“Are you even listening to me?”
Jayne looked up at Ellie. Her life was so simple, and it didn’t hurt any that she looked like a movie star in the making. Her skin was as flawless as Kate Winslet’s or some other English actress’s.
Jayne? She was fighting a losing battle with an angry, bulbous stress pimple on her right cheek. Reminiscent of the vicious pimples those Survivor people got after three weeks without soap or Proactiv.
“Why don’t you just use your backup bracelet?” Jayne concentrated on the food in front of her, never having felt less hungry in her life.
She had exactly eight hours and thirty-seven minutes until she met with the lawyer. Until she found out how much more her life was going to change. Which was a weird concept for a girl who’d planned every aspect of her life since she was three.
From when Ken and Barbie were ready to get married, to which college Jayne would eventually apply to.
She went to the sink and scraped her untouched breakfast into the garbage disposal, careful not to let her cast get wet. Ellie stood next to her, frantically looking through a pile of Arizona Republics.
Jayne rolled her eyes as the eggs slipped down the drain. “The bracelet’s probably in your gym locker.”
Ellie started pulling open kitchen drawers, rifling through their organized contents. “Why do you say that?”
Jayne stifled a sigh as she went over to a kitchen chair to zip up her messenger bag. “Because that’s where you’ve left it at least two other times.”
She took one last look inside her bag. French book, chemistry book, The Scarlet Letter. Everything she needed was there for her first day back at school.
Whoopee.
She straightened and saw her belt buckle wasn’t centered with her shirt buttons. She didn’t bother doing anything about it. Or the cuff that had come undone on her right pant leg. Jayne just wanted to be in her pj’s. That sounded good about now. So did popping a few of those pain pills, taking a marathon nap, and snuggling with Britney. Life would be perfect if she could just stay home.
Okay, maybe not perfect, but at least she’d be away from the real world. Where people knew about . . . Where people knew. Thanks to the midday, five o’clock, six o’clock, and nine o’clock news.
Jayne sat down and looked at the clock. It was time to go. Time to get the day over with. “Where’s Dad?”
Ellie had given up her bracelet search and was leaning against the kitchen counter, eating M&M’s. She shrugged. “Dunno.” She dumped the last M&M into her mouth. “Don’t tell Dad I can’t find it. He’ll write his number on me in Magic Marker or something.”
A week ago, Jayne would’ve lectured Ellie about eating that candy crap. It wasn’t good for her diabetes.
It also wasn’t good for her diabetes to be going outside without her bracelet after eating a handful of M&M’s.
Today, though, Jayne sat down and put her forehead on top of her crossed arms.
She heard the jingle jangle of pocket change a few seconds before her dad rushed in. She lifted her head, the movement cracking her neck. God, she was tense.
Her dad took a traveler’s mug out of the cupboard. “Good, you’re both here.” He filled the mug with the green iced tea he’d made the night before. “I was hung up on a conference call with U of A.”
He looked around, patting his blazer’s pockets. “Insulin. Did Jaynie give you your shot, Ellie?”
Ellie shook her head. “Not yet. She’s been too busy getting ready for school.”
Jayne wanted to put her head back down on her arms and shut out her sister. Whatever. Ellie had had plenty of time to ask her. She was just being self-centered, like always.
Like Gen.
Jayne didn’t say anything as she went to the fridge. On top of everything else going on today, she didn’t want to get into an argument with Ellie. On autopilot, like she’d done a thousand times before, she pulled out a vial and started rolling it with her good hand against the side of her leg, mixing together the milky liquid inside.
“I’ll swab the decks, Captain.” Their dad mock-saluted Ellie and took a cotton ball out of the jar by the fridge and soaked it with the bottle of rubbing alcohol beside it. “Where are we doing this one today?”
Ellie pulled down her waistband a few inches on her left hip. She looked up at the kitchen light. “You almost ready, Jayne?”
Her back to her dad and sister, Jayne pressed her lips together. Ellie was begging for a fight. The little jerk wasn’t going to get one, though.
After checking the syringe for air bubbles, Jayne pinched the flesh at Ellie’s hip and pushed the needle into the skin. Ever since her sister had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at age six, it had fallen on either their dad or, in the last four years or so, Jayne to give Ellie the shot three times a day. At school, the nurse did it.
No one else could do it, though. Or rather, would do it. Their mom’s gag reflex activated whenever she saw a needle, and Ellie couldn’t stomach giving herself the shot.
Their dad gave Ellie a fresh cotton ball with alcohol to clean up the tiny dot of blood from the puncture. Jayne threw the used syringe into a lidded plastic container and wondered what the garbage men must think of them. Did they think they were a bunch of drug addicts?
With everything else that had happened recently, Jayne could just imagine the headlines if one of the local networks saw their trash. Jayne Thompkins Turns to Drugs to Forget Tragedy!
If she had been another kind of girl—an average, wimpy girl—maybe she’d turn to drugs. But she was Jayne Lee Thompkins: straight-A, Harvard-bound Jayne Lee Thompkins.
She didn’t do that kind of thing.
9
THERE WERE CAMERAS in front of the school.
There. Were. Cameras.
