What Janie Saw (2 page)

On the radio, a song began.

The words were a shock.

Hannah stared at the radio. She walked closer to it. She eyed the radio sideways. She knelt in front of it, as if the singers were inside the little box and if she squinted, she’d be able see them.

“Evelyn!” shouted the supervisor, stomping into the room. “The radio doesn’t matter! The schedule does!” She stalked over to flick the radio off.

Got to be a video
, thought Hannah.
There’s always a video
.

And it will be a video of me
.

Janie Johnson slapped the radio button off before any more of those words slapped her. She knew the words all too well. Of all bands, it had to be Visionary Assassins, the newest hit, who had picked up that song.

This explained why people were staring at her. They were listening to this. Downloading it. Watching the video.

The video
.

Janie clung to the steering wheel.
There’s always a video
, she thought, queasy.

She smacked the radio button on again.

The song had originally appeared at the worst point of Janie’s nightmare: when the court ordered her to rejoin her birth family. When she was told that a country and western song had been written about
her
—suburban Connecticut Janie—Janie had thought it was such a hoot. She figured the song was actually about the kidnapper. Hannah was never caught. People loved stuff where the criminal never got caught.

Nothing rhymed with the kidnapper’s last name, Javensen, or the word “kidnapper.”
They’ll find something to rhyme with “Hannah,”
Janie had told herself.
Savannah? Montana?

Now the hot little space of her car closed in on her.
If only
, she thought.

The minor country singer who had issued the first recording had vanished, along with his song. Visionary Assassins’ version was angry and harsh, with
little trace of the original soft, sad ballad.

She dropped her iPhone in her lap and took her iPad out of her satchel. Senior year she had stopped carrying backpacks or book bags, plastic bags or department store totes. She had treated herself to a beautiful large leather handbag, meant for executives, with lots of compartments for cosmetics and electronic devices. The iPad was heavy and a nuisance, but ever since her father’s stroke, Janie had been handling the family banking and bills online. She checked the device often—probably too often—worrying about the responsibility.

In a moment she found it. “Janie Johnson”: the video.

She had to pay for it, which hardly seemed fair. It downloaded with terrible speed. Why couldn’t it get stuck out there in the limbo occupied by failed songs?

Janie turned the car key, the power stopped, and the radio was silenced.

The video on her iPad did not show the band. It opened with real-life footage of Janie herself, taken when she was coming and going from that courtroom. The hearings had been private, because Janie was a minor and because there was nothing criminal involved; it was really just an unusual and complex
custody case. Could Janie go on living with the parents who had brought her up? The kidnap parents, as it were?

Until that day, Janie and her Johnson parents had not known that America was ferociously interested in Janie’s story. They were shaken by the horde of reporters and cameras and shouts.

The news cam that had filmed this had been very close to her.

In those days, she’d let her hair fly free, and a mass of auburn curls had encircled her head and been heavy on her shoulders. That day was windy and her hair whipped over her eyes. She had not known enough to wear sunglasses. Startled by the presence of paparazzi, she obeyed when they yelled, “Janie! Over here!”

She looked very young in this film. Confused and frightened. The camera zoomed in, focusing on Janie’s small hand inside her “kidnap father’s” big one. It looked as if Frank was dragging Janie, but in fact, Janie had been clinging tightly to her father. She had been thinking of the irony of her situation. A few months earlier, she had decided to find out the truth. How could her very own face be on a missing child picture? She wasn’t missing! She was right here! She had a loving family.

She didn’t want to change anything. She wanted the mother and father she had. But she had to know who that missing child was.

With Reeve’s help, Janie had located that family, the ones whose toddler, Jennie Spring, had been snatched from a mall in New Jersey. For weeks, only Janie and Reeve knew that that toddler had grown up as Janie Johnson. Herself.

Janie was horrified for the poor Spring family, who had been destroyed by the kidnapping. But she did not want the family she had grown up with to be destroyed as well. She loved her family!

So the windblown teenager in the news footage had been thinking a terrible thing:
I didn’t have to look
.

I could have pretended the face on the milk carton wasn’t me. I didn’t have to drive down to New Jersey with Reeve and see the house where they lived, and watch those children get off their school bus, so that before my very eyes, they turned into a real family. Real brothers and a real sister. A real mother. A real father
.

My own
.

I could have left it alone
.

In the car, the video of Visionary Assassins pounded on.

In that courtroom, the judge had said, “You’re fourteen.”

How she had resented finding out her real age; she’d thought she was fifteen, which was on the cusp of adulthood, but fourteen was still a child.

“Tell me your hopes and fears,” said the judge.

So she told him, because you were supposed to tell the truth in court.

And then the judge, in his wisdom or his lack of it, decided that Janie’s hopes and fears were immaterial. The biological parents were to have her back and the “other” parents were to become history.

Getting along in a new family would be difficult under any circumstance. But when a judge has to order you to move in, your family is going to have an attitude. As the months turned into years, Janie could see that her birth family—her father; mother; sister, Jodie; brothers Stephen, Brian and Brendan—had been very generous of heart. They never referred to the court event. Both the Johnson and the Spring families made a huge and painful effort to share Janie.

It was Janie who did not know how to share. How did you chop off pieces of your life and family?

Visionary Assassins loved their lines. Over and over, they screamed,

That isn’t true
, thought Janie.
My whole life has been about trying to tell right from wrong. I couldn’t throw my Johnson parents away. But you have to embrace your birth mother and father. I am always half wrong, because whatever I do right is wrong from the other direction
.

