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.a%20Tregarde%2003%20-%20Jinx%20High.%20(v1.1).html (37 of 434)3/16/2004 9:26:59 PM file:///F|/eMule/Incoming/Lackey,%20Mercedes%20-%20Diana%20Tregarde%2003%20-%20Jinx%20High.%20(v1.1).htmlAnn could not imagine a life without books, especially for someone as bright asJill proved she could be.A life without books& There was a book locked up in Ann's desk right now thatwas Jill's I, Claudius.She'd brought it in under her notebooks and asked Annto keep it for her so she could read it between assignments.Presumably because if she'd been seen with it, she'd have had the stigma ofbeing a Brain.Well, it was all an academic question now; the girl was as dead as last year'sleaves, and all her ambitions or rather, lack of them were dead with her.And the kids, ranging, from freshman to senior, were taking it much harder thanshe would have dreamed.The life was gone from the class.She wasn't just the star pupil with a gift for comedy, Ann thought, watchingDerek Kestrel turn over the last page of the assignment, then brood out thewindow.She was their passport into the In Crowd, if only by proxy.And it isn'tjust that she's dead, it's the way she died.The accident had not only been freakish, but there were some strange rumorscirculating about it, rumors that had reached even the teacher's lounge, thatthings weren't the way the official story had them.According to the police reports, Jill was the only one of the four kids in the carnot wearing her seat belt.And that, given that Ann had personally heard FayHarper boast of having no less than twenty-three warning tickets for not wearingfile:///F|/eMule/Incoming/Lackey,%20Mercedes%20-%2.a%20Tregarde%2003%20-%20Jinx%20High.%20(v1.1).html (38 of 434)3/16/2004 9:26:59 PM file:///F|/eMule/Incoming/Lackey,%20Mercedes%20-%20Diana%20Tregarde%2003%20-%20Jinx%20High.%20(v1.1).htmlher belt ("It scrunches my clothes"), was very odd indeed.So was the way Jillhad died.She'd been catapulted over the front seat and partially through thewindshield.But not completely through and it wasn't the impact that hadkilled her.She'd bled to death, her throat slashed open to the spine by the brokenwindshield.When Jill's head went through the windshield, the glass hadfragmented into knife-edged shards that had closed around her throat like acollar of razors.Yet none of the blood had fountained into the interior of the car.Neither Dekenor Fay had so much as a single drop on them.There were rumors mat Fay had been moving in on Jill's steady; mat Fay hadtold Jill not to object or tell Deke Kestrel, or Fay would "take care of" her.Yet Fay wasn't acting like a teenager who'd gotten her way over a rival; and Annhadn't met a kid yet who could convincingly cloak gloating triumph or fakegrief.Fay was acting "normally, " just as distraught as anyone would expect.Shehadn't been overly hysterical, nor cold and distant.She'd wept exactly as much asone would predict for a girl whose best friend had just died.Even more telling, to Ann's mind, she wasn't zeroing to on Sandy that Ann couldsee, which would have been the next move for a girl whose rival was out of theway.At least, she wasn't going after the boy publicly, and teenagers, in Ann'sexperience, were just not good at subtlety or strategy.There were other contradictions, though.There were rumors and eyewitnessaccounts that the quartet had been drinking heavily at the concert and afterwards.file:///F|/eMule/Incoming/Lackey,%20Mercedes%20-%2.a%20Tregarde%2003%20-%20Jinx%20High.%20(v1.1).html (39 of 434)3/16/2004 9:26:59 PM file:///F|/eMule/Incoming/Lackey,%20Mercedes%20-%20Diana%20Tregarde%2003%20-%20Jinx%20High.%20(v1.1).htmlAccording to the doctors' reports and a dozen lab tests, mere hadn't been a traceof alcohol or drugs in the kids' systems.Even Jill, who'd been the first tested.Ofcourse, it had been pretty easy to get a blood sample from what was left of Jill&The official story was that Jill had unbuckled her seat belt to talk to Fay, becausethe music on the car stereo was too loud for her to be heard from the back seat.That would certainly account for why the girl went headfirst through thewindshield when the others were only cut by flying glass, or bruised.Fay's storywas that the steering went out, cause unknown.According to the police, therewas no way of telling what had happened, because the undercarriage had beendestroyed when the car went off the road&Enough already, Ann told herself sternly.You aren't Miss Marple, and there's noway any of this could be anything except a particularly bizarre accident.Lifegoes on.You have a class to teach, and they've already lost a week to this.Youhave to get them motivated again.That's your job.Not trying to make an episodeof "The Twilight Zone" out of this.She watched the kids finishing their assignment, one by erne.Finally the last oneturned over the final page, and Ann stood up.Twenty-four pairs of eyes turnedlistlessly toward her."You've all finished C.J.Cherryh's essay, " she said."It might interest you toknow that Ms.Cherryh is a very prominent science fiction writer and lives herein Oklahoma. And used to teach in Oklahoma City, poor thing, Ann thought wryly.No wondershe went into writing.They ought to issue machetes and Uzis, and award combatpay over there.file:///F|/eMule/Incoming/Lackey,%20Mercedes%20-%2.a%20Tregarde%2003%20-%20Jinx%20High.%20(v1.1)
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