Janie Johnson - Voice On The Radio Part 11

Janie, presumably, was the roll of blanket.

n.o.body said anything.

The radio was off. The television was off. They were too high to hear traffic.

My turn, thought Reeve, and he was afraid. "I'm sorry," he said finally.

* S *.

There was no fight-or-ffight reaction in Brian. Only fight.

He wanted to slam Reeve to the floor, kick his ribs in, bash his skull. He wanted to hit-bite- kill. It was so primitive, so complete, that Brian's mind didn't have sentences in it; just images.'

Brian despised himself for being little, for being short and thin and a crummy athlete. He hated how Reeve's eyes pa.s.sed over him, ruling him out. He wanted to protect and fight back, not be the little boy watching to see what the big boys did.

But if he attacked, Reeve would just hold him off, and Brian would be pathetic, and the girls would have to waste 'time separating ~ ~m, and somehow this would make it easier on Reeve.

So Brian stood still, pressing his angry arms against his heaving sides.

"You sold us!" said Jodie. "You took our story, the hard parts, the insider stuff, the things that hurt most, and you sold it."

"I'm sorry," said Reeve again. He was sorry. He was horribly sorry.

"You didn't think you'd get caught, did you?" said Jodie.

"No."

Janie's hair had spilled out of the blanket tube. If only he could fling the blanket off Janie, and tighten his, arms around her, and muss up her hair, and convince her that he really was a good guy. A mistake, sure, but hey. Shrug it off, Janie.

"How could you do it, Reeve?" screamed Jodie without raising her voice; a scream of intensity, not volume. "How could you actually say things like Janie not wanting us? Janie not having enough love to go around? Bad enough to mention what people already know from newspaper and television. But to tell what we kept safe in our hearts? How could you do that to us?"

The word safe and the word heart were terrible. "It didn't feel real," he said. "It was just airtime. It's just you and the mike. You're alone in a gla.s.s room and it isn't real."

She shook her head. "I don't buy that. We're radio fiends, too. The first thing in radio is to hook the listeners. You knew the audience was out there. You were buying listeners, Reeve."

He swallowed. "Yes."

"Buying them through me," said Janie.

Her voice jolted him terribly. It was still her voice. She's still who she was, he thought confusedly. A lump in his throat like broken pavement blocked speech.

"For fame?" said Jodie. "Was this part of your master plan to be rich and famous?"

"I guess so," he said. Janie did not move inside the blanket; she could have been dead. He said to the blanket, "Radio is exciting. It's live. People recognize your voice, and they call up the station and ask for you, and you have automatic friends. Strangers smile when they meet you." But Janie, he thought, Janie isn't going to smile when she meets me. Oh, G.o.d.

"If you did it so people would know you, why didn't you talk about yourself instead? The freshman experience or something?" said Jodie.

"Because I started so early," said Reeve. "I'd hardly even been a freshman when I began."

"You've been talking about us since August?" hissed Jodie. "How many of these little stories have you woven? How many nights a week? How many details? How many times?"

He could not answer that. It was too d.a.m.ning. He took refuge in his first sentence. "I'm sorry."

He looked at the misshapen blanket that contained the person who mattered most to him in the world. He sat heavily down on the bed, the way he always sat, letting go completely, so that the springs touched bottom.

He peeled the blanket down, and Janie's tired eyes stared back at him. "I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to. I was just being stupid."

* * S.

It was Jodie who began to bawl.

Brian's sister was not given to tears; she was battle-p.r.o.ne, and often damaged her brothers. Jodie sobbing made Brian feel uneven, tippy. Wis.h.i.+ng they had called Mom and Dad after all.

Brian felt defused. He had expected a monster. But Reeve was still Reeve. The same endearing, good-looking, nice person. The need, to damage Reeve faded. Brian just felt mixed up, with a headache on the side.

"We were getting there!" Jodie cried. She was mad at herself for crying, wiping tears away as fast as they fell. "You wouldn't even know my mother and father if you came down. They're happy. They're not worrying. They can let go of us. And look what you did. Threw us out there, like raw meat in front of wolves. Saying on the' air that Janie had better things to do than make an effort to love us."

Reeve didn't defend himself.

"You've ruined Boston for me. How am I supposed to get excited about attending school in a town where they know private, personal family. hurts?"

Reeve tried to explain how it had begun, how it had s...o...b..lled. He described the first night, the agony of having nothing to say. How Derek and Vinnie and Cal were going to laugh at him, along with his entire dorm.

Brian hated it that Reeve was a coward. Afraid of being a jerk for five minutes in front of some other jerks? That gave him the right to sell out the family?

"But I never used last names," said Reeve. "I never said Johnson or Spring. So it matters less than you think."

"It doesn't matter less, Reeve!" shouted Jodie. "It matters all the way, through and through!"

"People never called in ,and asked, for last names?" said Brian.

