Black Tuesday (2 page)

Ellie snorted. “You mean
if
.”

“No. I mean
when
,” Jayne said with a smile.

Suddenly, the front door slammed shut. “Ellie? Jayne? You girls home?”

Ellie stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Jayne.

Their mom was home.

Ellie was screwed.

2

CRAP!” Ellie said. “She's going to kill me.”

Jayne cleared her head, like she did right before she took a test. In order to outsmart her mom, she had to treat this whole situation like a test. “We'll just say the jerkwad here was helping you study, Elle. Don't worry about it.”

“Don't worry about it?” Ellie bit down on one of her cotton-candy-pink nails. “Jaynie, Mom grounded me this week because I'm getting a D in pre-algebra. I'm not supposed to have anyone over.”

“We'll just say Dennis here was tutoring you in pre-algebra.”

“Yo, it's Danny.”

Jayne hissed, “Keep your voice down, idiot.”

“But that won't work. Mom paid for a tutor.” Ellie looked like a beaver with a log, the way she was going at her nail.

“We'll just say Danny here's that tutor.”

“Uh-uh. Won't work. Mom made sure they gave me a girl because of my ‘boy-crazy tendencies.'”

Jayne exhaled. She shouldn't be this tense. After all, it wasn't like her mom was the Antichrist. Then again, Ellie always liked to say she didn't have the fear of God in her—just the fear of Gen Thompkins.

“What are we going to do?” Ellie whispered, her words coming out like a mouse on helium.

They both knew that boys weren't allowed at the Thompkins homestead when no parent was around. And boys were definitely never allowed in either of their bedrooms, the only exceptions being paramedics and firemen if one of them was dying. As in not breathing.

Bleeding and unconscious didn't count.

Evasive action was needed. Now. Jayne called out, “We're in Ellie's room, Mom. We'll be right there!”

“Whose car is that in the driveway?” Jayne should've known their mom wasn't going to back off that easily.

Jayne racked her brain for a good explanation. Just like during a test, she mulled her options. None were good. And just like during a test, she opted to skip this question for later. “Mom, can't hear you! We'll be out in a minute!”

She turned to the boy in her sister's room. Judging by the look of terror on his face, he definitely didn't want to face Gen Thompkins. She was the kind of woman who convinced fathers to send their sons to military schools. Word on the street was she'd already done it twice.

Only Jayne and Ellie knew the truth. And how close the rumor was to the truth. Gen had powerful friends. That didn't bode well for the boys who messed with her daughters.

“Okay, we need a plan,” Jayne said, looking around the pale rose room. Her eyes stopped on the door leading to the adjoining bathroom. “The bathroom window. Let's go.”

Danny and Ellie ran ahead of her into bathroom and then stopped. “That window's like five feet up!” Danny whined.

“Keep your voice down!” Jayne surveyed the window and the claw-foot tub under it. “Ellie, bring your desk chair in here.”

Jayne grabbed the chair her sister dragged in and positioned it under the window. She went up first, sliding the window open before pushing the screen out with the palms of her hands. “Okay, listen, David, Denny, dipwad.” She climbed off the chair. “Whatever your name is. Your skinny butt should fit through here. There's a natal plum bush below it, so your fall should be cushioned.”

“Fall?” A lock of girly hair fell over his eye.

Jayne arched an eyebrow at him. “Military school?”

He scowled at her and stepped onto the chair.

“Wait.” She stopped him from climbing through the window by hooking a finger through his belt loop. “Make sure you put the screen between the bush and the house to hide it. I'll pop it back in later.”

He started to pull himself through the window. Jayne yanked him back down again.

“What!”

“You're going to have to leave your car here.”

“Whatever.” His scowl told her he thought she was nuts. And that she could go to hell.

“Do you want my mother seeing you drive away?”

“No, but I don't really want to walk ten miles to get home.”

Jayne had to admit that it was pretty hot for April. Then again, Paradise Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, was usually pushing the triple digits this time of year, and this big whiny baby should be used to it. She said in a low, rushed voice, “You should have thought of that before introducing yourself to my sister's boobies.”

Jayne pushed him through the window and closed it.

“Girls?” The three of them stopped talking as the bedroom door handle jiggled. “Everything okay in there?”

Jayne's mind raced to think of an excuse. What could buy them time with Gen Thompkins, the mother who micromanaged every minute of their lives when she wasn't micromanaging her career?

“We're putting highlights in Ellie's hair, Mom. I'm on a roll with the foil, or else I'd get the door.” Jayne's mind raced, trying to cover any loophole she hadn't thought about. “Gustav couldn't fit us in, so we got our own kit.”

“I've warned you girls about those box highlights. I hope you're not turning that gorgeous hair of Ellie's orange.”

It was just like her mom to think Jayne was screwing up. Jayne had never gotten anything less than an A-minus in her entire life, but her mom still found a way to harp about a minus.

Her mom's voice pierced through the door again, breaking through Jayne's thoughts. “Whose car is that out front?”

Back to that question again. Jayne wasn't fooled by the no-nonsense, sane tone of her mom's newscaster voice. She knew that if any of them played this the wrong way, her mom would get a drill and pry the door off its hinges.

Ellie looked at Jayne, speechless again. When it came to standing up to their mom, Ellie had a way of becoming a big useless blob.

Which usually turned Jayne into a big fat liar. All for the sake of saving Ellie's butt. “One of Ellie's friends took her to get the highlights, and when they got here, the girl ran out of gas. Dan . . . ielle took the bus.”

Jayne winced. Even she thought the story was Swiss cheese.

“You couldn't have just given her a ride?”

“The bus stop is just outside, Mom. The girl had some appointment she had to get to, and I'm trying to finish up Ellie's hair before tennis practice.”

