He had his American history textbook open on the table next to him and was frantically scribbling on a piece of notebook paper, stopping only to shovel a bite of cereal into his mouth every so often.
“Shooting a hair gel commercial today?” I asked, bumping into his chair with my hip on the way past.
“What?” he said, running the palm of his hand over the spikes of his hair. “The ladies love it.”
I rolled my eyes, smiling. “I’ll bet. Dad leave yet?”
He took another bite of cereal and went back to writing. “Yeah,” he said around the food in his mouth. “He left a few minutes ago.”
I grabbed a waffle out of the freezer and popped it into the toaster. “I see you were too busy with the ladies to do your homework last night,” I teased, leaning over him to read what he was writing. “What did the women in the… Civil War era… think of excess hair gel, exactly?”
“Give me a break,” he said, bumping me with his elbow. “I was talking to Tina until midnight. I gotta get this done. Mom’ll freak if I get another C in history. She’ll take my cell phone away again.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll leave you alone. Far be it from me to stand between you and Tina’s riveting phone romance.” The waffle popped up out of the toaster and I grabbed it. I took a bite of it, plain. “Speaking of Mom, is she driving you again today?”
He nodded. Mom drove Frankie to school every day, dropping him off on her way to work. It gave him a few extra minutes in the morning, which I guess would be nice. But since it would require me to sit within three feet of my mom and thus spend every morning hearing how my “hair looks atrocious” and my “skirt is too short” and “Why does a beautiful girl like you want to ruin her looks with all that makeup and hair dye?” I preferred to stand on the curb and wait for the bus full of jocks to come get me. And that’s saying something.
I looked at the clock on the stove. The bus would be coming any minute. I shouldered my backpack and took another bite out of my waffle.
“I’m outta here,” I said, heading for the door. “Good luck with your homework.”
“See ya,” he called to my back as I stepped out on the front porch, closing the door behind me.
The air felt crisper than usual—felt like winter was on the verge of rushing in on us rather than spring. Like right now the day was the warmest it was going to get.
2
[FROM THE GARVIN COUNTY SUN-TRIBUNE,
MAY 3, 2008, REPORTER ANGELA DASH.]
Christy Bruter, 16—Bruter, Captain of the Garvin High softball team, was the first victim and appeared to be a direct target. “He bumped her in the shoulder,” says Amy Bruter, the victim’s mother. “And some of the girls who were there told us that when Christy turned around he said, ‘You’ve been on the list for a really long time.’ She said, ‘What list?’ and then he shot her.” Bruter, who was shot in the stomach, is described by doctors as “damned lucky to be alive.” Investigation confirmed that, indeed, Bruter’s name was the first of hundreds on the now infamous “Hate List,” a red spiral notebook confiscated from Nick Levil’s home just hours after the shooting.
“Are you nervous?”
I picked at the rubber that was peeling off the sole of my shoe and shrugged. There were so many emotions running through me I thought I might go screaming down the street. But for some reason all I could muster was a shrug. Which, now that I think about it, was a good thing. Mom was watching me extra close this morning. Any wrong move and she would run to Dr. Hieler and blow it all out of proportion as usual and then we’d have The Conversation again.
Dr. Hieler and I had had The Conversation at least once a week since May. It always went something like this:
He would ask, “Are you safe?”
“I’m not going to kill myself if you’re asking that,” I’d answer.
“I am,” he’d say.
“Well, I’m not going to do it. She’s just crazy,” I’d answer.
“She’s just worried about you,” he’d say, and then we’d, thankfully, move on to something else.
But then I’d get home later and climb into bed and start thinking about it. About the suicide stuff. Was I safe? Was there really a time I might have been suicidal and I didn’t even know it? And then I’d spend about an hour, my room darkening around me, wondering what the hell happened to make me so unsure of who I even was. Because who you are is supposed to be the easiest question in the world to answer, right? Only for me it hadn’t been easy for a very long time. Maybe it never was.
