This Girl's life (part 1)

The girl woke up with a start. She was drenched with sweat. She wiped the sweat trickling down her cheek. It was then that she realized she was crying. The girl pulled her blanket off her and painfully got out of bed. She switched on the light to the toilet and kneeled down at the side of the toilet bowl. She was just bending down when she wrenched and threw up what ever food content in her stomach. She did it several times until there was nothing left to throw up except a pink colored liquid. Feeling sick the girl sat on the wet tiled floor and leaned on the wall. The foul smell of her own vomit filled the small toilet room. The girl closed her eyes feeling weak and tired. But what left her immobile was the aching pain in her chest. The pain and the feeling of loneliness enveloped her until she couldn’t stand it longer and burst into tears. Crying out loudly not carrying if anyone heard her. Her cries could be heard through the open toilet door into her room and even outside the empty hallways ringing along the dark passage.


She cried long and hard. She cried and cried until she fell asleep leaning on the wall, but nobody in that household knew of the girl’s misery because there was no one there to help her.

The house was empty and cold and the only witness to her misery was her old loyal Siamese cat, Fluffy, who purred and meowed to comfort her poor mistress.


BAM ! Sofia woke up with a start. She looked dazedly trying to focus on her surroundings.

Where was she?

She saw several faces looking back at her and some of them were grinning mischievously while others were pointing to something beside her desk.


Sofia slowly turned her head towards where they were pointing and saw the Ustazah looking down angrily at her. In the Ustazah’s right hand was a text book on Religious Studies while in the left hand was a threatening looking long metal ruler. Sofia was still looking at the ruler without blinking when the Ustazah hit her with the text book on her back. The Ustazah ordered Sofia to get out of her classroom and washed her face.

Solemnly Sofia got up of her chair and walked slowly out of the class feeling the stares and sly smiles of her classmates. She couldn’t help feeling sleepy. Religious study class was the last subject before end of school. The dragging monotonous lecture had lullabied her to sleep.

Sofia tiredly dragged her feet up the stairs towards the girls toilet, located on top of a hill a few meters farther from the classrooms. Sofia cursed under her breath wondering for the gazillions time, why oh why did they put the girls’ toilet at an isolated area on top of a steep hill.

Sofia was almost out of breath when she reached the top. The toilet looked like a run down hut from a horror film with the big oak tree behind it and the branches and leaves loomed across the roof giving that extra eerie and dark look to the toilet. She went to the entrance and could smell the stench of urine coming out from inside. She switched on the lights. There were three rows of lights but only one flickered weakly against the others which had burned out.

Sofia was thankful that the sinks were located near the entrance. Above the sinks was a long mirror giving a view of the dark row of toilet cubicles behind her. The toilets seemed to be empty. Sofia turned on the pipe and run her hands through the cold water coming out of the pipe. Sofia washed her oily face. She had gotten water into her eyes and she blindly searched for the tissue packet she had in her ‘’baju kurung’ pocket. Wiping her face she looked at her reflection in the mirror. She saw a 15 year old girl, with long thick untidy wavy hair tied in a pony tail with a rubber band. Big round eyes looked back at her. She turned her head to the left and then to the right. There were a lot of pimples on her checks and on her T-zone area. She smiled at the mirror, showing her teeth, she had a small gap between the two front upper teeth.



“Not that bad, Sofia. Not that bad,” said Sofia admiring herself. That was when she heard the sound.

It sounded like a gasping sound coming from one of the toilets. Then it sounded like heavy breathing and the moaning sound gave Sofia the goose bumps.

“Is there someone in there?” asked Sofia loudly. Nobody answered her back. Sofia looked at the row of toilets through the mirror. Most of the doors were closed. The moaning sound had stopped. Sofia turned around and faced the row of closed toilet doors.

“Is there anyone there?” asked Sofia even louder trying her best not to sound scared.

There was silence.

Sofia knew that she should just leave but she didn’t want to sound like a fool running out of the toilet scared especially if someone was playing a trick on her.

Sofia walked slowly to the first toilet and with hands shaking terribly, she pushed the door open. It was empty.
She walked to the second door and placed her hands on it. It wasn’t lock. She was about to push the door open when there was a loud banging noise on top of the building. One of the dried up branches had fallen on the zinc roof giving a loud clanging noise. Startled screams rang out in the girls’ toilet. Sofia sprinted out of the toilet and dashed down the fleet of stairs. It wasn’t when she reached the corner to her classroom did she stopped and tried to calm down. She was shaken so badly and her heart was beating so furiously, she was so afraid that she would faint right on that spot. Sofia tried to control her breathing and turned to look up the stairs towards the toilet. What had petrified her was that when she screamed, she could not only hear her own scream but there was another scream, more piercing than hers coming from behind the door that she was about to open!

After a minute or two Sofia had calmed down and maintained her composure. She walked towards her classroom. She was about to turn the corner when she collided with the Ustazah. The Ustazah looked at her grimly and pushed the stacks of exercise books she was carrying onto Sofia’s arms and ordered her to the Teachers Room…


Sofia kicked the small pebble roughly with her left foot. Today was not her day. First, she was caught sleeping in class, second, she was given the scare of her life in the girls toilet and third, she was given a long lecture by the Ustazah in the Teachers Room with the other teachers from other classes looking at her and lastly she was ordered to write a three full page of apology for sleeping in class. It was to be handed in the next. What made it worst was that she had missed her school bus and had to call home for her mother to pick her up. Her mother didn’t sound please; she was a very busy person with her saloon to look after and she did not like her schedule to be interrupted with petty things such as this.

Sofia sat at the side of the road facing her school. She could see parents dropping their children for the afternoon session. Sofia watched the cars passing in front of her. Her eyes stopped at a lone figure sitting on a bench near the security hut beside the entrance gate. It was one of the school girls in her form. Her hair was straight and short below the ears. She was fair and she had on a round rimmed spectacles. She was small in size and the ‘baju kurung’ she wore looked like it was too big for her. The girl swung her legs watching the cars passed by when their eyes met.

Sofia smiled and raised her left hand. The girl looked blankly at her and then looked down at her feet.

‘How rude,’ thought Sofia. She wanted to cross the road to tell the girl off when a car honk made her jump. It was her mother arriving in her brand new BMW. Sofia quickly went into the car and as they drove off, Sofia looked out the window and saw the girl still looking down at her feet. She watched the girl through the rear view mirror until the car turned a corner and the girl was out of view.