Janie Face to Face - By Caroline B. Cooney Page 0,1

grown-ups with this child were probably only a few feet away. But they were not watching at that split second, or they would have come over. Hannah had possession. It was a hot, surging feel. A taunt-on-the-playground feel. I have something you don’t have, sang Hannah.

She and the little girl walked to the escalator. Hannah’s pulse was so fast she could have leapt off the steps and flown to the food court. Stealing a car had been much more fun than stealing a credit card. But stealing a toddler! Hannah had never felt so excited.

“What about Mommy?” said the little girl.

“She’ll be here in a minute,” said Hannah. And if she does come, thought Hannah, I’ll say I’m rescuing the kid. I’m the savior.

Hannah giggled to herself. She was the opposite of a savior.

At the ice cream kiosk, Hannah lifted the toddler onto a stool.

“How adorable your little girl is!” cried the server. “Daddy’s a redhead, huh?”

The toddler beamed.

Hannah did not.

How typical of American society that even a stupid ice cream server cared more about pretty red hair on some kid than about the suffering soul of a woman in need. The server turned to a second worker behind the counter, a skinny young man whose apron was spotted with chocolate and marshmallow. They helped each other with orders and they seemed happy.

Hannah had had a life once where people helped each other and seemed happy. But that life was gone now. The leader had been arrested, and when the group melted away, Hannah stumbled around the country, following various members, hoping they would include her in their lives again.

But they wouldn’t. Grow up, they said to her. Get a life.

Hannah could not seem to get a life. It was her parents’ fault. She had known that when she was a teenager. She had known that when she was in her twenties. And now she was thirty, and what did she have to show for it?

Nothing!

A stupid ice cream server had more of a life than she did!

She hated the server.

“What about Mommy?” said the little girl again. She wasn’t frightened, just puzzled.

Hannah hated the cute little girl now, with her cute little outfit and her cute little barrette in her cute curly red hair. She hated the way the little girl sat so happily among strangers, assuming everybody was a friend and life was good.

You’re wrong, thought the woman once known as Hannah. Nobody is a friend and life is bad.

I’ll prove it to you.

CHAPTER ONE

Janie Johnson wrote her college application essay.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

Please write an essay (750 words or fewer) that demonstrates your ability to develop and communicate your thoughts. Some ideas include: a person you admire; a life-changing experience; or your viewpoint on a particular current event. Please attach your response to the end of your application.

My legal name is Jennie Spring, but I am applying under my other name, Janie Johnson. My high school records and SAT scores will arrive under the name Janie Johnson. Janie Johnson is not my real name, but it is my real life.

A few years ago, in our high school cafeteria, I glanced down at a half-pint milk carton. The photograph of a missing child was printed on the side. I recognized that photograph. I was the child. But that was impossible. I had wonderful parents, whom I loved.

I did not know what to do. If I told anybody that I suspected my parents were actually my kidnappers, my family would be destroyed by the courts and the media. But I loved my family. I could not hurt them. However, if I did not tell, what about that other family, apparently my birth family, still out there worrying?

What does a good person do when there is no good thing to do? It is a problem I have faced more than once.

I now have two sets of parents: my biological mother and father (Donna and Jonathan Spring) and my other mother and father (Miranda and Frank Johnson). The media refers to the Johnsons as “the kidnap parents.” But the Johnsons did not kidnap me, and they did not know there had been a kidnapping.

Usually when people find out about my situation, they go online for details. I have friends who have kept scrapbooks about my life. Among the many reasons I hope to be accepted at your college is that I ache to escape the aftermath of my own kidnapping. It happened fifteen years ago, so it ought to be ancient history. But