The Face on the Milk Carton Read online

  “You know Reeve’s best friend, Michael?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Better than I do. I adore Michael. Do you think you could ask Reeve to ask Michael to ask me out?”

  Janie could hardly get through the conversation. She had to plan every sentence, figure ahead the possible answers to possible questions. It was harder than homework.

  Sarah-Charlotte babbled on and on about Michael, and boys, and friendships between boys. Usually Janie could pass an hour, even two hours, on these precise topics. “Don’t you and Reeve ever do things with Michael? He and Michael used to be inseparable. Isn’t Michael always over at Reeve’s house?”

  Janie struggled to listen. Her mind exploded with loyalties and parents. She could not seem to put Sarah-Charlotte into the framework of her life. She could not figure out the conversation they were having.

  “What kind of friendship is it when the only words you say now are yes, no, maybe, and mmhmm?” said Sarah-Charlotte. “I’m sick of this, Janie. You aren’t any fun anymore. You don’t even like any of us anymore.”

  She tried to find an explanation that did not include New Jersey. “That isn’t true,” she whispered, but Sarah-Charlotte had already hung up.

  Reeve drove straight for the Scenic Overlook. She knew by his driving. It was more physical, more excited.

  I want to be a nice person, she thought. I want to be the kind of little girl who would have screamed for help when she got kidnapped. I don’t want to be somebody who thought it was neat. But I don’t want to be Jennie Spring.

  “Reeve, pull over.”

  “I can’t stop here, Janie.”

  “Pull over.”

  He yanked the car to the edge of a road that barely had passing room anyway. Behind them a car honked. Janie opened her door, leaned out, and threw up into some unfortunate person’s shrubbery.

  If I can’t write it out of my mind, she thought, I guess my body is going to throw it out instead.

  She refused to go home.

  Reeve drove to a diner miles away because she refused to go anyplace where people might recognize them. In the bathroom she mopped herself up with paper towels. Her complexion was like kindergarten paste: white and gluey.

  Then she dragged Reeve back to the car. She couldn’t sit in the diner. People might look at her.

  Reeve said, “Janie, I thought you could just forget about it, but obviously that isn’t working.

  So you have to tell them. You have to talk about it with them.” “No.”

  “Janie! You are losing it. Literally.” “Fine.”

  “No, it isn’t fine. You’ve got to have your parents in this with you.”

  “No, because the minute I do that, I have to trade them in again for another set.”

  “No, you don’t. Nobody would make you.”

  “That other family—those people in New Jersey —you think I could just call them up and say, I’m fine, so stop worrying and don’t bother me, either? They’ll be in court, they’ll call the FBI, they’ll get lawyers. And I”—Janie’s voice turned so ragged it no longer sounded human— “I’ll have to admit what happened at that shopping center.”

  “Janie!” shouted Reeve. “What happened was, a pretty blond woman took a pretty little girl for a ride in her car and they had a great time.”

  “And the little girl never looked back,” said Janie. “I hate her. I hate that little girl.” She began to cry. The tears made no noise and took no effort, but they burned fiercely, as if they were the acid remains of her horrible deeds.

  She wouldn’t let Reeve touch her. She wouldn’t answer anything he said to her. They went home, finally, Janie crouched against her door, and Reeve driving with a stiff precision.

  A mile from home he said, “I’m sick of this. Now tell them.”

  “No.”

  “Tell them,” said Reeve, his voice hard and loud, “or I’m not seeing you again.”

  “I’m not ready to tell anybody.”

  “You’re being stupid. Either wise up or I don’t want to be bothered.”

  “Fine!” she said. “Don’t be bothered.” She jumped out of the Jeep, slamming the door. Her foot caught on a loose pavement brick and she stumbled, blinded by tears. “This is my life we’re talking about!” she shouted at him. “And you don’t want to be bothered anymore.”

  Reeve got out of the Jeep more slowly. “Janie,” he said.

  “Drop dead.” She ran in the side door and slammed that, too.

