She took the car down the wide suburban arcades where the leaves were falling. (Where did I hear the phrase “the perfumed arcades of autumn”—was it English class?)

I used to think the world was some strange and sheltered place, but now it just seems bizarre, cold, and full of interest. Maybe I just thought I was too complex for Adela, or maybe she felt this, and that’s what frustrated her for a few days, and drew her into my orbit, or me into hers—even to the extent that she was ready to show me this other side of her. Person to person, tête-à-tête, Adela to me, unfiltered. Or maybe this was a seduction.  

It wasn’t long before I realized where she was driving me.
“The high school?”
She looked over at me in the mirror. “Yeah. You don’t wanna?”
“I don’t care, actually.”
“Good.” She turned her eyes toward the road, and we were lost in our own thoughts until we arrived at the school. She left the car under a shade tree at the back of the parking lot. There were no other cars on the premises, not even the janitor’s. Because the doors were all locked and bolted from the inside, and neither Adela nor I (as far as I knew) had keys, I wondered how she expected to get inside the building.

But I shouldn’t have. When we were two feet from the door, Adela shrank me to a quarter-inch in size, and then told me to crawl underneath the door. My clothes fell away, and in my bare skin I felt strangely vulnerable.  (Even so, there was no reason for me to feel this way, because only Adela could see me.) The crevice was a tight squeeze—almost too tight—and I got some abrasions on the balls of my palms, from rubbing them against the gravel banked up by the wind against the door. One last flick with Adela’s shiny blue index finger dislodged me from the gap and knocked me through all the way to the other side. I stood up, and Adela whispered to me under the crevice, her warm, moist breath rich with the smell of coffee and maple syrup.

“Now walk down to the side-door of the gymnasium, and let me in,” she said. The sibilant “S” sound in “gymnasium” poured over me like a thick, Caribbean wind, and almost laid me low on the ninety-year old (c. 1920s) terrazzo floor. (The floor was gross to me when I was at my full height, but it was beyond disgusting to me at a quarter-inch—I won’t even attempt to describe it.)

Adela restored me to my original size. Even though I knew the school was empty, I instinctively covered my nakedness. (What if there were cameras around—and there weren’t. But how the hell would I explain a photograph or a news-story like that to my parents—or to the town?) I ran down the hall to the gym, feeling like a complete idiot. If this was Adela’s idea of a good time, then I had a few more questions for her.

The gym smelled like wax and ninety years of daily workouts, and the floor was as dusty and gross as ever. I was conscious of only one thought, during my run, and I repeated that thought to myself about a hundred times in a row: “I hate this goddamn school.”

I quickly ran to the side door and opened it, as instructed. The day was cold and breezy, and the smell of rotting leaves, and grass-clippings, filled the cavernous room. About twenty feet away, Adela was walking across the lawn at a leisured pace, watching the ground. She looked up as the door creaked open, and jogged the last few steps. She wasn’t carrying my outfit.
“Where are my clothes?” I asked, almost panicking.
Her eyes were wide, “Oh….Oh no. I’m so sorry, Martin.”
I was speechless, horrorstruck. There was a deafening silence—and then she cracked a smile and duly produced the little bundle from her backpack.
“You…little…you…well.” (I was so close to saying the word, but held it back.)
“Good one,” she smirked. “I couldn’t resist. Sorry.”

We walked the halls, past Adela’s locker, to the auditorium. I wondered to myself if she kept any slaves inside her locker, for use during school. It seemed possible—and maybe probable—but I didn’t ask. Our voices echoed in the dank and chilly air, as we walked down the center aisle. Adela sat down on the edge of the stage and dangled her legs. I settled down beside her. It was like the old times.

“So now you know,” Adela said.
“Yeah.” I looked around, thinking. “I know some things, but there are other things that confuse me.”
“Hm.” She mused for a minute, kicking her heels absently against the wooden panels. “Do you like being a slave?”
I remembered that Adela asked this question when I was writing the last chapter, and answered it there.
“Oh,” she said, stilling her heels and looking off toward one of the windows, where white light filtered through. “I wouldn’t tell Mom that you enjoy it.”
“Why not?”
“I just wouldn’t,” she paused in thought “You can tell me that you enjoy it, and I’d understand.” She gave me a seductive smile. “But not Mom. Holly wouldn’t understand.”

