In 1996, after the sudden passing of a pupil who attended the same Secondary school I attended, the religious, head teacher informed the assembly: ‘It is inevitable that we shall go on to meet our past in the next lifetime.’ I think he was trying to say, in his own inimitable style, that when someone died we would meet them again, when–or with regards to a large number of cases in that school theatre, if–we reached heaven. He didn’t, however, explain to us that it was possible to come face to face with a deceased person long before we left this mortal realm. Obviously, he left that off the day’s checklist.

I was fourteen at the time, and going through the darkest days of puberty. Everything within my world appeared to be tinted with an indescribable vomit-coloured gloom. No one and I mean no one got to share the thoughts and dreams and feelings I was experiencing. My mother tried to discuss them with me, my father reassured me and told me it was only natural to be thinking things that I’d never thought before, but my brain was impenetrable.

I didn’t feel the need or desire to discuss any of the ever-altering images that were swirling inside my expanding mind with anybody. That went for my close friends too; close friends who seemed utterly obliged to air their views and give their own take on the undesirable effects of their own formative months.

It was a revolting time. It was a gruesome period. It was wet dreams, facial hair, stifling science labs with sex education videos, disturbing dreams full of Freudian taboos, wicked daydreams that were nonsensical, and phases of nervousness and fear that I believed would never cease. The war, and that’s how I approached it, was a war full of mini battles and epic encounters that no doubt made me the man I am today. There were few moments of sunlight, even fewer instances of clarity, and if every tunnel has a light at its end, then it seemed a long way off in those middle days of change.

It was late in the year. I’d celebrated my 14^th birthday in October with a couple of noticeable hairs already sprouting from my armpit. I felt both relieved and slightly disgusted by their presence. From that day until well into the New Year of 1997, everything else was -quite literally in some cases- a blur.

My eyesight had deteriorated since earlier in the new term, and at my regular check-up in mid-November, the optician had advised me to wear glasses. They aren’t essential, he announced, but it will benefit your eyes if you begin to wear them now. I was devastated. On top of the already mile high pile of worries in my head, here was a new one that was sure to give those few rascals in class something to really laugh at.

I lurched aimlessly along the corridor that first morning with my head firmly down. It was a vain attempt to detract attention from the metal and glass squares that were protruding from my greasy face. The corridor was long and typical; rows of graffiti-filled lockers, dirty grey tiled floors complete with chewing gum, walls painted by sixth form art students from yesteryear, and notice boards packed to the brim with notes about tutor rooms, teachers, extracurricular activities, Christmas holiday ideas, and the odd poetry competition. In other words, there was nothing peculiar except for one thing; there was nobody else around. In fact, I hadn’t seen a soul since I walked through the school gates. Yes, I had been on a mission to hide my face, but you know when someone passes you, you can hear them, or feel their presence. I realised that I hadn’t came within walking distance of anybody.

I knew I was late for registration and wanted to be late. In truth, I didn’t want to enter the testosterone pit and become the latest victim of the sharp tongued ones who never seemed affected, or indeed, intimidated by anything. Those were the one’s who didn’t appear to have had their heads dipped in the frying pan and seemingly didn’t have any hang-ups. I was relatively spotless throughout my teens and didn’t suffer the embarrassment of severe acne, but greasy skin and glasses would certainly make up for that otherwise blessed fact

I retreated from the classroom door, and noticed that the clock above the food hatch read 8.43. I was late by a full eight minutes. It was only then, as I sat on the bench outside, that a curious thought came to me, how long could I go around the campus without being seen? How cool it would be, I thought, to avoid people all day and say yes, I have been to school, but I just didn’t go to class? My question had to be put to the test.

On hearing my teacher Mrs Dawkins ask the class if they had seen me that morning–to which everyone who spoke, said no–I finally beat the little voice in my head (You must go to class, it was telling me), and made my way into the bathroom.

