The Voice on the Radio by Caroline B. Cooney
Janie wondered when she would develop a desire to drive. She felt stunted sometimes, as if the discovery of her two families had cut off something essential; kept her a child while everybody around her grew up.
Janie knew suddenly that the Johnsons were all playing house: her mother, her father and her—staying little, staying inside.
She played with the radio dial. Both New York and Boston came in clearly. She loved thinking about Reeve on radio. She loved thinking about Reeve. Boston sounded so romantic. While Jodie was touring colleges, Janie could be with Reeve. She thought of wedding gown fabric: satin, lace, velvet, brocade. She thought of veils and gloves.
She laughed to herself in the dark of the car, but it was no joke. She dreamed of a life with Reeve. In this life, he was not just standing with his arm around her; he had his arms around all the players in this sad game, and she and they loved him for being sturdy. She thought of him in terms of wedding vows: for better or for worse. He had certainly seen her worst, and had waited calmly for her best to return.
One thing she knew. Reeve was sick of calm. He’d like some wild in their relationship.
Janie pretended Reeve was next to her, and she snuggled up to his invisible heat, warming herself on his invisible chest.
Reeve was tired of gentle janies. He’d rehearsed truly wrenching janies for tonight. It would be his best night. People phoning in would get busy signals.
He waited for ten o’clock.
Derek was offering a prize to the listener who could answer a Boston music trivia question.
Prize.
A phrase Reeve associated with Martin Luther King filtered through his mind. Keep your eyes on the prize.
What was that prize, for Reeve?
He did not need freedom. He had too much of it. The prize, for Reeve, was not to use his freedom.
The prize is not a million listeners, and money, and fame, thought Reeve. The prize is shutting up.
If he shut up, nobody would hear his really good janies.
Besides, I won’t get caught, he told himself.
Anybody who worries about getting caught knows he is wrong. Reeve did not want to think about right and wrong. He just wanted to enjoy his new place in the world. He resented Martin Luther King for appearing in his mind, righteous and judging.
He whispered prize to himself, turning the prize back into a pair of Derek’s tickets.
Boston popped out of the ground. They’d been on a boring highway, with boring buildings, they entered a tunnel, and wham! There was Boston, skyscrapers and hotels, neon lights and streetlights and office-at-night lights.
Jodie concentrated on being in the correct lane at the correct time, but she never once picked the correct lane, and had to whip between cars and risk fender benders and listen to angry honks.
They hit the Marriott at 10:14.
The place was so efficient that they were in the room at 10:21.
“Reeve broadcasts Thursday nights from ten to eleven,” said Janie. “Let’s listen to his station.”
Brian took over the radio. It was a cheap little thing, brown and black plastic with a sleep alarm, and Brian had trouble finding WSCK. “They’re just down the block,” said Janie. She tried tuning and got nowhere. Jodie finally managed to get the station, and there was Reeve’s voice, big and sexy and deep, announcing Visionary Assassins.
Brian cracked up. “I’d sing in a group with that name.”
“Or maybe you wouldn’t,” said Jodie after listening for a minute. “Visionary Assassins ought to be assassinated for pretending to be a band.”
They lay back on their beds, giggling at the ceiling, punchy from having accomplished the trip and being on their own in a wonderful city, with freedom in front of them.
“Okay, the pressure’s on!” cried Derek Himself into the mike. “The interest is up, the calls are in, you guys want another janie tonight. Well, we got a special coming up. A twofer. Along with a couple of janies, Reeve’s promised us a hannah.”
Reeve flexed his arms, took the mike, felt the sweep of pleasure rushing from mike to heart. He prepared his best speaking voice, his best timing, his most dramatic pauses.
* * *
Janie didn’t go politely into being Jennie.
She went fighting and spitting.
The courts said Janie had to be returned to her biological family. To New Jersey. Lawyers took her down the same interstate we took the day we skipped school. But this time, it wasn’t a road. It was a tunnel of fear. Janie was being poured down some evil tube, where she could land in any kind of nightmare, because she no longer had parents. She was mad at Hannah, she was mad at the world, but mostly she was mad at her birth parents. How dare they want her back, when she liked her old life better?
Janie found out something while she was living in New Jersey. She didn’t have enough love to go around. Janie turned out to have a limited supply of love. Not enough to fit in her real mother and father. Who needed them? Janie had a great life. They were clutter.
* * *
Reeve felt strangely less cluttered himself. It dawned on him that one reason he was so good at this was because he, too, had ended Janie’s terrible year with a heart full of confusion and pain. He, too, needed the release of confession.
Janie lay inside her body and turned into plastic. A Barbie doll.
Reeve.
She couldn’t pull her lips together to say his name, or any other name, or any other word.
Reeve.
Jodie thought it was a good thing she was not armed. If she’d had a shotgun, or a machete, she would have used it on Reeve Shields.
On the air, that Janie never wanted to be one of us, Jodie thought.
On the air, that Janie went back to her other family because she loved them more.
It would kill my parents.
