There was a hole in the boxspring under my twin-sized mattress.

A king-sized bed sat across from mine, resting against the wall. When will this house be finished so I can have my own room? No privacy whatsoever. My younger sisters shared the larger bed. I was lucky to have my own, the perks of being a first-born.

I picked at the hole a little every night. I don’t know why. If Mom were to see it, I’d probably get in trouble. She wouldn’t know because as long as I kept my bed made, changing my sheets every Saturday morning, she’d never see it. No one but me knew it was there. A little private secret kept to myself.

Eventually, the hole became large enough, but not too large, for me to drop small things into it. But could I take them out? I’d have to place them carefully. Deciding not try my jewelry, I chose something useless. A pencil.

I left a pencil near my bed one night to test out the treasure chest of sorts. This is nothing like the movies. Why can’t I have a normal house with my own room and a loose floorboard where I can hide things? (I watched too many movies, read too many books.). Lights out, I waited until I knew the other two were asleep. They conked out right away. Sleep has always eluded me.

I pat around for the pencil. Finding the hole, I slip it in, holding it between my thumb and forefinger. I tap it up and down. Move it side to side.

Flip.

I lost my grip.

Gasp!

It’s just a pencil. I’m relieved it wasn’t my good pen. How do I take it out though? Feeling for the hole, which was smaller than my hand, I popped in my forefinger. Even though the middle finger is longer, I may be able to grip it somehow. Sure enough, it dropped straight down to the boxspring lining. Dragging it toward the side rail, I carefully pulled it up and my thumb soon entered the rescue mission. Grasping the pencil, I pulled it straight out. A buzz-less game of Operation–I was good at that game.

Success!

I hid a pencil for a few minutes, until I almost panicked about losing it. You don’t even like pencils!

My mind got busy dreaming up what I’d hide there: my favorite Teen Beat posters, so my sisters wouldn’t claim them and put them up on their side of the room. Piles of 80s style folded notes (is there even a name for those? Umm, yeah, folded notes, IYKYK). Neon colored jelly bracelets I hated sharing. The possibilities were endless…

Yeah, until there’s too much in there that you can’t take any of it out. Then the liner starts sagging and tears, dumping everything under the bed. That’s the first place they look for stuff.

Eventually, the hole grew enough form me to slip in various items without much effort.

And then there was my black spiral. It lived under piles of other school spirals and books and gossip-less folded notes, Seventeen and YM magazines, graded papers. I hid it well. That’s where my secrets lived. In that spiral, I wrote thoughts I dared not to share.

I tried those little diaries with locks and tiny keys that always got lost only to find out you can poke anything into the dumb little lock to open it. And there was a teensy amount of space for each day. Even my boring life needed more than five little lines. Those teen crushes were real, more than five lines real.

After some writing, I placed my spiral near the top of my stack. At night, I’d maneuver the relocation. Lights out. Wait. Slumber in the king sized bed. I rolled up my spiral into a tube and slipped it in.

Gasp!

It slipped in, but how do I take it back out? Surely, it’s flattened back out.

It’s okay. I took out the pencil, I can take this out too. In went my hand. Managing to roll it up, I pulled it out.

Success!

I tried it a few more times and left it there. To keep it safe, it wouldn’t have companions. Grinning to myself and knowing my thoughts were safe, I closed my eyes and sleep found me.