The Newton North High School I attended was an absolute UNIT of a building. It was a campus really, taking up a full quarter mile square of space. Those brief 5-10 minute gaps between classes because you needed every single one of those minutes to navigate its 6 floors, 4 color coded quadrants, and 14 staircases. Its mass was necessary though. 2000 kids, and in one of the more affluent school districts in the state, you needed to ensure that each one of those kids had access to each and every opportunity that their respective castes afforded them.

My freshman experience inside this academic metropolis was one of overwhelm. Getting to classes was an experience. Which staircase to get to which part of which floor to get to class in time led to many inside jokes among my class. It’s like the architects, drunk on rust-colored grandiosity, were also tangent enthusiasts. Probably. With time our navigation skills improved, and the labyrinth began to make an odd kind of sense, except for the last staircase in the “Red” Quadrant of the school. That staircase, tucked a few steps past the entry mouth of the Cafeteria and across from the housemaster’s office, led to a single, massive classroom on the fourth floor.

You know what’s really odd though?

Ok, humor me a second.

Close your eyes.

Think of the hallways of your high school.

Any hallway.

What do you see? Once the fog clears and the sepia filters kick in? Maybe some peers, professors, and lockers right?

Carpets with patterns like elevator music?

The classrooms on one or both sides of the hallway?

Think of the doors.

Notice how they sometimes are open, sometimes closed?

Yea, this classroom at the top of the stairs was always open… always.

Now I never(always) cut class, but if a student happened to find themselves with an unexpected free time, it is incumbent upon them to make the highest and best use possible of that reprieve from responsibility, don’t you think?

It was on that type of day that I found myself climbing those metal and concrete stairs, set on trying to understand what exactly was going on in that room. Dust motes unevenly revealed themselves, wafting through the sunlight that poured through the 1970s era skylight. This gave an almost consecrated ambiance to the ascent. Which in my 15 year old opinion, would have been a pretty irresponsible use of heavenly sanction.

Soon I found myself walking down the hall towards the always open door. The carpets here were a mute steel grey, my footsteps muffled by their synthetic fibers. Before long, and anticlimactically (sorry) I was crossing the threshold and entering the classroom.

At first glance, it was unremarkable aside from a killer view, which given its height, and being in almost a parapet of the monolith of the school body, this would have been expected really. Natural lighting was phenomenal, standard green chalkboard center mass, but as I started to turn it’s when I saw the real payload this room had been hiding. The bookcase.

Anti-anticlimactically, this was no regular bookcase. It was floor to ceiling, holding not tens or dozens, but easily several hundred books. Hard covers, soft covers, the colors, the...dragon logo? The many… dragon logos? Scattered amidst the many book rinds? This wasn’t a simple bookcase. This was a great wyrm’s horde underneath a Dwarven kingdoms vault. This was a cache of long walks now entertained, and successful procrastinations yet to be delayed!

Like a moth to a shop vac, I was reading all the titles, opening the books and smelling the sweet must of their inseams, skimming the backs. My undiagnosed ADHD brain spiraling into a dopamine frenzy. See, I had always loved reading, but it was only the previous year that I had really sunk into the fantasy and sci-fi genres. To find this? This was like getting end game boss loot on a side quest!

Somewhere in the distance it occurred to me that I had no idea what the actual situation was here. Some teachers kept their personal collections in their classrooms. But whose were these? It was not even a moment between the arrival of this thought then I saw the computer lab printed sign taped unceremoniously to the wall.

“Feel free to borrow, don’t forget to bring back.”

Permission granted! That day at school I may or may not have missed a few classes. It was unavoidable you see. I was productively occupied, having had a change of heart about the possible uses for a heavenly sanction so clearly implied.

I never did get to meet the teacher who owned those books. Room #501 never had a teacher listed, and my periodically “I just remembered to ask” queries would just be answered with shrugs and smiles. Maybe the mystery is part of what makes this memory so special. A treasure only for those with the eyes to see it, in the room at the top of the last staircase. With a door that’s always open.

-KC

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Room 501