Whatever Happened to Janie? (6 page)

Miss P was very funny. She picked on everybody, all the time, but it was not cruel and nobody’s feelings were hurt. Even Janie, who knew nobody and shared no in-jokes, found herself laughing. It was such a treat to laugh out loud. At her Connecticut school, boys rarely joined the choir, because they were so afraid of becoming Chorus Geeks. This had a different atmosphere: the best boys were here—jocks, studs, and scholars. All of them in love with Miss P.

Miss P dragged a very nervous young man to the front of the room. He wore a suit, but it looked
like somebody else’s, or as if somebody else had dressed him for the day. Janie knew the feeling.

“Hey, guys!” shouted Miss P.

“Miss P!” they shouted back.

“I brought you a new victim,” said Miss P. “A student teacher.”

“All right!” shouted the boys. “Fair game!”

The young man struggled to look brave and competent. He lost.

“Mr. Clarke,” said Miss P, swinging her arms in the direction of the chorus, “welcome to the land that normalcy forgot.”

The bass section sprang into wrestling poses, proud of living in the land that normalcy forgot.

Janie could breathe a little better. The boys in the bass section reminded her of Reeve. You could fall in love with one of them. She smiled at Miss P. She smiled at Mr. Clarke, who was so afraid he could hardly lift his arms to direct. I can’t lift my arms to hug, she thought. I’ve got to learn in public, too. Good luck, Mr. Clarke!

Janie’s seatmate was an alto named Chrissy, who had been assigned to her. Chrissy was long and lean and reminded Janie of Reeve’s annoying older sister Lizzie. Even though Janie had detested Lizzie all her life, she found herself homesick for her.

“You need to check yourself off on the attendance sheet,” said Chrissy softly. She pointed toward four large oaktag posters—Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass—one name to a line.

“I’m not on it,” Janie whispered back. “I looked when I came in.”

Chrissy looked at her oddly. “Yes, you are. We
redid the entire alto section to put you in. Miss P said you were going to feel weird enough and she wanted your name in alphabetical order.”

After chorus Chrissy dragged her right up to the alto poster. “See?” she said, pointing.

Spring
, it said.
Jennie.

I was looking under J for Johnson, thought Janie. I never thought of looking under S for Spring.

Eighty General Chorus members drifted past, slowing the usual rampage to get to the next class, fascinated by the presence of the kidnap victim and pretending not to be. Janie could feel Miss Fs eyes on her, and a question forming on Mr. Clarke’s lips.

“They had an assembly about you,” said Chrissy.

Janie froze.

“The whole school,” said Chrissy. “All seven hundred of us. The principal told us the whole story so there would be no questions. He said you were going through a lot and we were not to poke into things that weren’t our business, or make trouble. He said every adolescent asks who he is, and why he drew the parents he did, but you must be asking yourself more than any teenager in America.”

Janie could have thrown up on Chrissy. The whole school had attended an assembly to discuss Janie Johnson’s personal problems? The invasion of it! The trespass!

“Did my—um—”she could not quite say the nouns out loud. She took a shuddery breath and started up again. “Did my brother and sister go?” There. She had called Stephen and Jodie her brother and sister. Out loud. Wipe the sweat off my
brow, she thought, remembering Brian. Or Brendan.

“Of course they went. Everybody went.”

“Did they talk?”

“No. They’re very closemouthed about the whole thing.” Chrissy waited, wide-eyed and hopeful. She wanted Janie to talk. She wanted gossip and detail.

I want gossip and detail, too, thought Janie. I want to talk so much I can hardly bear it. I want to be on the phone with Sarah-Charlotte. I want to be in the backseat with Reeve. I want—

Janie was afraid she was going to bawl right in the chorus room. She moved quickly on, before Miss P could get any closer. Music teachers were always understanding. Janie was not ready.

“Give me your schedule,” ordered Chrissy. She took it out of Janie’s hands before Janie could react. “Okay. You go to English next. Mrs. Fann. I liked Mrs. Fann, but your sister hated her! They fought all last year. Your parents were in here all the time, arguing about Mrs. Fann’s assignments and standards and grading.”

