"Cooney, Caroline B - Janie Johnson 03 - Voice on the Radio" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooney Caroline B)

Lizzie's head was packed with argument. She liked silence, so that she could fill it with a lecture. She liked questions, so that she could answer them at great length. She liked not getting together with her family, because they thought they should be able to talk, and this was not correct: Only Lizzie should be able to talk. Other people should listen.
Reeve' felt a real kinship with Lizzie now. Other people should listen.
Of course, the question you're phoning in with is . . . who's the bad guy here? There's gotta be a bad guy. You can't have a kidnapping without a bad guy. But Reeve, you tell me over the phone, you make Janie's real parents sound like great,people, and you make Janie's kidnap parents sound like great people.
There's a problem here.
Somebody has to be the bad guy.
You're right.
There was a bad guy.
And her name was Hannah.
S S S
Derek took over at the mike, pushing an on-air contest. "You can go to a real concert, instead of the crap produced on this campus!" said Derek, trying to get the phones to ring.
Derek was jealous and hurt. Vinnie fawned over Reeve. He, Derek, got treated like reliable old equipment. Reeve just trashed his girlfriend for a few sentences and the phones went crazy.
But trash sells. -
The nickname of which Derek was so proud- Derek Himself-was foolish now; in one short month, he'd become nothing but Reeve's lead-in.
Derek didn't have a girlfriend. He thought Janie sounded wonderful; beautiful; the kind of girl who deserved a Once upon a time beginning, complete with handsome prince. Well, Janie might have a lot of stuff, but she sure didn't have a prince.
S S Х
Janie didn't have her driver's license yet. Everyone else lived for the moment of getting a license. Janie didn't want one. After all these years of being so sheltered, she found that she was willing to go on being sheltered. She liked to have her mother or father drive her. She liked the comfort of getting into a car and having her parents smile at her and
knowing that they would navigate and cope with traffic and she could just sit there and dream.
Last year Reeve had driven her to school, but this year it was Sarah-Charlotte. Sarah-Charlotte had one of the world's less safe cars: a teeny Yugo with a hundred thousand miles on it, its upholstery rotted and split by the hot sun in the parking lot. Passengers spread towels on the disintegrating foam and hoped to be alive after a few miles of Sarah-Charlotte's braking technique.
Sarah-Charlotte and Janie left after the volleyball game and drove to Janie's. Sarah-Charlotte clipped a curb and jumped two lights. "I'm insane to drive anywhere with you." Janie said.
"It builds your character. Whoa, look, Janie! On your porch. It's that reporter! The one who won't let go."
Janie recognized him. The question this particular reporter liked was the responsibility question. Who had created the Hannah who grew up to be a kidnapper? What had Mr. and Mrs. Johnson done so wrong, so badly, that their not-so-little girl Hannah had stolen the Springs' little girl Jennie?
"You better come home with me," said Sarah-Charlotte.
But Janie's beautiful house, designed to be open to sun and sky, was blank. Her mother had pulled every blind and drape. "I have to go in. My mother's alone."
"Call if you need me," said her friend.
"Let's hope I won't need rescue twice in one day." Janie launched herself toward her own front door.
"Jennie Spring!" the reporter cried. "Good to see you again! It's been six months since-"
Janie neither looked at him nor spoke. She knew by now that a silent subject did not make good copy.
The door opened from the inside, and together Janie and her mother shut it against thejournalist.
Janie rubbed her mother's cold hands between hers. Her mother had gotten so thin in the last year. Her fingers were bony and old. "What happened?" said Janie.
"They think their readers deserve an update."
Everybody deserves something, thought Janie. Sarah-Charlotte deserves details, Ty deserves photographs, the readers deserve a piece of my mother.
She hated them.
Janie made a pot of coffee. Coffee relaxed her mother, but it put Janie on the ceiling. She needed to be the one on the ground. So much for telling Mommy about Lipstick Day and Tyler's yearbook plans.
When Daddy got home from work and heard they'd had a reporter around, he just made it worse. Instead of brushing it aside, he actually confided, "I've been thinking about Hannah lately."
They never admitted this: that Hannah was real, a real daughter, and must be thought of.
Janie had a sudden, terrible vision of her parents with a carrying case full of Hannahs under their bed. But they couldn't take Hannah out, like a Barbie, and dress her, and fix her hair, and fix her life.
"I was on the Internet the other night," said her father. His fingertips touched his wife's, and Janie saw that her mother's ring finger had gotten so thin that she'd wrapped tape around her wedding band to keep it from falling off. "On the Internet, you're connected to a million strangers. Names without faces. Hidden people."
In the Johnson family code, this meant Hannah.
"Do you think she's out there?" whispered Janie's mother, shivering not just with fear, but also with hope. Hannah was a lost daughter. Dangerous-but still, and forevermore, a daughter.
What would we hope for, if we hoped for Hannah? thought Janie. It's too late for the good career, or the fine husband, or the healthy children.
I am their only hope, she thought. I am all that stands between them and hell.
It was Janie who insisted on dinner; Janie who assigned easy little tasks; Janie who asked casually if everybody was taking their heart medicine.
Her mother normalized. "Everybody? Well, I am, and your father is, but luckily you don't need heart medicine."
Oh, but I do, thought Janie. I do. And so does the world.
5 5 5
"Hi, you've reached WSCK!" said Reeve into the telephone. "We're Here, We're Yours, We're Sick! How can I help you?"
"Hi, Reeve. Are you going to do ajanie tonight?' The caller had recognized Reeve's voice.
Awesome! thought Reeve. For the next call, he did a little test. "Hi, you've reached WSCK! We're
Here, We're Yours, We're Sick! This is Burt Smith, how can I help you?"
"Hi, Reeve. Burt Smith is a dumb name, don't use it. Reeve is much sexier. Listen, I just have one question. I don't understand how her kidnap parents are still the good guys."