The Face on the Milk Carton

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Pete retrieved his flattened milk and tried to shape it back into a carton. He read between the folds. “You were stolen ten years ago from a shopping center in New Jersey, Janie. What are you doing here?”

  “Yeah,” said Adair, giggling. “Why aren’t you off yelling for the police?”

  “Oh, she’s just trying to get out of reading her essay,” said Jason.

  “No, she’s just trying to steal my milk,” said Sarah-Charlotte.

  The bell rang. The others hurled their garbage toward the huge plastic-lined trash cans by the door, and missed. Ducking under the plump arms of the lunch ladies, they raced back to class instead of picking it up.

  Janie held Sarah-Charlotte’s empty milk carton and stared at the photograph of the little girl.

  I was kidnapped.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Janie learned that her body could function without her.

  She lived entirely inside her mind, searching her memory like a little kid going through an encyclopedia, trying to find the right heading. Jane Elizabeth Johnson, Kidnapping of.

  Her body, including her voice, her smile—even her knowledge (during sixth period she was actually able to answer questions in biology lab) —continued to work properly.

  How interesting, Janie thought clinically. My body doesn’t need me.

  She had a sense of herself being brain dead: running on tubes and machines.

  Inside, her mind spun. It was like having a color wheel for a brain. When it slowed down, things were separate, like primary colors: I have a mother and father … I have a childhood … I was not kidnapped … kidnapping means bad people … I don’t know any bad people … therefore I am making this up.

  But when her mind speeded up, the colors blended dizzily. That is me on there. I, Janie Johnson; I was kidnapped.

  But it could not be.

  The facts did not compute.

  She tried to climb outside her mind and go where her body was: sitting neatly at a desk, neatly taking notes.

  It was like crawling on glass. No matter how firmly she resolved not to think such stupid things, she thought them. She slithered backward into her mind.

  Perhaps it’s insanity, Janie thought. Perhaps I’m trapped in here with this horrible idea and I’ll never get out. After a while people will notice and they’ll lock up my body the way insanity has locked up my mind.

  She discovered that school had ended.

  Her body had gone to her locker. Taken the right books. Put on her jacket. Remembered the gym uniform that had to be washed. Said goodbye to friends and foe.

  But slowly. Like someone trying to avoid the muddy parts in the grass. Her small body seemed to thicken, as if she had real iron in her blood and weighed several tons. The bus had left before she even arrived in the lobby. All the buses had left.

  It was pouring rain.

  The golden, gaudy-blue October had vanished and turned black and thundering. The sky at its richest: full of rage, ready to hit someone. It threw the rain against the pavement and ripped the leaves from the sugar maples.

  A car headed for her. She watched the car, realizing that it was going to run her over: that somehow, although she was on the sidewalk, the car was aimed for her. Perhaps I should move, she thought. But nothing happened to her legs. They stayed there, holding her color-wheel brain in place, waiting to get run over.

  “Get in quick,” said Reeve, “before you get any wetter.”

  She had recognized neither him nor his Jeep. He had pulled the Jeep almost over her toes. The outside rearview mirror brushed the buttons on her jeans jacket. Janie got in slowly. This is fun, she thought. Now I’m paralyzed and blind, too.

  Reeve said, “Let’s ride down by the water. See if the tide is up over the road.” Reeve loved floods. Two years ago there had been such a wonderful flood the families on the beach roads had to be rescued by the National Guard. Reeve had begged his parents to buy waterfront property so they could be in place for the next flood. They had uncooperatively said they liked it better a mile away on top of a hill. But Reeve kept an old battered canoe ready in the garage in case there should be another opportunity to paddle down the middle of the street. “A deluge like this,” said Reeve happily, “a true Noah’s Ark-type rain, you should have some decent flooding.”

  Janie nodded and turned the hot-air vents in her direction to dry her clothes. Her thick red hair sproinged up like a new permanent from the wetting it had taken.

  “May I borrow your penknife?” she said.

  “Sure.” He detached the knife from his belt loop while she steered the Jeep. Then she couldn’t get the blade to come up without breaking off a fingernail. Reeve stopped at a red light and opened the penknife for her.

