Stolen

(8) The Girl in the Secrets

Camilla, I know that when you are older you will probably have some boy problems; I know I did! Your father was not the first man I had been in a relationship with, when I was a teenager I had a tonne of boyfriends. My mother didn't like the idea of me having so many at a 'young age', but she did not try to stop me.

I had my first boyfriend when I was seven years old, it all started in school. He would often send me glances while we were doing school work, and waggle his eyebrows in a funny way. When I had first told my mother about it she burst out laughing. But then one day he came up to me while the class was packing away for the end of the day, and admitted his feelings for me. He even dug into his school pockets and brought out a crumpled flower and handed it over to me! Honestly, it was so cute. When I was a few years older I had my second boyfriend. He was sweet, silent type of boy who you just could not say no to.

With my other boyfriends I was a teenager by then, and we would often do things like kiss and stare into each other's eyes for whoever knows how long. The other girls in my class seemed to be quite jealous of me, but would look up to me. That felt good that people thought of me as a good example.

One time a boy in my class asked me to be his girlfriend, and I said yes. I do not know why I said yes in the first place, since he was the type of boy who was hugely immature and would joke around with his group of friends about anything. The farest we got to was developed kissing (and a bit of fondling!). I later found out that he only asked me to be his girlfriend, to prove to his friends how far he could get with me. I was furious when I heard about this, and punched him straight in the nose during school. And then later on in the evening my friends and I sneaked out with eggs from the local farm and covered his house in smashed eggs.

It was so fun, the next morning when my friends and I were walking past his house the eggs were still there! And then in the news it was reported that someone had come to his house and covered it in eggs! It was hilarious. I was sure he had learned his lesson not to mess around with someone like me.

Every boyfriend that I had always had one thing in common; they would always compliment me on my beauty. They would say how they liked how I had good fashion sense by wearing a grey high-waisted skirt with a white long-sleeved shirt and grey cardigan and tights along with my army bag to school each day, and how my Ghanaian weave hairstyles looked good on me, and how they loved my smile. My mother always said that I could blind boys with my dazzling smile.

When I was seventeen I met a boy called Moses. He looked so attractive, and I instantly fell in love with me. He also fell in love with me, and we soon became boyfriend and girlfriend. He was the best boyfriend that I had ever had. I soon found out that he was a bad boy; he would sell illegal drugs. This scared me, but I still stayed with him. He promised that he would keep me out of harm's way and always keep me safe. I believed in him.

One evening he came over to my house while my mother was spending the week in Ghana; I had the house all to myself. We watched a couple of movies and had a couple of snacks. Then we kissed. We kissed for hours, and seemingly made it from the living room into my bedroom. We almost went the whole way, but he knew that I was not ready yet and stopped when things started to get serious.

A few months passed, and we were still boyfriend and girlfriend. Our relationship was stronger than ever. He even gave me a promise ring! I always wore that promise ring, and remembered about our relationship all the time. I could not stand being away from him for more than an hour. The night he had given me the promise ring he admitted to me that he really did want me to be his forever and ever and that soon we would get married and have children and he would go out and get a proper job.