In the video, her younger self came sobbing out of the courtroom. She had been allowed to go home for a few days with her “other” parents, wrap up that life and pack her things. Then she would go live with her “real” parents.
The video slid the news clip to the side, and now the sneering faces of Visionary Assassins zoomed up next to her, tilting their heads, mocking the angle at which Janie held hers. Tears lay on her cheeks. Visionary Assassins drew fake wavy tear lines on their cheeks.
The headlines in newspapers and the comments on talk shows after that court decree had screamed, Wrenching Decisions! Heartbreaking Choices! Online media let people vote—should Janie leave the family who brought her up or not? Was Janie sick and rotten because she wanted her “kidnap” parents? Were the “kidnap” parents twisted and depraved?
Visionary Assassins changed their rhythm and softened the chords.
Janie, Janie, torn in two,
Claiming that you never knew,
Here’s what we know about you.
A torn heart doesn’t share.
A torn heart can’t go anywhere.
A torn heart doesn’t care.
Doesn’t care! It echoed itself. Doesn’t care! It mocked.
She wanted to phone Visionary Assassins. You stole me. You might as well have kidnapped me for that song. You’re as criminal as Hannah! You’re making millions while I’m just making tears. Listen to me! My heart always cared. Everybody in our nightmare did their best, and everybody got torn in two anyway.
And if I could get hold of you, Visionary Assassins, I’d tear you in two.
Reeve Shields was one of tens of thousands of college students in Boston. Reeve was not a fine student. He was not even halfway to being a fine student. But he made friends as easily as most people make sandwiches.
This coming weekend, he had an invitation. A girl he had known since freshman orientation had asked him to join her family at their cottage. Her dad was picking her up Friday at two.
Brianna was beautiful, fun, smart and interesting. Reeve knew her parents and her younger brother. He even knew her dog. When her family drove into Boston for a visit, her collie danced and leaped and whined and licked in a steady rotating pattern like a weather front. The collie’s joy was infectious. People came out to watch.
Reeve could hop into the car with Brianna and her terrific father and her happy collie. He’d help close up their summer cottage, and they’d fish in the lake, and have great food, and hike on trails at the edge of the mountains.
Or he could drive down to Connecticut and deal with a girl who half loved him. Half let him near and half would never forgive him.
He didn’t know what to do about loving Janie Johnson. It wasn’t a burden; it wasn’t a weight on his shoulders. But it was hopeless. He had screwed up big-time. Nothing he said would convince Janie that he had learned from his mistake.
It was time to move on. Janie said so herself. And Brianna would not be halfway about taking Reeve into her life.
But even though Janie had not mentioned the situation with Visionary Assassins, he wanted to be there for her.
He was so proud of Janie right now. The song and the video were racing toward number one in the nation—and Janie hadn’t blinked.
“She never even refers to it,” Sarah-Charlotte had told him last night. “Now, what did your sister Lizzie say about the whole thing? Can we sue them?”
Reeve’s sister Lizzie was an attorney, the terrifying kind you would hire in a crunch. Reeve was always puzzled that he could be related to a woman like Lizzie. But he had gotten her legal opinion. “Lizzie explained that Janie Johnson became a public figure once the milk carton story got out,” he told Sarah-Charlotte. “Public figures are different. They don’t have the privacy rights the rest of us do. That footage of Janie and her families leaving the courtroom was shown nationally back when it happened, and as long as Visionary Assassins paid for the news clip and have permission from whoever took that footage, they’re legal. They don’t need Janie’s permission.”
Sarah-Charlotte sighed. “That’s what my dad said. You know, I’m actually kind of hurt. I thought Janie would lean on me and need me, but she just strolls around school staring right back at the people who stare at her.”
Janie doesn’t need me either, Reeve thought.
He tried to be glad. He wanted Janie strong and tough.
But mostly, he wanted Janie.
