Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(20)

“Cardboard is cheap,” I said cheerily, though the pressure of holding in my pee might have raised my pitch a few octaves. “We could try that.”

“And maybe some dresses? Like old-school, medieval stuff.” She grinned. “With corsets and cleavage.”

“Cleavage?” asked her friend. “I doubt even a corset and medieval dress could press those mosquito bites of yours hard enough together to make cleavage.”

“My mom says they’ll come late, just like hers did, and they’ll still be perky years after yours are dangling past your belt.”

“Uh, I don’t have to wear a belt, because I actually have these things called hips. You should try them sometime.”

“Girls,” I said tightly. My bladder was screaming for release, and their conversation was just one of many conversations I wanted to laugh at, but I knew I had to maintain a teacherly neutral. “I’m sorry, but I doubt we’re going to have the budget for anything like that. We’ll do our best, th—”

The bell rang, and I abandoned all pretense of authority, making a mad rush to be the first out of my room. “Study your lines. Quiz tomorrow,” I shouted over my shoulder on the way out. I had made it halfway to the lounge before students even began leaving their classrooms and flooding the corridor.

I tried to walk while simultaneously squeezing my thighs together and praying I wouldn’t pee myself. I probably looked like a constipated duck, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I had to go so badly that I thought there was a chance I might propel myself off the toilet when the time came, as if I had one of those water jet packs strapped to my back.

I wove my way through a final group of students before reaching the door of the lounge, knowing I had only seconds before the first wave of teachers would come bearing lunches and full bladders.

I fumbled my keys at the door, yanked it open, and stepped inside the lounge. I vaulted over a chair in my way and yanked the door to the women’s restroom open. I took one huge step in before stopping dead in my tracks.

Something had gone terribly wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

It looked like a murder scene, except instead of blood, it was poop. On the walls. On the ceiling. On the ground. Everywhere but the toilet. The handprints on the wall told a horrible story. I could almost see each step of what had unfolded, from the act to the attempted cover-up and the eventual escape. The sink was even running at full blast, like the poopetrator had tried and failed to cleanse themselves of what they’d done, but no amount of water could wash this away. To paraphrase Macbeth, all Neptune’s oceans could not wash the stain of what they’d done from their hands—and probably their pants and shoes.

I staggered backward, mouth open and fingers desperately squeezing my nose closed. My eyes fell to the center of the floor, where it looked like they had even tried to kick some of the evidence down a circular drain. I saw then that there were footprints leading out, and I finally stumbled backward out of the room.

I still had to pee, but violent flashes of the scene I’d just been exposed to were playing in my head like rapid-fire blasts of a strobe light. The walls. The floor. The mysterious way the toilet was the only thing that remained unscathed. I had so many questions, but I had to make it to a bathroom. I burst out of the faculty lounge walking as fast as I could. I distantly remembered passing a group of teachers who were heading to the lounge behind me with their lunches in tow. In the back of my mind, I hoped they wouldn’t have to see the same thing I’d seen, but I knew they probably would.

I finally found a bathroom. By the time I was done, I knew my lunch would go uneaten, maybe my dinner too.

I was lost in my own thoughts when I stepped out of the restroom a couple of minutes later, and I almost didn’t stop when I heard my name.

“Kira,” said the voice.

I turned and saw Rich approaching down the hallway. Female students were freezing in their tracks like he trailed a wake of paralyzing fumes. Whispers followed, and when he stopped in front of me, I could already feel the rumors pounding within every student’s chest, just begging to be released where they could spread like wildfire. Word of his interruption on the first day already had circulated the school, but I knew this would only make it worse.

“Maybe you should start wearing a name tag,” I said. I was trying to sound casual, but my heart was still pounding from what I’d just seen in the faculty bathroom.

He squinted. “You okay?”

“What? Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m fine. Perfect.”

He took me in with a slow, searching sweep of his eyes. “Well, I—”

“Hey!” a woman said in a hushed voice from behind me. She came and put her hand on my shoulder. I recognized her as Mrs. Bosch. I had a habit of thinking of the older teachers by their titles, while I thought of the younger teachers by their first names. Mrs. Bosch had been with the school over thirty years, which also meant she’d been around back when I was a student here. I still wasn’t completely over the strangeness of that. In a lot of ways, it felt like I’d been allowed backstage at a concert I’d seen a hundred times. Except instead of half-naked rock stars and drugs, it was just a bunch of stale baked goods in the teachers’ lounges and awkward team-building exercises.

Mrs. Bosch looked at Rich like he was a stray dog before positioning herself between us for a little privacy. “Are you feeling okay? I heard about . . .”