

Maybe everybody saw it and that’s why they hate me so much—because I’m a poser. Maybe he even knew something about me I didn’t even know. “Maybe I thought I didn’t mean for those people to die, but somewhere, I don’t know, subconsciously, I really meant it. Valerie is left with the terrible guilt that she possibly helped cause this catastrophic event with her Hate List, a notebook full of names of all the people who ever tormented her and Nick. That was the moment Valerie realized she didn’t know Nick at all–at least, not this empty-eyed person who calmly gunned down their classmates one by one. Until Valerie threw herself in front of Nick’s gun to stop the carnage and sustained a terrible wound to her leg. Until the day he walked into the school Commons and killed six students and one teacher, then turned the gun on himself. Valerie thought she knew her boyfriend Nick.

Even though they were both outcasts at their high school, Nick always made Valerie feel like she belonged.

He was smart and funny and angry and sarcastic, just like Valerie.
