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

Of course, she didn't tell Reeve about this. She was a high-school junior and Reeve a college freshman. If Janie said "wedding" out loud, he'd probably buy a sailboat and circumnavigate the globe for a decade or two.
There was no stopping a Reeve fantasy once it took off. Now Janie saw herself keeping house on a yacht.
Sarah-Charlotte studied flower arrangements for modern brides. "Janie, which of your fathers would walk you down the aisle?"
This was a serious problem. Janie considered Daddy her father, of course; and he was; he had brought her up. But there was also her New Jersey dad, of whom she was becoming quite fond. "I could have both of them," she said. "One on each arm."
"Yikes! Would they do that for you?"
"Sure," said Janie. Could I do that to them? she thought. It would be so hard on them both. Of
course, I've done everything else to them-why flinch now?
"But," said Sarah-Charlotte, who had learned to ask for details without a question, "everything should be settling down now."
She'll probably be a reporter, thought Janie, getting silent people to talk by saying something they have to contradict. "I don't think things ever settle down in this kind of situation," said Janie. "It's like an extra-extra-extra-extra-wicked divorce."
"I don't know if it's four-extra," said SarahCharlotte. "Two-extra, tops."
They heard Janie's mother on the stairs, tucked the brides' magazines under the bed and began a loud, pointless discussion about chemistry assignments. Mrs. Johnson went into her own room and, moments later, ran back downstairs.
"I don't know why we act as if we're doing something bad," said Sarah-Charlotte, retrieving the magazines. "Every normal girl dreams of her wedding day."
"We're supposed to be reading investment magazines so we can plan our Wall Street careers, or computer magazines so we can plan our high-tech careers," agreed Janie, "when all we want to do is design our wedding invitations."
They designed a wedding invitation. How pleasingly the names Reeve Shields and Jane Elizabeth Johnson rested on the page.
"You'll have to get married under your real name, you know," said Sarah-Charlotte. "Otherwise it won't be legal." Sarah-Charlotte wrote another wedding invitation.
Reeve Shields and Jennie Spring.
The name Jennie Spring still made Janie queasy. She felt that she had barely escaped demolition; she was a building that had been scheduled to be blown up. The switch was still there, and Jennie Spring was still an explosive device.
Janie changed the subject. "Let's do one for you, Sarah-Charlotte." Janie drew a rectangle for an-other wedding invitation. "You still have a crush on Alec, don't you?"
"Yes, but not on wedding invitations. His last name is too hideous. Kinkle. Ugh. He's going to have to take my name instead."
"Sarah-Charlotte Kinkle. I don't know, it has kind of an interesting sound. Nobody would forget you."
Sarah-Charlotte was insulted. "I will have such a spectacular career that nobody will forget me anyhow."
"Cool. What will you do?"
"I don't know yet, but I'll do it better than anybody." Sarah-Charlotte turned to the beginning of the magazine and studied the masthead. "Editor-in-chief," she said. "That's a possibility. I'll put out a magazine so startling it will change the wedding world."
Janie giggled. "I don't think brides want to be startled." Janie would have been happy to stay on frothy subjects, but Sarah-Charlotte, of course, got sick of it, stopped being subtle and said, "So what exactly is happening in New Jersey, Janie?"
New Jersey was code for the Other Family. The Biological Family. The Springs.
The Springs had actually visited Janie, in this
very house. Well, the kids, of course, not the parents. The parents she had dumped were not ready to visit the parents she preferred. But Stephen, Jodie and the twins had come twice. Amazingly, her Spring brothers and sister seemed peaceful about the two families.
"What do you mean-exactly?" said Janie grumpily. "Nobody ever knows anything exactly."
"Okay, start here. Are they getting better about it?"
Everybody said it. Nobody called it by any other name because it was too crazy and complicated. Janie said not only it but also them because she did not know what to call her other family. A person with two sets of parents, one of whom had been involved in kidnapping her, had trouble constructing sentences.
Janie could never talk about it. When Sarah-Charlotte brought it up over and over again, so bluntly, insisting that the best friend deserved the most gossip, Janie wanted to scream, or else go attend college with Reeve. She couldn't stand how it never closed up, never went away, but was always in front of her, like fresh tar she'd step in and her life would stick.
Janie felt herself turning into a paper doll again. As a paper doll, she could keep her smile out front and her agony flat and hidden on the back.
This was the sort of thing you did not say to any adult. Adults were quick to leap off their chairs and out of their minds and force you once more to go to counseling.
This is my best friend! she thought. And I feel as if she's a police officer interrogating me.
Janie had learned, this year, to take questions in her hands and bend them off to the side. "I guess New Jersey doesn't matter as much as Boston," she said.
Boston meaning Reeve. Boston meaning boyfriends.
Oh, Reeve! thought Janie. If only you were here! I'm under siege from my own best friend, who won't give it a rest.
The stab of Reeve gone was like a medieval spear; an iron lance leaving a hole in her life. She didn't want him crisp and starched in a tuxedo, but soft in cords and his old fleece jacket. The part of his anatomy she wanted most was his shoulder, where she used to tuck herself in, and close her eyes, and let Reeve decide what happened next. Sometimes she wanted to go next door to Reeve's house, steal his old jacket, and have it to hold.
"He still faxing you every day?" said Sarah-Charlotte.
"It's slacked off a little. And sometimes it's telephone or e-mail or a Hallmark card."
But none of that helped much. Reeve just plain wasn't here. He lived in a dorm she had never seen, had friends with whom she had never spoken, had a new wardrobe she had never seen him wear.
When Janie and Reeve got together, they didn't talk about it because it was old stuff for them. Been there, done it, seen it. With Reeve, Janie was no paper doll. Best of all, she was not Jennie Spring, explosive device.
She drew a necklace of hearts around the wedding invitation that said Jane Elizabeth Johnson.
Reeve.
Well, within reason. She had not shared with Reeve her hobby of drawing up their wedding invitations. She aimed for the new yacht fantasy and tried to step aboard, tried to stand on the teak deck and hear the wind whipping in the sails.
"Ooooh, here's a great maid-of-honor gown!" squealed Sarah-Charlotte. "Dark wine-red velvet. Perfect for a winter wedding. Just my color."
"It's a beautiful gown," Janie agreed. Sarah-Charlotte's white-blond hair would look like its own veil against that deep wine red.
But I have a sister now, thought Janie. A sister with auburn-red hair like mine. Isn't your sister supposed to be your maid of honor? And Jodie would look better in green. How do I tell Sarah-Charlotte she can't be my maid of honor? How do I sort out the fathers of the bride?
It's just as well that Reeve doesn't know about the wedding, she thought. I'm not quite ready myself.
She ached for Reeve. It was physical, that ache, located inside her arms. She needed to curve around him.