Playground Zero

by Sarah Relyea

  “What do you read?”

  “Oh, you name it. Margaret Mead—”

  “I’ve heard of her.”

  “Everyone reads her. Do you know that on Samoa—”

  “Do you know Helen’s sister?” Alice interjected, remembering her mother’s monologues about Sabrina and her family.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Just wondered. I thought she was enrolled in Other Paths.”

  “Who, Maggie?” Becky seemed amused. “Oh, no, she never comes. I mean, what for? Last year we had Joel’s classes, but he’s hardly there anymore. And now—” She held up her hands as if to say, “All gone.”

  The woods glowed under the moon. Becky pulled up her collar.

  “Where’s everyone?” Alice wondered aloud.

  Becky giggled. “Where do you suppose they are?” She giggled harder. “Gosh, everyone turned in so early.”

  “No one even showed up for dinner.”

  “Oh, so you saw that, too.”

  “I was looking for Raymond—”

  “Raymond?” Becky was suddenly sober. “Oh, Raymond won’t come out before morning. I can promise you that.”

  Something made Alice feel she should inquire no further. But there was no need; Becky had more to say. She leaned over.

  “Do you swear?”

  “Huh?”

  “Swear not to tell, silly.”

  “I swear.”

  Becky closed her eyes and inhaled deeply; then she opened them, waved her head roguishly, and leaned in. “I heard he’s in a cabin with someone—”

  With Becky gazing into her soul—or appearing to do so—Alice fumbled for a response, but found none that seemed on cue.

  “—bad girl Helen!” Becky gasped, eyelashes fluttering.

  Alice rounded her eyes in the equivalent of a shrug. She should be cool and casual, for sure. In a deadpan way, she probed the rumor.

  “How do you know?”

  “Oh . . . I have ways.”

  “You mean you saw them?”

  Becky pursed her mouth and nodded vigorously. “But no one’s supposed to know. So if you tell anyone, I’m in real trouble.”

  Several moments passed as they looked out on the lawn, leaden under the moon and fading deep among the gathering trees. The woods hung before them, enclosing the lodge and its small gleaming windows in a darkened amphitheater. At the far end of the porch, the four cabins were camouflaged by the cedar grove, marked with traces of unnatural light. Was Raymond really down there, and if so, which of the cabins had he chosen? The thought of sleeping by herself in a secluded cabin gave Alice a sense of foreboding, which deepened as she contemplated the chances of encountering Raymond in or near the cedar grove. She had thought of him as a teacher—young and overly casual, but a teacher nonetheless. Images appeared in her mind of Raymond sparring with Helen, responding with pleasure rather than anger, encouraging her to assume the lead, even though he was older and a man. There was something strange in the way the quarrels led to personal confessions. By now everyone knew how Helen’s father had cornered her in the yard, complaining that her mother refused him, and how her mother had bragged one day that she’d found another man—not long after Helen’s father had headed for the Amazon jungle. The group had been riding in the van, and Helen had been crying and rapping to Raymond about her problems.

  “It sounds so Peyton Place,” Raymond teased, and when Helen heard the words “Peyton Place,” she laughed.

  The porch had become very cold. Becky glanced in her eyes and then away. “I thought everyone kinda knew, or wondered, anyway. On Samoa—”

  From the woods came a round of bloodcurdling whoops—a war cry. Then the false calm of evening sounds, as though the woods had stopped breathing. In the ensuing gasp, the sky filled with the shrill clamor of a war party, as ten boys converged on the lawn, racing and vaulting and brandishing branches.

  In moments, a flame appeared on the lawn, low and crouching, then dancing up, high and wild in a smoky, snapping bonfire. Alice could feel her blood surge. Around the flames, the boys clasped one another by the shoulders, lashing back and forth like a banner made of paper cutouts, ready for the flames. Then the line broke and they charged the lodge, Andy in the lead. He was waving a red flag and a peacock feather.

  “The palace is ours! The palace is ours!” hollered Andy. Another war cry arose from the group as they charged the porch, rushing the door of the lodge.

  The girls stared at the leaping flames. Alice knew they should be doing something; the bonfire was flaring. The Happening was in full swing, and they’d been caught clueless.

