The Voice on the Radio

by Caroline B. Cooney

  He laughed oddly. She did not know what to make of it. “If you had been at school, Reeve, it would have been okay. I would have put a lip print on your cheek.”

  “I would have reserved my cheeks for your prints exclusively.”

  “Send me those kisses over the phone,” she ordered.

  He sent kisses over the phone.

  “Send me a tape of your show,” she said.

  “I don’t do anything. I’m the new kid. Besides, college radio plays pretty rough stuff. Your parents would pass out if they heard the lyrics I’ve memorized.”

  “Sing me some,” said Janie.

  “When I get home,” he promised.

  Reeve lay on his back in the lower bunk and stared up at the blue-striped bottom of Cordell’s mattress. There was no privacy in a college dorm. He had to think things through in the middle of a room full of people he detested.

  If Janie was hurt by a page in the yearbook…if she had grabbed the guy’s camera, and nearly smashed it on the gym floor, all but hit him in the face with it…

  She shouldn’t be so sensitive, he told himself. She’s not in step with the decade. This is routine. Everybody airs their emotions in public.

  He imagined Janie lying here beside him, snuggled in on the wall side of the bunk. He had ended any chance of bringing Janie into his college life.

  So don’t do it again, he told himself, don’t stay at the radio station, don’t do any more janies.

  Very early that morning, long before it was light, Reeve got up, dressed warmly, and left the dorm for a different kind of station.

  The day after Lipstick Day had the first truly winter-is-coming weather of the school year. Janie wore layers. Winter clothes felt safer than summer clothes. She put on a hunter-green river driver shirt and tucked it into a darker green corduroy skirt. She yanked on trail walkers, padded for hiking, and laced the boots tightly. She tied a scarf around her neck and shrugged into an extra-large tweed blazer. For earrings she picked out heavy dangling silver moons, crescents to swing beneath her red hair. Janie loved earrings and had a huge collection, but never fixed her hair so that her ears showed. She kept meaning to analyze this but had never gotten around to it.

  After breakfast she kissed her parents good-bye. “What are you guys grinning about?” she said suspiciously.

  They pointed outside. It looked pretty ordinary to Janie. Nothing out there but their driveway, pocked with ice-rimmed puddles, and the Shieldses’ driveway and Reeve’s Jeep waiting for her—

  “Reeve!” she shrieked.

  She whirled around and hugged her parents. “Did you know he was coming?”

  “His mother called before you were up. He was in the mood to see you and he caught the dawn train out of Boston,” said her father. He was smiling in the way of parents whose children are happy before their eyes.

  “Ooooh!” said Janie. “How romantic!”

  “Have a great day,” said her mother.

  “I will! There is no doubt of that! None!” Janie spun out of the house. How wonderful the Jeep looked, idling away, Reeve grinning at her from the driver’s seat. He leaned over to open the passenger door with his right hand, but she ignored that, raced around the car and ripped open his door.

  When they finished hugging, he looked her up and down. “You going fishing maybe? Hiking the Appalachian Trail?”

  “At least I look interesting. You look exactly the same as you did last year. Rugby shirt, khakis, loafers, no socks.”

  “It’s the boy-next-door look.”

  “I thought once you went to college you’d act out. Wear gang clothes, or get tattoos.”

  Reeve gave her a look. “You want tattoos? I’ll get tattoos. Where do you want your initials?”

  “Ugh! No! Don’t even think about it. I hate tattoos. I just thought that eighteen-year-old boys at college went wild.”

  Reeve shook his head. “No, that’s girls.”

  “Oh. Do you think I’ll go wild when I get out of town?”

  Reeve laughed. He had been asking her to go wild for two years. “There’s always hope.”

  She wanted to sit in his lap for the drive to school. That long, thin face with that big, wide grin, so that when he laughed, there was nothing on his face but laugh. He’d gotten a buzz last year, but never trimmed it, so now the hair was in desperate need of cutting, but at the same time perfect, as if he were a windblown model. Reeve drove with his left hand and slipped his right hand under her hair, at the back of her neck, and his big made-for-footballs hand lay warm and wonderful against her pulse.

