The Toilet Paper War

                                              The Toilet Paper War

         Mike and I are really good friends, which is the only reason why he still lets me room at his place instead of making me stay with my brother two blocks down. It’s not that I don’t like Tom, but we don’t always work out our problems in the meaningful convenient way that normal people do. For one, when we were in grade school, he colored lines on the living room wall and told Mom it was me, who wasn’t even there, all because he was supposed to watch my dance recital instead of going to the football game. So, while he was at the football game and I was grounded, I redecorated his room with markers, including the sleazy poster he wasn’t supposed to have of Shamree Shay in a thong. We tend to express ourselves in a non-verbal manner. That’s how I know Mike really likes me, because he’s put up with the mailbox being overstuffed with Tom’s magazines just before the carrier came, and the pound coming to impound my ‘rabid dog’ which was actually a goldfish named pooch, and his girlfriend Vanessa calling my house in tears every day for a week to yell at me after I told Tom I’d seen her flouncing with some other guy. OK, so the girl only looked like Vanessa, but I was still glad he broke up with her because she was always snubbing me off.
         My brother and I nearly went over the limit, though, after Mike had to tent his house for termites. Despite all the rumors, we don’t sleep together, so while he went to a hotel, I had to go to Tom’s apartment. He used to share it with this guy named Zach who was taking classes at Tom’s college, but that guy split after about two months, although I’m not sure if it was because of Tom’s taste in loud music or because I accidentally mistook Zach’s tropical fish for Tom’s and let it swim in the toilet. Hey, I wasn’t the one who flushed, it was Vanessa! But that’s why Tom lives in a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment and I had to stay in it for two days.
         One of the first things I discovered is that between two bathrooms, there is one roll of toilet paper. The revelation hit me while I was actually seated, so after the panic attack I felt relieved that my brother was out. I peeked out the door and checked down the hall just to make sure, sucked in my breath, and charged two feet across the hall to my brother’s bathroom. It was locked. How dare he! Luckily, years in the art of revenge had left me the skills of a cat burglar, so it was no trouble picking the lock with a hairpin, Just to be fair, I checked under his sink to be sure there really wasn’t another roll before swiping the coveted only one and tiptoeing my way back to my own bathroom. What a relief!
         Later on, I made a mental note to myself on the way out the door to grab some more at the store on my way back. Tom’s not good at stocking up, so just buying another roll simply wouldn’t do. It would have to be bigger, like a 36 pack – he should thank me for it. With that many, he shouldn’t be running out for a year! I went to stuff some under his sink and noticed that the toilet roll holder was missing – did he come home while I was at work? Sheepishly, I glanced in my bathroom – the original roll was still there. Just then the front door slammed shut, and there was Tom holding a pack of 48 just staring at me and my half-emptied 36 pack, and I knew for certain that he had needed that last roll after all. Uh-oh.
         He stomped past and threw his bundle hap hazardously into his room. “There you go, you really do use too much,” Tom’s scowl was enough to unroll the paper off the rolls by themselves.

