What Janie Found

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Kathleen said, “Brian, may we please have permission to enter this building and investigate those boots?’”

  “You’ve never asked permission in your life,’” said Brian, staring at Kathleen.

  “No, but I’ve heard about your permissions. You guys cannot enter danger zones unless you hold hands.’” Kathleen burst out laughing and flung open the door to the pawnshop.

  If Stephen stays with her, thought Brian, she’ll never quite get it right. She’ll always think it’s a little bit funny, when it’s always a little bit nightmarish. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe Stephen needs somebody to poke fun at it.

  His brother was right. The pawnshop was just a secondhand store.

  The clerk got the red boots down. “Size six,’” he said. “Very high quality. Some college girl bought ’em the first week she was here, ran out of money and hocked ’em. Lots of people been in and want ’em, but nobody fits ’em.’”

  Janie unlaced her sneakers and slid her small feet in their plain white socks into the boots. “They fit!’” She danced down the aisle.

  The boots were wonderful, but they were also nothing. They were a diversion. She was going to need a lot of diversions. Because it was not just Brian and Reeve she had to get rid of. It was also the very pushy Kathleen and the very observant Stephen.

  All Brian had had to do was get half a block ahead of them, and Reeve had panicked. As for Brian, one glimpse of the post office and he had panicked. A few more episodes like that, and Stephen would start asking questions.

  When the clerk said how much the boots cost—even secondhand! even here!—Janie’s face fell. If she spent that much on boots, she wouldn’t be able to afford the bus back to the airport.

  “You know what, Janie?’” said Stephen. “I’ve never gotten you a present.’” His smile was truly sweet; this older brother who had despised her last year. “I’m buying you those.’”

  All those birthdays, she thought. All those Christmases. Without presents between us. Hannah took away every Christmas morning, every Christmas carol, every Christmas present.

  Their eyes met, hers and Stephen’s, and she thought: Stephen and I are the closest of all. Reeve walked beside me when this unfolded, and he knows most of it, but it isn’t his. Brian was too young and too twinned to be inside the whole of it. Kathleen is a stranger. But Stephen and I, we possess our history together. We’re both still so angry.

  Stephen paid for the boots with ones. How he enjoyed counting out those bills he had earned one sweaty dollar at a time. The price was a stretch for him. Maybe a sacrifice.

  And I, thought Janie, am not about to sacrifice anything for anybody. I have my questions. I’m going to ask them.

  Reeve and Brian were sleeping on the floor in Stephen’s room, in borrowed sleeping bags.

  Kathleen had no roommate for the summer, so she spread her sleeping bag on the bare mattress of the empty second bed for Janie. It felt oddly intimate to use somebody else’s sleeping bag.

  “That might be too hot,’” said Kathleen.

  “Oh, no, it’s perfect. I always sleep like a rock. I’m usually asleep within twenty seconds.’”

  “Yeah, right,’” said Kathleen. “You just don’t want to be a decent guest and talk all night.’”

  Janie said nothing.

  “You want to go out with me for a run in the morning?’” asked Kathleen. “I take off about six when it’s still cool and head into the mountains.’”

  “I can’t run up those hills. Can you stand to run in the town part of Boulder? On sidewalks? Like, say, going past the library and the post office?’”

  It was not precisely another lie. But it would have the result of a lie. Inside the hot sleeping bag, Janie shivered, and wondered if H. J. would see her froth of red hair, and remember.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  Six A.M. was just as early and horrible as it sounded and Kathleen’s alarm clock could have been mistaken for a chain saw.

  “My approach,’” said Kathleen, vaulting off her mattress to begin stretching exercises, “is to be firm with myself at all times. Slack off and weakness sets in.’”

  Fly two thousand miles, and you meet yet another perfectionist. Janie moaned and peeled down her sleeping bag. How could Kathleen have softened Stephen?

  It seemed best not to look in a mirror but just to yank on clothes and stagger out, hoping not to fall down the stairs.