  Becky laughed loudly. “Maybe Ray will show up for the finale. Oh, goody, here he comes!”

  Sure enough, Raymond appeared, running from the cedar grove, wearing only jeans. He pulled up before the porch, thrashing madly and yanking a jersey over bare shoulders.

  “Andy, over here! Now!”

  Andy appeared in an upper window, solemnly waving the red flag and the peacock feather. “Ray man lay man, Ray man lay man!”

  From the flames came hissing and crackling.

  Then Andy was gone. A moment later, a large bowl hurled from the window, bouncing off Raymond’s leg. He never glanced down; but the girls could see that he was covered with applesauce.

  Alice ran for the door. Something was finally happening, and she refused to be a bystander any longer.

  In the common room, the band had reappeared, all but Jonathan. Dodging among the early rumblings of a sonic avalanche rebounding through the room, she headed for the upper floor, where everyone would be. Raymond suddenly charged across the room and sprang up the stairs, shoving her to the wall as he passed. She heard a heavy thumping as he ran down the hall. In the room below, the band launched into a song, frothy and untethered in the absence of Jonathan’s bass. Following Raymond, she turned down the hallway and encountered the dry, musky odor of grass. He had paused before a door, where he was banging loudly.

  “Open up, Andy, or they’ll have the cops here.”

  The door opened. Grabbing Andy, Raymond hauled him from the room and shoved him against the wall. Andy crumpled to the floor, where he lay propped on one elbow, shaking the other hand at Raymond.

  “Raymond, you fucker, leave my woman alone!” Andy’s arm was waving madly as he squirmed forward, slapping at Raymond’s leg. “I want her! I want her!”

  Raymond was sneering now, one hand playing in the droopy red mustache, the other propped on the wall above Andy’s head. “Shove it, Andy, or you’ll have the cops here. You already have the caretaker coming down on us.”

  “Ray, you fucker.” And he lunged for Raymond’s leg.

  Raymond shook him off. “No, man, you’re the one who’s done us in. Things were fine half an hour ago.”

  In the room below, the band abruptly ceased, followed by the slamming of boots on the stairs. Alice turned; rounding the corner was a heavy man in a baseball cap. The stranger held a pump gun in one hand.

  “What the—” He glared down the hall, sniffing the marijuana fumes. “My, my, some pajama party you folks are having.”

  Andy peered around Raymond’s leg. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

  “I’m hoping you can tell me,” responded the man. He spoke calmly and held up the pump gun ever so casually, coolly surveying Andy as he squirmed on the floor.

  Raymond faced the man, his hand playing in his mustache. “Sorry for the trouble. Things are under control now.”

  “My, my.” The man paused, glancing up and down the hall, then advanced on Andy. “Why, that there troublemaker’s nothing but a boy.” He glared at Alice as he passed. “Your brother?”

  “No,” she responded, aware of something familiar in the man’s anger.

  “I’m glad to hear.” He approached Raymond. “Any more problems and you’ll be in the slammer, big fella.”

  For a moment, he faced Raymond down, then turned and lumbered off. They heard the thumping of boots on the stairs, and then th
e slamming of the porch door. No one moved; finally, Raymond pulled Andy to his feet. “You heard the man,” he said.

  “Yup.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Yup.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  “Groovy, man, how about some jump rope?”

  “No more, Andy.”

  “I’m not for real, you know, Ray man—I’m never for real.”

  “I know.”

  “Fucked up, man, I’m so fucked up . . .”

  Raymond glanced around, waving Alice away. “You’ll come down, Andy—in a couple hours everything’s gonna be fine.”

  Alice heard Andy sobbing. “You—you stole her from me, you . . . She’s mine, mine.” She descended the stairs, wondering how many of the others had shared the LSD. Maybe she’d found a good place for sleep, after all, far from the lodge and the madness.

  In the common room, the singer from the band called to her, “Something bad happen?”

  “No.” She paused. “Not really.”

  “Anything good happen?”

  “Yeah,” added the drummer, “like maybe the man with the gun pumped some lead into Andy?”

  “No.”

