The Voice on the Radio Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  “ONCE UPON A TIME,” HE…

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PREVIEW OF WHAT JANIE FOUND

  CHECK OUT MORE EDGE-OF-YOUR-SEAT THRILLERS!

  ALSO BY CAROLINE B. COONEY

  COPYRIGHT

  For Harold, who knew what happened to Reeve

  And with thanks to Lynne Hawkins,

  a great line editor

  To Sayre, whose idea of editing is

  “Wow, Mom, this is perfect!”

  And to Beverly Horowitz, my editor,

  whose ideas are perfect

  “Once upon a time,” he repeated helplessly, stuck in horrible repetition of that stupid phrase.

  And then talk arrived, like a tape that had come in the mail.

  “I dated a dizzy redhead. Dizzy is a compliment. Janie was light and airy. Like hope and joy. My girlfriend,” he said softly, into the microphone. Into the world.

  Never had Reeve’s voice sounded so rich and appealing.

  “Except,” said Reeve, “except one day in the school cafeteria, Janie just happened to glance down at the picture of that missing child printed on the milk carton.

  “And the face on the milk carton,” said Reeve, “was Janie herself.”

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  FROM: [email protected]

  TO: [email protected]

  SUBJ: unfair ccalendar practices rfor studentsc

  You have been at college 39 days = how have i survived without you? Not easily. Why do i need high school? 599 days before i graduate. Come get me—i have THSD…terminal high school disease. Only cure = you. loooooooove janie

  FROM: [email protected]

  TO: [email protected]

  SUBJ: h.s. diploma

  Necessary 4 you to pay full price of high school like every other American. remember that 599 days is really only 19 monthys, which is a very low number. cannot come and get you til I am rich and famous, which is soon…in ONE HOURr…thats 1 hour…I, yours truly, will be a real live dj on a real live radio station…Reeve

  He ran out of things to say.

  Reeve had never expected to have mike fright.

  How could he have run out of things to talk about?

  Eleven minutes into the hour for which he had begged and pleaded, and he was about to blow it. His tongue was drying out. Another sixty seconds and he wouldn’t even be able to make sounds.

  Reeve felt he could go to war in the jungle and not be scared. Be a cop at night in the projects during a drug war and not be scared. He was in a radio station with a mike at his mouth and nothing to say, and he was scared.

  Dead air. You could kill a lot of things in a big city and nobody would look up, but people don’t stayed tuned to dead air. Dead air is a dead jock.

  Derek Himself, an experienced deejay, was sitting in one of those office chairs that bend back-ward, so he was grinning at the ceiling, flopping his right hand toward Reeve, planning to take back the mike.

  Reeve grabbed himself a safety zone. “This is WSCK, We’re Here, We’re Yours, We’re Sick! Coming to you live from the basement of your very own administration building. Now let’s hear a brand-new release from Visionary Assassins, a Revere Dorm band.”

  Visionary Assassins were three guys who hadn’t known each other when college began on August twenty-seventh, but now, October fourth, they had a band and a demo tape and wanted to be famous, respected and rich, performing live to packed, adoring audiences nationwide.

  Reeve had loved radio all his life: talk shows and call-in shows, hard rock and soft rock, country and western and acid rock—anything except Easy Listening. He could even stand the two-hour news programming his parents liked at dinnertime, and now and then, for laughs, he’d tune in the local station—lost dog descriptions and advertising so pathetic he was embarrassed.

  But he had never thought of being a jock himself.

  Radio was so completely a thing for the car or the house that it never occurred to Reeve that radio could be him.

  He had walked into the studio of WSCK only because the freshman dorm made him nervous: fifteen hundred college students he didn’t know. How did you find a life among so many strangers? His roommate gave him the creeps. Reeve could not believe he was going to have to share a ten-by-twelve cubbyhole with this animal for nine months. Cordell didn’t brush his teeth, didn’t wash his underwear, didn’t plan to change his sheets. It was a stage, Cordell said proudly. Well, move on to a better one, said Reeve, who was inviting smokers to drop by in order to cover the odor of his roommate.