  Reeve discovered the earrings. He grinned, tucked her hair back and untangled the crescent moons from her curls.

  “Oh, Reeve, forget school, let’s skip,” she said. “The way we did that New Jersey day.”

  “No, I’m coming in with you. I’m going to attend classes with you.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I think they’ll let me. But actually, I’m not going to ask. I’ve learned one entire thing at college. Don’t ask. Just do it.” He grinned again. Janie would take bets. No teacher at her high school was going to turn down a guy with that grin.

  Reeve proceeded to disrupt Janie’s English class by gluing his eyes on her and never moving, never blinking. She felt his eyes right through her hair. She twitched and shifted, wrapped her hair in a ponytail and let it go, rested her chin in her hands, and then tilted sideways to see if he was still staring.

  He was.

  Every girl was envious, and every boy wondered how Reeve had acquired the composure to demonstrate so vividly how he felt about a girl.

  In the halls Reeve wound his fingers through her hair, and they walked in step, half leaning on each other.

  Tyler, camera bouncing on his chest, saw them coming. He pantomimed a photograph, but Reeve shook his head.

  I was going to say yes! thought Janie. When people stare at me because I’m a milk carton freak, I could kill them. But stares because we make a cute couple—I love it. “I have gym now, Reeve,” she said regretfully. “It’s really unlikely that they’re going to let you in the girls’ locker room.”

  “It’s okay. I have stuff to do,” he said breezily. “People to blackmail, places to rob.”

  She didn’t see him again till lunch, when he scooped her up and said they were going to Mickey D’s. The school had just started letting kids go off campus for lunch. You had to have parental permission, and Janie, of course, had no such thing.

  She and Reeve sauntered out of the building, following his rule of Don’t ask, just do it, and nobody in authority noticed, and everybody in the student body did.

  She’d be delighted to have a yearbook page for the romance of Reeve Shields and Janie Johnson.

  He opened the Jeep door for her. They loved doing things for each other. When she was seated, he tucked her skirt in so that it wouldn’t get caught in the door, and it felt like being tucked in at night. He started the engine and revved it a few times. “That’s my heart,” he told her, and they laughed.

  “What did you do during my last two classes, Reeve?”

  “Found the yearbook adviser. Told her she can’t allow a milk carton page. She promised. It’s not gonna happen.”

  Last year Janie would have wept all over him. This year she burst into laughter. “Oh, Reeve, you make everything so simple! I can’t stand it that you’re a million miles away.”

  “It’s not even two hundred miles.”

  “Light-years, then.”

  They skipped lunch.

  They found the far rear of McDonald’s parking lot instead, and Reeve said, “You are wearing very heavy-duty clothes, Janie.”

  “We trail walkers have to fend off attacking mosquitoes and grizzly bears.”

  “Just don’t fend me off,” said Reeve.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  “I want to drive up to Boston, Mom,” said Jodie.

  Mom, Brian and Jodie were at Home Depot, tracking down window blinds
and kitchen-cabinet knobs. Brendan’s team had practice, of course; Brian had hardly seen his twin for days.

  “There are six colleges I want to look at in Boston,” said Brian’s sister. “Friday we have a teachers’ workshop, so there’s no school; I can drive up to Boston Thursday after school, have Friday and Saturday to tour campuses and do interviews, and then drive back Sunday.”

  “By yourself?” said Mom doubtfully. Not as if she were going to lash out and shriek NO, NO, NEVER! but as if Jodie were brave to take on traffic and navigation all the way to Boston. “Maybe if you had company it would be okay.”

  Jodie nodded. “I’d like company, but Caitlin and Nicole are going south, they’re looking in Virginia for colleges.” A year ago, Brian thought, Jodie would not have dared mention going to a city at all, never mind alone.

  Their mother said, “But your father and I want to go along when you visit campuses, Jo. And that weekend we’ll be so busy. Brendan has two games.” Their parents had never missed a game, performance or concert in which one of their children had participated.

