DEAR DIARY

Scene four.
Episode five.

  I always thought the saying 'the walls have ears' was a mere example of the figure of speech- personification and it had nothing to do with me outside the four walls of English class but the walls didn't just have ears. it had  two eyes, it held a phone to its ears obviously making a phone call and it had big butt...very big butt,i didn't dare to compare mine with it.  Maybe because i wasn't aware of her presence. I was still deep in thoughts trying to prove myself wrong, telling myself i was only being paranoid and Prince was sweet,charming and innocent of my accusation even though he was unaware of the conclusions i had made about him in my head.  I wanted to believe his smile was genuine and that he was everything i had seen but everything i had ignored clouded my thoughts and my vision.
Prince est un vrai dragueur. Prince was a real flirt. It was there. Loud and clear whether i told myself in english or in french. He was the devil,coming to kill, to steal and to destroy yet he looked like the angel, sweet, apologetic and funny. He was too good to be true and yes, he wasn't.
We didn't have chemistry, we had catastrophe. He was a predator and i was the prey. He was a player and i was played

DEAR DIARY

Scene four.
Episode five.

  I always thought the saying 'the walls have ears' was a mere example of the figure of speech- personification and it had nothing to do with me outside the four walls of English class but the walls didn't just have ears. it had  two eyes, it held a phone to its ears obviously making a phone call and it had big butt...very big butt,i didn't dare to compare mine with it.  Maybe because i wasn't aware of her presence. I was still deep in thoughts trying to prove myself wrong, telling myself i was only being paranoid and Prince was sweet,charming and innocent of my accusation even though he was unaware of the conclusions i had made about him in my head.  I wanted to believe his smile was genuine and that he was everything i had seen but everything i had ignored clouded my thoughts and my vision.
Prince est un vrai dragueur. Prince was a real flirt. It was there. Loud and clear whether i told myself in english or in french. He was the devil,coming to kill, to steal and to destroy yet he looked like the angel, sweet, apologetic and funny. He was too good to be true and yes, he wasn't.
We didn't have chemistry, we had catastrophe. He was a predator and i was the prey. He was a player and i was played

DEAR DIARY

Scene four.
Episode four.

  All my life since puberty, i have fantasized about my 'Mr right' . He had to be tall...not tall so that i look like Tyrion Lannister beside The Mountain in game of thrones or one of the seven dwarfs beside the Prince in the folktale 'Snow White' but reasonably big enough to fight for me when i get bullied especially by two big girls who i mistakenly spill coke on.
He had to be fun to be with just so when we hang out with friends,it wouldn't be like we were at the hospital with sympathizers yet not too funny that i would choke on my food then die.      My soulmate had to like me for me not what i had to give the same way i would like him for what he is and not what i would take.  His compliment sank into my subconsciousness and it replayed in my mind over and over again. I stood in awe  watching him. He was kidding ,something about how big my ass was for my height and something about him wanting to spend more time with me another time but i had a hard time figuring each word out.
   My fingers were shaking in fury and i thought i would hit him on the face. I was more angry at myself for being a fool all week. To think i even took Karmsi's teases seriously. I was right to say Prince wasn't type even though i wasn't sure then.
   It is the truth now. Prince wasn't my type. Prince wasn't my Mr Right. Prince wasn't my soul mate.
Prince was a flirt and nature played its game.

DEAR DIARY

Scene four.
Episode three.

The silence lingered on but i knew he could hear my every thought. With every bite on my chicken,he grinned and threw me that look of admiration that made me almost bite off my own tongue. " see the way you are tearing the chicken, that chicken had a future. Who knows maybe he could have been the best Surgeon in the Aves kingdom " His joke almost made me choke and i feared i would make a total mess of myself but for the bottle of coke beside which i sipped to clear my throat. Give him the credit ,he was handsome and he was  funny. He was the total package.
We walked out of the eatery together and the heat struck our skin like evil arrows. I paused, scared to take another step forward for fear of being sunburned. It was the direct opposite of the seat in the eatery and i was glad i still had my cold half full bottle of coke with me. Prince hadn't taken his from the table ,obviously a way to impress me that he didn't care about a 'half empty' drink. Say he was forming for me but if you were in his shoes,i bet you would definitely do the same.  Being the best chicken in the world was a compliment and when he said it, it made me feel good about my body and myself but it also made one thing clear.

