Whatever Happened to Janie?

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Sure enough, Janie was killed, and the cheerful that’s-it-for-you! music took her off the screen.

  Jodie giggled. “You sounded like a pilot being shot down in World War Two. ‘Oh, no! I have no hope!’“

  “How many lives do you have left?” asked Stephen.

  “Just one.”

  “Hah!” said Jodie with satisfaction. “I have twenty-two.”

  Janie studied their play, memorizing the tricks and keys. She had memorized the little Nintendo songs without meaning to, the way you memorized the theme to Jeopardy. They sang in her head, like little companions.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” said Stephen.

  Mesmerized by the game, Janie hated to pause it just so they could eat. Jodie laughed at her. “Your stomach is growling, you need a snack so much.”

  It was true.

  “The game sucks you in, doesn’t it?” said Jodie. “There’s never a time when you’re really ready to stop.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Stephen. “All of a sudden you’re so sick of it you can’t believe you’ve spent the whole day there.”

  “Don’t tell Mom and Dad we played two solid hours, Jennie,” cautioned Jodie, following her brother into the kitchen. “And especially don’t tell them you died fifty times,” she yelled back. “They think all that dying makes you callous and perverted. They might even take the Nintendo away.”

  Stephen and Jodie discussed snack possibilities. They decided to stick chocolate chip cookies under the broiler to melt the chips. Neat idea, thought Janie, getting up and going after them. Daddy would love that.

  Daddy.

  The cozy school-day afternoon died as if Janie had put a knife through it. She had actually forgotten Mommy and Daddy. She had been having fun. She had liked being in this house, with this brother and sister. For an entire afternoon, she had put her parents on the shelf of her mind, storing them for backup.

  Mommy and Daddy will shift into the past, she thought. Soon they will be shadows. People I remember in slow moments, or sad times.

  No!

  That’s not what I want!

  I said I’d try—but I didn’t want it to work!

  “Cookies are ready!” yelled Stephen.

  “I don’t want any,” said Janie. She felt herself stiffening, as if she were preparing for war.

  Jodie popped back into the living room. “Yes, you do. Come on. I just poured milk.”

  “I am allergic to milk,” said Janie sharply. “How many times do I have to tell you that?” Stop it, she told herself, don’t pick a fight.

  Jodie stared. “Why don’t you come on in and tell us again, Jennie?” she said. “We’re slow learners, we Springs. Anyway, we love hearing about you and the Johnsons. About how you never have pizza and you’re always going horseback riding and you need a thirtieth Swatch.”

  Janie walked past. If they had a fight, it would exonerate her from forgetting about the Johnsons. Her loyalties twisted and swung, like a dead person hung from a tree. She opened the refrigerator door roughly and pushed the available drinks around.

  “Don’t like our selection?” said Jodie hotly. “Wish you were in a better-stocked kitchen? Up there in Connecticut where they do things right?”

  “Yes!” snapped Janie.

  Stephen lifted the plate of hot cookies between their snarling faces. The rich aroma of hot chocolate interfered with the fight. “Come on, Jennie. Come on, Jo. Dad told us to get along. So get along.”

  “She isn’t trying,” said Jodie.

  “She was for a while. Two hours is the most we can expect of her.”

  Janie stiffened.

  Stephen waved the plate on a slant. “Dig in. Your big brother’s very own homemade cookies.”

  If I had grown up here, Janie thought, would I idolize Stephen? Would this be the big brother I leaned on for advice? Would I think he was a wonderful guy and would my girlfriends want to date him?

  She leaned on the huge white refrigerator, wishing she could lean on Reeve, or Mommy, or Daddy. Anything but this place.

  Jodie actually picked up a kitchen chair and flung it.

  Janie leapt out of the way even though the chair came nowhere near her.