  Kathleen ran like a rabbit while Janie tottered like an old breathless dog. Kathleen said things like “So do you really believe your Johnson parents didn’t know you were kidnapped?’” and Janie said things like “What is that building over there, with the tower?’”

  When they were within sight of the post office, Janie said, “I am whipped! Kathleen, you are too much for me. What an athlete you are! I’ll just rest here. On that bench. I can find my way back to the dorm.’”

  “Great!’” said Kathleen, already half a block away.

  Lying to Kathleen was fun. It didn’t count, the way lying to Stephen and Reeve and Brian did.

  Even at this hour, Boulder was active.

  Two women, walking fast and talking faster, strode toward Janie. They had weights strapped to their ankles and were carrying weights in their hands. Their age was hard to guess. Fit and tan, they could have been anything from thirty to fifty.

  But Janie could not imagine Hannah having friends. They weren’t Hannah.

  And then, in sneakers so padded she made no sound whatsoever, a woman came up from behind and sat next to Janie on the bench. Right next to her. Almost hip to hip. Janie knew it was a woman from the legs, but she could not bring herself to look at the face.

  What if it was Hannah? Would there be a flicker of Miranda Johnson, a hint of Frank, in the woman’s eyes?

  Janie wiped sweaty palms on her khaki shorts. She focused on the post office across from her and tried to plan her attack. The five tall and shining numbers on the post office exterior were not the zip code written on the file folder.

  Terrific. Boulder had more than one post office.

  That doesn’t matter, Janie told herself. I’m not going to watch her pick up her letter anyway. We’re going to meet in some other place.

  The check was now late.

  If you received income four times a year, you would be feeling desperate now, wouldn’t you? You’d be hanging out at the post office, waiting, wouldn’t you?

  She’ll be there first thing Monday morning, thought Janie, because I bet she doesn’t have a job to go to. Just a box to check.

  The problem isn’t Hannah. She’ll come. The problem is everybody else. They’ll come. I have to get away from them.

  I have to decide right now where Hannah is going to meet me. And how I’ll describe myself. I won’t tell her who I am, that would scare her off. I’ll say I’m a messenger from Frank Johnson. I’ll say, Look for red hair.

  Janie got up carefully, keeping her head stiffly tilted so she could not see the woman on the bench, and walked back to Kathleen’s dorm.

  It was decided that they would bicycle up Flagstaff Mountain.

  Brian was not in on the decision. But he was determined to go along and not whimper. If he gave up, he’d get left out of everything.

  The trip was more ghastly than Brian could have imagined. Many times more ghastly. It turned out that mountains had beauty and mountains had fabulous views. Mountains did not have air. There really was such a thing as thin mountain air. Brian could not satisfy his lungs on such low-calorie air. And then—to bike uphill?

  Forget whimpering. Focus on not dying.

  Kathleen didn’t stop asking questions, but Janie was puffing even more than Brian and had no air for speech. When they weren’t gasping for breath, Reeve and Janie and Brian were laughing at themselves. Nobody had pictured the trip to Boulder like this.

  “I give up,’” moaned Janie. “I’m a weakling.’”

  “Yay,’” whispered Brian, summoning the energy to clap
once.

  Much to Kathleen’s dismay, they turned around and coasted home so that the jet-lagged people could nap.

  Waking up from a nap is not the same as waking up from a night.

  Nap sleep takes hold; is heavy and deep.

  The fingers that closed on Janie’s bare arm pressed down with long hard nails. The hand tightened, and shook her, and shoved slightly, as if to dislocate the shoulder. Janie woke up as if she were being attacked; torn from safety, thrown into danger.

  She woke as if she were being kidnapped, heart thrashing, soul coming loose.

  “Time to go, Janie, time to go!’” cried Kathleen. She sounded like a crow over a field. Again she shook Janie, hard; her fingers weirdly possessive.

  When I was kidnapped, a hand owned me like that, thought Janie. A woman’s fingers caught my arm, right there, and hauled me away, like this.

  This is how my New Jersey mother woke up in the night, thought Janie. Feeling my kidnapping in her heart. Feeling the hand that held me. Year in, year out, feeling the fingers that grabbed me.

