Free What Janie Saw by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

answer. Finally the housekeeper shoved herself in Hannah’s face. “Evelyn!”
    I’m Evelyn
, she remembered. “Not enough sleep,” she excused herself.
    “You awake enough to do your job?” demanded the supervisor.
    “Of course I am,” she snapped back. But now every room she cleaned would be checked. She could not lose this job. Jobs were hard to find, especially when you had to use a fake identity. Which was
her
fault! That girl’s fault!
    The woman formerly known as Hannah gathered the trash. Stripped the bed. Pulled the vacuum into the room.
    On the radio, a song began.
    The words were a shock.
    Hannah stared at the radio. She walked closer to it. She eyed the radio sideways. She knelt in front of it, as if the singers were inside the little box and if she squinted, she’d be able see them.
    “Evelyn!” shouted the supervisor, stomping into the room. “The radio doesn’t matter! The schedule does!” She stalked over to flick the radio off.
    Got to be a video
, thought Hannah.
There’s always a video
.
    And it will be a video of me
.
    Janie Johnson slapped the radio button off before any more of those words slapped her. She knew the words all too well. Of all bands, it had to be Visionary Assassins, the newest hit, who had picked up that song.
    This explained why people were staring at her. They were listening to this. Downloading it. Watching the video.
    The video
.
    Janie clung to the steering wheel.
There’s always a video
, she thought, queasy.
    She smacked the radio button on again.
    The song had originally appeared at the worst point of Janie’s nightmare: when the court ordered her to rejoin her birth family. When she was told that a country and western song had been written about
her
—suburban Connecticut Janie—Janie had thought it was such a hoot. She figured the song was actually about the kidnapper. Hannah was never caught. People loved stuff where the criminal never got caught.
    Nothing rhymed with the kidnapper’s last name, Javensen, or the word “kidnapper.”
They’ll find something to rhyme with “Hannah,”
Janie had told herself.
Savannah? Montana?
    Now the hot little space of her car closed in on her.
If only
, she thought.
    The minor country singer who had issued the first recording had vanished, along with his song. Visionary Assassins’ version was angry and harsh, withlittle trace of the original soft, sad ballad.
    Janie Johnson, stolen that day,
    Thrown into a car and driven away.
    Janie Johnson, what price did you pay
    When a kidnapper came and stole you away?
    She dropped her iPhone in her lap and took her iPad out of her satchel. Senior year she had stopped carrying backpacks or book bags, plastic bags or department store totes. She had treated herself to a beautiful large leather handbag, meant for executives, with lots of compartments for cosmetics and electronic devices. The iPad was heavy and a nuisance, but ever since her father’s stroke, Janie had been handling the family banking and bills online. She checked the device often—probably too often—worrying about the responsibility.
    In a moment she found it. “Janie Johnson”: the video.
    She had to pay for it, which hardly seemed fair. It downloaded with terrible speed. Why couldn’t it get stuck out there in the limbo occupied by failed songs?
    Janie turned the car key, the power stopped, and the radio was silenced.
    The video on her iPad did not show the band. It opened with real-life footage of Janie herself, taken when she was coming and going from that courtroom. The hearings had been private, because Janie was a minor and because there was nothing criminal involved; it was really just an unusual and complexcustody case. Could Janie go on living with the parents who had brought her up? The kidnap parents, as it were?
    Until that day, Janie and her Johnson parents had not known that America was ferociously interested in Janie’s story. They were shaken by the horde of reporters and cameras and