In the video, her younger self came sobbing out of the courtroom. She had been allowed to go home for a few days with her “other” parents, wrap up that life and pack her things. Then she would go live with her “real” parents.

The video slid the news clip to the side, and now the sneering faces of Visionary Assassins zoomed up next to her, tilting their heads, mocking the angle at which Janie held hers. Tears lay on her cheeks. Visionary Assassins drew fake wavy tear lines on their cheeks.

The headlines in newspapers and the comments on talk shows after that court decree had screamed,
Wrenching Decisions! Heartbreaking Choices!
Online media let people vote—should Janie leave the family who brought her up or not? Was Janie sick and rotten because she wanted her “kidnap” parents? Were the “kidnap” parents twisted and depraved?

Visionary Assassins changed their rhythm and softened the chords.

Doesn’t care!
It echoed itself.
Doesn’t care!
It mocked.

She wanted to phone Visionary Assassins.
You stole me. You might as well have kidnapped me for that song. You’re as criminal as Hannah! You’re making millions while I’m just making tears. Listen to me! My heart always cared. Everybody in our nightmare did their best, and everybody got torn in two
anyway
.

And if I could get hold of you, Visionary Assassins, I’d tear you in two
.

Reeve Shields was one of tens of thousands of college students in Boston. Reeve was not a fine student. He was not even halfway to being a fine student. But he made friends as easily as most people make sandwiches.

This coming weekend, he had an invitation. A girl he had known since freshman orientation had asked him to join her family at their cottage. Her dad was picking her up Friday at two.

Brianna was beautiful, fun, smart and interesting. Reeve knew her parents and her younger brother. He even knew her dog. When her family drove into Boston for a visit, her collie danced and leaped and whined and licked in a steady rotating pattern like a weather front. The collie’s joy was infectious. People came out to watch.

Reeve could hop into the car with Brianna and her terrific father and her happy collie. He’d help close up their summer cottage, and they’d fish in the lake, and have great food, and hike on trails at the edge of the mountains.

Or he could drive down to Connecticut and deal with a girl who half loved him. Half let him near and half would never forgive him.

He didn’t know what to do about loving Janie Johnson. It wasn’t a burden; it wasn’t a weight on his shoulders. But it was hopeless. He had screwed up big-time. Nothing he said would convince Janie that he had learned from his
mistake.

It was time to move on. Janie said so herself. And Brianna would not be halfway about taking Reeve into her life.

But even though Janie had not mentioned the situation with Visionary Assassins, he wanted to be there for her.

He was so proud of Janie right now. The song and the video were racing toward number one in the nation—and Janie hadn’t blinked.

“She never even refers to it,” Sarah-Charlotte had told him last night. “Now, what did your sister Lizzie say about the whole thing? Can we sue them?”

Reeve’s sister Lizzie was an attorney, the terrifying kind you would hire in a crunch. Reeve was always puzzled that he could be related to a woman like Lizzie. But he had gotten her legal opinion. “Lizzie explained that Janie Johnson became a public figure once the milk carton story got out,” he told Sarah-Charlotte. “Public figures are different. They don’t have the privacy rights the rest of us do. That footage of Janie and her families leaving the courtroom was shown nationally back when it happened, and as long as Visionary Assassins paid for the news clip and have permission from whoever took that footage, they’re legal. They don’t need Janie’s permission.”

Sarah-Charlotte sighed. “That’s what my dad said. You know, I’m actually kind of hurt. I thought Janie would lean on me and need me, but she just strolls around school staring right back at the people who stare at her.”

Janie doesn’t need me either
, Reeve thought.

He tried to be glad. He wanted Janie strong and tough.

But mostly, he wanted Janie.

He and Brianna were sitting on a campus bench, enjoying the wind. Red and gold leaves fell off the maples and piled up around their ankles. Reeve remembered the first time he had had the courage to kiss Janie Johnson.

Brianna said, “No pressure, Reeve. It would just be a fun weekend at the cabin. You’ll bunk with Dad and my brother and I’ll bunk with Mom and my sister.”

The harsh stench of bleach soaked into the woman formerly known as Hannah. It was a symbol. She could pour cleanser on everything, every hour of every day, but nothing would clean up. Nothing would have the beauty of young life and a world ahead of it. That girl had permanently stained Hannah’s existence.

Finally the day was over.

In a bathroom at the motel, she peeled off her uniform and stuffed it in a plastic grocery bag. She took street clothes out of another plastic bag. When she was dressed, she did not look in a mirror. She did not see that her shirt was unevenly buttoned and her hair was matted. She walked away.

She had a car but kept it a secret.

The Jennie-Janie situation had riveted the nation for a while, but everything got old, and so had the face on the milk carton. Nevertheless, Hannah had to assume that the FBI and the police never gave up. She was forced to live under stolen names. She couldn’t fly on planes or lead a normal life. She even parked
in different places every day, took different routes to work. She lied about everything.

This afternoon, she went nowhere near her car but headed by a crazy route to a library branch, crossing streets here and there to shake off anybody following her.

At this library, you had to sign up for computer use, showing an ID. She had a stolen ID she used only at this annoying branch. The librarians assigned you a specific computer, which meant they could go look at your search history if they wanted. You had exactly one hour. Then it turned off. By itself. No matter what you wanted.

Libraries used to be nice places, where nice people talked softly and handed you a good book. Now they were mean places, where nasty people strode up and looked over your shoulder, making sure you weren’t doing something they disapproved of and gleefully informing you that you had only five minutes left.

She settled into her cubicle.

When the librarian finally puttered away, Hannah Googled “Janie Johnson” and “Jennie Spring.”