The House with no Door

Taking advice from Anne Lamott, and her theory of 'shitty first drafts' here's a first draft that might eventually be a decent story. Or not.

THE HOUSE WITH NO DOOR

In one of the neighbourhoods near where I grew up, there was a house that my friends and I referred to as the ‘House with no Door.’ Of course it did have a door, it just wasn’t immediately apparent when walking past the house.
We first noticed the house walking home from our first day of high school. The walk was further than the distance we had travelled to elementary school, which in the winter time kind of sucked, but in the still balmy days of September, was great for strolling.
We turned off of the main street at a break in a cedar hedge with a wrought iron gate on either side. The path led onto a court with the typical 3 to 4 bedroom detached single family homes forming a ring that snaked off to another identical street.
The House with no Door was on the second street that we turned onto off of the court. The garage was just one more in a series of single storey rectangular boxes sticking out from the two storey domiciles. We were not paying much attention to the houses we passed; they were not nearly as important as what had happened in the cafeteria at lunch that day. But when the uniformity of garage, walkway, front door, window, was abruptly altered, we did notice. The garage ended at a path as usual, but it only seemed to lead to a bank of windows. There was no front door facing the street. No access to this residence that we could see from the sidewalk. As we continued past, we peered around the tree and shrubbery planted on the lawn to see if it was just hidden behind a smoke tree or juniper bush. It was not. Upon reaching the opposite side of the house I looked back one more time, and there was the door. On the wall of the garage, perpendicular to the street, the entrance to the house was completely hidden from anyone approaching the front from the left side of the driveway. We continued on our way, discussing whose locker was in the best location for meeting before class in the morning, but I couldn’t quite forget the door facing to the side. The owners must have requested that particular feature, because no other house on the street was built that way. Why would you want your door facing towards your neighbour’s house? Wouldn’t that make a cramped and awkward space to enter into? Instead of the whole rest of the house in front of you, there would probably be a wall from either the garage or a closet, or the powder room would be right there. I can’t think of a benefit to having the door perpendicular to the street as opposed to facing it. Except perhaps to discourage solicitors from approaching...