  “I hate you!” Jodie screamed, eyes blazing. Jodie grabbed the plate out of Stephen’s hands and threw that, too. Chocolate splatted where it hit the kitchen wall. “You can’t even take a cookie from us! You have brought nothing to this family but hurt and pain. Since you were three years old.” Jodie began sobbing. “I thought you would be so much fun. I always wanted a sister. And we were named to go together. Jodie and Jennie.” Jodie wiped her eyes and went on screaming. “I thought we’d share clothes and giggle and tell stories like a slumber party. But you’d rather lie there in the dark like a stick or read a book. You can’t stand talking to me. And you write your other name on your homework and you telephone those people all the time.”

  She was right and Janie knew it, but could not admit it. “They are not those people! They’re my parents!” said Janie fiercely.

  Stephen actually got between them.

  “You might as well be stabbing Mom with a butcher knife the way you act, Jennie! You’re not even trying,” yelled Jodie. “I hate you! You’re a mean, spoiled—” Jodie bit off the rest of her sentence.

  Mr. and Mrs. Spring walked in, home from work and no doubt sorry. They stared incredulously at the dumped cookies and upside-down chair.

  It’s my fault, thought Janie. I wanted a fight. I practically choreographed a fight.

  Mrs. Spring put a hand lightly on Janie’s shoulder and the other hand not so lightly on Jodie’s.

  But she did not say anything. She did not take sides. She did not make some grown-up type statement about what this meant. She did not say what they were going to do next.

  After a long time, Janie realized that Mrs. Spring did not know what to do next.

  Nobody did.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Reeve Shields had driven to New Jersey before.

  That was when he was still practically a little kid. He’d been seventeen, so crazy about Janie that just being alone with her in his Jeep filled his entire mind. Not that being with Janie was ever a mind-thing. It was a body-thing. Thinking about his body and her body was so intoxicating that Reeve found his own body useless. Swallowing, breathing, gripping a steering wheel—difficult in Janie’s presence.

  He had lived next door to Janie ever since he could remember. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with the girl next door; she was supposed to be too familiar and too ordinary.

  But Janie, her slender but deeply curving shape, her silken but ridiculously fluffy shining red hair …

  Reeve had his first college acceptance.

  It was so amazing. He would not have thought there was a college in America that would want him. Reeve had spent freshman, sophomore, and junior years killing time and staring at girls. This did not produce high grades. This did not even produce homework. He had picked up steam senior year, but his grade average was definitely average.

  He held the acceptance letter in his hand. Even the envelope was precious, with its college logo and return address. He loved knowing that his name and address were in their computer. They wanted him.

  Reeve wanted to tell the world, but mostly he wanted to tell Janie.

  You never saw lights on at her house now. The wide glass plates that filled the side wall of the Johnson house were dark. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson must sit in the dark, staring at the shadows, thinking their dark thoughts.

  Janie had been their light.

  Reeve did not understand why Janie had to be gone forever, why there could be no swapping or weekending, but the family in New Jersey had been firm. This is our daughter, they said. You didn’t know you were stealing her, but you did. Your time is up. We’re bringing her home. Do not interfere.

  Even Reeve got his marching orders: do not interfere.

  Settle in, that was the big phrase. Janie had to “
settle in.” Then Reeve might be allowed to get in touch with her. Might. Nothing was certain.

  Janie had written him twice from school. Letters scribbled surreptitiously during class. Ripped from spiral notebooks, stamped and mailed by a girl named Chrissy who sat next to Janie in choir.

  The whole thing was wrong. They were piling more secrets on a girl who could hold no more, and now she was adding secrets of her own. Reeve thought she might collapse under the weight of secrets.

  He still saw Mr. and Mrs. Johnson going to work or out for dinner or bringing in groceries. They still called hello to him, and asked how school was going. But they never mentioned Janie.

  He’d asked his mother why not.

  “They don’t want to break down,” said his mother. “They can’t start crying. They’d never stop.”

  “Does Mrs. Johnson talk to you about it?” Reeve wanted to know.

  Girls talked so much more than boys. He had listened to Janie enough hours to know they needed talk more. It wasn’t just the accumulating facts of her kidnapping that had overwhelmed Reeve, it was the number of times Janie needed to analyze them. Why wasn’t once enough? Why did girls need to talk so much?

