Hate List

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009

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Part 3, Chapters 28-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3

Part 3, Chapter 28 Summary

Valerie uncharacteristically paints her nails pink, a color she hasn’t worn in so long, she’s afraid the polish is not good. She remarks that her usual colors for the past few years have been black, navy, hunter green, or a sickly, corpselike yellow. Before that, Valerie reminds the reader, “Everything had been pink. I think I burned myself out on pink. And then I burned myself out on black. I’m not sure” (290).

Her dad comes in gingerly, described as moving through Valerie’s messy room like he’s picking his way “through a minefield” (291). He’s come to discuss what Valerie witnessed with his secretary at his office. First, he tells Valerie he loves Briley, his secretary, and that he has already told Valerie’s mother, who has kicked him out. To hear her father speak of love surprises Valerie: “I guess I’d always seen Dad as one-dimensional. Never a thought that didn’t include work. Never an emotion that wasn’t impatience or anger”(293).

Part 3, Chapter 29 Summary

Later that night, after her father has left the family for good, Valerie sneaks down to eat. She encounters her mother, crying. She asks her mother if she’s going to miss Valerie’s father, to which her mother responds, “I miss the guy I said ‘I do’ to. You probably wouldn’t understand” (298). Valerie hesitates before deciding to explain to her mother that that is exactly how this situation with Nick makes her feel. Instead of arguing, her mother agrees with her. Her mother expresses worry about Frankie turning out like Valerie, but Valerie reassures her mother that Frankie hangs out with good kids and won’t get into trouble. They reminisce about a family vacation until Valerie thinks, “Suddenly I felt this overwhelming need to repair something inside of my mother. Suddenly I was awash with compassion for her that I might have sworn would never again exist” (301), so she tells her mother about Jessica’s invitation, which comforts her mother.

Part 3, Chapters 28-29 Analysis

As Valerie’s father awaits her reaction when he announces his departure, Valerie examines her toenail polish for a change in color, indicating a change in mood, but, she reflects, “The truth was, and we both knew it, he’d gone long, long ago. I’d just made him stick around when he really wanted to be somewhere else. In his own weird way he was another victim of the shooting” (294). When she asks her father if he will ever forgive her, he responds that he cannot; although she did not pull the trigger, he blames her for the deaths at Garvin High. This reveals her father’s cold character; he moves on with his life, and does not accept any blame for his role in the hate list. The choice to paint her nails pink also reveals how much Valerie has changed: she looks for more balance when she chooses to mix up her color choice with the brighter, pink polish.

Though she loses traction with her father in this section, she gains some with her mother, however fleeting. The two come to an understanding about Nick. Her fresh sympathy for her mother makes her bring up the invite from Jessica Campbell to the party, to which her mother replies, “Sometimes, I forget that you were also a hero that day. All I see is a girl who wrote a list of people she wanted dead” (301). Valerie does not bother arguing anymore that she never wanted anyone dead; instead, Valerie genuinely wants to help her mother, so where she would typically argue, she relents, showing further growth and progress.