  “Gosh, sorry to hear.” The boys were giggling.

  She stumbled through the door onto the porch. No one was there. Someone had doused the bonfire; the lawn lay before her, dark and impenetrable, smelling of damp earth and the remnants of burning wood. The evening had turned languorous, untroubled, and chilly. From beyond the forest amphitheater, stars by the myriad beckoned her with the glow of other worlds. She ran for the cedar grove.

  Seen from the grove, the lodge seemed to hang in the surrounding dark, a drapery that had nearly caught and tangled her in its folds. She turned the knob on the cabin door and pushed; the door opened. The darkness felt warm; closing the door, she gazed through the window on cedar branches. She’d placed her carryall on the nearer bed; now she sat there, enjoying the grove.

  Suddenly she froze.

  “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  The words made her jump. She spun around to find Jonathan, one hand on the chain of a lamp, and the room aglow in unforgiving light.

  “I was reading, but I had trouble staying awake. I thought, man, what if she comes and finds me, you know, snoring on a bed, when she’s probably hoping to have the room to herself.”

  “I was.”

  “I know.” He paused. “What’s happening in the lodge?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Andy damn near burns the place down, a man comes waving a gun—and you call that ‘nothing much’? Jeez, that’s when I headed for the hills.” Hands folded behind his head, a copy of Mad magazine dangling over one leg, Jonathan was having fun.

  Alice shrugged. “Someone doused the fire, the man’s gone away—”

  “Ray should take that puny pyro and dump him in the well.”

  “Andy?”

  “What—you mean there’s more than one?”

  “There seemed to be a whole group of them.”

  “Andy’s the idea man, haven’t you figured anything out?”

  “I’m not spending my days figuring out Andy.”

  “Yeah, you’re too intelligent for that.” He began humming to himself, then ceased. “Imagine being in Raymond’s shoes—suddenly Andy becomes your problem. I’d rather do some dumb job, have a band in my spare time.”

  “Raymond seems to be having fun.”

  Jonathan resumed humming. Alice was wondering whether there would be anywhere else to sleep, if she began looking now. Surely one of the rooms in the lodge had girls only and a spare bed. She rose from the bed and headed for the door.

  Jonathan sat up, swinging his legs from the bed. “I can leave if you want. It’s your room, you came before me.”

  She looked at him. “Then why are you here?”

  “Same reason you are—nowhere else to go.” He looked reasonable enough. “I’m planning to sleep in my clothes. You should do the same. There’s no heat in here, by morning the room will be really cold.”

  He crawled under the covers of the other bed, as though to show he was harmless. She had shared rooms with her brother on family trips, and Jonathan was behaving more as a brother than as some guy she should fear. She removed her shoes and got in bed. Then she pulled up the covers and gazed through the window at the cedar grove, dimly lit by the glow from the lodge. Jonathan turned off the lamp. Soon he was breathing steadily. Unable to sleep, she pondered the day.

  As usual, there had been no plan—only Andy running wild. All the same, the day had been clarifying. She’d been duped again, brought here for group bonding—some form of community or even family—and then offered anarchy. One by one, they’d made her feel she was to blame for the problem she was having at Other Paths—Raymond, Jonathan, and Maya. They’d judged her for not following along, for being uneasy in someone else’s world. No, she would be losing nothing by leaving; she would be glad to go.

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, as glimmers of dawn seeped through the room, she became aware of an arm draped over her shoulder. It was Jonathan. Her head was very cold, and although she was confused to find him there, confining her, it seemed, she knew that in the absence of his body she would have woken from the cold long before. She turned her head; he was looking at her. He moved to press his mouth to hers, but she pulled away, leaving Jonathan and the bed and the room for the early-morning canyon.

  The lawn lay in morning shadow; no one was up. She’d known that Jonathan would make a move and that she would refuse, but she was surprised by the sense of deliverance she was feeling, as though she’d just escaped. For a moment, she wanted to laugh: someday she would walk in the woods—but by then Jonathan would be gone, and she’d have someone else. Jonathan was a good enough guy; things were just all wrong.