  Janie took the empty milk carton out of her book bag. She’d rinsed it out in the girls’ room between fifth and sixth periods. She slit the carton open. Carefully she flattened it out. Then she opened her three-ring, blue-cloth English notebook, which had a clipboard on the inner front cover, and clipped the flat carton so that the photograph did not show. All Reeve could read was the logo FLOWER DAIRY. YOUR LOCAL MILK PRODUCER, SERVING ALL COMMUNITIES ON THE SHORELINE.

  “That’s an interesting hobby,” observed Reeve. “You don’t find too many milk carton collectors.”

  Janie thought about Pete’s explanation. These so-called kidnappings are really just divorces, where one parent takes the child away and doesn’t tell the other parent where they’ve gone.

  Does that mean, she thought, that either my mother or my father is not my mother or my father? That somewhere out there is a real mother or a father who has wondered for twelve years where I am?

  Reeve was staring out at the Atlantic Ocean, where the storm was hurling water and sand on the unprotected beaches. Reeve was handsomer than the rest of his family, yet there was a very strong resemblance among them. People could actually recognize Reeve by the smile that so much resembled his brothers, and the ruddy cheeks that were the trademark of his sisters. Now he was making terrible faces, flexing his forehead and lips and nose like Silly Putty because high tide had not managed to go over the road.

  Reeve turned the Jeep into the Scenic Overlook, better known among teenagers as the Sexual Overlook because at night you could go there and watch couples in action. To the east stretched the ocean, and to the west, barely protected by thin spits of sand and mud, was the harbor where the wind jostled boats against the wharves. The boatyard was filled with marina employees taking boats out of the water for the winter storage. Even over the pounding of the waves and rain Janie could hear a strange smacking sort of applause. Not rigging hardware, nor waves against docks. “What’s that noise?” she said. At least I’m not deaf, she thought.

  “Flags,” said Reeve. American flags, everywhere: on the docks, at the fuel pumps, on the boats. Each clapped in the fierce wind like a cloth maniac. “I’m sort of like a flag,” said Reeve.

  “Red, white, and blue?”

  “No. A big banner flapping in the wind. You RE DUMB, says the flag. My sisters, my brother, my parents: they don’t say it out loud, but they kind of line up my college application forms next to my grades and my SATs and the old flag waves, You RE DUMB.”

  “You’re not dumb,” said Janie, although he was. She adored Reeve, but brains would round him out a bit.

  “My parents haven’t taken me to see any college campuses,” said Reeve. “Nor arranged any interviews. Nothing. For Megan and Lizzie and Todd we spent a year apiece visiting and pondering and drawing up lists and pros and cons. With me, they’ve already given up. They don’t yell at me anymore. You know what my mother said to your mother?”

  “No,” said Janie, although she did; her mother had repeated it, of course. Or is she my mother? thought Janie. Is she Daddy’s second wife? Did they steal me from my real mother? Or is it Daddy who is somebody else? Maybe they’re not even married. Maybe they just—

  “Your mother said to my mother, ‘At least you can be proud o
f Megan, Lizzie, and Todd,’ and then my mother said, ‘That’s true, three out of four isn’t bad.’”

  Nobody else in my family has red hair, thought Janie. I don’t laugh like Mother and Daddy. My fingernails aren’t shaped like theirs. “That’s terrible,” she said to Reeve. “They’re being rotten, writing you off like that.”

  “I’ll be lucky to get into the community college,” said Reeve. He fiddled with the radio dials and the heater knobs, flicked the emergency blinkers on and off, and pawed through the cassettes he had in the Jeep.

  “At least you have a Jeep to commute in,” said Janie, but this was not a comfort to Reeve, who wanted to be brilliant, outstanding, impressive, and memorable, like his brother and sisters.

  She opened her notebook. She tilted it and peered at the back of the milk carton. It was still her on there.

  She had not allowed herself to read the name under the photograph. Now she read it.

  Jennie Spring.

