Black Tuesday

by Susan Colebank

  “Finally.” She managed a weak smile. “I’ve been after you forever to get this developed.”

  She cradled the cheap black frame as she remembered that day on Route 66. They’d been outside of Flagstaff, on their way to the Painted Desert. Her dad had dragged her mom out to look at hieroglyphics; Jayne, Tom, and Ellie had amused themselves by taking tons of pictures. Jayne with her digital Nikon, Tom with his disposable cardboard camera.

  “Ellie took this one, right?”

  Tom grinned. “Yeah. The one your mom took is blocked by her thumb. For such a skinny woman, she’s sure got a fat thumb.”

  “It’s great. Thanks.” She slipped the photo into her messenger bag. The moment of happiness started to give way to sadness. The picture had been taken this past March. The biggest worry she’d had back then was how to study for four tests while fitting in ten hours of tennis practice and putting on three car washes in one Saturday for three different clubs she belonged to.

  The good old days.

  “Jayne, are you sure you don’t want to talk?” Tom attempted a wink. He wasn’t very good at it, though. He never was. “This is your chance to unload on me. Ellie things. Gen things. Any things.”

  The first bell rang.

  “Nope, I’m good.”

  Tom got up, his hands again twisting the backpack strap. “We better get going, then. Heard a rumor there’s a pop quiz in chemistry.”

  A pop quiz she hadn’t studied for. Yeah, that was going to get her on her feet and pushing her way through the crowds.

  Jayne opened her French book again. “That’s okay. You go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She looked up when Tom didn’t say anything. He had his backpack over one shoulder and was looking intently at the strap. He was contemplating something. He definitely had on his “How do I put this” face.

  He’d had that same look when he told her his dog had eaten their team art project in fifth grade. That had been the first and last time Jayne had been partners with him.

  She closed her book and rolled her eyes. “What? Whatever it is, just tell me.”

  He finally met her eyes. “I know you’re trying to avoid people, but I can walk you to class. No biggie.”

  “Why?” A hint of suspicion was in her tone. It wasn’t like she was Gloria Salas, his girlfriend in ninth grade. The one who’d led him around on a leash and had him opening doors and walking her to class and making him blow his pizza-job money on her.

  “We’ll be going past Jenna’s and Lori’s lockers.”

  Jayne looked down at the cover of her French book, warped after a decade of students using it. She forced out, “So?”

  “So, I don’t want you to have to deal with whatever Jenna’s going to say to you.”

  Jenna? Lori was the evil one of the two. Jenna was just the bumbling sidekick. “I can deal with Jenna. You know she’s just Lori’s lackey.”

  He gave her an odd look. “Lori isn’t your problem nowadays. You know that, right?”

  Tom might as well have been speaking Swahili. She would’ve understood what he was saying just as clearly.

  “I know what, Tom?”

  He dropped his bag back on the table and crouched down beside her. He had that “How do I put this” look on his face again. Times one hundred.

  “Jayne, the girl from the accident. Brenda Deavers?” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Jenna is her sister.”

  11

  WHERE’S THAT PEARL NECKLACE I put on your dresser this morning?”

  Jayne awkwardly pulled her seat belt across her body with her right arm. The purr of the Jaguar barely made a sound over the Tchaikovsky playing around her. Tchaikovsky meant her mother was trying to de-stress.

  Jayne had a feeling she knew what Gen was stressed about. And it wasn’t Ellie.

  “I didn’t see the necklace. Sorry.” She had seen it, but she hated the choking feeling necklaces gave her.

  Her mom’s silence was louder than if she had said something. Gen Thompkins, the master of guilt-tripping.

  “And why didn’t you call me back? I left a message on your cell reminding you to bring the notebook.”

  Jayne tapped the book in her lap. “I have it right here.”

  What she didn’t tell her mom was that she had turned off the cell phone right after lunch. That’s when the text messages had started rolling in.

  Poor little Jaynie-Waynie hiding out in the librerry. Murderurs belong in jails, not librerrys.