DEAR DIARY

Scene four
Episode two
  
    You remember back in nursery school when we had a topic called ' Fill in the gap' ? I was very good at it even till senior school when it became lexis and structure. Now i needed that acquired knowledge to close up the space between Prince and i without moving away from my seat.  It was an impossible possibility and the only way i could destroy the bridge between us and put an end to the jokes was to make him guilty for the other day. It was a trick i had played on other people to draw them into a serious conversation and it was working.  I was over the pain from that day so bringing it back didn't make me feel like a lesser person but Prince still had the hang of it. He kept apologising and promising to make it up to me if i wasn't satisfied with the day's treat. If only he knew a bottle of coke with him even in a cheap restaurant was enough to purge him of all his sins.  I pressed my lips together in that smile that always made my mum give me whatever i ask for,that smile that made me look very adorable and i knew was working its magic on my current target.  He smiled back, tilted his head to the side and heaved a sigh. I could tell i was already building a castle as big as the tower of babel in his heart and God didn't seem to disagree with that idea. He was with me.
Gracious Lord.

DEAR DIARY

Scene four.
Episode one.
 
   I picked the date and the place. It was my favourite eatery and the closest to my street so i didn't have to worry about traffic and transport.
I put everything on outfit. My favourite blue jean, my sleek lilac tank top, a cool shirt and my everyday face cap. It was too simple for a first date but it was summer and it protected me from the unforgiving heat from the blistering of the rays of sweltering sun. It was comfortable and didn't make my mum suspect i was going on a date.
African parents don't like the idea of teenage dating but like the saying "life starts when you are a teen" i was ready to live and not just exist.  Coincidentally, Prince and i wore similar outfit except his inner was a white round neck, his shirt was brighter than mine and he wore sneakers. Unlike me, i had worn my heeled sandals to elevate my height a bit. No one likes a 'short rat' for a date and i was willing to do everything to impress him.  I ordered for chicken and chips and of course a bottle of coke to cool with. Prince said he wasn't hungry so he took only a bottle of fanta.
I wanted us to sit on the sofas at the corners of the room where we could sit next to each other and maybe touch each other's hand every time 'accidentally'. A little intimacy on a first wasn't so much of a big deal.  But Prince preferred the spot directly in  front of the Air conditioner. The exact spot my friend Labake and Esther had picked the previous year when celebrating our success in an impromptu speech i competed in.
The exact spot that prohibited ' accidental touches'

The spot that caused our conversation to be clean, clear and hilarious.
If only we weren't three feet apart. 😢

DEAR DIARY

Scene three
Episode 1

Dear diary,
This was the first the first day of summer and like every other summer, it was the season of fun and relaxation.  Unlike foreign countries with different other seasons : winter,spring and autumn, Nigeria seems to be led by the holy spirit. It rains when it wishes and could be hot enough to roast a plantain a minute after. Often times i have been beaten by the rain in Ikeja only to get to Maryland and find dry land .

God was indeed awesome.  The general idea of an awesome summer is throwing pool parties and picnics at the beach, putting on shorts and spaghetti armed singlets with sun glasses but i was aquaphobic and thalassophobic : big body of water? Kindly shoot me in the head instead.  Karmsi had once made fun of me saying i am a run-away mermaid and that's why i have the fear of water.
The things Karmsi says.

My idea of a perfect summer was spending it with someone special someplace very comfortable. That 'someone' being my bestfriend and that 'someplace' being my house.
Like the saying there's never a place like home.

DEAR DIARY

Scene two.

Episode six.

  I looked at her and thanked God for giving me such a beautiful and intelligent person as a  best friend.

  Karmsi has a heart of gold.  If I was Barbie, she was definitely going to be my Teresa. She was Bae. 

   And she sounded like my mum and when I told her, her reply cracked me up I wanted pee on my body.
   She had lifted the 350kilogram weight in my mind and the blender funk that had clogged my heart.
  I was finally going to be fine.
All thanks to Karmsi.

DEAR DIARY

I felt better.
   Life is good when you have a best friend that understands you and stands by you through thick and thin. " you don't have to feel bad about anything, this is one of those awkward stories that makes life a story.  I mean this is such a story line for a secondary school drama! "
  I smiled at her statement.
It was all an accident and like every other accident it was an inevitable, unplanned and uncontrollable occurrence . It was a normal thing to slip.
  It was a normal thing to spill my drink on a person.  It was also a normal thing to apologize for your mistakes which was what I planned to do when next I meet Priscilla.
If I ever do again.

DEAR DIARY

I felt guilty.
I was feeling bad and because I couldn't pretend to be fine I was making Karmsi say too much to make me feel better.
  She wasn't one to believe anything she heard from people.  People say things they don't know about other people to make themselves feel better or to put down another person's ego.  It was life.
  Many times I have been told different things about Priscilla by people who met her only once or who attended the same secondary school with her. Most of them had jumped into conclusion that she is proud but I never supported anything anyone of them said and I knew Karmsi didn't too.
  She was only trying to make me feel better and she was succeeding.