  Her brain stopped being a color wheel and became an echo chamber—Jennie Spring Jennie Spring Jennie Spring Jennie—

  “What have you got in there?” teased Reeve. He reached for the notebook to see what forbidden article was stashed in it. Janie jerked it back. “No, Reeve, don’t,” she said urgently, and he was startled, pulling his hand back as if maybe it were a scorpion inside the English notebook.

  Reeve left the Scenic Overlook so fast they hydroplaned over the puddles. Then he gnashed the gears, roaring forward along the narrow, wet beach road, skidding purposely. He took each gear up to its highest RPMs so the motor screamed. He jerked left into the traffic on Route 1. Like a warrior he battled the cars and the rain, pedal to the metal, taking off from each stop sign like a chariot racer.

  Janie touched her seat belt and said nothing. She would feel that way, too, if she were Reeve. While he was passing in a no-passing zone, Janie turned the milk-carton cover over again.

  The little girl’s name and birthdate, the 800 number to call if you recognized her, the place from which she vanished in New Jersey. None of it meant a thing to Janie.

  I’ve always felt a year younger than Sarah-Charlotte and Adair, thought Janie. And if that’s my birthday, I am a year younger. I’m not old enough to get my driver’s license after all.

  But it was too ridiculous. She had a family. A perfectly normal family. They loved her. She loved them.

  “I don’t feel like going home yet, do you?” said Reeve. He spoke in the voice people use when you have to agree or walk home. Besides, she did agree. She had hardly ever agreed with anything more.

  “Let’s get ice cream,” said Reeve. He jerked the wheel hard, turned across traffic with far too little time, and just barely missed getting a pickup truck through the side of his Jeep. The trucker rightly leaned on his horn. Janie gave him an apologetic smile and the town wave.

  The trucker grinned at Janie. She shook her red hair at him and the guy grinned even wider.

  Perhaps I’m fascinating after all, she thought. That trucker forgave Reeve because I tossed my hair. He’d believe me if I said my name was Jayyne Jonstone.

  “I don’t have any money,” she told Reeve. “And I can’t have ice cream.” But what if my name is Jennie Spring? she thought.

  “I’ll pay. Anyway, I saw you drinking milk for lunch. You’ve already broken the rules.”

  He saw me drinking Sarah-Charlotte’s milk, she thought. Which I drank long after he waved. So he looked back. Checked me out a second time.

  They went to a booth, passing two groups of teenagers she knew by sight but not by name. All eyes landed on Reeve with Janie and drew conclusions. Janie was not sure she liked this. It was not a date; poor Reeve was just having to admit he was dumb; Janie was his trusty, rusty, next-door neighbor.

  Reeve ordered two hot-fudge sundaes on one scoop each of vanilla and chocolate mint. For years when they were little kids going shopping with their mothers, this had been Janie’s order. She had changed preferences since the last time she had had ice cream with Reeve; up till the lactose intolerance discovery, she’d ordered vanilla with butterscotch topping. She said nothing. She was quite touched that Reeve remembered.

  Reeve talked about first-quarter grades, which were coming up in only a few weeks. He talked about the horror of failing his senior year; of having to go to a lousy college when Megan, Lizzie, and Todd went to such winners; the horror of all school at all times.

  The waitress brought the sundaes much more quickly than usual and Janie thanked her. She turned to look at her sundae.

  The world shifted.

  Friendly Ice Cream seemed to spin around her, all its flavors, all its booths, tilting and screaming.

  She was sitting with somebody else.

  Sitting on a high stool—a stool that swiveled— she was turning herself slowly and carefully by holding on to the counter—her feet did not touch the foot rest—she was little—she was admiring her white cotton socks as she turned because they had a little strip of lace—

  A woman was next to her—not swiveling— long, straight hair cascading down the woman’s back, so pretty Janie had to touch it. The woman kept her hand in the air behind Janie’s back so she wouldn’t tip off the spinning stool.

  Janie was having a sundae—whipped cream on it—eating the cherry off her sundae first and then one off the woman’s sundae.

  They were laughing.

  Janie was little—the woman hugged her— swung her around as the stool had swung—

  —there was a hot wind—they were outside now; in a huge parking lot; maybe the biggest parking lot in the world—her dress, white with tiny dark dots, blew in the air—

  “Janie?” said Reeve. “Are you all right?”

