It’s my favorite game I was so happy when you rang my doorbell and asked my mother if I could play because I wasn’t always asked sometimes I would see you all playing running through yards or peeking around bushes looking for the person who was it and once I heard two of you under my window whispering about where someone was hiding and of course I could hear the laughter and the shouting whenever they were found and I would tell myself it didn’t mean anything that I wasn’t asked even though everybody knew it was supposed to be all the kids on the block no one ever said it but we knew it and no one had asked me in a while I didn’t know if it was because of my father or if it was something about me so of course I said yes when the doorbell rang and I had known for a long time where I was going to hide I had picked the perfect hiding spot if I was asked to play again it was behind the garage in my backyard the narrow space between the back garage wall and the fence separating our backyard from the people who live behind us who I didn’t know at all and had seen only once or twice through their windows so when it was my time to be it I ran as fast as I could and squeezed in between the wall and the fence and it’s been okay waiting although it is a tight squeeze and I don’t like thinking that the neighbors might be looking out their back windows and seeing me here doing what they would wonder but I can ignore that the thing is though I have been out here a really long time and no one has found me even though I remember I saw one of you run past and I thought he saw me but he didn’t say anything and that was forever ago and I haven’t heard any callouts or cries or laughing in so long I almost think the game is over but I could be wrong and about to win and I’ve never won before so I will stay out here until someone finds me or I hear them calling even though it’s been so many years now since my father officially went crazy and left me in this town and my mother sold the house and moved away and then died not literally but to me just after my father died really died she was the one who got the news and she decided not to tell me because we were about to go on a vacation together for the first time in years and she didn’t want me not to go so she waited until the vacation was over and pretended he was still alive each time I mentioned him so I haven’t had any family for a long time now and all of us on the block we have all grown up and I think most of you have moved away too but I will stay here until one of you finds me or until someone calls out to say I won and the game is finally over and then we can all shout and laugh together which has to happen sometime one or the other because every game has an end or it isn’t really a game at all and if it isn’t and if it wasn’t if it was a prank or maybe the doorbell never actually rang then I am and have been completely alone and hiding all this time with no one searching in a place where no one will ever find me
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is an award-winning disabled author of books for children and adults. His first book, The Outsider, which takes as its subject his late father's struggles with schizophrenia and homelessness, was published by Broadway Books.