  Inside the house, the tears ripped through her with even more force. How could she have done that? Why be mad at Reeve, the only one on her team, the only one who knew?

  Her sobs made a racket, ripped out of her lungs even as she tried to choke them down. It brought her mother and father running. “What’s the matter?” they cried, enfolding her.

  “I broke up with Reeve,” she said, praying it was not true.

  CHAPTER

  17

  The following week was bright with pain.

  Life flickered in Janie’s face like flashbulbs going off.

  No matter where she looked, Reeve was there, but he neither looked back nor waved. In the mornings when she got up, he was already gone. She could not bear to take the school bus again— that public declaration: yes, I lost him. Her mother drove her to school every morning. Afternoons Adair dropped her at home unless she took the bus that passed the town library.

  You know life is pretty grim if reading about Stalin and Krushchev beats all the other options, thought Janie. She tried to make herself laugh, but nothing in life was amusing.

  Five days after her scene in the driveway, Reeve drove home with a senior named Jessica. Janie knew Jessica by sight, a tall, thin, dark girl with very short hair and a brittle smile. She had thought nothing could be more painful than New Jersey.

  She was wrong. Reeve’s arm around Jessica kept her awake as many hours as New Jersey ever had.

  “If that isn’t a classic,” said Sarah-Charlotte. She was enjoying her role as comforter. It had made them best friends again. Although she was no longer the best friend Janie wanted. I want Reeve, she thought.

  “Everybody knows,” said Sarah-Charlotte, “that Jessica sleeps around. Was that his reason?” She looked intently at Janie. “Did you go all the way with Reeve or not?”

  Janie shook her head. They had come close. All that they had done she had loved. Would always cherish. Would never describe to Sarah-Charlotte.

  “Clearly,” said Sarah-Charlotte, whose knowledge of sexuality came entirely from talk shows, “that’s the only thing that mattered to Reeve in the end.”

  What mattered to Reeve, thought Janie, is what matters to everyone. Being first in somebody’s life. I put New Jersey first. He took it for a long time, considering.

  During study hall, Janie opened her silver spiral notebook. Losing Reeve had made one thing clear. If she also lost her parents, she would die.

  Never, never, could she get through that.

  She had condensed the facts and theories of the kidnapping to four pages. She tore them out of her glitter notebook, folded them, and stuffed it all into an envelope under the clip. She missed having the carton there to look at. She licked the stickum and closed the flap. There, she thought. I’m done thinking about it.

  She would pin the envelope and the milk carton to the inside of the polka-dot dress and put all three back in the trunk in the attic. That would store the problem for another season.

  Later on in the class, feeling spooky, she put the Springs’ address on the envelope. Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Avery Spring, 114 Highview Avenue. It made her heart pound to write it. Did I know that address by heart once? she wondered.

  She slid the envelope under the clip in her notebook. This afternoon her mother would be tutoring. Plenty of time for a solitary trip to the attic. She would study Hannah’s photographs. And then lock the trunk.

  She had to sit at lunch with Jason, Sarah-Charlotte, Adair, Katrina, and Peter instead of
with Reeve. She felt like the most conspicuous person in the cafeteria. She did not know where to focus her eyes. She wanted to look at Reeve. Only Reeve. Always Reeve. But Reeve was sitting with Jessica. Laughing.

  We didn’t laugh enough, thought Janie. I haven’t had any laughter to spare since the milk carton.

  She wondered if she could learn how to laugh again. If there would be a time, living next door to Reeve, when she would smile in an ordinary way at the driver of that Jeep?

  Sarah-Charlotte wanted to have a Pity Party for Janie.

  “I’ll invite only girls,” she promised. “Let’s see. Adair, Katrina, Jodie, Linda, Hilary. Who else do you want? Should it be a sleep-over? Well sit around and talk about how rotten boys are and Reeve in particular.”

  Jodie.

  Memory slugged her. Jodie.

  One of my sisters is named Jodie. “I don’t want a Pity Party,” she said, starting to cry.

  Jason and Pete suddenly had to get extra desserts. They fled the table.

