"That's cool."

Mrs. Parr told us to shut up and we went about our business, but every day before and after cla.s.s we talked. I introduced him to Stacey and Duce and the gang and he fit in with us right away, especially with Duce. But it was obvious from the beginning that he and I fit better than everyone else.

Pretty soon we were walking to cla.s.s together, meeting at his locker, and walking out of cla.s.s together. And sometimes meeting on the bleachers in the mornings with Stacey and Duce and Mason.

And then one day I was having a really c.r.a.ppy day and all I wanted to do was get back at everyone who was making it that way. So I got this idea that I would write down all their names in a notebook, like the notebook was some kind of paper voodoo doll or something. I think I had this feeling that just writing down their names in the book would prove that they were a.s.sholes and that I was the victim.

So I opened my trusty red notebook and numbered every line down the column of the page and started writing names of people, of celebrities, of concepts, of everything I hated. By the end of third period I had half a page filled out, things like Christy Bruter Christy Bruter and and Algebra-you can't add letters and numbers together!!! Algebra-you can't add letters and numbers together!!! and and Hairspray Hairspray. And I still didn't feel done, so I schlepped the notebook off to Algebra cla.s.s with me and was hard at work on it when Nick walked in.

"Hey," he said, after he slumped into his chair. "I didn't see you at the lockers."

"I wasn't there," I said, not looking up. I was busy writing Mom and Dad's marriage problems Mom and Dad's marriage problems in the notebook. That was an important one. I wrote it four more times. in the notebook. That was an important one. I wrote it four more times.

"Oh," he said, and then he was silent for a minute, but I could feel him looking over my shoulder. "What's that?" he finally asked, kind of laughing.

"It's my Hate List," I answered, without even thinking.

After cla.s.s, as we were walking out, Nick came up behind me and nonchalantly said, "I think you should add today's homework to that list. It sucks." I looked back and he was grinning at me.

I smiled. He got it, and somehow it totally made me feel better to know I wasn't alone. "You're right," I said. "I'll add it next period."

And that's how it started: the infamous Hate List. Started as a joke. A way to vent frustration. But it grew into something else I'd never have guessed.

Every day in Algebra cla.s.s we'd get it out and write down the names of all the people in the school that we secretly hated, the two of us sitting in the back row, side by side, griping about Christy Bruter and Mrs. Harfelz. People who irritated us. People who got on our nerves. And especially people who bullied us, who bullied other people.

I think at one time we may have had this idea that the list would be published-that we could make the world see how horrible some people could be. That we would have the last laugh against those people, the cheerleaders who called me Sister Death and the jocks who punched Nick in the chest in the hallways when n.o.body was looking, those "perfect kids" who n.o.body would believe were just as bad as the "bad kids." We had talked about how the world would be a better place with lists like ours around, people being held accountable for their actions.

The list was my idea. My brainchild. I started it, I kept it going. It began our friendship and it kept us together. With that list, neither one of us was so alone anymore.

The first time I went over to Nick's house was the day I officially fell in love with him. We stepped into his kitchen, which was dirty and unkempt. I heard a TV off in the distance and a smoker's cough echoing over it. Nick opened a door just off the kitchen and motioned for me to follow him down a flight of wood steps into the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The floor was cement, but there was a small orange rug tossed on it, right next to a mattress, which sat on the floor, unmade. Nick tossed his backpack on the mattress, and flopped back on it himself. He sighed deeply, running his hands over his eyes.

"Long day," he said. "I can't wait for summer."

I turned in a slow circle. A washer and dryer stood off against a wall, shirts draping off the corners of them. A mousetrap in another corner. Some moving boxes stacked by one wall. A squat dresser next to them, clothes spilling out of open drawers, an a.s.sortment of junk littering the top of it.

"This is your room?" I asked.

"Yep. Wanna watch TV? Or I've got Playstation."

He had flipped himself over onto his stomach and was fumbling with a small TV that sat propped on a box on the other side of the bed.

"Okay," I said. "Playstation."

As I settled on the bed next to him, I noticed a plastic crate between his bed and the wall, overflowing with books. I knee-walked across the mattress and picked one up.

"Oth.e.l.lo," I said, reading the cover. "Shakespeare?"

He glanced at me, his face taking on a guarded look. He didn't say anything.

I picked up another. "Macbeth." And two more. "The Shakespeare Sonnets. The Quest for Shakespeare. What is this stuff?" I asked. What is this stuff?" I asked.

"It's nothing," he said. "Here." He thrust a Playstation controller at me.

