Hide and Seek

The basement is compartmentalized, like a mother. Our side is wood-paneled, carpeted, with fluorescent lights that buzz when they're beginning to burn out. Old jam jars line one wall, each holding ten or twenty orange-and-black fireflies. They don't live very long, and Harry wonders if it's right to keep them until they pile up, dead.

The other side of the basement—where Harry is hiding now—has a steel-and-wood skeleton and a pipe-and-wire cardiovascular system and dirty, yellow, insular fat. Its peeling brown paper skin is stamped with OWENS CORNING in thick, red letters.

I stand in the triangle of faint yellow light that peeks in from our side of the basement. Small-bodied for his age, Harry shivers in the darkest corner, behind the squat water heater.

It's so quiet, I can hear him breathing.

"Harry?"

Of course he doesn't answer.

I move toward the storage room. I pull open the door and grope for the cord to turn on the light. It's not there. I shuffle a foot or two into the darkness, both hands out in front of me, but I still can't find it.

Panic builds. I look over my shoulder, startled by the idea that someone lurking outside, behind the tool cabinet—not Harry, but someone unknown, unknowable—is tiptoeing up to close the door and lock me in.

I hear a rustling on the other side of the wall and take an unthinking step backward. Something taps me on the back of the head.

"Jesus!"

It's only the cord.

"Shaun?"

Harry's stepped out from behind the water heater. I pretend not to hear him. Two houses down, Mr. Riley starts his lawnmower.

I tug the cord and blink against the sudden brightness. I glance around, pretend I'm looking for Harry. There are plenty of places to hide in here, little cubbies behind or in between boxes or old suitcases. The platform Dad built for the train leans against one wall of the makeshift room, another hiding place for a boy as small as Harry. A long, lone cobweb drapes across one shelving unit like an old party streamer.

There are boxes of Christmas lights and glass icicles and lawn ornaments in the shape of candy canes. There are stacks of old books. There are objects with no meaning to me whatsoever except as things that have always been stored in this basement. Harry's old high chair stands in the corner. I stare at it for a long time, knowing, somehow, that there will never be another baby to sit in it.

I reach for the cord and turn off the light. It's time to "find" Harry.

He's singing behind the water heater.

I pull the door closed behind me, thinking of the jars of dead or dying fireflies and the strange yearning I felt as I cupped them, their yellow light seeping from between my fingers.

I feel like hiding. I never want to be "It" again.