"Thank you."
"It's OK." Dianne put the glass down. "Hope it helps."
"Thanks for cutting up my nightie, too."
"Oh, I'll fix that. This afternoon. You'll never know it. I could do it at home-we have our own
sewing machine-but Mrs. Adams has a much better one 105
right here, It does buttonholes and zigzag, every thing .... "
"Why did you do it, Dianne?" Barbara said it impatiently, perhaps, but confidentially. After
all, Dianne was a girl; she must know the fear of nakedness. "I mean, was it just because
you wanted to get at me for some reason, embarrass me with them?" Them was clearly the
boys.
"Not really." As her part of the shared duties, Dianne dusted Barbara's room and made the
bed each morning and turned it down each evening. She did it with a mother's half-
annoyance and a perfectionist's dislike of mess. Now as she did this, she moved out of
Barbara's vision. Barbara turned and tried to follow with her eyes.
"Do they do everything you tell them to?"
"Me? No." Dianne might have been speaking with a toss of the head but Barbara couldn't
see. "We vote. We voted."
"I mean in the game, Freedom Five.''
"Oh." Dianne audibly laughed. It was the first time she had done , so, and it did not have a
funny sound. "That's all over."
"Then, what is this?"
"I don't know," Dianne said honestly enough, plumping the pillows back into place. "This is
just this, I guess. We used to play the other when we were younger, but not anymore."
Barbara sighed, but in exasperation. "Well, if you're not keeping me tied up because it's
part of a game, and you're not doing it because you're mad at me, and you all vote, then
what is it? Why did you ever start it? It’s stupid…”
"Well .... " There was the sound of that last thumping a well-made bed gets. Dianne was
obviously not in a mood to confess inner thoughts-it was almost unimaginable that such a
time would ever come-but again she wasn't being coy or obscure either. The conclusion
might be that she had not thought it out herself, or that she had and simply wasn't saying.
106
"I don't know," Dianne said. "We just got to
talking about it, and then we just did it, that's all."
"Like on a dare?"
"Yes. Kind of. I guess so."
"Then why keep it up? I mean, you did it after all-you won."
"Why not?" Dianne was dusting. Barbara could hear things being moved and replaced behind
her.
Barbara bit her lip. It was all a wheel and a circle inside of an oval with these kids. It wasn't
real; it wasn't a game, and yet it was. The illogic of the position didn't seem to bother them at
all. "Then, how are you going to get out of it," she said, "when the Adams come back and all?"
"I don't know," Dianne said. "What could they do anyhow? What's the harm?" Dianne came
back in front of Barbara and dusted the vanity top, moving bottles and things deftly and
quickly. "Have you been hurt? Really? Has anybody done anything to you?" She turned and
looked down at Barbara. "Well ... ?"
Barbara looked up into those clear, gray, flawless, and conscienceless eyes and was frightened
somehow. She had never been naked, helpless, stared at-it was more like inspection or
inventorying-by another woman before. Moreover there was no guessing what went on behind
those cool eyes.
Dianne and the others bad no gods and heroes to exemplify the good and proper life for them,
nor did they seem to have any pursuing demons either. Within their smoothly-managed,
automatic world, they were serene, secretive, knowing, adept and without fear or respect.
They paid no tax to their Maker, their parents, nor to anyone else-not really, not within their
hearts, Barbara felt that-and they operated free of standards other than their own. In the power
of Freedom Five, Barbara was more alone than she might have been in some classic, solitary
confinement. How could you guess what children like that might do, might dream of? She
swallowed.
"What now?"
"I'm going to dust," Dianne said with practicality.
107
"I mean with me," Barbara said.
Barbara was really too squeamish. Her actual thought-there was horror in it-was that you
just don't leave a naked, helpless girl sitting around for young boys to fool with. And
though she was the object/victim, she was too nice to protest. She said, "What are they
going to do with me next?"
If Dianne caught Barbara's mood, she ignored it.
"I don't know," she said. "I mean, after all, what can they do? Really?''
When it was Paul's turn to watch, he didn't think he was going to be able to walk into
Barbara's room. It was as if he were carbonated on the inside, a bottle of fizz that someone
had shaken too hard; everything tingled. He felt that he had some kind of haze over his
eyes; there was a knot in his throat. He was afraid.
"Wait a minute," he said when Bobby told him his guard time bad come. "Don't go yet-I
want her gagged again."
"Why's that?" John was sitting half-a-saddle against the kitchen sink, eating a sandwich.
"I just do. That's the new rules. You have to help me do what I want with her," Paul had
been eating too, but now his appetite disappeared. "Isn't that right, Dianne?''
She shrugged. "OK."
"Don't go out of your tree, man. I was just asking why. That's all." John swung down to his
feet. "Come on if you want to. Let's get it over with."
"Really?"
"Let's!" Cindy said.
When they all got into the room together, Barbara looked up. When Dianne got the gag
and tape from the dresser, she looked alarmed.
"What's that for, Dianne? Please-"
Paul thought that she had a nice pleading tone to her voice. "You're going to get gagged."
With the others around him, he was assured again. "Do it, Dianne."
"But why? I didn't make any noise ... "
108
"I know," Dianne said. "It's just the new rules.
Paul wants it, so that's what we have to do."
"What new rules?"
"Whoever's on guard, gets what he wants. We all help."
"When did this start?"
"This morning," Dianne folded the terry cloth square. "Don't worry, I'll take it out when it
comes my turn later on."
"But why do you want me gagged? What're you going to do?" Barbara averted her head a
moment and looked at Paul.
Paul squirmed and grew red. This was exactly the kind of confrontation be didn't want.
"He just does," John said, short of patience with them both. "Now are you going to do it or
not?" He looked around for the bottle of chloroform.