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It was such a trespass on Reeve, that everybody knew the details. Whatever Reeve kept secret, his mother told Janie's mother anyway. Reeve felt cramped by the intimacy of his life: he had always lived in this town, always gone to this school. I want to live in a city, he'd said last night, and be anonymous.
Ruefully Janie thought her name would give her a pretty good start if she wanted to go anonymous.
Sarah-Charlotte was hoping Reeve would ask Janie out. Sarah-Charlotte was not interested in getting her driver's license; she was interested in having a steady boyfriend, who had to be tall, handsome, muscular, smart, courteous, and rich. Reeve was all but one.
"And if Reeve doesn't ask you out," was Sarah-Charlotte's theory, "maybe his friends will."
Janie did not think the boy next door ever came through in real life. Nor would any of Reeve's friends ask her out. Last year's seniors had dated lots of younger girls. This year's seniors seemed annoyed that they had to be in the same building. And Janie felt younger than her age: she had grown later, and grown less. While Adair and Sarah-Charlotte were busy becoming sophisticated and articulate, Janie remained small. Her mother said she was cute. Janie loathed that word. Cute was for toddlers and kittens. Boys didn't date cute little girls. They dated streamlined, impressive women like Sarah-Charlotte and Adair.
Besides, how would she date?
Her parents didn't even let her go to the shopping mall alone. They'd never let her date. Alone with a boy? Hah. Not likely.
Janie waved back at Reeve and he turned to his friends, duty done. If he knew I'm really Jayyne Jonstone, shethought, would he do more than wave?
She felt curiously heavy: like the difference between whole milk and skim. Through the cafeteria windows the sun gleamed, filling the school with golden shafts in which dust swirled.
On her left--so close he was nearly in her lap--Pete drank his milk in one long swig and crushed the carton in his hand. The boys loved doing that.
If they had a soda, they stamped the can under their feet and looked proudly at the flat aluminum.
"My mother says none of them are really kidnapped anyhow," said Pete. "She says it's all hype."
It took Janie several seconds to realize he was talking about the face on the milk carton. "What do you mean?" she said. She ate her peanut butter sandwich. Almost anything with peanut butter was excellent--peanut butter and marshmallow fluff; peanut butter and bananas--but a person needed milk to wash it down.
"All it is." said Pete firmly, "is divorce, where one parent gets mad and takes his own kid, but he doesn't tell the other parent where they're going. It's never actually a stranger stealing a kid, like on television."
"You mean they weren't really stolen?" said Sarah-Charlotte, vastly disappointed. She made several dramatic gestures. There was no room for dramatic gestures in the cafeteria, and people grabbed to save the whipped-cream towers on their Jell-O from getting splattered by Sarah-Charlotte's hands. "Nobody wants a ransom?" cried Sarah-Charlotte. "Nobody is being tortured?"
If I drink one carton of milk, Janie thought, is my allergy so serious I'll die? How boring the obituary would be: Here lies Jane Johnson. I should leave a note: Put ."Jayyne" on my stone.
Janie shook her head.
Pete and Jason immediately complained that they had gotten red hair in their faces and would Janie please get a grip on her hair.
"What do you want me to do?" demanded Janie. "Wear a net around it?"
"Either that or build an addition to the cafeteria to house it," said Peter.
Everybody giggled.
Janie shook her hair more vigorously. The boys ducked and threw potato chips at Janie, while she reached for Sarah-Charlotte's milk and drank it up.
Perfect meal. Peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Janie set the carton down and sighed with pleasure.
The little girl on the back of the carton stared back at her.
It wasn't much of a picture. After all, how good could a picture be when it was printed on a milk carton?
"You ready for that algebra test?" Jason asked Adair.
"I was ready till I ate cafeteria food. Do you think he'll let me out of the test if I have food poisoning?"
The girl on the carton was an ordinary little girl. Hair in tight pigtails, one against each thin cheek. A dress with a narrow white collar. The dress was white with tiny dark polka dots.
Something evil and thick settled on Janie, blocking her throat, dimming her eyes. "Sarah-Charlotte," she said. She could hear herself shouting Sarah-Charlotte's name, yet her lips were not moving; she was making no sound at all.
She reached toward Sarah-Charlotte s sleeve, but her hand didn't obey. It lay motionless on top of the carton. It looked like somebody else's hand; she could not imagine herself wearing that shade of nail polish, or that silly ring.
"You drank my milk," accused Sarah-Charlotte.
"It's me on there," Janie whispered. Her head hurt. Was the milk allergy already setting in? Or was she going insane? Could you go insane this fast? Surely it took years to lose your mind.
She imagined people losing their minds the way you might lose a penny, or your car keys--accidentally dropping your mind in the cafeteria.
"On where?" said Peter.
"The girl on the back of the carton," whispered Janie. How flat her voice sounded. As if she had ironed it. "It's me."
She remembered that dress . . . how the collar itched . . . remembered the fabric; it was summer fabric; the wind blew through it . . . remembered how those braids swung like red silk against her cheeks.
"I know you're sick of school," said Sarah-Charlotte, "but claiming to be kidnapped is going a little too far, Janie."
Pete retrieved his flattened milk and tried to shape it back into a carton. He read between the folds. "You were stolen ten years ago from a shopping center in New Jersey, Janie. What are you doing here?"
"Yeah," said Adair, giggling. "Why aren't you off yelling for the police?"
"Oh, she's just trying to get out of reading her essay," said Jason.
"No, she's just trying to steal my milk," said Sarah-Charlotte.
The bell rang. The others hurled their garbage toward the huge plastic-lined trash cans by the door, and missed. Ducking under the plump arms of the lunch ladies, they raced back to class instead of picking it up.
Janie held Sarah-Charlotte's empty milk carton and stared at the photograph of the little girl.
I was kidnapped.
