Girl of my dreams

In my next life I will be a boy. Not like the stupid boys in my class but definitely a boy.

I want to be a boy, so I can be class captain. So that when I grow up, I will not be complaining about bra leaving marks on my skin and shoes killing my feet, like my mummy does. I want to be like my daddy, he’s very cool; he has plenty money and he’s always traveling, and when he’s at home, he does not wash plates or cook. He has mummy to do everything for him.

I want to be a boy, so that when I grow up, I can marry Ada.

Don’t get me wrong, being a girl is nice. You get to do different styles with your hair, like police cap and who is in the garden. And even though senior Ruka doesn’t apply enough shea butter and pulls too tight, it always looks good and everyone keeps asking me how did my hair get so long. You also get to wear fancy slippers, like the high ones my daddy’s secretary, Aunty Lucy, bought for me last Christmas. And you get to wear dresses with big bows and big skirts like those women in mummy’s magazines. But it also means you don’t get to do the things you really want to do, like climb soursop trees or walk around in shorts. It gets worse if you are in boarding school like me; you can’t ever sag your shorts because you can’t even wear shorts. You can’t do the seniors’ dance with your friend. The one where the boy stands behind while the girl shakes her bum bum on top of his kini. And you definitely can’t be class captain because only boys become class captain.

The truth is I’d make a better class captain than Femi. Femi is an olodo. He cannot find the area of a triangle on his own; he and his friends are always copying during tests; they all sit around Toye and Imam and copy their answers. He’s only class captain because he had plenty friends when we first resumed and they all voted for him as class captain. I was the first position overall at the end of JSS1; I should be class captain this year but girls don’t become class captain and even if, not a girl that was caught doing leelee . . .

Our class teacher appointed me assistant class captain and board keeper, but I never get to write names of noisemakers or help fill out report cards. My only duty is to keep the duster and marker. I don’t want to be board keeper and I’d rather be an ordinary class member than be Femi’s assistant!

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When I sleep, I see Ada.

As always, she’s wearing her white churchwear, the short one that stops just before her knees. She’s in the field between dining hall and yellow house hostel, dancing to a song I can’t hear. The pleats in her dress are flying around her and I can see her rainbow-coloured tights. Her arms are stretched out, waiting for me to come dance with her; every time I try, she flits out of reach until she’s running and I’m chasing her. Then I wake up, exhausted, reciting her name under my breath, longing for one more dance.

I miss Ada. She is the only one that gets me. Her parents took her away from school last term after Mr. Babs caught us.

They said I corrupted her, that I taught her bad things. But it’s not true. Ada wanted those things too. She even taught me things I didn’t know, like how to move my kini against her own kini without shaking the bunk, how to keep my face straight when she slips her hand inside my pinafore under the table in class so nobody would notice anything.

All I wanted to do was touch. But she...