I leaned over and picked up the hate list, which was lying on the floor next to the bed.
When I was at his house, it wasn’t unusual for me to check the list, if he had it. It was funny. And somehow it made me feel closer to Val, like I was in on a secret with her.
But this time when I flipped through the pages, I noticed something different. Several of the entries had been scratched through with red ink.
20. Jessica Campbell
67. Tennille
5. Ginny Baker
43. Jacob Kinney
All people Nick and Val hated, marked out, one by one.
It was as if the hate list had become more of a… checklist. I caught Nick staring at me, his eyes dark and hard, shining, one side of his mouth pulled up into a smirk, as if daring me to ask about the scratched-out names. Chilled, I shut the book and occupied myself with a video game instead.
If I hadn’t known Nick, I’d have started to wonder if something was up. If he was planning something.
But even if he was up to something and keeping it from me, Valerie would have known. And she would have told me.
She would have stopped it.
Or maybe that was just what I was telling myself.
Senior Year
This time they pantsed Doug between lunch shifts, in the hallway outside the choir room. Women’s choir was letting out, and the same two girls who had squealed in the field house the last time were squealing again this time. Jacob brayed with laughter, pointing at them, spit flinging out of the corners of his mouth as he yelled, “Got you again!”
So this was the game now. It was really about the girls. Doug was just a pawn, a tool for Jacob’s flirting.
People wandered off to class, giggling, glancing over their shoulders at Doug, whose lunch bag had spilled out as he’d dropped it to save his pants. At least Jacob hadn’t done as thorough a job this time. Doug’s boxers were mostly still in place, and where they weren’t, his shirt covered his skin. He’d begun wearing longer shirts lately.
Jacob followed the girls down the hall, his stupid laughter ringing out even after he turned the corner. I bent, picked up Doug’s sandwich, and held it out to him. “Here,” I said.
He wouldn’t look at me. Just kept his face pointed toward the floor, toward the baggies of chips and cookies, an elementary kid’s lunch.
“It’s no big deal,” he mumbled, roughly grabbing the sandwich out of my hand and stabbing it into the bag. The bell rang, and we both ignored it.
“You should punch him,” I said, and in the back of my mind I thought, Oh, rich of you to say, David. You’re such a fighter. A real badass. “I’d like to,” I added, arguing with myself.
“He’s not worth it,” Doug said. He stood and started toward the cafeteria, his rumpled bag in one fist. “Besides, it’s just a joke.”
“It’s not funny, though,” I called out. “You’re not laughing.”
He pivoted, walking backward. “I’m not gonna do anything stupid, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not a homicidal loser like Nick Levil.” He pivoted again and disappeared into the Commons.
***
After school Valerie pushed through the double doors at the same time I did. She was alone and seemed clean and fresh, like she’d finally started paying attention to how she looked again.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” She pushed her lips together and glanced nervously out at the parking lot.
“How are things?” I asked, hating the way it felt like we were strangers.
“What do you mean?” Her shoulders hunched guardedly.
I shrugged. “I mean, how’s your life? Nothing. Never mind.”
She made a noise. “My life,” she said, and then just let the sentence die. We stood side by side for a few minutes, and it was getting awkward. She watched cars pull up and pull away again.
“Still riding with your mom?”
“Well, last time I took the bus, it didn’t go so well,” she said.
I remembered. After she’d gotten off the bus that morning last year, she’d rushed up the bleachers and shown me her broken MP3 player. I’d suggested she get it fixed. And then Nick had arrived, and everything had changed forever. Everything.
Say something.
“Hey, um, so are you friends with Jessica Campbell now or what?” I asked.
She tapped her foot, impatient. “Why are you so worried about it?”
“I’m not. I just… it seems to me like some things haven’t changed at all. I mean with those people. And I thought…”
She turned to me. “Thought everyone was going to be nicer after what happened? Me too.”
“But they’re not,” I said. “Jacob Kinney is constantly pantsing Doug Hobson.”
“Jacob isn’t on StuCo, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I wasn’t. I’m not… if you want to be on Student Council, that’s your business. I’m just saying that some people are still—”
“I don’t want to,” she interrupted. A gust of wind blew a piece of her hair across her forehead; it got stuck on her eyebrow, but she made no move to push it aside. “I don’t want to be on StuCo. I just am, okay? And I’m sorry if that’s some big betrayal to you or Nick or… everybody.” She shook her head. “It’s what I have to do. You asked how my life is? I’m just trying to get it back, but half the time I don’t even recognize it. And sometimes I think Jessica isn’t who we th…” Her eyes glistened as she trailed off. “My mom’s here,” she said, and she was gone before I could even say good-bye.
***
Dad was home again when I got there. I joined him downstairs, where he was taking apart an old foxhole and rebuilding it.
“Hey, bud,” he said when I sat on the stool across from him. “How was school?”
“It was school,” I told him. The same answer I’d given him for most of my life. But there must have been something in my voice, because he sat back and wiped his hands on a work towel.
“And?” he asked.
Say something, my brain urged. Tell him what happened that day. Tell him what’s happening now.
“You think people can really ever change, Dad?” I asked.