I ignored it, kept digging in the crate. "A Midsummer Night's Dream. Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. "A Midsummer Night's Dream. Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. All of these are Shakespeare." All of these are Shakespeare."

"That one's my favorite," he said softly, gesturing to a book in my hand. "Hamlet."

I studied the cover, and then opened the book to a random page and read aloud: "O heavy deed!

It had been so with us, had we been there: His liberty is full of threats to all; To you yourself, to us, to everyone."

"Alas, how shall this b.l.o.o.d.y deed be answer'd?" Nick said, quoting the next line before I had a chance to read it.

I sat back and looked at him over the top of the book. "You read this stuff?"

He shrugged. "It's nothing."

"Are you serious? It's cool. You totally have this memorized. I don't even understand what it's saying."

"Well, you kind of have to know what else is going on in the story to understand," he said.

"So tell me," I said.

He looked at me uncertainly, took a deep breath, and hesitantly started talking. His voice grew more and more animated as he told me about Hamlet and Claudius and Ophelia and murder and betrayal. About Hamlet's hesitation being his fatal flaw. About how he totally berated the woman he loved. And as he told me the story, quoted pa.s.sages about divinity as if he'd written them himself, I knew. I knew I was falling in love with him, this boy with the ratty clothes and the bad att.i.tude who smiled so shyly and quoted Shakespeare.

"How'd you get into this?" I asked. "I mean, you've got a lot of books here."

Nick ducked his head. He told me about how he discovered reading when his mom was divorcing dad number two, how he'd spent long nights at home alone, a kid with nothing to do while his mom trawled the bars for guys, sometimes not bothering to pay the electricity bill, forcing him to read for entertainment. How his grandma would bring him books and he'd devour them the same day. He'd read everything-Star Wars, Lord of the Rings Lord of the Rings, Artemis Fowl Artemis Fowl, Ender's Game Ender's Game.

"And then one day Louis-that's dad number three," he said, "He brought home this book he'd found at some garage sale. It was his big joke." Nick pulled Hamlet Hamlet out of my hands and waved it in the air. "'Like to see you read this one, Smartypants,'" he mimicked in a gravelly voice. "He laughed when he said it. Thought he was being really funny. So did my mom." out of my hands and waved it in the air. "'Like to see you read this one, Smartypants,'" he mimicked in a gravelly voice. "He laughed when he said it. Thought he was being really funny. So did my mom."

"So you read it to prove them wrong," I said, flipping through the pages of Oth.e.l.lo Oth.e.l.lo.

"At first," he said. "But then," he crawled up onto the bed next to me, leaning back against the wall just as I was, looking over my shoulder at the pages I was turning. I liked the heat of his shoulder against mine. "I started to like it, you know? Like putting together a puzzle or something. Plus I thought it was really funny because Louis was too stupid to know that he'd given me a book where the stepdad was the bad guy." He shook his head. "Moron."

"So your grandma bought you all these?"

He shrugged. "Some. I bought some myself. Most of them came from a librarian who helped me out a lot back then. She knew I liked Shakespeare. I think she felt sorry for me or something."

I dropped Oth.e.l.lo Oth.e.l.lo back into the crate and then dug around and pulled out back into the crate and then dug around and pulled out Macbeth Macbeth. "So tell me about this one," I said, and he did, the Playstation controller forgotten on the floor next to the bed.

I spent my first days in the hospital remembering that day. Racking my brain until I recalled every little detail. The sheets on his bed were red. His pillow didn't have a pillowcase on it. There was a framed photo of a blond woman-his mom-perching on the edge of his dresser. The toilet upstairs flushed while we talked about King Lear King Lear. Footsteps creaked over our heads as his mom went from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen. Every detail. The more I remembered those details, the more unbelievable I found what they were saying about Nick on the news, which I'd turn on surrept.i.tiously, almost guiltily, when everyone had gone home for the night and I was alone.

When I wasn't remembering that day in Nick's bedroom, I was piecing together what had happened in the cafeteria, which wasn't easy for a lot of reasons.

First, I spent a lot of time during those two days in some sort of medicated alternate universe. Funny how you'd think the worst part of the pain when you get shot would be right when it happens, but that's not true. In fact, I really don't even remember feeling anything at the time that it happened. Fear, maybe. A strange heavy feeling, I guess. But not pain. The real pain didn't start until the next day, after the surgery, after my skin and nerves and muscles had a day to get used to the idea that something had forever changed.

I cried a lot during those first two days, and most of my crying was about wanting something to make the pain go away. This wasn't a bee sting. It hurt like h.e.l.l.

