The classic rock rang out, pingy, as it bounced around the hard walls and floor of the janitor's closet. The big rolling garbage bin, with its scaffolding containing the usual cleansers and scrubbers, sat just outside the door in the hallway. Holly reflected on the circumstances that brought her to the depths to which she was now seriously contemplating dropping.
So many fruitless trips to the grocery store, this one supremely necessary item deferred time and time again. TP is such an intermittent purchase, it just never made the handwritten list. Holly had first noticed a scarcity in bathroom tissue nearly a month ago, when the number of rolls fell into the single digits. The bathroom cupboard was physically bursting with two-ply at the beginning of the year, thanks to her roommate's Costco membership, it felt like they'd never be at a loss for the stuff. She realized now what a luxury that original supply had been, a mountain of the super fluffy stuff, fit for kings, queens, and celebrities. Connoisseurs of the finer things. At the time, she snubbed public toilets and the pathetic brown near-bark in their stalls. Such crassness. To be expected to endure? To skimp on TP? Please.
But for the last six days, Holly had been thanking her lucky stars for the brown stuff. She left her house in the morning thighs squeezed tight, and made for the faculty restroom at Garfield High first thing. She made sure to use the facilities again during the day, and especially right before she left for the day, just in case her lazy roommate Kara failed to load up the dispenser again. Day after day she was disappointed to see Kara's procrastination continue on. And on. Holly found herself staying longer in her classroom, grading papers, planning, re-organizing. All excuses to stick around the high school campus longer, to cut down on the marathon wait between quitting time and the next morning, during which she would have access to only a paper-free bathroom.
A normal human would have just driven, or even walked the half mile to the grocery store and picked up a six pack of Charmin, but the whole point of buying bulk items at Costco was to avoid the expense of all that packaging! The per-roll cost was more than tripled at Safeway! The economics compelled Holly to wait it out, for surely her roommate was due to make a Costco run any day now. Wasn't she hurting for some high-quality, ultra-soft, perforated squares too? Where did she 'take care of things' these days anyway... Holly was determined not to cave and lay down her own cash on the exorbitant fees at the local grocer, no matter how convenient. Call it pride. Call it financial prudence. You couldn't call it rational, but some things were more important that rationality. It was only after Holly was caught pilfering single rolls of the most generic of generics brand toilet paper, and admonished for it, that she realized this was not one of those things.
When it was just three rolls left at home, then two, and finally one, Holly began to fight the unspoken battle with Kara. It started with small stuff, like estimating Kara's TP consumption. Judging from the rate at which the radius of paper decreased, and taking into account Holly's own, modest use, she became convinced of Kara's frivolous habits. Was she one of those lunatics who had to completely coat her hand with the stuff before tidying up down there? When the penultimate roll was half-spent, Holly was on the fence about swapping it out for the last one and hording the remnants to herself. Would Kara notice? Holly spent a good ten minutes weighing the decision, still astride the porcelain throne, before coming to her senses. She caught her reflection in the mirror as she washed her hands, and nearly muttered out loud 'Get a hold of yourself, H.'
But she didn't confront Kara either. She just figured her resourcefulness and willpower would win out, and Kara would be forced back across town to Costco for another mother load out of personal need. She didn't expect it to last two days, much less six, and now looking into the supply closet, at those shelves and shelves of unpleasant, uncomfortable, but nevertheless effective cylinders of wipes, Holly found a loophole that would give her an edge in the financial battle for wash closet supremacy. Here was a free and bottomless cache to tide her over as long as it took. Kara's determination, though impressive, would never last. Holly looked left, looked right, then reached out and placed her hand on the only thing she'd stolen in her whole life.
It didn't last long, that first roll. And Holly was careful to make sure the halls were deserted before scraping another. But like all thieves, she got cocky, and she got careless. In a rush to make it home in time for her favorite sitcom one night, maybe four rolls into her addiction, Holly looked left, but not right. She stuffed her booty in her purse, in full view of Dave, with whom she'd previously had a friendly and mutually respected relationship. He cleaned her floors twice a week, emptied her trash daily, and once in a while surprised her with freshly cleaned erasers for the chalk board. That special treatment ceased, of course, when he caught her red-handed. At first he was shocked.
"Holly Schmidt!" he blurted.
"Dave!" Holly returned.
But the surprise was soon replaced with something worse. For David, it was like finding the mouse who'd been leaving small black pellets of evidence all around the house. He'd known for some time that the quantities of TP just didn't add up. Inventory was something he took very seriously, and besides knowing the exact number of every item in his closet, he even noticed the missing rolls simply by the small change in his stacking pattern. Here was the culprit. So pathetic, he couldn't feel anything but contempt.
For Holly, it was like looking an oncoming car in the headlights. She stood frozen with embarrassment. There's was nothing else to say. Her mind raced, and for a moment she considered a bluff: just taking some to the ladies room? No. Dave would never buy it. He probably knew exactly how much was in there this minute, and would never have let it drop to zero anyhow. She closed her gaping mouth, finally, and replaced the still wrapped evidence. No other words were exchanged. In fact she couldn't remember saying anything to him since. She couldn't even muster up a 'Hello' in the hallways. She would never recover an equal footing with Dave.
The meeting with Principle Golightly was quick, but nearly as awkward as the hallway bust. He didn't say much. Her building key was revoked. She was asked to come and go through the front office in the future, and to sign in with Golightly's secretary when staying after hours. Golightly didn't have the heart to fire a teacher over a matter of a handful of TP rolls, but he might as well have asked for her resignation because it didn't take long before the whole faculty knew. When the first student made a sideways comment about wiping the chalk board clean of the past, she knew it was time to leave Garfield forever.
But now she was happy, free of her miserable history, and beginning her life anew as a new type of educator, working in the children's museum across town. She moved out of her place with Kara, who as it turned out been frequenting the Ace Hardware at the end of the block the whole time, flirting with two of the male cashiers to keep from being called out. Holly had her own Costco membership now, and lived just a few hundred yards away in complete security, only a moment's notice from all the thick satisfying layers Holly Schmidt could ever want.
