My Secondary school crush and I

1.

There is an unspoken law that when you meet your ex, or crush, or ex-crush, or FWBs, or anyone you’ve been romantically entangled with! especially in a restaurant that is far too fancy for your measly salary, that you dissipate into thin air, strike the ground and fall into the endless abyss of pure darkness, or simply just fly away. Or, if you were me, duck behind the menu a posh-looking waitress had brought merely a second ago before you took one look at the counter and beheld the most life-plan-shattering sight of your life. 

Why had I even come here? It’s not like I could afford to pay 25k, I eyed the menu, my heart dropped.  Jesus, 30k! for a single plate of jollof rice and chicken. But my friend had said if I wanted a “rich boyfriend” then I should be going to where rich people hang out. Who didn't like the idea of ‘rich boyfriend’? And I also wanted to treat myself small. I deserve it na. But I hadn't expected to see him here.

Of course, this is the kind of place he'll be at! He was rich, or at least his parents were back when we were in secondary school. So, he'd be here. Unexpected. But he was supposed to be in Lagos. Don't ask me how I know. Well. Ok. Let's just say I follow him everywhere. IG ooh. Twitter ooh, Tiktok ohh. No one still uses FB, but FB ohh. And I even follow him with an extra account, a fake account where I could freely like his photos and watch his videos over and over again without being afraid I'd mistakenly like a video from 2013.  Yes, even the ones he was with whatever new woman that tickled his fancy.

Weird, yes, but that's how we'd been since sec-school when he'd fight off boys from Olodo class, famously known as o'class, made up of deliquescents that loved to skip classes, and hang out on the staircase, kissing and doing all sorts of unmentionable things, then when the quiet girls passes bye, tries to grope them or make them join them. 

I was a quiet girl, with capital q. The kind that couldn't meet the eyes of even her own classmates. The kind that was like a shadow, unnoticed, maybe until something like a maths competition or award, though I was never as good as SP or as bold as DSP, so even when I won more awards I was still unseen. I liked it that way though. I could come and go freely, and unlike the popular girls, could wear my faded shirt I had been wearing since Jss1— senior and junior section had the same uniform, unlike in most schools— because my father couldn't afford to buy me a new one and my patch-patch shoe. Those annoying patch-patch shoes that would soak my socks and blacken it during the rainy season. 

However, I started regretting it when SS2 passed, and SS3 was about to end and I hadn't gotten my first kiss or first boyfriend even after finally buying a new set of school uniform and fresh all-stars, the ankle one that hid my socks like the big senior I was. What was wrong with me? I was fresh now, remade my all-back every week using the pieces of mirror in my room, pressed my uniform so that the lines would slice through your fingers. Even when there was no light for weeks, I take our spoilt iron, put it over the stove until it heats, then iron my clothes till each line was prominent, and polish my shoes and if there was no polish I used water and vaseline, though the latter made it to pack sand eh. But the fact is, I was now looking good, and although I wasn't the prettiest girl in our set, I was still easy going in the eyes, at least better than the girl that always carried ishi eri that seemed to be too old year in year out, never irons her clothes, never washed them either and  the worst part was that she smelled like crayfish. Yet, the boys, some boys still chased her around and she got many kisses. 

Me sef I get eye na. There was no way they'd hit on her and not on me. So I made the worst decision ever made by mankind and went to the staircase, in the guise of wanting to use it, neglecting years of ingrained doctrines.

I never went there, not when I had to visit the admin offices upstairs during learning hours, especially not during break-time when teachers weren't patrolling it to make sure the ‘olodo kids' made it to classes. And I was a quiet girl. The quietest of all quiet girls in the school, in the world even, but I had to take matters into my own hands. O'class boys were unserious, yes, but they had the hottest boys, not nerd hot boys, but hot hot boys who had no business having muscles in just secondary schools. The ones that would tuck-in and wear palms and still look hot doing it. The ones that never left their house without pressed shirts and trousers, and carried a crossing bag, not the backpack we carried, that is if they even bothered with a bag at all. They didn't know how to do basic maths or point out an adjective from sentences, but they were fine and clean and popular and I was soon to graduate, and needed to be hit on, noticed in any kind of way.