STORM DRAIN SYMPHONY CHAPTER 3

The heavy piano lid dropped like a gunshot.

I positioned the felt-covered bar, closed the lock, then sat deciding what to do.

It was a weekend.

Classrooms below the auditorium would be empty and worth exploring.

I could climb the ladder into the pipe organ loft, explore practice rooms or backstage.

At the top of the stairs, where gymnasium maple met linoleum, was a hallway with gender-marked bathrooms hissing and clinking with radiators.

I'd never been in a girl's room before.

Afraid of what I might find, I entered the empty boys' bathroom instead.

A clanking radiator masked my presence as I peered under the stalls, then creaked open a saloon door to look for hieroglyphs.

Sitting on the edge of the closed toilet, typical dirty words and swastikas shone beneath paint layers.

I was peering through a drilled hole into the next stall when the door opened.

My heart skipped.

Adrenaline pumped as I noticed Hank's penny loafers.

I slid my feet backwards, trying not to breathe.

I could feel his awareness of me at the sink, running water on and off as if washing something.

I didn't dare move.

I would out-wait him, pretending, wondering if he could see my top-siders in the mirror.

Could he see me watching him through the crack? A loud bang sent warm air through an overhead vent.

My heart leapt.

Finally, he groaned, then threw some paper into the trash before he left.

I waited to hear him reach the bottom of the stairs before slinking back through the auditorium to the fire escape.

Ever since an upperclassman made sure I saw him in a similar bathroom at boys' school, I'd been turned on by urinals.

The upstairs schoolhouse bathroom was rarely used and would be a perfect place to do my business, if not for Hank, whose probing loafers and beady eyes scanning for me in the mirror made my heart race.

I nonchalantly returned to that bathroom, disgusted and excited.

The heating system banged, providing acoustic cover.