Shy Girls Also Dream Big

01. Prologue.

"According to child fund international (2013), poverty weakens a child's accessibility to school, leading to poor physical wellbeing and other physical and cognitive skills-"

Fatima, S. A., Fatima, S. T., & Alvi, K. K. (2021). Major Causes of Female Dropouts at Different Educational Levels in Karachi. Global Educational Studies Review, VI(I), 293-305

Chikamharida's POV.

Loud, panicked voices filled the whole Osiele street and mine was louder despite me being silent.

On looking around, our situation was easily perceptible. Students were either crouched on their knees, the weight of their problems heavy on their back or they were trying to rub their stinging eyes which had been invaded by tear gas ten minutes ago.

The noise of bullet rounds kept reverberating in my ear drums, those metal triggers appearing to have been tickled only a second ago.

A few students were still joining our procession of tears. They could easily be plucked out from the crowd like red roses in a garden of sunflowers. I wondered why the delay and I don't mean it in a derogatory way; even the dullest of animals, a fowl, wouldn't waste a second to flee from flying bullets.

I stood up from the crouching position I was in, my breaths in heavy puffs.

My eyes swept over the sea of bodies once again— each soul from different home and of various fates, to be tied by such misfortune as the lack of school-fee.

"Them dey shoot us and you dey catwalk!(They're shooting at us and you are walking slowly!)" The angry roar came from from a male youth with dreads, to a slender male who had crouched to adjust his footwear—a peeling timberland.

The guy with dreads got no reply from the slender timberland guy and he wasn't bothered to wait. Instead he kept to his pace, leaving me to tail him with my gaze till he banged an hostel gate at half a mile away.

I found my footing after standing from my crouched position and kept walking with raised ears and slow legs past trees, gates, fences and other natural things which were oblivious to our turmoil.

Like a wet wood in a fireplace, I sought a flame that wasn't meant to be ignited; we students sought a miraculous upturn of a finalised decision— a mission we didn't realise was not possible considering the nation's fragile government.

As I stood amidst them, I was trying so hard not to blame the school authorities for our failed protest.

They weren't to be blamed, of course. How could I blame the authorities when said affected students hadn't bothered showing up in their numbers for the protest? To the extent that the students who showed up were less than a hundred, enough to be considered flies in their eyes.

Instead, I blamed the students. All the faults on them for waning their time back home in Onga-influenced Jollofs.

Before I knew it, I'd arrived at our neighborhood and there, at the very heart was our hostel—Primrose, as short as it could be for a cheap bungalow. I passed through its gate of silence, walked straight to our flat, opened the door and waltzed in. Praise was on the bed, her bed, cause she was letting me stay with her without a significant contribution to the rent (or our living condition).

She welcomed me with a soft voice, knowing, or perchance sensing that the cause of my preparations earlier that morning did not unfurl as planned.

"How was it?" She asked.

Out of necessity, I rushed to the bathroom, and using my palm, scooped water from the bucket and splashed on my face. The water trickled down to the bathroom floor, forming a slow, running pattern of pitter-patter. She could see me as I washed the tear gas from my eyes; I was sure she could. The bedroom was not that far off from the bathroom, to be sincere. We were in a room self-contain, and it was only a wooden door separated the bathroom and the bedroom.