What Janie Found

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Many brothers are worthless,’” said Stephen. “Yup. This is the solution. It’ll untwin you. Brendan already untwinned, the skunk, and it’s time you did the same.’”

  Brian nodded, although he would never untwin; he couldn’t have if he’d wanted to; birth bound him too tightly.

  “Bri, lighten up,’” said his brother. “Is it Bren you’re upset about? Janie? Reeve? Reeve with Janie?’”

  Brian imagined the kidnapper contaminating Janie or Stephen, as the Arsenal was contaminated.

  “You’re acting like I’m a threat,’” said his brother. “What’s going on?’”

  Brian’s head swam with unfamilies. Hannah had been an undaughter. Stephen wanted Brian to untwin.

  “I guess I got too close to Janie’s other family,’” he said at last. “I’m worried about Mr. Johnson dying or being a vegetable. I’m worried about Mrs. Johnson being by herself and I’m worried about Janie making stupid decisions.’”

  “Like what?’” said Stephen, who had never been slow. “What stupid decision does she have in mind right now?’”

  Reeve was not surprised when Kathleen jumped up after five minutes and said she thought she’d go find Stephen.

  Girls who want you for themselves, he thought, even when you go off with a kid brother you haven’t seen in months—they’re trouble.

  He turned to share his thoughts with Janie and got her hair in his face. Today it was the approximate size and shape of a bushel of apples. How he wanted to run his fingers through the mass of her hair.

  She had opened her purse and was digging around in it. It would have made Reeve crazy to carry that thing around.

  She pulled out the checkbook.

  The hot sun suddenly blistered him. He did not want her writing Hannah Johnson’s name, with her own fingers curled around her own pen. Hannah Johnson didn’t even exist! She was a falsehood. There was only Hannah Javensen, kidnapper.

  But in Janie’s life, H. J. was a force stronger than gravity.

  Reeve felt frantic and yet heavy; his thoughts impossible to pin down, his body too thick to respond.

  He had agreed to this! He had even suggested the format for coming.

  “Janie, forget it,’” he said. “Let Hannah float downstream without you. Grown-ups have to take care of themselves. Cut her off.’”

  He himself might once have cut Hannah off.

  Reeve had gotten involved in his college radio station, narrating a soap opera: a nightly episode of Janie. The kidnapping, the milk carton, the courts, the birth family, all audience-pleasers. He’d blatted about Janie’s tears and failure of spirit. It entertained his listeners just fine until one night his listeners included Janie.

  Trust and love were dead in minutes.

  But what Janie didn’t know—nobody else knew—was that a phone call had been made to the station late one night. When he picked up, Reeve expected the usual band request, but the caller said she was Janie Johnson’s kidnapper. Without thinking—a frequent problem for Reeve—he disconnected. Stupid move, because the woman didn’t call back.

  One or two questions, and he’d have known whether it was Hannah from a pay phone or a silly college kid hoping for airtime.

  A thousand times he had wondered: Am I the only one who ever actually spoke to the kidnapper?

  That would have placed her in Boston last fall, and not in Colorado.

  But she had enough money from Frank to get on a bus and visit friends. If you could imagine Hannah having friends. Ex–cult members, maybe. Reeve didn’t think Hannah would go to Boston to see Paul Revere’s house.

  Reeve hadn’t done the right thing once in his entire freshman year. The only good things about his eighteenth year were the things he hadn’t done: He hadn’t murdered anybody or sold drugs.

  I have to do the right thing this time, Reeve told himself. And what might that be?

  The super stocks went round and round, mud covering the names of their sponsors.

  “I’m scared for you, Janie,’” said Reeve.

  Janie watched the race. “She’s not going to attack me.’”

  “Janie, no matter how sweetly you remember it, with the ice cream and the twirling stool and skipping along the sidewalks, kidnapping is a violent crime.’”

  But they were out of time for private conversation and she wasn’t listening to him anyway. The others were returning, Brian walking by himself, kicking at clods of dirt thrown up by the race cars. Kathleen had Stephen by the hand.