He and Brianna were sitting on a campus bench, enjoying the wind. Red and gold leaves fell off the maples and piled up around their ankles. Reeve remembered the first time he had had the courage to kiss Janie Johnson.
Brianna said, “No pressure, Reeve. It would just be a fun weekend at the cabin. You’ll bunk with Dad and my brother and I’ll bunk with Mom and my sister.”
The harsh stench of bleach soaked into the woman formerly known as Hannah. It was a symbol. She could pour cleanser on everything, every hour of every day, but nothing would clean up. Nothing would have the beauty of young life and a world ahead of it. That girl had permanently stained Hannah’s existence.
Finally the day was over.
In a bathroom at the motel, she peeled off her uniform and stuffed it in a plastic grocery bag. She took street clothes out of another plastic bag. When she was dressed, she did not look in a mirror. She did not see that her shirt was unevenly buttoned and her hair was matted. She walked away.
She had a car but kept it a secret.
The Jennie-Janie situation had riveted the nation for a while, but everything got old, and so had the face on the milk carton. Nevertheless, Hannah had to assume that the FBI and the police never gave up. She was forced to live under stolen names. She couldn’t fly on planes or lead a normal life. She even parked in different places every day, took different routes to work. She lied about everything.
This afternoon, she went nowhere near her car but headed by a crazy route to a library branch, crossing streets here and there to shake off anybody following her.
At this library, you had to sign up for computer use, showing an ID. She had a stolen ID she used only at this annoying branch. The librarians assigned you a specific computer, which meant they could go look at your search history if they wanted. You had exactly one hour. Then it turned off. By itself. No matter what you wanted.
Libraries used to be nice places, where nice people talked softly and handed you a good book. Now they were mean places, where nasty people strode up and looked over your shoulder, making sure you weren’t doing something they disapproved of and gleefully informing you that you had only five minutes left.
She settled into her cubicle.
When the librarian finally puttered away, Hannah Googled “Janie Johnson” and “Jennie Spring.”
No matter what the media claimed, they were not the same girl. She, Hannah, had created Janie Johnson. But did anybody give Hannah credit? The media always acted as if only Janie mattered. And they never called that girl by her birth name, Jennie Spring. They always called her by the name Hannah had given her. Janie.
Janie was nothing!
Janie would never have been anything if Hannah had not bestowed a new family on her.
It had been a while since Hannah had checked the Internet. She had to hold two jobs to stay alive. She hated both jobs. But she loved the Internet.
Someday she would finally have money. Someday she would have her own computer.
Hannah did not run checks on Janie because she was curious. Certainly not. That girl could drop dead and Hannah would be glad. Hannah checked because she needed information.
The computer cubicles on either side of her were occupied. One man and one woman, job hunting. They didn’t know how to use computers, so the librarian kept trotting over to poke keys for them. Each time, the librarian’s eyes roved over Hannah’s screen.
Hannah prided herself on staying alert. One click and she could have the Weather Channel screen hiding her Google search.
And there it was: “Janie
Johnson”—the video. By Visionary Assassins.
Everybody listened to them! Hannah heard their music seeping out of earbuds when she waited for the bus, when joggers passed her by, when store doors were propped open.
Visionary Assassins wouldn’t sing any sweet song about some sweet little tot. They would sing about Hannah!
She had not danced in years, but her feet tapped patterns on the floor under the little computer desk. I’m a hit song!
She let her fingers dance in her lap, just from pride.
But it was blocked! The library computer blocked it! She couldn’t watch the video.
She spoke to the librarian, although speaking to authority was against her rules.
“These are research computers,” said the librarian in her snarky voice. “Their purpose is not for watching music videos.”
Hannah always carried weapons. They were not recognizable as weapons.
She knew better than to have knives, for example. But today, in her big purse, she had a lovely rock. She imagined smashing it into the librarian’s satisfied face.
Janie Johnson, gone so long,
Can’t remember right from wrong.