It was so surprising, somehow, that the Springs had been having a life when Janie had not even known they existed. Parents arguing and sisters fighting. She was dizzy with understanding that this family was
real
“All last year” meant the last school year. Before the milk carton. Before Reeve. Back when Janie Johnson had truly been a little girl, knowing nothing, wondering about nothing.

The good old days, thought Janie. “Thanks, Chrissy,” she said, when Chrissy turned her over to Mrs. Fann.

I have to be polite, she thought. I’m going to live here. With the Springs. I’m going to graduate from high school here. With Chrissy. With Miss P. With Mrs. Fann.

I’m not going to move home, or get transferred, or leave for college.

This is it.

“So what’s she like?” demanded Nicole.

Jodie shrugged.

“She’s so pretty!” said Caitlin. “I love her hair. It’s like yours, only about a yard more of it.”

Yes, Jennie was Dad’s daughter all right. All the way down the long school corridors, Jodie could see the resemblance. Jennie had a wild, chaotic mane of red curls, just like Dad’s, except in Dad it was the beard that crinkled and curled. They stood alike and lifted their chins alike. Jodie could not get over it. It made her heart turn over.

Jennie must have been as distinctive when she was three, the angry middle child who never felt she got enough attention—who was happy to let a strange woman buy her a sundae and take her for a joyride.

“So?” pressed Caitlin. “Tell us about her.”

Jodie had thought talking about the new sister would be the most fun thing. But it wasn’t. Jennie was no wonderful roommate. She was a stranger who wanted to be called by her kidnapped name, Janie, and who didn’t want to cooperate in anything. She’d been back exactly three days and Jodie was already completely exhausted living with her.

Jennie didn’t eat what was set in front of her.
She didn’t meet their eyes, or laugh, or tell stories. She was just there. Trembling.

Nicole leaned closer to Jodie and lowered her voice, as if they were telling secrets. Nicole and Caitlin were thrilled to be best friends with the girl whose kidnapped sister had been returned home. They were hoping for some really gory details. So far nobody had any details, even boring ones. “Have you talked about any of the good stuff yet? Like what really happened?”

Jodie shook her head. Her throat closed up.

The thing is, thought Jodie, that my feelings are hurt. I love my family. I think we are absolutely terrific. I have this handsome, bear-hug Dad with a beard and a head full of jokes who’s crazy about us, and always wants everybody on a sports team so he can cheer and stomp his feet and take videos that nobody ever looks at afterwards. I have this exhausted mother going gray who works too hard but loves it, because she’s so crazy about her kids and her husband. She sells hot dogs and soda at half-time at the twins’ games because she and Dad chair the Athletic Boosters. She never lets anybody miss Mass. She loves buying me clothes, because I’m the only girl. No matter how tired she is after work, she makes a real dinner, because she loves it when we hold hands and say grace, and it’s hard to say much in the way of grace over a pizza delivered to the door.

I love our town. I love our school. I love my friends.

Jodie had been excited about showing off all those things. She had expected the new sister to be
thrilled with the Springs. Awestruck that she belonged to such neat people. She had expected Jennie to clap her hands, maybe. Burst into song. Instead Jennie kept her back to the wall and her elbows sticking out to fend off hugs.

Not only that, Jodie was battling jealousy. This girl had everything. There was not one watch, one scarf, one jacket, one necklace that the Johnsons had not given her. It was as if a department store had moved into Jodie’s bedroom.

Caitlin said, “It’s bad?”

Jodie shrugged. “Jennie gets into bed at night as if it’s a hiding place.”

“Gulp,” said Nicole. “What are you guys doing to her?”

“We’re not doing anything to her! We’re trying really hard. She’s the one who’s not trying.” Jodie could not bear it that her sister dream was not coming true. And even more she could not bear it that the parent dream was not coming true for Mom and Dad. Jennie wouldn’t let them near her.

“Jennie’s the one who’s scared,” Nicole pointed out. “I’d be scared too if I had lost my mother and father.”

