Black & White [Jeremiah Fisher]

thirteen

ROWAN

After Conrad and I's heart-to-heart, we both walked inside together to hit the hay. It was about 11 p.m., the night swim absolutely exhausted me. The two of us said our respective goodnights before he went to his room on the other side of the hallway and I headed to the bathroom to take a shower before bed. I knew if I didn't wash my chlorine hair, I would be paying for it in the morning.

I noticed that mostly everyone does not lock the bathroom door around here and typically respects the person who has the door closed. So I haven't been locking it myself either, plus, everyone is out and there's no sense of me locking it.

I turned the shower on, the water blasting the side of the shower curtain, causing it to splash all over me. I groaned, "Fucking, Steven." He always likes to point the shower head towards the curtain so it hits the next person who showers after him. He thinks he is so clever, and I should be used to it, but the last thing that is on my mind is to check which direction the shower head is pointing.

I tried my best to brush out my hair before I took off my sopping-wet bikini and hopped in the warm shower. This is exactly what I needed to warm up my body. Nothing beats a shower after a swim, especially a night swim.

Since nobody was going to be waiting on me, I decided I wanted to take an everything shower right now. Shampoo and condition my hair, exfoliate and shave my legs, and use a hair mask that Susannah picked up for both Belly and me out of the blue.

I enjoyed hot showers, like most girls I would say. Even though the boiling water is probably not the best for my skin, I didn't care. The steam rolled out the top of the shower and into the ceiling fan. Water rolled down my back as I took my time shaving. I already washed my hair and put on my hair mask.

I continued my everything shower, and just as I was getting the last bits of the hair mask rinsed out, I heard the bathroom door open and a breeze of cool air enter the bathroom. My heart stopped as my body jerked into the wall, causing a few bottles to drop, and making a loud noise.

Whoever just walked in scared the shit out of me.

I scrambled to pick up the bottles first, then I peeked my head out from behind the shower curtain. My first thought is the person who just barged in is Conrad. Even though he knew I was taking a shower, he was in fact the only person up here. But then I thought, no, Conrad would have knocked and announced his entering.

The next person that came to mind was Belly, but then I thought, no, she would have immediately started talking.

If Steven were to have walked in, he would have charged straight to the shower curtain and start to punch it to scare me, which obviously didn't happen.

That leaves one person. A curly-headed boy with cerulean eyes.

"Jeremiah, what are you doing?" My heart pounded against my chest. I cannot pinpoint if it's due to the fact that I'm literally naked behind this curtain or the fact that this is the second time he barged in on me in the bathroom.

He stared back at me, his cerulean eyes turned Prussian blue in a matter of seconds. He did not look happy at all, in fact, he looked pissed.

So pissed.

"Did you smoke weed with Conrad?" He confronted me with the last thing I expected. These are the first words that he has said to me in days.

I sighed, pulling my head back into the shower so I could turn off the water. Without opening the curtain, I reached my hand to find my towel which I successfully grabbed and began to dry my body down in the shower.

"Can you just wait until I get out of here?" I should be trying to plead with him, taking this chance to open up the conversation that I have been meaning to have with him. But for some reason, him barging in here like this when I'm the most vulnerable has really ticked me off.