The Face on the Milk Carton

Janie awakens and thinks about how she loves pajamas. She undresses and admires her figure in the mirror. In a dictionary, she looks up “nightmare” and reads about daymares, too. She imagines that a demon is giving her unsettling visions. Janie goes to school, where her friends consider pranking other students with an enormous roll of tape. Janie “adored mischief, if she could watch rather than participate” (38).

Janie quizzes her friend Adair with questions from the driver’s license test. When Janie hears that she must present a birth certificate for the license, she grows upset and wonders whether she has a certificate. Janie takes the bus home from school. She notes the fallen leaves along her neighborhood’s sidewalk. At home, Janie asks her mother to show her Janie’s birth certificate. Miranda stiffens and says the certificate is at the bank. She resists Janie’s requests to retrieve it.

Janie goes to the kitchen for ice cream and experiences another vision. She sees another kitchen full of “laughter…noise…mess…commotion” and two babies (45). Upset, Janie leaves the ice cream and runs outside. She sees Reeve raking leaves and accepts his invitation to help. Janie rakes with surprising intensity. She sits in the leaf pile with Reeve and asks him whether calls to 800 numbers can be traced.