Black Tuesday (3 page)

“By how much?”

Miss Challen shook her head and tsked, but she kept smiling. Jayne knew that smile. The academic adviser had always told Jayne she was the most competitive, grade-focused person she'd ever met in her life. “You know I can't divulge that information.”

Jayne shrugged, splitting her blonde ponytail apart and pulling it tighter. “That's okay.” She grinned. “I'll ask the loser later.”

“Always good to see what a good sport you are, Jayne.”

Jayne said the words she always heard her mother say, but she said them with the humor her mother always lacked: “It's called having a healthy competitive spirit.”

 

Jayne was walking down the last hallway, heading toward the parking lot, when her cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID before flipping the phone open. “Sucked any face today?”

“Not yet,” Ellie chirped back, “but the day's still young. Hey, are you still at school?”

“Yeah. I'm on my way to practice. I've got”—she checked her watch—“fifteen minutes to get over to the club. What's up?”

“I left my biology homework in my locker. Could you get it for me?”

Jayne slowed down her steps, but she didn't stop. “I'm really running late, Elle. And Coach Reynolds told me he'd make Missy captain if I was late again. She'll love gloating about that.”

“She's just pissed that you're only a junior and she's a senior.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Jayne felt her feet slowing down even more, her body warring with her brain. Her brain knew she had to get to practice. Her heart—and her feet—knew that Ellie was flunking biology. FIT didn't care if prospective students had a 4.0 GPA, but it definitely wasn't looking for students with a D or F average.

Jayne turned and went back down the hall, walking fast and furious. Ellie wasn't the brain in this family. A bad science grade might have a domino effect on the rest of her grades and lead Ellie to drop out, get a GED, and live in a double-wide trailer out in Mesa. Bye-bye, bright future. “Fine. I'm on my way to pick up your homework, slacker.”

“You know you're my favorite sister, right?”

Before Jayne could call Ellie on the load of crap she was shoveling her way, Lori Parnell and her best friend, Jenna Deavers, sprinted by in their blue-and-white cheerleading uniforms. They were two of the most popular girls at Palm Desert High, not because they were the smartest or the prettiest or even that nice, but because they were the meanest.

Behind their backs, everyone called them the Wicked Witches of the East and West.

But to their faces, everyone was nice. That was because they ran a blog that no one wanted to be on:
Palm Desert's Pathetic Losers
.

No one who was anyone wanted to make that list. As a result, everyone invited them to their parties. And kept the Wicked Witch comments to themselves.

Jayne hadn't made the list. What were they going to say about her?
Jayne's too smart and gets all A's. What a loser
. Ow. The pain.

As they trotted past her, Lori called out, “Does it ever get tiring to be such a wench?”

I don't know. How
does
it feel, lard butt?

In her head, she said the words. But Jayne didn't say them aloud. Even though she could've. Lori must've had the most cellulite of any sixteen-year-old, ever.

Jenna giggled. She was always giggling over anything Lori said. That's what lackeys usually did.

Jenna said, “Wench. Awesome word.”

“Who are you talking to?” Ellie's voice pulled Jayne out of her thoughts about the Wicked Witches.

“No one important.” Jayne stopped at her sister's locker. She tried to get Tweedledum and Tweedledumber out of her head. Otherwise, her backhand was going to be crap today. “What's your locker combo again?”

Ellie recited the numbers. “I totally owe you one, Jayne.”

“Yeah?” She started turning the dial. “What are you going to do for me if Missy gets made captain?”

“I'll make like Tonya Harding and break her kneecap.”

4

ONE BIOLOGY HOMEWORK assignment later, Jayne made her way to the underclassmen parking lot. It was behind the football field and as far as a person could walk and still stay on campus.

She had about twelve minutes to get to practice.

“Jayne!”

“What!” Jayne didn't even turn around. She knew that voice. She'd first heard it in fourth grade asking to borrow a pencil.

“Have you been to see Challen?” A boy with wavy brown hair and a runner's body loped up beside her.