  How Hills College had ever admitted Cordell was a mystery. An even greater mystery was that girls were flirty with Cordell.

  But after just one night volunteering on the college radio station, roommate problems became too minor to bother with.

  Reeve knew what he wanted in this world: the sound of his own voice on the air. People listening to him. People saying Hey, shut up, everybody, Reeve Shields is coming on.

  Of course he wasn’t using his last name. He wanted to be one of those few people on earth for whom one name is plenty. Reeve.

  And here he was: so scared he was in danger of forgetting his name, never mind making it immortal.

  Inside the headphones, Reeve listened to Visionary Assassins. The music was so live. The drumbeats meshed with Reeve’s pulse, and the bass thrummed in his heart. The headphones were extremely good: soft and easy to wear, no sense of weight or pressure. Just complete enclosure within strong, hot sound.

  Unfortunately, this was supposed to be a provocative talk hour, not a music hour.

  Derek Himself smiled an I-told-you-so smile. Derek had a purple Mohawk, seven earrings in one ear and three in the other. “Hey, honey,” he said, “want me to take over for you?”

  “I’m fine,” said Reeve, smiling falsely. One dark night, he would ambush and mutilate Derek for calling him honey.

  Through most of his life, Reeve had had one goal: to top six feet. Having done that, he had yearned for muscles. Having acquired those, he had been willing to consider studying. By that time, it was his senior year in high school. It was kind of a kick to get A instead of C minus. Reeve had had every intention of studying at college, too. Studying was cool. It was him, it was good, it was the whole point behind his parents’ forking over tens of thousands of dollars.

  When he had wandered into WSCK, though, that had been it for studying.

  Now—all six feet of Reeve looking at all five-five of Derek—Reeve understood that muscles and strength were meaningless on radio. Ability to go on talking was what counted. Broad shoulders were not going to rescue him.

  “Think of a topic you can run with,” said Derek. “Maybe you’ll be lucky and some creep will call in and you can get mileage out of a sick phone call. Or maybe you’ll be so boring that a normal person will call in and ask you to yield the mike to Derek Himself.”

  This was Derek’s name on the air: Derek Himself. Derek managed these two words as if he were introducing the President of the United States.

  Visionary Assassins unfortunately had a short opening song. It ended.

  Reeve had forty-six minutes to fill and nothing to say.

  Janie and Sa
rah-Charlotte sat on Janie’s bed studying brides’ magazines. They had split the cost of two new ones. Sarah-Charlotte, who was very practical, read the articles on joint checking accounts. Janie, who detested practicality, looked at gowns.

  “Your marriage will never last,” observed Sarah-Charlotte, “because you’re too romantic. The only reason you’d get married is to wear a long white dress. Remember, you only get to wear the dress for a few hours.”

  “Who asked you?” said Janie. “Anyway, if I marry Reeve, he’s a romantic too.”

  “Wouldn’t that be fun?” said Sarah-Charlotte. “I can just see Reeve waiting for you at the altar.”

  So could Janie. Ever since senior prom, the first and only time she had seen Reeve in a tuxedo, she had had wedding dreams. The crisp black and white, the formal tension of starch and cuffs—she could transfer whole hours of prom memory into her future wedding.

  Of course, she didn’t tell Reeve about this. She was a high-school junior and Reeve a college freshman. If Janie said “wedding” out loud, he’d probably buy a sailboat and circumnavigate the globe for a decade or two.

  There was no stopping a Reeve fantasy once it took off. Now Janie saw herself keeping house on a yacht.

  Sarah-Charlotte studied flower arrangements for modern brides. “Janie, which of your fathers would walk you down the aisle?”