  They were coming up the bleachers as Janie wrote the check, capped her ball pen and dropped pen and checkbook back into her purse.

  The check horrified him. Her casual attitude horrified him.

  And then Reeve figured it out. The check didn’t matter because she was going to talk to Hannah. All that mattered to Janie Johnson right now were her questions and her answers. The check was just a way to get hold of Hannah.

  He threw it all away, every minute and every month of trying to win Janie back. He said fiercely, “Janie. Stop it. You find Hannah, and you’re betraying your father and mother as badly as I betrayed you.’”

  How dare you? thought Janie. How dare you compare your nasty little radio trick with what I am facing? I am not betraying my father. He betrayed me! And I deserve answers.

  Stephen sat down next to her, with Brian on his other side, so that Kathleen was left to sit wherever. Kathleen did not like this. Stephen did not appear to notice. “What’s the stupid decision Brian was telling me about?’” he said, smiling at Janie.

  Stephen’s eyes were their mother’s eyes. Her New Jersey mother. Her real mother, who would be so disappointed in her right now. Make us proud, they had said to Janie when she left them for good.

  “I didn’t tell him anything,’” said Brian quickly. He jerked his head toward Kathleen, saying as plainly as words that she had shown up and ended their talk.

  Janie thought of a way to deflect Stephen that was not actually a lie.

  “There was this file in my father’s desk,’” she told Stephen. “Old papers. The police report on Hannah Javensen and stuff.’”

  She could feel Brian’s fear that she was going to tell everything. She hoped he held together.

  “There was this sentence in the police report,’” she said to Stephen. “The subject was last seen flying west. That sentence crawls around under my skin like a tropical disease. I love the idea of being last seen. Ditching the whole thing. Disappearing. Think about it, Stephen. You disappear, you have the power of a god. If you vanish, you control your family forever.’”

  Reeve tilted away from her, his spine stiff as a chair, his big warm features growing long and thin with surprise and distaste. Good. She felt the same toward him.

  “You’re not the one who has to be the good guy, Stephen,’” Janie said. “I’m the one. You guys thought I was the bad guy when I left New Jersey and went home, but I was just being the good guy for my other family. And when Reeve was a jerk last year, I was supposed to be the good guy again. And when my father got sick, I really had to be the good guy. And my stupid decision is: I’m sick of being the good guy. I could be last seen flying west too, you know.’”

  Brian looked ill.

  Reeve looked away.

  Kathleen was mesmerized.

  Stephen just grinned. “I totally understand. I was last seen flying west, Janie, and I’m not going east again. I made sure nobody else was kidnapped. I did dishes, I mowed the lawn, I washed the car, I finished my homework. If I had to swear at my teachers, I did it under my breath. That’s all the good guy I’m going to be.’”

  And that’s all the truth I’m going to tell, thought Janie. Because on Monday, I will be the bad guy. I will meet Hannah.

  She made a topknot of her hair and swished her forehead with it.

  “You already vanished from our lives twice, Janie,’” said Stephen. “You can’t do it again. Got to stomp on that one. What you can do is work around the edges. Distance is good. You l
ike it in Colorado? Come here next year. Your parents would go for it.’”

  Distance was good. It was easy to do what you wanted when you didn’t have to show up for dinner with the people you were hurting.

  “But what did Reeve do to be a jerk?’” said Kathleen, tugging at Stephen’s shirt. “Tell me, I love stories like that.’”

  Reeve gazed at the Arsenal, obviously picking a spot for Kathleen to soak up poison.

  “Beats me,’” said Stephen. “When Reeve came to New Jersey at first everyone loved him. He made things easier. But then nobody talked about Reeve anymore. Mom made a face every time his name came up. Janie wasn’t going out with him, and when I mentioned him, Jodie stuck her finger down her throat and gagged. So my wild guess was that we hated him.’” Stephen laughed. “I’m a good hater, I joined up.’” He smiled and said gently to his sister, “But I liked Reeve, so when you were seeing him again, it was fine with me. I unhated.’”