“People? Or any particular person?”
“People in general. Like the people at my school. The ones who were there for the… you know.”
He dropped the towel, worry lines etching across his forehead. “Is something going on?”
Yes. Yes, something is going on. People died, and nobody seems to even care. Everyone is acting like it was just Nick, just his problem. He was crazy, they’re all normal, that’s what they think. But they’re wrong. I knew Nick. I knew the Nick who fought Chris Summers in the locker room. He wasn’t crazy; he was desperate. And I thought I knew Chris Summers, but it turned out I didn’t, and I can’t tell anybody what really happened, because I’m too afraid for myself if I let the truth out.
I watched the worry lines deepen, the fear fill his eyes, and I remembered rushing to him on the sidewalk on May 2nd, the police keeping parents back while officers secured the school. I remembered my dad standing there in his work clothes, the factory smell still on him, the way he grabbed onto me and cried when he saw me—heavy sobs that felt like they were pushing my shoulders down. I was so worried, he choked out. I was so worried you were hurt.
I couldn’t do that to him again. He didn’t deserve that fear.
“No, nothing’s going on,” I said. “It was hypothetical. For a paper I’m writing about free will.”
“Oh,” he said. He went back to work. “I suppose people can change if they try hard enough. But most people don’t want to try. Most people would rather have their familiar bad traits than unfamiliar good ones. Change can be hard work. Just ask a smoker.”
I sat back and watched him build, thinking about what he’d just said. Jacob Kinney would never change. Why would he want to? It was so much easier to rule the school—to have all the popular girls love you and everyone els
e afraid of you—than to work to be a good person.
I thought about Doug saying it was all just a joke, no big deal. And about Valerie blowing me off, acting like I was the enemy. I thought about the FAG! that was still drawn on the inside of my locker door.
But mostly I thought about the names with the red lines scratched through them and how everyone was totally shocked when those people ended up shot.
When some of them ended up dead.
Everyone, that is, except me.
Junior Year
113. PinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPinkPink
114. Jessica!! The Bitch!! Campbell!!
115. Tennille’s muffin top
It was always hard to concentrate on school once the calendar turned to May. The sun was finally shining, and the only thing that sounded good was sitting outside, listening to music and maybe bouncing rocks off the water at Blue Lake.
But by May of junior year, it was almost impossible to force myself to go to school. After nine months of giving me shit, you’d think Chris Summers would have found something better to do to occupy himself. Hell, even a chimp gets tired of batting around the same ball after a while. But, no, he’d only managed to ramp it up over the winter, calling me Butt Pirate and talking all his buddies into speaking pirate language every time they passed me in the hall. Yaaargh, I heard Nick Levil’s been down to Davey’s locker to check out the booty! Har har har!
One afternoon I ditched school and pedaled out to Blue Lake. It was a sunny day, and the lake was sparkling, the soft ripples bouncing sunlight right back at my eyes. So peaceful.
Until I heard the noise.
A bang, like a gunshot.
Some people will say you can mistake a gunshot for a car backfiring. Bullshit. A gunshot sounds like a gunshot, and you know exactly what it is the minute you hear it. Or at least I did. I stopped my bike, planting my foot in the dirt, my ears perked up, unsure what to do.
But then I heard voices and laughter behind shelter 3, the same shelter where we’d always met when we came out to Blue Lake. I saw a car I recognized, parked by the restrooms. A black muscle car. The same one Brandon had been in when he flipped me off through the passenger-side window. Jeremy’s car.
I turned my bike toward the voices, leaning it against the car. I walked through the shelter house and out the other side, where I saw Jeremy sitting on a rock, messing with a gun in his lap.
“What’re you doing here?” I heard from over by the water, and turned just in time to see Nick, holding an empty soda can.
Jeremy stuffed the gun under his leg, his head whipping toward me.
“Hey, Peewee!” he called around the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Skipping school like a big boy? Cute!”
I took a few steps forward. “What’s up?” I asked, every nerve ending in my body on alert. I recognized the look in Nick’s eyes—the same smoldering intensity I’d seen that night in his basement when I’d found all those scratched-out names on the hate list. Only this time it made me really nervous.
“Just hanging out,” Nick said.
“Practicing some skills,” Jeremy added in his rough voice. “Having our own school today. Only without the assholes. It’s called the School of the Attitude Adjusters.” He laughed. “Class is about to be in session. You need an attitude adjustment, Peewee?”
I made a face but ignored him and turned my attention to Nick instead. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Leave him alone,” Nick told Jeremy. “David’s okay.” He walked all the way up to where I was standing, and I noticed the can he was holding had a huge, ragged hole right through the middle. “I’ll be at school tomorrow. I’ve got some stuff to take care of.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, eyeing the can in his hand.
He looked out across the lake, squinting. “Nothing,” he said. He paused. Then, “You ever think about it, Dave?”
“Ever think about what?”
“Them. Chris Summers and Abby Dempsey and Jacob Kinney and Ginny the two-faced bitch Baker. You ever wonder why they all act like that? Like, if we had all that they have—the cars and the money and the doting mommies and daddies and the huge houses—do you think we’d be like them? Or is it something born in them, and they’d do the things they do regardless of whether they had everything or nothing? I mean, maybe they’re just… bad people. Mistakes.”
