The Unlucky One

My life in the orphanage is something that is difficult to describe. Since I was four years old have I been living in it, the years before it are only small shimmering lights. I can’t remember any faces or happenings, what I remember are places like my room, I must have shared it with a younger sibling of mine. There was a crib and I remember coughing, the person in the crib was coughing. That is everything about my real home.

Now I’m almost 18 years old, old enough to leave this horrid place. I don’t care who my real family was anymore, they gave me the worst 14 years of my life by leaving me at the doors of the orphanage. As soon as I turn 18, I will leave and start my own life.
The people from the bookstore, where I work at, said that I could work there full time. I was glad about it, I would finally be able to drop out of school, a place even worse than the orphanage, and move into a small apartment close to the bookstore. I’ve been saving since I was ten years old, when I realized that no one would ever adopt me, because I was too old already. Seeing how the small ones got taken in one by one hurt a lot, but I swore that I would never cry a single tear ever again.
The last time I cried was the day when I lost my only friend I ever had, Yolei, she was always nice to me and liked to smile. She was in the same class as me and lived somewhere in Kohan Falls with her family. It was until the day she moved to Sebnan, I couldn’t hold it in anymore and told her I hated her for having the life I would never have. I was jealous. We had a fight and didn’t talk anymore with each other. It’s been four years now. Where she is and what she is doing, I can’t say, but I wish I had kept my words to myself at that time. Maybe everything would have been different. Better. Nicer.

I asked the nun, who watched the floor of the villa I was living on, why people hated me so much. I was thinking I would get an answer like “no one hates you” or “why do you think that?”, but the nun didn’t even look me in the eye, just held her cross tight. Was she praying back then?
She answered me a while after. “You my child, you are the unluckiest child. Your parents must have sold your soul to the devil.” I wasn’t shocked. Not at all. That I was the unluckiest bastard in the world wasn’t unknown to me. That I was a devils child? Nope. That’s something I have heard every single day at school and at the orphanage. What I had read every day and what got hit and kicked into me every day.
But hearing it from the adult, who should love the children that she was watching, was too much for me. I wanted to run away, but what would it get me? Children, who ran away from the orphanage, were severally punished. I didn’t want to be more bruised than I already was. Yet, I wasn’t stupid enough to take my own life. Why run away to a place that would be even worse than life? Worse than every day I had spent in this villa and at school. No, I wasn’t stupid and kept living, but maybe that made me stupid. I didn’t want to figure it out, maybe I was scared, I don’t know. The truth is more painful than lies. A lot more. Will my life change when I leave this place? Or will there be just more people like the ones I already know and hate.

Can’t someone tell me?

Can’t someone save me?

Take me from this place! To a better one!

Just away from here, I don’t care about being lonely; I don’t care about being alone!
Anywhere but here!


Another day. Another place.

I like working at the bookstore, it’s as if everything that happened to me that day was forgotten.
I don’t have to talk to a lot of customers, because I was busy packing and stacking books into the shelves. I was allowed to read as many books as I wanted and I got a discount, which I rarely used. The bookstore is a really big building; many people used it as a library like me. The atmosphere is nice and friendly, the people who work here are like family to another.

“Sydney? Could you take these into the lab?”
The lab is the room where we fix the books that are about to fall apart. “Sure, just a second.” I told the manager before taking the cart with the needed books. “You can take a break after that.”
The manager is a really nice person; we even share the same last name. That’s something that always reminded me of my real family. I thought about how it would be like to have siblings. ‘What would it be like to have such a nice sister like the manager?’ I was too deep in thought to notice how I drove into the edge of a bookshelf. It was falling in slow motion right on me, but my luck the book cart was in front of me and took the hit and not me. But I got the books on me and that hurt enough already.

“SYD!” the manager saw everything and was right next to me without a notice. “Sydney, are you alright?” she was throwing the books of me and pulled me out. “Are you hurt?” Questions over questions. “Uh – I’m fine.” I whispered and opened my eyes slowly.
“Should I take you to the hospital or home? I don’t want to think about what your parents will say.”
I winced and remembered that Jamie, the manager, didn’t know I lived in the orphanage. “No. It’s alright. Don’t worry.” I said and stood up. What would Jamie think of me if she knew? If she knew I was planning to drop out of school just to work at a nice place like the bookstore? She thought I would wait at least after I graduated.
“You make me worry a lot you know. You remind me of my little brother; he’s ill but still wants to do everything on his own. I wonder how my sister would have been like.” Jamie said quietly.

I heard this story before, Jamie had a little sister, but she died when she was still young. If she was still alive, she would be the same age as me. I wonder if we would have been friends.

“What was her name?”
“You know, as much as I loved her, I can’t remember. We always called her Sissi, or just little one. I was only eight at that time, it’s been too long.” I felt sorry for Jamie, losing someone at that age must have been difficult for her and her family. “She was really cute. She loved to call me Jam, my elder brothers were Lulu and Kuku to her. The youngest, Oli, doesn’t know he had another sister.”
She wasn’t crying, I think she already did that often enough, but she grabbed me and took me into a hug. Pain ran through my body. Maybe the books hit me harder than I thought.

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