Sometimes, in my world where parents hated one another and school was a battleground, it sucked to be me. Nick had been my escape. The one person who understood. It’d felt good to be part of an “us,” with the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same miseries. But now the other half of “us” was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I’d be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again.
I’d roll over on my side and stare at the dark shadowy horses dotting my wallpaper and wish they would giddy up and take me away the way I’d imagined them doing when I was a kid, so I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. Because not having a clue who you are hurts way too much. And one thing I did know for sure: I was tired of hurting.
Mom reached across the front seat and patted my knee. “Well, if you get halfway through the day and need me, I’m just a phone call away. Okay?”
I didn’t answer. The lump in my throat was too big. It seemed surreal that I was about to be walking the same hallways with these kids who I knew so well, but who seemed like complete strangers. Kids like Allen Moon, who I’d seen look directly into a camera and say, “I hope they put Valerie away for life for what she did,” and Carmen Chiarro, who was quoted in a magazine as saying, “I don’t know why my name was even on that list. I didn’t even know who Nick and Valerie were before that day.”
I could see her not knowing Nick. When he moved to Garvin freshman year, he was just a quiet, skinny kid with bad clothes and dirty hair. But Carmen and I had gone to elementary school together. She was totally lying when she said she didn’t know me. And, given that she was good friends with Mr. Quarterback Chris Summers all of sophomore year, and given that Chris Summers hated Nick and would take every chance he could to make Nick miserable, and given that all of Chris’s buddies thought it was hilarious whenever he tormented Nick, I found it highly suspect that she didn’t know Nick, either. Would Allen and Carmen be there today? Would they be looking for me? Would they be hoping I wouldn’t show?
“And you know Dr. Hieler’s number,” Mom said, patting my knee again.
I nodded. “I know it.”
We turned down Oak Street. I could have driven this way in my sleep. Right on Oak Street. Left on Foundling Avenue. Left on Starling. Right into the parking lot. Garvin High straight ahead. Can’t miss it.
Only this morning it looked different to me. Never again would Garvin High have that exciting and intimidating look it held for me as a freshman. Never again would I equate it with mind-bending romance, with euphoria, laughter, a job well done. None of the things most people think of when they imagine their high schools. It was just another thing that Nick had stolen from me, from all of us, that day. He didn’t just steal our innocence and sense of well-being. He had somehow managed to rob us of our memories as well.
“You’ll be fine,” Mom said. I turned my head and looked out the window. Saw Delaney Peters walking down by the football field with her arm hooked through Sam Hall’s. I had no idea they were together, and suddenly I felt as if I’d missed a lifetime rather than just a summer. Had things been normal, I’d have spent the summer at the lake or at the bowling alley or gas station or fast food places, picking up gossip, learning about new romances. Instead, I was holed up in my bedroom, afraid and sick to my stomach at the thought of so much as going to the grocery store with my mom. “Dr. Hieler feels strongly that you’ll be able to handle today with flying colors.”
“I kno
w,” I said. I leaned forward and my stomach started to tighten. Stacey and Duce were sitting on the bleachers like always, along with Mason, David, Liz, and Rebecca. Normally I would be sitting there with them. And with Nick. Comparing schedules, griping about who we got for homeroom, talking about being at some wild party together. My hands started to sweat. Stacey was laughing at something Duce had said, and I felt more like an outsider than ever.
We angled into the driveway and right away I noticed two police cruisers parked next to the school. I must have made a noise or had a look because Mom said, “It’s just standard now. Security. Because… well, you know. They don’t want any copycats. It makes you safer, Valerie.”
Mom pulled up in the drop-off zone and stopped. Her hands fell away from the steering wheel and she looked at me. I tried not to notice that the corners of her mouth were twitching and she was absently picking at a hangnail on her thumb. I put on a wobbly smile for her.
“I’ll see you right here at two-fifty,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said in a tiny voice. I pulled on the door handle. My hands didn’t seem to have enough strength to make it budge, but eventually it did, which disappointed me because it meant I was going to have to get out.
