Hate List

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009

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Part 3, Chapters 18-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3

Part 3, Chapter 18 Summary

Chapter 18 begins with a newspaper article about Chris Summers, a name Valerie mentions many times in flashbacks. Dash’s article informs the reader that Nick shot and killed Summers, who was Nick’s bully. Witnesses reported Nick taunted Summers before finally shooting him, relishing their role reversal, Nick the “big man,” holding the gun at Chris.

In present time, Valerie tempers such a chilling description of Nick with a flashback of her own, where Nick seems more resigned than evil. As the couple is in a tent, Valerie remembers watching a spider make its way across the tent’s fabric; she thinks, “I wondered what it planned to do once it got there. Or was that how a spider’s life was spent—forever scrabbling to reach a peak of something, the scrabbling its only goal?” (227). Nick, hopeless about any forthcoming change in their senior year, claims he and Valerie must stop scrabbling themselves and take a stand to make things better at Garvin High.

Valerie attends the student council meeting with Jessica. The meeting turns awkward as the students discuss ways to raise money for a memorial, particularly when someone raises the subject of donut sale profits; the student council regularly sold donuts in the Commons until the day of the shooting, when Jessica’s best friend, Abby Dempsey, was killed by a bullet intended for another target. Jessica reminds them that Abby would have wanted the sales to go toward the memorial. When the subject of what to do for the memorial comes up, the council remains silent until, surprisingly, Valerie recommends a time capsule and a bench honoring the victims.

The word “victims” raises debate as the kids begin to argue over whether or not to include Nick on that list; their advisor, Mrs. Stone, strongly suggests that Nick was a victim as well. Valerie blurts out not to include Nick, suddenly self-aware of a dark question: “Was a part of me that I hadn’t yet identified suddenly popping up, voicing my fear aloud: that Nick and I weren’t the victims…we were the ultimate bullies?” (232). Feeling she has betrayed Nick by leaving him out and joining with people like Jessica Campbell, Valerie flees from the meeting. She mourns, “I felt a shift inside myself so abrupt it was almost physical. I could practically see myself splitting into two people on the inside: the Valerie before the shooting and the Valerie now. And it just didn’t match up” (232). This emotional break sends her running to her mother.

Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary

This chapter begins with a news story about Lin Yong, a violinist struck by gunfire as Nick tried to reach Jessica Campbell on the day of the shooting; Yong explains how the injury ended her all-state music career. Still, Yong expresses gratitude at being alive when so many others died.

Valerie’s mother schedules an emergency visit with Dr. Hieler after the emotional break Valerie suffers at the student council meeting. During that meeting, Valerie struggles to get the words out to Hieler, to explain the strong blow to her sense of self she has suffered. As an outsider and compatriot to Nick, she wonders, “Should I tell him that what happened was that I publicly abandoned Nick, that they’d all finally gotten it through my head that Nick was bad? Should I tell him that I felt guilty as hell about it? That I’d caved to popular kid’s pressure and was so ashamed by it?” (235). Instead, she tells Dr. Hieler she left her calculator at school and that is what upset her. Wise to her ruse, Dr. Hieler explains to Valerie that sometimes people forget calculators and sometimes people replace calculators, but that doesn’t mean the owner doesn’t value the old calculator.

The next day, Valerie meets with Mrs. Tate, who asks how things are going with Dr. Hieler. Recalling their previous sessions, Valerie says things are going well. She reflects, “When I thought about all the times I felt most validated, safest, Dr. Hieler was usually involved in one way or another” (238). Mrs. Tate brings up the Commons, a place Valerie views as haunted by memories of the shooting: the world before and after that life-changing event. However, Mrs. Tate informs her she must start eating there, as “‘Mr. Angerson has put a ban on all solitary student activity’” (239), which includes eating lunch alone in the hallway. Valerie faces detention and suspension if she refuses to eat with her classmates in the Commons.

Part 3, Chapters 18-19 Analysis

These sections force Valerie to accept the difficulty she wrestles with: reconciling Nick the murderer with Nick her boyfriend. By accepting Jessica’s proposal to join the student council committee, she associates with the very people she and Nick avoided, and included on a hate list less than a year ago. Now, Valerie finds herself denying Nick, and denying his place on the memorial; this causes a break in her so powerful she runs from the meeting in order to see Dr. Hieler. This break is a function of her brain trying to simultaneously process her love for Nick and censure her own hatred of what he did, her simultaneous self-identification as a victim and a bully.