“Do you even have to ask, Tommy?” Jayne spared him a sideways glance as she pulled out her car keys.

“Then you know you're number two?” He tried, but he just couldn't hold the lie. His left eye blinked. That left eye of his was Jayne's lie detector. No blink—he was telling the truth. Blink—he was lying.

“Nice try. I'm still holding at number one.”

“Well, did you know
I'm
number two?” He jostled her with an elbow in the ribs. He smelled like Old Spice deodorant and Bengay. He'd done a few too many curls the other day at the gym when he tried to out-curl Jayne. He'd forgotten to take into account that he had a thirty-five-pound dumbbell and she'd been using a ten-pounder.

“Yeah, I did.” Jayne smiled up at him, squinting against the sun and into his dark blue eyes. Tom really had the nicest eyes she'd ever seen outside of Ellie's. “That makes Jenna Deavers number three.”

Jenna was a witch, but she was a smart witch.

“Four.”

“What?” Jayne was almost shocked enough to slow down her speed walk. “How?”

“A B-minus in PE.”

Jayne smiled. She believed in karma, and Jenna had just gotten a visit. “That makes sense. She spent a month in study hall instead of PE because we had to run a hundred laps in four weeks. So she made up some inner ear thing to get out of it.”

Jayne spotted her sweet-sixteen birthday present at the far end of the parking lot and pointed her remote at it. The white Jetta's headlights blinked and the horn beeped as she unlocked the doors.

Tom wiped at his mouth with the neck of his “Property of Palm Desert High” gym shirt. “Why are you still here? Don't you have tennis practice?”

“Ellie called and—”

“—and she asked for favor 3,298. Got it.” Tom put a hand on her elbow to slow her down. “Hey, I heard about Danny Broden's car. Genius.”

“Thanks.” Jayne flashed him a smile before focusing again on the car. One call to a tow-truck company had solved all of Jayne's problems. Ellie's little boy toy hadn't been too happy about his visit to Joe's Tow Service, but when Jayne reminded him about how cold the military schools got in Alaska, he'd shut up.

Tom cleared his throat and lightly touched her forearm. “I have to get to track practice, but I was wondering if I could talk to you for a second.”

“Weren't we just doing that?” She had to get to practice herself. The panicked feeling in Jayne's stomach was starting to spread through her whole body.

She pulled away from his grasp and opened the car door, throwing her book bag on the passenger seat. “Give me a call later, 'kay? If I'm late, I can kiss being captain good-bye.” She put on a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses hanging from her visor. “And you know Missy's going to lord it over me the rest of the year if that happens.”

They smiled at each other as they said in unison: “Bee-yotch.”

Yep, Tom was her best friend for a reason. They definitely were on the same wavelength. Not on a boyfriend-girlfriend level, but that would've just messed things up anyway. Romantic feelings always messed things up.

Ellie was the prime example of that.

Jayne punched the key into the ignition and turned toward Tom. He looked like he was going to say more but changed his mind.

“I won't be home till late,” he said, “so I'll talk to you tomorrow at school.”

“Or e-mail me tonight.”

“That's okay. It can wait until tomorrow.”

Jayne didn't notice the tiny blush on Tom's face. She was already closing the door and thinking how fast she could drive to practice without getting pulled over.

 

The clock on the dashboard said 3:57.
Come on, come on, come on!
She was behind a grandma in a Toyota Camry whose left blinker had been on for the last five blocks. They were going twenty-eight in a thirty-five zone on a two-lane road. Jayne had half a mind to cross the double line and pass the clueless driver. The fear of getting pulled over by a hidden cop stopped her.

She really didn't have time to devote a Saturday to traffic school.

Beethoven's Fifth started playing over the CD that had started up as soon as she'd turned on the car. Jayne flipped open her cell, not even checking the caller ID. Ellie probably wanted to cajole her into doing her biology homework.

That was so not going to happen.

Again.

“What is it now?”

