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

He picked his way around torn-up pavement and huge yellow equipment in front of his dcrm. You couldn't call it a construction site; nobody ever seemed to work here. it was more like a parking lot for bulldozers.
He skipped the dorm elevator and took four flights of stairs two steps at a time. Speed made Reeve feel better, too.
Three boys were getting off the elevator near his room. Nobody Reeve knew. Computer geeks. You were supposed to refer to your fellow students as men and women, but sometimes the words didn't fit. These were boys.
"Hi," said one boy timidly. "We're Visionary Assassins."
"You are?" said Reeve. This trio would have trouble looking both ways before they crossed a street, never mind being assassins.
"We're here to thank you." They were visibly delighted to meet him. He was Somebody. "You play us whenever you're on. We're your signature. Everybody's talking about the janies now, and they think of us at the same time. We just got our first paid gig because of you."
His radio 'show worked. It meant something!
"Can you announce on the next janie that we're going to be playing Saturday at Peaches n Crude?" they said anxiously. "We'd love it if you'd come, Reeve."
Reeve did not want them to see how happy he was. Famous people were cool. So he didn't leap into the air and smash through the ceiling panels with his fist. He said, "I might." Hegave a casual good-night salute and opened his door.
Cordell now had a steady girlfriend, and he had given Pammy a key to their room. Reeve was just as apt to find Pammy living there as Cordell. He was still getting used to girls in various stages of undress sharing his actual bedroom. College was definitely different from home.
Pammy draped herself around Reeve, who peeled her off like a sweater and set her aside.
"We were just talking about you," said Pammy. "What was in the box in the attic? You never went back to that."
How strange to be quoted.
"Come on, Reevey, tell."
"If you call me Reevey," said Reeve, "I'm going to put a hand grenade in your cereal."
"But what was in the box?" asked Cordell. "I'm your roomie. You have to tell me. College rule."
Reeve had a vision of his audience. The unwashed Cordells and the worthless Pammys. The dry, unpleasant taste filled his mouth.
"It would be easier to keep track of the story if you'd use last names," said Cordell.
Last names Reeve omitted because that way it wasn't the Johnsons and the Springs; it was generic; it could be any kidnap family in this situation.
Not that there was any other family in this situation.
Reeve busied himself with their shared computer. Maybe he had mail,. He never went past the dorm letter boxes without checking for a written letter, but he preferred e-mail. Written letters were exhausting. They required written answers. Reeve hated handwriting. Steering that little stick with
the ink at the bottom of it was a chore he had never conquered. When he had to handwrite, the words got cramped into the upper corners of the page, and his fingers hurt, and his brain went dead.
At the computer, there was no long, blank page like an accusation from a teacher that he hadn't finished the assignment.
Another cool thing about e-mail was that for some reason spelling didn't matter, and if you were a terrible typist, that didn't matter either; you didn't have to do it over. The first time was always good enough.
If I go into radio, thought Reeve, I can skip handwriting. My life will be wired.
~ou HAVE MAIL, said the cute little blinking postman icon.
Reeve smiled idiotically, the way people do when someone writes to them, personally. The letter was from Janie.
Reeve, I've had theworst day. Of course I did something stupid and made it worse. Reeve, I need you. Can I come up and visit you? Mommy and Daddy would never let me stay overnight, but I could stay all day. I could go to class with you, I wouldn't get in your way. I'd take the train that arrives in Boston at 9:22 a.m. How's Friday?
Looo~oooovvvvvvve Janie
CHAPTER
FIVE.
Reeve's hair prickled. He hated that feeling, as if his hair had come alive, or he had lice. Janie here? On campus? It was the hair that would give it away, just as that hair had been proof from the beginning. He remembered the spread of that coppery-red mass; the right he had, as boyfriend, to play with it, and kiss the face hidden beneath it.
Reeve imagined himself and Janie bumping into Vinnie. Or Derek Himself. Pammy or Cordell. Kerry's boyfriend Matthew. They'd know in a heartbeat who she had to be.
Reeve had known he shouldn't be doing this, but it was such fun that he had pretended he didn't know.
He had been doing the janies for a month now. They were the major part of his life. Reeve so routinely cut classes that he hardly thought of himself as having any.
How was he to handle a college visit? He was hardly even a college student.
If I don't take her to the student center, he thought, and I don't take her to my dorm, which I'll say is all grungy disgusting guys, which is true, and I tell her I've got to get off campus, being
cooped up here is making me insane, and think how much there is to see and do in Boston .
we could go straight from the train to Quincy Market, Janie loves shopping. Take her to some elegant restaurant like Legal Seafoods. Dinner at that kind of restaurant takes hours, no time to visit the campus, got to rush to Back Bay Station.
He clicked his mail closed. It vanished in a screen sort of way, sucking itself backward into the hardware.
S S S
Janie lay on her bed, flipping through TV stations with her remote. Talk show after talk show. Why did the rest of world love witnesses? How could they hop onto TV and blurt out their entire lives without a twitch? To ten million witnesses?
The phone rang.
"Hello," she said. She wanted Reeve the way she wanted oxygen. She pressed Mute on her remote. The talk show hostess struck silent, dramatic poses and thrust the mike into the faces of eager audience members. You could tell the audience was after blood.
"Hey, Janie," said Reeve. "What made the day so awful? Tell me about it."
"Oh, Reeve! I'm so glad you called. I was afraid you wouldn't check your e-mail. Sarah-Charlotte is smarter than I am, is what happened." If only she could, picture him now-where he was, how the room was shaped, what he sat on, the color of the phone, what he was wearing.
She missed all of him, all ways. Talk for hours, she thought, tell me everything, blot away today.
"This is about Sarah-Charlotte's IQ? Who cares?" said Reeve.
"No, it's about fight or flight. Sarah-Charlotte knew all along and I still haven't figured it out."
"Talking to you always starts in the middle," said Reeve.