Hate List

by Jennifer Brown

awful than I already did, given that it was my boyfriend who killed all those kids and apparently I made him think I wanted them dead too. Not to mention I was the idiot who had no idea that the guy I loved was going to shoot up the school, even though he basically told me so, like, every day.

People do it all the time—assume that they “know” what’s going on in someone else’s head. That’s impossible. And to think it’s possible is a mistake. A really big mistake. A life-ruining one if you’re not careful.

My instinct was to glare at her. To tell her what I knew about happiness, which was that you never know when it can change to terror. That it never stays around.

I had changed Mom. Had changed her role as parent. No longer was her sole purpose so easy and clear-cut as it had been on the day I was born. No longer was her job to protect me from the rest of the world. Now her job was to protect the rest of the world from me. And that was so unfair.

“Never be sorry about a mother,” she answered. “Be sorry for a mother, yes, but about one, most certainly not. Mothers almost always love purple. I should know—I had a very purplish mother.”

“Just like there’s always time for pain, there’s always time for healing. Of course there is.”

I stared at him, wondering how it was that we got to this place. How the same man who held his infant daughter and kissed her tiny face could one day be so determined to shut her out of

Of course Ma would have wanted Nick remembered as a “Beloved Son.” Of course she’d do it in the most laid-back way possible—whispering it to him in tiny letters on his headstone. Just a whisper. You were beloved, son. You were my beloved. Even after all of this, I still remember the beloved you. I can’t forget.