backs. She did it in front of our faces. She was on the Hate List more than once. Her name underlined.
With exclamation points behind it.

She was the one who should have the big dented scar in her thigh. She was the one who probably should have been dead. She
was the one whose life I saved. Before May I’d hated Jessica. Now I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about her.

The last time I saw Jessica Campbell, she was cowering in front of Nick, her hands covering her face. She was screaming. Total
throat-ripping screaming. She was almost delirious with fear. But then again, so was everyone else in the Commons at that
point. I remember she had a streak of blood wiped across the leg of her jeans and some sort of food smashed in her hair. I
have since thought how ironic it was that she was the most undignified I’d ever seen anyone in my life, but I couldn’t revel
in it because of what was happening. I should’ve really enjoyed seeing her like that, but I couldn’t because it was all so
horrible.

“What?” I croaked.

She pointed into the Commons. “You can eat lunch at my table if you want,” she said. Still no smile, no frown, no emotion
of any sort playing on her face. It felt like a trap. No way was Jessica Campbell seriously asking me to sit with her. She
was setting me up to take me down, I just knew it.

I shook my head slowly. “That’s okay. Thanks anyway.”

She stared at me for a few minutes, cocking her head slightly to the side and chewing on the inside of her cheek. Odd, I don’t
remember ever seeing her chew on her cheek like that before. She looked… vulnerable somehow. Earnest. Maybe even a little
bit scared. It was a look I wasn’t used to seeing on her.

“You sure? ’Cause it’s just Sarah and me over there and Sarah’s working on some sort of research project for Psych anyway.
She’ll never even know you’re there.”

I looked past her to the table where she normally sat. Sure, Sarah was sitting there, her head bent over a notebook, but there
were about ten other kids there, too. All of them Jessica’s crowd. I seriously doubted they wouldn’t know I was there. I wasn’t
stupid. And I wasn’t desperate, either.

“No. Really. That’s nice and all, but I don’t think so.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you can come over any time if you want.”

I nodded. “I’ll remember.”

She started to walk away, but stopped. “Um, can I ask you a question?” she asked.

“I guess.”

“A lot of people are wondering why you came back to Garvin.”

Ah, so here it is. Here’s where she calls me a name, tells me I’m not wanted, makes fun of me. I felt a familiar wall begin
to build itself up inside me.

“Because this is my school,” I said, probably a little too defensively. “I shouldn’t have to leave it any more than anyone
else here. The school said I could come back.”

She chewed on the inside of her cheek again, then said, “You’re right. You didn’t shoot anyone.”

She disappeared into the Commons again and I was struck with a thought that jolted me to the core: She wasn’t making fun of
me. She meant what she said. And I wasn’t imagining things—Jessica Campbell didn’t look like she normally did. She looked
changed somehow.

I picked up my tray and threw the food in the trash. I wasn’t hungry at all anymore.

I sat back down on the floor and angled myself to where I could see into the Commons.
See what’s really there
,
Valerie
, Dr. Heiler’s voice said in my head. I reached into my backpack and pulled out my notebook and pencil. I watched the kids
inside. I watched them do what they normally do and I drew them doing it—a pack of wolves bent over their trays, their long
snouts drawn up into snarls and sneers and smiles. Except Jessica. Her wolf-face stared delicately back at me. I was almost
surprised to look down at what I’d drawn and see that her wolf-face looked a lot more like a puppy’s.