Black Tuesday by Susan Colebank Page A

new, horrible name had been written in permanent marker. Daily. Sometimes even twice a day.
    She’d gotten a new phone, but someone figured out her number and the text messaging started again. Finally, she just stopped turning her phone on. And taking it with her.
    Her house had been egged. Three times. The last time, a bag of dog crap had been thrown at her front door. Her mom had gotten the police out to the house to test for fingerprints.
    Like high school students would have their fingerprints on file. Or at least not the two in particular who Jayne knew had vandalized her locker. Stalked her phone. Egged the house. Desecrated her front door.
    Jenna and Lori.
    They’d been writing daily blogs about “Child Killer Thompkins.” They’d scanned Jayne’s yearbook picture and used Photoshop to put her in an electric chair, her brain sizzling and tiny lightning bolts coming off her body.
    Jayne hadn’t seen it. Tammy, Ellie’s mall buddy, had told her one day around a mouth full of s’mores while standing in the Thompkinses’ kitchen.
    Jenna was here today, sitting by her mom. They were behind the guy from the state, the one prosecuting Jayne. Mrs. Deavers’s eyes were vacant, a crumpled tissue in her hand. Jenna looked at the ground, her arms crossed.
    Neither had looked at Jayne once.
    Val had told her Mrs. Deavers would be here today. Family members usually were, in order to have input on sentencing.
    Sentencing. That’s why they were here. To determine her future. Or lack of one.
    She closed her eyes for a moment. She wanted to sleep through the rest of high school. She sort of already had. She’d left half her finals blank, and the other half she had to guess at. She hadn’t done any studying since . . . since the day in Val’s office. When she’d found out Brenda Deavers had been taken off life support and had her organs harvested.
    She’d tried to study. For two months, she’d sit at her desk and open her books. Turn on her computer. But then images of the accident and the little girl would freeze her brain and make her useless for the rest of the day. She’d turn on crap TV and watch reruns of shows she hadn’t even liked when they were first on.
    She had no idea what her grades were. Usually she kept a piece of paper in her notebook with each and every grade recorded. Not this quarter.
    There hadn’t been too many good grades to record.
    She was halfway hoping her teachers would give her A’s by default. For just being Jayne Thompkins. If they didn’t . . . the crap was really going to hit the fan.
    College applications would be the least of her worries. First, she’d have to keep Gen from killing her.
    Val squeezed her hand and Jayne shook herself out of her thoughts. The judge needed an answer. What had been the question? Do you wish to say anything before sentencing is imposed? Val and her mom had coached her last night for a good two hours about what she needed to say right now.
    She licked her lips and started to speak, her voice thready and quiet at first before growing more solid and normal-sounding. “I wish to apologize to the Deavers family. I can never take back that day, that horrible Tuesday. I wish I could go back, more than words can say, and change the events of that day. But I can’t, and I’m sorry.”
    Jayne dropped her eyes down to the legal pad she’d been doodling on for the last hour. She couldn’t look in the judge’s watery blue eyes anymore. She just wanted this over with.
    â€œI understand the Deavers family is in this courtroom today,” the judge said. “Would a representative of the family like to say anything?”
    Jayne tried to keep from looking around. But the silence, the waiting, seemed to drone on. She slowly turned her head so she could see what the Deaverses were doing.
    Jenna and her mom stayed seated, neither looking like they had moved an inch.