You dry your hands and look at yourself in the mirror. Your hair is tangled, your face is flushed, the top button of your shirt is unbuttoned and giving a flash of the thin gold crucifix that lies against your creamy skin. Damn you, you naughty girl. Your mother’s going to tell you you’ll go to Hell for what you’ve done… well, she would if you told her.
‘You’ll have to button up your shirt.’ The toilet door swings backwards and his reflection is shown in the mirror next to yours. He’s just done up his belt again and thrown the user rubber down the machine that you toss your time-of-the-month womanly materials down.
‘I don’t think you’re supposed to toss that down there,’ you reply. Your voice is high.
He gives you a smile that clearly shows he thinks you’re an idiot. ‘What am I supposed to do? Throw it in the bin and get caught?’
‘People will think it some other student’s. Besides, you think we’re not going to be caught in here?’
He slaps you on the bottom playfully. You wish he wouldn’t do that. It’s embarrassing, even if there’s only the two of you around. ‘Of course we’re not going to be caught in here, you stupid girl. No one uses the disabled toilets. Who have you seen use the disabled toilets?’
You think for a moment. No one. He has a point.
He leans down the foot he needs to be at face-to-face level with you, and whispers into your ear. You can still smell the smoke on his breath; you think he should stop smoking. Something else that you wish he wouldn’t do. There is a small gap between his skin and the opening of his shirt, of which several weeks ago you’d peak down when you’d think he wasn’t noticing. ‘Exactly. See you in class, my love.’
And with that, he walks boldly out of the disabled toilets, his business jacket snug around his upper body.
Sometimes you wish you were a teacher. You could easily walk out of the disabled toilets like you have all the business in the world to be in there in the first place. Your relationship wouldn’t have to be secret and you wouldn’t run the risk of him getting fired. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. Of course, then you must remember that you don’t have any business to be in the disabled toilets, considering you are not disabled nor a teacher nor a disabled teacher, and you must remember that you are sixteen and as his student he will get fired.
And you’ll probably be expelled. Your mother wouldn’t be too happy about that. Well, she wouldn’t be if you told her.
You open the door a crack and glance out. No one’s around. You step out and shut the door behind you, and begin to walk quickly down the school corridor. There’s no one around, but there never is. The corridor smells of a hospital, your brother has complained the one time he came to your school, and you admit that it smells one. And that the toilets smell like chlorine. You wonder how many more smells you can pick up here before the year is out (keeping in mind that it’s only ten in the morning on a Monday in March).
You stop walking suddenly when you hear a schoolgirl’s giggle followed by a deep male voice.
‘Will you shut up?’
‘Hmm… mmm… I can’t… ahhh…’
‘If you don’t bloody well shut up we might be caught out and then I’ll have to give you a detention.’
‘That’s no… threat… Sir...’
The voices are coming from behind a closed door off a corridor leading to nowhere. You quietly slither down that corridor, pressing your small body against the side of the lockers, parallel with the door. You’re in the shadows; they wouldn’t be able to see you even if they weren’t occupied, despite the sunshine flooding through the window directly opposite you.
There’s a window on the door, wide enough for you to see through into the room but slim enough for them not to notice anyone looking in. You can feel your blood heating up in your veins and your breathing comes in short, sharp breathes. Your face is flushing again, but you shouldn’t be embarrassed – besides, you were just doing what you’re seeing now minutes ago.
But you haven’t seen other people do that before. Well, other than the time when you were eight and you walked in on your parents in the lounge late at night, but you didn’t know what that was then. Not to mention the animated video, which exaggerated it all, that your Science teacher showed your class in year seven. This is new, though. Two people are expressed in front of you and they’re carefree about it, while you watch on in amazement, and you know what’s going on.
It’s not his voice, it’s not him, and so you have nothing to worry about.
You watch as his hand slips up and under the short skirt she wears. Your own skirt isn’t much longer, because you pulled up the hem much further than your mother liked to gain his attention. The girl you watch moves up to sit on a desk and on the way, her knee high socks are snagged down. Your own socks are knee high. So are half the other girls’ in this school. It’s the way you can tell who have slept with the men more than twice their age and who hasn’t. The girls’ dirty little secret.
The gasp that’s suddenly heard from the door draws your attention from inside to outside.
She’s down on the table on her back, he’s slowly moving over her. He’s pushed her skirt up around her waist and her hands are busy at his belt. They kick off each other’s shoes, their shirts fly across the window, a blur of white and black. You need to look away as his head trails down her stomach, as the sounds from her mouth become more frequent.
You cross your ankles together as you look at the wall, you squeeze your thighs together, and you arch your back against the lockers. You do everything you can think of doing, which isn’t too obvious, to relax the muscles below your hips and behind your chest. You’ve never felt dirty when this happened with him, but you feel dirty watching. It’s like watching a mirror, except there’s no mirror hanging in the door of the disabled toilet.
When you think the tenseness has passed, you turn and walk away, in time to hear your soft moan coincide with the elated cry of the girl in the room.
You enter the classroom as the bell rings. Your lover smiles at you knowingly when you walk in, then places a finger to his lips and turns his head back towards the board. His hair falls across his eyes, the way you both know you like it. You sit carefully in a chair, crossing your legs tightly, and hold on.