  There were four more text messages waiting to be read after that one. She had a feeling they were from Jenna and Lori.

  Not just because they were the witches of Palm Desert High. But because Jenna’s sister was in a hospital because of Jayne.

  If Ellie had been put in the hospital because of Jenna or Lori, who knew what kind of vindictive things Jayne might find herself doing.

  After that first message, she’d deleted the rest without reading any and then turned off the phone.

  She just wished she could turn off her thoughts that easily. The ones about a cold cell. And bread and water.

  And roommates named Bertha.

  The car rolled away from the curb and maneuvered through after-school pickup traffic. It had been forever and a day since Jayne had been picked up by a parent. She’d been taking the bus since she’d been big enough to carry a bus pass and not lose it. When she’d finally gotten her license in February, she’d been glad to get away from the bus smells and random bus fights.

  Her license. She hadn’t thought about that. Like it mattered. Her car was in the shop, anyway. “Do you think my license will be suspended?”

  “Probably.” Her mom almost sounded as if she didn’t care. And a little put out, as if she knew she’d have to pick Jayne up more often. “Some judges suspend it until you’re eighteen, others until you’re twenty-one. There was one case Diane Googled where a boy had his suspended until he was thirty.

  For a second, Jayne panicked at the thought of not having a car for fourteen years. Just as quickly, she felt guilty for having that thought. That little girl was never going to learn to drive.

  Uh-oh. Tears were stinging her eyes. Time for a new thought. Math. Math was good.

  If it’s two and a half miles from home to school, all relatively flat, and I want to get to school in ten minutes, I’d have to do a four-minute mile, which is fifteen miles per hour. Okay, not possible. How about twenty minutes . . .

  Of course, she had to get a bike first. She’d have to look up which ones were the best. That made her realize what else her mom had said. “You had Diane look up what I could be punished with?”

  Her mom didn’t take her eyes off the road as she reapplied her nude lipstick. At least one Thompkins didn’t take her eyes off the road. “I certainly don’t have time to do the research.”

  Jayne stared at the after-school traffic ahead of them, which made them stop and start every few seconds. She consciously unclenched her hands. She needed to stay focused on the lawyer stuff. Getting mad at her mom was a daily occurrence, but she’d learned by now that calling her mom out on her bad behavior was never a good idea. Knowing Gen, she’d pull the car over and make Jayne walk to the lawyer to show her what a bad mom looked like.

  She’d done it before. She’d definitely do it again.

  Jayne closed her eyes briefly and tried to calm her nerves. She had a good impression to make, especially since this lawyer guy was going to have her future in his hands.

  “Have you talked to him already? The lawyer, I mean.”

  “Briefly. And it’s a her.” Her mom switched lanes and turned down the CD. “There wasn’t too much to talk about. We won’t know much about what’s going to happen until after we talk to the police.”

  She slammed her palm on the horn as a guy stopped too fast in front of them. “They’ve already cited you for running a red light. They had witnesses for that. We just need to know what the court systems are going to do with you.”

  Wh
at the court systems are going to do with me. Jayne looked down at her feet and clicked the pointy toes of her ugly black pumps together. She did some breathing exercises her dad had taught her to do right before a test.

  “You can even do these exercises when you’re taking those tests at Harvard, where they last for three days and make you act out the essay questions,” he’d teased.

  Like you have a chance at going to Harvard, a small voice scoffed in the back of her head. Jayne concentrated on her breathing again. With each breath in and out, she repeated: Re-lax. Re-lax. Har-vard. Go-ing. No-where.

  The Senior Student award, on the other hand . . . that was a moot point. With all the media coverage she’d been getting, the selection committee had probably dumped her application in the trash.

  She raised her arms away from her body a little to dry out the sweat under her armpits.

  The lawyer’s office was on the tenth floor of a high-rise in downtown Phoenix and had a reception area that looked like an advertisement for fake plants. Plastic ficuses and philodendrons were everywhere, even in plant holders above each window.

