Black Tuesday Read Free Page B

personal achievement.”
    â€œWhich was?”
    â€œMy 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.”
    â€œExactly. 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.
    â€œHey, 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.
    â€œHe has the second-highest grade in the junior class.”
    â€œBy how much?”
    Miss Challen shook her head and tsked, but she kept smiling. Jayne knew that smile. The academic adviser had always told Jayne she was the most competitive, grade-focused person she’d ever met in her life. “You know I can’t divulge that information.”
    Jayne shrugged, splitting her blonde ponytail apart and pulling it tighter. “That’s okay.” She grinned. “I’ll ask the loser later.”
    â€œAlways good to see what a good sport you are, Jayne.”
    Jayne said the words she always heard her mother say, but she said them with the humor her mother always lacked: “It’s called having a healthy competitive spirit.”
    Â 
    Jayne was walking down the last hallway, heading toward the parking lot, when her cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID before flipping the phone open. “Sucked any face today?”
    â€œNot yet,” Ellie chirped back, “but the day’s still young. Hey, are you still at school?”
    â€œYeah. I’m on my way to practice. I’ve got”—she checked her watch—“fifteen minutes to get over to the club. What’s up?”
    â€œI left my biology homework in my locker. Could you get it for me?”
    Jayne slowed down her steps, but she didn’t stop. “I’m really running late, Elle. And Coach Reynolds told me he’d make Missy captain if I was late again. She’ll love gloating about that.”
    â€œShe’s just pissed that you’re only a junior and she’s a senior.”
    â€œYeah, I guess.” Jayne felt her feet slowing down even more, her body warring with her brain. Her brain knew she had to get to practice. Her heart—and her feet—knew that Ellie was flunking biology. FIT didn’t care if prospective students had a 4.0 GPA, but it definitely wasn’t looking for students with a D or F average.
    Jayne turned and went back down the hall, walking fast and furious. Ellie wasn’t the brain in this family. A bad science grade might have a domino effect on the rest of her grades and lead Ellie to drop out, get a GED, and live in a double-wide trailer out in Mesa. Bye-bye, bright future. “Fine. I’m on my way to pick up your homework, slacker.”
    â€œYou know you’re my favorite sister, right?”
    Before Jayne could call Ellie on the load of crap she was shoveling her way, Lori Parnell and her best friend, Jenna Deavers, sprinted by in their blue-and-white cheerleading uniforms. They were two of the most popular girls at Palm Desert High, not because they were the smartest or the prettiest or even that nice, but because they were the meanest.
    Behind their backs, everyone called them the Wicked Witches of the East and West.
    But to their faces, everyone was nice. That was because they ran a blog that no one wanted to be on: Palm Desert’s Pathetic Losers .
    No one who was anyone wanted to make that list. As a result, everyone invited them to their parties. And kept the Wicked Witch comments to themselves.
    Jayne hadn’t