Hide and Seek

*

But right away she scared me.

They all did, actually. All three of them. They were rich kids, for

one thing, and I wasn't used to that.

You should know right off that there was, and is, no more depressed

county in the nation than Washington County. The per capita income is

right up there with, say, Appalachia. Everyone I knew was barely

scraping by. And here were these three rich kids popping around in

Casey's fabulous old white '54 Chevy convertible Steven's blue Chrysler

Le Baron as though tired, sad old Dead Rive were Scarsdale or Beverly

Hills. What in the hell their folks were doing in this part of Maine

at all I never could figure. Mount Deser sure. But DeadRiver? I

knew that the three families were fri enc back in Boston, and I guess

it was somebody's idea of getting awa^ from it all that brought them

there. But I don't think the kids knew either.

They resented it, though. That was for sure. And I think resenting it

made them crazy.

That was what really scared me.

All you had to do was look at them to see it. Casey most of all. You

could see it in her eyes. Something caught in the act of throwing

itself away, right there in front of you.

Recklessness. It scares me. It scares me today.

Because just writing this, that's a kind of recklessness too. It's

going to bring it all back to me and I've kept it down nicely for a

long