         Sometime just after I rolled into bed, I finally thought of the best revenge ever for the locked bathroom discomfort, if only I could do it without getting caught….
         The next morning, I tried sitting up to find soft ribbons of blanket covering my face – wait a minute – ribbons? Brushing it off my hair and glancing down showed toilet paper crisscrossing the bed in every direction, leaving trails of white fluff hanging off the sides. “Thomas!” I hollered, “you, you, get in here!”
         Some banging and bumping ensued from the wall dividing our rooms and finally he poked his sorry head around my door. Then he pulled it back laughing as I tripped over the shreds of tissue on my way to – to do what?
         “Cut it out, now Tom!”
         “Hey you were the one who asked me to look!”
         “I didn’t ask you to look, I just said to get over here!”
         “Same thing,” he sniggered as he rubbed his night’s worth of beard and grabbed his bathroom door. At this moment, I dove back under the covers – of toilet paper that is. From my hiding place, I devoured his delicious expression when he looked in.
         “GINA!” he roared. I couldn’t have done it any better! I leapt out of bed again and peered over his shoulder at the swamp that conquered the tiny floor. “Gina, you’re gonna clean this up!”
         “It’s your bathroom,” I offered, “And that way, you know what its like to feel wet and yucky. Something I had to go through yesterday when you locked me away from the toilet paper.”
         “I didn’t mean to! I mean, I locked the bathroom because I didn’t want you messing with my stuff!”
         “You were being an inconsiderate jerk!”
         “Hey, I have a right to my privacy! Besides,” he added, scooping up a wad of sopping toilet paper, “you made this. Have it back.” With that, he slapped the disgusting wad on my neck.
         At this point, considering our history, either of two things could have happened. First, our parents could have stepped in right then and sent us both to our rooms where we could both brood on our next plan of attack. Second, I could just coldly wander off to the kitchen and have a cup of tea to calm down while I planned a truly evil comeback. Guess which.
         The sound of Tom’s grumbling as he gathered together his sopping wet mess down the hall was hardly consolation for my suddenly bitter mood. No, there was no way I was going to stay another night. Since it was Friday, after work I could hang out with my girlfriends and maybe – hey was Tom dating again? No, not that again. And besides, the message wouldn’t be clear if it didn’t include the original material. Unless….

         Late into the evening I worked around Tom’s apartment. It hadn’t been too hard to get him out with my friend Sorsha, who has this ring in her belly button and thinks that she as a wild reputation to get any guy she wants. All I really had to do was to tell her she couldn’t get my brother, invite her over to his place, and soon let the finishing touches of toilet paper hang out of the kitchen cabinets.
         He must have come back very, very late, later than I expected even from Sorsha. Mike and I were just greeting the pest control goodbye and choking on the dust that covered every inch of the house that Saturday morning when the phone finally rang. Mike gave the phone a grave glance before handing it to me with the questions he no longer asked reflected in his expression. Gingerly, I put the phone up to my ear and politely asked, “Hi, this is Gina. Who’s this?”
         There was an exasperated gasp and the other end before the annoyed click. I shrugged my shoulders and gave Mike a sheepish glance. He rolled his eyes and shook his head as if he didn’t want to know. I didn’t tell him.
         If only we didn’t have to go out and buy fresh supplies – like toilet paper – the ultimate wouldn’t have happened. I saw it first because I’d just spent a fortune on a motel and didn’t have the cash to buy a lot of stuff. Instead, I just stood there with my mouth open at the TP’d remains of the bushes, the yard, the old oak tree in the front yard, and Tom standing on a ladder to decorate the roof. Mrs. Medit from next door was staring too, as well as every car that passed.
         “Thomas!” the name tore from my throat like blistering thunder. Then I marched up to the front door, unlocked it, and slammed my little bag of goods on the counter while Tom followed me in.
         “Beautiful work of art, eh sis? But not like what I brought my date back to at my place.”
         “Tom, you confounded twerp of ridiculous…” there just weren’t any right words.
         “I couldn’t take her back to that mess! I had to get a hotel!”
         “So did I!”
         “If you hadn’t TP’d my house you could have slept there!” he threw the roll of toilet paper he was holding at me. I caught it and started marching down the hall.
         “If you hadn’t thrown that gross toilet paper at me I wouldn’t have TP’d your house!” I spun around and threw the toilet paper back. It bounced off his chin and rolled a few feet before he scooped it up and started running after me.
         “If you hadn’t covered my bathroom with that stuff, I wouldn’t have had anything to throw at you!”
         “If you hadn’t locked me away from the toilet paper I wouldn’t have swamped out your bathroom!”
         “Then what about stealing it completely from mine?”
         I stopped running and started staring him down. “Is that why you threw a ton of toilet paper on me while I was sleeping?”
         Just then, we heard the tired squeak of a front door opening slowly. Gingerly, we both peeked around the corner to see Mike framing the doorway.
         He looked at the trails of toilet paper that marked almost exactly the moment of each side of our argument as it was laid out on the floor, turned around, and reviewed the spectacle of long wisps drifting gently with the breeze where they hung under the tree over the whitened lawn.
         “We’ll clean it up,” I offered timidly.
         He turned back and looked at us with a blank expression. “I hope it rains,” he said, then turned and walked away.