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

Then he upped the ante.
Ante.
A card game term. A gambling term.
It meant: If things are exciting now, just you wait. I'll make it more risky. And then we'll see.
Reeve lowered his voice, as if in the privacy between a human and the Almighty, he was offering up a genuine prayer.
Janie had a prayer.
The prayer was not to God.
It was to Hannah.
Dear Hannah, don't show up in our lives. My parents can't go through that. They'd have to see what became of you. And they and you would have to face a trial and the media. Hannah. there's only one thing you can do for the mother and father you abandoned.
Stay lost.
S Х S
Horror spread down Janie's body like snakebite.
The poison was cold, crawling through her system.
It was cold inside her head, too. Air-conditioned
nightmare
Reeve Shields had sold her over the air.
While she had been heartsick over a page in the yearbook, Reeve-her Reeve-had been using her as evening entertainment for a whole city. A joke between Assassins.
There was nobody in the world you could trust. Your parents turned out to be somebody else entirely, and the boy you loved, your worst enemy.
Х S S
Brian felt older than his sisters. He could be the parent here, the coach or teacher. The designated grown-up.
Janie had melted into the bed. Her face had a flat look, as if she had abandoned it.
Jodie looked like a losing tennis star. Ready to rip the net and bring her tennis racket right down over the head of her opponent and wrap it around his throat and strangle him while she was at it.
Brian stared at his two flaking-out sisters. Reeve, he thought. But we all loved you. You made it possible for us to forgive Janie for wanting to be a Johnson instead of a Spring. You were my hero, Reeve.
Brian felt destroyed around' the edges. He picked up the telephone. He hit nine to get an outside line. Twice Derek Himself had given the phone number for WSCK. Brian was not usually strong on numbers, but he would never forget these seven.
S Х S
Reeve set up two Visionary Assassins back to back. He was very attached to the Assassins.
Vinnie was out in the hall talking to somebody Reeve didn't recognize. Derek had actually retreated to another room to study. Cal had a date.
The phone lit. Reeve was as exhausted as if his mind had been vacuumed. Broadcast took a lot out of you. He stared at the silent, visible ring of the phone. Then he picked it up. He was mildly surprised when the tape reel next to him began turning. Derek must have been recording.
"Hi there," he said briskly into the receiver, finding his jock voice for another moment. "WSCK, We're Here, We're Yours, We're Sick. How can I help you?"
The caller was a woman.
Not a girl. Not a college kid. Not young.
The voice was tired. The vocal cords rasped from too much smoking. The speech was slurred, as if the caller had had too much to drink. "This-this is the radio station?" said the caller.
Derek would have said No, this is the high command, give me your latitude and longitude so I can drop a bomb on you. We have too many stupid people in the world.
But Reeve said courteously, "Sure is. What's your name?"
There was a pause, as if the caller needed to think about this, or needed to be prompted. Needed Reeve to say Yes, your airtime has started, the world is listening, go ahead.
And yet, not that kind of pause.
Not a person uncertain about whether it had started.
A person choosing to start something.
"I," said the voice, "am Hannah."
CHAPTER
NINE.
Reeve turned to Styrofoam.
Hannah.
No. Absolutely not. It was not probable. Statistics were against it. It was not logical. It was- It was the worst thing that could happen. He felt so light. He might float off the chair and tap against walls, a lost object in a space flight.
Hannah.
Vinnie was still in the hall, still talking to the stranger. Not even enough time for a change of posture had passed.
Nobody was paying attention to Reeve. The reel-to-reel tape, in its slow, old-fashioned way, circled on. It was taping silence now. Neither Reeve nor his caller spoke.
He said to himself: It's not Hannah. It's some college sophomore joking around. It's Cordell paying Pammy to lower her voice.
But could Pammy's high, annoying burble be transformed into that rough smoker-drinker voice?
He tried to calm himself.