Chapter One Begins

"I can't believe I'm here," I thought. So many years had passed. It appeared the same - one story of brown brick walls forming rectangular boxes. As I looked around, I realized how few windows there were on this almost invisible building hiding behind huge grassy mounds. Trees in the distance created a close-knit ring of sentries, always at attention, always standing guard. Even though years had passed and housing developments threatened to connect it to the rest of the world, this building still felt like a self-contained universe, isolated and far away.

"How did it all start, anyway?" I asked myself. Sitting in the car, my head jerked suddenly as I remembered. It started with a letter I read eighteen years earlier when I was fourteen years old - a letter in a magazine I found around the house.

My mother had noticed I was not talking much. She kept asking me why I was quiet all the time, so I gave her the letter.

Her head hung down. Prematurely grey hair made her look older than thirty-seven. After reading the letter she looked up at me, her eyes sad. I couldn't tell what color they were. Sometimes blue, sometimes green, I think they are blue-grey.

"How come she's not saying anything?" I thought she'd be happy.

She looked intently into my face and asked, "Do you want to kill yourself like the boy in the article?"

I was quiet. I didn't know the boy wanted to kill himself. How did I miss that?

He wrote in the letter about being inside an imaginary room in his head - just like I was. Inside my room I imagined a barrier between me and the rest of the world - just like he did. It is self-contained, with a refrigerator, TV, no pressure to go anywhere or do anything.

Sometimes I imagined myself in a small box in the back of my classroom, like a closet with a little window. I would sit and look at the rest of the class, but they were unable to see me. I was protected and alone. I could close my eyes and, with a simple press of a button, watch TV. Press a button - food would instantly appear. Anything I need - presto! He said he had an imaginary room because he couldn't relate to people because of his shyness. Me too. "Didn't he say that in the letter?"

He wrote about his life closing in and darkness surrounding him. But there, at the end, was a light. He wanted to get closer to it. My life had become small, enclosed in darkness with a light. The light was very bright at the end of my tunnel.

I thought the article would explain how I felt, so she would stop wanting me to talk to her about it.

I didn't answer her. What could I say? I didn't know the boy wanted to kill himself. He just felt the way I did. I left her seated at the dining room table. Mom looked so sad. But what could I say?

In my bed, staring at the ceiling, I thought, "Can't she see I'm only trying to express myself to her?" I rolled over on my side and looked at my bedroom. It was the tiniest room in the entire house, like a bird cage perched above our screened-in porch on the second floor. I wondered if it really was a bedroom. I had to go through my sister's room to get to it. There weren't any closets. "Bedrooms are supposed to have closets," I thought, "so the White Zambezi can come out and scare little kids."

"I have a lot of stuff in here," I realized. There was a bed squeezed against three of four walls, a nightstand, a dresser, and a desk. I liked the desk. I didn't do any school work on it but it held my art paper and pencils. We bought it at a yard sale for eighteen dollars. It looked like a piece of furniture on The Danny Thomas Show. "Didn't I read the boy who played Rusty committed suicide?" The desk had three big drawers flanked by long narrow legs. There was a blue satin patch inside a drawer with "Handcrafted by J.B. Van Sciver Co." written on it. I had a two-foot by two-foot square to walk around in. My cocoon was lined with Peter Max posters on dirty, cream-colored walls.

Later that night, as I came down the stairs, I stopped at the bottom step. I heard my father and mother talking. My father was upset. He told my mother they needed to sell the house.

"Why are they talking about selling the house?" I panicked as I thought of losing my room.

My mother said, "No, we don't have to sell the house. I've heard of a public health center in Rockville. I'll call and see if I can find something that will work for us." Money was tight, but it was hard to tell. My younger brothers and sisters and I always had what we needed.

"Who are they talking about?" I wondered.

"To get the help she'll need is going to cost money. Therapy costs a lot of money," he said, "and we just don't have it. If you can't find anything we can afford, we're going to sell the house. We have to do whatever we can. When did Midge give you the letter?"

"They're talking about me!" Startled, I turned quickly, and quietly walked back up the stairs. "Therapy! There's no way I'm gonna get into any car and go anywhere to see a shrink."

I went to my room and turned the old skeleton key, locking the door behind me. The room seemed smaller, even smaller than the day before. I stretched out on my bed, looked out the window and saw the lights from the neighbor's house. There were other lights, but one in particular held my attention. The darkness closed in around it; it looked like a star. I imagined myself in a cockpit of a space ship as I glanced around the darkened room. I imagined all the things necessary for living. "I don't have to go anywhere."

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