I’m sitting in the cafeteria at a table for six, alone, eating the same breakfast that I’ve been eating for the past twenty days: one hard boiled egg, a bun and a bowl of muesli with yogurt. I’m wearing the sweater that my ex-boyfriend gave a week before he cheated on me and my hair hasn’t been taken out of its bun for two days. I have a cold sore on my mouth from, well, I’m not sure what, but I read online that it can come from stress. So, let’s go with stress. The cold sore is in the middle of my lip and is in the process of crusting over, which not only stings when anything touches it but prevents me from making any b, p, and o sounds.
My brother Alex and I are working at a slave – I mean, a summer camp for kids, up in the mountains of Serbia. I share a room with him and a sassy black woman from New York named Chantel who wears fake eyelashes. We sat beside each other on the five-hour bus ride to the mountain and bonded over the fact that the bus had no air-conditioning or roll-down windows. Alex has been sleeping on a sofa bed in our room for the past twenty days ever since he discovered his roommate, a rapper who always wears sunglasses, is a chain smoker.
My colleague comes to the breakfast table with a tray full of buns, hard boiled eggs and a small bowl of ketchup. He takes a seat across from me.
“Hello,” he says with a formal British accent.
“How’s it going this morning?” I ask.
“I’m surviving,” he says as he peels an egg. “I hear there was some drama last night,” he says as he glances up at me.
I take a bite of my mushy yogurt and muesli, “yeah.”
“Well, the girls love you, I walked by a few in the hall and they just told me how cool you were last night.”
I stare at him blankly while holding my spoon in my hand.
“He doesn’t love me,” she yells out loud as bursts into my room and quickly runs into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
I’m half asleep but manage to lift my head from my pillow and look at my phone. It’s 2 am.
“Did a girl just run into our bathroom?” I ask out loud in a monotone voice.
“Yeah,” my brother says as he continues staring at his phone, “just leave her.”
I lay my head back down and continue to fall back asleep.
Within seconds, three other girls storm into my room and start yelling and thrashing their arms at the bathroom door.
“Get out of there, this isn’t your room – let’s just go to bed!”
The three girls then turn their heads and stare at Alex and me in silence. I stare at their faces, however, can’t seem to recall any of them. I strategically wiggle myself out from my bed, making sure no one witnesses my worn out sleeping undies that I’ve sported for the past eight years. I take the robe that I stole from the swimming pool and wrap myself in it. I stand up and drag myself to the bathroom door.
In front of the bathroom, I can hear the sounds of sobbing escaping through the crack at the bottom of the door. She unlocks the door. I take a breath before turning the handle.
I open the door slowly and see a young girl wearing a matching pink and yellow Mickey Mouse pajama set, kneeling in front of the toilet, sobbing with her head resting on the seat.
“Why don’t we just –” I lift her head from the toilet seat, “Yeah, let’s not put our head on there, okay?”
She looks up at me with bloodshot eyes and snot running down her nose. I scrunch my nose up as I look at her. I have never seen such a sight.
“H–he–he– doesn’t love me,” she stutters as her full body collapses onto the ground.
I start to laugh. I start thinking about what I was like when I was that age, I clearly remember crying in bed, avoiding the public eye. This method is a little too flashy for me.
I hear my brother heavily sigh as he rises from bed and walks elegantly to the bathroom, with the carpet making a soft whooshing sound under each foot step. He slowly peers around the door and stares at the girl on the bathroom floor.
Though she’s thirteen years old, this girl looks like she’s at least nineteen. She’s double my size in both height and width, with a swollen stubby nose and a modernized mushroom cut. Some would call her big boned, I call her jolly.
“She drank two liters of beer,” one of the girl’s whispers to me.
“Well, isn’t that fucking great,” I say out loud, staring at her as she wipes the snot from her face, “Jesus Christ”
“It’s our last night camp, so we wanted to celebrate,” chimes one girl.
“Can’t you guys make out with boys instead, or go on Chatroulette? Like, just normal pre-teen shit.”
They stare at me in silence.
“Okay, well, obviously this was a better idea. Fuck sakes, okay, let’s get her to bed.”
When I mean we, I mean my brother.
Alex put his arms under her armpits and hoists her up. She lets out a cry and collapses on the ground. She decides to crawl to her room instead.
I walk into her room and the smell of vomit infiltrates my nose and soul. The bathroom door is cracked open, I push it open with my bare foot and see an array of textured vomit covering the entire bathroom from floor to ceiling. I stare at the bathroom in silence and hook the door with my foot, pulling it back shut.
The girl is laying on the ground, rolling back and forth from side to side.
“Why, ” she cries out, “why doesn’t he love me.”
“Who’s the guy?” I ask out loud.
The three girls mouth his name to me.
“Are you serious? He’s like half your size, that would be a disaster.” I sit down on the sofa beside her.
“Listen, what you need is a man. And you’re not going to find one at –wait how old are you?”
“Thirteen,” she says in between gasps.
“Right, thirteen. I’m twenty-five and all the guys around me are pussies, so wipe the tears because you have at least another ten years before anything worthwhile walks by you.”
I get up and walk out of the room.
“Just fuck em”
My colleague looks at me with confusion, “what?”
“Fuck the children,” I put my spoon on my tray, get up from my seat to start my sixteen hour work day.
thelonelyserb 