The girls' team

Just when I thought the water would give me a second's reprieve, the main locker room door burst wide open. The roar of a dozen female students barging in all at once filled the space, shattering my fragile bubble of isolation.

"Oh my God, look at this!" a shrill voice exclaimed, followed by a burst of laughter that turned my blood cold.

I pressed myself against the freezing shower wall, squeezing my eyes shut and holding my breath, wishing I could dissolve into the tiles.

"What's this? It was lying right in the middle of the hallway!" another girl snickered. "Whose panties are these? 'Open it to receive a gift'... Gross! Who in this department would wear something so pathetic and ridiculous?"

My stomach plummeted destructively. The scrap of fabric I had been searching for on all fours, blindly in the shadows, was right there, exposed in the very center of the room for everyone to see.

"It's probably some freshman's who still doesn't know how to dress," added another voice, followed by the snapping sound of fabric being waved through the air. "Eww! Off to the trash with this. Nobody's gonna claim this junk."

I heard the dull thud of my thong landing at the bottom of the metal bin. A pang of absolute loss pierced through me. My only garment, the symbol of my small rebellious streak, was now the joke of the morning. I was officially, and in the rawest way possible, stripped of everything.

Minutes passed. Steam began to fog up the stall, but I was unable to move. The water kept running over my skin, consuming the last seconds of my time and any hope of a miracle. The hum of the locker room grew louder, and the pressure from outside was not long in coming.

BAM, BAM, BAM!

Knuckles pounded with impatient force against the plastic door of my stall, making me gasp in terror.

"Hey, the one in shower four!" a girl shouted from outside. "Hurry the hell up! There are five people waiting and practice starts in ten minutes. Get out now or we'll drag you out ourselves!"

The air left my lungs. The stall was no longer a refuge, but a death trap. If I opened that door, I would have to walk across a crowded locker room completely naked, exposed to the very same girls who had just thrown my underwear in the trash.