It was one of those days where everything had seemed to go wrong. The phonebooth ate my quarter, the bus whizzed by and splashed my pants and now I was waiting in the bathroom for a free stall and I really had to go.
Girls were lined up at the mirrors, preening and plucking and doing things that I wasn’t sure was allowed in high school washrooms, but I kept my mouth shut. The pressure on my bladder by this time had grown, and I was beginning to really hate that New Year’s resolution I had made to drink eight glasses of water a day.
The line at the mirrors was growing smaller but the huge line that extended out the doorway to the toilet had in fact grown. I was sixth in line, but the line never seemed to get smaller only larger.
I decided to pass the time counting ceiling tiles but that only lasted about sixty seconds and the fact that there was over a hundred ceiling tiles didn’t exactly remedy my bladder problem.
I started to glance around at the people in the exceptionally small bathroom. A few of the girls had been in my classes over the years, but most of them were grade nines, who looked around at us seniors with a sort of undetermined awe, as if they weren’t sure what to think. My mind started to wander and realize all the homework I had to do once I got out of the bathroom. The first and foremost thing that came to mind was the art project I had due tomorrow. We had two months to do it, I hadn’t even started. It was then and there I decided, that I was screwed.
As I stood in that line hopping from one foot to the other I began to think of all the homework piling up in my locker and the fines piling up at the library. I stared at the feet lining the wall underneath the stalls and noticed that a pair in the far corner ‘wheel chair stall’ had been there for awhile. I tapped the girl in front of me. “How long has she been in there?” The girl shrugged, her perfect hair bouncing on her perfect shoulders. “Beats me, at least an hour or two. Fibre problem probably.”
I discreetly stepped over to the stall and tapped on the door. “Umm, is everything okay in there?” There was silence. I looked at the people beside me, and behind me and looked at my watch. Class started in five minutes and if I wasn’t there I’d get another late. And when you were late in Fitzsimmon’s class it meant academic death. I pulled on the door, and as I had suspected, it was locked.
Again I looked back at the long bathroom line, and they in turn looked at me. It was childish and silly, and I hadn’t done it since grade school, but I decided there was no other alternative.
I was going to look over the side of the stall while standing on an adjacent toilet. Gingerly I moved into the stall beside it. Nobody used this stall, it was too scary even for the janitors to attempt to clean it. Graffitti written in unmentionable substances covered the walls of the stall, the toilet was so far plugged that even the most powerful plunger could not dislodge it. I had wandered into noman’s land.
Carefully I climbed onto the toilet seat and planted my feet firmly upon it. Then I slowly raised myself to place my hands on the top of the wall. Then gradually I lifted my head over the wall....
I was hit by a wall of stench, so powerful that I was knocked backwards and my head had started to spin. Nausea overcame me and I stumbled blindly out of the stall, waving my arms. I fell against a sink and clung onto it till the wave of nausea passed and the room had stopped spinning.
“That, that, that t-toilet is occup-pied!” I stammered and swallowed nervously.
Rosalie Shurman, the most popular girl in school glared down at me, hands on hips. “What do you mean! I have to pee and I have to pee NOW!”
“I don’t know what to tell you, but someb-body’s in there. You’ll have to wait for another stall.” I shrugged, and moved back more towards the wall. Rosalie glared at me some more and stomped off towards no man’s land. Then a few minutes later, she stumbled out, just as stunned and disoriented as I was.
The sneakers beneath the stall almost grinned at us. Red converse sneakers complete with white laces. Pristine and new, it was unbelieveable that something that was so horrible could own shoes like that.
I stood slowly and steadied myself, ready for another round with the stall. The hands on my watch had creeped to well past late. Fitzsimmons was already out for my blood. I had nothing else to lose. Except for your life... I shook my head to lose the thought. I had to go to the bathroom, and nothing not even pristine red sneakers were going to stop me.
I grabbed my school bag. Generic Army Canvas bag. Advertised to carry three textbooks and 4 binders. I could barely squeeze in the one binder and 2 textbooks I had. So much for truth in advertising. Grasping the shoulder straps in both hands and clenching my fists, I swung the bag hard at the door.
There was a loud RIPPPPPPP! as the straps from my bag gave way and I swore under my breath. Then there was a POP! as the clatch on the door let go and a slow CREAAK! as the door swung open.
Somebody or someTHING... Sat slumped over the toilet. She or it had one of those cheap cardigan sweaters, a pair of acid wash jeans there’s no accounting for the style of the deceased... and those red converse sneakers, now almost scowling at me angered that I had finally found a way in.
I reacted to the smell and breathed out. “Fwooosh! Phew!!!” The thoughts running through my head had been right. She was dead and from the smell, obviously a long time. “More than an hour or two!” I muttered.
At first I wondered how on earth could anyone not notice somebody dead in the bathroom? Then I breathed in deeply and started gagging. There was my answer right there. School bathrooms reeked anyways why would we question a little devation in the odour? Then I started to wonder how did the janitors not realize it? Then I looked over to ‘no man’s’ land. And again answered my own question.
Only one question remained. Who or what, is it? Sure there was alot of people away every day at school, attendance slips were sent home. But nobody really thought. “Oh maybe she’s dead.” It just doesn’t happen so people don’t consider that alternative.
I picked up my school bag and looked and saw an empty stall and headed toward it. Then realized that somehow I didn’t need to anymore. As I looked back towards the scowling sneakers, I was being ushered outside by paramedics, and teachers that were freaking out. I slowly walked out amongst a growing crowd of people, students, teachers, reporters, all talking about “the dead girl” I was right up to her, I didn’t even see who it was, all I saw was those sneakers. Even when they wheeled her out on the gurney, the sheet covering her cadaverous body. Two things protruded from the sheet. Her Sneakers.
A week later it was front page news the girl’s school photo plastered all over the pages of the newspaper. But one newspaper for some reason had captured the girl’s feet under the bathroom stall, before the paramedics had taken her away on the gurney.
It was then I found out what I would do for my art project. It was pretty good for a day’s effort, the colours of the sheet complimenting the shade of the main object for my painting:
The red sneakers.