Sitting on her bed, Kolevski counted and recounted her meagre savings. Her waitress work, which she combined with high school, didn’t pay her much: her boss was not very generous. He paid day by day and demanded discretion and hard work for the job. The girl looked drearily at the two piles of bills she had just made: on the left, the one to help her family, on the right the one to buy a new MP3 player. She had dropped hers the week before and without music, she would fall apart. Whether it was history, geography, or toilet duty, she needed her drug. However, she had to face the facts: with five hundred roubles, she could only hope for an atrocious plastic thing with deplorable sound. Again. She sighed and gathered the bills into one heap. Goodbye, dear music.
Her bedroom door opened to a
