What hides in the stalls

When I was in my old elementary school a lot of weird things happened. This weird things seemed to follow me throughout my life, but the worst of it happened when I was going to elementary.

I have no idea if it was because of me or because of that school. Maybe with age I learned to keep back whatever tries to harm me.

In this particular age in time I was maybe eight years old. Everything was fairly normal for children that age. I had friends and enemies, I had my ups and downs like any child. But no matter what we went through and who we are, we had a few rules.

-don't trust the janitor

-don't touch or look at 'the finger'

-the bathroom in the other building is off limits

-don't go to the back of the school no matter what

-don't go to the last stall in any bathrooms

It was nearly unspoken, but everyone knew.

One day we got a new student, something that happens a lot with children leaving the school left and right.

A small girl walked in, her hair was long and brown and pretty, her eyes were a bright shade of blue and had some freckles on her face. I knew from that moment that she would be very popular here. I couldn't wait to know her name and make her my friend.

As the day passed and lunch started, my usual friends and I made our way to one of the water fountains were we usually gossiped or something like that.

Next to the fountain there was a pair of door that led to the bathrooms. Usually we went in pairs of two, no matter what. After a few seconds of standing there a girl hurried out of the bathroom. I knew this girl too she was my crush at the time, let's call her Jane.

Jane crashed through the door a bit nervous and looked at us. She seemed relieved when she made eye contact with me. For a moment we all felt a heavy weight at that look, no one looks at me like that often. Without a word we followed Jane.

Me and my two friends made our way into the bathroom where we saw Jane's bathroom buddy, Katie almost crying and three other girls I didn't see the faces of.

What worried us all was the tiny girl making her way into the last stall, or trying to. One of the other two girls were standing in front of the stall door and the other girl was holding the third girl back gently, begging.

The girl in front of the door glances at me and then back at the tiny girl. I see now that the girl at the door was my friend Gal. And that tiny girl was the girl that walked into our class earlier that day.

Not sparing another glance at me Gal speaks, clearly directed at me. She beacons me and I walk toward.

After this point it stars to get hazy. I remember looking up at the surprisingly dark ceiling just above the stall and shuddering a bit. I remember trying to convince this girl to stay away from the stall but in the end, she didn't listen. She turned out to be an ugly word fighter. Threats and shoves at us all until we let her use the bathroom. We begged her to use anywhere else, every stall was open. She managed to get blood out of my wrist and at that point everyone gave up.

I stepped back and so did everyone else, we watched her glare at us as she walked in. With a hard breath we waited a few minutes and that soon turned into the rest of lunch. She didn't make a noise and she didn't come out.

Eventually I heard Jane and the other girls call me out of the bathroom, telling me there's nothing I can do and that it's done. I never learned that girls name before she went in there and I never did learn it after either.

After that incident she only came back the next day looking weaker than she did in her tiny body. After that she took a few sick days.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into forever.

We never spoke about it, I never left the grief and I never let anybody disobey the rules again.