  How forcefully Janie understood then that Hannah Javensen had no excuse. Not the slightest fraction of an excuse. There would never be an excuse for ripping a child from her family.

  “I let you sleep as long as I could, Jennie-Janie,’” said Kathleen. “Now get up! We’re going to car races at the Rocky Mountain National Speedway. Stephen got tickets in honor of Reeve.’”

  “Right,’” said Janie, thinking, I can’t lose my temper, Stephen loves her. She swung off the bed, damp with the sweat of heavy sleep, and struggled down the hall to the bathroom.

  Kathleen came right after her. “I’ve never been to a car race. Is it fun?’”

  Janie’s mouth was so dry she drank from the faucet in one of the sinks. She splashed water on her face and throat and didn’t dry it off.

  I was kidnapped. My parents are not my parents. I threw away my real parents to keep the parents who were not my parents. But they didn’t throw away their real daughter. They kept her first, they kept me second.

  They kept me.

  It’s all about keeping.

  Who keeps who?

  Does a good Frank keep an evil Hannah? Does a good Janie…?

  Or am I ready to be a bad Janie?

  “Reeve said to wear old crummy clothes,’” said Kathleen. She threw her huge smile at Janie and big white teeth gleamed in a dozen mirrors.

  “You’re going to get filthy,’” agreed Janie. She crossed the tiny white and gray and black tiles and closed herself inside one of the stalls.

  “What are the races like?’” demanded Kathleen.

  “You’re going to go deaf. You’re going to eat the worst tacos in the entire nation.’”

  “Hey, cool,’” said Kathleen. “I can’t wait.’” And she didn’t wait. She began pacing the tile floors.

  If I look down at the toilet, thought Janie, I’ll throw up in it.

  Keeping her back to the toilet, she pressed her forehead against the gray metal enclosure, and suddenly under the door appeared the tips of Kathleen’s open-toed sandals, pressing against her own bare feet.

  “What are you doing in there?’” said Kathleen crossly.

  Reviewing my life, thought Janie. Considering homicide.

  “Reeve says you love races,’” said Kathleen.

  “You get great jewelry,’” Janie said to the toes. “Paper bracelets with racing flags.’” She lifted her eyes and stared ahead so that she no longer saw Kathleen’s toes but was looking straight into the steel gray door.

  This is what you deserve, Hannah, thought Janie. A view of steel doors.

  And is that what I should be arranging instead of gazing stupidly at post office windows?

  Steel doors for Hannah?

  Kathleen borrowed a friend’s car and drove them to the racetrack. It was a long haul, and even though Denver was right there, the track itself seemed to be in the middle of a wilderness.

  Once they were settled in the stands, Janie positioned her purse between her feet. She normally carried a tiny purse or none at all, but for the trip, to hold tickets, paperbacks, hand lotion, hairbrush, a camera and the H. J. checkbook, she had acquired a roomy satchel. She wasn’t used to it and felt a constant obligation to check. Did she still have it, were the plane tickets still there, was the checkbook?

  She tucked her sandals up close, curving her ankles until she could feel the purse against her skin. Everybody else is here to watch cars go in circles, she thought. I’m here to stop running in circles. I’ve circled enough. It’s time to close in.

  “That,’” said Stephen, pointing to the wilderness around them, “is the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. See the high chain-link fence and the barbed wire? They used to practice chemical warfare here, but now they’re cleaning up. Every now and then you see MPs patrolling in Jeeps to make sure nobody trespasses. If your feet touch the ground, poison seeps through your shoes.’”

  “Really?’” said Brian, thrilled. He jumped up and shaded his eyes, hoping to see MPs capturing hikers. To Janie he whispered, “I have to get to a library or an Internet site and find out if that’s true.’”

  The first cars came out onto the track. Reeve discussed racing rules. Stephen said he’d forgotten his sunglasses. Kathleen said, “If only we had a camera.’”

  Janie opened her mouth to say, We do, I brought a disposable camera.