When I walk by, Janie thought, that’s what everybody in school is singing in their heads.
That’s what the guest speaker was thinking of, when those girls nodded at me. She was singing it in her head.
Janie Johnson, gone so long,
Can’t remember right from wrong.
How could Sarah-Charlotte and Reeve and Katrina and Adair and all her other friends have let her down like this?
Why hadn’t they told her?
Why hadn’t they prepared her?
The car key lay upright in the ignition, waiting. Janie could turn that key, start that engine, run home and hide.
Not that home was a sanctuary any longer.
The years had not been kind to Frank and Miranda Johnson. The strong, elegant woman who had brought Janie up was now trembling and overwhelmed. Janie’s handsome, athletic father had been ruined by a severe stroke, his mind and body now only partly useful. Janie was in her senior year. Her parents, far older than the parents of her friends, were a different kind of seniors. They were disintegrating.
I can’t hide, thought Janie. She took the car key out and put it back in her beautiful leather bag. No matter what people think, no matter how they stare, I have to remember that I do know right from wrong.
She got out of the car.
She held her head high. But good posture did not give her courage. A muscle in her cheek jumped.
Janie Johnson, gone so long,
Can’t remember right from wrong.
Hannah avoided the law and hid herself from society whenever she could, but she was not shy.
With the librarian out of sight, Hannah walked right over to some teenagers sitting at a table. All three were ignoring their splayed-open schoolbooks and whispering to each other. The boy wore an iPod in armband. One girl had an expensive cell phone and the second girl had an iPad.
“Do you have that video Visionary Assassins did?” she demanded. “ ‘Janie Johnson’? I need to see it.”
They were frightened, which was enjoyable. The boy fiddled with his armband. The girl with the iPad pulled it close to her chest.
Hannah leaned over them. Her body odor, bleach odor and unbrushed teeth odor saturated the air. “I just need to see the video. Couple minutes. That’s all.” She sat down between the two girls. They hitched their chairs away and looked around anxiously for the librarian.
“Please,” said Hannah, who despised that syllable. She resented having to beg. They had too much stuff anyway. They owed it to her.
The girl with the iPad tapped her screen with a long, decorative fingernail and Hannah imagined ripping the fingernail off with pliers. But on the screen, the video came up. The girl pushed the iPad an inch closer to Hannah.
Hannah did not worry that these kids might recognize her as the kidnapper. Fifteen years had passed since Hannah had made friends with a toddler in a mall. Back then Hannah had been slim and extraordinarily beautiful, with shining yellow hair. For a moment she cared terribly that she was no longer that lovely young woman.
Then she focused on the video. Because it would be about her.
But the song was not about her. It did not even mention her. It did not describe what had happened that day.
It was about Janie’s heart, and Janie’s decisions, and Janie’s pain.
Hannah couldn’t stand it!
People flocked around Janie and cuddled Janie and gave money to Janie and worried about Janie—while she, Hannah, was abandoned and had to clean toilets and didn’t even own a computer!
There was not a single picture of Hannah in that video. Instead it had endless reruns of Janie’s stupid red hair sticking out, as if the girl had been visiting a tornado. Upside down and inside out, seen from the left, seen from the right, Janie spurted like vomit all over the screen.
You ruined my life, thought Hannah. And now you’re making money off it. I can’t go anywhere, you know. I can’t use my real name or touch anything with my bare fingers. All those great things I was destined for, you ruined.
Hannah had planned to be a poet or a ballet dancer. A high-fashion model or an archaeologist. A movie reviewer or a novelist or a yacht captain. And this girl had ruined it all.
The vicious librarian was patting her shoulder.
It took all Hannah’s self-control not to smack the woman. But Hannah prided herself on her superb self-control. She returned the stupid worthless iPad without even smashing it.
Brianna was prettier than Janie. Maybe it was the hair. Brianna was polished and smooth. Janie was always a bit frizzy. A bit dizzy.
