Skeleton Key

Towards the end of elementary, an older boy gave me the master key to the school. Weeks later, he would take the key back, but, for a little bit, just before summer began, I had the master key to Queen Elizabeth Elementary.

I did nothing with it initially. Too scared, and, I had enough fear going on with the upcoming transition to high school. I was half-hoping the key wouldn’t work.

But I rode my skateboard to school one night after dinner and I tried the key on a side door. To my terror, the door actually opened. I took a deep breath before propping my skate against a wall and going inside.

I put the key into the door of a classroom. It opened and I stood inside the dim, colorful room. A grid of twilight beaming in through the caged windows.

A loud bang whipped my head around, and I booked it out of there. But it was just my skateboard. It had fallen over. I wanted to go home, back to mom, back to the Nintendo.

But I tried more rooms, the key, it was working on every door. The computer room, where I looked for the Sim City disk. The library, where I ran my hand across the Waldo books. My Teacher is an Alien. The sex-ed book that got the point across while struggling tonally.

The art room, and those watercolor “cakes,” like colorful hockey pucks, the gym. the equipment room. California kickball bases. European handballs. The smell of sweat and rubber. I grabbed a b-ball, fired a shot, but the booming echo when my airball hit the hardwood — i was lit with fear.

I ran to the door and peered down the hallway, waiting for an adult. But nothing. no one was around.

So I spent another hour in there, exploring the forbidden rooms. The vice principal’s office. The nurse’s office. The teacher’s lounge (which didn’t feel like a lounge after all). Not touching anything, just floating around, getting stronger with each room I crossed off. God, This monolithic building. I’d spent seven years in it. and, here it was, at the very end, confessing its secrets. we would part in good faith.

I skated home in the dark. Wiser. Dad had broken himself by then, irreparably it would turn out, and I was going to have to face my fears without him, to take an active role in these kinds of transitions. But maybe there’d be some advantages in having to do that.