Of all the people at my summer camp, one person was fiendish, cruel, and simply terrible enough to strike pure dread into my heart.

This person was ten years old, half my size, and looked like the most innocent girl on the planet.

If you ever meet her, do not let that deceive you.  I may sound like I am exaggerating, paranoid or even a lunatic.  I promise you that I am not, though.  I am the only person in the world who truly knows how terrible she is, because I had to share a room with her for three interminable weeks.

Everywhere we went, she fooled everyone into thinking that she was a sweet, innocent girl.  But she never fooled me.  Not when she looked at me with her round, endearing face.  Not when she blinked her large, chocolate brown eyes at me and smiled.  Not even when she wished me a good morning in her high, perky voice.

More than anything, I wish that I could have stayed in a room all by myself.  Unfortunately for me, there was no such option available.  So that is how I came to be acquainted with Roshi.  Or as I call her, Roshi the Terrible.
When my car first drove into the sweltering heat of Chestertown, Maryland, I was bursting with apprehension about my roommate.

“Do you think I’ll like her?” I enquired anxiously.  My mother rolled her eyes and sighed.

“For the eleventh time, you’ll probably get along just fine,” she replied through gritted teeth.

  I leaned back uncertainly, doubting the credibility of her hasty answer.  My parents always thought that I should be able to get along with everyone.  As we pulled into the campsite, I heard my mother mutter, “Finally.”  I narrowed my eyes.

After a few hours, I was settled into my room.  My parents and I had exchanged goodbyes, and they had driven back to New Jersey.  I was now sitting on my bed, staring at my new roommate.

“Hi,” I greeted, sticking out my hand.  “I’m Maya.  I’ll be living with you for the next three weeks.”
“I’m Roshi,” she smiled, shaking my hand.
“I don’t know how I’ll survive here,” I groaned.  “I only brought two books to read.”  Please be a book lover, please be a book lover… I pleaded mentally.
“Really?” she asked eagerly, her dark eyes shining.  “Which ones?”

This seemed like a favorable omen.  I was sure that I could be friends with a book lover.  We chatted eagerly, and soon went to bed.  That is where all the trouble started.
  I had set my alarm for seven; however, at five in the morning, I was rapidly jerked from my sleep by a thunderous thumping noise.
“Wha-?” I moaned.  When I opened my eyes, I saw Roshi walking, or rather, stomping around and organizing all her supplies.
“Roshi,” I whined.  “It’s five in the morning.  What ARE you doing?”
“I wake up early sometimes,” she sniffed, crossing her arms.

“At five in the morning?  Would you please try to make less noise?” I begged as politely as I could.
“Okay,” she agreed amiably.  However, the noise persisted, and when my alarm finally rang at seven, I was tired and surly.  I shuffled my feet to the cafeteria for breakfast, moving like a zombie.
“I’m soooo tired,” I complained to my dorm mates.
“How early did you wake up?” Sarah chuckled.
“I was supposed to wake up at seven,” I explained, lowering my voice clandestinely so that Roshi would not hear my complaints, “but Roshi woke me up at five.”  My counselor, Rhea, heard me and looked at Roshi.
“Roshi, honey?” she called, while I mentally gagged at her endearment.

“Yes?” she responded in a voice like poisoned honey.  I felt like I would throw up.
“What time did you wake up this morning?” Rhea asked cajolingly, as if Roshi was a toddler that needed constant mollycoddling.
“Five.”
“Did you make any noise?”
“A little, I guess.” Lies!!! I wanted to scream.
“Well, if you wake up early, try not to make that much noise.”
“Sure!” she replied perkily.

“And, be really quiet, ‘cause sometimes in the morning people sleep kinda lighter, and you don’t want to wake up your roommate.”

At this, Roshi’s eyes quickly flicked towards me.  “Of course,” she agreed.

I was faintly uncomfortable by now.  Still, I felt as if I had won a personal victory.  Rhea is on MY side!!!!  Roshi would not cause any trouble now.  She had agreed to be quiet!  In front of the counselor!!  I smiled to myself in anticipation of undisturbed sleep.  It is too bad that I never got it.

I was awakened by my dear roommate’s deafening stomping at six the next day.  I did not bother to protest.  I simply covered my head with my pillow and groaned like a wounded bull.  Despite my obvious distress, Roshi resolutely plowed on, continuing to make as much noise as a clumsy elephant.  She was a soldier that would not be hindered from her mission, and I was the enemy.

I felt immense rage and loathing bubble up in my throat.  At this moment, I despised Roshi with every fiber of my body.  A small voice in my head started screaming something that sounded like shrill, high vowels.  I wanted to whip out my superglue and stick those feet that emitted so much noise to the ground.
Instead, I buried my head in my pillow and tried to suppress the angry tears in my eyes.

Roshi never changed her ways.  And because hatred of a person endows us with a view of every minute thing they do wrong, I began to abhor Roshi more and more as the days passed.  I noticed how she was rude to everybody who criticized anything, claiming that they were “ungrateful.”  I noticed how she cheated at Duck, Duck, Goose and pretended that she did not know the rules.  Most importantly, I noticed how she told on anybody who said something she did not like.  She widened her spuriously mournful eyes, scrunched up her small mouth with its corners carefully turned down, and soon, nearly every adult was falling over themselves trying to be nice to her.

Evidence of her ability to charm whomever she wanted, or as everyone else called it, to “suck up” was revealed when Rhea made us all sit down and say what we liked about each person in our dorm.  When she went around the circle, she complimented us quite meagerly, and actually spent at least ten minutes trying to think of something polite to say to one of my friends.  For Roshi, however, she gushed about how sweet and nice she was.

When it was Roshi’s turn, she spouted haphazard fabrications about our, apparently lovely, dispositions.  To Rhea, however, she exclaimed, “You’re the best counselor I’ve ever met!”  When I promptly pointed out that Rhea was the only counselor she had ever met, they both ignored me.  Despite their obvious annoyance, my friends sniggered before hastily assuming straight faces when Rhea looked their way.

I let my hatred of Roshi poison the happy memories of that camp.  When I returned home, all I could talk about was my roommate.  My parents were sympathetic at first, but soon became angry.

“That’s all you talk about!” scolded my mom after I, once again, began to narrate the story of “How Roshi Ruined My Life.”  “You never talk about your friends.  You never talk about how much you learned.  You never talk about the opportunity of even being able to go to a camp like that!  You just complain, complain, complain!”  With that, she stormed up the stairs into her room.

I sat, seething with rage.  I felt as if she had deserted me.  She had joined Roshi’s army.  I was alone, a solitary soldier with no allies, losing the war even though I was fighting for the right cause.

But after I let my anger dissipate, I began to see that my mother was right.  I had had fun.  It was not as if my camp was agony.  But I could never see that.  I let Roshi ruin everything.  In a way, she had won the war.
Nowadays, I try to be positive about camp.  So far, it is not working to great effect; whenever I tell my friends about it, my story starts with, “I had this idiot roommate, Roshi…”  Maybe it is too late, and the small annoyance of my roommate has forever permeated my memories of camp.  Perhaps I will never be able to see the silver lining in the raincloud.

But I still try to remember the fun times I had.  If I catch myself whining about Roshi to my friends, I try to counterbalance my pessimism with an optimistic story about my friends or my classes.  A story that shows that I did have fun, because, after everything I whined and complained about, I really did.

Maybe someday, I will be able to tell everyone about my camp, and what I say will be happy.  Maybe I will have forgotten about Roshi.

Until that day, all I can do is try to stop complaining about Roshi, remember the happy times I had, and hope.