  Janie let go of her hair, shaking herself to free the curls.

  Kathleen leaned around the three Springs. “What did you do, Reeve?’” she asked with her silken smile.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  They left the races early.

  The girls headed for Kathleen’s room to scrub off track grime and get into something nice for dinner. While Kathleen was blowing her hair dry—something Janie could never do or she would have a red pyramid for a head—Janie said, “I have to mail a letter. I’m just going to run over to that box by the student center. I’ll meet you at Stephen’s dorm.’”

  “I might take a few minutes,’” said Kathleen. “I have to change the reservations. Make sure the boys look decent, Janie. We’re not just getting pizza.’”

  As if I don’t have enough to worry about without enforcing dress codes, thought Janie.

  She walked out of Kathleen’s room, shut the door carefully and, instead of going to the stairs, followed the corridor until she arrived in the dorm commons: a sunny bright place with a television, a few Internet-dedicated computers, two sofas and some vending machines.

  Nobody was there.

  In summer, the dorm had a hot, waiting feel: dust collecting and thoughts set down.

  Janie sat at one of the small slanting desks, designed before laptops needing flat low surfaces; designed for three-ring binders and sharp pencils. She opened her purse.

  There was the envelope, stamped and addressed. There were three sheets of plain white writing paper, in case she made mistakes and had to make a second or even a third try at the letter to Hannah.

  She took out the ballpoint pen and uncapped it.

  Her hands got cold. She put the pen back and took out a pencil instead. She felt safer in pencil.

  DEAR HANNAH, she wrote, and the words leaped off the page and screamed at her. There was nothing “dear’” about Hannah.

  This is not a letter, Janie reminded herself. This is a set of instructions. I’m going to tell her where and when. I’m going to leave out who and why. We’ll get to that when we talk.

  She folded down an inch of paper, creased it with her fingernail and tore away the DEAR HANNAH.

  She quit using block letters. It felt criminal, as if Janie were demanding a ransom.

  Frank Johnson has asked me to deliver your check by hand. He needs to know if he is giving you enough money, or if you need more.

  That idea had come to her in the night and it was brilliant. How could Hannah resist more money?

  Meet me in the university library magazine room.

  What could be safer?

  Libraries were full of people browsing here and there. She and Hannah would blend. But what time Monday? If Hannah did have a job, she wouldn’t be free until five or six. But by five or six, Stephen would be back from work, the boys would be hungry and Kathleen would be pouncing on everybody like a fox after mice.

  It’s money, Janie told herself. Hannah never ignored the money before. She won’t ignore it now. She’ll get out of work to get the money.

  At one-thirty, Janie would claim jet lag and leave Brian and Reeve and go to Kathleen’s room. Reeve would trust Janie to do what she said.

  She wrote:

  Two p.m.

  Her hand shook. The writing was barely legible.

  Her hand was so damp with perspiration, it left a complete and perfect five-fingered print on the paper. She would have to copy the letter over and use this effort as a blotter so that she didn’t pawprint again.

  How was Hannah to know which person in the magazine room?

  Janie’s identifying mark was certainly her bushel of red hair. But did she really want to refer to her hair, age and looks? Once they started talking, it would become clear that she was the tiny child Hannah had snatched all those years ago. But Janie needed to build up to that, or Hannah might take flight.

  It’s a magazine room, she reminded herself. The signal can just be a magazine. She wrote:

  I will be reading National Geographic.

  Janie copied the note, folded it, put it in the envelope and sealed it. She went down the stairs farthest from Kathleen’s side of the dorm and out the back, following paths over the grass, passing under trees and around shrubbery to a fat blue curved mailbox.

  It was Saturday, seven P.M. Mail, the placard on the box said, would be retrieved Sunday at eight A.M.