MARTHA JOHNSON LOVES JIMMY SNEDDING read the prominent scrawl on the grimy mirror above the residue-stained sink. Sanitation had a lot to be desired for in my school. Martha Johnson was cute, with a cleavage that 14-year-old boys just went crazy over. Jimmy Snedding, on the other hand, was everything 14-year-old boys hated. He was the smug, unruly and muscular king of the school; the girls simply swooned when he so much as looked in their direction. Deep down, of course, I wanted to be Snedding and I did have pocket-sized hopes of one day being as popular. That was if the whole changing episode passed by before I was 18. For me, an 18-year-old was over the hill.

The person staring back at me in the mirror was an extension of me, and I half believed that it was my true self. I was Jimmy Snedding times ten, I was the new king, the main man, and more to the point I was with a girl who knocked Martha Johnson’s beauty into a cocked hat. Then I was me again; me in that world only I was allowed into. I felt a sensation of otherness and proceeded to slip into a surreal realm that made me feel like an invisible being; an undetectable presence that was peering in on itself from a different place than the one it was truly standing in. For all the illegal drugs and alcoholic escapades in later years, nothing ever made me go into that world again. I witnessed the blurring of life’s edges as I entered it, and then I watched the edges fold back in on themselves as I slipped back in to normality.

It was when I was penetrating the liquid-like womb of the other world, that I heard the bell sounding. The bell was the head teacher’s convenient reminder that the beginning of lesson one was five minutes away. I turned my back on the mirror and went to the urinal. After finishing my business, I washed my hands –there was no soap, so I made do with hot water- and thought it best to hide in the sole toilet cubicle whilst the rest of school went on to their respective lessons.

Whilst seated on the toilet lid, I was reminded of a tale which made me shiver. The tale was my own conception; a boy gets trapped in the scout hut after being locked in by a neglectful leader. He is stuck in the store room over night –his parents and the rest of the neighbourhood are searching frantically for him outdoors- and through the keyhole he sees the former army hospital (now the scout hut) come back to life. The boy watches injured soldiers, with the most ghastly of wounds, being put onto beds and comforted by compassionate nurses. Then in a wicked twist, the hospital is overrun by the enemy. When the antagonists try to break the store room door down to take the boy ‘spy’ away, the scout leader’s bellowing voice cuts through the enemy onslaught and saves the day.

I suddenly felt cold and looked upwards to the window above the toilet. It was open just a fraction and a hint of cool air was drifting into the cubicle. The white ceiling tiles looked ominous -the way they were sucked upwards- and all I could imagine was me (like the boy in the story), getting locked in the school bathroom -God only knew what the school was built on. Despite the fact that the building was fairly modern and had been built for the sole purpose of becoming a school, there must have been other structures on this plot of land before it. Maybe even a graveyard -I shook that thought from my head, immediately.

Behind the bathroom door, voices from the corridor buried my fear in an instant. My willingness to evade the whole school took priority from that point onwards, and I concentrated hard. Someone did come into the bathroom. He tried to push the cubicle door open, shouted at me, and then kicked the handle. He told me that I was a dead man if didn’t open up, and then tried to look under the cubicle door. I was scared and stepped onto the lid just in case. It was inevitable they’d back off and go to class before I even thought about moving, but he did wait longer than expected. One thing was certain; he didn’t know it was me inside.

After a full five minutes, when I was certain the coast was clear, I came out of the cubicle and got ready to make my way into the corridor. Then a thought suddenly struck me–I still had my satchel, full of books, strapped around my shoulders. I had to get rid of it and instead of throwing it under the stairs like I did each dinnertime, I had a better idea. I turned and went back in to the toilet cubicle, stood on the toilet lid once more and pushed one of the loose white tiles into the empty space above it. I then undid my bag and pushed it up through the square gap in the ceiling. At that moment, I had a vision of crawling through the ceiling, worming my way around the insides of the building and then dropping in on an English lesson. What an entrance that would be. As always, my righteous side got the better of me and I finished pushing my bag into the hole and closed it off by pulling the tile back into its original position.

It was a blessing that the idea came to me. No sooner had I got down from the lid, when someone entered the restroom. I held my breath and wondered if the same older kid had returned. Thankfully, he went about his business and made a swift exit. It was a warning.

