The Hate Race: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

In the summer between grade six and high school, Maxine is 13 and enjoying the beginning of adolescence. She spends her summer peacefully with activities such as roller skating and watching Black family sitcoms. A few weeks after school ends, she takes out her old school uniform, on which everyone wrote goodbye messages at the end of the school year. She observes how all of the messages are either neutral or kind, despite how much bullying she received from many of the students who signed. She throws away the dress, then changes her mind and retrieves it. She decides that everything she dealt with in primary school was just “teasing” and that she should be stronger in high school.

One day, Maxine goes to the gas station to get a slurpee—a freedom Cleopatra now gives her the privilege of enjoying. While there, she runs into Carlita, who is with a new friend, an Asian girl named Melanie. Carlita is uncharacteristically friendly to Maxine, whom she introduces to Melanie as a “friend.” Maxine responds coldly and walks out; when she turns around, she sees Melanie staring at her through the store window. Later, Maxine mockingly recounts the encounter to her friend Selina, whom she befriended in grade six and who she now spends much of her time with.