Black Tuesday (11 page)

Jayne didn't turn around. She felt weird having a boy yell to her to call him. Or rather, “IM” him. She'd never really had a guy do that before. Sure, there was Tom, but he wasn't a
guy
guy.

As they walked away, Jayne asked in a low voice, “Why is he here? Drugs?”

“Drugs?” Ryan laughed. “Sure, why not.”

14

JAYNIE, YOU IN THERE?”

Ellie's voice sounded halfway hopeful on the other side of the bedroom door. Which was weird since Jayne had stayed pretty much to herself these last couple of months and hadn't exactly been chatty. She'd become an expert at avoiding Ellie all day and night. Luckily, if she pissed off Ellie early enough, her sister would hold a grudge for a day, maybe two.

And leave her alone for a day, maybe two.

Her living her hermit life. Ellie living her life. Where the biggest worry her sister had to deal with was “Does this shirt match these shoes?”

“I'm busy.” She pulled her comforter up to her chin and turned up the volume of
Three's Company
. Bad eighties TV was all she needed right now.

Mind-numbing TV after the mind-numbing day she'd just had at the Outreach place. Learning the phone system. Being given a manual about how to talk on the phone to teenagers in crisis.

Playing solitaire on the computer when Maria left her alone.

Ellie opened the door to the dark room and took in the flashing lights coming from the set. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“What do you want?” Jayne didn't take her eyes off Jack and Janet trying to explain to Chrissy how to make toast.

She felt something fall onto the blanket covering her legs. “I saw this in the mail. Thought you'd want to see it before Mom and Dad.”

Ellie was already at the door by the time Jayne picked up the white envelope. She saw the green palm tree in the upper left-hand corner and knew exactly what it was.

Crap
. D-day had arrived.

“Don't know why I bothered. It's not like you're watching my back or anything nowadays.”

Ellie mini-slammed the door before Jayne could say what was in her thoughts but what hadn't quite made it to her mouth.
I haven't watched your back, you ingrate? I'd like to see where you'd be without me. Pregnant and full of STDs, that's where you'd be!

Whoa, where'd that come from? She didn't hate Ellie. She just ... she just couldn't be in the same room with her right now.

Jayne glanced at the white envelope addressed “To the parents of Jayne Thompkins.” It was now or never.

Before she could talk herself out of it (it being a federal felony to open someone else's mail and all), she tore open the envelope with more force than she'd intended, ripping part of the carbon copy inside.

Four C's. Two B's. A 2.3 GPA. She checked the name at the top. Maybe it was Ellie's report card. Nope. Jayne felt like a massive hand was strangling her windpipe.

Four C's. And two B's.

Before that Tuesday, she'd had over a one hundred percent in all of her classes. But then again, it had only been a couple of weeks into the fourth quarter.

The room around her blurred as her chest began to burn and tears raced down her face. Then she did the only thing she could think of. She started tearing up the report card into smaller and smaller pieces until it looked like confetti. Even then, she tried to tear the pieces some more.

But she knew it wasn't that simple. The grades were still out there, in some computer system, in some permanent record. For a nanosecond, she entertained the idea of getting someone to hack into the high school computer system.

She picked up the shredded paper from her down comforter. Her mind wandered back to the last time she'd gotten her report card. She'd been ecstatic and had put it on her bulletin board along with every single report card she'd ever gotten.

Ellie called the board her A-hole Award Board. Jayne hadn't cared. It made her feel good to lie in bed and stare at the board and think about her future.

But now? What was the future? What in the hell did four C's and two B's get you? A job at Mickey D's scrubbing toilets?

She cupped the pile of paper between both her hands and dragged herself into her connecting bathroom, the muted cream color doing nothing to calm her nerves. She dumped everything into the blue water of the toilet and flushed.

Two flushes later, the four C's and two B's were gone. At least, the evidence was.