“Jennie did not lose her parents,” said Jodie fiercely. “She got them back.”

Nicole shrugged eyebrows, shoulders, and hands all at the same time. “Maybe she only wants the other set.”

Caitlin swatted Nicole with a math workbook. “Try a little tact, will you?” She tried to console Jodie. “It’ll take time, that’s all, Jo,” she said.

“Time!” said Jodie, furious. The temper on
which she had so little grip erupted. “We’ve spent twelve years missing Jennie! Now we’re supposed to spend—what—another twelve years helping her work back into the family?”

“Now come on,” said Caitlin. “This is just day four, right?”

Jodie nodded.

“I bet it takes twelve months,” said Nicole. “Yup. How much money do you want to bet that it’s a whole year before Janie turns into Jennie?”

A year? How could they stand it?

“When is the FBI coming over?” asked Nicole.

Jodie was starting to find Nicole very tiresome. “Next week, supposedly. Or maybe never. My parents won’t let them talk to her until she’s settled in. At the rate Jennie’s settling in, Hannah will have died of old age before we get the facts.”

“I can’t wait to hear more about Hannah,” said Nicole. She actually rubbed her palms together with anticipation.

Jodie had almost forgotten the kidnapper, in the reality of dealing with the kidnapped. They had never seen a picture of Hannah, this woman who had ripped Jennie Spring off a soda-fountain stool in a mall and carried her away. Hannah, who had brutalized their family with one short car drive.

Newcomers to Highview Avenue were always astonished by the way the Spring family worked. The kids did not have baby-sitters, on the theory that a sitter would not know how to deal with a kidnapper. Either Uncle Paul and Aunt Luellen baby-sat, or else Mom and Dad did not leave. Even now, with Stephen seventeen and Jodie sixteen, Mom notified
the neighbors if she was going to be out of reach for so much as an hour. Old friends would explain in a whisper: “They lost a child, you know. Kidnapped. They’re very paranoid.”

They weren’t paranoid, though. That meant overly suspicious. People whose little girl had been kidnapped could never be too suspicious.

Oh, Hannah! What you did to us!

“Yes,” said Jodie, hating Hannah. “I want some details, too.”

T
he Spring family did not “do” things the way her real family did. Nobody visited museums. Nobody went to antique shows. Nobody got theater tickets. Nobody belonged to the symphony series. Nobody sat quietly at the dining-room table reading the newspaper. In fact, nobody sat quietly.

Instead, the house filled with Spring children and Spring friends.

On her second Saturday, a horde of the twins’ friends materialized at the house. Janie expected Mrs. Spring to go insane from the noise and the mess, but she just laughed and pushed the boys downstairs into the family room. They popped up constantly, demanding food or drink, throwing Nerf balls at everybody, and screaming at the rain outside to turn into enough snow to cancel school on Monday.

Stephen’s friends Mark and Drew—boys she could have had a crush on if her mind had been free—came over to play SuperNintendo with Stephen. The three of them sat on the floor in front of the living-room television, which had the game hookup.
The short, burbly song of each game repeated endlessly. Stephen, Mark, and Drew played all day long, falling backward on the floor, screaming, “I’m dead, I’m dead!” when they got killed.

The twins’ crowd was mostly having cookies: Oreos, chocolate chip, and lemon wafers. Stephen’s trio was having nachos, and were continually in the kitchen shredding cheese and lettuce, chopping tomatoes and olives, and loading plates into the microwave.

Jodie’s friend Nicole came over. Nicole had entered a fashion contest with a five-hundred-dollar prize for Most Unlikely Material for a Dress. Nicole had struggled to make a dress out of her little brother’s millions of Legos but it didn’t work and now she had a minidress of her mother’s from the sixties and was tediously sewing Matchbox cars all over it. Janie had never seen anything so pathetic in her life.

Through all this, Mr. Spring came and went from the attached garage where he was changing the oil or something in the cars. Mrs. Spring was on the phone at the same time that she was leafing through women’s magazines, doing a crossword, and updating her address book from a tower of Christmas cards she was getting ready to throw out.