Janie Johnson - Voice On The Radio Part 8

"Just one?" he said. "Normal people have at least a hundred." Reeve disconnected, laughing to himself. He loved how the tip of one finger could remove somebody from his world.

Vinnie said to him, "Remember I had Derek Himself ask for volunteers 'cause we need more disc jockeys?"

Reeve nodded.

"Guess how many people called in?"

"How many?"

"Eleven. Guess how many said they wanted to be just like you? Go overnight from pathetic lame freshman to campus star?"

"Eleven?"

"You're pretty conceited, fella." Vinnie grinned. The 'phone lit up. "Hi, you've reached WSCK, We're Here, We're Yours, We're Sick," said Reeve grandly, "how may I help you?"

Vinnie held up ten fingers. Reeve went wild beneath his shrug. Ten people wanted to be Reeve. Eat your heart out, world, thought Reeve. I'm the only one.

"Listen, I just have one question," said the caller in a childish voice. They all said that. Listen, I just have one question.

Listen, I have all the answers, thought Reeve.

Jodie was telling Janie about the day she and Stephen had gone into New York City thinking they could find Hannah.

"How'd you get away from Mom and Dad?" said Brian, awestruck. Mom and Dad would never have allowed Jodie and Stephen to go into New York City alone.

"We lied," said Jodie, and Brian was thrilled and stunned that his good, decent older sister and his difficult, moody older brother had had this pact between them, this lie, this adventure.

"And did you find her?" said Brian seriously.

"Bri, get a life. How could we find her? There are seven million people in New York City."

"Then what made you look to start with?"

"Remember the police report? She'd been arrested in New York two years before? Of course, back then they didn't know she was the kidnapper, they just thought she was a common hooker, they wouldn't figure out who the kidnapper was until Janie figured it out. Stephen and I thought she might still be in New York, so we went there."

Brian had been to New'York with school groups. He hadn't been able to find the Metropolitan Mu-'seum, never mind one particular woman out of seven million. He forgot about being so nice to his sisters that they would agree to go to Faneuil Hall with him. "Pretty stupid to think you could find her."

"We felt stupid all day long," Jodie agreed, "but we also felt okay. It's hard to describe. At the end of the day, I didn't want to murder Hannah. Or you either, Janie."

Janie made noises of irritation. "I don't see why you had fantasies of murdering me. I had no choices in this whole thing. And besides, what if you had found Hannah? Nothing could be worse.

Do you realize what we would go through if Hannah appeared? A trial."

It would be Hannah accused in court, but it would be Janie's mother and father who were tried, by television, and radio, and newspapers, and neighbors.

"We'd be on CNN for a year," pointed out Brian. He thought this was cool, but he knew his parents and Janie's parents didn't. They'd die first. Hannah might deserve a trial, but they didn't, and there was no escape once these things began.

Brian thought of himself on the witness stand, being calm and handsome and knowledgeable. Of course, he wouldn't be called. He'd been a toddler in diapers when it had happened. His mother had literally kept the twins on leashes; little harnesses as if they'd been dogs pulling carts. Brian hated to look at photographs of himself on a leash.

How quickly Janie and Jodie left the fascinating topic of Hannah. Brian wanted Janie to talk about what her Johnson parents thought when they thought about Hannah. Were they full of guilt? Anger? Horror? What did they say out loud to the daughter they had acquired by theft?

He listened to his sisters talking, enjoying the plural: two sisters. But they were boring, which was the habit of girls, talking about the personalities of boys instead of anything interesting, so Brian stared out the window instead. Turnpikes at night were like girl talk: not interesting.

0 5 5.

Jodie was a good driver. They drove north on 395, rural with little traffic, and picked up the Ma.s.s Pike, where a steady thrum of trucks pushed them faster and faster toward Boston.

Janie wondered when she would develop a desire to drive. She felt stunted sometimes, as if the discovery of her two families had cut off something essential; kept her a child while everybody around her grew up.

Janie knew suddenly that the Johnsons were all playing house: her mother, her father and her- staying little, staying inside.

She played with the radio dial. Both New York and Boston came in clearly. She loved thinking about Reeve on radio. She loved thinking about Reeve. Boston sounded so romantic. While Jodie was touring colleges, Janie could be with Reeve. She thought of wedding gown fabric: satin, lace, velvet, brocade. She thought of veils and gloves.

She laughed to herself in the dark of the car, but it was no joke. She dreamed of a life with Reeve. In this life, he was not just standing with his arm around her; he had his arms around all the players in this sad game, and she and they loved him for being st.u.r.dy. She thought of him in terms of wedding vows: for better or for worse. He had certainly seen her worst, and had waited calmly for her best to return.

One thing she knew. Reeve was sick of calm. He'd like some wild in their relations.h.i.+p.

Janie pretended Reeve was next to her, and she snuggled up to his invisible heat, warming herself on his invisible chest.

Reeve was tired of gentle janies. He'd rehea.r.s.ed truly wrenching janies for tonight. It would be his best night. People phoning 'in would get busy signals.

He waited for ten o'clock.

Derek was offering a prize to the listener who could answer a Boston music trivia question.

Prize~ A phrase Reeve a.s.sociated with Martin Luther King filtered through his mind. Keep your eyes on the prize.

