Warning: Child abuse
A free period. I never really knew what to do with them. Most guys went to the local supermarket that was down the road from school, which I was also probably gonna do, if it wasn't for the rain. It was pouring like hell outside.
Also I just didn't wanna sit in a hallway as teachers would come around and start asking you why you weren't in class. Well there was really one place to go. The school library.
You know, that's gonna sound funny since you're reading my diary, but I never really read. However, I managed to strike a pretty good relationship with the librarian, which you could attribute to my try-hard attempts to get everyone to like me during freshman year.
But all that didn't matter, as I entered library, I saw her with headphones on her ears. As I closed the door behind me, she turned her eyes towards me.
˝Hello, I'm in a meeting, so please, just try keep it quiet.˝
I nodded and made my way to the back of the place as I was already searching for my headphones, probably planning to play some Jesus and Mary chain, yeah, yeah I know, I'm cool and quirky like that.
But I stopped. In the corner of the library I saw a face that caught my attention. It was Alen. A classmate of mine, who I was talking to for a big part of my first two years here, but in the last couple of months he got really quiet and barely talked to not just me, but to anyone at all.
Now, I'm a pretty introverted person, but with him, I was always pretty open. I sat myself a safe distance of 2 meters from him and I started observing him. He was reading. As I checked out the cover of the book he was reading, I was able to spell out: Gimnazijka-Anton Ingolič. I was not familiar with the book, but i made out that it was probably some old piece of prose.
After a while I got sick of the starring and after about 2 minutes i decided to try and chat him up.
˝Hi Alen, what are you doing?˝ I said, almost in a way that made it sound like a mockery.
˝Oh, hi, nothing I'm just reading.˝ He said pretty unamused.
˝Nice, nice, pretty cool.˝ I said, while my smile slowly turned into a frown.
We left it at that. For about a minute. I decided for a bit of a more aggressive approach. I just couldn't hold it anymore. I saw through his mute bullshit. Or so I thought.
˝Hey, are we in the middle of an argument or something?¨ I said rather pushy.
˝No, I mean, not to my knowledge.˝
˝Oh, ok I just noticed you have been pretty quiet to me in the last couple of months.˝ I knew I sounded like a bitch, but now there was no turning back.
˝Oh yeah that.˝ He kept his composure but you could see he was stumbling a bit.
˝Yeah that, what is it with that?˝ I said the loudest I could without disturbing the librarian.
After about one minute of questioning he broke, which kind of surprised me. I decided to soften my tone.
˝Listen Lara, I just spent the last couple of months self reflecting, looking at the man in the mirror if you will, and it made me realize...that I'm a piece of shit.˝
That statement took me back a bit. I tried to bounce it back a bit with a joke.
˝You, a piece of shit, boy me too, high five!˝ He didn't find it funny and I lowered my hand.
˝You ever been to a camp?˝ He asked me with a completely straight face.
˝Yes, I have.˝ I replied, returning the coldness.
He told me about a camp his parents would send him to every summer. Him and his cousin would go there ever since the fourth grade. But the camp he was talking about was from 2019. The reason this one was so significant was because Alen grew up with a condition that would constantly mess up the skin on his face, but in 2019, he finally beat the condition which finally gave him some confidence.
He also told me he was quite a quiet kid and that was not at all different during that camp, tough he managed to get on with his roommates pretty well. But then he stopped when talking about a certain girl from that camp.
˝You know, I just wasn't used to getting attention from anybody, let alone a girl.˝
He went on about a her and how he would get to know her. He said she would send over younger guys, keep in mind Alen was about 11, to ask him what was his name, ask him how old he was, and he would mostly laugh it off.
Then she ended up gaining some courage and go up to him herself. If I remember correctly, he said it was during some sort of dance they used to have during camp.
˝You don't talk much do you?˝ That's what he told me she said to him.
˝I treated her like some sort of child, like I felt I was better than her, which I was not.˝
He told me they eyed each other a couple of times after that, but after a while, she started to hang out with another guy.
˝She probably thought I was not worth it, which I wasn't .˝
The camp was nearing its end and he spent the last days going to the beach and messing around with other guys, they also pranked their roommates.
They reached the second to last days and it looked like it was gonna be just another day. The night quickly came and they were getting ready to go to bed. However, as a last minute change, one of the guys from their room decided to switch with a guy across the hall.
˝Why he did it, I don't remember.˝
And the guys were off to sleep. However, as was the tradition, the guys got ready to talk to each other for about an hour after the lights got turned off. It started off with normal conversation about every day things. But the guy who was a guest in their room very quickly changed the subject.
He and all the other guys started talking about that we had gotten so familiar with. It was all pretty generic until the guy dropped the bomb.
˝Oh yeah, I heard that girl got raped by her father when she was five.˝
It struck Alen, who was tucked in his bed. This woman, who he treated like a child, that girl that he ignored. He didn't know what to say. The confidence that he spent his whole life building was gone. But that didn't matter anymore. The next day on the bus he tried not to think about it. He managed to forget about it. But as the years went on he became a lot more self-reflective and that moment popped back in his head.
The free period was over and we had to go back to the class. As I was sitting at my table, I was looking at the back of Alen's head and that last sentence he said to me was lingering in my mind.
˝I am just another disgusting self-absorbed man in her life. I am just another man that wronged her.˝
There is not much I can add.
LARA PETEK 21.1.2025