Hate List by Jennifer Brown

when she and Dad
     were left in the kitchen together for too long. I felt a brief pang of guilt for leaving Frankie down there alone to bear
     the brunt of her frustrations since I was technically the one who had her frustrated. But Frankie never got it as bad as I
     did. In fact, ever since the shooting, Frankie really didn’t exist much. No curfew, no chores, no limits. Mom and Dad were
     always too busy fighting with one another and worrying about me to remember they had another kid to worry about. I didn’t
     know if I should feel really jealous of Frankie for that, or really sorry for him. Maybe both.
    That weary feeling came back and I dropped the glass and plate into my trash can and flopped backward on my bed. I reached
     into my backpack. I pulled out my notebook and flipped it open. I chewed my lip, staring at the pictures I’d drawn throughout
     the day.
    I rolled over and pushed the button to turn on my stereo and cranked it. Mom would be up in a few minutes hollering at me
     through the door to turn it down, but she’d already confiscated all my “concerning” music—you know, the music that she and
     Dad and probably Dr. Hieler and every other old fart in the world thought would incite me to slit my wrists in the bathtub—which still ticked me off since I bought most of that music with my own money. I turned up the volume loud enough that I
     wouldn’t even hear her. She’d get tired of pounding long before I’d get tired of her pounding. So let her pound.
    I reached into my backpack again and pulled out a pencil. I chewed on the eraser for a minute, looking at the picture I’d
     started of Mrs. Tennille. She looked so sad. Wasn’t it funny that not all that long ago I would’ve said I’d wanted Tennille
     to feel sad? I’d hated her. But today, seeing how sad she was, I felt horrible. I felt responsible. I wanted her to smile,
     and I wondered if she smiled when she got home and held her kids or if she just came home and sat back in her recliner with
     a vodka and drank until she couldn’t hear the gunshots anymore.
    I bent my head and started drawing—drawing her doing both at the same time, curling around a little boy like a peanut inside
     a shell, her hand curling around a bottle of vodka like the shell clings to the vine.

PART TWO
     

MAY 2, 2008
6:36 P.M .
“What did you do?”

6
    When I opened my eyes again, I was actually surprised to find that I wasn’t still asleep in my own bed, waking to start a
     new school day. That’s the way it was supposed to work, right? Nick was supposed to call and I was supposed to go on to school,
     hating every minute of it, worrying that he and Jeremy were at Blue Lake doing God-knows-what and agonizing that Nick was
     going to break up with me and getting pestered by Christy Bruter on the bus. I was supposed to wake up and the scraps that
     I could remember about Nick shooting up the Commons were supposed to be a dream, drifting away before I could even drum up
     the images fully in my awakened mind.
    I woke up in the hospital. There were police in my room and the TV was turned on to a crime scene. Their backs were turned
     to me, their faces tilted up toward the TV screen. I squinted at the TV where images of a parking lot, a brick building, a
     football field, all vaguely familiar, blipped on and off of the screen. I shut my eyes again. I felt groggy. My eyes were
     very dry and my leg throbbed, and I started to remember not exactly what happened, but that something really bad had happened.
    “She’s waking up,” I heard. I recognized the voice as Frankie’s, but I hadn’t seen him when I’d opened my eyes before and
     it seemed easier to just imagine him standing next to the bed saying that than to try to see him. So I let myself drift into
     this imaginary world where Frankie was standing nearby, saying
She’s waking up
and it was true, but I wasn’t in the hospital and my leg didn’t hurt.
    “I’ll go find a nurse,” another voice