The Locked Door

For as long as I could remember, the door at the end of the hall was locked.

My older sister, Hazel, told me once that it didn't use to exist.

But that's impossible.

I tried to ask Damian about it, but he just smiled and told me to leave it alone.

Damian is my older brother, you see.

The door has a white frame.

And yet the rest of our door frames are black.

No one will own up to painting it.

Hazel insists that the door wasn't there before.

Damian just hushes her.

Our cousin Milo brought me out of the room so the adults could talk.

I don't know why they won't let me stay.

Hazel, Damian, and Victoria are allowed to stay.

Milo can too.

He just chooses not to.

I don't say it out loud, but Victoria is my favorite cousin.

She sat with me once, in the hallway.

I was trying to get in the door.

There's a light, turned on in the room.

You can see it at the bottom.

I'm not quite sure what I want there to be in there.

The adults don't talk about the door.

I tried to ask them what it was for.

Victoria explained to me.

"They don't know about the door, Tony. None of the grown ups can see it."

I don't understand that, though.

How can they not see it?

But from what I can tell....

They don't like going up to the third floor.

That's where our bedrooms our, the "kids."

Our grandparents took the room on the ground floor.

My mother, uncle, and aunt got the rooms on the second floor.

Their husband and wives moved in with them.

We got put up on the third floor.

Milo once joked it was separation by generation.

It wasn't very funny to me.

Auntie Rosie laughed though, before sending him out to work in the yard with the rest of the men.

She used to go out with them.

My mother, Uncle Darryl's wife Aunt Maria, and Auntie Rosie's wife Anna would make lunch or dinner inside.

After Micah died, though, Auntie Rosie stays inside.

She adopted him when he was smaller than I am.

He was the first to live on the third floor.

I caught him once, outside the door.

He had told me not to tell anyone he was there.

I still don't know why, but I never told.

After that, he never went back when I was there.

Hazel and Victoria apparently have.

I heard them talking about it.

He was trying to open the door, apparently.

After he died, I searched his room for a key.

Or, even a pair of lockpicks?

If he was trying to get in, he'd have to have something that would open it.

I tried to ask one of my siblings or cousins, but they just laughed.

Victoria pulled me into her room and sat me down.

I listened closely as she explained.

"No one can unlock the door, Anthony. Micah...."

She had paused to sigh, and brushed my hair back from my face.

"Micah set himself an impossible task, alright?

He doesn't have a key, or lockpicks-

I doubt he even tried a bobby pin, that foolish boy."

I don't think she meant for me to hear that last bit.

All the other kids think he was crazy for trying.

But I want to try it, too.

So what does that make me?

I'm not sure I want to ask and find out.

But I know that no matter what, I'm gonna open the locked door.

Even if it kills me.

...

I heard Micah mutter that, the night I found him in front of the door.