Reeve got dizzy too, when he was around Janie.
“It’s just that I have to let my mother know so she can buy enough groceries,” said Brianna. Her smile was perfect. Friendly, beautiful, no pressure.
Why drive two hours to see a girl who referred to him as half worthy when Brianna thought he was fifty times worthy? But Janie had had a grip on him since they were kids.
Reeve found himself flushing. He had a hard time meeting Brianna’s eyes. “It’s a great invitation, Brianna. I know I’d have a wonderful time. But I pretty much committed to being in Connecticut this weekend.”
To Brianna, Connecticut was nothing but the state south of Massachusetts. To Reeve, Connecticut was Janie and autumn leaves and houses next door and hope.
In the auditorium, the principal was still introducing the speaker. Janie stood for a moment in the door. There were empty seats in the rear where Janie could be invisible. She almost slipped into one.
But I’m not invisible, she thought. That’s the problem. It will always be the problem here in high school. But what about college? What if I find a college so big, with so many students, and in such a big city, that I go unnoticed? Could Janie Johnson of video kidnap fame be invisible at college?
Publicity is like cancer. It eats everything. But if nobody knows that Janie Johnson is there, I won’t have the cancer.
Forget searching out a pretty campus and a good climate.
I need a college where nobody will know me. I need distance. I need crowds. I need to dye my red hair brown and buy drugstore glasses and wear dowdy peasant skirts.
Well. Maybe not dowdy peasant skirts.
As for names, I have my choice. I won’t be Janie Johnson. I don’t think I’ll be my Jennie Spring self either. There’s my Johnson middle name, Elizabeth, and my Spring middle name, Marie. Which of those girls is likely to be invisible in a crowd?
“Janie! Sarah-Charlotte saved you a seat,” people hissed, pointing.
Janie nodded, as if she were grateful. She walked down the sloping aisle and sat down next to Sarah-Charlotte.
The lights were dimmed and a PowerPoint presentation began.
“I saw the video,” Janie whispered. She wondered what Sarah-Charlotte’s excuse would be for not standing at
Janie’s side and prepping her, bracing her.
Sarah-Charlotte nodded. “Isn’t it amazing how it skyrocketed? I can’t remember a song that went to the top that fast.”
It’s at the top? thought Janie.
It occurred to her that if she entered college with the last name Johnson, it would kill her New Jersey parents. They didn’t want her going into adulthood with her kidnap name. But if she entered college with the last name Spring, it would kill her Connecticut parents.
Maybe it’s true, she thought. Maybe I don’t know right from wrong. Shouldn’t it be easier to make the right choices?
The assembly dragged on. Janie felt sure that worthy information was being presented, but she could hear nothing except the pounding, screaming beat of Visionary Assassins. She could see nothing except her fourteen-year-old face in that old news clip, turning and twisting in the crazy cloud of her hair.
The assembly ended. People clapped and looked pleased, as if they had learned something or at least managed to play video games in a clandestine manner.
They gathered in clumps, not quite ready to head out for their next class.
Now that she could talk, Sarah-Charlotte said, “We’re all totally blown away by how magnificently you’ve handled it, Janie. I thought you’d fold when Visionary Assassins came out with that. But you just sashay around school like nothing’s happened. I’m so proud of you, Janie. You have guts.”
Janie was dumbfounded. They thought I knew. They thought I knew all along. They thought I was brave.
She let herself dwell on that word. I’m brave, she told herself, and almost giggled. Brave? A girl for whom the best thing about senior year was feeling safe?
In the foyer, where they would separate for the next class, Sarah-Charlotte said, “It’s scary, don’t you think?”
“The band? The way they set up the chords and beat?”
“No. Videos in general. That video in particular. Because it’s really you. I made Reeve ask Lizzie if it’s legal to use a video of you from real life. Lizzie said that the persona of Janie Johnson is a public figure and that you can’t control the news about yourself.”