Chapter 18 begins with a newspaper article about Chris Summers, a name Valerie mentions many times in flashbacks. Dash’s article informs the reader that Nick shot and killed Summers, who was Nick’s bully. Witnesses reported Nick taunted Summers before finally shooting him, relishing their role reversal, Nick the “big man,” holding the gun at Chris.

In present time, Valerie tempers such a chilling description of Nick with a flashback of her own, where Nick seems more resigned than evil. As the couple is in a tent, Valerie remembers watching a spider make its way across the tent’s fabric; she thinks, “I wondered what it planned to do once it got there. Or was that how a spider’s life was spent—forever scrabbling to reach a peak of something, the scrabbling its only goal?” (227). Nick, hopeless about any forthcoming change in their senior year, claims he and Valerie must stop scrabbling themselves and take a stand to make things better at Garvin High.

Valerie attends the student council meeting with Jessica. The meeting turns awkward as the students discuss ways to raise money for a memorial, particularly when someone raises the subject of donut sale profits; the student council regularly sold donuts in the Commons until the day of the shooting, when Jessica’s best friend, Abby Dempsey, was killed by a bullet intended for another target.