Free Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett Page A

the newsagent. Sundays were the only times I got to wear long pants here, because it was the only day I didn’t have to go to school, and long pants were for the upper-form boys, the ones with pubic hair.
    The lined gray wool of my trousers lay crumpled around my ankles. When the numbness started to hurt, I got up from the toilet and stepped out of them. All I had on now was Michael’s silky white shirt, which felt like someone touching me. I unbuttoned it and let that slink to the floor, too. I put the footstool in front of the sink and climbed up to look at my bare self in the mirror, and then I leaned forward and flapped my penis up against the glass.
    Have a good look then, you little wanker, Linsbourne had said in the showers after games. I’d been staring at his without knowing it. Everyone looked at me, and I looked down at the gray soapy water puddling by the drain.
    But here with the door locked no one could see me bobbing my penis up and down with the handle of my toothbrush, or running naked in circles around the bath mat. I touched my bare legs to the curves of the towel rack, and the radiator, which burned, and my stomach to the knob of the linen closet. Then I got bored and went over to the door.
    I took the knob of the sliding-bolt lock between my thumb and finger. The lock was stiff and hard to use. Mom kept saying that. You had to press it until your fingers hurt. She kept telling Dad to fix it. I pressed hard enough to feel the little pain on the pad of my thumb. But not enough to shift it open. Which excited me again. One hard push and they could open this up and discover I was naked.
    I knocked on the door. Then I stood very still, and listened, not breathing. Nothing happened. I knocked again, more loudly. I heard footsteps. Mom coming into the front hall.
    “Who’s in there?”
    “It’s me. The lock’s stuck. I can’t get it open.”
    “Just push it a little harder.”
    I pressed the knob again, enough to feel the prick of the little pain.
    “It’s too tight,” I said. “It won’t move.”
    “Well, then find something to push it with. The handle of the plunger or something.”
    I did as I was told, crossing the room, naked, getting the plunger, and scraping the wood of it against the metal loud enough for her to hear.
    “It won’t go,” I said.
    “What’s the matter?” Celia asked, coming down the stairs.
    “He can’t get the lock open.”
    “Why, because he’s too weak?”
    “No,” I called through the door. “Because it’s stuck.”
    “Well, push it harder.”
    “He’s tried. I knew this would happen. I told your father.”
    Kelsey bashed her tail against the bottom of the door, excited by our voices. I heard Michael passing through from the living room.
    “Alec’s trapped himself in the toilet,” Celia told him.
    “I keep saying he’s the fortunate one,” Michael said. “But no one believes me.”
    “That’s not helpful,” Mom said. “I have to check the meat. Could you two help your brother, please?”
    “Just open it,” Celia said. “I need my barrette.”
    “I can’t,” I said, my cheeks burning, a strange light-headedness lifting my body until I almost floated there just a few inches from them, the door the only thing covering me.
    “What are the conditions like in there?” Michael asked. “Are you well provisioned?”
    “You’re just encouraging him,” Celia said, walking off toward the living room. “Leave him there and he’ll come out.”
    But Michael stayed. He sat in the creaking wicker side chair by the hall table. I heard the drawer open, and a moment later the end of a black shoelace appeared under the door.
    “What’s this?”
    “You could tie it to the bolt and pull.”
    I pressed my bare back to the wall and slid down it until I was sitting cross-legged.
    Michael had hated his school as much as I hated mine, at least in the beginning. He’d cried about it, even though he seemed too old to. I listened at night from my bedroom,