“If anything that came out of this tragedy could be considered remotely good,” he said, “it’s that the students seem to have come to an understanding of one another and of the old saying ‘Live and let live.’”
According to Angerson, it’s not unusual to see former enemies sit together at lunch, see old feuds end as students pair up on a more conscious level.
“Things are very much more peaceful,” he says. “We don’t have nearly the number of complaints coming through the counselor’s office about petty things that we used to.”
Behavior difficulties in the classroom are a thing of the past, as well, according to Angerson, who predicts that the school can expect to see a decline in the number of behavior problems in the years to come.
“I think students are beginning to understand that we’re all friends here. That the criticism, harsh opinions, and quick dislike that are so common in children of this age just aren’t worth it in the end. Unfortunately they had to find that out the hard way. But they learned and they changed. Which is why I think this generation will make the world a better place.”
The students were allowed back into the building to complete the school year, although Angerson admits that curriculum has taken a back seat to what he’s calling “damage control.” The district has hired a team of trained counselors to work with the students on coming to terms with what happened on May 2nd.
Angerson also reports that students were not required to come back. No final exams will be administered, and teachers are working closely with the students on an individual basis to ensure every student has the opportunity to earn the grades they need.
“We have some teachers who are heading up study groups in their houses at night. Some at the library. Others are doing it online. But a lot of kids came back,” Angerson says. “Some of them feel really strongly about their school spirit and wanted to show support for Garvin High. They wanted to show that they won’t be scared away. Honestly, the main reason we resumed classes was as an answer to students’ outcry.”
Angerson reports that he is proud of Garvin High students for maintaining their loyalty to their school and feels that, in the years to come, the students of Garvin High will emerge as strong leaders in society. “I’m so proud of them for being the first wave of what I believe will be the agents of change in this world someday,” Angerson adds. “If there’s ever to be world peace, it will come through these guys.”
I smuggled the article into Dr. Hieler’s office later that day. No sooner had he shut the door than I dropped it on the coffee table between us.
“Does it make him a hero, Dr. Hieler?” I asked.
Dr. Hieler scanned the paper with his eyes as he eased into his chair. “Who?”
“Nick. If the people who survived are stronger and all about peace like the news says, does that make him a hero? Is he like the millennium’s version of John Lennon? Peace-spreader with a gun?”
“I understand that it would be easier for you to think of him as a hero. But, Valerie, he did kill a lot of kids. Probably not a lot of people are going to think of him as a hero.”
“But it seems so unfair that the school is just moving on and that finally they’re accepting everyone and nobody’s mean anymore and Nick is gone. I mean, I know it’s his own fault that he’s gone, but still. Why couldn’t they have just seen it before? Why did it take this? It’s just not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair. A fair’s a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the Ferris wheel.”
“I hate it when you say that.”
“So do my kids.”
I sulked, staring down at the article until the words blurred together. “You’re probably thinking I’m an idiot for being kind of proud of him.”
“No, but I don’t think you’re really proud. I think you’re pissed. I think you wish this change of attitude at Garvin had happened sooner and then maybe none of this would’ve happened. And I also think you don’t really believe that it’s true.”
And for the first time—but certainly not the last—I purged everything to Dr. Hieler. Everything. From talking about Hamlet on Nick’s unmade bed to wishing Christy Bruter would pay big-time for what she did to my MP3 player to the guilt I was feeling. Everything I couldn’t say to the cop in my hospital bed. That I couldn’t say to Stacey. To Mom.
Maybe it was the way Dr. Hieler looked at me, like he was the one person in the world who could understand how everything got so out of control. Maybe it was just that I was ready. Maybe it was the newspaper article. Maybe it was my body’s way of exploding—letting off the pressure before I destroyed myself.
I was a volcano of questions and remorse and anger and Dr. Hieler stood strong under the hail of all of it. He watched me intently, spoke softly, evenly. Nodded somberly.
“Do you think I would’ve done it?” I cried at one point. “If I had a gun, would I have shot Christy? Because when Nick said, ‘Let’s go get this finished,’ and I thought he was going to, I don’t know, embarrass her or maybe beat the crap out of her or something, I felt so good. So, like, relieved. I wanted him to take care of her.”
“That’s natural, don’t you think? Just because you were happy that Nick was going to stick up for you doesn’t mean you would’ve picked up a gun and shot her.”
“I was pissed. God, I was really, really pissed. She broke my MP3 player and I was so pissed.”
“Again, natural. I would’ve been pissed, too. Pissed doesn’t equal guilty.”
“It felt good to have him on my side, you know?”
He nodded.
“I thought he was going to break up with me, so having him stick up for me was really good. It reassured me. I thought we were going to be okay. I wasn’t even thinking about the Hate List.”
Again, he nodded, his eyes narrowing as I became more agitated.
His words floated softly in the air, wrapping around me. “Valerie, you didn’t get her shot. Nick shot her. Not you.”
I leaned back into the couch cushions and took a drink of my Coke. There was a perfunctory knock on the door and Dr. Hieler’s secretary poked her head inside.
