Ozzie's Book of Secrets

The First Notebook

Oswald Winters closed the door to his room, opened it and closed it again, then sat down on the floor in front of the door, smiling. This was the first time he'd ever had his own room and his own door. He looked at the door again and smiled. Then he spun around on his bottom and looked over his room, then lay down on his back with a deep sigh.

Finally the move was finished. Nearly every moment of the last several months, Oswald (or Ozzie, as he liked to be called), his younger brother, Jack, and his parents had spent preparing and moving from their apartment in central Philadelphia to their new house just north of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Even though the move wasn't far by number of miles, it may as well have been across the country for how different everything was here. But here Ozzie would be able to play football in his own yard and explore the countryside and here he had his own room. So far, the only down side was having to start as a freshmen in a new school, but that seemed a small price to pay.

Ozzie lay on the floor staring at the ceiling until and heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Then a light knock rapped on his door. "Ozzie? Can I come in?" came the little voice on the other side.

"Sure, buddy, come on in," said Ozzie, sliding over and laying behind the door. The door handle fumbled a bit and the door pushed in with the bright face of Ozzie's brother, Jack behind. Jack took a couple of steps into the room and Ozzie reached up and grabbed Jack's leg and piled him down onto the floor, laughing.

"What are you doing on the ground, Ozzie?" asked Jack.

"Besides Navy-Sealing you? I'm just trying to get used to having my own room. How about you? What do you think about your room?"

"I like the blue walls. It makes me imagine I'm a fish in a fishbowl or maybe a shark in the ocean," smiled Jack.

"Ahh! A shark," Ozzie gasped, and rolled away and scooted across the floor, pretending to swim away from Jack. "Swim away, swim away!"

"I'm'a gonna catch ya and I'm'a gonna eat'cha!" Jack's sing-song came following and he pretended to swim after Ozzie.

They played the game for a few more minutes until Ozzie sat up and asked, "So have you explored the rest of the house? Did you find any good hiding places?"

"I'm not telling," said Jack, slyly, and plopped on the floor next to Ozzie, cross-legged. Jack pushed his glasses up by the nosepiece, a habit he employed regularly.

"Well, that sounds like a hide-and-go-seek game we need to have," winked Ozzie.

"Ok, but I'm going to go unpack more boxes, I just wanted to see if you liked your room," said Jack and he started out the door.

"Me, too," said Ozzie. "I'll come check out your room in a little while."

"Okee Dokee," said Jack as he started thumping back down the stairs, both feet landing on each step.

Ozzie looked around his room and decided to unpack some of the boxes for his desk. He sat down in the creaky wooden chair his dad had given him last year and pulled a box open next to him. Inside he found a stapler on top of a pile of books. He put the stapler into his top drawer and hefted up the stack of books and walked them over to the built-in bookshelf next to his closet.

His room perched on the top floor of the old farmhouse. The ceiling angled in on two sides where the roof had stolen some of the space. His window at the end of the room looked north, a view filled with green grass, fences and the biggest, sprawling oak tree he'd ever seen. Other houses bordered their yard, but from this window it almost looked like they lived in the country. Such a difference from the apartment where he'd mostly grown up with the crowded streets of Philadelphia.