Marcie Ratliff/Winonan

“Don’t go in my room,” my little brother John said, appearing in the doorway of my room with two fighter planes in his hands.

“Why not?” I looked up from my Dear America book.

“It’s closed.” He flew the planes around my garage-sale lamp, spitting motor noises out of his lips.

“Stop spitting on my stuff! Why is it closed?”

“Because it’s the Nasdaq room. And the Nasdaq room is closed.”

“Why? What’s the Nasdaq?”

“I don’t know. I just heard the radio say the Nasdaq was closed.”

The Nasdaq. It sounded like magic, like fire, like some foreign country, or some secret group of people planning an invasion when the northern lights showed up again, like they had one summer night, golden and burning above Merrill Street.

The Nasdaq room was closed, but I was going to see what it looked like.

I waited for John to go into the living room again, to his cars and planes which constantly fought for control of the long windowsill, which was part runway and part racetrack.

I waited until I could hear the airplane motor noises again, hear Dad’s green chair squeak in the office above the drone of Daniel Shore on the radio, and then I snuck into Bobby and John’s room, opening the door so slowly I could feel goosebumps rising on my arms.

I shut the door behind me. The sense of the forbidden made the air—which smelled like pee because John peed in the night a lot—thicker, and I breathed deeply, lest I stop breathing altogether.

Faint blue light from the backyard shone in the two windows, and the yellow nightlight on the wall spilled gold on the blue carpet.

I sat down in front of the bulb and looked around the room even as my shadow filled it.

To me, Nasdaq was invisible. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary—my shadow was the only addition to the scene. I stood up.

There was Bobby’s desk with his computer.

There was the closet with its messy rows of sweaters.

There was the dresser, hulking in the corner, and in the light from the window I could see six or seven dented ME 109s or Spitfires gleaming on the dresser top.

There was the bunk bed, Bobby’s top bunk neatly made, John’s bottom bunk stripped down to its plastic cover because of the pee. Nasdaq, whoever or whatever it was, was closed, and I was teasing it as I tiptoed around the room, daring it to come out and show itself.

I was not afraid. I could be here and John would never know, and maybe Nasdaq would never know because I was so quiet.

The nightlight beckoned me, and I turned toward it again, my back to the rest of the room.

John had heard of Nasdaq on the radio.

I thought about the radio.

I thought about Thistle and Shamrock, and Speaking of Faith With Krista Tippet, and Car Talk with Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, and All Things Considered, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, which we listened to every Sunday on the way to and from church in the city.

Sometimes we got the questions before the caller did. Mom hated the radio, because everything on it was boring or sad, but I liked it.

Without the radio in the car, there was only silence, or John screaming about something, like maybe I pinched him, and there was only the road pulling itself away from us like an old nametag, rolling off and flying away.

After a while, I couldn’t think of anything else to think about and my back muscles were twitching from all that breathing and silence.

I got up and left the Nasdaq room, as quietly as I had come.

In the hall, I stepped on a squeaky floorboard beneath the diamond-pattern carpet, worn from so many years of steps.

I went into the bathroom and turned on the light, too bright on the pale yellow tiles my mother cleaned with a toothbrush, too bright above the mirror where I looked into my eyes and smiled.

John would never know that I had gone into the Nasdaq while it was closed.

I had trespassed, and here I was, leaning down into the bathroom sink to get a drink, because bathroom water tastes better than kitchen water.

Inevitably, Nasdaq let me down. The secret society I had dreamed of was only a cousin of the DowjonesinDustrialaveRage, a boring game they talked about on the radio all the time, where people gained points and lost them, and I never knew how.

That’s what imagination does, throws a shadow on the wall where there isn’t any substance.

But one of the best parts of being a kid is seeing that shadow, knowing its name, and knowing that you can never know it.

Contact Marcie at [email protected]