  Reeve preferred action. Physical action. Every time he and Janie had been ready to move beyond kissing, it turned out that only he was ready; Janie was just ready for more talk.

  There were times when he felt this was her master plan, to distract him.

  Nothing had ever distracted Reeve from Janie’s body.

  But he was eighteen now, and had been accepted at college. He was in a different car-insurance category, and he could vote, and enter the army … and on a Saturday in March, he could drive to New Jersey with or without parental permission.

  He wanted to flourish the letter in front of Janie. See Janie’s eyes light up. Hear Janie’s cry of delight. He wanted Janie to wrap her arms around him, and tell him how brilliant he was, and what a magnificent future lay ahead of him.

  Then he wanted to get in the Jeep and drive her to some secluded spot.

  When it came to fantasies, he had had them all.

  On the telephone, Caitlin said, “Maybe you could think of Jennie as an exchange student. You know. From Nigeria or Mongolia. And naturally she has different customs and different habits. And doesn’t even speak your language. And so naturally she’s homesick.”

  Cait was always sure of her psychology. She referred to herself as Jodie’s best friend. And that might be true, but it was not what Jodie wanted. Jodie wanted her sister to be her best friend. “I guess I’m not mad at Jennie so much as I’m mad at myself,” said Jodie. Think of her as an exchange student, she thought. It wasn’t such a bad idea. No matter what Jennie’s like, she promised herself, I’ll be a diplomat. I will be the ambassador to Jennie’s foreign country. “I shouldn’t have yelled,” said Jodie. “I should have hung on to my temper.”

  “Yes,” agreed Cait. “You were a total jerk and lost everything you’d gained.”

  Best friends, thought Jodie, or sisters, don’t call you a total jerk. They stick by you.

  She wondered if she had either a best friend or a sister.

  She got off the phone. She was too depressed to talk. That was depressed. She avoided her own room; Jennie was in there. She headed down to the playroom instead. When the phone rang in the kitchen, she didn’t even race to the bottom of the stairs to see if it was for her.

  “Mommy!” said Janie. She was so happy. Her mother had not once telephoned her; Janie had done all the calling home.

  But it was not a happy call. “Sweetie, Frank and I have spent a long time on the phone with Mr. and Mrs. Spring.”

  Not “your father and I” but “Frank and I.” Janie’s heart clutched.

  “Janie, this is the most terrible thing I have ever had to say. Please forgive me for saying it. I love you, and that’s why I’m saying this. You are with your mother and father now. They seem like wonderful people, sweetheart. We knew they’d be. They’re your parents after all. And they’ve told us everything. You’re not trying, darling. You’re not trying at all. I want you to try, honey.”

  Honey. Sweetheart. Darling. But not, and never again, Daughter.

  “It’s hard,” said Janie, her throat filling up and her eyes overflowing.

  “It’s hard here, too.” No mother is made of material tough enough to give away her baby without weeping.

  “Does Daddy want me to try?”

  Her mother sobbed once, and then her father came on the line. “Yes, honey, I want you to try,” he said. “We brought you up. We brought you up to be good and decent and loving. Your mother believes in helping others; she believes that the purpose of our being on earth. We tried to teach you that. And now the people you have to help are your own mother, your own father, your three brothers, and your sister.”

  “What if I love you better? What if I want to come home?”

  “Ah, baby,” said her father. “In this field of wrongs, there has to be a right somewhere. And it’s right for you to be back with your real family.”

  Write your resolutions down, they said next. You always loved to keep special notebooks and diaries. Resolve that you’re going to be a Spring.

  Talk about blackmail, thought Janie resentfully. She was actually glad to say good-bye to Mommy and Daddy. Whose side were they on, anyway?

  Alone—for once—in Jodie’s bedroom, Janie got out the blue cloth three-ring binder. What they had been through together, she and this notebook! Lying inside was the flattened milk carton that had gotten her here. If only she had never stolen Sarah-Charlotte’s milk. None of this would have happened.

