The Wardrobe

I had never before noticed how soft Seamus's hair was until we were tightly packed together in the large wooden closet.

"It's called a wardrobe," Seamus had said a few minutes before. His voice had changed dramatically from last year when I had visited, when things were so normal. "We'll hide in here."

I felt a burning in my cheeks as Seamus steered me farther back into the wardrobe to hide us behind the coats and boxes his parents had put inside to store. It was so cramped inside and dark that I was scared he'd feel my blush when he trampled over me to the back.

"They'll never find us here," he said in his accent. I had always found it natural when we were little, but now it sounded so refined with his developing voice that I struggled to keep myself from shivering in the summer heat.

We were playing hide-and-seek with our cousins during our yearly vacation in Ireland. Our families were always well connected as friends, so it was only natural that we would vacation together in the place where it all started.

We always played hide-and-seek in groups of three, but since my sister decided that she was too old to play anymore, Seamus and I were left as the only group of two. The wardrobe was a new addition to Seamus's home, where we usually stayed, and he thought no one would guess to look in it. Especially since it was in his attic, and no one ever ventured up there.

Pushing Seamus away from me, I whispered, "Move over."

"I'm trying!" he said, turning to face me. His sandy hair brushed against my smoldering cheeks, but all embarrassement was lost and replaced with exasperation when he stepped on my toe.

"Ouch! That's my foot, Seamus!" I hissed through clenched teeth.

"Sorry."

We eventually got situated, him standing across from me. I could just barely see his outline as my eyes adjusted to the dark inside the cabinet. He had gotten taller over the school year, a whole head taller than me. I watched him in curiosity as he brushed his hair back from his eyes and straightened his posture. He definitely wasn't thirteen anymore.

"You're rather short for someone who's about to be thirteen."

"Shut up," I growled. "They might hear you."

"No they won't." I could feel him lean forward, one hand just above my head, the other by his side somewhere. "No one can hear us up here."

"Well, it's wrong to break the silence, so shut it." I was getting frustrated because he refused to keep his voice down, but he just chuckled at my expense in the joke that I knew nothing of.

"It's wrong to break the silence?"

"Yes."

"I never thought much of silence." It was here that a very awkward quietness surrounded us. We were just staring at what parts of the other's outline we could see in the blackness for a few minutes and still nothing was spoken.

I opened my mouth, wanting to say something important, but I couldn't. I didn't want the precious few seconds of him staring at me wasted by my drabbles, and I had lost the thought anyway. I swayed towards him a litte, but he moved a lot more when he noticed my position change.

He bent down. He brushed his lips against my forehead, gently; quietly. But the kiss was quick, too quick and it was gone before I even knew it had been there. The middle of my forehead tingled as my mind struggled to find exactly how the impression of his lips had felt for the nanosecond they had rested on my skin.

I wanted him to stay bent over me, stay enclosed around me, but he adjusted himself again, pulling up and away. There were footsteps on the stairs.

"Hello?" It was Seamus's cousin Collin; he was It. "Is a-anybody up h-here?"

He sounded so scared in the dark attic, the poor kid, but I didn't want to leave this place where I realized Seamus was a boy and I was a girl and that it meant something.

I heard Collin shuffling around the boxes, heard him drop one of them, then try and replace it wherever it had originally been.

I felt Seamus's eyes look from the door to me and back to the door. Collin was getting closer. "Get down," muttered Seamus, taking a seat on the dirty floor of the wardrobe and pulling me down with him. "He won't see us under the boxes and coats."

I liked the feeling of risk that was involved in hide-and-seek, but I never realized it could feel romantic. But as Seamus kept his fingers intertwined in mine, I felt a burning sensation in my stomach. I scooted closer to him and laid my head on the back of his shoulder. He didn't flinch or move away, so I left it there, content listening to his heartbeat that was going almost as fast as mine over Collin's steps that grew louder as he got closer.

I closed my eyes and pressed my nose into his plaid shirt and breathed. Apples.

"Guys? Is anyone in here?" The light from his flashlight, a 'muggle' device that gave off artificial light, entered the cracks in the wardrobe and made Seamus flinch from the sudden illumination.

He held my hand tighter.

I heard a small crash as Collin stumbled around trunks and packages as he attempted to get to the wardrobe.

His flashlight was bobbing mildly, as if it was hanging and the wind was blowing it, throwing the light into all corners of the cabinet. I saw Seamus's face staring mutely over the boxes, then the gray and black fur coat that hung above me, then the bright light blinded me as it glared into my eyes. But the noise of Collin's footfalls were beginning to get drowned out by how fast the blood was pounding through my veins and past my ears and Seamus's unsteady breathing.

The flashlight was suddenly steady, pointed directly at the wardrobe. "If you two are in the wardrobe, don't jump out, OK?" Collin was nearing the wardrobe. "You know I hate surprises."

"Let's jump out and scare him," Seamus said softly. "He'll forgive us eventually."

I smiled and then nodded. Seamus always knew how to have fun.

"OK. The count of three then! One," the knob on the closet wobbled. "Two." Light was pouring from the crack in the door. We sat on the balls of our feet, ready to launch ourselves at Collin. Our hands were still clasped together.

"Three!"