Read Online The Voice on the Radio by Caroline B. Cooney - Free Book Online

the world.
    How could people cut out their own hearts—or the heart of a person they used to love? And then hand it around, a little joke between commercials?
    “Reeve, I’m just material to them. I’m not a person. I’m a page in a yearbook.”
    He didn’t answer for a moment. Then, strained, he said, “That’s awful, Janie.”
    She loved the anxiety in his voice. “Oh, Reeve, I want to talk, I want to come up and visit you.”
    “That would be great. I’d love to see you. But I don’t know where you’d stay. My roommate is too disgusting for you even to meet. And it’s so crowded; every double room’s a triple this year. I don’t know any girls I could ask to take a guest.”
    “But I want to get away, Reeve, to where it’s safe and nobody knows me.”
    He laughed oddly. She did not know what to make of it. “If you had been at school, Reeve, it would have been okay. I would have put a lip print on your cheek.”
    “I would have reserved my cheeks for your prints exclusively.”
    “Send me those kisses over the phone,” she ordered.
    He sent kisses over the phone.
    “Send me a tape of your show,” she said.
    “I don’t do anything. I’m the new kid. Besides, college radio plays pretty rough stuff. Your parents would pass out if they heard the lyrics I’ve memorized.”
    “Sing me some,” said Janie.
    “When I get home,” he promised.

    Reeve lay on his back in the lower bunk and stared up at the blue-striped bottom of Cordell’s mattress. There was no privacy in a college dorm. He had to think things through in the middle of a room full of people he detested.
    If Janie was hurt by a page in the yearbook…if she had grabbed the guy’s camera, and nearly smashed it on the gym floor, all but hit him in the face with it…
    She shouldn’t be so sensitive, he told himself. She’s not in step with the decade. This is routine. Everybody airs their emotions in public.
    He imagined Janie lying here beside him, snuggled in on the wall side of the bunk. He had ended any chance of bringing Janie into his college life.
    So don’t do it again, he told himself, don’t stay at the radio station, don’t do any more janies.
    Very early that morning, long before it was light, Reeve got up, dressed warmly, and left the dorm for a different kind of station.

    The day after Lipstick Day had the first truly winter-is-coming weather of the school year. Janie wore layers. Winter clothes felt safer than summer clothes. She put on a hunter-green river driver shirt and tucked it into a darker green corduroy skirt. She yanked on trail walkers, padded for hiking, and laced the boots tightly. She tied a scarf around her neck and shrugged into an extra-large tweed blazer. For earrings she picked out heavy dangling silver moons, crescents to swing beneath her red hair. Janie loved earrings and had a huge collection, but never fixed her hair so that her ears showed. She kept meaning to analyze this but had never gotten around to it.
    After breakfast she kissed her parents good-bye. “What are you guys grinning about?” she said suspiciously.
    They pointed outside. It looked pretty ordinary to Janie. Nothing out there but their driveway, pocked with ice-rimmed puddles, and the Shieldses’ driveway and Reeve’s Jeep waiting for her—
    “Reeve!” she shrieked.
    She whirled around and hugged her parents. “Did you know he was coming?”
    “His mother called before you were up. He was in the mood to see you and he caught the dawn train out of Boston,” said her father. He was smiling in the way of parents whose children are happy before their eyes.
    “Ooooh!” said Janie. “How romantic!”
    “Have a great day,” said her mother.
    “I will! There is no doubt of that! None!” Janie spun out of the house. How wonderful the Jeep looked, idling away, Reeve grinning at her from the driver’s seat. He leaned over to open the passenger door with his right hand, but she ignored that, raced around the car and