Free Gravity Brings Me Down by Natale Ghent

last night,” she begins, then stops, pointing in horror at my feet. “Oh my God … what is that?”
    I look down to see a pair of dirty underwear creeping across my shoe—grody side up. They must have been trapped in my pant leg when I took my clothes off yesterday. I was in such a hurry this morning I didn’t notice them when I got dressed. What’s more, they aren’t one of my sexy little pairs of black underwear: they’re white briefs, the size of a pillow case, the kind my grandmother wore.

    I have one stupid pair like this and I only wear them when I’ve hit the rocks in the panty department. They’re the last desperate measure before deploying my bikini bottoms.
    “Oh my God.” I jerk my leg to dislodge the underwear. They crawl off my shoe and into the crowd of moving bodies. A girl screams and kicks them down the hall. Then everyone is screaming and running and kicking. I retreat into CP class, praying no one actually saw my pants give birth to the dirty knickers. I can tell you one thing: this is way worse than having my name written on the bathroom wall.
    Miss B., my CP teacher, stares into the hallway in shock. “Is there some kind of emergency out there?”
    I totally ignore her. The master stoner, Dennis Carson, answers for me.
    “If you call discovering dirty underwear an emergency, then yes.”
    “Were those yours?” Sharon asks as she sits next to me. “You will
never
live this down.”
    Thanks, Sharon. I hate her for saying it but she’s right. I
will
never live this down. Now I really wish I weredead. I can never show my face at school again. Ever. I’d rather have a thousand stupid jocks writing my name on a thousand bathroom walls than this. My life is so over. My only hope is to find the underwear and hide the evidence.
    When the screaming stops and the halls are finally empty I ask to be excused. Miss B. raises her eyebrows but lets me go. She’s pretty good about that sort of thing because she’s a feminist and feels women should be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever they like. She even belongs to a group that fights for women who get bladder infections from working in factories in Third World countries where they aren’t allowed to take breaks.
    Leaving the classroom, I turn left toward the bathrooms, then go up the stairs to the second floor so I can double back and scope things out. I try to move as casually as possible. I don’t want to attract any unwanted attention from teachers in other classrooms, especially Chocko. Most of them keep their doors open so they can gawk around for suspicious student activity.
    No sooner do I touch down on the first floor again than Chocko steps out in front of me. He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there with this dumb smirk on his face. I stare back at him, then employ an evasive manoeuvre, stepping to one side as though to pass. He cuts me off.
    “We need to talk about your term paper.”
    “Right now?”
    He looks at me smugly but can’t think of a good enough retort. He eventually moves and lets me continue my search.
    I wait until I’m sure Chocko’s back in his lair, then comb the hall for my wayward underwear. To my despair, they’re nowhere in sight. Someone must have picked them up. I’m done for.
    Just in case, I nonchalantly check the trashcans. As I’m looking in the garbage, Mr. Ricketts, our principal, appears at the end of the hall and starts gunning toward me. I pretend to take a drink from the fountain. He scans me like a Cylon as he walks past, just long enough to let me know he’s onto whatever diabolical scheme I may be hatching. After he disappears, I continue checking the garbage but come up empty. I guess I have to accept the fact that my life really is over. Someone, anyone, could have my dirty underwear in their possession. This is too much for me. I consider walking out of school right there, leaving my books and everything, and never coming back. Until I hear Miss B.’s voice.
    “Are you lost,