Jodie felt like a gun going off, friction, powder, explosives, hot as a cannon. She felt white-hot and violent. I’ll kill Reeve.
Was this how her brother Stephen had felt all those years? Had Stephen been filled with this rage and had to control it? Who could live with this much fury? It was burning up her thinking.
I hate Reeve’s filthy guts.
She had to find some degree of control before she attempted speech. Otherwise nothing but swear words and meaningless shrieks would come out of her throat. I’m the oldest, thought Jodie, I have to set an example.
I’ll kill him.
Derek introduced the hannah.
Reeve could feel his listeners. It was an incredible hot sensation. He knew they were there. Glued, hungry, thirsty.
He was just as glued. He was hungry and thirsty to hear himself.
* * *
Who, really, is Hannah? Of course everybody was being kind to her parents, and pretending she was a misguided lost soul…but she wasn’t. She snatched a baby girl and left that family to worry forever. And that’s evil. Hannah was evil.
* * *
The families, even the Springs, did not consider Hannah evil. Pathetic. Wrong. Lost. But not evil.
Reeve had learned, however, as all shock jocks before him had learned, that the best topic is always evil.
If you don’t have evil, invent it.
If it isn’t exciting enough, embellish.
* * *
And where is Hannah now?
She’s out there.
Somewhere…the sweet dishrag daughter…the thief of two families…is out there.
All grown up.
All evil.
* * *
The word evil was heavy and coppery in Reeve’s mouth. He lingered on the word, so that his audience would taste it.
Then he upped the ante.
Ante.
A card game term. A gambling term.
It meant: If things are exciting now, just you wait. I’ll make it more risky. And then we’ll see.
Reeve lowered his voice, as if in the privacy between a human and the Almighty, he was offering up a genuine prayer.
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Janie had a prayer.
The prayer was not to God.
It was to Hannah.
Dear Hannah, don’t show up in our lives. My parents can’t go through that. They’d have to see what became of you. And they and you would have to face a trial and the media. Hannah, there’s only one thing you can do for the mother and father you abandoned.
Stay lost.
* * *
Horror spread down Janie’s body like snakebite. The poison was cold, crawling through her system. It was cold inside her head, too. Air-conditioned nightmare.
Reeve Shields had sold her over the air.
While she had been heartsick over a page in the yearbook, Reeve—her Reeve—had been using her as evening entertainment for a whole city. A joke between Assassins.
There was nobody in the world you could trust. Your parents turned out to be somebody else entirely, and the boy you loved, your worst enemy.
Brian felt older than his sisters. He could be the parent here, the coach or teacher. The designated grown-up.
Janie had melted into the bed. Her face had a flat look, as if she had abandoned it.
Jodie looked like a losing tennis star. Ready to rip the net and bring her tennis racket right down over the head of her opponent and wrap it around his throat and strangle him while she was at it.
Brian stared at his two flaking-out sisters. Reeve, he thought. But we all loved you. You made it possible for us to forgive Janie for wanting to be a Johnson instead of a Spring. You were my hero, Reeve.
Brian felt destroyed around the edges. He picked up the telephone. He hit nine to get an outside line. Twice Derek Himself had given the phone number for WSCK. Brian was not usually strong on numbers, but he would never forget these seven.
Reeve set up two Visionary Assassins back to back. He was very attached to the Assassins.
Vinnie was out in the hall talking to somebody Reeve didn’t recognize. Derek had actually retreated to another room to study. Cal had a date.
The phone lit. Reeve was as exhausted as if his mind had been vacuumed. Broadcast took a lot out of you. He stared at the silent, visible ring of the phone. Then he picked it up. He was mildly surprised when the tape reel next to him began turning. Derek must have been recording.
“Hi there,” he said briskly into the receiver, finding his jock voice for another moment. “WSCK, We’re Here, We’re Yours, We’re Sick. How can I help you?”
The caller was a woman.
Not a girl. Not a college kid. Not young.
The voice was tired. The vocal cords rasped from too much smoking. The speech was slurred, as if the caller had had too much to drink. “This—this is the radio station?” said the caller.
Derek would have said No, this is the high command, give me your latitude and longitude so I can drop a bomb on you. We have too many stupid people in the world.
But Reeve said courteously, “Sure is. What’s your name?”
There was a pause, as if the caller needed to think about this, or needed to be prompted. Needed Reeve to say Yes, your airtime has started, the world is listening, go ahead.
And yet, not that kind of pause.
Not a person uncertain about whether it had started.
A person choosing to start something.
“I,” said the voice, “am Hannah.”
CHAPTER
NINE
Reeve turned to Styrofoam.
Hannah.
No. Absolutely not. It was not probable. Statistics were against it. It was not logical. It was—
It was the worst thing that could happen.
He felt so light. He might float off the chair and tap against walls, a lost object in a space flight.
Hannah.
Vinnie was still in the hall, still talking to the stranger. Not even enough time for a change of posture had passed.
Nobody was paying attention to Reeve.