I left the toilet, quickly tip-toed past two classroom doors and made my way to the first set of stairs. I suddenly felt unsure of what I was supposed to do. Did I sneak out of the nearest door and try to get from one house block to another without being caught, or did I lay low–beneath the stairs, perhaps–until I thought of something better? I went with the former and pushed the door open. The vast majority of teachers would be in class teaching and the ones that weren’t were sure to be in the staff rooms that were situated in each of the four house-blocks. Moving from this block to the next should have been easy pickings, but there was something wrong. Mrs Hamilton, my science teacher, was outside talking to a number of younger pupils about the effects of erosion, no doubt, and I was halted in my tracks. I walked back indoors, hoping and also supremely confident that I hadn’t been noticed. I had to create a distraction to get rid of them.

The last door in the block faced a large plate-glass window. I was tempted to smash the window which, in turn, would cause Mrs Hamilton to inspect the damage. While she did that I would sneak out the door and move on to the next house-block. Undetected. The trouble was I had nothing to put the window out with and also, how would I explain to the teacher who burst out of the classroom door, that I didn’t commit the crime. The timing of my movements, in order to evade both teachers, would have to be spectacular; too spectacular for me.

I would just have to bide my time.

The class and Mrs Hamilton scattered sooner than I thought they would and left me free to walk up the deserted path to the next block. I was a third of the way to it when I saw something hover on the inside of the door. Instinctively, I ducked into the doorway that sat between the two house-blocks, and entered a small cubicle.

The small square section had two doors; one that led into the kitchen of the first house-block, and the second that led into the computer room. The actual computer room had since been moved to the second floor of the science block, but to my year group, the room I was outside would always be the computer room.

Firstly, I tried the kitchen door to see if I could get something to eat (I’d left home without breakfast), but to no avail. I thought there was less chance of the computer room door being open and for a second or two wondered what had remained there since when computers had been taken out. As I twisted the knob and pushed the door open, I was met by an empty, dust-filled room that looked like it hadn’t been used in two years, which of course was exactly what it was. All I could think of was the attraction it must have had for mice. Then I imagined what affect that would have on the kitchen which lay less than two metres away.

I tottered through the layer of dust, leaving obvious prints on the floor and felt an eeriness I have not felt before or since. Someone or something was in that room with me. This wasn’t the same feeling I was repeatedly having, but something new, something sinister. I tread over loose wires and ripped up cardboard boxes, and like I remembered, the small line of windows had been blacked out; they freaked me a little. I kept turning to see if the door I’d came in through was still open and inspected the room for other exit points. There was one on the opposite side which probably led to the other kitchen–at 14, two years ago seemed like five years ago.

As I got closer to it, noticing the information posters on the grimy cream walls, I heard the door behind me close abruptly. The panic button was pushed with rapid alarm and I felt the thud of my heart echoing off the discoloured hardboard. After my initial hesitation, I moved steadily to the door. It was windowless, so I couldn’t check to see if anyone had pushed it shut on purpose, or if a teacher had seen it open and not bothered to check if anyone was around. All I knew was that it was locked. Now I was really in a situation.

The bright sunlight from outside barely pierced the cracks that appeared on the darkened windows, but they did shed a little light on the tiny sectioned off area in the corner of the room. I had and still have no idea of its purpose, but I made my way to it cautiously. I only wanted to see if I could find something that may get me out of the state of affairs I’d gotten into, but when I stuck my face up against the glass and inspected the inside of the sectioned off area there was literally nothing there. Like the rest of the room, the bare tiles were filled with dust and in its corner empty computer boxes were stacked to the roof. I was about to turn away and scream for help when I got the shock of my young life. The bell rang for lesson two and I fell backwards, landing hard on my backside. My eyes closed tight as the screeching sound drummed off the walls, and when I opened them I saw the pale blue face of a girl peering out from the sectioned off area. She was staring straight at me and looked as though she had tears in her eyes. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, and yet the terror lurking inside my stomach told my brain that I was bordering on lunacy.

I was paralysed for around twenty seconds. Only my eyes seemed to be functioning correctly and I could not take them off the dusty window that the girl stood –perhaps floated- behind. I was relieved by the fact that she didn’t approach me, but was terrified when she opened her mouth. Rather than making a sound as such, she blew cold air from her mouth, causing a draft that filtered through the neglected room and made the windows ice. Although not terrified by this –I was more shocked than scared- I was sure my heart felt the coolness more than any other part of my body. I got to my feet, treading backwards.