So the nurse, who still didn't like me, I could tell, would come in every so often and give me a shot of this drug or a swallow of that one and next thing I knew everyone sounded weird and the room looked all grainy and stuff. I don't know how much of that time I was asleep, but I do know that after those first couple days when I stopped getting the mind-bending pain relievers and just started getting the regular ones, I wished I was asleep more often.

But the bigger reason it was tough to put the pieces back together was that it just didn't all seem to fit. Like my brain just couldn't make sense of it all. I felt like it had been snapped in two. Actually, I asked the nurse at one point if it was possible for the noise of the gun to make something in my brain get sort of jumbled up so I couldn't think straight. All I could really think was how much I wanted to sleep. How much I wanted to be in a different world other than the one I was in.

She said, "The body has many mechanisms to protect it from trauma," and I wished mine had more.

Every night when I would turn on the TV mounted to the wall across from my bed, I would watch pictures of my high school-aerial pictures that made it look about as faraway as I felt, and inst.i.tutional and foreboding, not the place where I'd spent three years of my life-and I would have this weird sensation where I was sure I was watching some sort of fiction. But the nauseated feeling in my stomach reminded me that this was no fictional scenario. It was real and I was right in the middle of it.

Mom sat by my bed constantly for those first two days, the whole time dumping one emotion or another on me. One minute she'd be crying softly into a palmed tissue, shaking her head sadly and calling me her baby, the next she'd be an angry-faced, puckered-mouthed woman blaming me and saying she couldn't believe she gave birth to such a monster.

I really didn't have much to say to that. To her. To anyone. After Frankie told me Nick was dead, that he'd shot himself, I sort of just curled up like a salted slug. Turned to my side and curled up around my sheets and blankets, tucked my knees into my chest as best as I could with the bandaging and the throbbing in my thigh and the tubes and wires that kept me tethered to the bed. Just curled into a ball and after my body stopped curling my soul kept going. Curling, curling, curling into something tight, wound, tiny.

It wasn't some big decision that I would stop speaking or anything. It was just that I didn't know what to say. Mainly because every time I opened my mouth I wanted to scream in horror. All I could see in my head was Nick, lying dead somewhere. I wanted to go to his funeral. I wanted to go to his grave, at least. I wanted to kiss him mostly, to tell him I forgave him for shooting me.

But I also wanted to scream in horror for Mr. Kline. For Abby Dempsey and the others who'd been shot. Even for Christy Bruter. For my mom. For Frankie. And, yeah, for me, too. But none of those feelings seemed to really match up, like when you're putting together a puzzle and two pieces almost-maddeningly, just almost-fit. You could shove the pieces together and force them to fit, but even after they're successfully stuck together they still don't fit exactly, don't look quite right. That's how my brain felt. Like I was shoving odd puzzle pieces together.

And then on the third day my door swished open. I was staring at the ceiling, thinking about this time that Nick and I played laser tag at Nitez. I'd won the game and it had really ticked Nick off at first, but afterward we went to a party at Mason's house and he told everybody what a great shot I was. He seemed really, really proud of me and I felt so good about myself. We spent the rest of the evening holding hands and making googly eyes at each other and it was, like, the best night of my life.

When I heard the door open, I closed my eyes quickly, because I wanted whoever it was that came in to think I was asleep and go away so I could keep thinking about that night. I swear my hand was warm, like Nick's was in it right at that moment.

I heard footsteps scuff over to the side of the bed and stop. But the wires didn't move. I didn't hear any drawers or cabinets open like I normally would if a nurse was in the room. And I didn't hear Mom's telltale stuffed-up nose snorting. Didn't smell Frankie's cologne. Just a still presence beside me. I opened one eye.

A guy in a brown suit stood next to the bed. He was probably in his forties, I guessed, and he was completely bald. Not the kind of bald where all of his hair had fallen out, but the kind of bald where he'd lost enough of it to just give up and shave the rest off. He was chewing gum. He didn't smile.

I opened both eyes, but I didn't sit up. I also didn't say anything. Just looked at him, my heart pounding in my chest.

"How's your leg, Valerie?" he said. "I can call you Valerie, right?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, but didn't answer. My hand involuntarily moved to the bandage over my leg. I wondered if I should be prepared to scream. Was this some freaky horror-movie kind of guy who planned to rape and kill me in my hospital bed? I had half a thought that it would probably serve me right, that a lot of people out there would be happy to hear that something horrible happened to me, but it couldn't really form because he was moving and talking again.

"Better, I hope." He stepped back and pulled a chair forward. Sat in it. "You're young. You got that on your side at least. I got shot in the foot two years ago by some crackhead in Center. Took forever to heal up. But I'm an old man." He laughed at his own joke. I blinked. Still didn't move, my hand still on the bandages.

