"Cooney, Caroline B - Janie Johnson 02 - Whatever Happened to Janie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooney Caroline B)

which she had so little grip erupted. "We've spent twelve years missing Jennie! Now we're supposed to spend-what-another twelve years helping her work back into the family?"
"Now come on," said Caitlin. 'This is just day four, right?"
Jodie nodded.
"I bet it takes twelve months," said Nicole. "Yup.
How much money do you want to bet that it's a
whole year before Janie turns into Jennie?" A year? How could they stand it?
"When is the FBI coming over?" asked Nicole.
Jodie was starting to find Nicole very tiresome. "Next week, supposedly. Or maybe never. My parents won't let them talk to her until she's settled in. At the rate Jennie's settling in. Hannah will have died of old age before we get the facts."
"I can't wait to hear more about Hannah," said Nicole. She actually rubbed her palms together with anticipation.
Jodie had almost forgotten the kidnapper, in the reality of dealing with the kidnapped. They had never seen a picture of Hannah, this woman who had ripped Jennie Spring off a sodafountain stool in a mall and carried her away. Hannah, who had brutalized their family with one short car drive.
Newcomers to Highview Avenue were always astonished by the way the Spring family worked. The kids did not have babysitters, on the theory that a sitter would not know how to deal with a kidnapper. Either Uncle Paul and Aunt Luellen babysat, or else Mom and Dad did not leave. Even now, with Stephen seventeen and Jodie sixteen, Mom notified
which she had so little grip erupted. 'We've spent twelve years missing Jennie! Now we're supposed to spend-what-another twelve years helping her work back into the family?"
"Now come on," said Calthn. 'This is just day four, right?"
Jodle nodded.
"I bet it takes twelve months," said Nicole. "Yup. How much money do you want to bet that it's a whole year before Janle turns into Jennie?"
A year? How could they stand it?
"When Is the FBI coming over?" asked Nicole.
Jodie was starting to find Nicole very tiresome. "Next week, supposedly. Or maybe never. My parents won't let them talk to her until she's settled in. At the rate Jennie's settling In, Hannah will have died of old age before we get the facts."
"I can't wait to hear more about Hannah," said Nicole. She actually rubbed her palms together with anticipation.
Jodie had almost forgotten the kidnapper, in the reality of dealing with the kidnapped. They had never seen a picture of Hannah, this woman who had ripped Jennie Spring off a sodafountain stool in a mall and carried her away. Hannah, who had brutalized their family with one short car drive.
Newcomers to Hlghview Avenue were always astonished by the way the Spring family worked. The kids did not have babysitters, on the theory that a sitter would not know how to deal with a kidnapper. Either Uncle Paul and Aunt Luellen babysat, or else Mom and Dad did not leave. Even now, with Stephen seventeen and Jodie sixteen, Mom notified
CHAPTER
7.
The Spring family did not "do" things the way her real family did. Nobody visited museums. Nobody went to antique shows. Nobody got theater tickets. Nobody belonged to the symphony series. Nobody sat quietly at the diningroom table reading the newspaper. In fact, nobody sat quietly.
Instead, the house filled with Spring children and Spring friends.
On her second Saturday, a horde of the twins' friends materialized at the house. Janle expected Mrs. Spring to go insane from the noise and the mess, but she just laughed and pushed the boys downstairs into the family room. They popped up constantly, demanding food or drink, throwing Nerf balls at everybody, and screaming at the rain outside to turn into enough snow to cancel school on Monday.
Stephen's friends Mark and Drew-boys she could have had a crush on if her mind had been free
-came over to play SuperNintendo with Stephen. The three of them sat on the floor in front of the livingroom television, which had the game hookup.
The short, burbly song of each game repeated endlessly. Stephen, Mark, and Drew played all day
long, falling backward on the floor, screaming. "I'm dead, I'm dead!" when they got killed.
The twins' crowd was mostly having cookies:
Oreos, chocolate chip, and lemon wafers. Stephen's trio was having nachos, and were continually in the kitchen shredding cheese and lettuce, chopping tomatoes and olives, and loading plates into the microwave.
Jodie's friend Nicole came over. Nicole had entered a fashion contest with a fivehundreddollar prize for Most Unlikely Material for a Dress. Nicole had struggled to make a dress out of her little brother's millions of Legos but it didn't work and now she had a minidress of her mother's from the
sixties and was tediously sewing Matchbox cars all over it. Janle had never seen anything so pathetic in her life.
Through all this, Mr. Spring came and went from the attached garage where he was changing the oil or something in the cars. Mrs. Spring was on the phone at the same time that she was leafing through women's magazines, doing a crossword, and updating her address book from a tower of Christmas cards she was getting ready to throw out.
The blackandwhite kitchen TV, tuned to CNN, droned stories of politics, earthquakes, and federal funding for art projects.
The noise and the chaos were incredible.
Janie sat at the kitchen table, untouched homework spread in front of her. She had wedged herself safely into a corner, where she could hear
and see everything but was not in the direct line of traffic. It was probably just as well she could not telephone SarahCharlotte to describe this place. It was not only a zoo; now that Nicole had arrived,
Janie was the chief exhibit.
Nicole was dying to hear about the kidnapping. "Have you been to the mall yet, Jennie?" she said. "You know. The one where-well-you know."
Janie shook her head and pretended to write in her sciencelab notebook.
"Here, Jennie," said Nicole. "I've threaded a needle for you. Start sewing this row of cars onto the dress. There's room at the table for all three of us to work on it. I'll never get it done without you."
Janie had never held a sewing needle in her life.
She could possibly imagine sewing a torn hem. But she could not believe that her first sewing project involved tacking a twoinch car onto a minidress.
It was remarkably hard. You had to wind the thread around the tiny axles of the car, or through the little windows. The car had to be attached in at least two places to keep it from sagging. Janie concentrated. When she had sewn on a royalblue car, she sorted through the rest of the cars and picked out a miniature ambulance to go next to it. Then she added a red convertible.
'Try it on," commanded Jodie, thrusting the dress back into Nicole's arms.
Nicole had already tried it on three times. But she obligingly tugged It on again. What had seemed pitifully ridiculous when there were just a couple of cars sewn on was now so weird that it was"fabulous.
"I like it!" said Janie, laughing. "It's going to be
like armor. You're a medieval knight, except on the