  But she did not want to open the purse in front of anybody. She had zipped her plans inside there, and the camera was for taking a photo of Hannah. Although she was not sure what she planned to do with a shot of Hannah. Give it to Frank? Tape it on the refrigerator? She imagined herself telling her kidnapper to pose. Get the light right. Smile.

  The first race began. Kathleen gasped and covered her ears. The boys leaned forward, discussing strategy.

  On Monday, both Stephen and Kathleen had to work; Janie and Brian and Reeve, they said sadly, would have to manage without them.

  The problem, thought Janie, is making Brian and Reeve manage without me. How do I dump them? Should I set up a college interview and go by myself? Or get silly and Hollywoody, slip through buildings when the boys aren’t looking, go out the back, leave them waiting for hours in a lobby?

  No, the easiest thing would be to claim exhaustion and return alone to Kathleen’s room for a nap.

  I’ll tell the boys I’ve given up the idea of staking out the post office, she decided. I’ll tell Reeve he was absolutely right, I’m just mailing the check, anything more is too creepy. None of us will go look for Hannah.

  Adding one more lie to the manure pile of lies that ruled her life made Janie duck beneath her hair. But there was so much sun on this prairie. Such bright light! There was no place to hide.

  How had her father kept so many secrets for so long? It must have eaten into his gut like cancer.

  No, she remembered.

  Into his heart.

  When the race ended, Stephen turned happily to Kathleen to see if she had enjoyed it, and Janie thought: I’ve got to photograph that for Mom, Stephen smiling and soft in his new world.

  It was her New Jersey mother she meant.

  She felt like a person in a cartoon, straddling cracks in the earth where quakes had torn apart the land. She had to keep a foot in New Jersey, a foot in Connecticut, a foot in Colorado, a foot in revenge, a foot in—

  But nobody could do that. You fell through the cracks instead.

  “Isn’t the Arsenal a little close to the taco stand?’” said Reeve. “If there is poison leaching—’”

  “Eastern wimps worry about this stuff,’” said Stephen. “We Westerners, we’re tough. We shrug. We’re real men.’”

  It turned out that real men didn’t use the cement-block bathrooms, either. They walked up to the fence and peed through the chain links, joking about fumes that would suffocate fellow racers. There seemed no end to the stupid jokes Reeve and Stephen could make about this.

  Boys being friends always attract
ed Janie. Their friendships were so different from girls’ friendships. Now she was just glad their minds were occupied.

  She planned what to write in her letter to Hannah. She unzipped the purse just wide enough to thrust her hand in and make sure her writing supplies were there. On top lay her cell phone.

  Back home, Janie called her mother constantly. She called if she was next door, or at Sarah-Charlotte’s, or at school. Now she was two thousand miles away and not calling.

  Distance was so real. You could feel it.

  All two thousand miles stood fat and sturdy between Janie and that hospital bed. From this distance, the man and woman in that room were dots, not people. You didn’t have to worry about dots.

  Stephen said, “Come on, Bri, let’s you and me hike around, see what there is to eat.’”

  When they were behind the stands and the roar of cars had diminished, Stephen said abruptly, “Tell me about your worthless twin. Is he still being a jerk?’”

  “He’s not worthless. He’s an incredible athlete, Stephen. He—’”

  “He’s worthless,’” said Stephen. “Last week on the phone I talked to Mom and then Dad and then Jodie. They had to force Brendan onto the phone. He tells me, this jerk starting ninth grade in September, that he’s already chosen his college. Duke. He says he isn’t smart enough to get in, but as long as you write his papers for him he’ll be okay. Have you been doing that, Brian? Admit it. Are you cheating for him?’”

  Brian was helpless. “He’s my twin.’”

  “Brian, I’m telling Mom and Dad—’”

  “No!’”

  “—to put you in a different school. There’s a Catholic boys’ school, it’s very academic, just right for you, and you’d be away from your worthless twin.’”

  “You would have taken a garbage route before you’d have gone to Xavier, Stephen,’” said Brian. “And don’t call him worthless, he’s your brother.’”