15

HOW'S IT GOING with the community service, Jaynie? Met any delinquents yet?” Grams lit up another Djarum clove cigarette. She hacked up a lung with the first puff.

Her grandmother floated on a raft a few feet from her, her one-piece showing leathery arms and legs, thin with old age. Her stomach, on the other hand, had seventy-two years' worth of pies, red meat, and ice cream puffing it up.

Jayne stared at the community swimming pool and tried not to breathe in the smoke. “Yeah, I've met a couple.”

“They trying to hook you up with any doobies yet?”

Jayne hid her smile in her shirt. Her grams said whatever the heck was on her mind. It was part of the package with her. “I'm not that kinda girl, Grams. Anyway, I mainly just sit around doing nothing but answering the phone for Maria, who runs the center.”

The Sun Valley Retirement Village might've been low on most teenagers' lists of places to be on a summer afternoon, but Jayne was just glad she was here and not in that cold warehouse Outreach Arizona called home. It'd been only a week since she'd started there, but it was already at the bottom of her list of “all-time greatest experiences.”

“Made any friends yet?” Grams took a drink from the Bloody Mary she kept in the raft's cup holder, the clove cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.

Before Jayne could say anything, Ellie called over from the shallow end's steps, “You've gotta be kidding, Grams. Jayne doesn't believe in friends. She's into staying in her room all day watching crap TV.”

Jayne looked up at the cloudless blue sky, trying to get the kink out of her neck. Ellie had been getting pissier and pissier with her lately. Fine by her. That meant Ellie didn't bother her.

For her insulin shots.

For homework.

For a movie.

The movie stuff, though, Jayne kind of missed. She just wasn't ready. Ready for what, she didn't know. Being normal?

Scratch that.
Feeling
normal?

Scratch that. Going back to her normal self as Ellie's go-to girl?

Yeah. Maybe.

Ellie shrieking into her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. “You were supposed to call me two hours ago, you dork!”

Jayne squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the sound. This was the fifth call Ellie had gotten since they'd been there. She felt pain pierce her gut.

Sure looked like Ellie was getting along just fine without her. And based on how much she was going out lately, Ellie didn't seem to be working on that FIT scholarship. Then again, Ellie never seemed to think about her future unless Jayne was pushing her.

Grams lowered her hot pink sunglasses and winked a cloudy blue eye at her. “Don't you worry none about the friend thing, Jaynie. I didn't have many friends as a girl, either.”

She started to cough and took a sip of her drink. Grams had been diagnosed with emphysema a couple of years ago, but that hadn't made her cut back on anything—food, alcohol, or cigarettes. “There aren't that many quality teenagers nowadays.” She sucked on her cigarette for a good five seconds and went on. “You gotta wait until you're thirty or so until you meet a divorce attorney or orthopedic surgeon at some cocktail party or PTA meeting. Now
those
are the kind of people you want to be friendly with.”

Jayne smiled. Grams had been married three times and had been in and out of hospitals the last couple of years due to broken hips and wrists. Those “friends” of hers must've been why she was always getting the best divorce settlements and had the newest, best technology holding her bones and joints together.

A high-pitched giggle interrupted their conversation. Jayne wondered if Ellie was chatting up the statutory rapist she'd pulled off of her. Danny? Denny? Whoever. Whatever, it didn't matter. Her sister was a big girl. Jayne wasn't her keeper.

“Who do you think's on the phone with Ellie?” Grams's head was turned, and Jayne knew she was straining to hear her little sister's conversation. Grams always told her she tried to live vicariously through her beautiful granddaughters.

“Don't know, don't care.”

Ellie could live her life. Jayne was too busy trying to tread water in her own life.

She felt a cool hand circle her ankle. It was a surprisingly strong hand for a woman in her seventh decade on Earth. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right, Jayne?” Grams peered at her over her pink frames. “Anything. Boys, Ellie, your life right now. I'm an ear and a shoulder when you need one.”