All at once, a little speech formed itself inside me. I had something to say. “I’ve spent the last month trying to live with you and Holly to the best of my ability, and trying to learn how to cope with the changes she’s inflicted and is planning to inflict on the world—mine and yours and everyone’s. I think she would want to hear that, because it’s true.”
"It may be true, but it’s irrational, I think.”
“Well, Joel liked it. Richard liked it. Have you seen Meredith lately?”
“Okay, and there are like a million others, Martin. But you don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?”
She sighed. “Holly. That was the service. She punished men by handing them what they desired most: Her.” 
I was silent.“Have you seen Dad, yet?” she asked.
“Yes. On the first day.”
“Well, that’s not what Holly wanted to happen. That’s what he wanted. But to give it to him, she had to take everything else away. That’s what happens to all the people who want to be slaves. They get what they want, and they find out that when they get satisfaction, when they get their greatest desire, all it really is is a big, lifelong punishment. I said that something always goes wrong. And it does.”
“Holly hates them?”
“No. She loathes them.”
“What about you?”
“Well, I’m not like that,” she said. “I don’t think all men should be slaves—only those that want to be. But if you get inside Mom’s head, that’s what she really thinks. And that’s why she gets angry and frustrated every time some dumb sap proves her right. And that anger leads her to seek out new slaves. It just goes on in a vicious circle.”
“Ah,” I said. “Keep talking. This is fascinating.”
“Fascinating, huh?” she grinned. “Wait till next week.”
“The truth is, I’m learning to live with my life.” And I thought to myself: But if what you’re telling me is true, then I won’t ever be happy if I stay with Holly. The moment I find myself happy, she’ll punish me for succumbing.
“I don’t think you should,” Adela said.
“What do you mean?”
She winked, and started kicking her heels again. “I think you should ditch Mom and come with me.”

The five or six competing narratives began to fall away in my mind, and for the first time I seemed to have the true story in front of me. The true story of Holly, Adela, Holly’s husband, and the rest of the slaves. My true story. Clarity came to me at last that afternoon, and I realized that I trusted Adela. Possibly she had led me around to the diner, theater, car, and school to seduce me—but it was obvious that she also wanted me to be seduced by her.

And if I rejected her this time, she would forever be against me. But if I accepted—then, maybe, she could offer me a security, or a lease on life, which Holly would never consent to. I believed Adela’s story. Holly punished devotion, and Adela rewarded it. It was that simple. I witnessed it firsthand, but just hadn’t really seen it until Adela fleshed it out for me in words.

In any case, here were my options: if I went with Adela, then Holly wouldn’t have to know about it immediately—so I might be able to change my mind, or finagle around it. But if I rejected her, then everything was over between us. I would have an enemy in her, and I knew that if she ever forgave me, it wouldn’t happen for a long time. The choice was easy, and I made it.

“Okay, Adela. I’ll go with you,” I said.
“Yay!” she clapped her hands. “I’m so glad.”
“But it can’t be out in the open, even though I have confidence in Holly—“
“So pessimistic,” she waved me off with her hand. “She won’t know until I tell her. Trust me.”
“All right. I trust you.” Did I?

We talked for a while on the stage, after that pact was concluded. She told me stories about school, dramas she’d acted in, parts she’d played. Then she told me stories about home, about her father and mother, her childhood, and the previous two years. We stopped talking, and then walked through the halls for an hour, stopping in front of her locker (there was no one inside), and mine (which was cleared of all the books and papers, and filled with letters and rotted roses and mums). We opened the library door and sat around in the aisles, reading and talking, until the late afternoon—and then heard a noise. Someone was opening the door of a classroom adjacent to the library. “That’s the janitor,” said Adela. “We should go.”

She took off her right sneaker and sock, and then gave me a look that said, “Play time’s over.”
“Now?” I was unsure.
“Yes. Now.” She shrank me down to three inches, and then picked me up underneath her smelly toes.
I said, “Adela—” but the rest was muffled inside her sock.
“Hush, now,” I heard her say, as she pounded me into the insole of her sneaker. “Don’t ruin the afternoon.”

As she began to walk, and the full scent and heat of her moist foot overmastered my senses, it dawned on me. I had fallen for her. Adela had actually convinced me to become her personal slave.