What was that prize, for Reeve?

He did not need freedom. He had too much of it. The prize, for Reeve, was not to use his freedom.

The prize is not a million listeners, and money, and fame, thought Reeve. The prize is shutting up.

If he shut up, n.o.body would hear his really good j anies.

Besides, I won't get caught, he told himself.

Anybody who worries about getting caught knows he is wrong. Reeve did not want to think about right and wrong. He just wanted to enjoy his new place in the world. He resented Martin Luther King for appearing in his mind, righteous and judging.

He whispered prize to himself, turning the prize back into a pair of Derek's tickets.

S * S.

Boston popped out of the ground. They'd been on a boring highway, with boring buildings, they entered a tunnel, and wham! There was Boston, skysc.r.a.pers and hotels, neon lights and streetlights and office-at-night lights.

Jodie concentrated on being in the correct lane at the correct time, but she never once picked the correct lane, and had to whip between cars and risk fender benders, and listen to angry honks.

They hit the Marriott at 10:14.

The place was so efficient that they were in the room at 10:21.

"Reeve broadcasts Thursday nights from ten to eleven," said Janie. "Let's listen to his station."

Brian took over the radio. It was a cheap little thing, brown and black plastic with a sleep alarm, and Brian had trouble finding WSCK. "They're just down the block," said Janie. She tried tuning and got nowhere. Jodie finally managed to get the station, and there was Reeve's voice, big and s.e.xy and deep, announcing Visionary a.s.sa.s.sins.

Brian cracked up. "I'd sing in a group with that name."

"Or maybe you wouldn't," said Jodie after listening for a minute. "Visionary a.s.sa.s.sins ought to be a.s.sa.s.sinated for pretending to be a band."

They lay back on their beds, giggling at the ceiling, punchy from having accomplished the trip and being on their own in a wonderful city, with freedom in front of them.

"Okay, the pressure's on!" cried Derek Himself into the mike. "The interest is up, the calls are in, you guys want another janie tonight. Well, we got a special coming up. A twofer. Along with a couple of janies, Reeve's promised us a hannah."

Reeve flexed his arms, took the mike, felt the sweep of pleasure rus.h.i.+ng from mike to heart. He prepared his best speaking voice, his best timing, his most dramatic pauses.

Janie didn't go politely into being Jennie.

She went fighting and spitting.

The courts said Janie had to be returned to her biological family. To New Jersey. Lawyers took her down the same interstate we took the day we skipped school. But this time, it wasn't a road. It was a tunnel of fear. Janie was being poured down some evil tube, where she could land in any kind of nightmare, because she no longer had parents. She was mad at Hannah, she was mad at the world, but mostly she was mad at her birth parents. How dare they want her back, when she liked her old life better?

Janie found out something while she was living in New Jersey. She didn't have enough love to go around. Janie turned out to have a limited supply of love. Not enough to fit in her real mother and father. Who needed them? Janie had a great life. They were clutter.

Reeve felt strangely less cluttered himself. It dawned on him that one reason he was so good at this was because he, too, had ended Janie's terrible year with a heart full of confusion and pain. He, too, needed the release of confession.

Janie lay inside her body and turned into plastic. A Barbie doll.

Reeve.

She couldn't pull her lips together to say his name, or any other name, or any other word.

Reeve.

S S *.

Jodie thought it was a good thing she was not armed. If she'd had a shotgun, or a machete, she would have used it on Reeve s.h.i.+elds.

On the air, that Janie never wanted to be one of us, Jodie thought.

On the air, that Janie went back to her other family because she loved them more.

It would kill my parents.

Jodie felt like a gun going off, friction, powder, explosives, hot as a cannon. She felt white-hot and violent. I'll kill Reeve.

Was this how her brother Stephen had felt all those years? Had Stephen been filled with this rage and had to control it? Who could live with this much fury? It was burning up her thinking.

I hate Reeve's filthy guts.

She had to find some degree of control before she attempted speech. Otherwise nothing but swear words and meaningless shrieks would come out of her throat. I'm the oldest, thought Jodie, I have to set an example.

I'll kill him.

. S S.

Derek introduced the hannah.

Reeve could feel his listeners. It was an incredible hot sensation. He knew they were there. Glued, hungry, thirsty.

He was just as glued. He was hungry and thirsty to hear himself.

Who, really, is Hannah? Of course everybody was being kind to her parents, and pretending she was a misguided lost soul .

but she wasn't. She s.n.a.t.c.hed a baby girl and left that family to worry forever. And that's evil. Hannah was evil.

The families, even the Springs, did not consider Hannah evil. Pathetic. Wrong. Lost. But not evil.

Reeve had learned, however, as all shock jocks before him had learned, that the best topie is always evil.

If you don't have evil, invent it.

If it isn't exciting enough, embellish.

And where is Hannah now?

She's out there.

Somewhere. . . the sweet dishrag daughter the thief of two families . . . is out there.

All grown up.

All evil.

The word evil was heavy and coppery in Reeve's mouth. He lingered on the word, so that his audience would taste it.

Then he upped the ante.

Ante.

A card game term. A gambling term.

It meant: If things are exciting now, just you wait. I'll make it more risky. And then we'll see.