Chapter 5 - Hidden
The darkness didn’t really bother him. At home darkness often meant security. No one could find him in the dark. If they couldn’t find him then they couldn’t mess with him. If they couldn’t mess with him then he could relax. And he did. The tight space beneath the counter, beside the file cabinet was just right for hiding. Joshua knew hiding places. No one would believe he could fit in here. He was good at fitting into tight places and disappearing. He disappeared a lot.
It wasn’t the dark that made him uncomfortable. It was the cold. At first the tight little space had felt warm, like the air outside. But the metal side of the file cabinet and the concrete wall he was squeezed between were cold and they pulled his body heat into themselves and gave nothing back. Goose bumps scattered over the skin of his arms and his legs. Shorts and a t-shirt had been fine outside in the summer sun. In here it was dry and air conditioned. He started to shiver.
He wasn’t sure he liked air conditioning. They didn’t have any at home. To keep cool his mother had bought a big fan shaped like a box and set it in front of the sliding glass doors to the balcony of their apartment. He loved to sit in front of it. The breeze it made was cool enough to feel better, but not too cool to make him shiver. He wanted to sleep on the floor in front of the fan, but instead of saying yes, his mother had chosen to scare him with horror stories of fans that fell on little children and pulled them into the plastic screen when their hair got caught in the fan blades. Her stories hadn’t scared him. His hair was too short to get caught and he knew it. But clothes could get caught in the blades. She had shown him that. It took him several long minuets to get the tattered t-shirt out of the fan blades. It was hard to pull the material out when the plastic grate was tight against your body. He never got close to the fan after that.
In the distance he heard a door shut followed by the clicking of the woman’s shoes. The lights in the hallway came on as she walked around the corner. She came to a stop in front of the room he was hiding in and stood there. Then she took two steps and the room lights came on, too. He watched as her shoes turned to go, turned back, and then turned and left, clicking their way further down the hall. Another door closed somewhere further along. When it grew quiet Joshua peeked out and looked around.
The room was mostly white and grey. There were four counters with stools tucked under them. There was stuff up on the counters, but he had no idea what the stuff was. There were cabinets by the room door and a big white thing on the wall. Someone had written a bunch of scribbles all over it. Next to it, hanging off the seat of another stool, was a white shirt. If he was quick and quiet, he could grab it and get back to his hiding place before anyone would know. The shirt would be warm. It would keep the cold air off his arms. If he tucked his legs up tight it might cover them, too. He squeezed out of the space and crawled as quickly as he could to the stool, snatched the shirt off the seat, and scrambled back as fast as he could go.
In the cramped hiding space he struggled to pull the shirt around his shoulders. He could hear the woman coming back, the door had opened and smacked the wall somewhere down the hall and her shoes were clicking towards his room again. He grabbed his ankle and pulled his left leg in as hard as he could. One of the shirt sleeves fell off his lap and into the lit space beyond his hiding place. She would see it if she looked. He reached out and jerked it, pulling it into his lap and holding his breath. Her shoes stopped in the doorway. They took a few steps into the room, stood quietly for a moment and then turned and left. Joshua held his breath, wanting the lights in the room to go out. Wanting the lights in the hall way to turn off. Wanting the darkness that would keep him safely hidden. A moment later the room went dark, and then the hall.
Joshua took a tentative breath. Nothing happened. He shivered a little less under the shirt in his tight little space and after ten minutes of silence and darkness he fell asleep.
~ Peace and security
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