Chapter 3

Ugoma attacked me as soon as I entered the classroom. “Amy, have you heard?” She said ready to gist me but I was already sure that it was about Funke.

I couldn’t help but pity that girl, the news about her wasn’t going down anytime soon, I couldn’t imagine the embarrassment.

“About Funke, right? I heard already.” I said as I cut Ugoma off and went to sit on my chair.

As much as I would have loved to tell you that I was the center of attention in my school, the oh-so-beautiful princess that every student liked and wanted to be friends with, the most brilliant student, blah blah blah!

Oh please! I was non of that.

I was not even near any center of attention, not so beautiful and not even that brilliant, I was just average of it all.
“Look, my mum and I went shopping on Saturday for my hostel supplies and we spent over two hundred thousand Naira!” I heard a voice brag as my head snapped to the direction of the voice and just like I had expected, it was Toyin, the wannabe of my class, that girl can lie!

Her lie could wake a dead man up!

I am not exaggerating. There was a time that she told us that her mum was an oyinbo {white} woman based in New York, she even buttressed her point by showing us a picture, some of them believed that bullshit but I didn’t. The fact that she was very light doesn’t mean her mum had to be white.

The cat was let out of the bag when her mum came to school one day to harass her for stealing her money. Toyin was a typical representative of Alakada (fake girls).

“Hun! Toyin the rich girl! You that I saw sitting in your mom’s small kiosk on Saturday! Must you always lie? The thing no dey tire you ni (don’t you get tired)?” The shortest boy in our class attacked her.

Dolapo was the shortest boy in the whole senior school, you could even mistake him for a dwarf. He had his own special chair due to his height. He coupled his shortness with being troublesome and mean, I guess he didn’t want to be cheated on or something.

Funny enough, most students didn’t even know his real name, they called him by his nickname, ‘Boiling ring.’
Let me tell you how he got that name; When we were in Junior secondary school 1, all newbies and naive, Mrs Sobowale, one of our subject teachers cared enough to give us time to introduce ourselves during her class.

It got to Dolapo’s turn and just because he wanted to act and look cool, he said, “My name is Soyinka Adedolapo but my friends call me Dolly ray”.

The way he pronounced Dolly ray that day sounded like boiling ring and that was what we all started to call him ever since.

Queen and her friends cat-walked into the classroom in all their elegance and poise. Now, this girl was the definition of beauty. She’s dark in complexion, tall and curvy plus she was even brilliant. She practically had it all on a platter of Gold.

But all this gets into her head sometimes thus making her act like an idiot, it was no wonder that I never liked her.How could one person have all that qualities? Say I’m envious or jealous but i guess that’s what makes me human and also a teenager. Insecurities are bound to loiter somewhere.

Had it been she was nice and not proud or anything, I probably wouldn’t have anything against her but she just had to choose to be mean.

She walked towards Ore who was sitting somewhere at the back of the class. “Ore, is it true that you got a love letter from Funke Anikulapo?” She whispered even though everybody in the class could hear what she said.

“And so? What’s your business with that?” Ore snapped at her while the whole class laughed.

Despite Queen’s qualities, she still fought for Ore’s attention like the rest of us, that boy acted as if he wasn’t interested in girls, I couldn’t help but wonder if he just wasn’t interested in girls or something.

Before queen could even think of a comeback, our civic education teacher walked in. Miss Bamijo was a short robust woman with three tribal marks on her face, students call her ‘okola’ (okola means someone with tribal marks) behind her back.

Some of the boys even joke by saying, ‘you fight lion?’

Miss Bamijo who was surely in her thirties but yet to get married used to act like she was strict but actually wasn’t.We all had those teachers in our schools that liked holding cane to scare students and would be frowning face up and down but couldn’t actually beat, Miss Bamijo was one of those teachers.

“Toyin, why can’t you do without talking, ehn? sho sho sho like a parrot. And if I flog you now, you will start crying like a baby!” She snapped Toyin who just stared at her.

You dare not talk back at your teachers in my school, else you’d taste punishments that’d make your whole body ache for the next ten days, get Caned so bad that your hands refuse to hold the pen for the next three days or even get traumatized by being sent to the staff room and passed from teacher to teacher.

“It’s like you people don’t know what you are into! Your GCE exam is knocking and you are now in S.S 2, You had better be serious.” She said trying to scare us with our external exams like most typical Nigerian teachers do.

Funny enough, this GCE exam was still the following year and they keep exaggerating it like our whole lives would end if we play a little.Only our school was making the exam compulsory as if it was their business. A typical private school.

“So, what was our last topic?”