11.The final trip

In my school, at the end of the first year, you would go on a 2-day trip as a way of celebrating the end of your first year. 

It was basically schools way of saying: ˝Congrats, you survived!˝

The six classes that build up the freshmans were split in a group of two and sent to a remote location in Slovenia, we got dealt Kočevje, which was like 1 hour and 30 minutes away. 

On a Friday, we had to come to a bus station, which is close to the train station in Ljubljana. We had to be there at 7 and since my dad was already taking my sister to school, he dropped me off.

I was the first one there as usual, but it didn't take long before like a fourth of the school appeared in front of the ticket office. I saw most of my schoolmates and I quickly joined one of the many little crowds that started forming.

It was expected that some of the boys were gonna bring some alcohol, cigs although vapes were more popular then and they were not wrong. I also saw him, yes him. This was before the wallet thing, before 'the incident', before the stalking, this was before I even cared really. But it was the first time he ever really fell in my eyes. 

He was coming right out of the bakery that was located near the station. I don't know why i felt this way at that point, but that feeling was there to stay.

As the clock ticked 7.30, it was time to get on the bus. I got seated next to Alen, who was still in his extroverted was before all the stuff in the 3rd year. He spent most of the ride talking to me about literature. 

He spent one and a half hour praising people I barely ever heard of. I forgot my headphones so I didn't really have any other option to cure boredom and I never really had luck with falling asleep on the bus.

When the ride came to an end. We entered the place, where we were gonna spend the weekend. We quickly had to settle ourselves in the rooms as the teachers were gonna take us out on a hike, which we later found out, would not be our last time.

The teachers that were with us on the trip, were actually not the ones we were familiar with, as our actual teachers were busy at that time, so we were given professors from higher grades. This actually helped me a lot in the long run, as I managed to make a good name for myself.

When we got back to rooms, I ended up talking for a bit with my roommate. She and me were in a room for 4 alone, as there was not enough of us to fill out the rooms. She actually tried to squeeze herself and me in another room with other classmates, but she was unsuccessful.

The most interesting thing about the weekend were actually the evenings, where the teachers would have us play games that were supposed to bring us closer together. On the first night, we had a quiz about the city we were in. The next and last day we played pantomime-

In the whole building there was only one room with 4 showers and with about 60 students, you could imagine how it went. I actually only got to go at 10 pm and by that time I was half asleep, so I'm surprised I didn't drown in there. I made my way back to the room and threw myself in the bed while the roommate was still on her phone.

˝I hope you don't fucking snore, because this room is only big enough for one hippo.˝ She said, but I was already counting sheep.

But the night was not over, you see at about 3 am, I woke up felling like my bladder was trying to exit my body. I made my was of the bunk bed with my legs crossed. I left my room and found myself in the hallway. As I was getting closer to the bathroom, I heard a door open.

Out of the room, came out a boy from different class that I never saw before, holding a pair of pants and underwear. We made eye contact I looked him up and down, and as I went past him I gave him a nod. Why? I don't know? But he, he looked at me like he had seen a ghost.

As I relived myself, I went straight back to my room and bed. In there I thought to myself:

˝Why did he look at me that way,? What was he so scared of? What was he doing?˝

I know that the line for the showers was long, but surely that's not what he was doing, and without a towel, no this falls out of the question. As I checked him up and down, I didn't notice anything weird, so I thought that idea of him peeing his bed also didn't make sense.

But then it hit me:

˝Ewwwww....what were you dreaming about man?˝

The rest of the trip kinda became a blur after that.

 LARA PETEK 26.12.2024