“Your three o’clock is here,” she said.
Dr. Hieler’s eyes never left me. “Tell him I’m running a little behind today,” he said. His secretary nodded and disappeared. After she left, I was hyper-aware of the silence that stretched across the room between us. I could hear a door shut in the vestibule, someone talking in the hallway. I felt embarrassed, exposed, a little disbelieving that I’d spilled everything like that. I wanted to slink out of there, never face Dr. Hieler again, hide in my room and will the wallpaper horses to whisk me away to somewhere where I wasn’t so vulnerable.
But, I realized with some amount of horror, even calm and wrought and small, I wasn’t done yet. There was more. Darker, uglier things I had to know. Things that haunted me at night and wouldn’t leave me, like a tickle behind my ear, an itchy spot that couldn’t be identified and scratched.
“What if I wasn’t serious about it then but maybe I am now?” I asked.
“Serious about what?”
“The Hate List. Maybe I thought I didn’t mean for those people to die, but somewhere, I don’t know, subconsciously, I really meant it. And maybe Nick saw it. Maybe he knew something about me I didn’t even know. Maybe everybody saw it and that’s why they all hate me so much—because I’m a poser. I set it all into motion with that stupid list and then let Nick do my dirty work. So, I don’t know, maybe I should be serious about it now. Maybe that would make everyone feel better.”
“I doubt more killing would make anyone feel better—least of all, you.”
“They expect it of me.”
“So what? Who cares what they expect? What do you expect of you? That’s what matters.”
“That’s just it, I don’t know what to expect of me! Because everything I expected about everything has all gone to shit. And I think people are disappointed that I didn’t die. Christy Bruter’s parents definitely
think I should have killed myself afterward, just like Nick. They wish Nick had aimed better when he shot me.”
“They’re parents and they’re hurting, too. Even so, I doubt they wish you were dead.”
“But maybe I wish she was dead. Maybe a part of me always did want her dead.”
“Val…” Dr. Hieler said, and his hesitation told all: If you don’t stop talking like this, I’ll have no choice but to lock you back in the psych ward with Dr. Dentley. I chewed my lip. A tear slipped down my cheek and, not for the first time, I ached for Nick to hold me.
“It’s just that I feel like such a bad person because even now sometimes I find myself still wishing he was just in jail so I’d get to see him again,” I said. Suddenly I was struck with that memory again, Nick holding me down by my wrists on his bedroom floor, telling me we could be winners. Of him leaning in to kiss me. I sat on the couch, feeling more alone than ever before. Feeling colder than I’d ever imagined possible. Feeling like, of all the horror of what happened, this was the worst of it. This was the worst because, even after everything that had been done, I still missed Nick. Sometimes we get to win, too, he’d told me and, hearing those words in my head again, I began to cry, miserably, achingly, Dr. Hieler moving to the couch next to me, his hand on my back. “I’m so sad without him,” I sobbed, taking a tissue out of Dr. Hieler’s hand. “I’m just so sad.”
PART THREE
16
[FROM THE GARVIN COUNTY SUN-TRIBUNE,
MAY 3, 2008, REPORTER ANGELA DASH]
Max Hills, 16—“I thought they were friends,” one student was reported to have said about Levil’s decision to shoot Hills, who was pronounced dead at the scene. “He definitely meant to shoot him,” she added. “He, like, bent down to look under the table and made sure he knew who he was shooting before he did it.”
Hills, described by friends as a quiet student, good at math and science, but not overly involved in many extracurricular activities, had been seen on many occasions chatting with Levil, both in school and outside of it. Many thought the two of them to be friends, which has had a lot of students wondering why Levil targeted Hills, if, indeed, he did.
“Maybe he thought it was someone else,” Erica Fromman, a senior, said. “Or maybe he didn’t care if they were friends or not,” a hypothesis that has some wondering if the victims were more random than initially suspected.
Hills’s mother, Alaina, however, says that she believes Max was a deliberate target. “He wouldn’t let Nick borrow his truck last summer,” she told reporters. “And the next day someone smashed Max’s headlights in the parking lot while he was at work. Max could never prove it was Nick who did it, but we both knew it was him. They haven’t been friends since then. They didn’t ever talk again. Max was pretty mad about the headlights. He paid for that truck himself.”
When I got home from school my second day back, I really doubted my ability to keep going back into that school. Forget transferring at the end of the semester. I’d never make it that long.
Ginny Baker never came back to class—at least not the classes that she had with me. And Tennille never looked me in the eye. And Stacey and I never sat together at lunch. But pretty much everyone else just ignored my existence, which I thought was pretty good. But hard. Being a true outcast, without even other outcast friends, is tough.
I was really glad to get home on the second day, even though Mom kept attempting to “Mom” me, like I was still seven or something, asking me questions about homework and my teachers and—my favorite—friends. She still believed I had some of those. She actually believed the news reports. The ones that said we were all holding hands and talking about peace and love and acceptance every day. The ones that said kids are “incredibly resilient, especially when it comes to the concept of forgiveness.” I often found myself wondering if that reporter, Angela Dash, was for real. Everything that woman wrote was a total joke.