Jayne had already figured out this fictitious girl was going to decide that she didn't have time to come back here tonight to pick up her car. That meant Jayne had to deal with the car later.

Jayne held her breath. She wasn't the greatest at lying, but the key was to play the scenario out like a little movie in her head. That's how she figured out tests: she put herself back at her desk in her room, with her CDs playing in the background, and she tried to remember during what part of which song she'd memorized the bit of information that she had momentarily forgotten.

She knew her mom's next questions before she asked them.

“Who is Danielle?”

“She's one of Ellie's mall posse.”

“And why aren't you at tennis practice yet? Doesn't it start at four?”

“Practice starts late today. Coach had a teachers' meeting.” Jayne grimaced at Ellie. Her stomach hurt. Lying had a weird way of doing that to her.

The girls were quiet as they waited to see Gen's reaction.

Ellie whispered, “Danielle? Mom's going to want to meet her at some point. Nice, Jayne. Couldn't you have used one of my real friends?”

“You have a car out there that doesn't belong to either Janice or Megan, dweeb.” Jayne checked her watch. For once, she wanted time to move faster. “And you better remember all this when Mom quizzes you later. I didn't put my butt on the line so you could screw me over.”

They heard their mom's heels click down the hall. “Well, make sure you get out of here in the next ten minutes so you're not late, Jayne. Harvard's not going to take you just on grades alone.”

Jayne wanted to say,
Well, duh.
She wanted to so badly. The words were there, on the tip of her tongue. She just had to open her mouth and say them.

But she didn't. Instead, like usual, she sucked the words down.

3

C'MON, THOMPKINS. What's the answer to twenty-three?”

Jayne hunkered over her paper. She had two more essay questions to go and fifteen minutes left. She didn't have time for Lori Parnell.

Instead, she needed to spend the next nine hundred seconds worrying about herself.

Jayne took another look at the clock. Fourteen minutes and counting. Her eyes hurriedly scanned the question again, her leg jiggling.
If F. Scott Fitzgerald were alive today, would he have written
Gatsby . . .

“You suck, Thompkins.”

Jayne sat up a little straighter. Lori was a jerk. But she should've been used to the Loris of the world. She'd been dealing with them since first grade, when she won her first class spelling bee and someone called her a poophead.

She put Lori out of her mind. Or tried. She looked at the clock. Twelve minutes left.

C'mon, Jayne. You know you don't suck. What
is
going to suck is you flunking this test because you didn't finish these two essay questions. And then blowing an A average. Harvard won't like that much. And your mom definitely won't like that.

She ended up finishing the essay questions right before the bell rang. But she wasn't happy with her answers.

Or the way she had let Lori harass her.

 

“You're sure I'm still number one?”

“Yes, Jayne.” Angie Challen, junior guidance counselor and all-around granola, folded her hands on top of the file in front of her. She had tiny bird hands that went with the messy nest of red hair secured on top of her head with three number-two pencils.

She didn't look too upset with Jayne's line of questioning. After all, Jayne'd been asking the same question for the last two and a half years.

Miss Challen was also a family friend and knew how much Jayne and her parents wanted Jayne to get into a good school. And by
parents
she meant
Jayne's mother
. And by
good school
she meant
Harvard
. She knew Jayne's dad would be happy to see her go to college—any college.

But Gen Thompkins liked to say, “The rest are crap, Jayne. And I'm not sending my daughter to a crap school like I had to go to.”

Miss Challen winked at Jayne. “If you want, you can stand over my shoulder while I add everything together again.”

Jayne pushed herself away from the doorjamb. “That's okay, I believe you.”

She smoothed her blue tennis skirt over her thighs. She had the highest GPA for the eleventh quarter in a row. She only had to keep it up for five more quarters—then she'd be valedictorian.

And then she'd be off for four more years of straight A's.

Crap
.

Where'd that come from? That . . . resignation? Sure, she had to work for A's. She sometimes had to put in forty hours of studying a week.

She liked studying. She liked A's. No big deal.

But sometimes it'd be nice to be normal, like . . . going to the mall. And slurping an Orange Julius with Ellie. And not getting an “I told you so” look from her mom when she got an A-minus a few days later.

She stole a glance at her watch. Twenty-five minutes to get to practice. Between meeting with Janice to talk about the car wash for the French Club next week and now sharing small talk with Miss Challen, she was running late. She had to be on time today. After covering for Ellie yesterday, she knew that if she was late today, Coach could quite possibly make Missy Travers captain.

And Missy Travers didn't deserve captain. She always hit her forehands into the net. Missy getting to put “captain” on
her
college résumé was totally unacceptable.

“Did you turn in the Senior Student application?”

“Yesterday.” The Senior Student was the best academic award in Phoenix. Probably even in Arizona. The winner got to spend all four summers during college living and learning in different places around the world. Like excavating in Egypt and learning about wildlife preservation in Alaska.

Over one thousand people were said to apply for it.

Jayne didn't care where the scholarship took her, as long as it was far away from her insane family.

“Sent in my transcripts, my three letters of recommendation, and an essay about my greatest personal achievement.”

“Which was?”

“My grades.”

Miss Challen looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “Grades aren't an achievement, Jayne. They're more of a quantifier for the achievements you make in each class.”

“Exactly. And I've accumulated a lot of great quantifiers.”

Jayne had actually written about a different topic. About how hard it was to stay motivated through almost all twelve years of school and still get A's a hundred percent of the time.

But that was too personal to share with Miss Challen. She hadn't shared it with anyone, actually.

“Hey, before I get going, what number is Tom? Tom Gerome?” Jayne couldn't help herself. Tom may have been her best friend, but he was also her closest academic competitor.

“He has the second-highest grade in the junior class.”