“Maybe tomorrow you’ll wear a little lipstick or something,” Mom said as I pulled myself out of the car. What a strange thing to say, I thought, but I tucked my lips in against each other anyway, out of habit. I shut the door and gave Mom a half-wave. She waved back, searching me with her eyes until the car behind her honked and she pulled away.
For a minute I was rooted to my spot on the sidewalk, unsure whether or not I could walk into the building. My thigh ached and my head was buzzing. But everyone around me seemed totally normal. A couple sophomores walked past me, talking excitedly about homecoming. One girl giggled as her boyfriend poked her in the side with his finger. Teachers stood around on the sidewalk, griping at kids to get to class. All things I remembered from the last time I was here. Strange.
I started walking but a voice behind me made me stop dead in my tracks.
“No way!” It seemed like someone hit the “mute” button on the world just then. I turned and looked. Stacey and Duce were standing there, holding hands, Stacey’s mouth hanging open, Duce’s screwed into a tidy little knot. “Val?” Stacey asked, not as if she didn’t believe it was me, but as if she didn’t believe it was me, here.
“Hey,” I said.
David came around Stacey and hugged me. His hug was stiff and he let go right away, stepping back in line with the rest of the gang, dropping his eyes to the ground in front of him.
“I didn’t know you were coming back today,” Stacey said. Her eyes darted just briefly to the side, assessing Duce’s face, and I could instantly see her begin to mold herself into a copy of him. Her grin took on a superior slant that was really awkward on her face.
I shrugged. Stacey and I had been friends since pretty much forever. We wore the same size, liked the same movies, dressed in the same clothes, told the same lies. There were stretches every summer when we were almost inseparable.
But there was one big difference between Stacey and me. Stacey had no enemies, probably because she was so eager to please all the time. She was completely moldable: you just told her who she was and she became it, just like that. She definitely wasn’t one of the popular kids, but she wasn’t one of the losers like me, either. She had always sort of walked this line in between, totally under the radar.
After “the incident” as my Dad likes to call it, Stacey came to visit me twice. Once, in the hospital, before I was speaking to anyone. Once at home after I was released, and I had Frankie tell her I was asleep. She never really tried to make contact again, and neither did I. I think maybe there was a part of me that felt like I didn’t deserve friends anymore. Like she deserved a better friend than me.
In a way I felt sorry for her. I could almost see it in her face—her desire to go back to where we were before the shooting, the guilt she felt over holding me at arm’s length—but I could also see how acutely aware she was of how being friends with me now made her look. If I was guilty by virtue of loving Nick, would she be guilty by virtue of loving me? Being my friend would be a tough risk to take—social suicide for anyone at Garvin. And Stacey would no way be strong enough to take that risk.
“Does your leg hurt?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I said, looking down at it. “At least I don’t have to take P. E. But I’ll probably never get to class on time with this thing.”
“Been to Nick’s grave?” Duce asked. I looked at him sharply. He was staring at me with hard contempt in his eyes. “Been to anyone’s grave?”
Stacey elbowed him. “Leave her alone. It’s her first day back,” she said, but without much conviction.
“Yeah, c’mon,” David mumbled. “Glad you’re okay, Val. Who do you have for math?”
Duce interrupted. “What? She can walk. How come she never went to nobody’s grave? I mean, if I was the one writing down all these names of people I wanted dead I’d at least go to their graves.”
“I didn’t want anyone to die,” I practically whispered. Duce gave me one of those raised eyebrow looks. “He was your best friend, too, you know.”
There was silence between us, and I began to notice that all around me were curious onlookers. Only they weren’t curious about the confrontation. They were curious about me, as if they’d all of a sudden realized who I was. They walked past me slowly on all sides, whispering to one another, staring at me.
Stacey had begun to notice, too. She shifted a little and then looked past me.
“I gotta get to class,” she said. “Glad you’re back, Val.” She was already walking past me, David and Mason and the others trailing behind her.
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 W
E 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.