  Before Jayne could really analyze the kind of person who put fake plants in natural sunlight, the receptionist told her she could go right in.

  It took a few steps before she realized her mom wasn’t right behind her. In fact, her mom was sitting by a plastic fern, checking messages on her handheld.

  “Mom?”

  “Go on ahead. I’ll be there in a sec.”

  Her mom sat there as calm as could be, typing into her BlackBerry. Not breathing down Jayne’s neck. Was this some sort of test? There was one way to find out. In an antagonistic voice that usually pissed her mom off, she asked, “But don’t you want to make sure I say the right thing?”

  Gen looked up briefly, a tight smile on her lips. “I have faith in you.” Looking back down, she added, “That’s why you have that notebook of questions and answers I edited.”

  The lawyer’s office was small and wood-paneled with a tinier, more condensed jungle. A red-haired woman with fuchsia nails and albino skin rose from behind a huge mahogany desk. She took one of Jayne’s hands in both of hers.

  The grip felt cool and strong.

  “Jayne, right?” The woman stood about four inches shorter than her, even with three-inch purple heels. “I’m Valerie Shetland. Call me Val. Please, have a seat. The officer who was at the scene of the accident will be here in a few minutes, after we’ve had a chance to talk for a bit.”

  She smelled like sandalwood and lavender. The smell seemed ... confident.

  Val walked around her desk, her strides long and sure-footed. “Sit, sit. I’ve asked your mom to wait outside while we get acquainted for a minute.”

  Jayne thought it had been weird when her mom hung back. Doubly weird when she said she trusted Jayne to handle herself. Gen Thompkins always wanted to be in the thick of things. In the thick of Jayne’s life.

  Val must’ve read Jayne’s thoughts on her face, because she laughed. “Yeah, it was like pulling teeth to have her wait out there. But she respects my decisions. Including the one that will have her finding other representation if she doesn’t like those decisions.”

  Jayne sat stiffly on the edge of a chair that was overshadowed by a huge flowering plant. Fake, of course. It looked like that human-eating plant in that movie Little Shop of Horrors she’d seen with Ellie a couple of years ago during their campy horror-film phase. She started feeling claustrophobic and had to remember those breathing exercises again. She rearranged one of the fronds pushing against her shoulder.

  “Sorry about that. I just love plants to death. They’re my Zen. The woman who comes to dust them every week must’ve moved that one.” She added in a loud whisper, “I kill the real ones in five days or less, so I got these fake ones and treat them like they’re real. Weird, huh?”

  Yeah. “No, not really.”

  Val smiled, like she knew she was being humored. “Your mom tells me you both went over the accident already?”

  Jayne nodded mutely.

  “Great. Figuring out the exact details of that day will help us build a rock-solid case.”

  “Case?” Jayne’s voice raised a few octaves. She remembered the notebook she was holding. She held it out in Val’s direction. “Mom and I went over stuff you might want to know. Here are the answers.”

  Val laughed and took the notebook. She started flipping through the pages as she walked around the desk. “Are you going to be a journalist like your mom?”

  “No.” The answer came fast and furious. Which was unexpected. Jayne had never really given much thought to being a journalist. That her subconscious already knew the answer before she did . . . that was interesting.

  What else did her subconscious know that she didn’t?

  Val continued to scan the notebook. “The juvenile court system will want to try you for assault with a deadly weapon, what with that little girl still in her brain-dead state.” She started making notes on a yellow legal pad. “It’s a manslaughter charge. And because you weren’t drinking or on drugs—that I know of and that we’ll get to in a minute—that’s a misdemeanor. Which basically means no jail time and you can still vote when you turn eighteen.”

  A cloud of spiderwebs had taken up residence in Jayne’s head. “It’s only a misdemeanor?”

  “Yep. As long as you didn’t have any mind-altering substances in your system or weren’t going a criminally negligent speed”—Val flipped through some notes on her desk—“which, according to the tire marks you made with your car, you weren’t. The police report states you may have been going five, six miles over the speed limit. That still clears you for a misdemeanor.”