  This was a serious problem. Janie considered Daddy her father, of course; and he was; he had brought her up. But there was also her New Jersey dad, of whom she was becoming quite fond. “I could have both of them,” she said. “One on each arm.”

  “Yikes! Would they do that for you?”

  “Sure,” said Janie. Could I do that to them? she thought. It would be so hard on them both. Of course, I’ve done everything else to them—why flinch now?

  “But,” said Sarah-Charlotte, who had learned to ask for details without a question, “everything should be settling down now.”

  She’ll probably be a reporter, thought Janie, getting silent people to talk by saying something they have to contradict. “I don’t think things ever settle down in this kind of situation,” said Janie. “It’s like an extra-extra-extra-extra-wicked divorce.”

  “I don’t know if it’s four-extra,” said Sarah-Charlotte. “Two-extra, tops.”

  They heard Janie’s mother on the stairs, tucked the brides’ magazines under the bed and began a loud, pointless discussion about chemistry assignments. Mrs. Johnson went into her own room and, moments later, ran back downstairs.

  “I don’t know why we act as if we’re doing something bad,” said Sarah-Charlotte, retrieving the magazines. “Every normal girl dreams of her wedding day.”

  “We’re supposed to be reading investment magazines so we can plan our Wall Street careers, or computer magazines so we can plan our high-tech careers,” agreed Janie, “when all we want to do is design our wedding invitations.”

  They designed a wedding invitation. How pleasingly the names Reeve Shields and Jane Elizabeth Johnson rested on the page.

  “You’ll have to get married under your real name, you know,” said Sarah-Charlotte. “Otherwise it won’t be legal.” Sarah-Charlotte wrote another wedding invitation.

  Reeve Shields and Jennie Spring.

  The name Jennie Spring still made Janie queasy. She felt that she had barely escaped demolition; she was a building that had been scheduled to be blown up. The switch was still there, and Jennie Spring was still an explosive device.

  Janie changed the subject. “Let’s do one for you, Sarah-Charlotte.” Janie drew a rectangle for another wedding invitation. “You still have a crush on Alec, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but not on wedding invitations. His last name is too hideous. Kinkle. Ugh. He’s going to have to take my name instead.”

  “Sarah-Charlotte Kinkle. I don’t know, it has kind of an interesting sound. Nobody would forget you.”

  Sarah-Charlotte was insulted. “I will have such a spectacular career that nobody will forget me anyhow.”

  “Cool. What will you do?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll do it better than anybody.” Sarah-Charlotte turned to the beginning of the magazine and studied the masthead. “Editor-in-chief,” she said. “That’s a possibility. I’ll put out a magazine so startling it will change the wedding world.”

  Janie giggled. “I don’t think brides want to be startled.” Janie would have been happy to stay on frothy subjects, but Sarah-Charlotte, of course, got sick of it, stopped being subtle and said, “So what exactly is happening in New Jersey, Janie?”

  New Jersey was code for the Other Family. The Biological Family. The Springs.

  The Springs had actually visited Janie, in this very house. Well, the kids, of course, not the parents. The parents she had dumped were not ready to visit the parents she preferred. But Stephen, Jodie and the twins had come twice. Amazingly, her Spring brothers and sister seemed peaceful about the two families.

  “What do you mean—exactly?” said Janie grumpily. “Nobody ever knows anything exactly.”

  “Okay, start here. Are they getting better about it?”

  Everybody said it. Nobody called it by any other name because it was too crazy and complicated. Janie said not only it but also them because she did not know what to call her other family. A person with two sets of parents, one of whom had been involved in kidnapping her, had trouble constructing sentences.

  Janie could never talk about it. When Sarah-Charlotte brought it up over and over again, so bluntly, insisting that the best friend deserved the most gossip, Janie wanted to scream, or else go attend college with Reeve. She couldn’t stand how it never closed up, never went away, but was always in front of her, like fresh tar she’d step in and her life would stick.

