Let's Go Play at the Adams'

and a lot of bad things could happen before it got better. Memory of Paul's cruel streak

alone made him more afraid of Freedom Five than of any adult power ever to come.

''Make up your mind. Hurry up." Bobby sighed, still sniffling a little.

"OK, get the rope, Paul. I'll watch him." "No, wait a minute ... "

"What?"

''OK, OK, I'll do it. I'll help you."

Paul dropped back on his heels, a little disappointed.

"No telling lies and then letting her go by yourself some night?"

"No."

"Because if you do, when everything's blown over, we're really going to get you."

"Yeah. OK," Bobby said dispiritedly. Something of the sort had been going through his mind.

"But I'm still scared."

Paul gave a yell of triumph and leaped to his feet "Man, this is really neat!"

"Yeah, all right," John sighed and rose, too. "We can talk to Dianne about it on the way

home."

Bobby-humiliated, still sitting, still cradling his arm (it still hurt like hell), still occasionally

brushing tears and sand from his eyes--encountered the

82

dilemma so known to adults and so unknown and even unsuspected by him-conflicting

loyalties. On the one hand, he had promised to do what he knew he must do to survive-be

loyal to the kids, to Freedom Five-while on the other, the same pledge had committed him

to see and accept the stripping and humiliation of someone from the adult world (Barbara

was certainly that) to which he owed equal loyalty.

Well, there was that other thing.

Bobby liked Barbara, and she wasn't entirely just "adult." He liked her for reasons unknown

to himself, but then he did and that was that. In submitting to loyalty to Freedom Five to

escape pain and punishment directed from them toward himself, he had equally submitted

her to their whims.

Bobby Adams did not know what manly meant nor did he remotely know what unmanly

meant. In not letting John break his arm, in agreeing to everything, in abandoning Barbara,

in not sharing her fate, Bobby Adams had done something that made him extremely

ashamed and sad. He did not know why. It was sensible not to let yourself be hurt, and it

was senseless to let Barbara get hurt, and the two arguments collided. Hegel had a

thought on the matter, but Bobby Adams had never heard it and would little understand it

if he had.

What Barbara thought of as her second night in captivity-actually it was the third, but she

had been unconscious Sunday night-began about four-thirty in the afternoon when the

McVeigh children and John Randall were ready-to go home for supper. Then, with their

endless caution-each of her limbs was always tied to something or other-they fed her, got

her to bed spread-eagled, and bound her tightly again. Afterward began the impossible

hours between daylight and her distant release into troubled sleep, hours when she could

only look up at the ceiling and mark the slow fading of August twilight. -

During the forty some hours that she had been a 83

prisoner, Barbara had passed far beyond shock or injured dignity. Her mind, if not her

active body, accepted the idea that there would be no early escape or release now. She

was the it of a children's game that had not run its course yet and might well become

worse. The matter was simply how to endure.

Of the two main problems, the first was mental, of course. In her survey psych course

at school, she had heard the classic example of the prisoner in the round gray room

with nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see, nothing to attract his attention-the

ancient case of the man who went insane from boredom. Her own situation, she

considered neatly parallel. Her room at the Adams' was neither round nor unfurnished,

but with the ever-humming air conditioner and the pale curtains covering the window, it

was dimly and evenly lit at the brightest time of day. Moreover, the walls were a light

blue which could easily be considered gray if you wished it. To further the similarity,

while the textbook prisoner could at least move-amuse himself with the flow of sinew

and muscle-she was forbidden even this distraction. The challenge to the normal, in-

telligent person not to go mad was strikingly real.

With-for her-unaccustomed objectivity, she realized that she spent most of her time in

fantasy. From the beginning she had been able to imagine the voice and, at times, the

person of her roommate, Terry. Last night Terry had been quite real, .but there had been

a wall between them even then-Barbara here, Terry there. Now the wall thinned: it was

easier tonight than last night to call Terry forth, and when she came, she was no longer

in their room at school but almost here, almost real.

Pretty soon, she'll start coming here without my asking, and I'll really be out of it,

Barbara thought.

The longer she remained a captive, however, the more fantasies crowded in with Terry

and the more real they were. Barbara was doing laps in the pool, and it was so vivid