Tattoo Girl also had tribal tattoos inked in rings around her right upper arm and left calf. Jayne became mesmerized by the one on her calf as they walked the mile to the back of the building. She wondered if that tattoo had hurt the most. Or how Tattoo Girl would hide it once she got a real job and was a slave to pantyhose and skirts.
Also, what kind of parent would let their seventeen-, eighteen-year-old kid get a tattoo? If Jayne ever got a tattoo, her mom would hurt her more than any needle would.
At the back of the building, they stopped at an office with a window that let everyone look inside and whoever was inside keep an eye on the outside. A brunette in her thirties was talking on the phone while she painted her big toenail a chromelike blue. She wiped at the corner of a toe with her thumb. Jayne wondered what she was going to do with the paint smear that was now on her skin. She got her answer when the woman wiped it under her desk.
“I’m definitely on the same page you are, Ken. Remember, we wrote the book together. But I have to stand firm on this. As a nonprofit, I have to watch our pennies. And everything for that night has already been paid for. Nonrefundable paid.”
She tilted her head to the side, saw the girls in the doorway, and motioned them in. Tattoo Girl made herself comfortable on the tapestry love seat and picked up a crumpled magazine. Since she took up the entire length of the sofa, Jayne had no other option than to maneuver herself awkwardly onto a denim beanbag in the corner.
“Great, Ken. I knew we could come to a solution together. Yeah, send me an e-mail confirming everything. Bye.” She hung up and screwed down the cap of the nail polish. “Ryan, remind me again why I do this job?”
“Because the pay keeps you in that bling bling you like so much.” The girl on the couch didn’t look up from her News-week .
“Oh, yeah. Thanks for the reality check.” The woman turned to Jayne and scooted forward on the wheeled chair with the heels of her feet. Feet that were bare and had black soles from what looked to be the less-than-clean industrial carpet. “You must be Jayne. I’m Maria.”
Jayne pushed herself up to shake her extended hand. She let go when her stomach muscles couldn’t hold her in the weird scrunched-over position any longer.
“I hear we have you for a year. Is that right?”
Jayne nodded numbly. A year. It sounded so permanent.
“Great. Ryan, show her where to put her bag and where the lunchroom and bathrooms are. Then bring her back to me and we’ll get you up to speed on your daily duties, okay?” Maria’s brown eyes crinkled at the corners as she directed this last part at Jayne. She picked up the nail polish. “Plus, that should give me enough time to do the other foot.”
Ryan showed Jayne the lockers where she could lock up her stuff. Rather, she half-lifted an arm in the direction of the lockers and sighed, “Your crap goes there.”
Jayne pulled out a sweatshirt before she put the bag in the locker and turned the key. “Is it always this cold in here?”
“Right as rain, princess.”
Princess? She didn’t deserve that. She had on Old Navy jeans. Rhinestone flip-flops. A gold Bulova watch.
“I’m not a princess.” Hearing herself say the words, even she wasn’t convinced.
“Is Harvard paying for itself, then?”
Jayne looked down again. She was holding a crimson sweatshirt, the Harvard crest in full view. She didn’t know why she’d brought it. She didn’t really want to think about it.
“This was a gift.” From her mother, with the words “Make me proud” attached. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Her voice cracked saying the words.
Ryan raised an eyebrow. The unpierced one. The smaller girl didn’t say anything else as she finished up the tour filled with lots of pointing. Point left: break room. Point in two of the four corners of the building: restrooms. There were about twenty people filling up half of the cubicles, most in their late teens.
“Is Maria the only adult here?” Jayne stared at the back of her guide. Her skirt looked like it was Goodwill and had a tear running almost to her butt. It worked, though. It went with her black Doc Martens, black tights, and spiked dog collar.
Ryan let out something that sounded like a snort. “Define ‘adult.’”
“Can legally drink. Has a lower insurance rate than the rest of us.”
“Within the confines of those definitions, yeah, sure.”
“Hey sunshine!” A guy with a “Saguaro High Basketball” shirt sat on one of the chairs in the sitting area Jayne had passed earlier. A girl with a short blonde shag sat next to him crunching through a bag of Doritos.
“I’m not in the mood, dipwad.” Ryan stopped. “I assume you went out of the way to say hi because you’re wanting me to introduce our new meat?”
Ryan kicked the boy’s legs out of the way and started picking up some empty soda cans littering the coffee tables. “Darian Green. Meadow Haraway. This is . . . what’s your name again, princess?”
“Jayne Thompkins.” Jayne wanted to say, It’s Jayne Thompkins, Goth Girl Loser. But she didn’t.
That didn’t stop the words from burning in her throat, though.
“So, Miss Jayne Thompkins, why are you here?” Darian crunched into an orange chip as he leaned behind Meadow. The girl seemed to be staring a little too hard at Jayne. Like she was trying to place her from somewhere. “College résumé?”
“Something like that.” She crossed her arms and shivered. It really was cold in here. She’d have to bring another sweatshirt next time. Just not her Harvard one. “How about you guys?”
“Got caught selling my brother’s Ritalin for recreational purposes.” Meadow fiddled with the clasp on her silver link bracelet, a shiny silver heart dangling from it. “I’ve got another three months to work it off.”
Jayne didn’t know what to say to that. Sorry you’re a drug dealer didn’t seem right. Instead, she smiled and nodded in consolation.
“Don’t judge us based on Meadow’s lack of judgment here.” Darian smiled. He looked like a guy who was used to getting people to like him. “Me? I’m in your boat. Gotta pump up my résumé in case that basketball scholarship doesn’t come through.”
Jayne saw Meadow raise her eyebrows as she kept searching through the chip bag. Ryan started to cough, but it was more theatrical than real.
Darian wasn’t telling the truth. She got it. She stole a glance at Darian again. He was cute in a tall jock sort of way. What’d he do, get caught with alcohol in his locker, or a joint?
“Hey, princess, Maria’s waiting for you.” Ryan materialized by her elbow, the armful of cans gone. Jayne felt her cheeks grow warm when she heard that stupid nickname again.
Was she blushing? Wow. She was embarrassed about the nickname. And since she didn’t care what Meadow thought, she must’ve been caring about what Darian thought.
Never in her life had she cared what a boy thought. Well, a boy boy. Tom didn’t count.
Darian’s voice followed her as she walked away. “If you get bored, my screen name is IHeartBB. It’s totally gay, but Meadow picked it out.”
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 de
al 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.
Yeah, Jayne, then you can have a real felony on your record.
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, ri
ght, 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.
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