  Jayne stared blankly at the large turquoise pendant Val was wearing. It was freaky that people who hadn’t even been in the car with her could figure out how fast she’d been going.

  “Then there’s the civil suit if the family wants punitive damages, which I think they will. America’s too sue-happy a place for the Deavers family not to take you to civil court. And with all the news coverage this story’s gotten, the people in the red”—she glanced at her notes again—“Toyota and black Mercedes definitely know your family’s got money.”

  Val picked up the papers, tapped them on the desk to straighten out the edges, and returned them to the folder, which she snapped shut. “Even with this dandy notebook you’ve given me, it’s time for me to ask you a few questions. Up for it, Jayne?”

  Jayne nodded numbly, still mesmerized by Val’s pendant and the fact that all of this was a misdemeanor.

  That maybe she still had a chance at Harvard. But did she deserve to go to Harvard?

  “Based on the toxicology reports from the hospital, you had no drugs or alcohol in your system. So that’s good.” She flipped open the notebook. “Was there anything else distracting you that day?”

  Jayne thought back to the notebook with Gen’s red-ink edits. “Nothing more than the usual distractions.”

  Val laughed. “Spoken like someone whose mom does incriminating interviews for a living. But I’m not the cops. Was there anything distracting you? Just in case there are witnesses that will report otherwise.”

  Witnesses. The guy in the Diamondbacks hat. The voice coming from the area by her feet. “I was answering my cell phone.”

  Val wrote it on the yellow pad of paper. “That’s not an offense in Arizona. Even if it was, you’d still be in misdemeanor territory.”

  The way Val kept throwing “misdemeanor” around, like what had happened was no big deal, made Jayne feel better and worse at the same time. Better because she felt like maybe she could still have a future.

  Worse because being charged with a misdemeanor didn’t seem right for making someone brain-dead.

  Her left leg started jiggling, and if Tom had been around, he’d tell her she was driving him nuts.

  The phone on Val’s desk buzzed. Depressing a button, the woman barked, “Yes?”

  “Police Offi
cer Bradley is here, Ms. Shetland.”

  “Great. Send him and Mrs. Thompkins in.”

  Jayne breathed. In-two-three-out-two-three-four-five. It didn’t help. She still wanted to run as fast as these stupid heels would let her. Her cool, white, down-comforted bed would be perfect.

  A familiar-looking man opened the door. He was the officer who’d given her the thumbs-up sign at the accident. He stepped aside to let her mom in first.

  “Officer Bradley?” Val greeted him with a handshake and a gesture to take a seat. “We spoke on the phone already.”

  Val ignored Jayne’s mom. Seeing this, Jayne felt oddly better. It was nice that for once her mom wasn’t the center of attention and that the woman representing Jayne’s future in a court of law wasn’t wasting her time brownnosing Gen Thompkins like half of the Phoenix population did.

  “Jayne, I’m here to make sure that the officer doesn’t tread on any of your rights while we discuss the day the accident occurred. I will speak on your behalf if he asks a question that I do not want you to respond to, okay?”

  Jayne nodded. Her throat felt like she’d just run a half-marathon without any water. Val poured her a glass of water without saying anything and briefly squeezed the shoulder of her good arm before retreating behind the desk again.

  “Miss Thompkins.” Officer Bradley flipped to a page in his notebook while Jayne sat with her clasped hands squeezed between her thighs. She now knew what it felt like to feel as close to throwing up without actually throwing up. “Today is your only meeting with me. Next week, they’ll probably get you on the juvie court docket where you’ll appear in front of a judge who’ll give you a court date and a probation officer.”

  “Probation officer?” Jayne felt her mouth go dry. She’d only heard about hardened criminals having probation officers. Guys with tattoos and crusty apartments and really bad drug habits.

  “Yes.” He looked down at whatever was written in his note-pad. His bald head was red from too much sun and not enough sunscreen. “Until this goes to court, you’ll need to check in with her every day. You’ll also be released to your parents, which means you need to always tell them your whereabouts.”