  Janie’s mouth was dry, her hands icy. She was shivering all over. She could feel the tiny table shaking from her shivers. Reeve was frightened.

  “Are you getting the flu?” he said. He put his hand out as if to stop her from crossing some terrible road. “You’re not really seriously allergic to milk, are you? I mean, is your throat going to close up or your heart stop?” She was aware that he was calling her. Raising his voice. That people were looking. “Janie? Janie, are you okay?” His hand took hers and to her frozen fingers his hand felt like a furnace, as if he were going to scorch her.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Dizzy.”

  She had always had control over her daydreams; like the daydreams of Denim and Lace in which she designed every detail to suit herself. She had never had a daydream that dreamed itself, like nightmares. That crawled out of her brain like a creature of the dark.

  A daymare.

  Janie shuddered. “I’d better not eat the sundae,” she said. Already the daymare was fading, leaving her flesh like jelly, but no pictures to remember it by. Woman, she thought dimly, stool, dress, hot wind.

  It must be, thought Janie, that my life is boring. Deep down I must be as angry over the boredom as Reeve is over being dumb. He drives like a maniac to feel better and I fall into maniac daydreams. My parents are my parents. Nobody kidnapped me. I don’t really remember the dress.

  Reeve called to the waitress. “Could we have these to go?” He pointed at Janie. “She doesn’t feel well.”

  “They’ll be messy,” said the waitress doubtfully. “The top will be on the bottom.”

  Tell me about it, thought Janie.

  CHAPTER

  3

  There were no cars in the driveway. Her father couldn’t be coaching soccer in this weather so he would be pulling in any moment now. Her mother must be at the hospital—what day was this?—she volunteered two days a week.

  The Johnsons’ driveway was separated from Reeve’s by a thin row of shrubs over which Megan, Lizzie, Todd, and now Reeve continually backed. Only hours ago Janie had thought joyously of the day when she, too, learning reverse, would flatten a few bushes.

  “You sure you’ll be all right?” said Reeve. “I could ask Mom to go over and sit with you.”

  “Please,
” said Janie, meaning no, and they both laughed. When Reeve’s mother took care of a person, she took serious care—bed rest, chicken soup, and pillow fluffing. On school-nurse forms, Janie had always put Reeve’s mother to phone in an emergency, and Reeve had always put Janie’s mother. Reeve’s mother always sat with Janie, rubbing her back, reading chapters from long books. Janie had to be in the mood for all that loving kindness. More often, when she was sick, she just wanted to be alone, in the silence and the nest of her bed.

  How can I be kidnapped? thought Janie. I don’t even have neighbors who understand evil, let alone parents.

  She got out of the Jeep and dashed through the rain, putting her key in the side door. This opened onto a landing on the stairs between the cellar and the kitchen. Down in the cellar next to the gleaming-white washer and dryer, her folded jeans were stacked. Up in the kitchen lay a pile of mail, an overflowing brown paper bag marked for the Salvation Army, and the breakfast dishes.

  She scraped the dishes and loaded the dishwasher. It wasn’t full enough to run. There was a note on the refrigerator in her mother’s pretty script: Darling—don’t forget class tonight, home by supper, love Mommy.

  Janie hadn’t called her mother Mommy in years, though she still called her father Daddy. Class? she thought, trying to make sense of that reminder.

  She walked through the house, touching. Same furniture: her mother liked deep, intense colors: the sofa and chairs were a blue so dark and rich they invited you like a deep sea to dive in. In the dining room two walls were glass and one was bright red; the only decoration was an enormous framed color photograph of Janie, age twelve, bridesmaid for a wedding. She was giggling in the picture, half bent over, trying to hold her tiara of flowers as it slid off her red hair. Janie disliked the portrait: she hadn’t gotten her braces yet and the uneven teeth seemed to take over the entire picture. But her parents loved it. “How you adored that long dress!” they would say, smiling into the photograph’s eyes, as if it were as alive. “How proud you were, being in the wedding party, dancing with the groom, staying up till dawn.”