“I never thought about it,” I said, feeling awkward and strange around Nick again and wondering when this happened, when he became such an uncomfortable person to hang with.
He crumpled the can in his fist, collapsing it right along the hole, and dropped it onto the rocks at our feet. “Yeah, I guess you don’t think like we do. You’re a good guy.”
“We’ll find out,” Jeremy called. “We’ll find out if they’re just piss-poor people, right, Peewee?”
“Leave him alone,” Nick said again.
“What?” Jeremy asked, all fake innocence. “Peewee’s okay, he knows I’m just talking. Tell you what, Peewee, you can come visit me down at my cousin’s cabin in Warsaw after. We’ll go fishing. You fish?”
“After what?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.
“Nothing, he’s just messed up,” Nick said. “I need to take him home. He isn’t making any sense. You should go.”
I didn’t want to go. Leaving felt risky, as if walking away meant I was agreeing with something dangerous. As if I were part of a secret I didn’t really know, but knew enough of to be frightened. But hanging out in the middle of Nick and Jeremy’s… whatever they were doing… felt too uncomfortable, so I went back to my bike and pedaled away, feeling relieved as I left them behind.
***
I didn’t know why, but I felt like I needed to check in at school and see that everything was normal, so instead of going home, I biked straight to Garvin High.
I found Valerie on the bleachers after final bell, gouging the word PAIN into her jeans with a black pen. It looked like she’d been graffitiing herself all day. Her jeans were covered with words and pictures, rips, staples. She was a walking emotion.
“I wanna draw,” I said, sitting next to her. I pulled a pen out of my notebook and scrawled a smiley face on her knee. She immediately X-ed out the eyes. “Wow, bad mood,” I teased.
“Jessica Campbell.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I even care anymore. Why can’t she just leave me alone? She wants to hate me, fine. But why can’t she act like I don’t exist? Why does she always have to be making it such a big deal?”
I drew a Mohawk on the smiley face and then added angry eyebrow lines over the X-ed-out eyes. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she’s just a bad person.”
She looked at me, her pen hovering over her jeans. “Funny, Nick and I were just talking about that the other day.”
Senior Year
Graduation was in ten days, and everyone was all about getting high school over with. Other than a moment of silence on May 2nd, nobody seemed to even remember that our class was going to be missing a bunch of grads. And it was only a few minutes after the moment of silence that Jacob Kinney, supposed best friend of the tragically late Chris Summers, started in again.
“Hey, Dav-a-lina,” Jacob called as we walked back to our classes, “maybe you can find a pink, glittery cap and gown for graduation. With flowers!”
Whatever.
Ten days from now, I would never have to listen to that jerk again. I would never have to answer to “princess” or worry that the drawing of a penis someone had inked on the cover of my math book would be seen. I would be free.
But then they pantsed Doug Hobson again. Right outside the locker room, their favorite place. And I don’t know what made me snap. I don’t know if it was the buildup of two years of torment or if it was the look on Doug’s face, like he was laughing along with them, only I knew he wasn’t. I knew he was only doing it because he felt that laughing somehow made him look like he was in on the jok
e. Like he was in control of his uncontrollable situation.
“Grow up,” I called, stepping next to Jacob, so close I could smell his breath.
He stopped laughing, though he was still smirking. “Why don’t you back off, queer? I’d think you’d like it. Free show. You don’t even have to buy him dinner first.”
I was done. I was done listening, I was done watching, I was done talking. Without even thinking, almost without even realizing, my fist darted out and smashed against Jacob’s cheekbone.
He hit the ground, and I had a crazy moment of staring at my hand thinking, Holy shit, I just dropped Jacob Kinney! But I barely had time to process the thought before he was up on his feet again and coming at me. I tried to dodge, but I was too slow, and his friends got behind me, blocking me from running away. He caught me under the chin, and my head snapped back. I stumbled backward a few steps, regained my footing, rammed into him, and next thing I knew, we were on the floor, and I was swinging my arms as hard as I could, my eyes shut, not paying attention to where my fists were landing. He cussed and called me names, landing punches on my cheeks, shoulders, chest. I just kept swinging until someone grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me up.
I finally opened my eyes, and there was Jacob, just a few feet from me, yelling and struggling to get free from Coach Radford.
“Calm down,” I heard in my ear, and wanted to die when I realized that it was the girls’ gymnastics coach who was holding me back. Of course. Because being subdued by a woman could only make me look even more like a weakling.
“He attacked me,” Jacob said, seething. I was pleased to see his face streaked with blood and hoped that it was at least partially his and not all mine.
“I’m sick of it!” I screamed so loud, my voice cracked. “I’m sick of him getting away with it! He didn’t learn! Nick shot all those people, and he still hasn’t changed! His best friend died! His best friend!” I knew at that point I wasn’t making any sense, that I wasn’t getting my point across, and that at best I was going to land myself on Angerson’s Potential School Shooter watch list. But I couldn’t stop. “He’s a bad person! He’s just a bad person!”
Say Something Page 4