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The Secret Room

I knew the secret room wouldn’t stay secret for long. You just can’t trust a sixth grader with stuff like that. Especially one with as big a mouth as Martha Hargrove.

We had a great system. Every Tuesday afternoon, Martha, Brick Morris and I would meet at the abandoned utility closet behind the orchestra room. A broken mop, a filthy sink with a half empty bottle of bleach sitting inside it, and a rusty, yellow bicycle with a single training wheel and a missing seat were the neglected custodians of this musky room.

The three of us would meet for forty-five minutes after school as we waited for Mrs. Morris to pick us up. Brick’s mom was a teacher at a school across town, which gave us plenty of time to explore our secret room while we waited for her. The three of us lived in the same rural southeaster Texas town— cow pastures and rotten marshes were our playground.

The closet was locked but we’d figured a way around that quickly enough. Martha stole a small flat head screwdriver from her dad’s toolbox and turned it diligently into the lock. The door clicked open with little effort. So much for middle school locks.

After dismissal on a fine October Tuesday, we were huddled inside, voices hushed as we waited for the remaining sounds of middle school laughter to fade toward the car pick-up lane and away from our secret. Martha was turning the squeaky handlebars of the rusted yellow bicycle like she always did, staring at the seat post longingly. She desperately wanted to ride the bicycle and was certain the seat would appear if she just stared at the metal post long enough. It never did.

Brick was talking about his upcoming online gaming tournament while I half-heartedly listened. I wasn’t allowed to play games online. Too much damage to my brain, is what my mom would say.

That’s when the strangest thing happened. Martha stopped playing with the handlebars-and yet they continued to move on their own. Rotating back and forth, squeak, squeak, the flat front tire smushed into the concrete floor. The three of us looked at one another and screamed. We pushed each other out of the way to get out of the closet first, Martha rambling about ghosts and invisible child molesters haunting the closet and other such nonsense.

We never went back to our secret space again, always eyeing the door with suspicion and dread. Brick and I occasionally talked about it, wondering exactly what happened that day. We couldn’t explain it. Marth just blabbed to the entire school. She made up some crazy story about a sixth grader, Becky Bordon, that disappeared fifty-years ago around the time the school was built. She said they found her bicycle but not her body. The custodian was suspected in the murder, but it could never be proven. She said Becky was haunting the school, hell bent on redemption.

Nobody believed Martha, of course, but she insisted it was true. She said her grandmother was a friend of Becky’s and told her the story after she ran home and told her about the bicycle incident. She even brought an old, yellowed newspaper clipping of the incident to school to show everyone, but Brick and I figure she photoshopped it in Tech class.

The next week, we saw the custodian fixing the lock. We never bothered to see if a flat head screwdriver would open it again. Martha might be a blubbering liar, but I’d lost my stomach for creepy after-school hiding places.

“Mr Invisible look at the flowers in bloom

You stay in your secret room

always so quizzical!

Mr Invisible.

Mr invisible why don’t you ride on your bike?

Why don’t you do what you like?

You should be physical

Mr Invisible!”

It was nonsense of course, but everytime he heard the 1968 “Toytown” style hit by The Young Groove, Geoff was reduced to a state of panic. After the panic, a dull ache of regret and embarrassment seeped through him and he, momentarily, had to put his head in his hands to hide the frozen horror of his facial expression. Even years later on the morning of his retirement.

Surely the whole office knew, surely the pretty office assistant knew, surely the annoying red faced office wag knew, surely Steve Wright in the Afternoon talking all over the end of song knew. He could see it in their eyes and hear it in the tones of their voices.

When he’d first heard that number, through his sister’s transistor, the shiny new bike given to him on his ninth birthday was standing in the hall, unused, red, and brand new. Dad’s last attempt to make him rough and tumble.

Something rose within him, a purple mist of hope, an urge to be seen, a need to have friends, a desire to be admired, an instinct to inspire parental pride. Like Pinnochio his hope of being a proper boy led him astray.

He walked out on the pavement, a surge of confidence rising in him like a mighty wave and then, with no practice, no helmet and a set of limbs that had always disobeyed him he’d mounted the bike, tottered, …….and crashed.

Watching were the girl next door, the local bully and know-it-all Phillip Coleman……..

The laughter and humiliation stayed with him far longer than the grazes and tormented him like homemade jumpers and Aunties that kissed you. He went back to being Mr Invisible.

He saw Phillip Coleman at a meeting years later and Geoff avoided eye contact, because, though Phillip never mentioned it, he could see a cloud of disdainful memory around him.

Geoff got a life, he had a wife and kids and friends and was only dragged back into his sad childhood occasionally by things like the song or friends suggesting cycling holidays but no one ever called him a confident man. He made very sure his own children had proper cycling lessons early.

On the first Saturday of his retirement, he stood the local community track with 16 children under age of 10 and a jolly plump woman with a disability. He was wearing a helmet, and knee pads and elbow pads. His instructor did not patronise him. He mounted his brand new bike.

He fell over 17 times. But after four hours he could stay up, brake, weave gingerly round cones and, with difficulty, stop at the fake traffic lights.