Jayne started to scoot down in her seat. She wanted to slide down to the floor. But she didn’t. In fact, she straightened up. She had never hidden from anyone. Ever. Then again, she’d never done anything in her life that she had to hide from.
“Jayne!” One of the vultures with a mike had seen her. He started walking toward her like a man working out on a treadmill. One by one, the rest of the reporters realized where he was heading and followed. With that same quick, determined stride.
Holy crap.
“Jesus.” That word coming from her dad was unexpected. He rarely swore. “Your mother and I were hoping they wouldn’t be here.”
“Oh my God.” Ellie pulled against Jayne’s seat, leaning over and looking out the front windshield. “There are so many freakin’ cameras! Does my hair look all right?”
“Why are they here?” Jayne felt her stomach clench, and she willed herself not to puke up the two bites of eggs that had gone down there.
Her dad let out a long breath. “Probably because they couldn’t get near you at the house.”
Since Jayne had gotten home, the news vans had been at the end of the driveway, off their property. The vultures knew they couldn’t push their legal boundaries when it came to the queen of all vultures.
But they’d gone away after a couple of days. They’d gotten their shots of the house, the background for their news stories. So why were they here?
“But I’m old news.”
“For anyone else, you would be.” Her dad’s voice was calm. Soothing. Just like it always was. “But you’re a bright, pretty girl who got some bad luck thrown her way. And you need to keep in mind that you’re Gen Thompkins’s daughter. They probably want to get an on-air comment to take her down a notch or two.”
He turned and grinned at her. “At least your mom dressed you up today, right?”
Jayne knew he was trying to make her feel better. Instead, he was making her feel like a special-needs person. At least your mom dressed you up today.
“Do you want me to drive to another entrance? Or maybe come back later?”
“Yeah, Jayne, let’s ditch.” Ellie was still pulling at her seat. Jayne was feeling dizzy from the movement.
>
“No, we’re not ditching.” The sooner this day got started, the sooner it would be over. “I’ll just keep my head up and my eyes forward.”
That’s what her mother had taught her. “Guilty, shameful people look at the ground, Jayne. If you’re ever in trouble, act like the queen of England. Otherwise you’re going to be judged and executed by the public.”
Her mom had told her this when she was seven and about to welcome the parents to parent-teacher night on behalf of the first grade.
She opened the door, keeping a hand knotted around the strap of her book bag. “Come on, Ellie.”
“Wait.” Her dad had grabbed Jayne’s wrist.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I know that’s an undadlike thing to say, but these people”—he nodded toward the reporters, who were about five seconds from the car—“are going to eat us alive.”
If she was a lesser person, she would’ve turned tail and headed home.
But she wasn’t that kind of person. Then again, it might’ve been easier if she was that type of person.
“I just want to get this over with.” She turned toward the backseat. “Ellie, get your bag, stay close, and don’t answer any of their questions. Got it?”
Jayne opened the door without waiting for a reply and plastered a small smile on her face. In the distance, she saw the principal making his way down the steps.
The vultures screamed, “Jayne, Jayne!”
She heard her name but everything else was a jumble of words. The ten or so reporters were talking over one another. She kept the smile in place. Forty yards. I can make it that far. Just keep heading straight and don’t say anything.
One of the reporters, a woman who was on the network that came in second after Jayne’s mom’s, shoved a mike about two inches from her nose. “Jayne, how do you feel after hearing the news?”
Hearing the news? After watching it? What was this woman yammering about?
The woman had a follow-up: “How do you feel knowing six-year-old Brenda Deavers is brain-dead?”
Brain-dead? Jayne’s feet stopped working and she came to a standstill. Cameras flashed around her. But she didn’t see them. That little girl was on a ventilator. Jayne hadn’t heard anything about her brain being . . . dead.
She didn’t have an answer for this lady. She didn’t have an answer, period. But she had questions. A lot of questions.
“Jayne.” Ellie hissed the word in her ear. “Jayne, get going. C’mon.”
She had to get to the library. To the computers. Computers always had the answers if you searched them correctly.
And she was a master researcher.
Jayne slowly started walking again as she focused on the front doors. As she did, a tiny voice chanted.
Brain-dead. Brain-dead. Brain-dead.
The first-period bell had already rung by the time Jayne made it through the double doors. Behind her, she heard the principal shout, “You’re not allowed on school grounds. Get off my campus!”
She beelined it toward the library.
“Jayne!” Ellie had stopped in front of the door to her classroom. “Isn’t your homeroom down the other hall?”
“Yep.” But she wasn’t going there.
Her dress shoes, a respectable pair of two-inch pumps, clicked down the hallway, away from Ellie. She was momentarily transported to the day her mom click-clacked into her hospital room. The day all of this started.
Minutes later she was seated at a computer terminal, the Internet up. She clicked onto one of the sites that had made her stay away from the computer for the last few days.
A news site.
Once the Phoenix Herald home page popped up, she clicked on a link buried low on the page:
Local Newscaster’s Daughter Leaves Little Girl Brain-Dead
The words, in black and white, made her really, really regret she’d eaten anything today. She didn’t cry, though. She thought she should’ve felt like crying.
