The Face on the Milk Carton Read online

  When Mom thought nobody was watching, she would rearrange the dining table, seeing where the seventh chair fit best. The chair her missing daughter would sit in when she came home. Then Mom would do a little tap dance around the chair, fingertips on the wood. She looked so comic, a forty-three-year-old, getting heavy, going gray, wearing sneakers that squeaked on the linoleum instead of tapping.

  “We’ll all have to work hard,” Mom warned every night. “Jennie’s grown up with another family. Different values, I suppose. This won’t be easy.” Mom burst into laughter, not believing a word of it. This was her baby girl. It would be easy and joyful. “We may have a hard time adjusting,” she added.

  This was for Stephen’s benefit. Stephen was not a great adjuster.

  Jodie planned to be the buffer between Jennie and Stephen. Jodie knew that she would not have problems. This was the sister with the matching J name. They would be like twins.

  Brian and Brendan never noticed much of anything except each other and their own lives. Jodie thought it was such a neat way to live, wrapped up and enclosed with this secret best friend who went with you everywhere and was part of you.

  That was how she would be with Jennie.

  At night, when they were each in their own beds, with only a thin little table and a narrow white telephone to separate them, they would tell each other sister things. Jennie would tell Jodie details about the kidnapping that she had never told anybody. And Jodie would share the secrets of her life: aches and hurts and loves and delights she had never managed to confess to Nicole or Caitlin.

  Jodie was cleaning her bedroom as it had never been cleaned before. Nicole and Caitlin said it was impossible to share a room this small. Two beds had been squeezed in, one tall bureau and one medium desk. Another person could never fit in her share of sweaters, earrings, cassettes, and shoes. Jodie was seized with a frenzy of energy, folding and refolding her clothing until it took up only half the space it used to; discarding left and right; putting paper grocery bags stuffed with little-used items in the attic.

  She had spent her allowance on scented drawer-liner paper from Laura Ashley. It was a lovely, delicate English-looking pattern. Its soft perfume filled the room like a stranger. Jennie would be pleased.

  Mom loved matching names. Jodie and Jennie went together. Of course the twins, Brian and Brendan, went together. Stephen was the oldest, and Mom and Dad had always meant to have a sixth child, who would be named Stacey whether it was a boy or a girl. So there’d have been Jodie and Jennie, Stephen and Stacey, Brian and Brendan.

  Of course, after Jennie went missing, nobody could consider another baby. How could any of them ever have left the room again? Nobody could have focused their eyes anywhere else again. They’d all have had heart attacks and died from fear that somebody would take that baby, too.

  Jennie was only twenty months younger than Jodie. As toddlers they had fought, Jodie pairing up with Stephen. Over the years, Jodie had thought of this a lot. If she, Jodie, had been holding Jennie’s hand at the shopping mall the way she was supposed to, nobody could have kidnapped Jennie.

  When she got to know this new sister, should she say she was sorry? Admit that it was her fault? If the new sister said, don’t worry, everything’s fine now, I’m home and happy, Jodie would be safe telling about her guilt. But if the new sister said, I hate you for it, and I’ve always hated you for it—what then?

  Jodie put the hand mirror that said JENNIE down on the piece of lace she had chosen to decorate the top of the bureau.

  Jodie’s mother loved things with names on them. The four kids had mugs, sweatshirts, bracelets, book bags, writing paper—everything—with their names printed or embroidered or engraved. Mom wanted to have a house full of JENNIE items for the homecoming. It was a popular name. They had had no trouble at the mall finding tons of stuff that said Jennie. They bought so much they were embarrassed. “We’ll have to bring it out one piece at a time,” said Jodie, giggling.

  “She’ll know we love her,” said Jodie’s mother.

  But behind the hyperventilating and the laughter lay the years of worry.

  Mom was trembling. She had been trembling for days. She was actually losing weight from shivering. You could see her hands shake. Nobody had commented on it because everybody else had shivers, too. Everybody was worried about everything. What to serve for dinner on the first night? What to say to the neighbors? How to take Jennie to school. How to hug.

  Would she be afraid? Would she be funny? Would she be shy? What would she be like—this sister who had grown up somewhere else?

  Jodie opened her bureau drawers and looked at the empty halves. She was so proud of herself, opening up her life, just like a drawer, to take Jennie in.

  I have a sister again, thought Jodie Spring. She isn’t buried. She isn’t gone. She wasn’t hurt. Her guardian angel did take care of her. And now he’s bringing her back to us.

  Tomorrow.

  AND DON’T MISS THE CONTINUATION

  OF JANIE’S STORY IN…

  Whose voice will help Janie when she must face

  not only her incredible past but also her

  unknown future?

  Excerpt copyright © 1996 by Caroline B. Cooney

  Published by Delacorte Press

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  “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. For Reeve Shields really did know a story that began with “Once upon a time.”

  “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.

  “You know the type. Really cute, fabulous red hair, lived next door. Good in school, of course, girls like that always are. Janie had lots of friends and she was crazy about her mom and dad, because that’s the kind of family people like that have.”

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

  “Except,” said Reeve, “except one day in the school cafeteria, a perfectly ordinary day, when kids were stealing each other’s desserts and spilling each other’s milk, Janie just happened to glance down at the picture of that missing child printed on the milk carton.”

  His slow voice seemed to draw a half-pint of milk, with its little black-and-white picture of a missing child. It was almost visible, that little milk carton, that dim and wax-covered photograph.

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

  He deepened his voice, moving from informative into mysterious. “They can’t fit much information on the side of a half-pint,” said Reeve, “but the milk carton said that little girl had been missing since she was three. Missing for twelve years.”

  In radio, you could not see your audience. Reeve could not know whether he really did have an audience. Radio was faith.

  “Can you imagine if your daughter, or your sister, had disappeared twelve years ago? Twelve years have gone by, and yet you still believe. Surely somehow, somewhere, she must be waiting, and listening. You haven’t given up hope. You refuse to admit she’s probably dead by now, probably was dead all along. You believe there is a chance in a million that if you put her picture on a milk carton, she’ll see it.”

  Beyond the mike, Reeve imagined dormitories —kids slouched on beds and floors, listening. Listening to him.

  “Well,” said Reeve, “she saw it.”

  SOME SECRETS AREN’T MEANT TO BE KEPT….

  The thrilling conclusion to the bestselling novels

  The Face on the Milk Carton, Whatever Happened to

  Janie?, and The Voice on the Radio,

  by Caroline B. Cooney

  Published by Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.


  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1990 by Caroline B. Cooney

  All rights reserved.

  Laurel-Leaf and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on request.

  RL: 6.0

  eISBN: 978-0-307-56750-5

  October 2008

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