A little Gray Building
39
There was no other place that I wanted to be at that moment, the walls cradled me as I pressed against them and the small doors let in a sliver of light that reassured me of the dark. As I got comfortable (ish) I got in position for our famous shadow puppet show, starring dino and bunny! I knew what to do with my hand and I knew what Gracie would do with hers, because it never changed. We used an old flashlight behind our hands to put on the same show over and over again where the dino slowly approaches the bunny and then attacks it. Every time, the bunny (Gracie’s two fingers) got more crumpled and broken as the dino attacked it. I watched this show with joy and pride as my dino hand puppet conquered all its battles against the bunny. We finally laughed so hard that we just couldnt take it and moved onto playing Go Fish. My face was tired and my side hurt from laughing. I laid the flashlight against the wall while leaving it on so that we could still see, and I began to mix up the cards. The cards folded between my fingers as a shuffled them before we began. I dealt each card slowly as they slipped between my small fingers until we each had seven cards. There was barely any room for the cards between us and every time I moved my cards around my elbows ran into the walls. I was so determined to be comfortable that I made it happen, ignoring every new bruise and splinter.
The wood that enclosed us was hard, old, and smelled of rust and mildew. The sent of cardboard also filled my nose as I inhaled in thick air. The wood was unforgiving and we didn’t stand a chance against it. But just looking across from me to see my best friend smiling at me as she winced from the bruising was enough to get me to smile through it too. As we played we ate more and more chocolate chips, we were rebels for stealing them from the kitchen pantry! I grabbed more and more chocolate each time I shoved it into my mouth for the sweet melting flavor. The chocolate let off a beautiful sweet aroma that filled the small space quickly. The cards we held slowest fell out of our hands as we lost interest in the game and began to talk. We continued to ask “What do you wanna do?” But the answer was always the same “I don’t know” because we were happy just where we were, doing nothing except as the same question every time we came back from getting side tracked in a new conversation.
We were having so much fun that we didn’t even realize the time go by, until we heard footsteps on the stairs. The dreaded sound of a mother approaching the gray carpeted floor that would lead to the small guest bedroom that lead to a whole new world that was just for the two of us. We were breaking the rules, but we didn’t care. If we heard the thumping of the stairs we scurried out of the small cupboard like mice. The small doors above our backs making it nearly impossible to escape. As we hit our heads and bent out of shape to get out we laughed and shushed each other as we did so in hopes of not getting caught. We didn’t know the consequences or the safety hazards of the whole thing, we didn’t know anything. We were young and naive and as I crawled out of the small space the only thing on my mind was the girl who laughed with me. As we slammed the trap doors closed I whipped my head around to see the tips of black shoes reaching the top of the stairs. With instinct we jumped onto the bed and acted as naturally as possible while trying to hide how out of breath we were.