Hate List Read Online Free PDF

schedules,
     griping about who we got for homeroom, talking about being at some wild party together. My hands started to sweat. Stacey
     was laughing at something Duce had said, and I felt more like an outsider than ever.
    We angled into the driveway and right away I noticed two police cruisers parked next to the school. I must have made a noise
     or had a look because Mom said, “It’s just standard now. Security. Because… well, you know. They don’t want any copycats.
     It makes you safer, Valerie.”
    Mom pulled up in the drop-off zone and stopped. Her hands fell away from the steering wheel and she looked at me. I tried
     not to notice that the corners of her mouth were twitching and she was absently picking at a hangnail on her thumb. I put
     on a wobbly smile for her.
    “I’ll see you right here at two-fifty,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
    “I’ll be fine,” I said in a tiny voice. I pulled on the door handle. My hands didn’t seem to have enough strength to make
     it budge, but eventually it did, which disappointed me because it meant I was going to have to get out.
    “Maybe tomorrow you’ll wear a little lipstick or something,” Mom said as I pulled myself out of the car.
What a strange thing to say
, I thought, but I tucked my lips in against each other anyway, out of habit. I shut the door and gave Mom a half-wave. She
     waved back, searching me with her eyes until the car behind her honked and she pulled away.
    For a minute I was rooted to my spot on the sidewalk, unsure whether or not I could walk into the building. My thigh ached
     and my head was buzzing. But everyone around me seemed totally normal. A couple sophomores walked past me, talking excitedly
     about homecoming. One girl giggled as her boyfriend poked her in the side with his finger. Teachers stood around on the sidewalk,
     griping at kids to get to class. All things I remembered from the last time I was here. Strange.
    I started walking but a voice behind me made me stop dead in my tracks.
    “No way!” It seemed like someone hit the “mute” button on the world just then. I turned and looked. Stacey and Duce were standing
     there, holding hands, Stacey’s mouth hanging open, Duce’s screwed into a tidy little knot. “Val?” Stacey asked, not as if
     she didn’t believe it was me, but as if she didn’t believe it was me,
here
.
    “Hey,” I said.
    David came around Stacey and hugged me. His hug was stiff and he let go right away, stepping back in line with the rest of
     the gang, dropping his eyes to the ground in front of him.
    “I didn’t know you were coming back today,” Stacey said. Her eyes darted just briefly to the side, assessing Duce’s face,
     and I could instantly see her begin to mold herself into a copy of him. Her grin took on a superior slant that was really
     awkward on her face.
    I shrugged. Stacey and I had been friends since pretty much forever. We wore the same size, liked the same movies, dressed
     in the same clothes, told the same lies. There were stretches every summer when we were almost inseparable.
    But there was one big difference between Stacey and me. Stacey had no enemies, probably because she was so eager to please
     all the time. She was completely moldable: you just told her who she was and she became it, just like that. She definitely
     wasn’t one of the popular kids, but she wasn’t one of the losers like me, either. She had always sort of walked this line
     in between, totally under the radar.
    After “the incident” as my Dad likes to call it, Stacey came to visit me twice. Once, in the hospital, before I was speaking
     to anyone. Once at home after I was released, and I had Frankie tell her I was asleep. She never really tried to make contact
     again, and neither did I. I think maybe there was a part of me that felt like I didn’t deserve friends anymore. Like she deserved
     a better friend than me.
    In a way I felt sorry for her. I could almost see it in her