  “Mom, I’m running out of time!” said Jodie. “I have to decide where I’m applying in only a few months.”

  Brian was not eager to see Brendan triumph twice in one weekend, and Boston sounded great, plus he was mildly fond of his sister, so he said, “I’ll go with you, Jodie. I can read the maps and hand you change for the tolls.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Jodie hugged him right there in the store. Brian shrank out from under her grasp and took refuge on the far side of the cart.

  “But Brian,” said his mother, “Brendan has a big game on Friday afternoon, and another one on Saturday. He’s your twin,” she added, as if Brian, of all people, might have forgotten this.

  “Mom, I’ve seen Brendan play. I’ll see him the rest of my life. But I haven’t been to Boston with Jodie.” Boston is history, he thought. Ben Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere. Maybe I’ll go to college in Boston, too, and study history.

  He had never had a long view of his life. His life was in short takes: a practice, a game, a shower, a brother. Now he could see it, his own personal calendar years spread like computer printouts.

  One day last week, when Bren had practice and Brian didn’t, Brian had gone to the town library and wandered through the adult American history section. He had never entered the adult division of the library before. He’d felt like a trespasser. The collection was immense. He didn’t know where to begin. How did you figure out which of those thousands of books you wanted to read?

  He settled for reading the spines, just exploring titles. The books were arranged like geography, starting with European explorers crossing the Atlantic, moving into settlers of New England, and advancing toward the Ohio River, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi.

  He came home after two hours in which nobody had known where he was. And when he got home, nobody asked. It was a first in Brian’s thirteen years.

  He wanted to thank his parents. He wanted to shout Yes! It’s about time! but he said nothing, because maybe they hadn’t realized the freedom they had allowed, and maybe they wouldn’t allow it again.

  He resolved that next time, he would actually sit in one of the cozy armchairs in the adult section and read the first paragraphs of some of those books, and even take one home.

  “We could stop off at the Johnsons’,” said Jodie eagerly, “and see Janie.”

  Any idea that they had a new, easy, upbeat life vanished.

  Their mother’s face sagged and she looked blindly at her shopping list, swallowing hard as she checked off an item they hadn’t yet bought.

  Brian was becoming the person he should have been, but his mother could never be the person she should have been.

  The damage had been too long, and too terrible.

  Oh, Hannah, he thought. What you did to us.

  Derek Himself loved to talk about fame. “Did you see me on 20/20 last night?” Derek liked to ask. “I’m America’s newest shock jock, syndicated in a hundred and seventy-two stations. They had to interview me, or their ratings would tumble.”

  Reeve, listening, thought: I’m the one here who might actually accomplish those things. And now I have to back off.

  He’d been so surprised by his visit home. Nothing had changed. His life was so different that he had somehow expected everybody else’s life to be different, too. The same pots were stacked on the same stove. The same pile of bills waited for attention on the same counter. He had forgotten high school, too, but there it sat: same halls, teachers, lights, sounds, smell.

  And Janie.

  He’d forgotten the silk of her hair.

  Forgotten what it was like to be the physical center of someone’s universe.

  Forgotten, here among other young men pushing and shoving for ratings, what it was like just to be loved.

  He’d felt so great, saving her from the yearbook assault.

  That evening Reeve and Janie sprawled on the sofa in his parents’ living room, Janie half in his lap, leaning back against his chest, holding his arms locked around her, while he rested his chin on her head. If he relaxed his hug, she’d pull his arms tight again, for that combination of love and safety that she required of him.

  She filled him in on the reporter who had tried to barge into her house on Lipstick Day. It was good that she could not see Reeve’s face. He was doing exactly what Tyler and the reporter had tried to do, except they had failed, and Reeve hadn’t.

  Reeve’s answers, therefore, required detour after detour. It was like the streets of Boston: one pit after another. Every sentence led to WSCK, and he couldn’t even mention it, let alone brag. How he wanted to tell her: Janie, I’m the best, I’m a fad, people tune in just for me.

