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 s.h.i.t. 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. 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. 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, 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." 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 G GARVIN C COUNTY S SUN-TRIBUNE,.

MAY 3, 2008, R 3, 2008, REPORTER A ANGELA D 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 cla.s.s-at least not the cla.s.ses 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, Senor 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.

"I have homework," I said. "So..."

She got up. "Sure. Okay." She swished that blond hair around like a pendulum. I think that hair swish thing was on the Hate List at one point. I tried not to think about that. "Listen, the reason I came over... StuCo has this project going on. A memorial. For graduation, you know. Think you could work on it with us?"

I chewed my bottom lip. Work with Student Council on a project? Something was definitely up. I shrugged. "I'll think about it."

"Cool. We have a meeting Thursday in Mrs. Stone's room. Just, you know, brainstorming."

"Are you sure they want me? I mean, don't you have to be voted into Student Council?"

It was her turn to shrug. She looked toward the window when she did it, which made me think she definitely thought they didn't. "I want you there," she said, as if that's all that mattered.

I nodded, didn't say anything. She seemed to hover in the middle of my room for a few seconds, thinking. Like she couldn't decide if she should stay or go. Like she couldn't figure out how she got there in the first place.

"So everybody's saying how you were in on it. The shooting, I mean," she said in a very quiet voice. "Did you know he was planning it?"

I swallowed, looked out the window.

"I don't think so," I said. "I didn't know he really meant all that stuff. That probably sounds really lame, but it's the best I can do right now. He wasn't a bad guy."

She considered my answer, followed my gaze out the window and nodded just slightly. "Did you save me on purpose?" she asked.

"I don't think so," I said again, then changed my mind. "No, I'm pretty sure I didn't."

She nodded again. I think that was the answer she expected. She left just as quietly as she came.

Later, as I sat in Dr. Hieler's office, a can of c.o.ke balanced on my knee, I recounted the whole strange scenario to him.

"Sitting there with Jessica Campbell on my bed was totally weird. I mean, I felt... naked or something with her in the room. Like everything she looked at was private. It made me nervous."

He scratched his ear, grinned. "Good."

"It was good that I was nervous?"

"It was good that you handled it."

In other words, I didn't tell her to go away.

Instead, she just left. And after she'd gone, I turned on my stereo and stretched out on my bed. I turned on my side and stared at the horses on my wallpaper. One of them seemed to shimmer just a little-the longer I looked at it, the more it looked like it wanted to take off.

17.

[FROM THE G GARVIN C COUNTY S SUN-TRIBUNE,.

MAY 3, 2008, R 3, 2008, REPORTER A ANGELA D DASH]Katie Renfro, 15-Soph.o.m.ore Katie Renfro was not in the Commons when she became victim of the shooting. "Katie was just pa.s.sing by after leaving the guidance office," Adriana Tate, the school guidance counselor, told reporters. "She didn't even know Nick Levil, I don't think," she added.Renfro, whose injuries were not life-threatening, was. .h.i.t in the bicep by a stray bullet that appeared to have ricocheted off of a locker near the Commons area."It didn't really hurt that bad," Renfro said. "It felt more like a sting. I didn't even know I was. .h.i.t until I got outside and one of the firefighters told me there was blood running down the back of my arm. Then I started freaking out. But mainly I think I was just freaking out because everybody else was freaking out, you know?"Renfro's parents report that they have made the decision to pull Katie out of public high school permanently."It was a no-brainer for us," Vic Renfro said. "We'd always been a little bit worried about Katie going to public school. This just sealed the deal.""You never know," added Katie's mother, Kimber Renfro, somberly, "who your child is going to school with in a public school. They let anybody in those places. Even the disturbed kids. And we don't want our daughter hanging around disturbed kids."

"She's making such a big deal out of this," I said. I was pacing-something I didn't ordinarily do in Dr. Hieler's office. Of course, ordinarily I wasn't in there under Mom's microscope, which had gotten more intense with every pa.s.sing day. It was as if, rather than trusting me more as time went on, Mom actually managed to trust me less. Like she was afraid that if she stopped watching me, even for a second, I would end up involved in another shooting.

"Well, do you blame me?" Mom said. She sniffed and dabbed her nose with a balled-up Kleenex she'd pulled out of her coat pocket. "I just have a hard time believing that she now wants to hang out with those people and that they want to hang out with her. And now a memorial project? Surely it can't be healthy for her to continue to focus on the incident. Surely she should be moving on now, right?"

"For the last time, Mom, I don't want to hang out with them. I'm working on a project. That's all. A school project. I thought you wanted me to get back into school projects. This is is me 'moving on' with my life." me 'moving on' with my life."

Mom shook her head. "Two days ago she didn't even want to be in school. And now she wants to work on a school project with the very kids that were on that list of hers," she said to Dr. Hieler. "It seems suspicious, doesn't it? Sounds like a fake to me."

This time I turned to Dr. Hieler. "She didn't talk to Jessica. I did. Jessica was serious when she asked me. It wasn't a fake."

Dr. Hieler nodded, still rubbing his lip, but didn't say anything.

Mom shook her head, like I was some fool for believing Jessica Campbell. Like I was a fool for everything I ever believed, just because I once believed Nick. It was silent in the office and Mom was staring at me.

"What?" I finally said. My voice was getting too loud. "Why are you looking at me like that? She's not going to hurt me. She didn't set me up, okay? Why is that so hard to understand? Haven't you been watching TV? Haven't you seen all the stories about how the shooting changed everything at the school? People aren't like that anymore. They aren't going to hurt me."

"I'm not worried about them them hurting hurting you you," Mom said in a hoa.r.s.e voice. She looked up at me with her red eyes. She dabbed at her nose again with her tissue.

I looked from her to Dr. Hieler. He still sat with his index finger resting on his lip. He didn't say anything. Didn't move.

"What are you worried about then?" I asked.

"Are you going to hurt them?" Mom said. "Are you joining up with them so you can finish the job that Nick started?"

I slumped backward into a chair. In all of her bawling and begging and forbidding and hiding newspapers and dragging me to Dr. Hieler... it was never to protect me from the other kids. It was to protect them from me. It was always about me hurting them. About me being the bad guy. No matter what I said, I couldn't change that in my mother's eyes.

"It's just that I wasn't paying attention before," she said, half to me and half to Dr. Hieler. "And look what happened. People think I'm a horrible parent and, I don't know, I think maybe they're right. A mother should know these things. A mother shouldn't be surprised like I was. The more I let her go... the more I'm afraid that I'll have more deaths on my conscience."

She wiped her nose as Dr. Hieler talked to her in his soft, understanding voice. But I was too numb to listen to what he was saying.

I had changed Mom. Had changed her role as parent. No longer was her sole purpose so easy and clear-cut as it had been on the day I was born. No longer was her job to protect me from the rest of the world. Now her job was to protect the rest of the world from me.

And that was so unfair.

18.