DEAR DIARY

She sat beside me and the mattress sank in like my heart did when she began to talk.  Don't get me wrong she didn't have bad breathe neither did her armpit smell but she called me clumsy and it sawed my heart into two.
The truth can never change from what it really is... Bitter even than the taste of your mouth when you drink water after eating a pineapple.  I frowned and listened on never missing a word obviously looking for something to take up and cause a fight but there was nothing. She was neutral,  didn't take my side because she held the title 'bestie' neither did she think Priscilla was right to slap me yet she didn't condemn her for her actions. "she 'was' a brat to slap you" karmsi has stressed the word 'was' so it didn't mean Priscilla is always a brat but she 'was' because she was angry.
It made sense.  It made me understand I wasn't the one who had to apologize neither was it Priscilla but the two of us.

DEAR DIARY

DEAR DIARY

I felt ridiculed.
I had kept it to my self and I wished I had let it remain that way.  Locked and sealed within me.  This wasn't the first time Karmsi would make fun of me and I would totally laugh at her if I was in her shoes. 
  It was quite funny and normal but I wasn't normal and I didn't want it to be funny.  I shot her that look that always told her I wasn't in for jokes and I could break into tears if she didn't stop laughing. 
  She understood the message I had passed and her laughter reduced to a quiet snicker and she planted that i-am-just-kidding smirk on her face.
She began to walk towards me purposefully and I got myself ready for the motivational speech she was going to lay on me.
What are friends for?

DEAR DIARY

DEAR DIARY

Scene Two.

  I know I promised not to share my worst experience with anybody but I had to break vow.
I could hardly bare the pain in my heart which wasn't totally from the experience but the itch in my guts to tell someone yet not anyone. I didn't want anyone to laugh at me yet I couldn't keep it a secret.
  Meet Karmsi.  She is not anyone. She is my bestfriend and like every best friend, she was always there for me when i needed her except that she could be very annoying sometimes. We never kept a secret from each other and I began to feel like I was breaking the trust between us by keeping it away from her so when she came to my house to pay me a friendly visit, I decided it was finally time to let the cat out of the bag .
  Her reaction was unexpected and unpredictable. I had imagined she would get angry at me for telling her a week after instead of a second after like we always did.
  But the moment I completed the story about my ordeal , she burst into a loud dramatic laughter that filled my room bouncing back in an hilarious echo.
  Anyone else would laugh and make fun of me but Karmsi wasn't anyone else... Or was she?

DEAR DIARY

  Maybe I was wrong and he wasn't at fault.
He threw me a pitiful look and shook his head in disapproval of his girlfriend's irrational behaviour or was his look that of guilt and the shaking of his head in disapproval of my clumsy and lousy behavior?
   I wanted it to be the earlier because the  second hypothesis wasn't in my favor and it made me want to drown myself with the remaining content in my bottle of coke which was now emptying itself unto the tarred estate ground. 
   He turned and walked off with them and I wished he had walked over to me instead.
To pick me up from the floor where I sat and tell me "it's okay, mi lady" and listen to my hearty laugh as I reply "thanks sire" and maybe end my imagined fairy tale with a kiss on the lips while my two step sisters stand afar watching with hatred oozing out of their sweat pores.
But this was real life...my life.
   I was on the floor and I could be mistaken for a mad woman if I stayed there for long.
I pulled myself up along with what was left of my dignity.
I wouldn't tell anyone about the worst day of my life.

DEAR DIARY

Is there a nerve connecting the face and the leg?  Or was I just so weak from the many feelings and thoughts going through my head?
The air was tense and non of us made any sound. I had stopped trying to talk because there was no point.  Anything I said would be useless,  not that I couldn't speak fluent English but any word I utter would seem like they came from a spoilt radio and I feared I would break down in the tears that were already gathering behind my eyes.  Why was I such an emotional person?  I slipped to the pavement and sat there still holding my face, still in shock and dismay as I watched walk away commenting on the scene as if I was at fault.
Wait a second,  who was at fault?
It had to be the coke,  if it hadn't spilled ,the girls wouldn't have been angry but I would still be a laughing stock.
It had to be Prince, if he wasn't so cute I wouldn't have been distracted nor slip in the first place.

DEAR DIARY

    "say Ha" is a normal expression used by nursing mothers when they want their kids to open their mouth and take a spoonful of cereal or whatever food it was they had in the plate but in my case, I wasn't begged to leave my mouth ajar in bewilderment and shock as the slap landed heavily against my cheeks.
  The slap was so hard I thought the flesh on my cheeks had stuck to her palms. I quickly placed mine against my face and heaved a sigh of relief.
   First Priscilla then Peace then Prince and it was finally my turn to leave my mouth ajar in disbelief. I totally didn't see the slap coming.  It was a quick flash of her palms and a sound like someone trying to kill a giant mosquito feasting on human skin with intent to save the world from Malaria not a angry slap from spilling coke...as bad as it was it was just coke and it was totally wrong of her to have given me that.  If only I could find the words to confront and correct her.
I stood searching for the right words to explain the misunderstanding and the shocking awkward moment but the words wouldn't come.
They stared at me with crossed brows and I stared back with bulgy eyebags.