The girl eventually stopped breathing out and, having not moved an inch, she actually looked apologetic. I wanted to talk to her, but the room had gotten so cold that my survival instinct whipped me into action. As I tried the door ("never lose faith" read part of the school motto), the young girl’s pupils started to dilate. She began to look unsteady, vulnerable, and perhaps even anxious, as well; that made me panic more than anything else did during that whole morning. I had to get out.

The girl remained inside the room within a room and repeated her earlier ice-breath routine. The freeze took my own breath away, and all at once I felt faint. A niggling part of me still felt pity and sorrow for her, but I realised that now was my time to be selfish. I rushed to the opposite corner of the room and got on top of the solitary cupboard. As I felt for a loose ceiling tile, I began to believe that the subzero temperature would get the better of me. Each tile seemed to be stuck. Each second seemed to pass with excruciating slowness, and then my heart might as well have frozen; I looked down and the girl had vanished.

I wasted no time in hammering a tile with the back of my right wrist and eventually broke it in two. The material crumbled over my hand, fell hard and spread across the top of the cupboard like gravel. I pulled myself up into the aperture, and crawled at full stretch through the ceiling. My youthful heart had found its beat, and it seemed as though the danger had gone.

The metal frame that held the white panels was flimsy, and barely held my ten stone. I was sure that the whole ceiling would collapse and I’d be found two months down the line inside a freezing room. I imagined my head teacher’s face as he was being questioned by the police–priceless. Then I thought seriously about my predicament. Yes, the girl had vanished, but where had she gone? Who was she?! I could not look behind me and so the sensation of a chilled hand on my ankle wasn’t very hard to imagine. I had to get away from the chill and into the heat.

Pulling myself through the dark I began to wonder if I’d find my way out. The whole stay-out-of-sight thought was returning, but as it did the girl’s lonely face crept back into my head. It was like a paradox of emotions. How could I be scared of someone and yet worried for them at the same time? I shuffled to my left, gripping to the metal strips that criss-crossed their way through the building. I came to a dead end.

I didn’t know if I’d came to a wall or not, but for the first time I got a sudden case of claustrophobia. I sucked in as much air as I could and kept my eyes tight shut. No matter how much I willed myself to do so, I could not open them.

I felt my way along the wall and got the intense feeling that I was above the small section where the girl was. There was a sudden whistling noise and instantly I was immobile. I held my breath and waited for the cold grip of certain death to drag me down and down and down until I could be taken no further. Then a sudden blast of air whispered its way to me and got me moving again. The girl was behind me, of that I was certain. I couldn’t see her, but I felt her cold presence getting closer and closer with each inch I moved. The whole area became immersed with cold air, and a shallow sound –like someone wanting to scream, but being incapable of doing so- sifted around the dark, open space. I lunged forward, elbows rolling ahead, feet dragging behind, and felt the first tear trickle down my face. It froze half way down my cheek. I opened my eyes in order to stretch my face and crack the speck of ice. In doing so I noticed the light up ahead. I struggled along with the girl still very much on my tail and at that most vulnerable point I saw something I never thought I’d ever be glad to see. In the half-light, the shiny sticker on my schoolbag shone like a beacon I approached it at an unsafe speed, lifted myself up and dug my elbows right into it. The tile shattered and I heard the fragments splashing into the toilet. The bag bashed off the wooden panel of the cubicle, and I swung down and dropped seven feet without a moment’s hesitation.

When I glanced up the lump in my throat was almost choking me. The girl was smiling at me. Her eyes were sad, as if she didn’t want me to leave her, as if she wanted me to stay and play games with her. I whispered ‘sorry,’ and darted into the corridor where the rest of the school were enjoying their mid-morning break.

No one seemed surprised to see me. No one asked me where I’d been. No one mentioned my glasses.

No one mentioned my glasses.

I touched my face and realised I didn’t have them on. They must have come off in the ceiling.

I wouldn’t go back for them, though. Not even for a kiss off Martha Johnson.