Free Whatever Happened to Janie? by Caroline B. Cooney

“I love you, Janie,” he whispered.
    “I love you, too, Daddy,” she said.
    She forgot there was another Daddy in the room. When she hung up, almost caressing the telephone that she could now use, her New Jersey Dad was gripping his mug so hard she expected him to crush it, like a soda can. She had no idea what to say. She only knew that she felt so much better, so much more able to face tomorrow. She was actually able to smile at these people to whom she was related. “Good night,” she said. “And—um—thank you.”
    Her father struggled to return the smile and didn’t make it.
    “Good night,” said her mother, managing an expression that was half sob and half smile.
    They are good people, she thought. They are my parents. They are on my team. I could love them if I tried.
    Janie fled the hurricane of emotion, feeling her way in the dark bedroom, tucking herself deep under the covers.
    And once more she could not sleep. A new nightmare surfaced. She did not have enough love to go around. Whatever love she gave these parents, she would have to take away from the others.

CHAPTER
9
    S chool passed for Janie.
    She found the library. The librarian was different from good old Mr. Yampolski back at her real school. This librarian was more like a prison warden of old dead books than an eager, knowledge-thirsty shouter and sharer like Mr. Yampolski.
    She needed books. Since Jodie could sleep with the lights on, Janie would read into the night, keeping nightmares at bay. Her dreams were of falling. The cliff she clung to crumbled and everything around her was bottomless. Dark and slippery with the grime of evil. She would wake up drenched with sweat in the tight little bedroom, only a few feet separating her from the new sister whom she could not enjoy, and who definitely did not enjoy her.
    Be nice, Janie ordered herself every morning, each time she faced one of her family, each time she needed to speak with them. She managed this not even half the time. The rest of the time, purposely, she was rotten.
    The matter of the telephone was always difficult. The Springs could not afford long-distancecalls. But Janie’s real parents had given her permission to use their credit-card number any time she wanted. She could just go in the kitchen and poke in a thousand digits and speak to her parents. But she could not do it privately. This family did not know what privacy was. The only other phone was in Mr. and Mrs. Spring’s bedroom, and Janie would have felt like a housebreaker going in there.
    She was never left alone. Mr. and Mrs. Spring did not get home from work until late afternoon. Jodie and Stephen were virtually on rotation duty, making sure their new sister was always escorted, and safely locked indoors. Who did they think would kidnap her now?
    Jodie was given to flashes of temper that vanished as quickly as they came. Janie rather envied this trait. It must be nice to be mad and be done.
    Tired of romance and mystery novels, Janie found the rack of college catalogs and took some of them home. Janie had never wanted to go away to college. How terrifying those huge dorms full of strangers looked. Now she yearned for college because college had no parents. You did not have to divide your loyalties between the Connecticut parents you loved and the New Jersey parents you still could not believe were yours. College had no brothers and sisters either. If you didn’t like your roommate, you could trade.
    But the days became weeks, and what had been alien became ordinary.
    The name of the beauty shop was Scissors, and outside in front hung an immense wooden pair ofscissors, painted silver, glittering in the thin afternoon sun.
    Mrs. Spring was the kind of person who was never happy at how her hair turned out and changed hairdressers continually. “Hairdressers hate Mom,” Jodie informed her sister. “She hardly tips at all and then she goes to somebody else for exactly the same cut. So she can never go back a second