  He wanted Janie to light up, the way she did, all the way to her fingertips, laughing her wonderful laugh, and kissing him before she got her laugh done.

  On the train returning to Boston, it was an easy decision: back off, skip radio.

  But here in the studio…

  Derek had put on the Fog, had a tape by Slow Burn ready to play back to back. Plenty of time for Vinnie, Cal, Derek and Reeve to talk. Talking was what they liked best. There were no strong, silent types in radio.

  Back off didn’t mean quit. Back off meant still here, but not as deejay. Or as deejay, but not doing janies.

  If I’m here, listening to Derek Himself, can I stand it? I’d rip the mike out of his hands and do a janie anyway. I’m not gonna back off. So I have to quit. Cold. The way people who have quit smoking have to throw away their cigarettes.

  Not come down here again.

  Not hang out with these guys.

  Find a new set of friends.

  “Vinnie,” he said, and he found it surprisingly hard to get enough air beneath his sentence, as if this were his first time on the radio all over again, “I’m going to quit.”

  “No, you’re not. You love this.”

  “I do love it. But Janie is a real person. This would upset her. So I’m quitting.”

  Vinnie was amused. “You won’t quit. You love the sound of your voice. You love the numbers, how you’re up every week. You’re an addict.”

  I am not. I am in control and I’ve made a decision. I won’t do another janie.

  The music was fading out. Derek Himself talked over the last chords. Reeve hated that, when they cut out the final lyrics in order to have more time for their own voices. He wasn’t going to be that kind of deejay.

  Derek surprised Reeve by giving him a janie cue, swinging the adjustable arm of the mike into Reeve’s face.

  The air was empty and waiting.

  I won’t say a janie, he ordered himself.

  He didn’t.

  He swung the mike back to Derek and walked out of the broadcast room.

  There. For Janie’s sake, he’d quit.

  He was proud of himself. He felt tall and strong and good for people. Maybe he’d run for President.

  In the big
Dodge coming back from Home Depot, Jodie needed to be private, so she let Brian have the front seat with Mom and she sat way in the back, slumped down, her face hidden by the middle seats.

  Unbelievable. Her mother was going to allow it! Jodie would be permitted choice, and independence, and risk.

  Risk.

  It had never been allowed in the Spring family since Jennie had vanished.

  Stephen, out there in Colorado, told them nothing when they were on the phone with him. Nothing. Was he being dull and good, going to class, getting eight hours of sleep, being friends with suitable people?

  Or was he taking risks? Hitchhiking? Skydiving?

  Jodie hoped he was taking risks.

  Jodie, like the rest of the family, had hair that glinted red and gold. But unlike Janie, whose chaotic curls were airborne in the humidity of New England, Jodie’s was thin and straight. She wore it in a soccer cut.

  If she went to college in Boston, she’d probably dye it blue. Shave some off. Have earrings in her scalp. Scare normal people by sitting down next to them. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d wear long black skirts and vests with a zillion glitter beads. Or she might rip down the city streets on her Roller-blades, with her leather jacket and her gang bandanna.

  What do I want from life, thought Jodie, now that I have choices?

  Well, I don’t want a family. That’s more risk than I’m willing to touch. I don’t have daydreams with little kids in them. I don’t want babies I could lose.

  I’m going to have money, and answering machines, and a staff to order around, and jets, and travel, and great clothes. After my shaved-skull-and-earrings stage, that is.

  And Jodie was happy, thinking: It’s over.

  It was cold out, the kind of cold Reeve liked. He was in shirtsleeves, but the cold felt good. He loved his bare arms in winter.

  Reeve often rehearsed the janies in the dark. In front of people, he couldn’t even rehearse inside his head. Alone in the dark, he could move his lips, or even whisper, getting the flow.

  I have to stop that, too, he thought. I’m doing this for Janie and I don’t even get to tell her what a great guy I am. No fair making sacrifices when the sacrificed-for doesn’t know.