26
Gwendy’s first impulse is to sprint down the hallway, lock her bedroom door, and yank out the button box so she can pull the small lever and devour a magic chocolate treat. She can almost hear the voices chanting in her head: Goodyear! Goodyear! Goodyear!
But she doesn’t do that.
Instead, she closes the toilet lid and sits back down. Let’s see, I bombed my track season, pulled a pair of B’s for the semester (one of them just barely a B, although her parents don’t know that), and I gained weight (six whole pounds!) for the first time in years—and I’m still the happiest I’ve ever been.
I don’t need it, she thinks. More importantly, I don’t want it. The realization makes her head sing and her heart soar, and Gwendy returns to her bedroom with a spring to her step and a smile on her face.
27
The next morning, Gwendy wakes up on the floor of her closet.
She’s cradling the button box in her arms like a faithful lover and her right thumb is resting a half-inch from the black button.
She stifles a scream and jerks her hand away, scrambling like a crab out of the closet. A safe distance away, she gets to her feet and notices something that makes her head swim: the narrow wooden shelf on the button box is standing open. On it is a tiny chocolate treat: a parrot, every feather perfect.
Gwendy wants more than anything to run from the room, slam the door behind her, and never return—but she knows she can’t do that. So what can she do?
She approaches the button box with as much stealth as she can muster. When she’s within a few feet of it, the image of a wild animal asleep in its lair flashes in her head, and she thinks: The button box doesn’t just give power; it is power.
“But I won’t,” she mutters. Won’t what? “Won’t give in.”
Before she can chicken out, she lunges and snatches the piece of chocolate from the little shelf. She backs out of the bedroom, afraid to turn her back on the button box, hurries down the hall into the bathroom, where she hurls the chocolate parrot into the toilet and flushes it away.
And for a while, everything is all right. She thinks the button box goes to sleep, but she doesn’t trust that, not a bit. Because even if it does, it sleeps with one eye open.
28
Two life-changing events occur at the start of Gwendy’s final semester of high schooclass="underline" her college application to study psychology at Brown University is granted an early acceptance, and she sleeps with Harry for the first time.
There’ve been several false starts over the past few months—Gwendy has been on the pill for at least that long—but each time she isn’t quite ready, and gallant Harry Streeter doesn’t pressure her. The deed finally goes down in Harry’s candlelit bedroom on the Friday night of his father’s big work party, and it is every bit as awkward and wonderful as expected. To make the necessary improvements, Gwendy and Harry do it again the next two nights in the back seat of Harry’s Mustang. It’s cramped back there, but it only gets better.
Gwendy runs outdoor track again when spring comes, and places in the top three in her first two meets. Her grades are currently A’s across the board (although History is hovering in the danger zone at 91%), and she hasn’t stepped on a scale since the week before Christmas. She’s done with that nonsense.
She still suffers from the occasional nightmare (the one featuring the well-dressed man with the silver coin eyes continuing to be the most terrifying), and she still knows the button box wants her back, but she tries not to dwell on that. Most days she is successful, thanks to Harry and what she thinks of as her new life. She often daydreams that Mr. Farris will return to take back possession of the button box, relieving her of the responsibility. Or that the box will eventually forget about her. That would sound stupid to an outsider, but Gwendy has come to believe that the box is in some way alive.
Only there will be no forgetting. She discovers this on a breezy spring afternoon in April, while she and Harry are flying a kite in the outfield of the Castle Rock High baseball field (Gwendy was delighted when he showed up at her house with the kite in tow). She notices something small and dark emerge from the tree-line bordering the school property. At first she thinks it’s an animal of some sort. A bunny or perhaps a woodchuck on the move. But as it gets closer—and it seems to head directly at them—she realizes that it’s not an animal at all. It’s a hat.
Harry is holding the spool of string and staring up at the red, white, and blue kite with wide eyes and a smile on his face. He doesn’t notice the black hat coming in their direction, not moving with the wind but against it. He doesn’t notice the hat slow down as it approaches, then suddenly change direction and swoop a complete circle around his horrorstruck girlfriend—almost as if kissing her hello, so nice to see you again—before it skitters off and disappears behind the bleachers that run alongside the third base line.
Harry notices none of these things because it’s a gorgeous spring afternoon in Castle Rock and he’s flying a kite with the love of his young life at his side, and everything is perfect.
29
The first half of May passes in a blur of classes, tests, and graduation planning. Everything from sizing caps and gowns, to sending out commencement notices in the mail, to finalizing graduation night party arrangements. Final exams are scheduled for the week of May 19th and the Castle Rock High School graduation ceremony will take place on the football field the following Tuesday, the 27th.
For Gwendy and Harry, everything is set. After the ceremony is finished, they will change clothes and head to Brigette Desjardin’s house for the biggest and best graduation party in the school. The next morning, they leave for a week-long camping trip to Casco Bay, just the two of them. Once they return home, it will be work at the drive-in for Gwendy and at the hardware store for Harry. In early August, a ten-day vacation at the coast with Harry’s family. After that, it’s on to college (Brown for Gwendy; nearby Providence for Harry) and an exciting new chapter in their lives. They can’t wait.
Gwendy knows she will have to make a decision about what to do with the button box once it’s time to leave for college, but that’s months in the future, and it’s not a priority this evening. The biggest decision facing Gwendy at the moment is which dress to wear to Brigette’s party.
“Good lord,” Harry says, smiling. “Just pick one, already. Or go as you are.” As she is happens to be in bra and panties.
Gwendy gives him a poke in the ribs and turns to the next page in the catalog. “Easy for you to say, mister. You’ll put on jeans and a t-shirt and look like a million bucks.”
“You look like a trillion in your underwear.”
They’re lying on their stomachs on Gwendy’s bed. Harry is toying with her hair; Gwendy is paging through the glossy Brown catalogue. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson are at dinner with neighbors down the block and not expected back until late. Gwendy and Harry came in an hour ago, and Gwendy was mildly surprised to find she didn’t need to use her key. The front door was not only unlocked but slightly ajar. (Her dad is big on locking up; likes to say Castle Rock isn’t the little country town it used to be.) But everyone forgets stuff, plus Dad’s not getting any younger. And with thoughts of the party to occupy them—not to mention thirty minutes of heaven in her bed beforehand—neither notices a few splinters sticking out around the lock. Or the pry marks.