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Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009

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Part 2, Chapters 14-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2

Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary

During her session with Dr. Hieler, Valerie discusses her life, her hobbies, and her friends. Valerie asks Dr. Hieler if Valerie’s mother, whom Dr. Hieler sees separately, blames her for the shooting. Dr. Hieler tells Valerie that her mother blames herself, which organically leads into Valerie’s conversation with Stacey about apologizing to the victims of the shooting. Valerie questions whether she needs to apologize to a bully like Christy Bruter, a stance Dr. Hieler asks her to reexamine. He also asks her to think about the wisdom of alienating all her friends, as she did when she sent Stacey away the second and last time she visited Valerie. However, seeing Valerie is not quite prepared for this, he diffuses the seriousness of the situation with humor.

Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary

As this chapter begins, Valerie is reading a newspaper article, written by Angela Dash and quoting heavily from Principle Angerson. The content of the article claims Garvin students, responding to the shooting with solidarity, are now better people, that “behavioral difficulties are a thing of the past,” and “students are starting to understand that we’re all friends here” (201). Upset, Valerie takes the news article to an appointment with Dr. Hieler. If the content of the report is true, then Valerie wants to know if that makes Nick a hero, since solidarity and kindness are such good things. However, Hieler sees how this article fits a broad pattern of blaming the students and not the administration or other present factors, like bullying, for the shooting.

Hieler gently tells Valerie that it is hard to cast Nick as a hero because he killed people. He also adds that he believes Valerie is mad that the change didn’t happen for Nick, instead of after his death. Finally, Dr. Hieler suggests that she doesn’t really believe the change even happened. He reminds her of an old adage: “Life isn’t fair. A fair’s a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the Ferris wheel” (203).

Part 2, Chapters 14-15 Analysis

During a session, Dr. Hieler asks Valerie about her hobbies, but she finds herself at a loss to answer him because so much of her identity is tied into Nick’s. Also, she has trouble answering him because “it had been so long since there were things about me that were important other than the shooting” (194). She notices a wooden hot air balloon decoration in the office and remarks how she likes it. Dr. Hieler tells her that the hot air balloon is special: “In this office, anything can fly. No matter what is weighing it down” (195). His comment allows Valerie to reimagine her perspective on things.

Raising the subject of bullying, Valerie spills her deepest fears to Hieler: she wonders if she is a killer just because she wished people dead who had hurt her and Nick—that subconsciously, she wanted the shooting to happen and Nick knew it. Internalizing her love for Nick and grieving his loss make her feel even more alone. Confessing this to Dr. Hieler, Valerie “felt embarrassed, exposed, a little disbelieving that [she’d] spilled everything like that. [She] wanted to slink out of there, never to face Dr. Hieler again” (205). Met so often with resistance and anger when expressing her true feelings, Valerie now starts to understand what a real ally she has in Dr. Hieler.