Free The Voice on the Radio by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

to my audience to let them understand how the kidnapping happened. Then I’ll quit.
    The professor patted his shoulder. “Now if you’d work as hard at physics as you do at radio…,” he said, letting his voice drift off in a friendly fashion.
    Reeve was aware of the cold again. It felt wonderful. It cleansed his worries. It seemed enough that he had considered quitting.

CHAPTER
SEVEN
    Jodie had been counting days, hours and minutes till her first college search weekend. She could hardly wait to get into the car, get out on that interstate, and cross those state lines. O Freedom!
    She drove fast and silently, dreaming of college.
    The Johnsons lived about two-thirds of the way to Boston. Jodie and Brian arrived around five.
    Much to Jodie’s disgust, Janie’s friend Sarah-Charlotte was there. Jodie considered Sarah-Charlotte the most pretentious name she had ever come across, and Sarah-Charlotte the most pretentious person. Sarah-Charlotte couldn’t stand it if you abbreviated her name, so of course Jodie always wanted to call her Char.
    Brian sat in the deep-blue living room and talked about libraries with Mrs. Johnson, who worked in the high school library, while Janie, Sarah-Charlotte and Jodie went upstairs to Janie’s room.
    “You did the room over!” exclaimed Jodie. Last time she had been here, the room had been pastel, romantic and soft. Now it was icily white. It was urban, out of a slick magazine, as if some cold, successful woman lived here with two possessions and an empty refrigerator.
    You could have been in the mood to decorate a room at our house, Janie, thought Jodie resentfully. You could have let
my
mom pick out—
    Jodie calmed herself. She had been mad at her sister long enough. She had not come here to pick a fight, although that had appeal and was one of Jodie’s better skills.
    Jodie circled the bed which looked clean and starched enough to do surgery on. There on the floor was an array of dolls. “Barbie and Ken?” she said incredulously. “Janie, they sure don’t match this room.”
    “Come on,” said Sarah-Charlotte, “Barbie has outfits to match everything.”
    “I wouldn’t know. I never went through a doll stage.” Jodie made a decision. “Sarah-Charlotte, I’m going to be incredibly rude and ask if you could visit another time, because I have only tonight to be alone with my sister.” Jodie held her breath.
    But to her credit, Sarah-Charlotte said she should have realized that, and she’d see Janie in school tomorrow. She ran lightly down the stairs.
    In the snowiness of the white room, the sisters looked at each other edgily. They heard Brian call good-bye to Sarah-Charlotte, heard Brian and Janie’s parents laugh together.
    Janie flushed. “You guys are so nice when you come up here. You’re polite to my parents and you joke with my dad and compliment my mother on her color schemes. I never did any of that when I visited you.”
    “You could start,” said Jodie. She had not meant to touch the serious stuff, and here it was—too soon, too much of it. “You could start by calling our parents Mom and Dad. They’ve stopped calling you Jennie. They’ve given you back completely. We don’t even refer to Jennie Spring. We call you Janie Johnson. They need a present from you, Janie.”
    Janie felt ill and nervy. It was all this talk of futures. She didn’t like to look out there the way other kids did. Janie looked ahead for a week or a month at most. Anything else was scary. “Jodie, I still have to put the words
New Jersey
first. New Jersey Mom. New Jersey Dad.”
    “I’m not demanding,” said Jodie. She picked up a Barbie and stared at the doll as if she had never come across such an oddity. “It would just be a nice gift.”
    A gift, thought Janie. Barbies you wrapped for children at Christmas were just presents. But her New Jersey parents needed a gift.
    Janie felt light again, her thoughts spinning off, leaving her less to work with. “The visits to