floored upon reread that we only learn about vikki's backstory in you'll all be sorry, e.g. in the last third of the total page count, considering how central her brutalization at the hands of three classmates is to the narrative. we as readers have no particular reason to believe that hunter faced any consequences, legal or otherwise, for having almost beaten his classmate to death. by context clues and his continued presence in the town where they both grew up and where he works, we can assume that he remained in the same high school; from the fact that she sees him in the funeral home a few years later, we can assume that he did not face prison charges and was not ostracized by his family. vikki, on the other hand, was placed into alternative school and subsequently fired.
hunter acts as milo's counterpart on many levels; no responsibility-taking is required of him at all; vikki summarizes it quickly as "he's either sorry or he's not, and i'm pretty sure he's not". his actions are neither criminalised like griffin nor psychiatrized like milo, an unlikable offputting trans person. milo's crime - mutilating an already-dead body under threat of physical harm - is bad enough for his entire life to be upturned and for him to be expected to vanish from public life (physically in the ward, then online); hunter's crime is mundane enough to go undercover until much later, with vikki not being allowed to bring it up earlier or even react to his presence at her own workplace. hunter's (interesting name!) violence is unremarkable, a fact of life, worthy at best of a slap on the wrist. it is in the order of things