  Janie felt herself turning into a paper doll again. As a paper doll, she could keep her smile out front and her agony flat and hidden on the back.

  This was the sort of thing you did not say to any adult. Adults were quick to leap off their chairs and out of their minds and force you once more to go to counseling.

  This is my best friend! she thought. And I feel as if she’s a police officer interrogating me.

  Janie had learned, this year, to take questions in her hands and bend them off to the side. “I guess New Jersey doesn’t matter as much as Boston,” she said.

  Boston meaning Reeve. Boston meaning boy-friends.

  Oh, Reeve! thought Janie. If only you were here! I’m under siege from my own best friend, who won’t give it a rest.

  The stab of Reeve gone was like a medieval spear; an iron lance leaving a hole in her life. She didn’t want him crisp and starched in a tuxedo, but soft in cords and his old fleece jacket. The part of his anatomy she wanted most was his shoulder, where she used to tuck herself in, and close her eyes, and let Reeve decide what happened next. Sometimes she wanted to go next door to Reeve’s house, steal his old jacket, and have it to hold.

  “He still faxing you every day?” said Sarah-Charlotte.

  “It’s slacked off a little. And sometimes it’s telephone or e-mail or a Hallmark card.”

  But none of that helped much. Reeve just plain wasn’t here. He lived in a dorm she had never seen, had friends with whom she had never spoken, had a new wardrobe she had never seen him wear.

  When Janie and Reeve got together, they didn’t talk about it because it was old stuff for them. Been there, done it, seen it. With Reeve, Janie was no paper doll. Best of all, she was not Jennie Spring, explosive device.

  She drew a necklace of hearts around the wedding invitation that said Jane Elizabeth Johnson.

  There was nothing she had not shared with Reeve.

  Well, within reason. She had not shared with Reeve her hobby of drawing up their wedding invitations. She aimed for the new yacht fantasy and tried to step aboard, tried to stand on the teak deck and hear the wind whipping in the sails.

  “Ooooh, here’s a great maid-of-honor gown!” squealed Sarah-Charlotte. “Dark wine-red
velvet. Perfect for a winter wedding. Just my color.”

  “It’s a beautiful gown,” Janie agreed. Sarah-Charlotte’s white-blond hair would look like its own veil against that deep wine red.

  But I have a sister now, thought Janie. A sister with auburn-red hair like mine. Isn’t your sister supposed to be your maid of honor? And Jodie would look better in green. How do I tell Sarah-Charlotte she can’t be my maid of honor? How do I sort out the fathers of the bride?

  It’s just as well that Reeve doesn’t know about the wedding, she thought. I’m not quite ready myself.

  She ached for Reeve. It was physical, that ache, located inside her arms. She needed to curve around him.

  Think of a topic! Reeve yelled at himself.

  His mind was a clear space.

  Politics? He didn’t know anything.

  The world? Nobody on campus cared.

  Music? He couldn’t think of the name of a single band on the face of the earth.

  Nature? Women’s rights? Traffic jams?

  What do people talk about on the air? thought Reeve.

  His mind was as smooth as the polish on a new car. His brain was buffed. The microphone was waiting; Derek was laughing silently and gladly.

  Reeve had been a deejay for the first time from three A.M. to four A.M.—an hour when even college kids slept and the number of listeners probably hovered around two. It came easily: no clenching up, no fumbling for words, no mispronunciations. After two weeks at three A.M., Reeve had talked his way into prime time.

  Derek’s advice had been against Reeve, and Derek was about to be proved correct.

  Reeve had told everybody. Two of his classes were lectures with five hundred strangers. When the prof asked for questions at the end of class, Reeve stood up and announced his broadcast hour. His other two classes had twenty-five kids, and he’d told them, and of course he’d told the guys on his dorm floor and the girls on the floor below—people he had to live with.

  Why, oh why, hadn’t he chickened out? Every single person he would ever know at Hills College was going to hear him being a jerk and a loser.