I'm Sort of Okay with This

One: Abby

The stall furthest from the door in the second-floor bathroom was my favorite.

Vast, private, and arguably the cleanest, though the stall by the entrance was a close second. Of course, none of the stalls were exactly fucking spotless, don't get me wrong.

They all reeked of shit and used period products, and flushing the toilets might as well have been optional. Whether or not you would find toilet paper in the dispensers was always subject to chance. And if you did happen to find any, it was more like sandpaper than something you would want to wipe your ass with. Of course, the school had the money to buy the goddamn football team new helmets every year, but decent bathrooms were something they absolutely did not have the budget to splurge on.

It was truly a promised land if I ever saw one.

The walls were covered in pencil graffiti, but that was the least of my complaints. Some of the etchings were quite entertaining, aside from the phallic imagery and mindless cuss words. To the left of the toilet, someone had simply written whore in massive bubble letters. In the top corner of the stall door,  a curious phrase was carved in black felt marker;

Welcome to Paradise!

The irony made me chuckle. Hell, I wish I could've met whatever girl wrote it. I'm sure she was funny as hell, whoever she was.

I crossed my legs on the toilet, ears peeled for the clack of footsteps. I dialed up the music churning from my headphones and let the harsh guitar and rasping vocals move me into a pleasant inertia. The sour taste of my morning coffee lingered at the back of my mouth.

I wished I had a joint, but I didn't want to get caught. A girl named Gina Lopes sometimes hung around in there, too, and she was one of those cross-wearing religious types, with a stick jammed about twelve feet up her ass. God, I hated her.

I leaned back on the toilet and stuffed my hands in the pockets of my denim jacket. A trickle of sadness dripped down my spine, the dull, aching kind that you get when you see an old man sitting alone at a restaurant booth. There was no reason for it. There was no reason for anything, it seemed.

The sound of shoes squeaked against the floor and the door swung open. I pulled up my feet so whoever came in couldn't see my boots from under the stall door. Exasperation rushed through me. I knew it was a public bathroom, but I was always wary of others. At first, I thought it was Gina Lopes, but I could sort of tell there were two people from the rhythm of the footsteps.

"It smells like shit in here," the first girl said. Her voice bounced off the walls.

A bathroom smelling like shit? I thought to myself, who would've thought?

"Ugh," said the second girl, "I know, right? It's like they never clean."

The first girl puckered her lips. I could tell they were preening themselves in the mirror, since they didn't come into the stalls and I didn't hear the sink, so they couldn't have been washing their hands.

"So, did you hear about Cheyenne?"

"No," the second girl said, "what about Cheyenne?"

"So, apparently, at Sasha Simmons's party, she hooked up with Rafe Powers," the first girl squeaked.

I rolled my eyes. I did understand the forceful, atavistic obsession my peers had with other people's sexual encounters.

"I thought she was dating Ian," the second girl said.

I raised my eyebrows. I knew of Ian Kennedy from my English class. He was the pitcher on the baseball team, I was pretty sure, one of those conceited athletic types. He was supposed to be a pretty good baseball player, though, and his father was something of a local celebrity. He owned one of the largest car dealerships South of Puget Sound. His commercials were always on television, garish and loud.