DEAR DIARY

I wish I had stayed home cooling off with my hand fan instead of going out to get a bottle of coke only to have it wasted.
To make matters worse, on Priscilla!  First impression was very important in every meeting and in mine... I didn't have to introduce myself, Peace had already nicknamed me 'the Clown' as if being called 'short rat' in junior school wasn't enough.
I stood watching her scream "O.M.G" over and over again obviously dumbfounded just not as me. I was shivering and my already weak legs and hurting big toe were yelling for peace.  Like my ears as the slap landed on my face.

DEAR DIARY

I hate to recall the startled look on her face as I accidentally projected the content in my bottle of coke on her.  It happened really fast,  one minute she was standing with a bright smile ready to listen to the nice things she knew I would say about her as it was definitely not the first time an instagram fan would meet her with so much enthusiasm except mine was a little bit over expressed.
The second minute she was drenched in the brownish liquid and the previous upward curve of her lips was now opened wide with disbelief and awfully... RAGE!

DEAR DIARY

The realisation sent a jolt through my heart and it ached so bad I almost spat it out.  If that was even possible but the truth was... He wasn't just Prince, he was Prince Charming.
  I couldn't ignore the fact that he had caught my attention.  I couldn't even control my own steps . The universe was definitely against me as I took another step forward still looking into his face captivated by God's ability to create all humans in his image but still make some people as gorgeous as the boy before me. I was childish,no doubt. 
Suddenly, I missed my steps,hit my toes against the cemented floor wishing I had hit my head and fall in a coma instead.  But fate was a bitch and she had other plans for a worse day. I struggled to regain my balance and in the process, I did something very.......

DEAR DIARY

   I couldn't control my excitement anymore.
Curse me,  I wasn't myself , I was pushed by invisible  irresistible forces and the grip on me was so firm,  I literally became a robot. "Hi Priscilla and Peace" I yelled in top of my throats, I could feel my wind pipe expanding and contrasting.  I was definitely going to have a soar throat.  Anyone would think I saw Nicki Minaj  or Rhianna. Thank God no one else was watching. It was a quiet day on my street.  Praise God!
"Hi Priscilla! " I yelled again and they stopped taking selfies and turned towards me.  I had successfully won their attention. The boy with them turned around and I saw his face. He was so handsome I felt my legs go weak again. My entire body frame reacted to his presence even my heart was soared away from Earth to Mars and was halfway away from Saturn!  What was I thinking?  I had seen him somewhere before.
Somewhere that placed a 'Do not touch ' tag on his forehead.
Curse me again : he was Priscilla's boyfriend.

DEAR DIARY

I stopped short and watched them. 
The popular instagram girls where back at it with the different poses to slay their followers again and it was a pleasure to be an eye witness. It was like giving a baby candy!
  My stomach churned again and my alter ego told me to go on my way but when I tried to move,  my feet wouldn't bulge. I was glued to the position, fascinated by their outfit and total awesomeness.
Anyone would imagine I hadn't seen another human before as I stood paralysed and stupefied. I shook away the urge to say Hello. I wanted to make myself invisible but I couldn't.
I was powerless against the force of my previous wish.

DEAR DIARY

  It was a sunny afternoon and the only way I could cool off was to buy a bottle of coke on the next street down my estate because for some reason, the woman who always sold to me didn't open her store. 
  It isn't new to my few friends that I am a coke addict even though I would never admit it to any of them.  I take my exercises seriously so I didn't have to worry about stored up calories and fat  What I had to worry about was the new faces in that street.
  The both of them were elegant and pretty. Don't forget they were way taller than me or maybe that's a normal thing since almost everyone I know is taller than me .
They looked really mature and if my eyes weren't working well, I wouldn't have recognized them as my instagram idols. It was a dream come true and I immediately felt a rumbling of excitement in my stomach.
Or was it my stomach telling me I had taken to much sugar in the past days?
Or was it my instinct warning me not to be over excited?

DEAR DIARY

Scene One.

Dear Diary,

What do I call the worse day of my life?
Slapped and Shut out. Slapped hard by the one instagram celeb I have always adored and totally shut out by the loud bang the slap had made against my cheeks.
   My ears were hot and I swear I could hear the ringing of a church bell.  If I was asked to guess what church bell, I would definitely be right guessing the noise was from St Timothy Catholic Church but no,  it was all in my head and it gave me