Let's Go Play at the Adams'

complicity and commitment in the basement. They all knew that in "the game," there were

other

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things that could be done. It was suddenly a little scary-at least, Cindy thought so-and she

didn't reply or say any other word.

"Well, what did you expect? That we couldn't, or something?" John bluffed a casualness

that Cindy' saw as false. He was nervous and not nervous, looking and not looking at

Barbara's white, smooth, rounded be-

hind.

Dianne alone acted. Standing in front of the captive, she reached out beneath the bent

body and took the older girl's breast in her fingers and with deliberate coolness squeezed

and twisted it as hard and as far as she could.

It is possible to feel someone else being hurt, and Cindy experienced it now. Barbara's flesh

was soft and grotesquely distorted, and the hand was hard and thin and white-knuckled.

Moreover Cindy heard it; the prisoner exploded in futile writhing and noises and was

allowed to continue so for some seconds. Eventually Dianne released the breast, took

Barbara's head up by the hair, and slapped her across the face just one hard time. Then

the obscene moment was over.

Dianne did not dignify her actions by a single word.

Barbara's knees bent, and for a moment she seemed in danger of tearing out her own

shoulder sockets with her own weight. She made the same old sounds of being hurt and all

that. Then the greater pain took charge, and she stood on toe, legs stiffened once again.

It unnerved Cindy, the whole thing did. It imposed complicated thoughts and emotions and

responsibilities she had no wish to have. She felt her face becoming hot as it did when she

was about to go into a total-despair crying time. It was all bad. And Barbara was bad to

have caused it all, and Dianne was right. With something akin to sudden, hot abandon,

Cindy drew back a puny fist and hit Barbara, and then Dianne caught her arm and stopped

her.

"No!"

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Cindy understood. She had stepped into something personal.

"She didn't do anything to you," Dianne said, "and don't you hurt her-yet." She relented

and patted Cindy. "But you were good. You helped."

Cindy looked up, still faltering angry, and saw that Dianne's face was not its cool, always

right shape. Still, she did what she would not have done for her parents or Bobby or

anyone else alive. She nodded and left the room with hands clenched. But she knew what

was going to happen anyway.

"Listen!"

Because they bad been in the basement for some time, the children hadn't beard the truck

until it was nearly at the house. Within seconds after they identified the sound of the

engine, it was there, an emergency brake ratcheted, a horn tooted-after the days of silence

it was oddly cheerful-and a truck door slammed. There would be no footsteps immediately

because the path around the house was of deep, loose, sunbaked sand and dust. Freedom

Five stopped breathing all at once, and all for the same second's time. One by one, they

looked up as if trying to see through the solid floor and walls above them. Cindy clapped

her hand over her mouth.

Barbara's head-to the extent that she could move it-inclined with the children's. She tried

to twist around, making startlingly loud (to them) noises through her nose. The unspoken

words were plain to the hearers-help me. Instinctively John jumped for- t; ward and curved

his band under her taped mouth and close up under her nose. The sound all but ceased as

· Barbara began to suffocate. She reared hopelessly in tether.

'

"Will you shut up?" .

"She'd better!" Dianne's whisper was as sharp as a 22 shot. "Go up and get into your

bathing suits and come out into the kitchen." She was looking at Bobby and Paul.

"Bathing suits?"

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"Hurry up!"

Now, at last, there was a thudding outside on the kitchen stairs and a knocking-nearly a

pounding-at the river (kitchen) door. A grown-up was here.

"Come on!" Less rattled and more commanding each second, Dianne grabbed Cindy and

went up the - stairs first, two at a time. "Just a minute!" she yelled from the top. Then,

stopping at the bathroom, she pulled Cindy inside and turned on the shower.

More knocking. "Coming!"

Dianne was exasperated, trembling, but still in command. "You stay in here and leave the

shower running. You understand? Leave it be. And if I say anything through the door, just

yell back yes or no and try and act like Barbara. You got it?" She shut the door apparently

not reassured by the child's look of bewilderment.

"Coming!" Almost trotting down the hall now, she saw from the first window that it was

Tillman's delivery truck. Half a minute later, she was into and across the kitchen and

opening the door for Mr. Tillman, who stood on the outside steps holding one brown bag

and balancing another on his knee while he banged at the screen.

"I'm sorry. Come in."

"Thanks, Dee-Dee." He came awkwardly past her, a pungent mass of sweaty male skin,