And since that day the Young Groove and the girl next door and the local bully and know-it-all Phillip Coleman and the pretty office assistant and the annoying, red faced office wag and Steve Wright in the afternoon talking all over the end of the song, have never tried to tease him again.

“Mr Visible!!! Popstar Paedo Unmasked!

Vile Perve Vince Brando, real name Gordon Woodley, of pop band The Young Groove, who reached number one with Mr Invisible, was today exposed as the perpetrator of the Billington Disco scandal. Tearful accuser Linda Greene, 60, named the monster after years of silence…”

It was the height of the Saville Scandal and every paper was finding stories. Gordon Woodley stared into space. He was now a retired carpenter who only sang in church. He’d been invisible since 1973 until this!

In the secrecy of his shed, he looked again at his frayed yellow cuttings preserved in see-through plastic. Him and Kev, the lead guitarist, good looking boys, all hair and moustache, two peas in a pod they’d been.

Had he done it? He didn’t think so. “How could you not “know?” he wondered. It didn’t feel like him but he’d been around in a scene where morals were loose and drugs plentiful. Had he always checked the passports for the ages of groupies?

But this girl said she’d been 13. Surely not. The fact that it was just about possible wreathed him in guilt. What must she think of him? He’d thought of the detail of his pop career as youthful hi-jinx up until now but faced by this narrative, had it been?

He couldn’t bear to put himself or his family through the shame.

His daughter’s bike stood in the corner, she was now 35 but he didn’t have the heart to throw it out. What must she be thinking in Loughbrough? He turned his phone off. What about his wife Dianne? He’d already been seeing her at the time of the alleged incident and yes, before it had got serious he’d been unfaithful once, that he could remember. Perhaps those days were wilder than he’d thought?

What could he remember about the Billington Disco? That he’d taken some uppers just to get him through the gig. There were kids everywhere. Kev had been unusually boisterous. Then. Nothing.

It might be true. It might.

The very thought of the shame and guilt he’d feel if it were, was enough, in his desperation, to make him consume all his prescription heart pills at once. (Not nearly enough to kill him but enough to knock him out.)

He didn’t know how long he’d been there, not hearing anything outside when he finally became aware of someone kicking down the door. It hadn’t worked! A flash of terror! The police!

When he woke in hospital Dianne explained. “You soft idiot! You were never like that! You weren’t capable! I was there at the Billington Disco! I took you home! With Eddie the manager, dozens of people saw you pass out! you never were great at drug-taking. They did the gig without you, with Kev singing! She’s got you confused! As soon as I saw the accusations I knew what had happened. You know what Kev was like and I don’t like to speak ill of the dead but I wouldn’t have put anything past him and well, you looked similar. It wasn’t you Gordon!”

And after a nasty incident involving local vigilantes Gordon gratefully went back to being Mr Invisible helped by a pay out from The Sun. But Linda Greene will never get closure.

Mr Invisible is sitting next to Mr Invisible. Next is Mr Invisible, next to him is Mr Invisible, until finally, me: Mr Invisible. Five Mr Invisibles out for dinner together, all of us skipping the starters, going for the thirty-two-ounce sirloin, because wolfing down two pounds of red meat is the route to abs like Logan. Those abs are so defined, surely the waitress can see them through his shirt.

The other invisibles are taking copious notes on their Logan branded leather pocketbooks – his stance, his smile. The way he corners every attempt to get past him. In my notebook what I’ve mostly written is the number seven hundred, followed by many question marks.

Logan struts as he returns to our table. We spent an hour that morning, leaning how to pimp our walks. We also learnt how to buy expensive shirts, designer shoes, and just how terrible our haircuts are. Logan is teaching us the art of seduction.

He takes his chair. He waits for his audience to grow quiet in expectation. Then he tells us the waitress has a boyfriend. He tells us she has a kid, and she’s working extra shifts to save for a bike for his birthday. He waits for the shock of this news to dissipate across the faces of his disciples. Only then does he unveil the folded piece of paper complete with her phone number.

Logan is our God. He is training us in the ways of the PUA – the Pickup Artist.

I’m too chicken to ask Logan to dial the number.

After dinner we shall hit a club. Logan says he is going to teach us how to neg women. He boasts he gets ten phone numbers a night, and sure, maybe we’ll only manage ten percent of his luck, but that’s one more phone number than either me or any of the invisibles ever manage.

I’m not sure that’s worth seven hundred dollars.

What I’ve learnt so far: Logan is an eight out of ten, and we are a bunch of fives. Logan is pretty. He is charming. Logan has easy access to that secret room in life where the guys are confident and have no issues pestering women till all their resolve is beaten away. Oh yeah, and another thing - you take five guys to pester women for long enough in the park eventually the cops show up.

Seven hundred dollars for a running lesson?

Logan leaves his jacket in the restaurant. It’s a chance to send one of us back inside for one last pester. I can’t help the grin when he picks me.

The art of seduction is all about confidence. It’s about having the balls to pick up Logan’s jacket, to paint my face with a smooth smile, and then stroll blithely through the kitchen and out the back way.

