What Janie Saw Read Free Page B

were propped open.
    Visionary Assassins wouldn’t sing any sweet song about some sweet little tot. They would sing about Hannah!
    She had not danced in years, but her feet tapped patterns on the floor under the little computer desk.
I’m a hit song!
    She let her fingers dance in her lap, just from pride.
    But it was blocked! The library computer blocked it! She couldn’t watch thevideo.
    She spoke to the librarian, although speaking to authority was against her rules.
    “These are research computers,” said the librarian in her snarky voice. “Their purpose is not for watching music videos.”
    Hannah always carried weapons. They were not recognizable as weapons.
    She knew better than to have knives, for example. But today, in her big purse, she had a lovely rock. She imagined smashing it into the librarian’s satisfied face.
    Janie Johnson, gone so long,
    Can’t remember right from wrong.
    When I walk by
, Janie thought,
that’s what everybody in school is singing in their heads
.
    That’s what the guest speaker was thinking of, when those girls nodded at me. She was singing it in her head
.
    Janie Johnson, gone so long,
    Can’t remember right from wrong.
    How could Sarah-Charlotte and Reeve and Katrina and Adair and all herother friends have let her down like this?
    Why hadn’t they told her?
    Why hadn’t they prepared her?
    The car key lay upright in the ignition, waiting. Janie could turn that key, start that engine, run home and hide.
    Not that home was a sanctuary any longer.
    The years had not been kind to Frank and Miranda Johnson. The strong, elegant woman who had brought Janie up was now trembling and overwhelmed. Janie’s handsome, athletic father had been ruined by a severe stroke, his mind and body now only partly useful. Janie was in her senior year. Her parents, far older than the parents of her friends, were a different kind of seniors. They were disintegrating.
    I can’t hide
, thought Janie. She took the car key out and put it back in her beautiful leather bag.
No matter what people think, no matter how they stare, I have to remember that I do know right from wrong
.
    She got out of the car.
    She held her head high. But good posture did not give her courage. A muscle in her cheek jumped.
    Janie Johnson, gone so long,
    Can’t remember right from wrong.
    Hannah avoided the law and hid herself from society whenever she could, but she was not shy.
    With the librarian out of sight, Hannah walked right over to some teenagers sitting at a table. All three were ignoring their splayed-open schoolbooks and whispering to each other. The boy wore an iPod in armband. One girl had an expensive cell phone and the second girl had an iPad.
    “Do you have that video Visionary Assassins did?” she demanded. “ ‘Janie Johnson’? I need to see it.”
    They were frightened, which was enjoyable. The boy fiddled with his armband. The girl with the iPad pulled it close to her chest.
    Hannah leaned over them. Her body odor, bleach odor and unbrushed teeth odor saturated the air. “I just need to see the video. Couple minutes. That’s all.” She sat down between the two girls. They hitched their chairs away and looked around anxiously for the librarian.
    “Please,” said Hannah, who despised that syllable. She resented having to beg. They had too much stuff anyway. They owed it to her.
    The girl with the iPad tapped her screen with a long, decorative fingernail and Hannah imagined ripping the fingernail off with pliers. But on the screen, the video came up. The girl pushed the iPad an inch closer to Hannah.
    Hannah did not worry that these kids might recognize her as the kidnapper. Fifteen years had passed since Hannah had made friends with a toddler in a mall. Back then Hannah had been slim and extraordinarily beautiful, with shining yellow hair. For a moment she cared terribly that she was no longer that lovely young woman.
    Then she focused on the video. Because it would be about her.
    But the song was