  By midmorning, she was in the van with the others, all but Andy, heading for Berkeley. Raymond had assembled them on the lawn and informed them of the dreadful doom: they had been commanded to leave as soon as they reasonably could. The group in the van was subdued, even chagrined. Hardly anyone spoke; they stared uncomfortably at the floor or through the windows on ever-fleeing trees. Confused and scared of returning home, Alice pondered what she’d done wrong—though nothing had happened, she’d shared a bed with a boy, when she should have found a room in the lodge. Furthermore, what reason would she give her mother and Charles—he’d flown up, and they’d been planning a weekend alone—for coming home early? She hoped her mother and Charles would be too absorbed in each other to probe and pry; there had been so many days when she’d feared being caught, but no one had cared to know—or maybe they’d already come to conclusions and chose to do nothing.

  Raymond was in full swing. “You’re gonna have to learn,” he was saying, “or we’re gonna lose the school. They’re praying we mess up. I know, you were just in the woods, doing some reefer, the girls were learning about those bulges in the boys’ pants—and that’s okay. But man, when you’re smoking dope in the lodge, or making goddamn bonfires, then suddenly it’s not so cool. There’s no blaming me—everyone helped put us where we are—and I mean everyone.”

  They huddled speechless in the van, shoulders touching as they rounded the curves.

  The van slowed. They’d come through the hills onto Tunnel Road.

  “Alice, you’re first,” called Raymond. Then, seeming to read her mind, he demanded, “Are your mom and dad gonna be home?”

  “Yes, my mother and Charles.”

  “Same problem. What are you gonna say?” The van rounded a corner only blocks from her house.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Say we were bounced out,” Raymond snapped, “and soon they’ll know everything. How many beds and who was in them and—you know?”

  Several heads turned to survey her.

  “Then your mom complains—”

  Someone coughed.

  “—and we’re closed down.”

  “That wo
uld be very uncool,” remarked the boy who played drums.

  Raymond resumed. “Everyone’s gonna fill in the blanks with something banal—‘Oh my God, Jimmy and Mary Jane having sex’ or whatever they imagine we do at Other Paths. ‘Oh no, they were running naked through the woods. They had an orgy in the swimming pool—’”

  “There was no swimming pool,” Jonathan corrected.

  “I know, and even if there was, it’s February. But all you need is a good rumor, and we’re defunded.”

  “We understand, Ray.” From the front, Helen managed to sound in charge, though she was fifteen and he was twenty-three.

  “I have to be sure Alice knows how things are,” Raymond snapped. “She’s younger than you guys and newer to the school.”

  Jonathan turned to Alice. “Some of us were bored and came home early.”

  Raymond nodded. “That should be good enough.”

  “She’s cool, Raymond.”

  Alice pondered the problem. She could choose: her mother and Charles would never know what had happened, unless she informed on the school. And as everyone knew, she was younger than the others and a newcomer. Though she would be moving on, how could she betray them? Anyway, there had been no naked forays in the woods, no orgy in the swimming pool—no swimming pool, even.

  “I’m just saying be careful,” added Raymond. “Understand how rumors can be used. Look how the government uses false rumors to harass people who challenge it.”

  Helen combed her fingers through her hair. “That’s enough, Ray. We all fathom.”

  The van pulled up by the curb on Forest Avenue. Near the door, Jonathan leaned down on the handle. Alice made her way through a tangle of feet. When she was safely on the ground, she turned and glanced back.

  “Take it easy,” called Raymond.

  “Bye.” She heard the door close with a crash as the van rumbled from the curb. She reached the porch, feeling confused and scared. She’d learned from her father never to be renegade from the group. Now she would be tested.

  AS ALICE ENTERED the house, just before noon, her mother and Charles could be heard in the living room. He was eagerly spinning a tale—an unusual thing for a father to do—and her mother was laughing. The laugh was new, though the mode of conversation was becoming familiar: Charles holding forth in some eager way, a glass in one hand, as her mother appeared enthralled by the performance. There was a long gasp; the laughter rose in a crescendo, broke, and tapered off. They were engaged with each other—a promising development, for that meant they would be heedless of her return, leaving her a chance to steal up to her room, make a plan, and then come down to them with some plausible story of the retreat.