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.
4
[FROM THE GARVIN COUNTY SUN-TRIBUNE,
MAY 3, 2008, REPORTER ANGELA DASH]
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.
“Yeah.”
“My mom said your mom called her the other day just to talk.”
I paus
ed, 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.