  Wouldn’t they all be much happier? Even Mrs. Spring—wouldn’t she be happier without this hostile enemy daughter in her home?

  But that’s what my parents mean, thought Janie Johnson. Stop being a hostile enemy daughter.

  She opened the binder to a fresh page. The familiar white paper with the thin blue lines and red margin marker stared back. Connecticut, New Jersey, or California—they all used the same paper in school. One by one, she wrote, not New Year’s Resolutions, but New Family Resolutions.

  I will call Mr. and Mrs. Spring Mom and Dad.

  When the Springs say, “Jennie?” I will answer instead of looking around as if I don’t know who they’re talking about.

  I will stop daydreaming that I am still Janie Johnson.

  I will fit in.

  I will not cry myself to sleep and I will not hide in the girls’ room at school and cry there either.

  Well, that seemed like enough. She should be able to break those resolutions in twenty-four hours or so.

  Doing it was different.

  This was the house around which Reeve and Janie had skulked when they were trying to figure out the milk-carton secret. Back when Janie was sure it was a fantasy created by her subconscious. But they had seen those red-haired twins get off the school bus and known: the milk carton told the truth.

  Reeve parked the Jeep in the road.

  His eighteenth year had turned him into a man. His arms and legs had thickened. Weight lifting and track, which he loved because the sports taxed him and because they were almost, but not quite, solitary, had come through for him. He could feel the impact of himself. He felt safer inside himself because of the size of his body and the power of his muscles. How awful Janie must feel, he suddenly thought, so light and fragile, a person whose position can be shifted by anybody stronger.

  For a moment he didn’t feel very strong either. Then he walked up and rang the bell. Harder than track. The front door opened. This had to be the oldest brother: Stephen. Also a senior, but a year younger than Reeve. Still skinny. Still a growing boy.

  How Reeve used to hate that phrase. He got it a lot at Christmas when relatives materialized. My, you’re a growing boy! Grown now, he thought gladly. “Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “You must be Stephen. I’m Reeve Shields. Janie’s boyfriend.”

  Stephen, slightly stunned, let
him in. Reeve was in luck—or out of it, depending on what happened next: the parents were right there. Reeve introduced himself to Mr. and Mrs. Spring.

  “You’re the young man who drove her down here last fall,” said Mr. Spring. “Have a seat. Hungry?”

  Reeve, who was always hungry, liked him immediately and was surprised. He had cast Mr. and Mrs. Spring as The Enemy. Mr. Spring was an inch shorter than Reeve, which was nice. However, he was several inches broader in the shoulders and many pounds heavier. He had a beard that looked like nothing so much as Janie’s hair pasted on his chin. Reeve could not imagine wanting that around your mouth and all over your throat.

  But then, Reeve was new enough to shaving that he still thought standing in front of that mirror and using that razor was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Sex would be better, but sex was harder to get than razors. “Is Janie home?”

  “Jennie,” Mr. Spring corrected him. “Yes, she is.”

  “Yes, I am!” said Janie, coming into the room.

  Reeve turned, and even though he knew how glad he would be to see her, still, he was amazed at how very glad he was to see her.

  The sight of Janie Johnson made him laugh and want to throw things. All his life Reeve had reacted to good news and bad by wanting to throw things. It was a habit his parents had tried to end for years. Now he wanted to gather Janie in his arms and throw her in the air and catch her.

  So he did.

  CHAPTER

  11

  The boy actually asked Dad’s permission to take Jennie out for the rest of Saturday.

  Jodie knew Dad didn’t want to say yes, and also knew Dad didn’t have grounds for refusing either. Dad had to confine himself to saying, “You have a five-hour drive to get home, don’t you, Reeve?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jodie knew Dad would love that “sir.” The boy even looked military, with that buzz cut and those broad shoulders.

  “When do you need to leave in order to get home at a reasonable hour?”

  The boy grinned. This is one good-looking guy, thought Jodie. No wonder Jennie isn’t interested in anybody else! I should be so lucky!