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

She wanted to cry. Tears were both wrenching and comforting. But she was not near crying; she was in some grim, dark place without tears or hope.
This is where my parents are over Hannah, she thought. Hannah's betrayals sent them forever into tearless, hopeless dark.
She saw the years of her parents' suffering, and shrank from it. No, please, don't let it hurt me that long and that badly!
But it would. Because it was Reeve.
Reeve, whose presence was beneath her, around her, with her, supporting her. As if she were a swan, floating on the ocean of Reeve's steadiness.
Oh, Reeve!
What was I to you, in the end?
Is this the end?
Well, of course, it has to be.
The end, she thought, and the two words were horrible and bleak. She had thought the two words would be I do. No. The two words were the end.
"We don't tell anybody," instructed Brian. "You listening to me in there, Janie? We don't tell anybody."
As if I could tell a soul, thought Janie. As if I could pick up the phone and say, Sarah-Charlotte, guess what?
"What about Brendan?" Jodie asked. "He's your twin."
S S Х
Brian had not told his twin much in months, and his twin had told him nothing. It no longer ranked as betrayal. Not with Reeve for comparison.
In the midst of his shock over Reeve, Brian felt a great relief about his brother. It was okay to be twins and be different. One was an athlete and one was academic.
Out loud he .said, "I don't tell Bren much anymore. And he doesn't have an imagination."
Brian had not known that until his mouth said it, and then he realized that was half the problem. "Brendan doesn't think about us," said Brian. "He won't lie awake at home tonight wondering if he missed something by not coming to Boston."
Home. Brian had an image of people who slept soundly, safe in what they did not know.
Brian would have said that if anybody was safe, it was Reeve.
Janie.
"Ick," said Jodie. "Some kind of insect? Sucking juice out of leaves?"
"No. In the fall, when the leaves come down .
beautiful maple leaves, orange and crimson and gold . . . you rake your leaves into the street. The town crew comes by with a leaf-sucker machine, and they suck them up and grind them into tiny, dusty shreds. I hated the leaf-sucker when I was little. It was so scary, all those beautiful leaves, turned into brown shred."
"Yeah, well, you're not brown shred," said Brian, "you're still our sister and Reeve is still-, well-"
"Brown shred," said Jodie.
S S Х
Eleven o'clock must have come, because Vinnie took over the mike.
Reeve sat where he was.
He felt like the carpet on the wall. Thick and gray and stuck with pins.
Vinnie barely glanced at him. He set out the CDs, cassettes and records he was going to play. Then he introduced the next song. Vinnie was inside the mike, unaware that another human being' occupied the room with him.
Reeve rewound the tape that recorded call-ins. As easily as that, he was rid of the Hannah voice. It had been taped but not aired, and now it wasn't taped either. It hadn't happened.
He left the building.
City lights cast a pinkish glow upon a cloudy
plans.
I can't face Janie, he thought.
He had to close his eyes against her image, but he knew her so well that the image was within him and did not go away.
She'll hate me, Reeve thought, and the certainty of this stabbed him.
He headed for the T.
I don't have to go to the Marriott, he thought. I could go back to the dorm. And do what? Lie there staring up at Cordell's mattress, knowing Janie's waiting?
When the 'train came (quickly, which was not fair; you were supposed to wait at night) he thought of riding the car to the end of the line. Getting off wherever that might be and picking up a new life. He thought of trying to explain himself to Janie. Explaining to her parents, and his parents, and the New Jersey parents, and on top of that- what ~f it was Hannah?
It just couldn't be. Surely it was Vinnie. Or Visionary Assassins. Or Pammy. Or the professor's wife.
Or Hannah.
CHAPTER
TEN.
The hotel was quiet and undemanding at this hour. Lobby, ferns, palms, flowers, desks. Reeve walked to the distant bank of elevators. Nobody looked his way. He was the wholesome type. People trusted Reeve.
The elevator moved swiftly to the sixth floor.
He had mike fright. The blank horror of his own speech.
Mirrors reflected him too many times. He did not want to look at himself. He kept his eyes on the doors, and when they opened he stepped through. The hotel was thickly carpeted. He walked silently, as if he weren't coming after all.
If only that were true.