“Thanks, Grams.” It had been two months of not talking about the accident. She wasn't about to start now. “Yeah, I know.”

“Good. Just had to put that out there in case you didn't know.” She patted Jayne's toes before pushing away from her. For the next minute, Grams battled another coughing fit. Then she took another sip of her drink and another drag from her cigarette. “I know your dad is there for you. He's my son. I raised him right. But with that mother of yours . . .”

She shook her head and whistled, long and low.

Grams's feelings for Jayne's mom weren't exactly news. But Gen
was
her mom. She was what she was. Jayne concentrated on scooping a ladybug out of the pool with a nearby leaf.

“You going to summer school?” Grams rasped.

Jayne grimaced. Her head was down, so Grams didn't see it. She darted a look up. Nope, Grams hadn't seen it. “Yep, I start school tomorrow.”

“Good, good. I know how much you like school.”

Jayne stayed silent. She used to like school.

That was, until she got the four C's and two B's.

Jayne started feeling a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach. She knew what it was. She'd been feeling it ever since she'd gotten her report card.

She hadn't told anyone about her grades. Not Tom. Not her folks. Not Ellie.

Jayne concentrated on the ladybug as it opened and closed its wings, drying. She couldn't keep this grade thing to herself. That 2.3 was eating her up. Where'd that put her? Number fifty out of seven hundred in the class? What kind of standing was that?

What kind of future was that?

She couldn't tell anyone. If she told her mom, she'd get a lecture about goal-setting and making it in today's economy.

If she told her dad, he'd tell her mom.

If she told Ellie . . . she couldn't tell Ellie. Ellie would start asking her stupid questions again, like, “Do you think you'll still get into Harvard, Jaynie?”

How the frick would she know?

But her grams? Jayne could tell her. She wouldn't say anything.

Heck, she'd probably forget by the time
Wheel of Fortune
came on tonight.

“So. Grams.” Jayne cleared her throat and focused on the ladybug opening and closing its wings. “I kind of got a bad report card.”

She took a deep breath and, for the first time since she'd flushed the Palm Desert High letter down the toilet, said the unspeakable aloud.

“Two B's.” She swallowed and took a deep breath to force the rest of the words out. “And four C's.”

There. She'd finally said it. She might as well say the rest, too.

“There's no way I'm going to be valedictorian now.” Another swallow, another breath. “Who knows if I'm even in the top ten percent of the class? Or even up for that Senior Student award anymore?”

Was she talking too loud? She looked over at Ellie, whose yellow bikini top pushed her boobs up all perfectly. In a quieter voice, she added, “Harvard's definitely not going to give me the time of day now.”

The last words were really a question. She waited for Grams to say she was an idiot. That Harvard was still in the cards.

She waited. And waited. The ladybug flew off.

A raspy snore finally broke the wait. Jayne looked up to see the Bloody Mary tipped over into the pool, the red liquid mixing with the chlorinated water.

16

C'MON, TOMMY.” Jayne fell back onto her bed, the cordless under her chin. She turned on the TV and flipped through the channels, the volume on mute. Tom hated it when she talked to him with the TV on. “I have to be there for three hours a day, five days a week.”

Summer school started tomorrow. And Jayne was dreading it.

Possibly worse than the time she had to go to the dentist to get all four wisdom teeth pulled freshman year.

“And how is me being there three hours a day, five days a week, going to help you?” Tom asked.

“By keeping me company at the break.”

“That's only fifteen minutes.”

“We can pass notes.”

“Jayne, you don't pass notes. It goes against your ‘shh, the teacher's talking' code.”

“A girl can change.” She had one more way to get him to say yes. She just had to be careful about how she phrased it. “Taking classes now can help you stock up on more honors classes in the fall, you know.”

“What's the point? You're set as valedictorian, right?” There seemed to be an open-ended question there. Did he know about her grades? She felt her eyelid twitch.