Read Online Black Tuesday by Susan Colebank - Free Book Online Page B

“So?”
    â€œSo, 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œJayne, 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œAnd 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.
    Â 
    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?”
    â€œProbably.” 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