But she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything. Not even the shoes pinching her toes.
Jayne concentrated on each word of the article. She hadn’t known any of this. Then again, she hadn’t wanted to know any of this. And her family, whether they had known about the details or not, hadn’t told her about any of this.
For now, she forgot about her family and what they didn’t tell her. Instead, she read about six-year-old Brenda Deavers.
About how she wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
About how the air bag hit her after the head-on.
About how the impact snapped her neck.
And broke it.
10
SOMETHING WAS DIGGING into her arm. Jayne glanced down. A piece of notebook paper, folded into a triangle, was poking into her.
It was third period. Honors English Lit. It was her first class of the day. After two periods in the library, Mrs. Fullerton had prodded her to go to class. It wasn’t an order, though. The librarian had helped Jayne with enough research papers to know that the sixteen-year-old was a bright, conscientious student not given to ditching class.
As such, Jayne received a polite nudge. “Jayne, why don’t you get yourself to class? You wouldn’t want to miss too much more school, would you?”
Jayne had taken the hint. She’d also heard the words Mrs. Fullerton had left out: You wouldn’t want to miss too much more school than you have because you broke that little girl’s neck, would you?
She’d gotten to class ten minutes after it started, holding a hall pass from Mrs. Fullerton saying she’d been “helping out” in the library. She took her seat while Mrs. Peabody lectured about The Scarlet Letter.
She had just started discussing Hester Prynne’s public humiliation in the town square.
Jayne could relate.
Her arm was being poked again. She clenched her teeth together and took the note. She never got notes. She wasn’t a note kind of girl. And Janice Wells, a quiet girl with a solid B average, was a well-known pawn in the note-passing game.
The note had to have come from the Wicked Witches in the back row.
Jayne was on the front. She didn’t recognize the handwriting. There were flowers with large petals and heart centers on both sides.
The happy scrawl across the paper didn’t fool her. This wasn’t a note taking a poll about which guy was the hottest or asking what she was doing Friday night. She didn’t get notes like that.
Which meant it was a note searching for gossip about the accident.
Jayne went with her gut. She tore the note in half and stuffed the pieces in the last pages of her book.
She didn’t give a crud what was in that note. Or what people were thinking about her.
Then why did she keep thinking about how long it would take to tape that note together again?
At lunch, Jayne sneaked a diet pop into the reference section of the library. Most of the students who came to the library were there to check e-mail on the opposite side of the silent, over-air-conditioned room.
This side of the library was the perfect hideout. No one ever came to use the encyclopedias anymore. Not when there was Wikipedia.com.
“Jaynie, I think it’s time you stopped ignoring me.”
Jayne’s hand jerked, spilling soda droplets on the table. Her heart stopped for a millisecond longer than usual, the good girl in her worrying that one of Mrs. Fullerton’s assistants had caught her with the contraband drink.
But it was just Tom standing in front of her. His dark blue eyes were—what? Sad? Annoyed?
“You almost made me pee my pants, Tom. Good job.” She attempted a smile, but her nerves were stretched too thin for that. She concentrated on using a piece of notebook paper to wipe up the amber spill. “How’d you find me?”
“I know your favorite study areas.” He sat down and put his backpack on the table. He leaned over it, his voice low. “Hey, did you get my messages? I e-mailed you, IM’ed you. I even braved your mom and phoned you a couple of t
imes. Well, I left messages with your dad, but still. She probably knows about them.”
Jayne saw the teasing in his eyes, but she also saw some hurt. He didn’t deserve her being a crappy friend. But it went hand in hand with feeling like a crappy human being.
“Life’s just been a little nutty, you know?” She closed the French textbook that had been open in front of her. She hadn’t been studying, anyway. “I wasn’t up for chitchat.”
“I know you’ve been through a lot. Ellie’s told me most of it, and I heard a lot on the news.” His hands played with a strap on his backpack, and he concentrated on the knots he was making. “I also saw the reporters out there today, stalking you.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “I just wanted to let you know I’m here if you need to, you know, whatever.”
Tom wasn’t too good with words sometimes, but he always meant what he said. Well, at least what he tried to say.
“I appreciate that.” She absentmindedly opened and closed the cover of the French book. Jayne wasn’t going to take him up on that offer to spill her guts anytime soon. She couldn’t do that with anyone. Not with her parents, not with her sister, not with Larry the Fairy, not with the media.
The little girl was brain-dead. Not just hurt, as in physical therapy hurt.
But brain-dead. Like one step away from dead dead.
She couldn’t say those words out loud. They were ugly, ugly, soul-crunching words.
When she was going to talk, it was going to be to that lawyer. And even then, hopefully, she wouldn’t have to talk talk. Maybe I can just hand him Mom’s notebook and let him look up the answers.
“Hey, I brought you something.” Tom pulled his hand away from his backpack and dug around in the front pocket. “It isn’t really anything. Just something, you know, to make you feel a little better.”
He gave her a crumpled lunch bag. Inside was a framed photo of both of them sitting on the curb outside a roadside diner. Tom’s head was on her knee, and she was sticking her tongue out while she made bunny ears behind him.
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