She wakes up at two o’clock on the morning after the dance, with her hands pressed over her mouth to hold in a scream, still in the grip of the most vivid nightmare she’s ever had. In it, she looked out the window over the kitchen sink and saw Henry sitting in the tire swing (which Gwendy’s dad actually took down a year ago). He had the button box in his lap. Gwendy rushed out, shouting at him, telling him not to press any of the buttons, especially not the black one.
Oh, you mean this one? Henry asked, grinning, and jammed his thumb down on the Cancer Button.
Above them, the sky went dark. The ground began to rumble like a live thing. Gwendy knew that all over the world, famous landmarks were falling and seas were rising. In moments—mere moments—the planet was going to explode like an apple with a firecracker stuffed in it, and between Mars and Venus there would be nothing but a second asteroid belt.
“A dream,” Gwendy says, going to her bedroom window. “A dream, a dream, nothing but a dream.”
Yes. The tree is there, now minus the tire swing, and there’s no Henry Dussault in sight. But if he had the box, and knew what each button stood for, what would he do? Push the red one and blow up Hanoi? Or say the hell with it and push the light green one?
“And blow up all of Asia,” she whispers. Because yes, that’s what the buttons do. She knew from the first, just as Mr. Farris said. The violet one blows up South America, the orange one blows up Europe, the red one does whatever you want, whatever you’re thinking of. And the black one?
The black one blows up everything.
“That can’t be,” she whispers to herself as she goes back to bed. “It’s insane.”
Only the world is insane. You only have to watch the news to know it.
When she comes home from school the next day, Gwendy goes down to the basement with a hammer and a chisel. The walls are stone, and she is able to pry one out in the farthest corner. She uses the chisel to deepen this hidey-hole until it’s big enough for the button box. She checks her watch constantly as she works, knowing her father will be home at five, her mother by five-thirty at the latest.
She runs to the tree, gets the canvas bag with the button box and her silver dollars inside (the silver dollars are now much heavier than the box, although they came from the box), and runs back to the house. The hole is just big enough. And the stone fits into place like the last piece of a puzzle. For good measure, she drags an old bureau in front of it, and at last feels at peace. Henry won’t be able to find it now. Nobody will be able to find it.
“I ought to throw the goddamned thing in Castle Lake,” she whispers as she climbs the cellar stairs. “Be done with it.” Only she knows she could never do that. It’s hers, at least unless Mr. Farris comes back to claim it. Sometimes she hopes he will. Sometimes she hopes he never will.
When Mr. Peterson comes home, he looks at Gwendy with some concern. “You’re all sweaty,” he says. “Do you feel all right?”
She smiles. “Been running, that’s all. I’m fine.”
And mostly, she is.
7
By the summer after her freshman year, Gwendy is feeling very fine, indeed.
For starters, she’s grown another inch since school let out and, even though it’s not yet the Fourth of July, she’s sporting a killer suntan. Unlike most of her classmates, Gwendy has never had much of a suntan before. In fact, the previous summer was the first summer of her life that she’d dared to wear a swimsuit in public, and even then, she’d settled on a modest one-piece. A granny suit, her best friend Olive had teased one afternoon at the community swimming pool.
But that was then and this is now; no more granny suits this summer. In early June, Mrs. Peterson and Gwendy drive to the mall in downtown Castle Rock and come home with matching flip-flops and a pair of colorful bikinis. Bright yellow and even brighter red with little white polka dots. The yellow bathing suit quickly becomes Gwendy’s favorite. She will never admit it to anyone else, but when Gwendy studies herself in the full-length mirror in the privacy of her bedroom, she secretly believes she resembles the girl from the Coppertone ad. This never fails to please her.
But it’s more than just bronzed legs and teeny-weenie polka dot bikinis. Other things are better, too. Take her parents, for instance. She would’ve never gone so far as to label mom and dad as alcoholics—not quite, and never out loud to anyone—but she knows they used to drink too much, and she thinks she knows the reason for this: somewhere along the way, say about the time Gwendy was finishing up the third grade, her parents had fallen out of love with each other. Just like in the movies. Nightly martinis and the business section of the newspaper (for Mr. Peterson) and sloe gin fizzes and romance novels (for Mrs. Peterson) had gradually replaced after-dinner family walks around the neighborhood and jigsaw puzzles at the dining room table.
For the better part of her elementary school years, Gwendy suffered this familial deterioration with a sense of silent worry. No one said a word to her about what was going on, and she didn’t say a word to anyone else either, especially not her mother or father. She wouldn’t even have known how to begin such a conversation.
Then, not long after the arrival of the button box, everything began to change.
Mr. Peterson showed up early from work one evening with a bouquet of daisies (Mrs. Peterson’s favorites) and news of an unexpected promotion at the insurance office. They celebrated this good fortune with a pizza dinner and ice cream sundaes and—surprise—a long walk around the neighborhood.
Then, sometime early last winter, Gwendy noticed that the drinking had stopped. Not slowed down, but completely stopped. One day after school, before her parents got home from work, she searched the house from top to bottom, and didn’t find a single bottle of booze anywhere. Even the old fridge out in the garage was empty of Mr. Peterson’s favorite beer, Black Label. It had been replaced by a case of Dad’s Root Beer.
That night, while her father was getting spaghetti from Gino’s, Gwendy asked her mother if they had really quit drinking. Mrs. Peterson laughed. “If you mean did we join AA or stand in front of Father O’Malley and take the pledge, we didn’t.”
“Well… whose idea was it? Yours or his?”
Gwendy’s mother looked vague. “I don’t think we even discussed it.”
Gwendy left it there. Another of her father’s sayings seemed applicable: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
And just a week later, the cherry on top of this minor miracle: Gwendy walked out into the back yard to ask her father for a ride to the library and was startled to find Mr. and Mrs. Peterson holding hands and smiling at each other. Just standing there in their winter coats with their breath frosting the air, looking into each other’s eyes like reunited lovers of Days of Our Lives. Gwendy, mouth gaping open, stopped in her tracks and took in this tableau. Tears prickled her eyes. She hadn’t seen them looking at each other that way in she couldn’t remember how long. Maybe never. Stopped dead in her tracks at the foot of the kitchen stoop, her earmuffs dangling from one mittened hand, she thought of Mr. Farris and his magic box.
It did this. I don’t know how or why, but it did this. It’s not just me. It’s like a kind of… I don’t know…
“An umbrella,” she whispered, and that was just right. An umbrella that could shade her family from too much sun and also keep the rain off. Everything was okay, and as long as a strong wind didn’t come up and blow the umbrella inside out, things would stay okay. And why would that happen? It won’t. It can’t. Not as long as I take care of the box. I have to. It’s my button box now.