The teacher’s attention was drawn to the wayward book, only after she had doled them out and was left herself without. Her beady eyes swept the room and fell upon my small form clutching my treasure. In a short but forceful battle, my prize was ripped from my grasp and all I was left with was the snappish ‘You can’t even read!’ to console myself with.
As the assembly hall around me filled with the chorus of my fellows I sat there silent, letting my insides smoulder with rage at the injustice of it all. Every ounce of my being was focused on hatred: hatred of the corrupt woman who had stole my trophy, hatred at the students around me who held their books at just such an angle that I couldn’t glimpse a word.
As I sieved my mind finally came across my revenge. From my cramped seat on the hall floor I could just distinguish the distant door of the school library. I had never been allowed near this room; in fact no student was given permission to enter until at least the fourth year. That was where I could read. That was where they couldn’t steal my pleasure. That was where I was going.
It was the easiest thing in the world for a small child to slip into the office in the bustle of four hundred students exiting the hall for their various classrooms. Some how the key found its way off its hook and into my pocket. Silently, ever so silently I crept back pass the buzzing lessons, glancing round every corner for the imaginary jailer that awaited. My heat fluttered like a giddy butterfly and I jumped at every slight noise. Finally the door came into slight; I ran the last few steps to it, twisted the key in the lock slipped through and slammed it behind me, a wall of protection from my enemies.
My imagination had held me engrossed with pictures of the wonders that awaited me. Perhaps shelf upon shelf of books, great piles of them stacked to the sky, with glossy, embossed covers. No, my sight slammed painfully into the blackness that enveloped me.
The room was an impenetrable black, a darkness consuming all it touched. I instinctively pressed myself back up against the wall as if to flee from this monster that had ensnared me. The shadows lurched towards me, and the dark press upon me. My hand wandered along the wall above my head, desperately searching for a light switch that could not be found. The rest of me cowered beneath, shielded by my remaining appendage. Through my panic I realised that the switch might be several feet above my head and thus I had no chance to bring light to the room. I had reached my limit now and decided the only sensible course of action would be to open the door and flood the room from the hallway.
My groping hand eventually came across the doorframe and I pushed-nothing happened. I heaved, pressed with both hands, threw my entire body weight at it-still nothing happened. Terror shot through me as my mind brought a reason for the immovable door. The key-it was no longer clasped in my grubby little hand but exactly where I had left it, in the keyhole on the other side of the door. As the door had slammed behind me, the key had twisted back and locked me in. Locked me in the dark. All on my own in the dark. I screamed.
It seemed like I spent ages inside my prison before the teachers, firstly noticed I was missing, and secondly found out where I was. In that time I had mastered the courage to explore the room through a touch-based investigation. It was the most frustrating thing in the world, however, when my fingers finally caressed the spines of the books I had been searching for. There were so many, and yet not a one could I read, enclosed as I was in shadow.
I must say though, it wasn’t a completely wasted expedition. As the school searched the corners of the earth for me, the police and my mother were called. I was over the moon to be graced with the privileged of wearing a real policeman’s hat, and my mother blamed the school for this entire incident so it wasn’t long before I got moved on. I never got back the books that woman took off me but the St. Anne’s school copy of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ still dwells happily on a shelf of mine with a key kept safely inside the front page.
