i'm late. who cares?
so in elementary school, there was the playground, right, and then out front there was the big grassy area that had sidewalks crossing it in a big x with the flagpole in the middle. on the other side of that was the woodchip field, which behind it down the stairs had the parking lot. but on the other side of the playground, between it and the blacktop, right by the weird concrete amphitheatre, there's a tiny corner of dirt garden. it's in line with the actual school garden that got added in fifth grade or so, which runs along the edge of the school building between it and the blacktop. but on the other side of the door, just by the amphitheatre, there was this tiny square of dirt, like maybe ten by fifteen feet. with some rocks, and some grass, walled by the school building on two sides and the raised playground on the third, with the fourth mostly taken up by a staircase going between the two. there was a little gutter where water would flow down, but it was always dry, so when i was small enough i would sometimes crawl through it, for fun.
eventually they turned it into an actual sort of memorial garden for a teacher who passed away, which is nice. but i want to talk about before that happened.
see, on the red brick wall of the school building, there was a doorframe. no door, to be clear: the bricks went through the whole thing. nor did it look like it was bricked up, really: in fact, it looked largely like a concrete doorframe with an ornate lintel had been put on top of a pre-existing wall, for some reason. and on top of the lintel, it read "LIBRARY".
kids went back there sometimes, and it wasn't like it was particularly private, just no one really paid attention to it. the "library" doorway was never brought up to me at any point during my entire time at that school, even after that area was transformed into a tiny memorial garden.
but i knew. i knew there was something on the other side.