As usual, when I got home, I grabbed a snack and headed for my bedroom. I kicked off my shoes, turned on the stereo, and sat cross-legged on the bed.
I opened my backpack, fully intending to get to my bio homework, but found my hand pulling out the black notebook instead. Stretching out, I opened it up. During the day I had drawn a line of P. E. students with faces dominated by enormous gaping holes for mouths, heading out to the track. A teacher—the Spanish teacher, Señor Ruiz—staring out over a staircase full of bustling students, his face blank, flat, an empty oval. And, my personal favorite, Mr. Angerson roosting on top of a miniscule version of Garvin High, his face taking on a remarkable resemblance to Chicken Little. My version of the “new and improved life at Garvin High.” Seeing what was real, as Dr. Hieler suggested.
I lost track of time, fleshing out a sketch I’d made of Stacey and Duce at the lunch table, their backs brick walls, and was surprised to see that the sun was much lower in the sky when a knock at the door interrupted me.
“Later, Frankie,” I yelled. I needed time to think, time to chill. I wanted to finish the sketch so I could get to my bio homework.
The knock came again.
“Busy!” I yelled.
A few seconds later, the handle turned and the door opened a crack. I silently cursed myself for forgetting to lock it.
“I said I’m—” I started, but stopped short when Jessica Campbell’s head poked through the small crack in the door.
“Sorry,” she said. “I can come back later. It’s just that I tried to call you a few times and your mom said you wouldn’t come to the phone.” Ah, Mom was apparently still screening my calls.
“So she told you to come over?” I asked, disbelievingly. Mom knew who Jessica Campbell was. Everyone in the free world knew who Jessica Campbell was. Just setting her loose in my house would seem… risky at best.
“No, that was my idea.” Jessica stepped in and shut the door behind her. She walked to the bed and stood at the end of it. “Actually, when I got here she told me you wouldn’t see me. But I told her I had to try anyway, so she let me in. I don’t think she likes me very much.”
I chuckled. “Trust me, if she could have you for a daughter she’d probably wet her pants. It’s not you she doesn’t like, it’s me. But that’s not news.” I realized as soon as I said it, that it was an awkward thing to say to someone who doesn’t really know you. “What are you doing here?” I asked, changing the subject. “It’s not as if you like me either.”
Jessica’s face got really red and for a second I thought she was going to cry. Again I was surprised at how un-Jessica-like she looked. The confidence was gone, the superiority was missing—all replaced by this weird vulnerability that didn’t look right on her. She whipped her head to one side, expertly tossing her hair over one shoulder, and sat down on the bed.
“I sit with Stacey in fourth period,” she said.
I shrugged. “And?”
“And we talk about you sometimes.”
I felt heat rise to my face. My leg started throbbing, like it always did when I got anxious. Dr. Hieler told me that my throbbing leg was probably in my head, only he didn’t use those words. He used something much nicer, I’m sure, but I only remember it that way—that it was all in my head. I rested my hand over the dent in my thigh, pressing into it through my jeans.
So this is how it was going to be—now that I was part of the mainstream again, they were going to go out of their way to make sure I knew I was officially not part of the mainstream. No longer would they wait for me to come to lunch or to my locker to make me feel like the kid everyone hates. They would to come to my house to tell me so. Was this it? Was this my punishment? “So you came to my house to tell me that you gossip with my ex-best-friend about me?”
“No,” Jessica said. She crinkled her forehead, like I was crazy for even suggesting such a thing. That crinkled forehead was a look I recognized on her, one that usually preceded her saying something snotty. I braced myself for it, but instead she sighed, looked down at her hands. “No. Stacey and I talk
about how we think you got messed over by Nick.”
“Messed over?”
She used her middle finger to swipe her bangs over to one side and tuck them behind her ear. “Yeah. You know. You weren’t guilty. But he dragged you into it. And then when they decided you weren’t guilty, they never said much about it.”
“They who?”
“You know. The news. The media. They only talked about how you were guilty and how the police were getting to the bottom of things, but then they never really said much when the police decided you didn’t do it. It’s not fair, really.”
My hand eased up on my leg a little and my fingers closed around my pencil again. Something just wasn’t adding up here. Jessica Campbell was sitting in my room defending me. I was almost afraid to believe it.
She glanced down at the notebook in my lap. “People keep talking about you starting another hate book. Is that it?”
I looked at the notebook too. “No!” Involuntarily, I slammed the book shut and tucked it under my leg. “It’s just something I’m working on. An art project.”
“Oh,” she said. “Has Angerson said anything to you about it?”
“Why should he?” But we both knew the answer why he should and neither one of us said it aloud.
Jessica surveyed my room in the silence. I saw her look at the piles of clothes on the floor, the dirty dishes on the dresser, the photo of Nick that had dropped out of my jeans pocket last night when I took them off and that I hadn’t bothered to pick up and hide again. Was it my imagination or did her eyes linger just a little on the photo?
“I like your room,” she said. But that was lame to say so I didn’t even bother to answer and I think she might have been grateful for it.