What Janie Saw by Caroline B. Cooney

 
    Senior year.
    Janie loved those two words. Since the milk carton, her life had been chaos. Yet here she was, safe inside senior year, the two final semesters every teenager daydreamed about. All bad things were behind her.
    Yet as September moved into October, she felt that the other kids were growing more aware of her. She was being watched.
    Janie was easy to spot: a mass of tangled red curls took up more than their fair share of hair space. But it wasn’t her hair they turned to look at. It was her kidnap self.
    For a few weeks, Janie had been able to convince herself that everybody in this school was used to her.
    But they weren’t.
    It was bad enough to be stared at by kids she barely knew, but even her friends were watching her intensely, as if they were about to paint her portrait and needed detail.
    Talk about paranoia
, thought Janie Johnson.
Your usual abnormal person thinks her enemies are after her. I think my
friends
are after me
.
    She made herself smile when people eyed her. She did not duck behind tall classmates or hunch down in a sea of shoulders.
    She considered the possibility that she was going crazy. Crazy people thought everybody was looking exclusively at them. Sane people knew that everybody was way too busy.
    Fifth period one October day, seniors were to attend a presentation about college applications. Only a year ago, Janie Johnson would have said that dormlife on some distant campus was not a possibility. She needed home and home needed her.
    Now the word “college” was exhilarating and the word “home” wore her out.
    Several hundred kids converged in the main hall. Janie moved slowly among them, trying to find Sarah-Charlotte, with whom she always sat.
    Near the central auditorium doors stood the principal with a very well-dressed woman, presumably a guest speaker. The principal turned aside to deal with some wild behavior. Two girls whom Janie knew slightly murmured to the guest and nodded in Janie’s direction.
    “Really?” said the guest. She stared openly at Janie.
    It’s back again. I’m not ordinary after all. Senior year isn’t safe. There was some TV event I missed. Some ugly news I haven’t heard
.
    Janie wanted to run screaming out of the building, but she refused to let them see how shaken she was. She drifted past without making eye contact, walked down the corridor, threaded through the crowd and out a side door.
    It was chilly. The sky was blue and cloudless. The wind was clean and sharp. She stood for a minute, hidden by jutting brick walls and shrubbery. She was panting slightly, the way she did when the world fell apart.
    I’ll walk around the building
, she told herself.
Exercise will calm me down. I’ll slip into the auditorium from the other side
.
    Instead her feet took her over the grass toward the student parking lot. Wind tossed fallen leaves in swirly bright circles over the dark pavement. Janie never saw autumn leaves without thinking of Reeve, her half boyfriend, who had kissed her for the first time when they collapsed on a heap of fallen leavesthey’d been raking.
    Her car was facing the sun. When she opened the door, heat rushed out to meet her. She sank into the driver’s seat. Okay, she was going to be late for the assembly. So what? For Janie there was an upside to the creepy celebrity that surrounded being a kidnapping victim: she could get away with anything. She would give herself a ten-minute vacation from staring eyes.
    Janie put the key in the ignition. She did not start the engine but powered up the radio. The joy of radio had been damaged when Reeve had betrayed her on the air, but time had eased the pain. She could listen without cringing. Radio had returned to itself: a wash of music that filled her mind.
    She leaned back and checked messages on her cell phone.
    Sarah-Charlotte had texted, of course.
Where r u?
she wanted to know.
I’m on the right aisle, halfway down
, she added, because Sarah-Charlotte always saved a seat for her