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

I don't belong at three A.M. I'm prime-time.
The room where Derek was now Himself had been designed for quiet and calm: soft gray carpet coated not just the floors, but also the walls. You could not write on those walls, but you could pin. The wall carpet was carpeted itself with concert posters and sick jokes and photographs of those immortal jocks who had been suspended for foul language or disgusting suggestions.
Everybody wanted to get suspended at least once.
Reeve thought of the suspension Janie Johnson would give him if she knew about this. Janie was a private person. Many a counselor, social worker or friend had expected to gain Janie's trust, and had failed. "No," he said awkwardly, "I'd better not do it again. Thanks for giving me a chance, it was fun."
"What do you mean-it was fun? It was brilliant," said Vinnie. "Reeve, this is the break we need. I could get a real job if I turn this pathetic, worthless college station into something. Thirty-
nine calls? And they weren't nut cases. They were listeners." He said the word listener reverently, because listeners were precious. "You'll do another janie tomorrow night." Vinnie said this as if it were a new noun: an object; a janie.
"I don't think Janie would like it," said Reeve.
"You didn't even change her name to protect the innocent?" said Cal. "Some boyfriend. Listen, Reeve, you got style. Style is rare. You been on the air once and already people recognize your 'style and they're calling in for more."
The word style hung nicely, like great clothes.
"How many people could start out 'Once upon a time' and make it work?" said Vinnie. "You had great timing. The way you segued into Visionary Assassins-the way you slowed down your speech at the creepy parts-you're a natural, Reeve."
I'm a natural, thought Reeve.
Derek Himself put on a CD, turned off the mike and sagged back into his everyday person. Vinnie, Cal and Reeve entered the broadcast room again. Derek scribbled on the playlist taped above the control board, inserted a CD for the next song and checked to be sure he had it on the correct track.
"Come on," said Vinnie, laughing at Reeve in a good-friends, we're-all-in-this-together way, "we have a broadcast range measured in city blocks. She's not gonna hear you down in Connecticut. She's still in high school! She's probably thinking about algebra or something. Do another one. Who's it gonna hurt?"
Reeve was surprised, almost embarrassed, to find himself missing Janie painfully,, as if he'd got his fingers caught in a slammed door. It had al
ways been Janie who closed her eyes, but now Reeve's closed, and she was there, complete with color and heat and voice.
The final chords on the tape disappeared like the back of a parade. Derek became Derek Himself again, jumping into the mike, eyebrows up and earrings swaying, punching On/Offs, sliding sliders, attacking the gooseneck of the mike.
winding up another loooooong commercial-free music sweep with Fast Liars!" shouted Derek Himself. "Singing their new recording! 'Choke Collar'!"
Reeve loved the names of bands. Visionary Assassins. The Fog. Fast Liars. What a great world music was.
"I lied," said Derek Himself into the mike. "There is no band called Fast Liars and no song called 'Choke Collar.' But there would be if I could sing and write."
This is so much fun, thought Reeve. These guys are so great. This is why I came to college.
"No, what's really coming up," said Derek Himself, "is what's hot, what's big, what youuuuuuu've been on the phone demanding from us. Heeere's Reeve! With another janie."
S S S
"Shall we look for a six-bedroom house," Stephen's father had said uncertainly, when they'd started house-shopping the previous June, "so' if Janie ever comes back, she'll have her own room?"
How Stephen hated it when his father sounded uncertain. He hated it that they had given up calling her Jennie, and everybody had agreed that
Jennie really had vanished more than a decade ago and his sister was really and truly Janie Johnson. He hated Jennie for having been kidnapped, for forcing him to lead the most protected life in New Jersey. "If she ever comes back," Stephen had said, "I'd rather she slept in a coffin."
"Shut up," Jodie had said. "If Janie ever comes back, Dad, she can share with me. You know she won't come for more than a weekend, and my new room has plenty of space for two beds."
Jodie's old room had fit two beds, too, but Janie hadn't wanted hers.
The Springs had found and bought a house within days, because Mom had said, "I can't wait," and Stephen knew this was literally true. For twelve terrible years, Mom had waited for the return of her daughter, and she could not keep waiting. "What color do you want your room to be?" she had asked Stephen a dozen times.
"It doesn't matter, Mom. I'll be at college. Paint it anything."
His mother had been crushed. As always, this had crushed Stephen right back. "Actually, I like blue," he said at last. "Cobalt blue."
This was the blue of Mrs. Johnson's magnificent living room. Stephen hoped his mother would not realize this. How stunned Stephen and his brothers and sister were that first strange weekend when they went to Connecticut to visit Janie with her kidnap family. Planning to crash the visit, hoping to crash the Johnsons, they were bewildered to find they liked the Johnsons.
And Stephen liked Reeve, who lived next door to the Johnsons.
Stephen and Reeve were the same age, but Reeve was so much more independent and sophisticated. Reeve at eighteen was just plain older than Stephen at eighteen. Stephen held the kidnapping responsible. How was a guy supposed to grow up in a household where they held your hand every minute of your existence?
Reeve was Stephen's model. Stephen couldn't match Reeve for muscles; he wasn't built that way. He gave up hoping for Reeve's inches, too, because you didn't grow after eighteen. But last spring and this summer, miraculously, Stephen had shot up to six-three. His body finally matched the enormous freaky feet attached to his ankles.
It was difficult for Stephen to care about JennieJanie or paint chips when the mirror had to be moved higher up on the wall or else his face wouldn't show.
Reeve had driven Janie down for her last visit before Stephen left for college.
What a moment, when Reeve had first seen Stephen's new inches. Reeve's grin had covered his entire face, reminding Stephen of a panting golden retriever. "Wow, Stephen," Reeve had shouted, "like tall! Like basketball hoop! Like extra-long mattresses!" Reeve had shaken hands with Stephen.
Then came the countdown: four weeks, three weeks, two, one-gone. Takeoff. Airplane wheels leaving the ground, putting behind his family history.
Sure enough, out here in Colorado, Stephen was too long for the regular mattress in the dorm. They had ordered an extra-long bed for him, but it
hadn't come, so Stephen slept with his feet hanging off the end of the bed. He had gotten used to the odd posture of not enough mattress, and he was pretty sure he had grown yet another inch, because doorways threatened his forehead.
Out here in Colorado, nobody had ever heard of the Spring family. Nobody remembered the media attention. Stephen Spring was nobody but another (very tall) freshman on another (very large) campus.
Nobody was holding his hand. ' -
Nobody was terrified if he was five minutes late.
He had no mother's anguish to worry about, no father's pain.
Stephen loved to leave his dorm late at night, stand on the parched earth, and look up at the huge, starry sky. He would think: I'll never go home. I'm done. They'll make it without me.
I'm free.
S Х S
"Have you decided what colors you want in your bedroom, Brendan?" asked their mother. She was happily putting away her Price Club booty. She loved stashing a year's supply of tuna fish.
"Mom," said Brendan, in his new how-canI - possibly-be -patient-with - this - dumb -woman? mode, "only girls care about colors."
"How about you, Bri?" said Mom.