  The lid was protected by a blue overhang. Dropping her purse on the ground, Janie took the mailbox handle in her right hand and opened the slot.

  Her left hand clutched convulsively on the envelope, wrinkling it badly. She had to stand for a moment, hanging on to the blue box, until a sick dizziness passed.

  Do it, she said to herself. Don’t wimp out now. You came here to do this. Do it.

  The boys took very hot showers, soaking out filth and grit and letting their muscles relax. When he was clean and had shaved, Stephen put on shorts and a T-shirt, so Brian and Reeve did too. The best thing about college was that you could wear anything anywhere.

  “Kath picked a place for dinner,’” said Stephen. “I’d rather order pizza, but she likes restaurants.’”

  “How can you afford all this?’” said Brian.

  “Actually, I’m not sure how I’m going to afford tonight. I may have to veto her restaurant choice.’”

  “I have money,’” said Reeve. “If it isn’t too expensive, I can pay.’”

  They counted the available cash and suddenly they were starving, desperate, in pain, not a single interest in life except food and lots of it. They charged down the stairs and burst out the front door to meet the girls.

  The campus road was quiet.

  There was no traffic, there were no other people.

  The shadows were long and dark.

  The sky was thick and sullen, the color of suffocation.

  Janie appeared in the distance, coming alone down a narrow path. She wore a long thin cotton dress that caught at her ankles. It was white, with tiny embroidered white flowers. Just washed, her hair was beginning to dry, and each separate curl was sproinging up.

  She was so vivid; so noticeable.

  The degree to which she stood out was frightening.

  She stood out like that when she was three, thought Stephen. That’s why Hannah Javensen wanted her. She was an adorable doll to pick up and carry along.

  Stephen felt queerly responsible, as if something were about to happen; as if, like a bird before a storm, he could feel a change in the weather. A change for the worse.

  Janie had a strange expression on her face, like a toddler who knows she has done something wrong; who expects punishment.

  Slowly, down the campus road, came a single car, its engine so well designed it was nearly silent. It was a black Lincoln Town Car, heavy doors and shadowed glass.

  They all turned to watch it, Stephen with his undefined anxiety; Reeve with his nerves shot; Brian hungry; Janie walking as if she would like to be someplace else.

  The car stopped in front of the boys while Ja
nie was still several feet away. Stephen recognized the driver and felt his visit crumbling. This, then, must be the punishment Janie was expecting: yet another interrogation.

  “What are you doing here?’” Stephen demanded. He walked sideways, not taking his eyes off the Lincoln, to stand in front of Janie. He knew he was not thinking clearly. He could not reach clarity. He said, “Get out of here.’”

  Kathleen opened the passenger’s door. “Stephen,’” she said, astonished. “What’s the matter with you? Dad just happened to be in town again. He’s taking us all to dinner.’”

  “FBI agents don’t just happen to be places,’” said Stephen. “Get away from us. My sister isn’t talking to you.’”

  Harry Donnelly got out of the car too, standing in the L of the open driver’s door. He held up his two hands for peace. “Stephen, I’m just here as Kathleen’s dad. I’m really not thinking of anything but a good meal and some good conversation.’”

  “Think again!’” Stephen could not stand it. Literally. He felt that his body might take wing, or swim, because he could not stand. Kathleen would puncture them all, like shards of glass under bare feet. She would never let go, she’d always be spitting questions. She would wring Stephen out again, when he had just conquered his past; just become himself.

  Stephen backed his sister toward the dorm.

  I’m acting as if we’re hostages, he thought murkily, and Harry Donnelly has a gun. But we are, and he does. We are hostages to our history, and they have a crowbar to break in and start it up again.

  “What’s the matter with you?’” snapped Kathleen. “Grow up, Stephen.’”

  I am late growing up, thought Stephen, and the reason is people like you, who never left us alone.

  In spite of the dry July heat, dampness covered Janie’s body. She closed her eyes to keep a faint from happening and hung on to Stephen.

  What will they do to me? she thought. What is happening?