  “Well, they won’t be back,” said Adair. “Boys collapse when girls cry.”

  “That sounds like Shakespeare,” said Sarah-Charlotte.

  “Embroidery on pillows,” agreed Adair.

  The bell rang. Janie walked between Adair and Sarah-Charlotte as they battered their way out of the cafeteria and back to English. Don’t let me be in the doorway the same time as Reeve and Jessica, she thought. Please.

  One prayer answered. But only one.

  English ended.

  History poked along.

  Passing period following passing period.

  Janie went to her last class slowly, not because she was dawdling but because she felt weak. I haven’t eaten in days, she thought. Pretty soon my mother won’t just have me at adolescent trauma counseling, she’ll have me at the anorexia clinic.

  The halls swayed and grew in the middle and clapped their sides against Janie’s head. She touched the lockers to steady herself but was knocked from the wall by a bunch of worthless boys. Druggies and scuzzies, all.

  I’m a scuzz, too, thought Janie. Tossing out my family like last weeks newspaper.

  The halls were empty. She did not know how that had happened. A moment ago she had been one among a hundred kids.

  She fumbled with her blue English notebook.

  She needed to see the carton.

  Dimly she remembered the carton was no longer there. It was between the mattress and the box springs.

  But her silver notebook was there.

  No, it wasn’t. It was in her book bag.

  But the envelope was still there.

  No, it wasn’t.

  There was nothing under the clip. The clip was broken.

  She had used the clip so often that the cheap little spring had snapped. The envelope was gone.

  I addressed it, she thought. To New Jersey. It was one of the SADD mistakes with my real return address on it.

  But no stamp.

  It can’t go anywhere without a stamp. Unless some Good Samaritan stamped it for me.

  Unless the post office delivers it and charges the postage to the Springs.

  If it’s been mailed, it will be read.

  They’ll know.

  In two days, the Springs will know who I am and where I am.

  How am I going to save my mother and father now?

  Her thoughts stabbed her separately, knife after knife of fear.

  Past the offices, past the school library, past language labs Janie walked. Reeve had last-period chemistry. She found the room and opened the door, walking in. Juniors and seniors looked up, startled. She could not see their faces. Reeve was somewhere among them but her eyes would not focus.

  The teacher was writing on the blackboard as he lectured, his back partially to the class.

  “Reeve,” Janie said, plowing across the room like a tractor.

  The teacher turned, chalk in hand. “Uh—miss?” he said.

  “Reeve, I need Lizzie’s phone number,” said Janie, walking steadily toward Reeve, although there were desks and knees in her path.

  Reeve unfolded from his desk. Took her shoulder, turned her around. “Be right back,” he said to his teacher.

  “And just where do you think you’re going?” said the teacher.

  But they were out of the room and the teacher did not bother to follow them.

  “You’re pushing me,” said Janie.

  “I’m walking at a regular speed,” said Reeve. “You’re trying to walk while standing still. Pick up your feet. Are you on drugs or something?”

  “I don’t think so. I need Lizzie’s phone number. Reeve, you won’t believe what I’ve done. How stupid I’ve been.”

  “I think I could believe that,” he said.

  She talked. He drove her home. “I hate to play psychiatrist with you, but you didn’t lose that letter by any accident, Janie. Any more than you wrote it and put it in an envelope and addressed and sealed it by accident. You had to get out of this somehow, and that’s the route you took.”

  The house was empty. They went into the kitchen where Janie stared at the wall phone and Reeve automatically checked her refrigerator for something to eat. It embarrassed him and he shut the door without taking anything.

  He wrote down Lizzie’s number for her. “Do you want me to call her first?” he said.

  She shook her head. She was starting to cry. Now she could see him clearly: Reeve, whom she adored. No wonder he had walked her out of chemistry: she must have looked completely demented, storming desks to get at him. She could imagine the class snickering. Telling Jessica. Preparing to humiliate Reeve when he got back.

