Let's Go Play at the Adams'

ternoon, and allowed her to sit down on it.

Though he retied her body to the pole afterward, he did not do it as tightly and as

thoroughly as before. It hurt, of course-everything they did, hurt-but relatively she had

more comfort than at any time since she had been taken. She stretched her legs and

thought. Though he had been the one to put the chloroform rag

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over her mouth and so sentence her to this week of misery, it was strangely enough

Bobby-uniquely Bobby-who had never intentionally hurt her or shown any indication of

doing so. (Even Cindy had hit her a harmless but vindictive little blow this morning.) More-

over, unlike the other two boys, his reaction to her nakedness was one of shyness and

aversion; he was always reluctant to touch her even when he had to. If there had been no

other difference, this would have made him the most normal of the five to Barbara's way of

thinking.

As she watched him, moreover, it also struck her that he was the most tired and afraid in

the group. He no longer seemed to like any of this. He didn't seem to like keeping her or

hurting her, and he probably didn't like the idea of his parents coming home just three and

a half days from now (to her it seemed forever, but to him it would likely seem like

tomorrow). Most of all, he obviously did not like the darkness settling around the house

outside. For a small boy, he was under considerable strain, and he showed it. When he had

finished knotting the ropes and had stood back to check it all, Barbara saw that he was

somewhat pale in spite of the constant sun each day, and when he gave the guard to Cindy

and left, he looked really weary. Barbara watched him go.

Maybe he had come down here to free her and then could not make himself do it. Maybe

she had an ally left in Freedom Five after all. Certainly he was behaving quite differently

tonight.

But Bobby. If she couldn't talk to him (he would never ungag her again-her own fault) or

use her sex on him as she had tried to do with John, how could she persuade him to let her

free? Play sick? Moan and groan a lot?

She had nearly fallen asleep thinking about it-chin down on chest, things beginning to blur-

when suddenly, Cindy began screaming almost beside her ear. The child was pointing her

arm and screaming at Barbara as if she should be the one to do something

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about something bad, and Barbara-startled-tried. She wrenched at her ropes and tried to get

up before her waking senses returned and the true situation reimposed itself. Then, obediently,

she turned her head as far to the right as she could and looked down Cindy's pointing finger at-

did she mean the window? If so, there was nothing to be seen but a square of darkness.

Barbara was both frightened and puzzled. Then the child had taken off in a scuffle of sandals

on concrete, her yells ringing up the cellar steps ahead of her.

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8

It was late when Freedom Five assembled the next morning; it was also hot, the hottest day

of the drought of late summer. When John and Dianne and Paul came out of the tree line

along Oak Creek, their faces were shiny with sweat. The dust-it lay on every leaf and pine

needle-stuck to their skin. Breaking clear beneath the broiling forenoon sky, they crossed

the field, came past the vegetable garden and up to the Adams' kitchen steps in silence.

Bobby and Cindy, nearly sleepless and certainly sandy-eyed, were waiting for them.

"Sorry we're late," John said.

"John had to leave his boat up the creek last

night."

"He saw the Picker." "He talked to him .... "

"We had to go up the creek this morning and get the boat," Dianne said.

Bobby and Cindy looked at each other. "He was

here last night, too," Cindy said defensively.

"Who, the Picker?;' "I saw him."

"Cindy says she saw someone looking in the basement window last night," Bobby said.

"She woke me up, and I looked around, but I couldn't see anything."

"You were scared enough!" "I was not."

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"Were too." Cindy stood firm. "You were as scared as I was."

"What window was he looking in?" Dianne said. "I dunno," Bobby said. "Maybe he looked in

all of them, if he was here. Cindy thought she saw something when she was guarding."

"Did he see her?" "Barbara? Who knows?" "Where is she now?"

"Still tied to the pole. She fainted. I had to let her sit down."

"What else?"

"Nothing. We turned the lights on upstairs and off downstairs, but nothing happened.

Nobody did anything. At least not yet."

Freedom Five stood silent a moment. They were solemn beyond their ages. John rolled his

handthumb, forefinger, and palm--over his forehead to remove the sweat. "I guess- we

better have a meeting."

There was a certain ceremoniousness about the Freedom Five meeting. Perhaps it was

caused by little things like the hot weather, their own selfish, sweettooth wishes, habit, or

the example of adults unconsciously observed, but there was ritual there. Dianne opened