Hate List

Chapter 4’s news article is about Ginny Baker, the student who rushed from Valerie’s class in Chapter 3. Sources identify her as a direct target of Nick’s; he looks around under tables until he finds her, and then he shoots her. Though her wound is not fatal, she requires extensive plastic surgery, forever marring her previously beautiful face.

Valerie faces her first excursion into the Commons. She runs into her former best friend, Stacey, in the lunch line. As they gather their meals, Stacey looks around uneasily, telling Valerie that her mother doesn’t want her hanging out with Valerie, as Stacey’s mother believes Valerie’s mother is a bad mom for allowing her daughter to get mixed up in the shooting. Valerie sees that Stacey keeps a careful distance on purpose, so she can explain away their encounter as chance. When they reach their old lunch table, Stacey excludes Valerie, much to Duce’s delight. As Valerie searches for a place to sit, she isn’t surprised she can’t find a spot among her peers, remarking, “They had spent the summer getting on with their lives. I had spent mine desperately scrambling to build a new one” (88-89). She feels like an outcast.

Valerie eats alone in the hallway, reverting to her memories. Alone, she tells the reader, “In my head I went back to the only safe place I knew. Nick” (89-90). She recalls a time when they had played a video game together, Nick letting her win, much to her chagrin. After they had playfully argued and wrestled, Nick had pinned Valerie, telling her, “‘It’s okay for someone to let you win sometimes, you know […] 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’” (91). The memory is interrupted by Garvin High’s “Queen Bee,” Jessica Campbell. Bitterly, Valerie notes that Jessica should be dead, as Nick had intended to shoot Jessica that day, and not Valerie. As Valerie prepares herself for the normal bullying, Jessica instead invites her to eat lunch at her table with the popular kids. As Jessica speaks, Valerie notices Jessica chews on the inside of her cheek, a nervous habit Valerie doesn’t remember from before. Valerie declines the offer; when she sketches the Commons, her illustration is of “a pack of wolves bent over their trays, their long snouts drawn up into snarls and sneers and smiles. Except Jessica. Her wolf-face stared delicately back at me. I was almost surprised to look down at what I’d drawn and see that her wolf-face looked a lot more like a puppy’s” (94).

Valerie flashes back to the day of the shooting, her memories intermixing with scenes from a tape of the shooting, which she has seen. After Nick shoots Christy, he continues looking for targets, while Valerie stays back to help press a shirt on Christy’s wound, begging another student to contact 911. She then follows Nick and the cracking sounds of the gunshots. She remembers Nick on the footage, looking under each table, specifically looking for people from the hate list to shoot. At the time, Valerie thought, “My brain was moving slowly still, but was picking up speed. It didn’t make sense to me. But then again, maybe it did. We had, in a way, talked about this” (99). She remembers a conversation Nick started with her about a shooting at another school; Nick joked he could do the same thing and no one would be surprised. Valerie recalls laughing at his comment at the time.

During the shooting, Valeria finally tracks Nick down; Nick is screaming at Mr. Kline to tell him Mrs. Tennille’s whereabouts. Valerie watches in horror as Nick shoots Mr. Kline. When Mr. Kline goes down, he leaves a group of previously shielded students in his wake; among them Nick finds Jessica Campbell, the most popular girl in school. Initially, students remain with Jessica, until Nick shoots one in the arm, causing them to scatter. As Jessica faces Nick alone, Valerie knows she must stop Nick and calls out to him. Nick turns, confused by her horror, and says, “Don’t you remember our plan?” (104). He turns to shoot Jessica, but Valerie gets in the way of the bullet. At first, she doesn’t feel anything, but then Valerie starts to lose consciousness. As she fades out, she recalls “all this gray fuzz appeared behind my eyes and I felt myself getting lighter and lighter or maybe it was more like heavier and heavier and then everything just went black” (105). Jessica runs to safety; the Garvin High shooting ends because Valerie sacrifices herself, betraying the boy she loves in exchange for her enemy’s life.