His laughter dried up, and he chewed his gum solemnly, staring at my face with his head c.o.c.ked just slightly to one side. He stared at me for so long I finally spoke.

"My mom's coming right back," I said. I don't know why I said it because it was a total lie. I had no idea when Mom would be coming in. It just seemed like the right thing to say-that an adult would be coming along soon, so he probably should get rid of whatever rape plans he had.

"She's in the lobby. I've already talked to her," he said. "She'll be up later. Maybe after lunch or so. She's talking to my colleague right now. Might be a while. Your dad's down there, too. Seems like he's not overly happy with you right now."

I blinked.

"Well," I said. I thought that pretty much summed it up. Well. Well, when has he ever been? Well, who cares? Well, certainly not me. Well.

"I'm Detective Panzella," the guy in the brown suit said.

"Okay," I said.

"You can see my badge if you want to."

I shook my head, no, mostly because I still hadn't really put together why he might be there.

He eased into a chair and leaned forward, his face entirely too close to mine.

"We need to talk, Valerie."

I guess I should've known it was coming. It only made sense, right? Except at that point nothing made sense. The shooting didn't make sense, so how could a detective in a brown suit sitting across from my hospital bed make sense?

I was scared to death. No, I was more scared than that, even. I was so scared I felt cold all over and I wasn't sure I'd be able to talk to him at all about anything.

"Do you remember what happened at your school?" he asked.

I shook my head no. "Not really. Some."

"Lots of people died, Valerie. Your boyfriend Nick killed them. Do you have any idea why?"

I thought about this. In all the piecing together of what happened at the school, it had never occurred to me to even ask myself why. The answer seemed so obvious-Nick hated those kids. And they hated him back. That's why. Hate. Punches in the chest. Nicknames. Laughs. Snide comments. Being shoved into the lockers when some idiot with an att.i.tude walked by. They hated him and he hated them and somehow it ended up this way, with everyone gone.

I remembered a night around Christmas. Nick's mom had loaned Nick her car, told him to take me out. It was rare that we had wheels and we were both really excited to go somewhere outside of walking distance. We decided on a movie.

Nick picked me up in the rusty, rattletrap car, the floorboard littered with lipstick-lined Styrofoam coffee cups and empty cigarette packs stuffed into the cracks of the seats. But we didn't care. We were too happy to be getting out. I scooted over to the middle of the front seat so I could sit close to him while he drove, hesitantly, as if it was his first time behind the wheel.

"So," Nick said. "Funny or scary?"

I thought it over. "Romantic," I answered, a mischievous smile on my face.

He made a face, glanced at me. "You serious? No way. I'm not sitting through a chick flick."

"You would if I asked you," I teased.

He nodded, grinning. "Yeah," he said. "I would."

"But I won't ask you to," I said. "Funny. I'm in the mood for a laugh."

"Me too," he said. His hand left the steering wheel and moved to my knee. He squeezed it softly, then left his hand resting there.

I leaned into him, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. "I've been looking forward to this all day. My parents were so annoying last night, I swear I thought I was going to go crazy."

"Yeah, this is great," he answered, giving my knee another rea.s.suring squeeze.

We pulled into the parking lot of the movie theater. The place was packed, people spilling out onto the sidewalk and lawn in front of it. Mostly teenagers, mostly people from our school. Nick's hand left my knee and reached back for the steering wheel as he drove slowly along, scanning for a parking s.p.a.ce.

Chris Summers was walking past our car, a giant fountain drink in his hand. He was with his buddies, and they were goofing around like always. They cut across the parking lot right in front of us, causing Nick to step on the brakes hard.

Chris peered into the windshield and then started laughing.

"Nice car, freak!" he called and then c.o.c.ked his arm and lobbed the giant drink onto the windshield. The cup split open and soda and ice splattered everywhere, leaving foamy streaks as it slid down onto the hood of the car.

I jumped, a little squeal escaping me. "a.s.shole!" I screamed, even though Chris and his buddies had already moved on and were pulling open the doors of the theater. Several of the kids on the lawn had looked up and were laughing, too. "You're such a jerk!" I screamed again. "You think you're so cool, but you're just a stupid a.s.s!" I let a few more insults fly, directing my gaze at people who were laughing, including Jessica Campbell, who stood with her cl.u.s.ter of girlfriends, their hands over their open, laughing mouths. "G.o.d," I said, finally, sitting back against the seat again. "I wonder if he misses his brain, you know?"