Haters by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Author:Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez [Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780759568891
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

I wake up in a hospital room. I haven’t been in one of these since my mother overdosed on cocaine a few years back and we all drove from Taos to Santa Fe to visit her and try to talk her into going into rehab. My father sits in a chair next to the bed I’m in, with that very same face that he had then. My stomach and head hurt so much I can’t stand it. I groan, and Dad uses a cool white washcloth to dab my forehead.

“Dad,” I whisper. “What happened?”

“Shh,” he says. “Just rest.”

I feel my stomach lurch. “Oh God. I have to throw up.”

Dad holds a pink plastic tub up to my mouth, and I vomit into it. “That’s good,” Dad says. “It’s the medicine they gave you to make you purge the drugs.”

“Drugs?” I ask. He wipes my mouth and looks at me with a mixture of love and pity in his eyes. “Dad, what happened to me? Why am I here?”

I look around the room and see that Chris is here. No! I don’t want him to see me like this. Why is he here? Please tell me he did not just see me hurl. No, wait. I have a memory of hurling on him earlier. Oh, my God. For some reason, Haley is with him. There is also a nurse in the room. She checks my chart and watches me carefully.

“Hi,” says Chris with a strange, sad smile.

“What happened?” I repeat.

My father looks at Chris and Haley, and then Haley answers. “Andrew put something in your soda, Paski.”

“You don’t know for sure it was Andrew,” says Chris.

“Like what?” I ask.

“The date rape drug,” says Haley.

Now my dad speaks. “According to your friends here, one of the boys at the party put something in your drink so that he could try to have sex with you without you remembering it.” My father says the word “friends” sarcastically, as if he can’t believe these people care about me, as if he hates them.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Tina warned me.”

“Who’s Tina?” asks Dad.

“A friend,” I say. For the first time, I realize that she really, truly is a friend. She might be the only friend I’ve made, and she tried to warn me. I shouldn’t have put my need to be with the popular kids ahead of my loyalty to the nicest girl in school, the only one who went out of her way to make me feel welcome, the only one who tried to protect me from Andrew. Well, almost the only one. Chris saved me. I remember that now. He jumped in the pool and pulled me out. And Keoni and Kerani told me to be careful. I have to thank them for that. They’re good guys. They really are.

“My poor girl,” says Dad, dabbing my head again. Okay, now the whole washcloth thing is getting annoying. Dad is kind of clumsy with these real gentle tasks. It makes me wish I had a mom, so bad.

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