Into the smelliest dumpster with Logan’s jacket and me the other way, leaving behind Logan and his cabal of sex pests in training.

“This is not to be forgotten Keeli. Pay attention. In here is the secret to it all.”

—

Keeli had a feeling in her bones. This was the time it would work. It had to. Everything was set in an exact replica of Image 17. The child’s bike had been hand painted in the same faded red colour. She had gotten the paint professionally matched. The set was constructed in an old warehouse that she had convinced a farmer to lend her. Image 17, was burned into her mind, but she checked the print anyway; a bike leaning against an old barn wall, with a Child’s mottled green coat on the floor. The sunlight drifted in from an unknown window or door. The only thing missing was the apple sat atop the post in the back corner. She had missed it so many times before, hidden in the shadows. But now she was convinced she had made the perfect replica, all she had to do was place it on the fence post and that would be that.

She thought back to when Mr Invisible had first showed her the Images. Her grandad had always been a mysterious figure to those around him. He came and went as he pleased, appearing and disappearing with out word or explanation. That ‘Bloody Mr Invisible’ muttered by her mother one christmas, had stuck. He didn’t seem to mind. But then when she was just 15, he had appeared one afternoon, flustered, demanding she followed him and to not speak a word. They had ended up on a quiet street down town. He had turned into a grotty alley, taken out a key, opened a metal door, and entered into the dark. “This is not to be forgotten Keeli. Pay attention. In here is the secret to it all.” He said, before flicking the light switch on. When the dim light sputtered on, Keeli had been amazed; row upon row of pictures, all identical sizes, that covered the wall, Top to bottom. All depicting a different scene. There were no faces, but for some reason she felt like she instantly recognised some of the scenes.

“There is a pattern K. You have to find it. Search, replace, duplicate, whatever you need to do. Each picture is a key, no, a moment, and you have to find that moment, be in it, in order to change.”

“To change what?” Keeli asked in confusion.

“Well to change everything. Now I need you do something for me. It is vitally important. You need to be here at exactly 12:45am. Tonight. Come sit here.” He gestured to a stool in the middle of the floor. “Now cross your right leg over. Good. And look down at the floor. And put this on. He handed her a red dress. Please.”

“But What’s going on? What’s the matter?”

She had promised him faithfully. Something in his desperate story convinced her there was a reason for all this. But by 11:00 she was scared, tired and worried about what her parents would say. She left and went home.

Mr Invisible was never seen again.

But now was her chance. After all these years. She had finally cracked it. She knew now what he was trying to do. The exact moment he was trying to create. And she knew how she could redeem herself. Forgive herself for those years of unanswered questions and what ifs. All it would take was one apple to complete the moment. And then it would change, everything would change.

The Tommy who came out of prison on November 23rd 1999 was a very different Tommy to the one who’d walked in five years earlier. A little thinner, a lot greyer and now missing that indefinable something that had once made him believe he was invincible.

He looked down when he walked these days, as if he couldn’t get used to the brightness of the watery sun and he carried his shoulders like bags of heavy shopping. He’d used to sparkle with life and now he just slunk along in the background, hoping not to be noticed. And for the most part he wasn’t.

Every morning he’d dress and drag himself to his dull grey factory job and every evening he’d trudge home again to his secret little room in his dull grey flat in a building of other dull grey flats. He walked. Tommy never drove anywhere anymore. A ready meal for his tea and a paperback from the library before bed.

But on Saturdays he couldn’t help himself. He’d go and watch the family.

It was like prodding an old, festering wound, instead of letting it heal; he had to see them, had to make himself face what they’d become because of him. Three instead of four, her absence a gaping hole in the perfect smile.

On Saturdays they went to the park. Nicky, the boy, was twelve now. Tommy remembered seeing him before, just a lad with a football and a bright smile. Ashleigh, the little girl, had just been a baby when her Mam had died. She must be nearly seven, Tommy thought.

Their Dad didn’t recognise Tommy, though he sat on the same bench every Saturday as the kids played. His eyes had never quite lost that blank, unseeing look that Tommy had put there.

Six years sober. Six years since he’d been behind the wheel of a car. Six years since all of their lives had changed irrevocably and Tommy still could not move on. Why should he be allowed to when they couldn’t?

Tommy looked up from his newspaper to see that Ashleigh was crying. Her Dad and Nicky were over on the grass, playing with the football and hadn’t seen her, but Tommy had.

“What’s wrong my love?” he said quietly.

“It’s Nicky, my brother. He’s hidden my bike again and I don’t know where he’s put it. He’ll tell Dad I lost it and I’ll get in trouble.”

“I’m sure your Dad will understand.”

Ashleigh shook her head and looked at the ground. “He never believes me” she almost whispered.

“What if I help you look? While they’re busy. That’ll be a shock for Nicky, won’t it?”

She nodded tearfully and half-smiled.

It didn’t take long to find the bike. The boy had tucked it inside the wooden Wendy house under the slide, but seeing her face light up in surprised delight made Tommy’s heart skip a little inside his chest.

He handed it back to her, and in her wet, unblinking, wholly grateful stare, Tommy could imagine, just for a moment, what forgiveness might have looked like.