Let's Go Play at the Adams'

for being the it of the game. Where this morning they had barely dared strip her na ked, she

had become by afternoon the object of rape. Tomorrow she would be little better than the

Barbie Doll that Terry had foreseen her becoming.

Tomorrow, Barbara said. I've got to think. Oh, why am I always saying that, when I can't?

One thing she had learned. If her body was a prisoner of Freedom Five, her mind was a

prisoner of her body. The steady complaint of nerve ends to the brain-stop everything until you

take care of this, and this and this and this--created an interrupting static that made her jump

from subject to subject. However she tried to imagine tomorrow, the most that she could come

up with was that it would be worse than today.

Tomorrow Paul would invent new ways to tease and hurt her (and here, she felt true fear). This

afternoon, when he had begun to drag his knife over her just short of breaking the skin, he had

just been Paul. As time passed, however, his face had assumed a smooth cast of pleasure,

even righteousness, as if what he was doing was for him the most correct thing-for him-in the

world. Here was the revengeful soldier putting the torch to Joan of Arc's pyre; here was the

good gray friar listening to confessions of heresy from the rack. Barbara had thought, this little

boy is very nearly insane. The string that held him together-fear of parental punishment-might

have snapped this afternoon, might well snap tomorrow when he no longer felt novelty in the

situation. If it did, he would really stab her or worse, and if he did it

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once, he would do it again and again in a frenzy. Barbara could see it; she could see that

tomorrow 's he might die sitting up, bound to a chair in the guest room at the Adams'.

Whatever other thoughts came across her mind, that picture remained-the little boy stab-

bing her again and again-and she was afraid.

Tomorrow-again her mind took a sideways jump-John would probably attempt to rape her

again, and he would probably succeed. Here her thoughts shattered and ran off in several

directions at once (again). There was fear of pregnancy ... sorrow ..• John ... Midge ....

In college, during Barbara's first year, there had been a girl called Midge, who, as the

nickname implied, was short, petite, brunette, vivacious, and pretty much everyone's

choice as the Most Fun To Be With. The night after the Indiana game, she and a boy were

goofing off, horsing around the freeways in their car when they hit an overpass bridge

abutment and were killed.

Such things, of course, produce shock on campus, even on so large a one as that. For

several days following, the conversation rather typically ran to "I knew

her ... ,"or "A friend of mine knew her ," or "She

was in my American Lit class last year ," etc. The

main point of it all was that one of us is dead, already dead, actually dead. There was awe.

Afterward there were sophomoric, if better considered, discussions of life, love, God,

philosophy, and so forth.

In the dorm where Barbara was living, the second clear point to be derived was, If you

knew you were going to die tomorrow, wouldn't you be sorry you hadn't jumped in bed with

every boy who ever asked you? It was hardly an original question, and it elicited what was

hardly an original answer. Yes, I would, I most certainly would. The girls had shaken their

heads. Since they were not going to die, of course (it was true: that was the only student

death incident that year), they had not altered their various standards. They had simply

thought about it.

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Midge's death had had no further meaning for Barbara until tonight when it was reflected as

this: if you had known you were going to be taken prisoner by a bunch of kids and raped by a

sixteen-year-old, wouldn't you have given in to Ted when he wanted you to? Yes, I certainly

would have, Barbara said. Absolutely. It would have had something nice about it then.

Ted swam, too.

He wasn't Olympic caliber-on the team there was a standing joke that when you were twenty

you were over the hill in swimming-but he was good as most young men went. They had met

at the pool and gone stroking off like a pair of sleek young otters, and afterward, Barbara was

considered to have a boyfriend.

Ted had a number of other qualities, too. He could be serious; he hit the books with fair results

and even thought about them afterward; he was kind and considerate for a young man; he

smelled good, and though he was strong as a bull, he was remarkably gentle and restrained

with Barbara. One night after a different game (it was the next year-last year) they, too, had

been goofing off and coasting around in his car when he turned into a vast, empty parking lot,

parked and put the moves on her. He was the first one whose attack did not cause revulsion.

She was surprised.

His hand circled under her arm and covered her breast, his other hand moved under her skirt