  His fingers, full of car keys, rested stiffly on the counter. She would have to give him permission to go. Reeve would force himself to be neighborly to the end. She bit the insides of her cheeks. She did not want to blackmail him by crying. “Thank you for the ride home,” she whispered. “You don’t have to stay.”

  The empty house seemed very noisy. The freezer hummed. The furnace buzzed. The clock ticked. Her own pulse throbbed in her forehead. She managed to look at Reeve.

  “Janie,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded behind the blind windshield of her tears. “Me, too. It’s okay.” She turned away from him. Think about Lizzie, she ordered herself. One disaster at a time. Think how you’re going to beg Lizzie to call New Jersey before they get the letter and call the police.

  “No,” said Reeve, swallowing audibly. “I mean, I’m sorry and I want to make up. That kind of sorry.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  In their place,” said Janie’s father, “I’d move heaven and earth to ruin the people responsible.”

  Lizzie sat quietly, having laid out the circumstances so easily, so clearly, that Janie marveled. It had taken Janie weeks of daymares to work her way to the end of this; Lizzie reached the end in ten minutes. Lizzie’s green wool dress had a narrow waist and very full skirt. Sitting primly on the edge of the coffee table, her skirt draped to the carpet, she looked like a tent in which tiny children would want to play house.

  “The Springs might understand,” said Janie. She was soaring. There was no burden left. She felt like dancing, laughing, throwing confetti. It’s over, she thought, dizzy with relief.

  “I wouldn’t understand,” said her father. “I’d have the police and the FBI, SWAT teams and old college roommates, all surrounding this house to get my daughter back.” His hands knotted into fists, as if he, too, would gladly have a fight with somebody; anybody.

  “Can’t you imagine the SWAT teams surrounding the house?” said Reeve, starting to laugh.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” said Janie’s father.

  Janie and Reeve began giggling, acting out SWAT teams with submachine guns peering in their windows. “You know what?” said Janie.

  “What?”

  “I am starving. I haven’t eaten in two weeks, I’ve been so nervous. I could eat my shoelaces. What is there to eat, Mom?
”

  “Let’s order a pizza,” said Reeve.

  “Especially when you talk like that,” said Janie’s father, “you feel like my daughter. Food first.” His control broke; tears suddenly made little gleaming rivers on his face, like gold in rocks. He put his arms around Janie. “Hannah would have faded away under this much stress.”

  “I thought about it,” said Janie, “but I reconsidered. I’m tough.” She gave her parents an impish grin. “I was well brought up.”

  Her father managed half a smile. “What am I going to say to those parents?”

  “Maybe they’ll be nice about it,” said Janie.

  “Maybe they won’t,” said her mother. On her mother’s lap lay the flattened milk carton. The stolen child who was Jennie Spring, who was Janie, smiled back over the years.

  I don’t need to see it again, thought Janie. It’s over. I’m safe.

  Reeve said, “Pepperoni? Mushrooms? Sausage?”

  The telephone rang.

  Everyone but Lizzie jumped. Shrill rings penetrated their hearts, like surgery. Nobody crossed the room to answer it.

  “Probably my mother wondering where I am,” said Reeve, but he looked white and afraid of the phone.

  “Sarah-Charlotte,” said Janie. “She’s mad at me.”

  Her mother’s laugh quivered. It was not really a laugh at all; it was a splintered soul. My nightmares laughed like that, thought Janie. “Or New Jersey,” said her mother.

  The phone rang eleven times. A determined caller. Janie’s mother had one hand on her mouth, the other on her throat, as if to contain her fears.

  “Getting worked up,” said Lizzie, “is not going to help us design our approach.”

  “Lizzie, have you ever been worked up over anything in your life?” said Reeve.

  Lizzie ignored him. He was merely a pesky baby brother. She said, “We have the weekend. They can’t possibly get the letter before Monday.”

  Janie’s mother said, “I can’t believe this is my life.”

  Lizzie waited two seconds to pay tribute to this sort of emotionalism and then continued, “But as long as the situation has arrived, Janie, we should deal with it. Ill call the Springs.”