"Constantly. That was the point. Make them call in.,'

"Don't you pretend to yourself Or us that you didn't have a choice, Reeve s.h.i.+elds!" Jodie was going to hit him. Brian wondered what Reeve would do. "I don't care how it s...o...b..lled. You're a big boy, Reeve, you could have stepped aside and let the s...o...b..ll go past."

Reeve swallowed. "That's true."

"So what's your excuse?" shouted Jodie.

"I don't have one!" At last Reeve's voice was as strained as Jodie's. Brian was glad to hear the'radio richness gone and the ragged nerves showing.

"I was in love with the sound of my voice, I guess. In love with being important. Daydreaming about how famous I would be."

His eyes were still on Janie, and he had a puppy look, with that moppy hair, and Brian thought, If Janie tells him it's okay, she loves him anyway, not to worry about it, then Stephen is right, let her sleep in a coffin.

"I want you to promise me," said Janie, sliding off the bed, keeping it between herself and Reeve, keeping the blanket on, "that you will never say another sentence about us."

Reeve didn't get up. He sat hunched and sagging on his side of the room. "I promise."

"You will never use us on any radio station ever again."

"I promise."

Brian had never heard Janie say us before. Us meaning her real family.

"Did I hear the announcer correctly?" said Janie. "Did he refer to me as a thing? A janie?"

Reeve closed his eyes.

Coward, thought Brian.

Brian wanted Reeve still to be his hero. He wanted Reeve still to be tall and wonderful and good at everything. We'll have to keep this a secret from Stephen, too, thought Brian, and he imagined hearing Stephen speak highly of Reeve at holidays.

* . S.

Janie envied Jodie's tears. She, Janie, was blank; a computer disk that has not been formatted.

Reeve looked so miserable. He was ashamed, she believed that. But his protests were another lie. He had known what he was doing.

No, thought Janie. You said to yourself: Oh well, it's only Janie, but a radio career is a radio career.

She felt soggy, like a swamp.

She thought of her Barbies, how firm they were, how solid and unchanging. If only life could be like that.

But my life is like that. My mother and father and I-we work each day to be as solid and un changing as dolls. This is what it is to be a doll. Somebody plays with you, and throws you down at the end of the day.

"Janie," whispered Reeve, and he moved toward her, and she shook her head, and 'he stopped.

She tightened the blanket around herself. She could not imagine ever coming out from under the blanket.

Reeve was sick from knowing himself.

Janie had felt her way to the armchair. The beautiful hair seemed unconnected to her: It belonged to somebody who danced and laughed.

"There's one more thing," said Brian. "This is a secret, Reeve. Even though you've told all Ma.s.sachusetts, it's a secret. We don't tell any of our parents."

"Yeah, Reeve, we let the parents go ,on thinking you're a nice person," said Jodie.

"We don't tell Stephen," said Brian, "we don't tell Sarah-Charlotte, we don't discuss your radio show again. Ever."

I sure don't want them to know either, thought Reeve drearily. "What about your twin?" he asked Brian. "You tell him everything, don't you?"

"No, Reeve," said Brian quietly. "You're the one here 'who tells everything."

Reeve flushed.

Janie had looked up. Reeve could not meet Janie's gaze. There was something glinting about her, like a setting sun in his eyes. Without inflection, just plain words, as if reading a vocabulary list, Janie said to him, "Don't call me. Don't come to my house when you're home."

"No, Janie, please," he said, and his voice cracked. "I still love you. Let me talk to you alone. Please."

"If you even liked me, you would have stopped yourself from doing this."

"That's not true. I just wasn't thinking. I still love you."

"Oh, shut up," said Jodie. "We hate you, so it's hate, so shut up and leave."

Janie tightened the blanket, insulating herself.

Brian put a light hand on Reeve's sleeve and guided him out; out of the room, into the hall, onto the thick carpet; and then Brian shut the door and Reeve was alone in the hotel corridor. He could hear the ding of arriving elevators and a clutteiy rush of ice cubes falling in their machine.

I've raped Janie, thought Reeve. , That's what talk shows are. The rape of the soul.

CHAPTER.

ELEVEN.

Boston.

One A.M.

A thin, mean rain was coming down.

The T was closed. Reeve had no cash for a taxi. He walked.

Even at this hour, in this weather, he was not the only person on the streets. Well-dressed people emerged from bars, drunks slept in doorways, police cruised in cop cars. Scrungy little convenience stores were full of light and customers.

He could not go to his dorm. He didn't even want to think about the thoughts he would have, trying to sleep.

The next block was deserted. He found himself slinking through the shadows at the edges of buildings, instead of striding down the sidewalk. He was a thing that needed to stay hidden.

Was this how Hannah had felt, when she made the final error, the ultimate betrayal of her upbringing, and became a kidnapper? Hannah, hiding in her parents' home with little Jennie. Spring, telling them monumental lies: Did she know she had become part of the dark?

Why was she calling WSCK?

Is any spotlight better than the dark? Even the spotlight of arrest and trial and imprisonment?

Reeve corrected himself. It was not, it could not be, Hannah.