idea.
"You couldn't have done it; you were locked in
the closet." Dianne was reassuring.
"What about you?"
"We were home before it happened." "Fingerprints."
"Wipe them off. We never used the car." "Footprints," Bobby said a little desperately. "Rub
them out with weeds."
"Time of death," he said. It was a sophisticated question for a thirteen-year-old-boy; it
arose from TV watching and being a doctor's son.
"Yeah," John said.
"It'll be close," Dianne said. "That's where we're just going to have to depend that grown-
ups won't suspect us. If we just go home on time and act completely natural"-here she
looked- at Paul-"the folks will never know. They don't know half of anything anyhow."
Bobby sighed an absolutely monumental sigh. He said very simply, "The Picker'll say he
didn't do it because be didn't. He'll be somewhere else at the time. Then it'll have to be
us."
''Not if we have him up around here doing some work and getting his fingerprints on
everything." Dianne had waited for Bobby's top card with her ace. She smiled triumph.
Bobby was overwhelmed. Dianne was really mean.
She had a twisted mind. Weakly, feeling the tide against him, be said, "He'll still say he
didn't do it."
"They'll pick him up and beat him or whatever
196
they do." (Dianne had a rather nasty idea about police work.) "And no matter what he says,
they won't believe him."
"Why?"
"Who cares what a Picker says?"
"Adults don't believe each other anyway." "Fingerprints"-Dianne came back at Bobby with
his own questions-"time of death .... " She let it linger.
"I dunno .... "
"You mean you will?" Paul said. "No."
"But you would, if you could get away with it." "We can't."
"Why?"
"Us." Without prior notice, tears appeared and began quickly running down Bobby's face.
"We're just kids. Some one'll blow up and start blabbing the first time a grown-up get his
hands on him."
"Chicken?" Paul said.
"If they can't make the Picker admit he did it, we won't admit it either," John said. "They'll
have to choose between us and him."
"I think we can count on our folks to help," Dianne said judiciously. "If we say we didn't and
cry a lot, they'll believe us."
"Paul'll tell."
"Who'd believe him?" John said. Dianne sat silent.
On this point, there was a curious agreement among the children: Paul was different, quite
different. They couldn't be rid of him in any way; they simply made a place for him, cripple
though he seemed to be. But he was batty.
"No one," Cindy said, and it was true.
Paul jumped up in fury. Whatever else was odd about him, he wasn't stupid. He shouted in
refute, "I
... I ... I .... ''
Paul wished to say something that could not be put into words, that much was clear. Had
he looked
197
around, he would even have found sympathy; they were all in various stages of self-
concern. But he didn't look, and he couldn't speak. Instead, words failing, be lowered his
head like a little bull and ran with full self-destruction straight at the living-room wall. He hit
with enough force to make a sound that could be heard and fell to the floor, but he did not
knock himself out. With that fragile-seeming and yet incredible energy, he appeared
slightly "still there."
Freedom Five (or three of them anyhow) were stopped. They bad heard of Paul's suicidal
head charges, but no one except Dianne had ever seen one. They stared at him absolutely
astonished.
Frustrated, hurt, still incapable of telling them what he wished to say, he lay sobbing on the
floor. It was a heart-breaking sound, not simply that of a hurt child, but a sound of
abandonment, of having been abandoned by whatever supported him.
Dianne jumped up and ran over to him. Dianne usually moved with glacial calm, but this
time she flew with a child's movements, abrupt, clumsy, frightened. She rolled Paul over
and cradled his bead in her lap; she hurt for him, it was easy to see. And Paul, when be was
not spastic or twitchy, was a normal enough boy. He had pale brown hair that was thin and
curly: his eyes were brown and warm. Against the cotton of Dianne's short dress, he looked
adorable. And pleading, somehow.
Dianne stroked his head for the bump. "Are you hurt?"
"I
I
" h b
.
d
.
. . . . .. , e egan agam an agam.
"Paul! Paul, listen to me. Hush now." "I ... what?"
"Paul, you can do it." "What?"
"Kill her."
"Me?" , ''Kill her," Dianne said. "Just like we said." Paul was somewhat pacified. He slowed
his crying.
198
"You can tell us what to do, and do it- first. You understand me?"
"I can?" A clarifying light thinned the color of his eyes to amber-amber like that of a
cat's.
Dianne looked up at the other three. She had asked for very little in her life and didn't
know how. "He can be first, can't he?" she said. "It isn't fair, but he'd like it-',
''I ... I .... ''
"Be first at what?" Cindy said.
"Be first-kill her." Paul was still somewhat incoherent. He rolled over on his side and
pressed his face against his thin sister's stomach as if he wanted to crawl into her
womb. His legs curled up in the foetal position, be looked like something waiting to be
born.
"He can, can't he?"
"Wait a minute," Bobby said. "We were having a meeting about it. We never voted. We
never decided anything-"
John had to acknowledge this true, though it seemed to annoy him. "OK then, we'll
vote. For killing her, who?"
"Me." Paul (well who else?). "Me." Dianne.
"Me," John got in.
"Oh-I guess so." Cindy.
"No." Bobby. He had stopped crying, but he was
still dismayed.
"Well, you wanted the vote." "It isn't fair!"
"What isn't?"
"I'm the only one who doesn't want to--" "That's what voting is for."
"-and I have to do something stupid just because 'you don't have the sense to see it.
We're going to get caught. I'm telling you, they'll find out."
"The vote!"
"Wait a minute," Dianne said coolly. "We can go through the first part-get ready-and
then if it doesn't 199
look OK, we can stop. We can always let her go, even at the last minute."
"No hurting her until then?" "Of course not."