u/Remarkable-Tax2085

This was a novella from between 1984 and 1988, published as part of a mainstream young adult subscription program; most likely Weekly Reader.

As for the plot, a girl was living alone with her mother in a country house during a drought. One hot summer day, escaping her chores, she descended to the cellar where there was an old-fashioned cistern (an unlidded concrete cylinder built into the floor). She climbed up to lie along its rim, fell in, and remained trapped for hours, her cries unheard by her mother vacuuming two floors above.

The atmosphere was meant to be quietly unsettling rather than overtly frightening but the writing had enough atmospheric intelligence to have lodged in my memory for several decades.

Physically it was a paperback, approximately 5 x 8 x 5/8 inches, with a warm-toned cover.

This was a novella from between 1984 and 1988, published as part of a mainstream young adult subscription program; most likely Weekly Reader.

As for the plot, a girl is living alone with her mother in a country house during a drought. One hot summer day, escaping her chores, she descended to the cellar where there was an old-fashioned cistern (an unlidded concrete cylinder built into the floor). She climbed up to lie along its rim, fell in, and remained trapped for hours, her cries unheard by her mother vacuuming two floors above.

The atmosphere was meant to be quietly unsettling rather than overtly frightening but the writing had enough atmospheric intelligence to have lodged in my memory for several decades.

Physically it was a paperback, approximately 5 x 8 x 5/8 inches, with a warm-toned cover.