The reel-to-reel tape, in its slow, old-fashioned way, circled on. It was taping silence now. Neither Reeve nor his caller spoke.
He said to himself: It’s not Hannah. It’s some college sophomore joking around. It’s Cordell paying Pammy to lower her voice.
But could Pammy’s high, annoying burble be transformed into that rough smoker-drinker voice?
He tried to calm himself.
It was Visionary Assassins. They’d hired a voice. For the Assassins, the more attention, the better. They, too, could up the ante.
It’s giggly girls with nothing else to do. Junior high kids listening after they’re supposed to be in bed. Kids in the student center, sick of video games. The professor’s wife, filling in her chart.
But not Hannah.
He felt cold from the inside out.
He needed to swallow and couldn’t. He needed to throw up and couldn’t. He needed to think and couldn’t.
“I need to know one thing,” said the voice. “Just one.”
They all said that. But this voice shivered on the words. It was not a demand. It was a plea.
Reeve disconnected. With the slightest pressure from just one finger, he got rid of the voice.
Then he stared at the phone. Why did I do that? I know so much that almost nobody else knows. I could have asked a single question myself, and if it’s Hannah, or if it’s not—I’d know.
She’s gone now. I can’t ask.
His mouth was full of something. A towel. Probably his tongue.
And what if it is Hannah? What then, stupid? he said to himself. His pulse whacked in his temple. It felt like a golf ball under the skin. Hire a real Visionary Assassin to do away with her? Invite her for dinner? Suggest a friendly local FBI agent?
If it was a listener trying to increase the action, he thought, she’ll call back.
He waited. His heart beat as fast as a humming-bird’s.
This is a college town, he reminded himself. Boston in November equals bored college kids with nothing better to do than listen to a dumb college radio station and make dumb calls.
Around him, clocks with sweep hands ticked off seconds.
Then, once more, the clear plastic bump on the telephone twinkled.
He tried to wet his lips. Couldn’t. Tried to look away long enough to find his Coke. Couldn’t.
Should he answer?
One more ring and the answering machine would pick up. He could not have Vinnie notice anything amiss.
Vinnie would love it, thought Reeve. He’ll make it be Hannah even if she’s not Hannah. In fact, Vinnie is the likeliest person to set this up.
His eyes flickered to Vinnie out in the hall. Vinnie was not subtle, could not act. If he was in this, it would show. But Vinnie continued to wave his clipboard at the stranger.
Reeve picked up the phone, finger poised over the Disconnect button. Reeve had large hands: hands meant for circling basketballs or carrying one end of a piano. A voice on a wire had reduced his hand to quivers.
Janie loved his hands. Loved resting her thin fingers against his big ones. He could not think of Janie now. He could not allow himself to think what he might have loosed upon Janie.
It’s not Hannah, he repeated to himself. That call was a joke.
And what was selling Janie? he thought. A joke?
He had been building a bomb here, as carefully as a terrorist in a basement. And hadn’t even realized it.
But who would be blown up?
Not me, he thought. I’m the talk show host. Nothing happens to the host. Hannah isn’t my daughter. She isn’t my kidnapper. She’s theirs.
Reeve managed a swallow. Dry, no Coke.
Hannah would explode Janie, and both families.
It’ll go away, Reeve told himself. I didn’t really do anything, and nobody really listens to this station. It isn’t Hannah, and I’ll stop doing janies. I’ll attend class, I’ll study, eat at McDonald’s instead of the cafeteria, pick up my mail in the dark of night, sleep in the park. “This is WSCK! We’re Here, We’re Yours, We’re Sick, how can I h
“I just have one question, Reeve.” Chipper, perky voice. Demanding, in a Hills College way. “I wanna know if Visionary Assassins look like their songs. Somebody told me that in real life, they’re wimpy, weedy nerds. I picture them as big, lean thugs. What’s the truth?”
Reeve’s horror faded to nothing. He felt thick and somewhat silly. His racing pulse dropped, and his sweat dried.
“Ah, the elusive truth,” said Reeve. “Only if you see the Assassins live will you come close to the truth.” He disconnected.
Well, that was a relief. No Hannah. Just an ordinary evening in the life of a deejay.
He’d have to put a third CD on. He couldn’t fill his lungs enough to talk on the air. Couldn’t wet his lips.
He felt like somebody who’s just missed having a fatal car accident and has to pull over until the jelly-legs go away. He took two extremely deep, calming breaths, the way he used to do in high school before a wrestling match.
High school. Talk about remote. He’d been a kid then, with kid-sized problems.
This is a kid-sized problem, too, he reminded himself.
The phone lit once more.
He tried to plan what to say to the fake Hannah, but no plan came to mind. He’d have to wing it. This time he would not hang up. He had to hear the woman out, find out who was behind her nonsense.
“Hey! You’ve reached WSCK! We’re Here, We’re Yours, We’re Sick, how can I help you?”
“Reeve? This is Brian Spring. Jodie and I are here in Boston for her college interviews. We heard your broadcast.”