“Jayne! Good. I have two minutes before I meet with my producer and I need to talk to you.”

Jayne clenched the steering wheel. Gen Thompkins was Arizona's number-one-rated newscaster. She reigned over the six o'clock and nine o'clock news on channel 16. The five-year-old show had Gen in her element: wearing thousand-dollar Saks Fifth Avenue suits while stirring up eggs Benedict with a local five-star chef or getting on-air Botox from the best plastic surgeon in the Sonoran Desert.

“What do you need to talk about?” Jayne's foot hovered over the brake while she silently cursed the mentally deficient driver in front of her.

“As usual, I'm up to my ears in work.” As usual, her mom was in “me” mode. “But I really want to do something for your dad's forty-fifth.” She paused. “I want us to throw your dad a surprise party.”

The grandma in the Camry finally turned, making a right as the left-turn signal continued blinking. Jayne jammed her foot on the accelerator and tried to keep from looking at the clock.

She heard her mom mutter something to someone on her side of the line before turning her attention back to Jayne. Gen liked to think she could multitask, but she wasn't good at it. Something—or someone—always ended up getting the short end of the stick.

“Now, we both know you're on much better terms with your grandmother than I am,” she started saying. “I need you to call your grandmother and have her bring some baby pictures of your father. I want to get the production guys here at the station to put together a slide show, a kind of
This Is Your Life
thing.”

Jayne sped through a yellow light. Only one more street to go and she'd be at practice and would secure her spot as captain of the Palm Desert varsity tennis team.

Jayne hazarded a glance at the clock. 4:02.
Crap!
“Sure. I'll call Grams later tonight.”

“Great. You're the best oldest daughter I've ever had.” Her mom hung up. Gen Thompkins wasn't big into saying good-byes.

Jayne was about to put the phone down when it rang again. This time she looked at the caller ID.
Ellie
. She flipped open the phone. As annoyed as she was at Ellie, taking the call was an automatic reflex. Like breathing.

She looked up from the caller ID and a cold sweat broke out over her body. The intersection was ten, maybe fifteen yards away. The light was red.

She was barreling toward it.

And the red sedan in the middle of the intersection.

5

OH MY GOD.

Jayne's head was resting on something weird. Actually, her head resting on anything right now was weird. She slowly sat up and realized it was the car's air bag.

White dust moved in slow motion around her. The smell of burned rubber filled her nostrils.

She felt like she was watching a bad made-for-TV movie. And some stupid girl answering a cell phone had gotten into an accident.

A pain shot through her wrist. The girl wasn't on TV. It was her. Her, Jayne Thompkins, the girl who never even got so much as a detention.
She
was the stupid girl in the crushed car.

She turned to watch the dust from the air bag float through the air and took a deep, quivering breath.

“Oww!” Her nose throbbed, like a brick had slammed into it.

She followed one of the dust particles with her eyes and tried to remember what had happened. Everything had been such a blur, followed by screeching brakes, shattering glass, crunching metal.

She sat in the car and waited for the ringing in her ears to stop. Jayne heard a voice coming from below her. Why would a voice be coming from that direction? She tried to make sense of it, but her brain felt like it was in a bowl of really dense Jell-O.

The cell phone. She'd hit TALK right before she'd seen the red light. The red car.

Then black as her face smashed into the air bag.

Where was the red car? It wasn't in front of her, or to her left, either.

It was to her right, locked together with a black luxury car. The black car's hood had mangled the red one's. Both front air bags were visible in the red sedan.

Jayne's heartbeat sounded abnormally loud in her ears, and it felt like her stomach was being wrung like a wet dish towel.

She closed her eyes and the images replayed in her head.

Her white Jetta plowing into the red sedan. Pushing it into oncoming traffic. A black blur smashing into the sedan. Head-on.

Jayne opened her eyes, even though she just wanted to keep them closed and rewind time. She scanned the distance between her and the other two cars. About thirty yards separated her from the destruction she'd caused.