Chapter 11: The Golden Rule
The minty freshness of toothpaste still cool in his mouth, Derek was toweling his face dry in his room when the commotion erupted in the hallway. It wasn't the usual muffled laughter or the soft click of a closing door. This was sharp, urgent, a percussive distress signal.
“Fiona, come out of the bathroom right now! I have to pee – like, really urgently!”
Sabine’s voice was a strained, high-pitched wire of panic. Derek cracked his door open just enough to see. Sabine was braced against the bathroom door, her knuckles rapping a frantic, hollow rhythm against the wood. Her body was a tight coil of desperation, one leg crossed tightly over the other, a hand pressed hard against her denim-clad crotch. Her face, usually a mask of cool indifference, was flushed and tight.
“Fiona, get out of there!” she pleaded, her voice cracking.
“I’m coming out already!” Fiona’s reply was muffled, flustered.
The lock clicked. The door swung inward. For a single, suspended second, Sabine’s expression shifted from panic to imminent relief. But that second was all it took. A dark, wet patch, no larger than a coin, bloomed on the light blue fabric between her legs. Her eyes widened in horror. Her body, held rigid for so long, gave a single, violent shudder.
It was less than ten seconds. The trickle became a stream, a quiet, rushing sound audible in the tense hallway. It soaked through her jeans, darkening the denim in a spreading stain, and dripped steadily onto the worn floral carpet at her feet. A small, shameful puddle grew around her sneakers.
The sharp, unmistakable odor of urine cut through the air.
Sabine stood frozen, her face a canvas of utter humiliation. A choked sound, half-gasp, half-sob, escaped her lips. “This… this is all your fault!” she whispered, her voice trembling with a fury born entirely from embarrassment. “You were in there forever!”
Fiona, huddled in the bathroom doorway, wrapped in a fluffy robe, looked from the puddle to Sabine’s face, her own features pale with shock. “Sorry, I was just… it was a minute! It’s your own fault, Sabine! We only have one bathroom up here, you know that! So next time, don’t wait until the last possible second! D was in there earlier, so I had to wait, too!”
“You… interfere,” Sabine hissed, the words weak and pathetic against the physical evidence of her disaster.
Derek pushed his door open fully, the floorboard creaking under his weight. Both girls flinched, turning to him as if he were a teacher discovering a fight in the school corridor. His gaze was calm, taking in the scene: the trembling, wet Sabine, the defensive Fiona, the pungent puddle on the carpet.
“Sabine,” he said, his voice level and firm, cutting through the tension. “Go get cleaned up. Now.” He didn’t raise his voice, but the former military cadence in it brooked no argument. “Then come back and remove the embarrassing puddle in front of the door.”
Sabine’s cheeks burned a deeper crimson, but she didn’t protest. She shuffled past him, head down, the wet fabric of her jeans making a soft, sticking sound with each step, leaving a faint, damp trail on the hardwood floor leading to her room.
Derek’s eyes met Fiona’s. She looked away, guilty, as if she were somehow to blame. He gave her a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head. It’s not on you.
He looked back at the dark stain on the carpet, a symbol of a deeper problem in the cramped upstairs of this old house. Four people. One bathroom. Two teenagers navigating the fraught terrain of morning routines and personal crises. It was an untenable situation, a recipe for more of this acidic drama.
“I’ll talk to Katja,” he said, more to himself than to Fiona. “Maybe we should change the room arrangement.”
Without further ado, he turned and headed for the stairs, the scent of mint on his breath a stark contrast to the lingering, awkward smell he left behind. The wooden steps groaned under his weight as he descended, his mind already working, piecing together a solution from the fractured dynamics of the household. This wasn't just about a spilled glass of water or a borrowed shirt. This was about territory, privacy, and the raw, unfiltered pressure of living in too-close quarters. And he was now, undoubtedly, in the middle of it.