Let's Go Play at the Adams'

passed to her, however, was the heavier thing-responsibility. She had seen that in their

eyes, all right. No matter what they decided to do, she would have to be the one who said

what the orders would be and what they would accomplish. No one else would. No one else

could, that is, if there was to be any outcome of the Barbara thing other than letting her go

and getting punished.

Dianne welcomed and resented this, welcomed it for the sense of freedom she felt and

resented it for what it allowed her to understand of the children. The little ones had always

known that they were going to give up and cry or something when it got hard; their

appearance of reliability and courage had only been a loan to be called in as soon as the

grown-ups' return was near. They hadn't said it, but Dianne saw that this was the way it

was going to be and soon, if she didn't think of some other way out. Barbara might be free

this time tomorrow night; they might be setting her free right this minute. And John, even

John. Now that he was messing around with the girl (Dianne was too repelled to watch, but

she wondered what it was like be-

175

tween a man and a woman), he too was undependable. He might even be the one to turn

chicken first. Sitting ivory-cool and neat in the car with her family, Dianne thought about it.

It was getting trickier. The chances of interference, discovery, Barbara's escape, and their

own loss of nerve, went straight up. They had had a fair run of luck for a fair time now.

Dianne didn't look at it so analytically, of course, but her sense of wonder at their success

and her clear foreboding that they were due for a change, was the constant weather of her

mind. The dread end of the game-the dread of each one of them-was hers to carry. And she

had the added problem of Paul.

Even regularly, he was erratic, predictable only in his strangeness, explosive,

temperamental, and unstable. A clever little built-in baby-sitter for her brother for years,

Dianne had learned a few ways to control him. Mother took tranquilizers and sleeping pills

as a part of her normal life. By switching capsules for capsules and pills for pills, Dianne

had been dosing little brother Paul for a long time now. The older she got, the bolder she

got, and Paul withstood it all without effect. Fragile-looking and spastic, he could

apparently burn off drugs in half normal time, and with the Barbara episode, he had

become worse. He moaned in his sleep, shouted out, and waked up crying until she was

sure he would blurt the whole story out. Caught be .• tween her responsibility to Freedom

Five, her mother's finite supply of sedatives, and Paul's super energy, she strung him along

with hints of what would happen and promises and-when everything else failed-stole an-

other pill and slugged him with it. (Even Bobby ransacked Dr. Adams' things for pills that

might work, but there was little to find of any use.) Paul was holding on now only to a faint

expectation Dianne had given him,

a way out of the game that would be a lot of fun, his kind of fun.

It was all enough to make a seventeen-year-old girl just give up, free the prisoner and go

forward to ' 176

judgment, and of course, the alternative had occurred to her. Her punishment would

probably be the lightest. She had entered only after they had captured Barbara; she had

run the house, kept everyone fed and safe, and so on, and so on. She could make a good

case of it. But •.. and but. It wasn't what she wanted to do.

The game was right. They bad done nothing wrong, not really. To this she clung. Grown-ups

and children were on opposite sides; anyone who knew anything knew at least that. One

was fair game for the other, and always had been. If there was fairness or loyalty between

them, it was the grudging, exasperated affection between opposites ever opposite. Dianne

could not-in pride-imagine crying at injustice, nor given the rare circumstance, imagine

adults doing less. So out of proper beginnings, fortuitous circumstances, and good

managing had come a logical (to her entirely so) situation that must have-sometime, some

place-an ending in harmony with the opening. This was an article of faith with her, so much

so that she began-she tossed away the dry, uneaten part of her ice-cream cone with the

thought-to imagine in detail bow they might conclude their little game.

At the state road her father got out and walked around to the passenger's side while

Dianne slid over to the wheel. A fair amount was on her mind. The driving of the car was

automatic, but at the touch of the wheel again, the movement of the gearshift into "drive,"

an

- outside, unbidden thought occurred to her as if some one had spoken it in her ear: "The

Adams have a car." There was nothing more, not a clue, not a hint, not a suggestion of