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

The matter of the telephone was always difficult. The Springs could not afford longdistance
calls. But Janie's real parents had given her permission to use their creditcard number any time she wanted. She could just go in the kitchen and poke in a thousand digits and speak to her parents. But she could not do it privately. This family did not know what privacy was. The only other phone was in Mr. and Mrs. Spring's bedroom, and Janie would have felt like a housebreaker going in there.
She was never left alone. Mr. and Mrs. Spring did not get home from wOrk until late afternoon. Jodie and Stephen were virtually on rotation duty, making sure their new sister was always escorted, and safely locked indoors. Who did they think would kidnap her now?
Jodie was given to flashes of temper that vanished as quickly as they came. dame rather envied this trait. It must be nice to be mad and be done.
Tired of romance and mystery novels, Janie found the rack of college catalogs and took some of them home. Janie had never wanted to go away to college. How terrifying those huge dorms full of strangers looked. Now she yearned for college because college had no parents. You did not have to divide your loyalties between the Connecticut parents you loved and the New Jersey parents you still could not believe were yours. College had no brothers and sisters either. If you didn't like your roommate, you could~ade.
But the days became weeks, and what had been alien became ordinary.
The name of the beauty shop was Scissors, and outside in front hung an immense wooden pair of
scissors, painted silver, glittering in the thin afternoon sun.
Mrs. Spring was the kind of person who was never happy at how her hair turned out and changed hairdressers continually. "Hairdressers hate Mom," Jodie informed her sister. "She hardly tips at all and then she goes to somebody else for exactly the same cut. So she can never go back a second time to anybody."
"I'm running out of options," said Mrs. Spring. "Pretty soon I'll have to go out of state for a trim."
"When did you have It cut last?" asked Janie. Mrs. Spring's hair was fluf1~r and illkempt. Her real mother, elegant and perfect, never had a hair out of place. And yet Janie felt a touch ofaffection for Mrs. Spring because her hair was a mess.
"Eight weeks ago," said Mrs. Spring. "Or ten. Or twenty."
"Twenty?" repeated Janie, laughing. "That's four or five months." Her real mother went every six weeks.
"Well, It gives me a chance to see if the beautician knows how to deal with disaster."
Scissors was exactly like any hairdresser's Janie had been in. The same perfumed air, the same shampooy scent. The same rows of wethaired women without makeup, smiling at their yettobemadepretty selves in the huge mirrors. Even
the same beauticians: two incredibly thin girls with strange and impressive hair; a heavyset matron fresh from her cigarette break, her hair dyed an impossible blond; and an amused young man, not
surprisingly named Michael. The familiarity was soothing.
While they waited, Janie chose Cosmopolitan; this was no doctor's office where the only choice of reading material was National Geographic or Sports
Illustrated. She and Jodie examined the cover for some time, wondering how the model had been laced into her bizarre gold gown.
'Three? Trims all around?" said the heavy beautician, bored. "I only got two on the schedule but wecould fit the third in."
Fit in.
I could fit in, thought Janie, touching the wilderness of her hair. I could get this cut. It would
make me more Jennie and less Janie. "Okay," she said. "Cut mine like"- she felt like a dentist extracting the word-"like my sister's."
"No!" shrieked Jodie, blocking the hairdresser as if she were armed. "You'd look terrible, Jennie. This isn't your cut. You have such beautiful hair." Jodie said to the hairdresser, "Absolutely not. Don't touch a hair on her head." She turned back to ,Janie. "See, I hardly have any hair. I have to cut It pixie like this because i am not hairendowed. You, on the other hand, have to display your hair the way the Cosmo model displays her cleavage."
They giggled.
Like sisters.
Mrs. Spring and Jodie went in the back to be shampooed. Janie finished the magazine.
It's happening, she thought. Everybody told me that all it would take is time. Time alone. Days passing would turn me into Jennie Spring.
She stared at her watch. How incredible that time-invisible, lostforever time-marked by little changing hands on a tiny decorated circle, could change her family, her name, and her thoughts.
I can lean into it, thought Janle. I can take this turn in the road. Become a Spring. Or I can step back.
"You can't play?" said Jodie, as if Janie had said she couldn't speak English. "I'll teach you. You'll love it. It's very addictive. We're crazy about It." She handed Janle a joystick. Janie had played plenty of computer games, of course, just not Super Mario. She and Stephen and Jodie sat on the edge of the couch staring at the TV screen.
It took her a while to figure out how to make Mario fly and swim and bounce high enough. Janie was determined to keep up, but It was Impossible; Stephen and Jodie had mastered the game ages ago and were wonderful.
When Stephen played, he sat completely still, eyes riveted on the screen, moving nothing but his fingertips.
Jodie, however, played sitting on the edge of her chair, She looked like the top half of a ballet dancer. Her legs and feet lay still, but her arms curled and leaped as she lifted Mario up a cliff. She sank down Into her own lap when Mario slid on an Ice floe and she rotated herself desperately as she tried to hurl Mario over boiling lava. Janie loved watching her. Jodie was a remarkably unselfconscious person in play and in sleep: thrashing and moving and making faces.
Before long, Janie was in the Vanilla Dome, tucking under safe overhangs to escape bluebubbled enemies. Just when she thought she was going to make it, blue bubbles came from both directions. "Oh, no!" shrieked Janie, trying frantically to run. "I'm dead! I have no hope! Look what's coming!"
Sure enough, Janie was killed, and the cheerful that'sitforyou! music took her off the screen.
Jodie giggled. "You sounded like a pilot being shot down in World War Two. 'Oh, no! I have no hope!"
"How many lives do you have left?" asked Stephen.
"Just one."
"Hah!" said Jodie with satisfaction. "I have twentytwo."
Janie studied their play, memorizing the tricks and keys. She had memorized the little Nintendo songs without meaning to, the way you memorized the theme to Jeopardy. They sang in her head, like little companions.
"Let's get something to eat," said Stephen.
Mesmerized by the game, Janie hated to pause it just so they could eat. Jodie laughed at her. "Your stomach is growling, you need a snack so much."Х
It was true.
'The gamesucks you in, doesn't it?" said Jodie. 'There's never a time when you're really ready to stop."
"Yes, there is," said Stephen. "All of a sudden you're so sick of it you can't believe you've spent the whole day there."
"Don't tell Mom and Dad we played two solid
hours, Jennie," cautioned Jodie, following her brother Into the kitchen. "And especially don't tell them you died fifty times," she yelled back. 'They think all that dying makes you callous and perverted. They might even take the Nintendo away."
Stephen and Jodle discussed snack possibilities. They decided to stick chocolate chip cookies under the broiler to melt the chips. Neat idea, thought Janle, getting up and going after them. Daddy would love that.
Daddy.