The first thing she did was put her suitcases back in her bedroom. Whether they had noticed she was gone or not, she didn't want them to come back and find those suitcases. Then she closed her bedroom door and went directly to Simon's room. He wasn't there. The room was black and the door was open, and everything had a strange blank look.
Downstairs, she poured herself a glass of milk from the refrigerator and then wandered through the rooms drinking the milk and switching on every light she came across. Soon all in the house were on, but it didn't seem to change things. When the motor in the refrigerator started up she jumped a little, half frightened for a second. Then she set down the glass of milk and walked very slowly and deliberately out of the house, with that feeling of loneliness prickling the back of her neck as she walked.
The way the music was pouring out, she couldn't identify the voices from Ansel's window. All she heard was words and phrases, and occasional laughter. She stopped at the Potters' window and peered in, but not a single light glimmered there, not even from the very back of the house. They couldn't be far, then. If they planned to be gone for any length of time they turned all the lamps on and sat up a cardboard silhouette of a man reading that was guaranteed to fool burglars. And they couldn't be in bed; it was no later than ten o'clock. She turned away from the window and looked out at the yard, hoping they might come walking up, but they didn't. The only thing left to do was to go on to Ansel's.
No one answered when she knocked. It was too noisy for them to hear her. She opened the screen and knocked once more on the inner door, hard, and then she heard Ansel say, 'Wait! Did someone knock?'
'I didn't hear anyone,' said Miss Lucy.
Joan knocked again, and Ansel said, 'See!' She felt the doorknob twist beneath her hands; then Ansel was standing there, swaying slightly and smiling at her, leaning his cheek against the edge of the door. 'Came back, did you,' he said.
'What?'
‘I saw you go.'
'I don't-'
'But I didn't tell,' he said, and then swung the door all the way open and threw back one arm to welcome her. 'Look what we got!' he called to the others. 'Who we got. See?'
Joan stepped inside and looked around her. The room was full; it looked as if someone had tipped the house endwise so that everyone had slid down to James's parlour. Now they sat in one smiling, rumpled cluster – the Potter sisters, the Pikes, Ansel, and James. When Ansel shouted at them they all turned toward Joan and waved, with their faces calm and friendly. The only one who seemed surprised was Simon. He stood up, and said, 'Joan!' but she frowned at him. 'Hush,' she said. The voices rose again, returning to whatever they'd been talking about before. Simon shouted, 'What?'
'I said, "Hush"!' called Joan.
'Oh, I didn't tell. It was like I promised you, I didn't-'
The rest of his words were drowned out, but Joan understood his meaning. Nobody had told. Maybe they thought she'd just been to a movie, or off visiting. Maybe they knew that wherever she'd gone, she'd be back. And now they sat here, cheerful and in a party mood -but what was the party about? Just by looking, she couldn't tell. Miss Lucy and Miss Faye were making a silhouette of James – Miss Lucy holding a lamp up so that James winced in the light of it, and Miss Faye tracing the shadow of his wincing profile on a sheet of paper held against the wall. But that was something they always did; some instinct seemed to push them into making silhouettes at parties, and now everyone in the house had at least one silhouette of everyone else. Nor could she tell anything from Mr Pike, who seemed to be a little tiddly from some wine he was drinking out of a measuring cup. He sat smiling placidly at something beyond Joan's range of vision, tapping one finger against the cup in time to a jazz version of 'Stardust' that the radio was sawing out. And the person who confused her most was Mrs Pike, sitting in a chair in the corner with her hands folded but her eyes alert to everything that was going on. 'Fourteen!' she called out; she seemed to be counting the swallows Simon took from his own glass of wine. But her voice was lost among all the other voices, and Joan had to read her lips. She turned to Ansel, to see if he could explain all this. He had lain back on his couch now, like an emperor at a Roman festival, and when he saw her look his way he smiled and waved.
'Have a seat!' he shouted. He pointed vaguely to several chairs that were already occupied. 'We're celebrating.'
'Oh,' Joan said. 'Celebrating.'
'Simon ran away.'
'What?'
Simon smiled at her and nodded. 'I went to Caraway on a bus,' he said.
'Oh, Simon.'
'I saw those gold earrings.'
'But how did-'
'James and Mama came and got me. They made a special trip,' he said. 'We're drinking Miss Faye's cooking wine.'
Joan felt behind her for a footstool and sat down on it. 'Are you all right?' she asked.
'Sure I am.'
'Oh, I wish I hadn't gone off and -'
'No, really, I'm all right,' said Simon. 'Look, they're letting me have wine. They put ice cubes in it to make it watery but I drink it fast before the ice can melt.'
'That's nice,' Joan said vaguely. She kept looking around at the others. Ansel leaned toward Joan with his own jelly glass of wine and said, 'Drink up,' and thrust it at her, and then lay down again. 'Ansel had to find his own supper tonight,' Simon told her. 'He had one slice of garlic bologna, all dried out. James is going to cook him a steak tomorrow to make up for it.'
Joan took a long swallow of cooking wine and looked over at James. He was swivelling his eyes toward the silhouette while he kept his profile straight ahead, so that he seemed cross-eyed. When he felt Joan looking at him he smiled and called something to her that she couldn't hear, and then Miss Faye said, 'When you talk your nose moves up and down,' and erased the line she had drawn for his nose and left a smudge there. Mr Pike laughed. He clanged when he laughed; it puzzled Joan for a minute, and then she examined him more closely and found in his lap the elephant bell from Mrs Pike's mantlepiece. 'Why has he got that bell?' she asked Simon.
Simon shrugged, and Ansel answered for him. 'He used it while hunting for Simon,' he called. 'Weird thing, ain't it? Such a funny shape it has. Everything Indians do is backwards, seems to me -'
'Fifteen!' Mrs Pike said.
'India Indians, of course,' said Ansel. 'Not American. Hey, James.'
Miss Faye's pencil had just hit the bottom of James's neck. She finished off with that same little bump at the base of it that sculptors put on marble busts, and then James stretched and turned toward Ansel.
'What, 'he said.
'Funny feeling in my feet, James.'
James sighed and rose to go over to the couch. 'Well, thank you, Miss Faye,' he called over his shoulder.
'No trouble at all. Joan, dear, it's your turn.’
'How about Simon?' asked Joan.
'They did me first,' Simon told her. 'I'm the guest of honour.'
'Oh.' She stood up and went over to the Potters, still carrying her glass of wine. 'My hair's not combed,' she told them.
'That's all right, we'll just smooth over that part on the paper. Will you have a seat?'
They sat her down firmly, both of them pressing on her shoulders. The lamp glared at her so brightly that it made a circular world that she sat in alone, facing Miss Lucy's steadily breathing bosom while Miss Faye, strange without gloves, skimmed the pencil around a suddenly too-big shadow of Joan. Outside the circle was the noise, and the beating music and the dark, faceless figures of the others. Their conversation seemed to be blurring together now.