Free Rooms: A Novel by James L. Rubart Page A

know.”
    “An obligation to let her know her employee spies on tourists.”
    “Wouldn’t get you anywhere. She’s a spy just like me.”
    The girl didn’t smile but Micah grinned. He toasted her with his cone. “Touché.”
    He turned and walked out of Osburn’s, the smile staying on his face. He put buying another couple of scoops at Osburn’s in the near future on his mental to-do list.
    ||||||||
    Micah got back to the house at six-thirty that evening. After a quick run down to Haystack Rock and back, and an even quicker dinner of pot stickers and rice, he strolled toward the library. He never got there. Next to it was another new door.
    Great, here we go again.
    Micah paused, pushed open the door, and groped for a light switch. As he snapped it on, he eased inside. The room smelled like a winter morning and felt unnaturally still. More than the absence of noise, the silence felt like a panther ready to strike. In his peripheral vision he saw the far wall move. No. Did it?
    Fear darted around the room like a bat. Micah walked in farther, refusing to lose his nerve. Against one wall from floor to ceiling were mail slots—the type seen in an old office building. Nothing else was in the room. Each mail slot was six-by-three inches, with off-white paint peeling from the edges. Each held papers. Most were crammed full; others held only one. All were yellowed, some stained with water, some with corners torn off.
    The room was wrong.
    When he reached the slots, his hand seemed to move in slow motion toward the first paper. Just before he touched it, something inside said stop.
    Too late.
    The instant his forefinger touched the parchment, his stomach twisted as if he were free-falling from ten thousand feet. He turned and looked at the door. It was shut. He knew he’d left it open, but it hardly mattered. Micah forced himself to stay calm as he opened the parchment. A series of headlines scrawled on the paper described memories of deep pain from his childhood.
    His favorite Hot Wheels car getting smashed by his dad at age six.
    His fourth-grade teacher joking that he was “Mindless Micah” almost every day during class for the entire year because he couldn’t understand the problems.
    Headline after headline about what he had missed, lost, failed at, and what had been stolen from him—the sting as fresh as when they’d first happened.
    Halfway down the page he pulled away and looked up. It would’ve been better if he’d kept his eyes on the paper.
    The wall in front of him was covered with moving pictures of more disappointments. He spun to his right to avoid them. It was futile. Every wall—even the floor—played grainy, mini-film scenes from his life, as if an old Super 8 camera had recorded every emotional scar from childhood and was replaying them all at once.
    A girl promising she’d go with him to the seventh-grade dance then dumping him for his supposed best friend.
    Being bullied on and off by Brandon Kopec during his freshman year of high school.
    Dropping the game-winning touchdown pass in front of the whole school in tenth grade and getting ridiculed by his teammates for weeks afterward.
    He dropped the parchment, tried to steady himself against the wall to his right, and fought the vise grip clenching his stomach. Micah stared in fascination and fear as the images came faster, now covering the ceiling as well.
    Cut from the basketball team his sophomore year because one of the coaches’ pet players spread the lie that Micah was smoking pot.
    Chewed up and spit out by his boss for ruining a stack of wood at the sign company at sixteen. “You idiot! I should call you Scarecrow. Get a brain!” His boss swore for thirty seconds straight, jabbing his finger like a metronome into Micah’s collarbone.
    Micah sank to the floor and gasped for air. He felt as if twenty-foot waves were pounding him into the sand. As the torrent assaulted him, part of his mind shouted, “This isn’t real!” But his body